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Isn't the point of all the weird magic systems in UA that magic systems have a shelf life, and all the old ones ran out? So the old adepts should be stuff like witches and whatnot? Or is that just the rituals?
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May 23, 2010 21:47
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Sargeant Biffalot posted:Isn't the point of all the weird magic systems in UA that magic systems have a shelf life, and all the old ones ran out? So the old adepts should be stuff like witches and whatnot? Or is that just the rituals? I kind of get the sense that other people don't feel this way, but that's my feeling. You can do an occult game set in Medieval times with the UA system...but I just don't see it feeling like a UA game.
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May 23, 2010 23:15
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DeclaredYuppie posted:I kind of get the sense that other people don't feel this way, but that's my feeling. You can do an occult game set in Medieval times with the UA system...but I just don't see it feeling like a UA game. I do know what you mean. UA has an explicitly modern feel. It wouldn't especially difficult to convert UA to a medieval time, but it would be really hard to do it true justice
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May 24, 2010 00:00
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Sargeant Biffalot posted:Isn't the point of all the weird magic systems in UA that magic systems have a shelf life, and all the old ones ran out? So the old adepts should be stuff like witches and whatnot? Or is that just the rituals? Also, according to the source material, some of the Adept schools have been around since before Rome, so the Adept system isn't inherently modern. They do make a point that Adept schools can go in and out of favor, disappear, and be created at any time.
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May 24, 2010 00:48
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Most of the adept schools that are ancient have changed considerably over time, though, as peoples attitudes toward what make them tick change. So for example personomancers used to be much more caught up in the ritual wearing of masks to gain the powers that the personify, the old-school shamanistic tradition. Now they're far more interested in the social aspects of mask wearing, what Jung called the persona, the idea of tweaking other people's perceptions of one and gaining strength from that. It's pre-modern mystical beliefs versus post-modern. Magic as presented in UA is decidedly post modern, it's very ancient and basic beliefs warped by the pressures and anxieties of modern times. A lot of what makes it "wierd" is this conceptual tension. The danger in changing it to a medieval setting is you run the risk of playing a very different game. That said, I think you could possibly do a game set in the past, if you really played up the mythic elements of it. It also might work at points in time where there was significant cultural upheavals happening, since I think that's where a lot of the anxiety that makes UA great comes from. I can see a thematically similar game happening in the last days of Rome, maybe, or in libertine France. Pretty much any era of the Industrial Revolution might work too.
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May 24, 2010 01:11
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The 'Ascension of the Magdalene' adventure is set in 1610 Prague. It's written as a one-shot, though it has a handful of new Archetypes appropriate to the era.
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May 24, 2010 01:59
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Impermanent posted:After you read Unknown Armies, everything you see becomes Unknown Armies. The Colbert Report ripping on O'Reily becomes a an upstart challenging the old Godwalker of the Demagogue. Wikileaks becomes a platform for the attempted ascension of the Anonymous Whistleblower. The old guy who comes into your local diner every day, pays in lint, mutters about the dogs he's seen, and gets coffee and a bagel becomes a burnt out Urbanomancer. That Rough Beast posted:The blasts are another awesome part of the game. They could have just had them straight up be damage, but they took the time to add some nice flavor to them. For example, the Oneiromancer blasts you with a nightmare so bad that having it might just drive you crazy, but if you can stay awake until he falls asleep, it fades harmlessly away.
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May 24, 2010 02:58
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Uncle Khasim posted:I always liked the Entropomancer blast, shooting raw irony at people owns.
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May 24, 2010 03:06
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The best blast is the plutomancer blast. Nothing beats making someone kick their own rear end.
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May 24, 2010 03:22
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Baby Babbeh posted:That said, I think you could possibly do a game set in the past, if you really played up the mythic elements of it. It also might work at points in time where there was significant cultural upheavals happening, since I think that's where a lot of the anxiety that makes UA great comes from. I can see a thematically similar game happening in the last days of Rome, maybe, or in libertine France. Pretty much any era of the Industrial Revolution might work too. God drat it, now I want Industrial Revolution era UA. 
