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How does Nemesis's sanity system work? Isn't it like a prototype to what Unknown Armies uses?
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May 12, 2016 13:16
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It is pretty much the same system as Unknown Armies 2e, except with the way dice-resolution is done (trauma level is minimal height for a successful match) and the removal of the Isolation meter. Oh, and each meter is tied to a stat which you roll with stability to resist trauma, so you have Senses for Violence checks, Mind for Unnatural and so on, so forth.
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May 12, 2016 13:26
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Pretty much sold on pulling the trigger on Reign. Sorting through the supplements for usable material is kind of tiring, but having more content available is never a bad thing.
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May 15, 2016 01:09
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I haven't played UA yet, but I have a fun idea for an adept school of Venturomancers. Basically they're like a Videomancer in that they're better at understanding the rules of fiction than the real world, but different in that they are convinced they are the hero of their own story and obsessed with making the world around them more like their favorite adventure stories. You know the type. They have some ridiculous name (probably self-given) that they insist everyone calls them by, dress like they're an Original Character (do not steal) with a dubious grasp of fashion, insist on being the center of attention, and expect those around them to either praise or envy them for their inherent Specialness like they're the Chosen One in a bad fantasy paperback. They probably speak in the heightened style of bad pulp or use (and misuse) lots of dumb archaisms like they just wandered in from Middle Earth. They're the hero (though perhaps an edgy-as-gently caress 90s comic sort of way). Their friends (if you can call them that) are sidekicks, comic relief, love interests, or wise mentors. Their enemies (or anyone who they don't like, really) are villains or their unwitting pawns.They are convinced that there is a big bad out their somewhere who is obsessed with them because he/she/it knows that only the Chosen One can stop their evil plan, even if they don't actually know who that person is. Everyone else is just a background character there to fill out the scene. Naturally, these people are kinda awful -- too solipsistic to understand that not everything is about them, too narcissistic to get why other people would have a problem with that. People don't like them because they're misunderstood, as heroes often are. The crappy things in their lives are just challenges to overcome.Their lives before they found their calling are just the sort of mundane or tragic backstories great heroes rise from. They're not sociopaths (unless they are) and generally try to actually be heroic, not just act that way. When they fall in love, they feel it as deeply as the protagonist of a great romance. When someone they love is murdered, they may theatrically tear their hair and go off on a quest for vengeance, but the grief itself will be real. They don't (intentionally) act like arrogant jerks or hurt people around for no reason, because true heroes should be humble and kind (unless they decide their life is a tragedy, in which case their hubris will be epic, but they'll fully expect to be punished for it). The Venturomancer's obsession is strong enough that the world around them seems to warp to fit the character they're playing. Whether they're actually aware that they're using magic to shape reality or are merely doing it subconsciously is up to the players and the GM. Their powers can include things like making incredible coincidences happen around them, using storybook logic to solve mysteries and discern hidden threats, getting people around them to act more like characters in a story, or, at the extreme end, warping causality so that their story unfolds the way it's "supposed" to. They gain charges by doing things that prove to the rest of the world that they're the hero they've always known themselves to be. They get minor charges for things like inspiring others with words and deeds (baking a hundred cakes in couple hours), acting selflessly or putting themselves at risk in a way that's genuinely heroic (giving the cakes to an orphanage for free), or having something unusual and unusually dramatic happen to them (getting a call from the Cake Boss). Significant charges come from performing feats that are genuinely impressive and either earn your widespread renown (making Cake Boss cry on national TV) or have a profound effect on a few characters in a way that advances you along your hero's journey (making Cake Boss renounce cakes and turn to revenge), or any time an audience sees you do/experience something absurdly dramatic that normally only happens in stories (getting thrown off a skyscraper, but surviving because you landed on a giant wedding cake). You get a major charge for defeating your big bad and saving the day (at least until the sequel) and becoming a hero in the eyes of millions. Jon Krakauer writes a bestseller about you and Brad Pitt plays you in the movie. Venturomancers can play many different kinds of heroes, but they all have the same taboo, which is that they aren't allowed to ever stop being the hero. They can do mundane tasks like going to the bathroom or washing their shirts as long as they do those things in private and "off-screen," but they always have to be on the lookout for the next adventure and can never take a day off. If they pass up an adventure, spend more than a day or so without finding one, or otherwise stop acting like the "hero" for too long, they lose all charges. When you make a Venturomancer, you decide three things. What sort of story the character thinks he or she is living in, what sort of hero they're supposed to be, and what makes them special. Since they are playing an adventurer in the "real" world, there are limits. Your Venturomancer can't just announce that they're an elf now and start wearing pointy ears around, because that wouldn't fit their "backstory" (IE childhood) of growing up human and doing normal human things, but they can decide that one of their ancestors had fae blood, provided they have a reason for actually believing it. Perhaps their family has a history of unusual health and longevity. Perhaps there is an old photo in the attic of their great-grandmother looking beautiful and sad while visiting a faerie mound in Ireland. Perhaps no one in the family will say who their great-grandfather was. For normal people, that would be an interesting mystery, for a budding Venturomancer, it might be enough for them to pick a "faerie" name (maybe one that came in a green), start wearing lots of green, and spend way too much time reading about ley lines. The ears would be right out though. Unlike with diehard LARPers and actual otherkin (most of whom know on some level that they're just playing pretend), the Venturomancer never fakes it. They didn't sit down to decide what kind of hero they would be, they came to their belief organically, and believe it with every fiber of their being. They are a hero, not just a nerd playing at being one Here's a couple examples of what I had in mind: Lucy "Lightning Rider" Lassiter was an ordinary high school girl until she was struck by lightning during a pep rally. The doctors say she's fine, aside from some minor nerve damage, but she knows that she's different now, changed, special. Part of her still wants to live a normal life and she maintains her secret identity while at school and with her parents, but that's not who she is anymore. It's just a mask she wears and one that