Greg Stolze (Unknown Armies, One Roll Engine) Appreciation Station

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Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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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.

This. I haven't played RPGs or Unknown Armies in 5 years but I still make those connections. I keep trying to stat up songs and albums by The Hold Steady in UA. Holly is an avatar of The Naked Goddess who Ascended but came back and Sapphire uses the awesome clairvoyance rules.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 12:21

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 08:04

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Test Pattern posted:

It's worth noting that the published scenarios for UA run the gamut from highly experimental game to nothing-supernatural-here fakeout and include, notably, an adventure that no one is going to run anywhere for at least the next five years (mentioned above, "Fly to Heaven" is, no poo poo, 9/11 the RPG, published in '99)..

My GM ran us through that a few years ago as a playable flashback involving The New Inquisition. I'm an American expat in Australia, and the other players were all Australians. I was pretty uncomfortable, but it fit the tone of the game.

In another game under another GM my character was taken over by an Epideromancer demon. Our group had just came out of an adversarial PC vs PC Mage game, so I had control over my possessed character. I ripped out 'my' eyeball and melted another PC. No saving throw.

I felt bad, but it was okay. He rolled up a Diplomancer and in the last session brought in expensive booze (the player, I mean) and used it to help me convince the party to assassinate an Aussie pop star I hated. My urbanomancer got the venue he was killed at to change it's name, gaining a Sig charge (I think) and stealing the pop star's soul. The game ended then.

A few weeks later the venue changed its name in real life.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2012 14:50

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Ben Lee. I have my reasons.

Speaking of Auatralian occult weirdness, I saw the 'Eternity' plaque in Town Hall and wondered if it was possible to somehow get a posthumous Major charge. Arthur Stace was obviously an Urbanomancer (and maybe an Avatar of The Messenger?), and having 'Eternity' written on the Harbour Bridge in 2000 would have given him some serious mojo.

His chalk is probably pretty powerful too.

For the uninitiated, The Eternity Man is basically a real life UA character:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stace

quote:

Stace was born in Balmain, in the inner-west of Sydney. The child of alcoholics, he was brought up in poverty. In order to survive, he resorted to stealing bread and milk and searching for scraps of food in bins. By the age of 12, Stace, with virtually no formal schooling, had become a ward of the state. As a teenager, he became an alcoholic and was subsequently sent to jail at 15. Afterwards, he worked as a "cockatoo" or a look-out for a Two-up "school". In his twenties, he was a scout for his sisters' brothels. At age 26, in March 1916 enlisted for the Great War (World War One) with the 19th Battalion 5th Brigade AIF, entering with the 16th Reinforcements, service number 5934. Suffered recurring bouts of bronchitis and pleurisy which led to his medical discharge 2nd April 1919.

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HideConversion to Christianity

Stace converted to Christianity on the night of 6�August 1930, after hearing an inspirational sermon by the Reverend R. B. S. Hammond at St. Barnabas Church, Broadway. Inspired by the words, he became enamoured with the notion of eternity. Two years later, on 14�November 1932, Arthur was further inspired by the preaching of evangelist John G. Ridley[2], MC on "The echoes of Eternity" from Isaiah 57:15:

"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones."

John Ridley's words,"Eternity, Eternity, I wish that I could sound or shout that word to everyone in the streets of Sydney. You've got to meet it, where will you spend Eternity?" proved crucial in Stace's decision to tell others about his faith. In an interview, Stace said, "Eternity went ringing through my brain and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write Eternity." Even though he was illiterate and could hardly write his own name Arthur, legibly, "the word 'Eternity' came out smoothly, in a beautiful copperplate script. I couldn't understand it, and I still can't."

After eight or nine years, he tried to write something else, "Obey God" and then five years later, "God or Sin" but he could not bring himself to stop writing "Eternity".

The Sydney City Council brought him to the attention of the police as they had rules about the defacing of pavements, so much so that he narrowly avoided arrest around twenty-four times. Each time he was caught, he responded with, "But I had permission from a higher source".

