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

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

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

You could go the Laundry/Rivers of London route. A vampire is a person infested with a parasitic entity that grants them heightened ability to use Magick, but needs to be fed with bioenergy from other beings or it devours its host. Similar to what Hostile V suggested, but with the original mind still occupying the body rather than just the parasite.

Or you could make it a low grade supernatural identity, not a full on Avatar that embodies a human universal, but something powered by some people believing in it somewhere. This kind of person would probably be an emotional vampire as well as a literal one, craving attention/adoration.

Neither of these are exact fits for Unknown Armies' cosmology, but your players don't sound like huge lore junkies who will be upset if whatever you create doesn't match the setting metaphysics perfectly, as long as you get the feel right.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2020 21:27

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2024 15:08

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Just wrapped my first UA3 campaign. Going to review all the Unknown Armies 3E books I�ve read.

OFFICIAL BOOKS

Books 1 and 2
The rules are split across two books for some reason, and the flowing narrative style makes them easy to read, but a hassle to reference at the table. Thankfully there�s a solid online pseudo-SRD that makes corkboarding and rules easier to follow.

The new edition�s killer app is corkboarding, the collaborative worldbuilding process at the beginning of the game where the players choose an objective and then create characters that care about that objective, while also adding other setting elements to the game (NPCs, factions, locations, etc) that they�ll encounter during play. The players choose �milestones� that will contribute toward their designated objective. The milestones are what the GM uses to convert the corkboard contents into gameplay in subsequent sessions.

There�s a tightly written game system buried in the flabby text of UA3�s two corebooks. The game has some of the best mechanics for skills, social combat, sanity and spellcasting I�ve ever seen in a game, including solid power creation rules that let you make your own abilities that feel distinct without the need for micro detailed GURPS style building blocks.

There are vague attempts at balance through things like the �omega� system, which calculates a spell school�s power versus the ease with which they gain charges, versus the difficulty of avoiding their taboo. In practice, the different caster types vary wildly in power level due to differences in the scope of their abilities - the Merchant (Salesman in the new edition) and the Epideromancer can min/max by trading things that normal people can�t trade, making them much more versatile than straightforward paths like the Warrior or Fulminaturge. It�s ultimately not a huge concern because even �weaker� schools get abilities that are useful and fun to use. Nonmagickal characters can accomplish most tasks that stump casters because they have all their build points sunk into character features that are useful all the time, rather than esoteric sorceries that are powerful in specific circumstances.

I would call UA3E �difficult to learn, easy to master�. Once you get past the barrier to entry, the game practically runs itself. The core issue is that the things UA is similar to, like Kraken, the Constantine comics or Last Call, aren�t household names. You usually can�t explain Unknown Armies to uninitiated players by saying the game is �Like X� because X is something they�ve never heard of. And if you can�t get them invested with a strong hook early on, the collaborative worldgen process will break down because the players have to be repeatedly prodded to come up with characters and content that fit a setting milieu and tone they�re totally unfamiliar with.

Book 3
Totally sucks. Lots of entries that just provide a two sentence description of an avatar or adept school, with no game mechanics. A glossary of lore terms from prior editions, plus a few metaplot events, like the very cool Freak becoming the very boring Human Universal. The kind of thing that should have been released as a free PDF, rather than one of the core three books.

Books 4 and 5
Like Book 3, but good. Adepts, Avatars, NPCs, organizations, magick items, all with actual gameplay information. Recommended.

Maria in Three Parts
The Free RPG Day module for UA3. Four assorted avatar and adept pregens must track down and reunite the scattered fragments of a Blue Line friendly's soul after a demon tricks her into fragmenting it with a magic item. The module includes a decent rules and setting tutorial, and has some cool encounters that teach different parts of the system.

Besides some mechanical and editing problems, the biggest issue with M3P is that it doesn't teach the hardest part of Unknown Armies for new players to grasp: the campaign structure. M3P is set up like a Delta Green game, the players get instructions from a law enforcement officer about unnatural activity that they need to locate and put a stop to. This does not match the 3rd edition corkboarding structure, where the players set their own objective and choose milestones to pursue during play. It works as an intro to the game setting and mechanics, but doesn�t help the players or GM over the biggest hurdle UA3 has to offer.

Image tax for excessive text post: Yoshida the Cleaner from a previous game

STATOSPHERE BOOKS
Licensed fan products. Like Miskatonic Repository or DM�s Guild, but for Unknown Armies.

American Dreams
Three pre-baked modules designed for new players. Step into pregenerated cabals enmeshed in intricate webs of social relationships. Undertake various quests like like �stop your dad from sacrificing you to gain a major charge� and �become an avatar of the Firebrand to start a Maoist revolution in the bayou�.