fits less comfortably than the neon and blue latex number she wears at night. Her powers aren't as flashy as some superheroes, but with her Lightning Sense to warn her to danger and her Lightningcycle to get her out of it, she knows there's no danger she can't face. Some day soon, she's going to throw away her nerd glasses for good and ride the lightning full time, but first she's got to graduate. Mitch "Red" Redding grew up in Arizona, trains horses for a rodeo, and watches a lot of Westerns. He sees life as a wild frontier full of danger and possibility and himself as a modern day John Wayne, the only man left with the grit and guts to tame it. He dresses like a cowboy (because he actually is one), and speaks with a drawl. He wears a silver colt on his hip everywhere he goes and doesn't need no stinking open carry permit. The world he inhabits is like an adventure serial. He follows the rodeo from town to town playing cards, picking fights, and breaking hearts. He used to dream of finding a pretty senorita and settling down, but that was before the man in black shot his brother. Some day he'll find the man in black and put a bullet in his eye, but until then, the road is the only home he knows and his six string and his six shooter are his only companions. e: I guess my questions for yall are how well this sort of character would fit the setting (I know in some ways they're a lot like avatars, but I hope their obsessiveness and self-involvement came across), what some good generic "spells" would be, and how you think having a PC who actually thinks of themselves as a player character (or rather as the player character) would work at the gaming table. Duckbox fucked around with this message at 22:17 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 21:52
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Paladins work in d&d groups just fine, this isn't too different. You just have to find reasons as a group why this nut should work with the rest of your nuts. One thing is that adepts aren't ever really unaware of their Magick, so they need to know that they're pulling the universe around them occasionally. They can definitely think that it is the rightness of their cause, not the force of their belief, that channels their Magick, but they need to know they're doing it. Otherwise they're unconscious avatars. Furthermore, like adepts tend to attract like. What does their subculture look like and how do they interface with the rest of magical society. What does a very clued-in venturomancer look like? I think it's a really fun concept and I might wind up statting one later. Spells: x minor But Thou Must! Give someone a noble or at least neutral but in your favor request, and make them roll a self check of they refuse it. Badass scar: x minor Retroactively cause an injury to have been less severe. My plane is about to take off, more later. Maybe a spell that makes forces someone you've designated a villain to monologue.
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May 31, 2016 02:18
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I feel you should probably work out what their random magick can do, too. Does it allow them to manipulate the apparent importance of things, or does it allow them to manipulate internal self-images, or what? Like, in the former case, a major charge could probably allow them to permanently render the Constitution unimportant except for its content, or render a particular TV show a national obsession (depending on how difficult they should find it, of course). In the latter case a major charge could be used to permanently alter someone's personality or give them supernatural attributes/skills (though not avatar, adept, or even thaumaturgy skills). And formal spells would then be elaborations of whether they're about imparting literary meaning on reality or about modeling yourself on fiction. So, like, in the first case their minor blast would be something along the lines of charging the target with some negative meaning which causes them harm (making other people want to beat them up to avoid treading on urbanomancer toes, probably), and in the second it would probably make them nauseated to contemplate attacking the venturomancer. You don't have to use these ideas but I hope they give you some inspiration. (I guess I inadvertently shifted the central contradiction to be about how their magic denies the ability of individual heroism to change things/rejects the inherency of heroism. Whoops.)
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May 31, 2016 03:58
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The contradiction I had is mind is basically the classic power vs. freedom dynamic. The better they can play their role, the more power they'll have, but the more trapped they become by their own fantasy. The closer they get to being who they want to be, the less they become like a real person. I figure the major charge would have to be used in a way that relates directly to Venturomancer. The story is about them, so any magic they do should be the same way. Burning a major charge is the sort of thing that happens at the end of a story (after all, they have to beat the big bad to get there), so the power it grants is essentially the ability to pick the ending for the Venturomancer's story. If they want to cash it in for a happy ending, elements of their life will suddenly take a turn for the better. It might not last all the long (things have to start going wrong again if there's gonna be a sequel), but for a while at least, the day will be saved, the girl will be gotten, and all will be right with the world. That's if the story is supposed to have a happy ending. If it's supposed to be a tragedy, the hero will instead spend their charge making sure their downfall is as dramatic and stunning as everything else in the world. Note that actually earning that major charge and being recognized as their inner hero would be the ultimate vindication of the Venturomancer worldview, but it would also be condemning them to a hollow existence where life was just a story about them and now the best part of the story has already been told. As for their random power, it's probably something to do with the way people perceive either the hero or themselves in relation to the hero. Maybe it's like a taunt ability that instantly draws the attention of everyone in the room and clouds their thinking. Maybe it's more like a swift kick to the ego of everyone less self assured than the Venturomancer (ie everyone except other venturomancers, whom I might as well have called Egomancers). Basically you meet someone who is an honest to god hero and it makes you feel pathetic and small and a little worse at being a self-actualized human being than you ever suspected before. Or we could do something weird and unrelated. Several of the other adepts have pretty left-field blasts, so there's no reason we can't get creative with it. Impermanent posted:Spells: x minor These are great, thank you.
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May 31, 2016 05:17
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Duckbag posted:The contradiction I had is mind is basically the classic power vs. freedom dynamic. The better they can play their role, the more power they'll have, but the more trapped they become by their own fantasy. The closer they get to being who they want to be, the less they become like a real person. Isn't that the core theme of avatars? The closer you act to your archetype the more mystical power you get from mantling it, but the less freedom and flexibility you have in controlling abs directing your own life?
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May 31, 2016 15:52
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Yeah, but avatars are all about a acting, believing is unnecessary. I can see it being a good avatar channel too.