Several mornings a week for the next 35 years, Stace left his wife, Pearl and their home in Bulwarra Road, Pyrmont around 5am to go around the streets of Sydney and chalk the word "Eternity" on footpaths, train station entrances and anywhere else he could think of. It is estimated that he wrote the word around 500,000 times over the 35 years. Workers arriving in the city would see the word freshly written, but not the writer, and so, "The man who writes Eternity" became a legend in Sydney. The mystery was solved when Reverend Lisle M. Thompson, who preached at the church where Stace worked as a cleaner, saw him take a piece of chalk from his pocket and write the word on the footpath. Thompson wrote about Stace's life and an interview was published in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph on 21�June 1956.

In 1963, photographer Trevor Dallen cornered Arthur and asked to take a few pictures of him writing his famous phrase. After four photos, Trevor ran out of film and asked for Stace to stay put while he got more film. Upon Trevor's return, Stace was gone.

Stace's grave in Botany Cemetery
Stace died of a stroke in a nursing home at the age of 83 on 30�July 1967. He bequeathed his body to the University of Sydney; subsequently, his remains were buried with those of his wife at Botany Cemetery (General�15, no.�729) around two years later.

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra holds one of Stace's iconic 'Eternity' signs, which he chalked on a piece of cardboard for a fellow parishioner. The museum also has an Eternity gallery, inspired by Stace's story. The gallery features 50 personal stories from ordinary and extraordinary Australians. The stories are tied together by emotional themes including joy, fear, separation, chance and loneliness, which are all elements of Stace's story.

The replica Eternity at Town Hall Square, Sydney
In Sydney today, the word "Eternity" can still be seen written in three places:

On Stace's gravestone in Botany Cemetery.
Inside the bell in the GPO clock tower which had been dismantled during World War�II. When the clock tower was rebuilt in the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen were installing it they noticed, inside, the word "Eternity" in Stace's chalk. This is the only surviving "Eternity" by Stace's own hand in Sydney. (No one ever found out how Stace had been able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up).
In Town Hall Square, between St�Andrew's Cathedral and the Sydney Town Hall. When the area was redeveloped in the 1970s, a wrought aluminium replica of the word in Stace's original copperplate handwriting was embedded in the footpath near a fountain as an eternal memorial to Stace.
As a tribute to the man known as Mr�Eternity, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was lit up with the word "Eternity" as part of the celebrations for the beginning of the year 2000.[3]

The Eternity Man is an opera based on Stace's life, written by Jonathan Mills to a libretto by Dorothy Porter. This was adapted in 2008 into a film directed by Julien Temple.[4]

# ¿ Jan 3, 2012 10:58

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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InfiniteJesters posted:

I recall someone earlier in the thread describing UA as a Coen Brothers movie where everyone is in contact with magic.

Now I am thinking of "True Grit" with obsessive wizards and other weirdness.

I must make this reality.

My friend ran a Dark Tower game using UA, so it's doable. Town drunk is a dipso, gambler is an Entropomancer, slick merchant is a Merchant, etc. I'd play it.

We're discussing Feng Shui in FATAL & Friends, and we've reached Stolze's contributions: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3421366&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=226

# ¿ May 12, 2012 05:30

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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The player-defined skills make a huge difference, and taken at high levels function almost like FATE Aspects.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2012 23:54

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3478575&pagenumber=1 - Can't remember if I posted this here before, but it's a gassed thread full of UA style rumors. Hundreds of them.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2012 10:00

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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The Mountain Goats use the phrase 'unknown armies' in a song on their upcoming album. Is it a coincidence, am I completely obsessed, or is John Darnielle (a man who's written songs about Lovecraft and Sax Rohmer and Mario Brothers and poems about Moorcock) just that nerdy?

I just asked him on Twitter.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jul 11, 2012

# ¿ Jul 11, 2012 08:25

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Geekkake posted:

You'd think so, except he always played the same loving druid with a different name every time and he kept bringing Maud Gonne around to games and she was a complete drag.