The strongest is the third module, about a group of mages in Detroit trying to upload themselves into the metaphysical heart of the city in order to revitalize it. It has the most interesting content, and it most closely mirrors how a normal Unknown Armies game is set up, with the players pursuing milestones to accomplish an overall goal, dealing with NPC blowback at each stage.

Lacks the compact rules tutorial offered Maria in Three Parts, but better demonstrates Unknown Armies 3's core loop of self-directed play driven by character motivations. Good product.

The Charioteer
An avatar archetype. Conceptually similar to the Messenger, but focused on the movement and protection aspect. By committing to a delivery assignment, mission or journey, the Charioteer gets a "resolve" that works like an additional passion, granting dice manipulation as such. The Charioteer can use their resolve to hand out buffs and debuffs. At high levels, they can drive any vehicle, and bend reality to avoid ending their journey prematurely.

This one didn�t grab me. The mechanics are fine, but it doesn�t make me excited to play as a Charioteer or have one in my game. An example NPC or two would have added a lot of flavor to this dry, functional document.

Oddities and Endlings
A huge book of monsters, NPCs, magic items, spells and other game content. This was originally posted on a yearblog. It was the reason I came back to Unknown Armies, after initially dismissing the game as an unplayable mess tied to lore I didn't care about.

The best Statosphere product on this list. Strong recommend.

Strygomancy
I picked this one up because it sounded cool. It's a fleshsmithing adept school based on the works of David Cronenberg, with most of the abilities directly referencing his films. Strygomancers charge by traumatizing themselves, getting a minor for every hardened notch and a major for every failed notch. They spend these charges to effect physical changes to themselves and others. Their signature spell lets them create special organs by sacrificing aspects of their personality, giving themselves mutant powers fueled by hate, fear, desire, neuroses, etc. It's not cheap, but with a Therapeutic identity somewhere in your cabal you can keep charging without going off the deep end.

There are a couple sample NPCs and a cool otherspace in the back of the book. All the NPCs are antagonists, with their most interesting characteristics shuffled off into backstories the players will never learn. They showcase the arc of this adept school from transhumanist to flesh monster, but they would be more narratively interesting at the earlier stages of the journey rather than the end.

Yoshida at Roses' Bar

mellonbread fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Jan 10, 2022

# ¿ Jan 10, 2022 19:50

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Strange Cares posted:

My wife wrote this one! I helped playtest most of these one-shots, I think they're great. No, I'm not biased, why would you say that?

I thought about doing an F&F for American Dreams, but ultimately I don't want to review a module I haven't run or played. Though after the discussion on 33.3 FM I'm pretty confident it's better than Bring Me the Head of Comte Saint Germaine.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2022 21:46

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Picked up Bring Me the Head of Comte Saint Germaine.

I don't think it's as bad as 33.3 says, but I ultimately agree with their conclusion: the pregens have weak motivations that aren't interesting. The scenario is driven by NPCs giving the players orders to drive the plot forward, to the point where one of the pregen groups has a character controlled by the GM who exists to give the players orders. The pregen characters are cool, but their reasons for being in the scenario don't lend themselves to the kind of self-directed play that normally makes a UA3 game work.

While I do like the format of switching from one group of pregens to an opposition group of pregens (who might have just killed the original group in the previous act), I think the whole thing would work better if the players controlled a group of characters they built themselves using the chargen rules, coming up with their own motivations for pursuing the shared objective of getting the head.

There's no suggestion for how the player characters can claim the power of the head for themselves. This would solve a lot of the motivation problems much better than the three way background conflict between the Sleepers and the two metaplot NPCs.

I respect that Bring Me the Head is in an awkward place because of how it was released: originally intended as a con scenario, which later became an online tournament game for UA superfans. I think that harmed the final product. It has an excessive focus on the psychodrama of established lore characters, which only people already familiar with the books will appreciate (and still might not care about).

This is a minor beef, but when the first act of your game is a heist, you benefit enormously from a "what if the players get stuck" section. Heists are the most likely scenario to decay into endless planning discussions, and some indication of when a player plan is "good enough" is enormously helpful for getting people to the actual meat of the scenario.

Interested to hear if anyone here played in the Tournament, and how it went.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2022 22:24

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Everything Counts posted:

I am working on a UA archetype called the Weary Traveler, people who travel so frequently for their job/responsibility that they have no real time for themselves. This is one of their Taboos; does this scan? I want to be sure it's understandable.

