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So Stolze is working on the new Mummy. Thoughts?
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May 12, 2012 12:06
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Tollymain posted:So Stolze is working on the new Mummy. Thoughts? I'm assuming you mean a game and not the film reboot. Because if it was the film reboot I'd become so conflicted about it, I might suffer injury.
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May 12, 2012 15:17
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So I'm considering firing up an Unknown Armies IRC game that's basically sort of a "what if the X-Files happened during the Civil War, and they actually listened to Mulder, and now it's the modern day?" sort of game. So... a lot of mortals with guns, no magic, and government backup dealing with the unknown, maybe some wizards and poo poo coming around to gently caress with them, etc. Am I using the right system? It seems like it'd work well, but I'm not one of those guys who can look at a system and really understand it without 4-5 sessions of play, and by then, well, you know. Too late. So is this a good system for the aforementioned vague scenario (I don't want to give too much away, I will probably recruit goons)? I mean, from what I've read, UA seems so rules-light that it hardly seems to matter, but I feel like I'm missing something.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:43
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You might need to gently caress around a lot with Archetypes. Unknown Armies really likes to play with postmodernism and pop culture as occult influences.
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Jun 18, 2012 16:53
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Mors Rattus posted:You might need to gently caress around a lot with Archetypes. How so? Pretend you're talking to a hung-over drunk, because you're talking to a hung-over drunk. For context: I was originally going to go with WoD mortals, but WoD can be so loving tedious. I wanted to go with a faster, looser system.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:03
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Geekkake posted:How so? Pretend you're talking to a hung-over drunk, because you're talking to a hung-over drunk. Well, you've changed culture a lot, haven't you? Archetypes draw on how the masses see...well, archetypes. When you make a mass change to world culture, you have to think about how that manifests in their beliefs about people. Does the Flying Woman look different now? How about the Fool? And so on. Archetype avatars draw their strength from becoming as close as possible to those cultural ideas, though to some extent they can work to shape them by shaping public views on them. It's a bit complex, and I don't fully understand it.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:10
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Mors Rattus posted:Well, you've changed culture a lot, haven't you? Archetypes draw on how the masses see...well, archetypes. When you make a mass change to world culture, you have to think about how that manifests in their beliefs about people. Does the Flying Woman look different now? How about the Fool? And so on. Archetype avatars draw their strength from becoming as close as possible to those cultural ideas, though to some extent they can work to shape them by shaping public views on them. It's a bit complex, and I don't fully understand it. Oh, poo poo, I get what you mean. Well, that part should be relatively easy, then, actually. Hell, if there's anything I do well, it's gently caress with Jungian archetypes on the fly. I thought you meant some kind of mechanic and I was all worried. I can tweak the Man in Black and a couple Illuminati perceptions and largely have the groundwork done. I mean, the entire point of the Foundation is to keep poo poo hush-hush, so the global tremors should be kept at a minimum. My main concerns are mechanical. Edit: My usual method of GMing is to have a rules lawyer present who is rendered toothless by quietly reminding me of important things about other people's characters while largely shutting the gently caress up about his own and just kinda rolling whatever the Hell he wants (they are always shoved into a support role). That way, I never have to remember the rules, and can focus on the important stuff. The downside is I am absolutely terrible at remembering/balancing/figuring out mechanics. Solid Poopsnake fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jun 18, 2012 |
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Jun 18, 2012 17:16
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Depending on how much changes, you may want to change some of the mechanics of the Archetypes' Avatar powers to reflect their new roles. So, that's a thing. But I'm afraid I don't know UA well enough to help with that. Beyond that, you should be okay, I think. UA occultists tend to fall out of the public eye just as a consequence of what it takes to become involved in the occult underground.
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Jun 18, 2012 17:18
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Mors Rattus posted:Depending on how much changes, you may want to change some of the mechanics of the Archetypes' Avatar powers to reflect their new roles. So, that's a thing. But I'm afraid I don't know UA well enough to help with that. Honestly, I doubt it will come up much. I plan to use the ruleset and not much of the universe, if that makes sense. Maybe some adepts. Not many avatars. - E: If any. In fact, I can't currently think of a single avatar I'd want to use. Oh wait. wait
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Jun 18, 2012 17:23
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The only thing that might be a problem is how lethal combat usually is in UA. I'm not sure how "action-y" you want your game but the system tends toward a more gritty feel, where if you get into a gun fight somebody is going to get shot and somebody probably is going to die. There's a reason why the combat mechanics chapter starts with advice on how to resolve your differences without fighting.