That joke is so good it almost makes up for my blatant stupidity.

Ulysses is the most UA Irish novel, what with the main characters walking around and explicitly embodying archetypes. The chapter that's a drugged out play feels like it would work as an Ascension or a Room of Renunciation.

The 100th Bloomsday was a few years ago and I was thinking of it as the setting for a one-shot adventure. A group of Bibliomancers, Urbanomancers and Cliomancers want to hurl Dublin back to 16 June 1904 using the energy of thousands of people reenacting Ulysses. Only the PCs can stop them (or not).

# ¿ Jul 12, 2012 23:22

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Dedhed posted:

I'm going to bump this because I found a good resource for UA stuff.

Return to Dunwich from Chaosium 1920s Cthulhu (the 1991 version).

I think it's technically an adventure, but basically it's a big rural sandbox full of weirdness and a ton of NPCs. And by ton I mean like a 1000 entries of families, NPCs and weird places (keyed to a cool map).

The nice thing about it is the NPCs and places are rarely connected to the mythos or even the plot of the adventure. Each little area seems to have their own sets of problems, allies and villains. You could drop alot of these guys into a rural game of UA quite easily, especially a street-level one.

My friends and I have recently found some good beer called Mythos. What would happen if a Dipsomancer drank it in Innsmouth?

But seriously the Mythos and the UA cosmos are, in my opinion, fundamentally incompatible. UA's theme is 'You Did It'. All the gods and monsters started out as humans and human ideas. Going mad isn't the end of the adventure - it's the start.

The Mythos is about existential terror, about humanity being beneath notice in an infinite cosmos. I'm not sure how you could reconcile the two. Unless the Invisible Clergy's power is limited to Earth, a fact discovered by the unfortunate Cliomancer who harvests that charge on the moon.

I suppose you could play a Bibliomancer who believes in the Mythos and it's tomes.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2012 10:59

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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I pass this place every day on the way home from work: http://bar333.com.au/

It makes me think of UA.

Also this: http://www.snopes.com/disney/info/33myths.htm

# ¿ Aug 31, 2012 06:28

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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http://www.theonion.com/articles/ill-smoke-anything,10882/ - I feel like this is describing an Adept, but I can't find the paradox.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2012 05:43

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Maybe he's a variant Narco-Alchemist. Everyone dismisses him as 'just a stoner' until he pulls out some big powers. Bibliomancers HATE him because he's always smoking rare books.

Books absorb knowledge, body parts give you a characteristic associated with that person, etc. It lasts as long as the joint does. Honoring things by consuming them.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2012 09:40

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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There's very little in Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol run that isn't UA as gently caress. One of the team's most powerful members is The Mystic Hermaphroditie, and is identified as such. The Brotherhood of DADA, who's powers run on paradoxes. The painting that ate Paris. Burroughs cut-up as reliable divination.
In fact, did Grant Morrison coin the term 'postmodern magic'? He has popularized it.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2014 11:51

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Grant Morrison is an actual post-modern/pop magus, and intended The Invisibles to be an occult sigil that changed the world and his own life. In his book Supergods, Morrison talked about using the writing of The Invisibles to alter his life. He also describes what may be a visit to a Room of Renouncition. You could probably make a campaign based on his occult war with Alan Moore. Or this:

https://sites.google.com/a/deepspacetransmissions.com/site/news-1/speakandspell-thecon

quote:

"Part short story, part history, part occult ritual", 'The Con' told the tale of celebrated aviator and world-class recluse Howard Hughes' duel to the death against foppish King of Schmaltz Liberace, "for the soul of Las Vegas".

When I met Morrison in Sydney, I wish I'd told him about UA.