"Weary Travelers have to spend more money each month on work-related expenses than on themselves. This includes your housing, groceries, and other necessities. Work-related expenses can be directly paid by the company, or paid by the avatar and reimbursed, or (if you�re a parent) not recovered at all, but it has to add up to more than you spend on personal hobbies or meals or whatnot. (Travelers who are weary because of family catch a break here; if your family lives with you then housing, groceries, etc. are considered work-related.)"

It's easy enough to understand. Enforcement is tricky, it requires stricter financial bookkeeping than the Plutomancer/Plutophage (the only other spell schools that require the player to track dollars and cents). It could lead to interesting outcomes like the character deliberately overspending on hotel stays/meals/transportation to maintain the balance in favor of work expenses. Ideally you'd have some way to track the balance of work versus personal expenses without needing the player to total up receipts.

# ¿ Jan 28, 2022 20:05

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Happy to announce the Statosphere release of the first Special Orders book for Unknown Armies 3e: The Scottish Rite. This is the first in (hopefully) a series of sequels to the popular 2e splatbook Break Today, bringing the burger wars into the 21st century. This book is for both experienced GMs looking for table ready content for their 3e game, and new users looking for a more structured introduction to Unknown Armies than the one offered by the 3e core set.

Preview materials

Ronald McDonald High Chair posted:

Designed in 1975 as a cross promotion with the McDonaldland commercial series and multimedia franchise, only a single prototype of the Ronald McDonald high chair was ever produced. The design was rejected as too expensive to manufacture. It quickly accumulated malign symbolic energy because it was the ultimate exponent of everything vile about marketing fast food to children - propagandizing kids who were literally too young to walk.

(It might also be thanks to conflict between the embryonic videomancy schools of the day, incensed by similarities between the McDonaldland brand and the H.R. Pufnstuf children�s entertainment program it plagiarized.)

The chair sat in a warehouse in LA for a few decades before Church of Death Triumphant grifter Trintignant stole it. TNI had just clipped the Church�s leadership, leaving a power vacuum that the barely-magickally aware con artist was able to exploit. He used the chair�s powers to obliterate his followers� identities, filling their empty minds with a boilerplate sex-and-death mythos dedicated to himself.

Trintignant was duly mindscrubbed by powerful West Coast cliomancer John �Jacurutu� Ward, owner of the world�s oldest still-operating McDonald�s in Downey, CA, 13 miles outside LA. He gave the Satanist severe early onset Alzheimer�s and took the chair. Posted it to the anon list, asking what it was. Monica privately offered to buy it. Jacurutu made a counteroffer: if Center wanted it, she could come down to LA, and he would be happy to kill her. Then he melted it into a puddle of thermoform plastic.

Which wasn�t a huge deal. The Upper Echelon can just make another. Epperson has the original design drawings, bought off Heritage Auctions circa 2018. The freshly forged high chair will inherit the same sinister power held by the original. Advertising aimed at children has only gotten more precisely directed and intense since the 1970s. And, thanks to magickal research from the Siddhi list, the Scottish Rite now has a constructive way to use it. By combining the chair�s power with the purification rituals developed by sinister sadhus of Mak India�s McDutva faction, the remade chair will not only �deconvert� burger warriors from the opposition, but actually replace the removed loyalty identity with the Rite one.

Probably. They haven�t built it yet. Even Cedric isn�t willing to actually test it on live children. Partially out of scruples, also because he suspects children didn�t have developed identities anyway (just urges, like little demons). And even if it does work, it�s a provocative technology, the kind that starts a war once the other guy knows you have it.

The Strong Anthropic Principle posted:

New York Theosophist and Sleeper Indra Soug created the Strong Anthropic Principle in 1951, back when Cliomancy major charges were cheap. She wanted to imagine a world without magick, and what she ended up getting was a world without human beings - or a world where human beings never existed.

The Strong Anthropic Principle is a featureless desert, a flat plane of finely ground particles baked into a hard surface by the pitiless heat of a massive red sun. At first it seems like the toy world is frozen in time, the sun a pasteboard mask hung on the skybox. Then you realize it doesn�t move because the simulated world you�re standing on is tidally locked. It�ll be an hour before twilight for the next million years, until the inner core of the star contracts to form a white dwarf, leaving the world to the dark.

To this desolate expanse, Soug and her confederates added a number of cute little structures, connected by a tasteful covered walkway, columnated in the Spanish style. A few of her favorite cacti still live in pots on the terraces of the mini-hacienda, desperately conserving the few drops of water that thoughtful visitors to the space occasionally deposit.