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May 31, 2016 16:28
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Had a vague idea for adepts obsessed with the narratavistic hero's journey and the try-fail cycle common to fiction. Inciting incidents, crossing the threshold, guardians, dark night of the soul, symbolic death and rebirth, etc. They charge up by following the path, often involving self-sabotage if they haven't reached the climax, and can use charges to keep everyone else on it, too.
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May 31, 2016 16:51
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psychopomp posted:Had a vague idea for adepts obsessed with the narratavistic hero's journey and the try-fail cycle common to fiction. Inciting incidents, crossing the threshold, guardians, dark night of the soul, symbolic death and rebirth, etc. They charge up by following the path, often involving self-sabotage if they haven't reached the climax, and can use charges to keep everyone else on it, too. There's something like that in UA3 actually. Cinemancy is fairly simliar, in that it's followers basically substitute their actual reality for the fictional one seen in movies. I imagine a similiar principal (and a similiarly broken mind) can be applied to more classical sources of patterns, cliches and such - myths, folk tales and others.
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May 31, 2016 17:18
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Well, I've been inspired to dig this out and start working on it again:quote:Vintnomancy Brainiac Five fucked around with this message at 17:56 on May 31, 2016 |
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May 31, 2016 17:53
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Yesterday while playing Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor we discovered a Tough monstrous body part can parry emotional damage RAW.
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Jun 16, 2016 08:49
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Is this just UA or can I discuss other Greg Stolze titles like Better Angels here?
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Jun 17, 2016 21:57
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Jun 17, 2016 22:01
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I just wanted to ask about the whole "width x height" thing. Never read UA so I didn't know if that was in it too (only Greg Stolze work I've read -- and soon will play -- is Better Angels). The whole "time matters = width matters & vice versa" seems like it could get confusing in play. Anyone have an experienced opinion on the subject? Also, while the game does internal conflict well, I question if BA justifies the "you need to be a supervillain" aspect mechanically. What is stopping you from never invoking the demon, never sinning, and just living the rest of your days like this never happened? If the supervillians are only supposed to be doing this because it stops the demons from taking them over, I don't see it: how would their primary strategy hit 5 if you just live a normal life? I can see the argument that battling is the only way for attributes to go down and sinning then repenting is the only way to make virtuous aspects go up, but I feel it falls a little short. Am I overthinking it or is it more to do with the fact that, left to one's own devices, one might sin enough to hit 5 so they want to get beat up so they lose bad aspects and want to be a villain so they can sin and repent? Also, if someone misses chargen session or joins in late, how do you accommodate that considering the "I do half, you do half" nature of chargen? The book gives advice on missing one day, but not missing chargen or straight up leaving or joining late? We might be having that problem for our chargen session sunday. Don't get me wrong, by the way. I think Better Angels models the internal struggles great, I love what I've read, and being a supervillain trying not to be evil but, instead, eeevil sounds awesome. Just got some questions.
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Jun 18, 2016 04:08
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Well, for one thing, a lot of actions require sinful stats to be successful. For another, combat isn't just physical. Social attacks are very much a thing. But yes, technically you can try to sit pat, ignore your new superpowers, and live a virtuous life as far as I can tell. That doesn't make a very good story, though, and it's the player's job to create a character that would engage with the premise of the game, the GM's job to introduce complications that tempt power use/abuse and then the Screwtape's job to tempt their mark into sin while the demon's awake to mark it on their permanent record.
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Jun 18, 2016 04:26
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Venturomancey is basically what I believe/quasi believe but without the anime/TV Tropes/heroes journey stuff. My version is kinda a mishmash of Unknown Armies, Joyce's Ulysses, and the music of The Hold Steady (plus too many drugs). The idea is that you overlay a mythic reality onto the 'real world'. So you don't just commute home at night in a dodgy train - you're also going through a Passage Through the Underworld. But you're still commuting. Same as Joyce's characters are both living their lives and rennacting Greek myths, or Hold Steady songs are about how scene drama and drug dealing is also Biblical stories. Or how the McDonalds run after an Unknown Armies session is part of the game 'cause you can pretend you get minor charges.The Hold Steady posted:I got to the part about the exodus The thing is, Unknown Armies already handles every single part of that (which is part of why I'm so obsessed with it). Adepts cover WHAT YOU DO, so if you collect books or walk around the city or watch too much TV or drink a bunch you get power. And Avatars cover WHAT YOU ARE, so if I'm being a whacky stoner I can channel The Fool or if I'm following around some band I can channel The Pilgrim. Venturomancy just sounds like a really Vulgar (in the colloquial and the Mage: The Ascension sense) Archtype, and can be covered by various types of heroic avatars. I guess the way I see UA (and life, I guess) is that everybody already sees themselves as the protagonist. But I could be wrong, and it's an idea worth developing. There is an incredible amount of sociopathy/lack of empathy that goes along with that, or so I'm told; apparently most people don't try and force reality into a mythic framework. Check out Matt Wagner's old Mage comic (no relation to the game), where a baseball bat is Excalibur.