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Jun 19, 2012 22:25
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Lethality shouldn't be much of an issue, insofar as I'm advising players not to get too attached to their characters, as those characters are very likely to die from a wide variety of sources aside from firearms.
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Jun 19, 2012 22:50
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There is a significant difference in playstyle between Gygaxian Vietnam Meatgrinder and the one systematically enforced by Stolze's UA. For one, characters survive for long enough for sanity to actually matter rather than re-rolling every time they experience a minor inconvenience. And the character creation system is surprisingly shallow; there are only two lines of difference; you're either choosing what Archetype you want to embody or what obsession your character gains power from.
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Jun 19, 2012 23:49
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The player-defined skills make a huge difference, and taken at high levels function almost like FATE Aspects.
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Jun 19, 2012 23:54
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Not trying to understate that, but there are only so many Dipsomancers you can play in a campaign; its better to allow players to get attached to the characters than not in a system like UA
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Jun 20, 2012 00:00
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For what it's worth, PCs will be neither adepts nor avatar-hopefuls, but rather Regular Dudes kinda chucked into a whirling, buzzing environment beyond their ken, with strict orders to do poo poo they don't understand. It should only take a few lost sheets before they learn not to play with Cthonian matches, and always wear a rubber. After that, I expect the mortality rate to drop sharply. E: I may be totally wrong, but I see this game having a sort of weird, Darwinian underpinning.
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Jun 20, 2012 02:41
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Geekkake posted:For what it's worth, PCs will be neither adepts nor avatar-hopefuls, but rather Regular Dudes kinda chucked into a whirling, buzzing environment beyond their ken, with strict orders to do poo poo they don't understand. It should only take a few lost sheets before they learn not to play with Cthonian matches, and always wear a rubber. After that, I expect the mortality rate to drop sharply. Paranoia / Unknown Armies crossover?
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Jun 20, 2012 03:02
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Gerund posted:Paranoia / Unknown Armies crossover? Yes, please. 
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Jun 20, 2012 05:26
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You're not entirely that far off. Extra-Straight.
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Jun 20, 2012 06:26
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If you like the morality/sanity tracks from UA but want a more-mortals, fewer-archetypes system, you could always try Nemesis, which is straight-up "ORE + UA." And also, free and legal, because it was an early ransom game.
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Jun 20, 2012 06:33
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http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3478575&pagenumber=1 - Can't remember if I posted this here before, but it's a gassed thread full of UA style rumors. Hundreds of them.
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Jul 3, 2012 10:00
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The Mountain Goats use the phrase 'unknown armies' in a song on their upcoming album. Is it a coincidence, am I completely obsessed, or is John Darnielle (a man who's written songs about Lovecraft and Sax Rohmer and Mario Brothers and poems about Moorcock) just that nerdy? I just asked him on Twitter. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jul 11, 2012 |
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Jul 11, 2012 08:25
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Werewolf the Forsaken was the first RPG product I owned, but Unknown Armies was the first product I loved. I read the rulebook over and over again trying to master it, and it was new every time. I tried to start a game of it in high school for some friends, but they were hardcore DnD grogs and they were pretty much; "People that cast magic through obsession? People who embody certain archetypes existing in the collective human consciousness? Hardcore sanity rules instead of just a sliding scale or permanent confusion? Lack of focus on combat? Yeah, good luck taking that seriously, we'll be over here playing our mature elfgames." The one game I was in was an IRC game that only ran for 3 sessions, but I had a ton of fun with it. I was playing a nascent Legomancer (I was 15) who was thrown into magic through a fight with a seriously powered up Dispomancer, and my GM decided that it would be enough to catapult my obsession with Lego into full blown magic, but I would have to give up all the memories of my best friend, another player. I asked if I could get a major charge from this, and the GM said yes. I rolled against mind, and I rolled an 11, way under my mind score. I rolled to see if I could turn one of my smaller beloved creations into a sapient being, and I rolled a 01. The RNG was with me, and I had a sapient Lego robot familiar devoted to me. I had to drop out of the game not long after than, and the game folded soon after. More's the shame that I lent the Core Book to a friend and it's unlikely I'm gonna get it back.
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Jul 11, 2012 10:54
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The UA corebook is one of the most fun to just sit and read, too.
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Jul 11, 2012 11:35
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CAPSLOCKGIRL posted:I was playing a nascent Legomancer (I was 15) Are you retroactively apologizing? 'Cause there's no reason a Legomancer isn't awesome.