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May 24, 2010 10:44
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I was thinking of something like the Ravenloft setting. Probably less vampire focused, but still the world of mist bit, maybe with the odd elder evil schtick thrown in. The game (any non-modern one) could be informed by modern ideas even if it's set in the past. Sort of looking at the past through the eye of the modern, even if it's not historicaly accurate or whatever. If I didn't hate steampunk I'd probably do something with that, but I've got a strange love for weird gnome style magic/alchemical tech, so I'm seeing mysterious alchemists chasing the philosopher's stone and cultists obssesing over their cult. Gonna have to get the rules I suppose.
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May 24, 2010 12:05
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Sargeant Biffalot posted:Isn't the point of all the weird magic systems in UA that magic systems have a shelf life, and all the old ones ran out? So the old adepts should be stuff like witches and whatnot? Or is that just the rituals? I can't remember which, but one of the adept schools has a major charge you get in a completely different way to all the others, as a leftover from the days when the school meant something completely different. No one has managed to figure out how to get a major charge in a new way yet. I want to say it's the one about staying awake and the major charge involves acting as an oracle, but I haven't read the book in a long time.
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May 24, 2010 12:15
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chrisoya posted:I can't remember which, but one of the adept schools has a major charge you get in a completely different way to all the others, as a leftover from the days when the school meant something completely different. No one has managed to figure out how to get a major charge in a new way yet. I want to say it's the one about staying awake and the major charge involves acting as an oracle, but I haven't read the book in a long time. I think Narco-Alchemy has this problem -- they all know what they want (the stone), but no one knows how to get that in drug form. I'm not even sure anyone knows where to start.
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May 24, 2010 14:45
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northerain posted:Maybe it's my pet peeve. I always find nWOD lacking in horror because everything is quantified. If you're a player and you know nothing about the settings, maybe you can enjoy it more, but as an ST, that freaky monster thing isn't that scary if you can nail it as a ''Ridden''(from Werewolf) or a lowly vampire. Actually, the Hunter books are very good about this. Spirit Slayers, the book about werewolves and shapeshifters, goes through history talking about different kinds of werewolves. Yes, there are the werewolves of Forsaken, but there are also wolves that spread the curse with a bite, witches that use black magic to turn into wolves, people that sold their soul to the devil for magic balm that will turn them wolfy. Witch Finders does the same thing. Hunter really shines when you say 'sometimes things are known monsters like ghosts and vampires. Other times, poo poo is just fuckin' weird' I did a Moth Man game where all kinds of weird stuff happened. One PC left a voice mail for another while they were at breakfast together, telling him to get the hell out of town, and they lost like 3 days. Go to bed Thursday, wake up Sunday morning. People at the counter remember them being there, asking about the Moth Man sightings. No, it wasn't a Mage using Power X or whatever, it was just some weird-rear end poo poo that went down. : )
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May 24, 2010 17:29
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chrisoya posted:I can't remember which, but one of the adept schools has a major charge you get in a completely different way to all the others, as a leftover from the days when the school meant something completely different. No one has managed to figure out how to get a major charge in a new way yet. I want to say it's the one about staying awake and the major charge involves acting as an oracle, but I haven't read the book in a long time. Yeah, the Oneiromancy major charge is "proclaim and witness a prophecy," referencing when the school was about oracular pronunciation and not dreams.