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Jun 18, 2016 07:22
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Count Chocula posted:The thing is, Unknown Armies already handles every single part of that (which is part of why I'm so obsessed with it). Adepts cover WHAT YOU DO, so if you collect books or walk around the city or watch too much TV or drink a bunch you get power. And Avatars cover WHAT YOU ARE, so if I'm being a whacky stoner I can channel The Fool or if I'm following around some band I can channel The Pilgrim. Venturomancy just sounds like a really Vulgar (in the colloquial and the Mage: The Ascension sense) Archtype, and can be covered by various types of heroic avatars. I guess the way I see UA (and life, I guess) is that everybody already sees themselves as the protagonist. This isn't entirely correct. The general division is actually that being an Adept is about how you see the world and being an Avatar is about how the world sees you. An Adept must believe, in every single day of their lives, the insane logic that is the source of their power. They must, after all they know it's absolutely true, because they can prove that it's true easily! There is no point in which a Bibliomancer ever sits down in her library and says "Wait, it is rather stupid to just collect the books and not read them. That's not what people say when they mean that "books are power"!". And if she ever does she would lose all her charges, as she admits to herself and to the universe that her own vision of the world might not, in fact, be the right one. Compared to this, being Avatar is all about how other people see you - it's an act, but it's an act you can never stop, not even when you are alone (Because in those moments, you are performing for the entire Universe, for the Archetypes, not just for other people). If everyone around you, including the world itself, perceives you as an X, then you must logically be an X, and so you get the power from that. (Although, technically, you only get power if there is already an ascended Archetype of that - if it has taken a human soul. Otherwise you are walking a path that is not cleared up enough - maybe if you stick to it one day you'll disappear into a flash of light and ascend to give your soul to whatever Archetype that is.) And this has been the central division between these two sources of power basically since the setting has existed. As such, for your Venturomancer, you need to figure out for yourself if they are getting stuff done, because they believe in this so, so, SO hard that both their brain and reality itself bend over backwards to accommodate the belief, or if they are simply walking the path of an Archetype, be it an embodied one or, maybe, a new one.
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Jun 18, 2016 07:37
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quote:There is no point in which a Bibliomancer ever sits down in her library and says "Wait, it is rather stupid to just collect the books and not read them. That's not what people say when they mean that "books are power"!". Theoretically, that point may occur after the 4th move in a year that involved hauling around heavy milk crates full of unread books. One of my freakier gaming moments was having somebody explain the Bibliomancy Taboo to me and me not understanding how anyone could POSSIBLY violate it. I think realizing that I was acting like an insane fictional character helped me get rid of some of my precious books. What about an Ace Ventura-mancer, who gets power from talking to animals and transphobia? Maybe the Venturomancer can channel multiple Archtype channels, but only the level 1 channel, and they need to adhere to the taboos of the ones they channel. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 07:49
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Count Chocula posted:Theoretically, that point may occur after the 4th move in a year that involved hauling around heavy milk crates full of unread books. One of my freakier gaming moments was having somebody explain the Bibliomancy Taboo to me and me not understanding how anyone could POSSIBLY violate it. I think realizing that I was acting like an insane fictional character helped me get rid of some of my precious books. Nah, even then it wouldn't happen - a Bibliomancer simply wouldn't have such a thought. It's not so much that it's wrong in their worldview - it's that the way a Bibliomancer thinks simply does not allow for such a concept to occur. quote:What about an Ace Ventura-mancer, who gets power from talking to animals and transphobia? Now, on the Venturomancer - You can't channel multiple Archetypes. Nobody can. Ever. You only get one patron at a time, no exceptions. However they could have spells that allow you to imitate the channel of an Archetype that you know, similarly to how Cryptomancy works. In fact, I think that might be a good base for your adept school - a strange offshoot of Cryptomancy! After all, both Western and Eastern Cryptomancy are based on truth and secrecy, and the relation between the two. Following the mythical path, while also knowing that you are doing it, is very much knowing a mystery, a secret. I can imagine this school springing up as the last remnants of the Cryptomancers try to get new people into their folds, and of course lying to them about how things are...and the end result is that something different than Cryptomancy ended up happening. The big issue with Venturomancy (and, to be fair, with basically 99% of all fan-made adept schools) is that it seems to be missing it's central paradox, the thing that rubs against the grain in such a way that it is both important to people, yet twisted. I am going to quite some text from UA3, and I hope this doesn't get me in trouble, but I think it illustrates the point better than I can: quote:They go against the grain, sometimes out of deliberate contrarianism, sometimes because their nature is just alien to cultural norms and they don’t even have a chance of hiding it. And here's the thing - nobody actually gives a gently caress about the Hero's Journey. Well okay, you do, and I do, and some people who write fiction do, and very, very, very few people who study mythology still do (Campbell's theories are not really considered relevant in mythological studies these days). As such, there is nothing for an adept to really gain traction against, because there's not enough of it there in the public consciousness for him to go against. This is the case with a lot of the fan-made schools I've seen around - they seem to start with the image, not the idea, which is more of an Archetype's forte, than an Adept's. My advice would be to maybe not even bother with this as an adept school entirely - a "school" in UA means that either enough people spontaneously come to this idea on their own (which means it needs to be based on something relevant enough to the modern world like alcohol, or sex, or books, or guns, or history are), or there are enough people who practice it who managed to teach it to other people, who themselves managed to teach it to some more people and so on. What you've described doesn't really feel like a school, it feels more like a freaky, random one-off power that someone manifested because they are bent [ijust so[/i]. Honestly, that's probably even better, and makes them freakier, even by the lax standards of the Occult Underground. Or maybe it's just that I have soft spot for mageekans and other people with super-specific one-trick powers - enough to make you a freak, not enough to give you the self-righteous satisfaction of an Adept's ego. Edit: Also, I really hope I am not too disparaging here! I love me some Monomyth and the Hero's Journey, and I think that is a very cool concept for a character to be obsessed about, I just think it needs some more work to really make sense within the setting. Jenx fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 08:11
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The simplest way to put it is that in order to be an Adept you have to be crazy, but you don't have to be crazy to be an Avatar. It's entirely possible to become an Avatar purely by accident but Adepts are never accidental, whether they brought it upon themselves or someone brought it upon them, if you are an Adept then fundamentally your view of reality is askew with everyone else's and not just in some doublethink sort of way, there's one way you view the world and it happens to be pretty hosed up and weird by pretty much everyone else's standard but on the other hand it also lets you use no-fooling magic so there's that. Being an Adept is like tossing an apple into the air and not just believing but knowing that it's going to fall upwards, and it does. Another core difference is that Adept magic is fundamentally, at a certain level, self-destructive. I haven't delved into UA3 too deeply but in UA2 Adept schools are always, always inherently poised to lead you on a downward spiral. Entropomancers and Epideromancers and Dispomancers are the most obvious examples thereof, but every Adept school demands things of you that are unhealthy and ultimately self-destructive and antithetical to leading a normal, happy, healthy life, whether it's Pornomancy's dehumanization of sex or Plutomancy's financial taboos, Narco-Alchemy's dependence on addictive drugs or the aptly noted logistical ball-and-chain of Bibliomancy. Mechanomancy requires you to sacrifice your own memories to bring your creations to life. Videomancy shackles you to an unhealthy dependence on a television show. There is no such thing as a casual school of magic that doesn't gently caress your life up. This is in contrast to the cosmic Archetypes which aren't all light and rainbows but many of them are empowering without being innately harmful and the ultimate endpoint of an Avatar successfully navigating the path of a godwalker is ascendance, whereas the endpoint for most Adepts that continue to delve deeper into the pursuit of magic is an untimely and probably unpleasant death.