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Jul 11, 2012 20:48
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Count Chocula posted:The Mountain Goats use the phrase 'unknown armies' in a song on their upcoming album. Is it a coincidence, am I completely obsessed, or is John Darnielle (a man who's written songs about Lovecraft and Sax Rohmer and Mario Brothers and poems about Moorcock) just that nerdy? William Butler Yeats posted:The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears
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Jul 12, 2012 04:12
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Yeats played RPGs? Dope.
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Jul 12, 2012 08:22
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Swagger Dagger posted:Yeats played RPGs? Dope. You'd think so, except he always played the same loving druid with a different name every time and he kept bringing Maud Gonne around to games and she was a complete drag.
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Jul 12, 2012 21:46
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Geekkake posted:You'd think so, except he always played the same loving druid with a different name every time and he kept bringing Maud Gonne around to games and she was a complete drag. That joke is so good it almost makes up for my blatant stupidity. Ulysses is the most UA Irish novel, what with the main characters walking around and explicitly embodying archetypes. The chapter that's a drugged out play feels like it would work as an Ascension or a Room of Renunciation. The 100th Bloomsday was a few years ago and I was thinking of it as the setting for a one-shot adventure. A group of Bibliomancers, Urbanomancers and Cliomancers want to hurl Dublin back to 16 June 1904 using the energy of thousands of people reenacting Ulysses. Only the PCs can stop them (or not).
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Jul 12, 2012 23:22
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Count Chocula posted:That joke is so good it almost makes up for my blatant stupidity. Honestly, it writes itself. It's a fertile enough gimmick that it could stand as a thread of its own, a la Dungeons and Douchebags. T.S. Eliot claiming elves were metaphors for Jews and Hemingway playing exclusively barbarians. E: If I didn't go into some kind of atavistic fugue every time I moused over the POST button, I'd start it. But the seizures and terror. Solid Poopsnake fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jul 14, 2012 |
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Jul 14, 2012 23:24
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Stolze has a Kickstarter for audiobooks of some of his new short stories. It's close to hitting the stretch goal for a second recording.
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Jul 18, 2012 19:10
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So did Better Angels (that demon-superhero mash-up that was mentioned a few times in the thread) ever come out? For those who have run Monsters and Other Childish Things: how did monster combats work out in your games? Did you mostly have one-on-one monster fights or did everyone wade into the fray? It seems like if you had a group of 4 kids (with monsters) versus another group of 4 kids (with monsters) that it'd be a huge amount to keep track of. I ran a short game, but was trying to introduce the players to both Monsters and the ORE, so we didn't really mess around with combat too much. For my next game, I'm thinking something more Pokemon inspired, and would be interested to hear any experiences/tips on the combat side. Sionak fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 16:47
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Sionak posted:So did Better Angles (that demon-superhero mash-up that was mentioned a few times in the thread) ever come out? I just asked Greg Stolze about it on twitter and he said they're getting ready to kickstarter it, so watch this space.
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Jul 24, 2012 17:09
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Interesting! I was just thinking of asking him about it myself. The beta test version that was released last year was pretty flawed, though, so I hope that they've fixed the biggest problems before they push it out.
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Jul 24, 2012 18:26
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Hey, if any of you guys feel like playing in an Unknown Armies PBP, I've got a recruitment thread open over here: [Unknown Armies] Magic and Mayhem in the Nation's Capital. Make a dude, have fun, use magick all willy-nilly.
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Jul 24, 2012 19:58
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I know I saw someone somewhere do up Vancian styled casting as a Wild Talents power, but I can't find it. Is this good enough, do you think? code:
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Jul 27, 2012 00:45
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Better Angels is up on Kickstarter GO GO GO
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Jul 27, 2012 15:36
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Oh man, that sounds incredible. And here I thought I was done with Kickstarter for a while.
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Jul 27, 2012 15:46
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For $250, Stolze himself will run a session of it for you over Skype. That's a little tempting.
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Jul 27, 2012 16:09
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The thing that pisses me off the most is that at the bottom of the Better Angels Kickstarter is a link to that stupid loving Penny Arcade "no ads" campaign. I told myself I wouldn't click it. I told myself it was only going to make me angry. But I was weak. I did click it. And it did make me angry. Those two unfunny hacks are literally getting 20x what Better Angels needs to print a full-color book...for the removal of ads on some of the pages of their lovely comic website. Life ain't fair.
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Jul 27, 2012 17:58
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I don't think I would know about games like this if it weren't for this site and this thread. This one looks like a winner!
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Jul 27, 2012 18:26
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