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May 24, 2010 18:15
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Ansob. posted:God drat it, now I want Industrial Revolution era UA. Actually when you think about it the Industrial Revolution is our precept of "Modern" in our current era. So a lot of the stranger stuff for Adepts would be passed by without a blink, such as carrying around dead bodies or collecting random gee-gaws; eccentric behavior works fine in that setting- which implies that it wouldn't work to serve the themes of UA
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May 24, 2010 18:53
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Gerund posted:Actually when you think about it the Industrial Revolution is our precept of "Modern" in our current era. So a lot of the stranger stuff for Adepts would be passed by without a blink, such as carrying around dead bodies or collecting random gee-gaws; eccentric behavior works fine in that setting- which implies that it wouldn't work to serve the themes of UA While I disagree about the industrial revolution being "modernist" as it predates modernism for the most part (although maybe you mean modern in a different sense), the basic point here is absolutely correct. Adept magic for Unknown Armies is rooted in post-modernist ideology. Trying to port that framework back to a period of time before post-modernism is going to be odd at best and terrible at worst. All in all, it's not a very good idea. Regardless, the rules will handle it just fine. of course applying post-modernism to pre-modern time periods could itself be said to be pretty post-modern so~
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May 24, 2010 19:11
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I didn't say I wanted to port UA as it is to the Industrial Revolution - what I'd like is a game similar to UA, where you play UA-style mages and try to influence the world, except it's set during the tail end of the Industrial Revolution and not the 90s. Basically, I want a game that lets me run around defying Victorian European political norms and actively stirring up revolutions just so I can gain a major charge. 
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May 24, 2010 19:30
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Ansob. posted:I didn't say I wanted to port UA as it is to the Industrial Revolution - what I'd like is a game similar to UA, where you play UA-style mages and try to influence the world, except it's set during the tail end of the Industrial Revolution and not the 90s. What does "UA-style mages" mean to you? Or to anyone in this thread?
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May 24, 2010 19:36
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Tolervi posted:What does "UA-style mages" mean to you? Or to anyone in this thread? Gritty, grimy, low-magic urban fantasy dudes who you run around messing with bad people in order to do very stupid things. Basically, every Guy Ritchie film ever, but you can break the laws of physics every now and again.
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May 24, 2010 20:17
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Tolervi posted:What does "UA-style mages" mean to you? Or to anyone in this thread? Knowing how to use magic and wishing you didn't because it's ruining your life
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May 24, 2010 20:18
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Mikan posted:Knowing how to use magic and wishing you didn't because it's ruining your life Well it has to be more than just that because Sorcerer is a pretty decent system that is easily adaptable to a Victorian setting and has a very definite "my magic powers make my life worse" thing going on. But I don't know that it would really have the same feel as a full on adaptation of UA would. *Yeah Ron Edwards, Forge, etc. but seriously I think it's pretty good
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May 24, 2010 20:28
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Tolervi posted:While I disagree about the industrial revolution being "modernist" as it predates modernism for the most part (although maybe you mean modern in a different sense), the basic point here is absolutely correct. Adept magic for Unknown Armies is rooted in post-modernist ideology. Trying to port that framework back to a period of time before post-modernism is going to be odd at best and terrible at worst. All in all, it's not a very good idea. Regardless, the rules will handle it just fine. Caryl Churchill a la Cloud 9 makes a really good point as to how early Victorian society (Industrial Revolution society) is the birth of what we interpret to be "modern life"- Pre-IR is "history", post-IR is "backstory". And really if you're playing UA in Victorian Society as if it is a living, breathing thing you're really just playing it for the initial Edgar Allen Poe / Gothic Horror aesthetic. You might as well have Sherlock Holmes drop-kicking dinosaurs at that point.
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May 24, 2010 20:29
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LGD posted:*Yeah Ron Edwards, Forge, etc. but seriously I think it's pretty good The only reason to hate on the Forge IMO is their annoying fan club that would invade pretty much every RPG discussion forum with their stupid, useless jargon. Some of my favorite games came from there, like Dread and Dogs in the Vineyard. Fun poo poo. 
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May 24, 2010 20:31
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LGD posted:Well it has to be more than just that because Sorcerer is a pretty decent system that is easily adaptable to a Victorian setting and has a very definite "my magic powers make my life worse" thing going on. But I don't know that it would really have the same feel as a full on adaptation of UA would. Well, yeah. There is more to it than that. It's just the element of UA's magic system that appeals to me most. I could never get into Sorcerer because it was too preachy and the organization/writing was a mess and because of Ron Edwards (who is also too preachy and a mess) but I have it sitting around here somewhere. It could have been really good if Ron Edwards had the sense to let someone edit and maybe even rewrite it for him because the ideas are cool and it has a lot of potential
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May 24, 2010 20:32
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Tolervi posted:What does "UA-style mages" mean to you? Or to anyone in this thread?