There's a British show, Utopia, about members of a comic book forum chasing a mysterious comic manuscript that a conspiracy also wants. It's very UA.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2014 11:32

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Effectronica posted:

Videomancers would probably be breaking taboo if they became regular cast members on their show. Their whole thing is about being an obsessive fan, and becoming part of the show is incompatible with that image, unlike getting to make a special guest appearance through how big of a fan they are.

Yeah but I read through Phil Sandifer's Doctor Who blog, and pretty much everybody involved in nuWho was an obsessive fan - writing books during the Wilderness Years, running fanzines, getting into acting to to play The Doctor, putting Who fans into unrelated shows. I know UA isn't the real world, but you can't tell me that half those scarf-wearing fans weren't as obsessed and dysfunctional as any Adept.

I guess the stereotype is Ian Levine, who destroyed a TV on the BBC to protest Doctor Who getting cancelled and was also on the show as a continuity editor. That's about as Videomantic as you can get.

Which explains why the weird British show got so popular. They blew ALL their charges on it.

gently caress the occult history of this show is more interesting than the show itself sometimes. It was the first thing that aired after JFK was shot FFS.

I wonder if you could have a similar thing for movies. Nick Cage had a Ghost Rider tat his whole life. Tom Hardy's first dog was named 'Mad Max'. What happens when you BECOME your fictional idol? And what really happened to Heath Ledger?

Actually if you want some UA-inspiration, watch The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Rooms of Renunciation and Tom Waits.

Evil Mastermind posted:

I think what you're trying to say is that you can't approach UA like D&D or a murderhobo simulator, because that's not what the game's trying to do at all. UA isn't about killing things and taking their stuff, it's about exploring the price of power and the consequences of your actions.

And even if you want to do that, a cop with a gun is more effective than an Adept, at least in US-centric games. I got screwed when I assumed my Private Investigator character would just have a pistol and a permit for it, until my GM gently reminded me that no, this is Australia, and if you want firepower you need to quest for it. That's where Adepts can shine, i guess. But even then, normal weapons can be just as effective as Adept magic. If you don't have a 'normal' person in your party, you're screwed.

I think 'stationary' adepts like Urbanomancers are great if you're setting the game in one place. New York or Paris or even Sydney or Austin or Gotham City should have enough mystical resonance and history to support Urbanomancers and Cliomancers.

Effectronica posted:

For example, if a Dipsomancer sobers up, he loses all his charges, but he can recover all of them the next day. A Bibliomancer that damages any book loses all the charges in her library and has to buy them back, at $100 a pop for minors, at GM fiat.

The thing is, Bibliomancers aren't even any more powerful than Dipsomancers to compensate. Soul Sip and Ghost Vintage mean that a theorycrafted Dipsomancer could accumulate a shitload of skills just by gnawing them off of ghosts.

I've found that it's really easy to live with a taboo against destroying books! It's not that hard, unless you get a job at a 2nd hand shop or something. And libraries ain't exactly portable, but if broke college students can haul around boxes and boxes of books I'm sure it's not too hard for a fictional character who probably has a thematic job like 'rare book dealer' or something.

Plus, Bibliomancers get to be sober sometimes. Unless you're playing Bernard Black from Black Books, and why aren't you?

quote:

Our 88% or something Bibliomancer barely ever got to do magic because it turns out getting rare hundred dollar books is something you have to kind of go out of your way to do, nevermind 500 dollar books.

It took me less than a minute to find hundreds of >$500 books on eBay. I'd actually say it's too easy to get those charges now, assuming the Bibliomancer has cash, and I'd rule that maybe the books shouldn't be able to be found on eBay to charge you up. Though this might be fun, in a meta way: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/JOE-HILL-LOCKE-KEY-1-2-3-NOS4A2-HORNS-COMPLETE-LETTERED-SET-NO-1-/111302934225?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_15&hash=item19ea2bfed1

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jun 19, 2015

# ¿ Jun 19, 2015 08:01

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Australia would still have a ton of Videomancers. We recently went from 7 to 15 broadcast channels, everyone gets together to watch (and tweet about) MasterChef and soap operas, barely anyone has 'FOXTEL' (cable), Netflix just got started and is cracking down on VPNs...
I mean it's a living nightmare for real people, but for Adepts obsessed with cooking shows, home renovation shows and soap operas it must be heaven.
Wouldn't sports-obsessed Videomancers still work fine? Or could they just switch to watching the same viral video/Netflix binge as everyone else the second it drops?