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Jun 18, 2016 09:00
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To be fair, giving up my books involved lots of yelling and deprogramming.quote:And here's the thing - nobody actually gives a gently caress about the Hero's Journey. Well okay, you do, and I do, and some people who write fiction do, and very, very, very few people who study mythology still do (Campbell's theories are not really considered relevant in mythological studies these days). As such, there is nothing for an adept to really gain traction against, because there's not enough of it there in the public consciousness for him to go against. Hah! My worldview (which doesn't involve the Hero's Journey, since it's not about a process or a simple story - it's about overlaying 'fiction' and 'stories' onto 'reality') came partly from my hosed up guru telling me a secret that suddenly 'made sense': I disagree that the Hero's Journey won't work, since it's such a hackneyed bit of storytelling that's infected almost every videogame and movie. Maybe that's the paradox - everyone thinks they're the Singular Hero getting Great Wisdom when it's millions of people following hack screenplays and bad history. You think you're the Hero - but so does everybody else. I kinda disagree on the Adepts vs Avatars. I can't see myself following any Avatar path without serious changes, but like... Bibliomancy just requires some good storage space and a friend with a van, and Urbanomancy just means you can't take your shoes off and walk barefoot in Central Park (which is a terrible idea anyway). And i'd get power from doing what I do anyway - being a flaneur. Epideromancy is both horrifically triggering in a real world way and interesting to play. As it's just past Bloomsday, I want to bring up again my idea of a Cabal of Bibliomancers and Cliomancers who want to return Dublin to perpetual June 16, 1906. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 09:09 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 09:03
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Covok posted:I just wanted to ask about the whole "width x height" thing. Never read UA so I didn't know if that was in it too (only Greg Stolze work I've read -- and soon will play -- is Better Angels). The whole "time matters = width matters & vice versa" seems like it could get confusing in play. Anyone have an experienced opinion on the subject? From my limited experience, it's not too complicated once everyone's used to it and if the GM is clear about it. Mostly it's a matter of letting the roller know what they're aiming for beyond the intuitive "higher and more = better." Without any pre-roll die tricks, it's easier since they can just roll and sort out sets before applying any post-roll die tricks to maximize a roll accordingly.
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Jun 18, 2016 12:44
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Count Chocula posted:
It's not that simple though. Let me give an example. My favorite book is probably Watership Down, I read it as a child with my mom and brother, and have probably read it 8 or so times since then, by far my most read book. But it wasn't always the same actual book. Once it was from the library, then we bought a copy, and now I own a copy of my own. That doesn't matter to me at all, because it's the story that is important. To a Bibliomancer that would be an insane statement. Like saying 2+2 if 5. The Book itself is what is important to them, the idea that a book is just some transitive thing to bring information, or a story, from one person to another is fundamentally opposed to their worldview. They can no longer relate to books as something you read when you want to relax, or enjoy a story but only as a totem, an item or power in and of itself. You cannot just decide to be an adept, and you can't become an adept because you want the power it brings you or anything like that. You become an adept by going insane and having a fundamental break from reality and never ever coming back.
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Jun 18, 2016 19:25
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That's a pretty common misapprehension of how magic in Unknown Armies works though. "Hey I drink all the time haha guess I could be a dispomancer, so all I need to do is pretend I'm crazy and I'll have real cosmic power, I love books so I could totally be a bibliomancer." A lot of that stems from what I'm sure was an intentional decision to present magical schools as something that seems innocuous or even appealing on the surface but upon deeper inspection is fundamentally warped and harmful.
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Jun 18, 2016 19:51
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I will say that, in a podcast interview, Stolze has somewhat mellowed on the idea that "adept = self-destructive gently caress-up." A lot of the UA3 Adept schools were criticized for not being "extreme" enough, and Stolze's reply was roughly "it's still possible to make a truly self-destructive Adapt with the rules, but I wanted to expand the concept and give examples of schools that were still interesting and crazy without being completely alienating." So you tend to see a lot more socially-acceptable schools, at least on the surface. A Viaturge can get along with society as long as he keeps traveling, and Sociomancers and Vestimancers can easily integrate themselves into the cosplay scene.
