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Why I prefer UA as opposed to Mage: Mage has a bunch of mechanics to ensure that the players are never going to reveal magic to the general public or deal with the result of using blatant magic. UA just has you dealing with it.
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May 26, 2010 10:46
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counterspin posted:Kemper: Not entirely true. UA has the "Claws of the Tiger" rule, which tells you just how much damage your character takes when a huge unstructured riot breaks out around them, as is the inevitable result of using most magic in public. Yeah, but there's a fine difference with having rules that ensure that most of the time you won't even think of doing it, and rules that make you deal with the consequences. The Paradox mechanism in Mage is so drat punishing that I've actually never seen anyone do something blatantly vulgar magic poo poo in a game.
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May 27, 2010 18:47
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Unknown Armies is one of the few games where non-magical characters are never on the sidelines. Hell, I ran a whole campaign based on the premise where an Occult Underground semi-gangster hired young, educated and open-minded people to do investigations for him, simply because they weren't hosed in the head or obsessed by magic. And the scariest opponent they had was a mob hitman who was off his rocker and had no magical powers or knowhow whatsoever.
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May 27, 2010 19:37
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counterspin posted:I'm confused as to which of these two things apply to UA in your opinion. In mine both apply. I've never seen someone use "vulgar" magic in UA except at the end of a storyarc, and the rules very clearly state what the consequences of using magic are, namely that you will be immediately surrounded by a violent riot after which everyone will remember you started the riot, though no one will remember exactly what you did. A presumption that you will be hunted down like a dog in a multi-state manhunt(which is what happens to people who start gigantic riots resulting in fatalities) and then put in jail for the rest of your natural seems like making you deal with the consequences to me. I think it's more of a paradigm difference than a clear rules difference, actually. Thanks to the fucker who stole my books, I don't have the books on hand right now, apart from the 1st edition corebook, but the way I see it, is pretty much like this: Mage makes a presumption that no one will ever perform flat out impossible stuff in front of mundanes. UA assumes that occasionally, this happens, like in the story about the dude who pulls off another dude's nose in a barfight. Mage is here about character-crippling rules, UA is about Power and Consequences. There is nothing to stop you from doing a miracle, but there are always consequences, and performing magic in front of mundanes isn't even harder to do.
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May 27, 2010 21:43
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counterspin posted:So the difference is between having the system punish you or the setting punish you? Yeah pretty much so. Thanks. Other thing I like: not even the Sleepers are all-knowing or all-powerful which is one of the great design elements in UA. WOD made me hate all-powerful conspiracies, and it's cute how the Sleepers (powerful, but to a significant part just lies and hot air) and The New Inquisition (have lawyers, guns and money but don't know poo poo) are handled. In the words of Stolze: that's pretty motherfucking elegant.
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May 27, 2010 22:59
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Rpg.net melted down at Stolze because men can't ride horses in the world of Reign.
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May 28, 2010 11:54
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TouretteDog posted:UA works great as a horror game where you've got the PCs as completely normal people whose lives get completely and utterly hosed by the magical world. I ran a game where mundanes got pulled into the occult underground, and for the reason that they weren't crazy obsessives like everyone else, all the movers and shakers took interest in them.
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Jul 14, 2011 07:20
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Cyphoderus posted:I totally want to gift myself Unknown Armies for Latetmas. There's absolutely no chance of a series revival and a new edition coming anywhere in the near future, right? Atlas Games is probably considering it, considering that they were supposed to release three new books for UA this year, but it got cancelled. John Tynes is out of the RPG biz nowadays, though.
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Jan 3, 2012 17:03
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Pope Guilty posted:How would you do a "street level" DG game when by definition any member of DG is at least in the military or works in a government office? That's like "street-level" Conspiracy X. Have the players get their orders from a DG member while being kept in the dark about what they're doing and who they are working for.
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Jan 15, 2012 12:29
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Babylon Astronaut posted:I've found pdf reference sheets for combat, and stress checks, but has anyone tracked down the one for magic and tilts? Tilts is the main thing I can't keep memorized. I make my players print out stuff like magic rules for themselves and honestly, something like Tilts shouldn't come up that often. Unless that's your thing.
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Oct 5, 2013 17:21
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Jenx posted:I feel it shows a very D&D way of looking at things, that people associate "unkillable" with "unbeatable". Please notice that in that passage about the Freak, it says it is unkillable, unstoppable and near-omnipotent. So you can't stop it, you probably can't kill it and in 99% of cases it's probably still more powerful than you. So? Just make it break taboo. Or start taking out it's contacts and associates, while running the gently caress away. You can harm someone by other ways besides just physically harming them, you know. Stolze later made a point about what the Freak is. Or more, what it can't do. One thing it can't do is that it can't have friends. Being super powerful but only having yourself to rely on makes the Freak a lot less powerful than at first glance.
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Jan 3, 2014 09:28
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I re-wrote The Bad Man so I could fit him into my own campaign and it's a really a lot of fun. Sure, he's super powerful and has (on a practical scale) endless resources and could waste you. But that's not what he wants to do, unless you really really piss him off. Instead he wants to make a deal, and unless you're hosed without what he has, he will probably even give you a good deal.
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Jan 4, 2014 18:34
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One thing that the corebook doesn't really make too clear is that not all adepts even know how to get Major charges. I've always talked with my players about it if they want to play adepts, because there's probably degrees of obsession to how into getting mojo someone is. Not everyone dares to shoot for the big score.
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Oct 30, 2014 19:50
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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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Reflections85 posted:I think they're saying that it's confusing that Whatevermancy identities don't provide the "I'm a... So of course I can..." or any other features but the ability to cast spells, since you'd imagine that being a Dipsomancer beyond just casting spells would let you at least talk shop with other members of your school. I think that some book of the first or second edition said that it's the complete opposite. The practice is so highly personal that it doesn't make sense for other members of the school. The dipso that comes from a hipsterish background and obsesses (minor O not major O obsession) about IPAs and hops is different from the 60-yo construction worker who doesn't even have the idea of drinking a fancy beer.
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Nov 24, 2016 10:00
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 05:02 |
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Back when UA was still a new thing, it had a problem for me. It made Mage seem really boring and middle-of-the-road by comparison.
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Apr 17, 2017 14:26
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