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Apr 7, 2016

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 03:37

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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I want to write up some Australia-specific schools. I had an idea for a coffee-snob Adept, which I guess would be a variant of Dipsomancy, that was half-done. Their big victory was kicking Starbucks out of the country. I remember the Savage apparently lived in the Outback.
The most powerful artifact in the country is the schooner that former Prime Minister Bob Hawke drank out of when he won the Guiness World Record for drinking beer the fastest. We're also home to the most UA person who ever lived, a homeless guy who wandered around writing 'Eternity' on sidewalks and somehow had that immortalized during the 2000 New Year's Eve celebrations: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Stace

Maybe there could be a conflict between working class Videomancers who just watch free-to-air TV and the newer Adepts with their Netflixes and stuff. The ageless golems who host variety and morning shows could be a reliable source of horror.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 04:11

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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The Max Attax seemed to fulfill the role of Anonymous in the setting before Anonymous was even a thing.
Most Adepts strike me as the kind of people who aren't on Facebook for vague and confusing reasons.

Besides the big changes, I'd add fun things like every other Narco-Alchemist brewing up a batch of Blue Meth, but they all do different and contradictory things.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Apr 7, 2016

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 06:24

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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I mean that even now and through the past 10 years Adepts would be those 'I don't trust social media/Facebook' people who you can only contact through e-mail or carrier pigeon or somethings.
Or they're 20 irony layers deep on Weird Facebook.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 06:47

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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quote:

Inside the bell in the Sydney General Post Office clock tower, which had been dismantled during World War II. When the clock tower was rebuilt in the 1960s, the bell was brought out of storage and as the workmen were installing it they noticed, inside, the word "Eternity" in Stace's chalk. This is the only surviving "Eternity" by Stace's own hand in Sydney. (No one ever found out how Stace had been able to get to the bell, which had been sealed up).[citation needed]

The opera based on his life is pretty good (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oNEVwP-Xc0I), but playing a fictional urbanomancer in Sydney is pointless. He's better than anything I could make up.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Apr 7, 2016

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 08:25

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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http://gawker.com/man-in-animal-onesie-and-fake-bomb-vest-shot-by-police-1773714245

quote:

A man in hedgehog pajamas and a bomb vest made of chocolate bars was shot by police on Thursday after threatening to �blow up� a Baltimore news station, WBFF-TV reports. Police say the suspect is in serious but stable condition and is expected to survive.

According to WBFF-TV security guard Jourel Apostolidies, a man wearing a hedgehog onesie, a surgical mask and combat boots tried to enter the studio at around 1 p.m. The man said he had a flash drive containing information about a vast government conspiracy involving �black holes and the Sun.�

It's the bomb vest made of chocolate bars that tips it into UA territory.

# ¿ Apr 29, 2016 01:08

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Kellsterik posted:

Just caught this in some of the chapter fiction in Book One:

It makes me so happy that there's a callback to the weirdness of that Fly To Heaven adventure in light of 9/11.

My gaming group sprung that on me, the only American in the group, in like 2004. It was memorable, at least. It gets mashed up in my head with the Lone Gunmen ep that predicted it.

# ¿ May 2, 2016 08:10

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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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
And up to then I only knew it was a movement of the people
But if small town cops are like swarms of flies and blackened foil is like boils and hail
I'm pretty sure I've been through this before

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.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2016 07:22

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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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

# ¿ Jun 18, 2016 07:49

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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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

# ¿ Jun 18, 2016 09:03

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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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

# ¿ Jun 19, 2016 00:52

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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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.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2016 01:33

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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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.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2016 02:36

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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You can be obsessed with something and not actually know about it. I used to obsessed with the SAVING POWERS OF ROCK AND ROLL but I can't play an instrument and was saved by like 4 mediocre bands. But I still had the obsession. Obsession can narrow your focus on to one aspect of something that takes on symbolic importance to the whole.