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Jun 18, 2016 20:38
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Kai Tave posted:That's a pretty common misapprehension of how magic in Unknown Armies works though. "Hey I drink all the time haha guess I could be a dispomancer, so all I need to do is pretend I'm crazy and I'll have real cosmic power, I love books so I could totally be a bibliomancer." A lot of that stems from what I'm sure was an intentional decision to present magical schools as something that seems innocuous or even appealing on the surface but upon deeper inspection is fundamentally warped and harmful. Yeah - the people who actually seek out adepts and want to become ones (which is how the "schools" can be said to exist, though there are of course exceptions) are probably some of the most desperate, pathetic and broken people you can find in the Underground, and that's saying something. Adepts who became such through their own insanity or warped logic - to them this poo poo almost comes natural. They do magic because they've been bent this way. The ones who actually become apprentices and want to learn this stuff? Those are the people who actually decided they want to completely destroy their own psyche, in the slim chance that magic will come out of it. If you actually sit down and read through UA2nd edition, Post-Modern Magick and the new UA3 books, you can sort of see a pattern with certain adepts - Schools like Urbanomancy, for example, have virtually no trained adepts - you gotta really, really, utterly subsume your identity with a city to have a chance of reaching around into Urbanomancy. That sort of absolute, total obsession with a city can't really be thought - it has to come from within. On the other extreme you have the Pornomancers, where almost all of the practitioners of this have been thought this externally - either by viewing the Naked Goddess Tape, or by joining the Sect. Hush Hush, the Sleeper sourcebook actually has a very interesting titbit on Entropomancers - While chaos mages can spring out from people who have extreme understandings and obsessions with fate and chance, there is a very, very sizeable group (again, by Occult Underground standards of size) of Entropomancers that come from the Midwest, all of whom seem to be traced back to a single magus named Big Betsy. She has so far had only four apprentices (Dan McKay, Uriel Sterne, Fred Mundy and Carlos LaDuke), all four of which have become Entropomancers, and some of them have managed to pass this on to one or two apprentices of their own. Think about it - this woman had managed to break each of these four people in juuuust the right way that they become magicians, and not just batshit crazy and useless. Edit: Simian_Prime posted:I will say that, in a podcast interview, Stolze has somewhat mellowed on the idea that "adept = self-destructive gently caress-up." A lot of the UA3 Adept schools were criticized for not being "extreme" enough, and Stolze's reply was roughly "it's still possible to make a truly self-destructive Adapt with the rules, but I wanted to expand the concept and give examples of schools that were still interesting and crazy without being completely alienating." So you tend to see a lot more socially-acceptable schools, at least on the surface. A Viaturge can get along with society as long as he keeps traveling, and Sociomancers and Vestimancers can easily integrate themselves into the cosplay scene. I actually really like this in the new edition. To me, if you're going to play an Adept and want to do the character justices it means going into some really dark poo poo and playing out stuff that, let's be honest, most people don't care much about, especially when they sit down to play a game. So making it possible to adepts to be just socially marginalized freaks, rather than "this guy is basically a serial killer, except he's into books, not murdering blondes" is probably make them a lot more playable than they used to be. Jenx fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 20:39
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A lot of the old schools tended to have downsides that didn't come up in play, too. Like, there's no mechanical representation for "you're a weapons-grade alcoholic and you've completely destroyed your life" and the non-mechanical representation tends to be minimized in game because you've joined a murderhobo troupe of the only people you know who won't care. So, people tended to underrate the cost of being something like a dipsomancer.
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Jun 18, 2016 20:54
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Covok posted:I just wanted to ask about the whole "width x height" thing. Never read UA so I didn't know if that was in it too (only Greg Stolze work I've read -- and soon will play -- is Better Angels). The whole "time matters = width matters & vice versa" seems like it could get confusing in play. Anyone have an experienced opinion on the subject?
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Jun 18, 2016 21:44
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Kai Tave posted:That's a pretty common misapprehension of how magic in Unknown Armies works though. "Hey I drink all the time haha guess I could be a dispomancer, so all I need to do is pretend I'm crazy and I'll have real cosmic power, I love books so I could totally be a bibliomancer." A lot of that stems from what I'm sure was an intentional decision to present magical schools as something that seems innocuous or even appealing on the surface but upon deeper inspection is fundamentally warped and harmful. Nah, I mean what I said. I hauled around tons of books because I saw them as having totemic power, and it caused real inconvenience. And until I was forced to the idea of destroying a book real hurt me. It's not like the core of my worldview or whatever but saying 'books are just transmission methods for stories' and ignoring how they look and smell and feel and how you can run your hands over them or look at them to reassure you that everything is alright doesn't make sense to me. quote:If you actually sit down and read through UA2nd edition, Post-Modern Magick and the new UA3 books, you can sort of see a pattern with certain adepts - Schools like Urbanomancy, for example, have virtually no trained adepts - you gotta really, really, utterly subsume your identity with a city to have a chance of reaching around into Urbanomancy. That sort of absolute, total obsession with a city can't really be thought - it has to come from within. That's pretty weird. I did a whole course on the idea of The City and there's a TON of literature that translates directly to Urbanomancy. The Situationists, psychogeoraphy, Walter Benjamin's idea of the Flaneur (http://psychogeographicreview.com/baudelaire-benjamin-and-the-birth-of-the-flaneur/). Hell in that course I was assigned to just observe and record one part of the city for a day. You could even use the book of city essays that came with Sim City 2000 as a starting point. And every great city (or not so great) has its own volume of literature and symbols and graffiti and explanations of its powerful places. Dublin has a million, thanks to Joyce. If UA was real Urbanomancy would be easy to teach, though you would need to connect to your city first, to feel it's pull and love it's hidden places. Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jun 19, 2016 |
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Jun 19, 2016 00:52
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I just binge-watched a youtube series that, if you've got a tolerance for a slow pace and high weirdness (and no solid answers), is an amazing inspiration for Unknown Armies: Alantutorial. Just felt I needed to share that. quote:A lot of the old schools tended to have downsides that didn't come up in play, too. Like, there's no mechanical representation for "you're a weapons-grade alcoholic and you've completely destroyed your life" and the non-mechanical representation tends to be minimized in game because you've joined a murderhobo troupe of the only people you know who won't care. So, people tended to underrate the cost of being something like a dipsomancer. Well, I'd say that while there's not mechanical rules that explicitly cover becoming a functional alcoholic via dipsomancy it does come up inevitably in play due to their charging/taboo structure. Any scene that's "focused on" in play has a good chance to be one where you're going to need to have charges on hard, meaning you're probably going to have to be tipsy, then when those charges get used you've got to get more drunk and so on. You'll also inevitably have to do things where that impairment penalty starts to hit you: shooting, driving, etc. Basically a well-constructed adventure with a dipsomancer is going to be like a snowball rolling downhill with the stakes, penalties and consequences getting worse and worse.
