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Mikan posted:
I completely agree with this. I discovered the UA sanity system when I was playing a lot of oWoD Vampire, and I really wanted to port it in over the humanity system. The humanity system, while not terrible, required a lot of focus from the storyteller to keep the double-edged sword of high-humanity/low-humanity. Also as a player you usually felt you had to decide where you wanted your character to end up on the humanity scale before you got too deep into the game (in part because you had to spend xp to buy it up...and while there's a certain thematic "a-ha!" in the players opting to buy more levels of potence than buying humanity, I never felt like that really got through to a lot of players). Also, humanity was something that mattered outside of "the moment". The UA sanity system, though, had two brilliant features. First- you were expected to ping-pong between failing your stress checks and then trying to harden yourself up. This was great because you could really play through both sides of the coin and get a sense of character change. Also, you could get a real sense of the downsides of both (with extensive failures you feel as if control is taken away from you, with extensive hardening you become less and less a real person). Also, the sanity checks were woven into the combat/conflict resolution system, meaning it was with you when the dice were actually rolling. edit- the sanity system was also brilliant in it wasn't just a violence or seeing weird poo poo meter. The self and helplessness meters immediately encouraged GMs to play around with how characters acted when they would do things like barricade themselves in hotel rooms to stay safe from enemies, etc etc. The stimuli system is also great as a "rule that makes roleplaying happen", and sometimes forgotten about in comparison to the fun of the sanity system. When it comes down to it, UA characters (esp. street level ones) have very low success thresholds on their skill checks. Activating a stimuli, though, gives you a much larger chance of success. With them, you give a huge bennie to every player simply for being able to answer the question (and I'd probably argue more than anything this is the most important question in actually "Roleplaying") "why does my character give a poo poo about this scene?" If they can explain how these gang members beating up a girl activates his noble stimulus of defending the innocent or whatever, that player has a much better chance of winning/surviving the fight. The rumors/stuff you know pages in UA were also classic. Later I'll post the summary of the UA campaign my younger brother ran a few years back for me. It was probably the best tabletop game I was ever in. Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 09:03 on May 22, 2010 |
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May 22, 2010 08:59
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 15:19 |
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^^^ Two minor additions to this. First- and it's been a while so I may be slightly off- how failing a sanity check ties to a given combat or conflict is pretty obvious. You are told to freak out and generally can't act. However, as you build up hardened checks in these meters, you are also adversely affected. High levels of hardened generally interfere with "soul" related skills. Also, once you are completely hardened in a given meter, you can no longer use your various passion stimuli to help you increase your chances of successful rolling. You're left without enough humanity to feel nobility or rage or fear. Second- I believe the only way to reduce your meters in either direction is to (a) undergo therapy or (b) there are certain, uh, esoteric rituals that may be able to help you...(these, if I remember correctly, almost always result in your meters going up) I can probably say a little about Avatars. The cosmology of Unknown Armies is based on the idea of a group of 333 celestial archetypes that define the world. Well, there aren't 333 yet- once 333 have been collected the world ends (I don't think any book ever went into detail how you would run this end, it's generally described as just a "reset" and it pretty much won't happen in a game). These Archetypes are in essence the defining characters of the world. The Executioner, The True King, The MVP...the concepts that define a given archetype can feel like they're from different times, but they have to be universal to all mankind. Those who know of the occult and the celestial chorus know they can attempt to be "in tune" with one of these archetypes and gain certain mystical abilities. Mechanically, this is represented by a single avatar skill that works like any other skill in the system (and grows based on the same mechanic). Similar to "adepts" who can lose magical charges by not giving in to their obsession, avatars can lose affinity for their archetypal skill by breaking any sort of bans they may have (the MVP shies away from a challenge or expects less of himself, the executioner doesn't, well, execute). I don't have any great listings of what you can do with an avatar skill- maybe someone else can copy a particular example? Now, being an avatar also involves you into some serious occult politics. See, the celestial chorus are, generally, real people who best exemplified their archetype. Robin Hood, for example, is the actual archetype for the noble thief. However, that person is only in the chorus because they're still the most thought of example of that archetype. By becoming an avatar of Robin Hood, though, you're also putting yourself up as a possible replacement for that chorus member. As your avatar skill reaches the highest levels (this generally involves becoming a very public figure, since people need to associate you with the archetype), you are on the verge of replacing the prior chorus member...who may have some influence on the world still, and is not going to be looking to get ejected (there's a hint that ejected chorus members return to earth alive with hints of what happened to them and a drive to return to the chorus). If you hit 100% with your avatar skill, you ascend to the chorus. The setting and system also provides for characters looking to create their own archetype.
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May 22, 2010 21:12
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rock rock posted:How tied are the rules to the setting? Could you port them to a past or future setting easily enough? I mean if Robin Hood is the archetype of noble thieves, that suggests to me maybe I could run a campaign in medievil england for example. While the system has very little that forces it to stay purely modern, you should be careful since some of the thematic underpinnings may be a bit harder to move around. First of all, the system is very supportive of psychological/existential horror, and your mileage may vary in terms of how a time period shift allows you to keep that focus. Also, a lot of the weirdness (and sometimes horror) plays off the banality of modern day versus the bizarre beliefs and "realities" of yester-year. In older times men had myths of dragons- a silly fear long lost to modern science or whatever. A UA story might posit that dragons did exist as a representation of something (maybe there's an avatar of "The Dragon", an element of change or violence or whatever you think a dragon really means) and there are still dragons today. Sure today's dragons are just men who fit with that theme of old, but they may still breath fire.
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May 23, 2010 14:33
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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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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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Squidster posted:What prevents an Entropomancer from putting on a blindfold, hijacking a bus, and driving it into highway incoming traffic? The other adept major charges seem like they would be a huge challenge and great story to obtain, but the chaos dudes seem to have it pretty easy. The relatively high chance that they will die? edit- like, if they do get that major charge, they'll probably want to use it on saving their own life or giving themselves the ability to walk and chew food again after being thrown through the front windshield of the bus and landing 100' away w/ 4 broken vertebrae. Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 20:59 on May 26, 2010 |
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May 26, 2010 20:44
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bewilderment posted:The nice thing about UA is the way that skills work, and how magic is a skill like anything else, sure you could have a 40% skill in cutting yourself for magical energy, but a 40% in First Aid or similar is going to come in handy pretty often too. It allows relatively normal characters who are still interested in the occult underground to play with the big boys. This is true- and really it's easy to play as a normal person in the occult underground since you generally have skills like "worked in the corporate world 35%" or "credit check 40%", and a lot of time in UA (IMO) was spent dealing with how these small bits of the deranged occult world interfaced with the normal world all around them. Looking/being inconspicuous was a value all its own.
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May 27, 2010 01:58
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counterspin posted:If you want to introduce people to UA run Jailbreak from the One-Shots book. Best adventure I've ever played in, run, or read. A masterpiece. There I said it, and I got gushy. Jailbreak features a small fortune-cookie sized slip of paper you're supposed to copy and cut out as the GM. During the session you hand it to players. It reads: Bored? Do Something! Jailbreak owns. fake edit- Icepick made an appearance in virtually every UA game my friends ran.
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May 27, 2010 05:50
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 15:19 |
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Totally minor thing I was reminded of reading the Bill in Three Parts writeup- Greg Stolze loves using moms as NPCs or pre-gen PCs. It's about the most anti-barbarian-chick thing.
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Jun 16, 2010 05:30
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