Like a Dipsomancer who's obsessed with getting drunk and doesn't care what he's drinking is going to know less about booze than a sommelier or a craft beer nerd, even if they don't drink as much.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2016 01:53

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I just finished reading Last Call, since I love UA so much. I didn't realize just how much UA cosmology came from the book, though. Avatars and Archtypes appear by basically the first chapter, Dukes (or Jacks) soon after. If you really want to go the Trump route, just read the book; since it has a bunch of stuff about Bugsy Seigal's dodgy hotel deals & stuff...I think you can connect some of the real life people in the book to Trump (again, if you care to). The Tower tarot symbolism is a bit on the nose.

Last Call also has a way bigger focus on poker than I expected, to the point where I'm surprised that UA didn't pull a Deadlands and use poker cards.

Speaking of card symbolism, Burger KING is called Hungry JACKS in Australia.

And if you want to turn a powerful real life person into a Duke, why not Tasmanian museum owner and gambler David Walsh?

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/february/1366597433/richard-flanagan/gambler

quote:

David Walsh first made global headlines in 2009, when he gambled on the life of Christian Boltanski, a French artist whose installations focus on death. Walsh was a mysterious figure even in his home, Tasmania, where, other than lurid rumours of a fortune made by gambling, little was known about him.

Walsh agreed to pay Boltanski for the right to film his studio, outside Paris, 24 hours a day, and to transmit the images live to Walsh, in Tasmania. But the payment was turned into a macabre bet: the agreed fee was to be paid as a monthly stipend, calculated as a proportion of an eight-year period, until his death. Should Boltanksi, who was then 65 years old, live longer than eight years, Walsh will end up paying more than the work is worth, and will have lost. But if Boltanski dies within eight years, the gambler will have purchased the work at less than its agreed-upon value, and won the bet.

The story gets weirder from there. I've been to his museum, its mind-blowing!

And if we're still doing the Mystic Hermaphrodite in 2017, it's either Laura Jane Grace or Hedwig from Hedwig & The Angry Inch.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 11:21

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Wow, how did I miss that? I looked on Genius but there weren't any annotations relating to it, and no mention of what the 333 means. The only thing on Wikipedia with that number is the album by Green Jelly that spawned the Maximum Carnage (videogame) theme song. I suppose somebody could just get on Twitter and ask her, 'cause those lyrics hew pretty close to UA & Last Call. It's a song you could build a campaign around, if the issues weren't so sensitive.

I have an Against Me! shirt (pre Laura coming out) with a pink lightning bolt on it, which could be a cool symbol.

There's a 333 bus in Sydney that goes from Hyde Park to Bondi Beach. There's a rumor that it's never late, but that's too outlandish an idea even for the Occult Underground. There is/was a 333 Bar in the centre of the CBD, but it was way too expensive for me to go in.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2017 13:34

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Sounds like Enter the Gungeon.

quote:

Agrimancer's must look like paranoids, constantly monitoring the weather for any tiny change or being paranoid around any animal they don't own.

But why wouldn't you be paranoid about animals you don't know? You can't trust them.
Quoting this so it shows up next to my custom title.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Apr 15, 2017

# ¿ Apr 15, 2017 05:05

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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Dipsomancer: Try and out-drink an Australian. Or be so good at drinking that you get in the Guinness World Records book, become Prime Minister, and then get a beer named after you.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2017 05:55

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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What's Agrimancy again? Because if it involves seeing Nature as something inherently inimical to humanity and that must be completely tamed & subjugated by Humanity-trust me, that loses you a few friends.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2017 14:37

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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I like both oMage and UA. It feels like oMage is 'what if the things you BELIEVE have power' but UA is 'what if the things you DO have power'. So in oMage, a guy with a magical library is a Hermetic, his library is magical because he believes it is but it's still a library full of magical power. In UA that guy has power because he's a hoarder, the books could be anything.