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Jun 19, 2016 01:20
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If you're over 18/21 (depending on applicable laws) you can just do what we did and have the Dipsomancer player drink along with their character. Our Dipso's player was rich, so he brought good vodka and soon everybody was making terrible drunken decisions! I always thought Dipsos were meant to be the 'intro' adepts, since they're so easy to understand.
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Jun 19, 2016 01:33
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Rand Brittain posted:A lot of the old schools tended to have downsides that didn't come up in play, too. Like, there's no mechanical representation for "you're a weapons-grade alcoholic and you've completely destroyed your life" and the non-mechanical representation tends to be minimized in game because you've joined a murderhobo troupe of the only people you know who won't care. So, people tended to underrate the cost of being something like a dipsomancer. My last UA campaign had a thing going on with the Entropomancer, where he had lucked into managing to find employment with a guy who was p much a magical mafia boss, and having a steady paycheck isolated him from the worst poo poo that his lifestyle would have caused otherwise. I gave him small reminders tho that not everything was ok anyway: he had no real friends and was alienated from his family, in addition to being a thirtysomething with no actual skills and no gainful employment aside from doing bad poo poo with gangsters.
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Jun 19, 2016 22:00
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I have a book about Nick Cave's early career that claims he used to car-surf for fun, then took so many drugs that he and one of his bandmates spontaneously started speaking in their own private language (which should be a Narco spell). Then there's all the rockstars who've lead long, productive lives as self-destructive drug addicts. Talent and/or fame can protect you from a ton of consequences. My best Dipsomancer concept was either a minor Kennedy or a ripoff of the Peter Cook film Dudley. Rich enough to fund the party, drunk and self-destructive enough to get into consequences. And I love how UA's freeform skill system let's you use something like 'Corrupt Politician' or 'Rich Kid' as a proto-FATE Aspect.
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Jun 20, 2016 02:36
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Just a heads up that I've started an UA3 game in the game room (set in Portland), if anyone's interested... EDIT: Oops! Here's the link. Simian_Prime fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Jul 11, 2016 |
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Jul 11, 2016 06:40
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You need a link to your game thread in that there recruitment thread, mang.
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Jul 11, 2016 12:49
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Rand Brittain posted:A lot of the old schools tended to have downsides that didn't come up in play, too. Like, there's no mechanical representation for "you're a weapons-grade alcoholic and you've completely destroyed your life" and the non-mechanical representation tends to be minimized in game because you've joined a murderhobo troupe of the only people you know who won't care. So, people tended to underrate the cost of being something like a dipsomancer. yeah, the challenge comes from a few things. for one, most people play games to relax or blow off steam or avoid the poo poo they have going on in the real world, and even if you're playing a game about consequences!!! like UA, most people don't truly want to spend their free-time getting invested in make-believe emotional drama and stress that is as draining or more draining than the real life poo poo they're trying to blow off in the first place. for another, there's nothing that's actually fun about being a completely, hopelessly, self-destructive alcoholic, and it's something that most people either can't related to at all (thankfully) except via whatever imaginary character from movies or t.v. they think an alcoholic would act most like, or they actually know someone who has ruined their life with alcohol and it's just loving depressing as all hell to imagine roleplaying as that person in your free-time (even if they can cast magic spells or whatever). so since it's no fun either way, people tend to gloss over this aspect of being a dipsomancer, and the DM probably doesn't try to push that angle too hard in the story, aside from checking to see if you're sober at an inconvenient time, and the other players are also probably not super concerned about whether or not you're properly roleplaying the headspace of a violently self-destructive alcoholic. it's an unfun thing that nobody likely wants to deal with, so it just gets politely ignored by everyone. also, there's not a lot of mechanical representation of what your slow descent into liver cirrhosis should play like (again not necessarily a bad idea because it'd be unfun as hell) but without that, most gamers brains are wired to assume that anything without a specific rule attached isn't an actual thing you have to worry about. sure, you have to make sure you don't accidentally sober up before a big climactic scene, but otherwise there's no real rules for determining how this career alcoholic is specifically alienating everyone in his or her life who has ever loved them to the point that drinking alcohol has given them magical powers. if anything, i think the 3rd edition adepts being less insane is a good thing, because it codifies what most people were likely doing in practice anyway, which gets away from the weird disconnect where the DM and players are all politely ignoring the ostensibly horrible poo poo that should be happening to an adept but isn't because we play games to have fun.