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May 24, 2010 23:59
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Oh, hey, speaking of Greg Stolze...you know that Wild Talents game? They released the cover for the next book: "Progenitors". quote:It started as a "What if...?" kind of thread on RPG.net. Greg found cool new things to add, then even cooler new things, then added a whole mountain of cool things on top of that. ArcDream is looking for playtesters, too.
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May 25, 2010 00:01
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http://ua.johntynes.com/content_comments.php?id=3149_0_3_0_C1 :iamafag: OK well Unknown Armies still owns!
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May 25, 2010 22:11
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homerlaw posted:I read through the main book a few months ago, and just had a possibly good idea. The SCP Foundation- http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/ basicly a X-Files type deal, there are a lot of SCP's that are these artifact type things. Player's would be agents, possibly adepts, for either the Foundation itself, The new inquisition, or the Sleepers. Freakishly enough, I'm currently running a UA game with exactly this premise (well, it's also a little bit based on The Lost Room.) Adept, avatar and ritual magic is nonexistent: the only occult game out there is hoarding as many artefacts as you can and figuring out how you can use them in a useful manner. So far, the best moment has been the PCs obtaining an envelope containing a photograph of smile.jpg which in the gameverse is, of course, a photograph from life (fortunately, none of them had seen it before). For this they got a handout envelope with a printout of smile.jpg inside, as well as a dossier of heavily-censored briefings from the agency who had it before them. Naturally, they passed these around the table to read, which meant that just as one of them got to "The photograph is to remain in the envelope at ALL TIMES in order to prevent CENSORED; if it must be removed, all experimenters must be blindfolded..." another had just said "Hey, guys, look at this freaky photo I found!"
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May 25, 2010 22:38
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Looking at the major adept powers, how the heck does a DM keep on top of things? When a entropmancer/chaos mage can literally say "no, that didn't happen, and your plot-critical NPC was never born", how do you shape a coherent plot? Handing the divine power of retcon to a player seems hella scary.
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May 26, 2010 00:54
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Squidster posted:Looking at the major adept powers, how the heck does a DM keep on top of things? You don't need to shape a plot. You need to give the PCs interesting situations and see what they do with it. IMO of course.
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May 26, 2010 01:02
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Maddman posted:You don't need to shape a plot. You need to give the PCs interesting situations and see what they do with it. The rule of all good campaigns.
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May 26, 2010 01:23
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Really if your players are slinging around the power to rewrite the world like that, you need to be able to think on your feet and come up with stuff on the fly or you're running exactly the wrong kind of game for your GMing strengths.
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May 26, 2010 01:28
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This may well be so - I think I have decent enough ideas, but I'm not very fast on my feet when it comes to player madness. I'll start with a street level campaign to get used to the system, and I guess I'll see how far I can take it! It can't hurt to try, though I'll reserve a spot in the Worst Experiences thread for my poor players.
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May 26, 2010 02:05
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I think that, while perhaps not as innovative and completely groundbreaking as Unknown Armies in terms of setting and magic systems, REIGN deserves a lot of props for its incorporation of social fu on a really sophisticated level. REIGN has a brilliant streamlined system for making tactical and social prowess of characters matter and be reflected in combat. edit: It is also pretty much the best system for the "training the peasants" part of a Seven Samurai plot. Impermanent fucked around with this message at 03:49 on May 26, 2010 |
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May 26, 2010 03:02
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Squidster posted:Looking at the major adept powers, how the heck does a DM keep on top of things? Don't forget- earning a major charge is usually the effort of a number of story arcs or an entire campaign. Your players will usually be running off a number of minor/significant.
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May 26, 2010 03:30
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Impermanent posted:REIGN has a brilliant streamlined system for making tactical and social prowess of characters matter and be reflected in combat. Write something quick up about it? It's been a year or two since I've read through it, but I don't remember anything special about the social skills from it except the usual mechanics of gobble dice breaking sets, with optional yelling at the start of combat to scare away grunts. I did think that the company system was the great, though, and really is flexible enough that you apply it in almost any game system. I still want to try it out in a really prolonged campaign at some point.