In oMage, Jim Morrison REALLY IS channeling the spirit of Dionysus to become the Lizard King and spread englightened hedonism to the world. All that poo poo he believes is real because he believes it hard enough.
In UA, he's powerful because he's a drunk and a drug addict, not because he dresses it up.

I flip between half-believing in oMage and half believing in UA. I think oMage is a bit healthier, since you're creating lofty beliefs and living up to them, while UA ties you to the mundane reality and forces you to work within that to makes changes.

The other thing is you could have either game be the false reality to hide the true reality of the other one. In oMage, Jim Morrison learns he can stop drinking & instead focus his enlightened will through higher symbolism in order to effect 'mundane reality.' In UA, it's 'the symbolism doesn't matter, the obsession does, let's go steal Lord Byron's skull cup'.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Apr 18, 2017

# ¿ Apr 18, 2017 04:31

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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My UA game wasn't a LARP, but the Dipsomancer's player always brought nice booze to convince the other players to go along with his schemes, and our post-game meal was at McDonalds.
The greatest thing about UA is it blends the barriers between 'reality' and fiction. You're all playing RIGHT NOW.

As for those 333 whales being killed, it makes sense. The Sea Shepherd guys who oppose them talk like they're in a Werewolf LARP.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2017 03:16

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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quote:

Whoever the current Messenger is, they've done a great job protecting themselves the past couple years. Snowden, Assange, etc. seem to have all failed in their attempts to usurp the archetype.

Nah, Steve Bannon's the Heisenberg Messenger, went from running a 'news' site to getting The Fool elected. I'll let you fill in the rest of the Tower/card symbolism yourself. I'm sure you could mine UA/occult symbolism from all his failed Shakespeare reinterpretations & general Florida lowlife weirdness.

The Fyre Festival would make a great one-shot.

The Heisenberg Messenger - 'I am the one who talks'.

# ¿ May 4, 2017 01:34

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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You could do it like this: tell the players it's a game of high society wealth & intrigue. There's not going to be much combat, so make Social/Mind focused characters (I'm a big fan of 'a Dipsomancer based on the movie Arthur'). You can even have them write their character's Instagram handle on the sheet. Then drop them into the Festival.

# ¿ May 4, 2017 03:11

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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How about r/nofap but it works? You don't need to do any new writing. All their elaborate charts & rituals are already online, but in UA they'd actually give them power.

If you're really not afraid of political controversy, there's a ton being written about 'Kekistan' and that whole dumb frog made up religion/trickster/chaos magic. Kinda reminds me of how Max Attax started as a joke but ended up with real power, but weirder.

Maybe there are 1 in 1 billion rare Pepes that are powerful.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 03:05 on May 28, 2017

# ¿ May 28, 2017 02:59

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 08:04

Count Chocula: Dec 25, 2011; WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
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It's probably safest just to roll up all the Pepe/alt-right/Incels/MRA yuckiness into a fictional group, if they're in at all.
Tho I guess the version of events where Internet memes elected a president is very 'You Did It' .

That said, you could do something with a magickal meme or sigil that got completely corrupted/turned around. The original creator wants to do some ritual to 'fix' it, but they don't know how or need protection while they do it. Cue PCs.

John Crowley just posted an article on UFOology: http://bostonreview.net/literature-culture/john-crowley-stranger-things-rise-and-fall-ufos-and-life-moon

There's some great symbolic tension around wanting to believe, but also fearing what you believe. UFOs are half-real and half-fictional, but I'm not sure how to turn that into an adept school.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 10:51 on May 28, 2017

# ¿ May 28, 2017 10:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Greg Stolze (Unknown Armies, One Roll Engine) Appreciation Station

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