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Jul 11, 2016 23:30
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Two things: First, I've heard -- at least in a few places -- that UA 3rd ed lacks the grit, that it's become sanitary and hopeful, even if the adepts are all still deeply damaged people. I'm disinclined to believe that this is sufficiently true to make it bad, since it's Unknown Armies, but I'm asking here, for anyone with 3rd ed, does it retain the spirit of Cosmic Bumfights? Second, an adept school concept: addiction-mages, Addictomancers, also called twelve-steppers, detoxers and ascetics. Their central paradox is the fact that they're cultivating addictions and needs just so they can prove they can overcome them -- asceticism for the sake of making the hunger stronger so you can defy it better, smoking just for the sake of quitting and jonesing for a smoke, refusing to take your heart medication because you can't tolerate the idea of biological necessity, destroying your body to prove you're stronger than it is. You get charges by fasting: at twelve midnight, you have to symbolically renounce a substance, by, say, throwing your last pack of smokes into the river, tipping out all the booze in your apartment, or locking your extremely high-quality stash in a lockbox and burying it in your yard. Of course, without temptation, repentance and renunciation are meaningless, so you need to retain at least something -- the last cigarette in the pack, a swallow of genuinely good bourbon, or the key to the lockbox. As you withdraw, accruing penalties based on the substance renounced, you start earning minor charges once the withdrawal penalties become strong enough -- one per day after you reach, say, at least a -15% shift. For significant charges, you need to give up a substance you can't do without -- food, say, or all liquids, or your heart medication, or sleep. For these, the biological necessity of the substance is sufficient, so you don't need to carry around a sandwich or water bottle in your bag, but you do need a renunciation ritual. Like the minor charging fast, you start earning charges once the penalty becomes high enough, one per day. This presumably also leads to damage (i.e. you need food to survive) and maybe Helplessness or Self checks as you restrain yourself from acquiring what you desperately need. For major charges, you need to fast on something you need right now, like air, or major organs, or warmth. Choke yourself, intentionally stop your heart or turn a meat locker's temperature down so low that your body starts shutting down immediately, and as long as you're not dead, you earn a major charge every ten minutes. The Addictomancer taboo is relapsing, but it's also getting over it. When you end your fast by indulging or by ceasing to desire the substance in question, to the point where you don't suffer penalties, you lose all the charges you accumulated during that fast. All fasts end eventually, of course -- a minor fast ends when you stop getting the cravings, and if you want to maintain a good addiction, you're going to need to smoke another pack eventually just to keep your hand in. The significant and major charging fasts, of course, end when you either die or take another gasp of air or water or whatever it is. Random magick messes with willpower, obsession, sublimation of desires and biological necessities. A few formula spells: Substance Abuse -- 3 minor charges The minor Addictomancer blast. Only works on someone who indulges in an addictive substance, whether or not they're addicted -- a guy who smokes the occasional cigar is fine, even if he's not a regular smoker. The next time the subject indulges in their vice, it provokes a bad reaction -- instant D.T.s, a hacking fit, intense caffeine jitters, vomiting, etc. -- and deals damage equal to the sum of the dice. Sublimation -- 2 minor charges This formula "enchants" a single instance of a coping strategy to fulfill a need unrelated to its actual character, for the adept or someone else -- a pack of gum can substitute for nicotine, or for a full-blown meal, and a session of intense prayer can actually drive off the need for sleep or make you stop wanting a drink. Of course, if you use this to stave off your cravings during a fast, you don't get a charge. Mrs. Jones - 4 minor charges Addicts someone to whatever the strongest experience they're having is -- if you're punching a guy in the face and you cast this spell, he'll crave blunt trauma to the face on at least a subconscious level. Causes a negative shift to most rolls unless the jones is satisfied. If you go a day without satisfying the jones, it fades away. Smoking Kills -- 2 significant charges The significant blast. Causes firearms damage and the appearance of an overdose. My Only Vice -- 1 significant charge The addictomancer can only cast this during a minor fast -- as long as they don't indulge in the substance from which they're abstaining, they don't need to eat, drink or eliminate, and feel no sexual urges. Get That Monkey Off Your Back -- 5 significant charges "Cures" addictions. Addictomancers can only cast this spell on others. To perform the rite, they spend a full 12 hours with the subject; whenever the subject feels a craving, they must report it, and the addictomancer has to supply a totemic substitute made from a combination of a real addictive substance, used almost to the point of exhaustion, and their own skin and blood, i.e., a cigarette butt which has been unrolled and re-rolled using dead skin, a bottle with a sip of wine and a lot of blood, etc. Additionally, every time a full hour has passed, the subject must take another hit. If this fails, the charge is lost. Once the full 12 hours are up, the addictomancer must supply a receptacle associated with cleanliness, like a dish detergent bottle; the subject's addiction is removed from them... and transplanted into the receptacle as a demon, whose Obsession is "indulging my addiction." The demon is bound until the receptacle is opened.
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Jul 16, 2016 00:49
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Covok posted:Also, while the game does internal conflict well, I question if BA justifies the "you need to be a supervillain" aspect mechanically. What is stopping you from never invoking the demon, never sinning, and just living the rest of your days like this never happened? If the supervillians are only supposed to be doing this because it stops the demons from taking them over, I don't see it: how would their primary strategy hit 5 if you just live a normal life? I can see the argument that battling is the only way for attributes to go down and sinning then repenting is the only way to make virtuous aspects go up, but I feel it falls a little short. Am I overthinking it or is it more to do with the fact that, left to one's own devices, one might sin enough to hit 5 so they want to get beat up so they lose bad aspects and want to be a villain so they can sin and repent? The solution to this lies with the person running the game. You need to give the players situations that are nearly impossible to solve without using some demon powers, or things like that. For example, in the "No soul left behind" campaign, the two things that are used to drive the player initially into using their powers/sinning is requiring a reason they need to keep their school job, and then putting a tight time limit and a large money requirement to keep that. Then put the demon powers out there as an 'easy' solution. Demon powers are pretty much all tied to sinful aspects/strategies, and avoiding those cuts out a ton of options for players to use (not only powers but just normal stuff geared around sinful things). Players failing at things and getting frustrated or being in situations where they need to do things like lie gives a drive to the players to start doing small sins. I guess it is similar to a question for something like d&d of "why would you go into a goddamn dungeon and risk your life for no guaranteed payment?"
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Aug 1, 2016 09:24
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