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May 26, 2010 03:52
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Unknown Armies chat: Is there a "multiple uses of a permanent increase formula don't stack" line I'm just not seeing, or is there no reason for an Epideromancer to cast Master of the Flesh on himself until his Body or Speed is already around 85, and basically never for wound points? I mean, Body Like Iron gives you 3 wound points for one significant charge, Preternatural Prowess gives you 5 Body or Speed for one significant charge, and the best you can hope for out of Master of Flesh ever is something like 9+8 or 8+9 of either (and hope you roll well, because drat), for 5 significant charges...which could've gotten you either 15 wound points from Body Like Iron or 25 Body or Speed (up to the 85 cap) from Preternatural Prowess. The name is just so much cooler, though...
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May 26, 2010 05:32
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I don't think there's a no-stacking rule, because Body Like Iron allows you to get up to 250 Wound points, 3 points at a time. I know of at least one Epideromancer statted out with something like 200 Wound Points, so it's definitely supposed to be part of the system. I think you've got it right - Master of Flesh is really only useful for boosting your stats over 85. The only circumstance I can see it being used to give wound points is if you were dying thanks to a self-inflicted injury which regeneration could not heal, like maybe the one used to collect a major charge, and you just didn't have time to cast multiple Body Like Iron spells. I dunno, that's weak as hell as a justification, though. That Rough Beast fucked around with this message at 06:30 on May 26, 2010 |
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May 26, 2010 06:26
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TouretteDog posted:Write something quick up about it? It's been a year or two since I've read through it, but I don't remember anything special about the social skills from it except the usual mechanics of gobble dice breaking sets, with optional yelling at the start of combat to scare away grunts. The company system is actually what I was referring to, and I'll go ahead and give a brief rundown from my admittedly not-great grasp of the rules: Companies are groups of people working together for a common goal, which can be as simple as "live a peaceful life as a peasant village" and as complex as "Become the ultimate coffee shop chain." They are rated in various qualities (Treasure, Might, Influence, Territory) which go from being crap in a bucket to being the ultimate examples of that quality. The peasant village might have a lovely might because they're a bunch of peasants, no influence, and negligible territory, but if they're all incredible devotees of the fish-god of the village, they might have a very high Sovereignty. Some of these are useful when others might not be. Might is great when you're dealing with military forces, but Sovereignty is going to keep you from going to the dogs when spies whisper treason into your village (or company or terror cell or boy scout troupe.) Your characters all will/should have some kind of skill that makes them good at dealing with a particular aspect of managing a company. A merchant-type can make your funds stretch and do backflips. A tactician and leader can keep your army informed and on top. And a socialite can keep your people happy and spread dissension through those who oppose you. Companies can do all sorts of things to other companies, from warfare to trade to espionage, and each kind of attack can be done in different ways. A raid will use your might to damage their treasure, a symbolic attack will damage their sovereignty, etc. Finally: your PCs can do Unconventional Warfare, which is doing stuff that PCs do best: slaughtering villages, assassinating leaders, stealing macguffins, poisoning wells... any terrorist act you can think of. In short: Companies are collections of stats that represent some tangible group of people bent on some goal, like a religious sect or even a specific, heretical sect of a religious sect. They can meaningfully interact with other companies and be given bonuses on these rolls from the PC abilities' and the players' quick thinking. The whole of the system comes together to meaningfully and quickly render the interaction of very large groups of people and nation-wide events in a way that can either be the focus of a whole session for players who enjoy strategic level thinking and political intrigue, or as a brief period of planning before dashing off into an enemy stronghold for players who want to get it all out of the way so they can start bashing in heads. This is what I meant by social and tactical prowess being reflected in combat: Not necessarily one on one combat (although I believe some social skills have some mechanical use in combat. Both in scaring off Unworthy Opponents and rattling Worthy Opponents)
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May 26, 2010 07:15
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