The only permanent �inhabitants� are the corpses the Sleepers have stored there over the years. Dead bodies that need to be kept in a no-magick zone, but they don�t want to (or can�t) just destroy. These corpses are artfully mounted, previous generations of the conspiracy taking great care to present them.
A tempered glass tank full of methylated spirits, six feet tall, holding the pickled corpse of Lakshmi Soug, 1919-1949. The edges of her mouth extend past her cheeks and down the sides of her body all the way to her ribcage, letting her open half her body like an alligator. The seam is held shut by safety pins, but the edges of her teeth protrude from the opening.

The mummified corpse of Sam Drapeau, 1895-1956. The body is desiccated as though all the water was sucked out, but the eyes are still intact, perfectly green and wet as though the dead man could still see out of them.

A 200 pound chunk of India rubber in a large bell jar, which according to the label is all that�s left of Norman �Housebreaker� Lockhart, 1900-1989. The patterns on the surface of the chunk cause an optical illusion, where the viewer sees a dead man in the rubber, who resembles themselves the longer they stare.

A four foot tall skeleton with a massively hydrocephalic, paper thin skull, belonging to Jenny Civilization (no date given). The skull and several of the bones are peppered with perfectly square holes, which have bored through the bone without cracking it. The left arm is missing entirely.

A case of one hundred twenty nine purple butterflies, pinned with their wings spread. The label names this the resting place of Bo Nagopleen, 1923-1967.
The covered porch of the hacienda facing the sun also has a 2,000 pound cement block carved in the shape of a chair. The block is engraved with the phrase �DO NOT REMOVE� in two dozen languages.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2022 21:03

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Everything Counts posted:

Hey, so I have published The Weary Traveler as part of my new Statosphere product, Three Miles Of Bad Road. A supplement themed around the magick of roads and streets. It also includes The Fugitive, and three new schools including Petrolphages, which people seem to like. It also includes rituals, artifacts, and some identities I'm pretty pleased with.

Finally got around to reading this one. It's pretty cool, petrolphagy is definitely the best part. The biggest flaw is none of the new caster schools have sample NPCs. Some of them sell themselves but you're always better off giving the player an example of what you can do with a new character build option.

You probably already saw it, but the 33.3 show also did a review.

mellonbread fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Sep 30, 2022

# ¿ Sep 30, 2022 21:30

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Karma Guard posted:

Hey! I know Bird Bailey! I helped them by being a soundboard and knowing about UA2. I was just about to post The Scottish Rite here. I just love this stupid-rear end game, even if I don't have a copy of UA3 yet (because A: I'm broke and B: no one to play with IRL )

Nice. Besides doing one of the pregens and some other game content, Bird put the second most work into the actual assembly of the book after Tormsen, including most of the copy editing.

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

This seems remarkably good. I never would have guessed that it wasn't a fully official thing.

Just for that, have another preview.

CORPSES GO HOME posted:

The Whisper War might have been a disaster for Mak Attax, but it was a windfall for Monica, Cedric, and the other leaders of the Scottish Rite. They got the big seats because they grabbed them when everyone else died. It made them more powerful than ever. The cautious conservatism of the Rite�s top level leadership rings a little hollow for some of the rank and file. They don�t have the status and wealth and magick to sit tight and forge schemes that might never pay off. They can�t wait for a ten year plan when they�re being evicted next week. Keeping quiet won�t save them.

So when someone on the anon list suggested killing rich people to drive down rents in expensive urban areas as their Safe, Happy New Year entry, they got a lot of �based� and �this but unironically� and �do it�. Some of them were probably memeing. Some of them were serious. Either way, the idea was bid back in subsequent threads, from summoning a creature that would hunt and kill yuppies, to using an old Sleeper ritual someone shared that would accomplish the same purpose: spreading fear.

STERILE BEGETTING (SIGNIFICANT RITUAL)
COST: 1 significant charge
RITUAL ACTION: Gather at least eight pounds of trash, at least half of it organic. Form it into a human outline. Sprinkle some blood on it, both yours and someone of the opposite sex.
EFFECT: The trash transforms into a fresh human corpse. There is no obvious cause of death, though it�s easy to stage one. The corpse�s genes are those of the two people whose blood was used to create it, as though they were its parents.

The plan is simple, and anyone who can cast rituals can participate. Manufacture enough fake murders to make wealthy people think twice about moving into the target cities. Increase the crime rate without hurting anyone, bring down the rent.

Outside of the people who think this is a stupid idea, full stop, this naturally leads to debates about strategy. Should all the killings be in one place, or spread across the country to create the impression of a coordinated nationwide movement? Should they have common features that suggest a specific modus operandi, or each look like the work of a different killer?

Someone pulls the trigger and starts dropping bodies before anyone agrees on anything. And once one guy starts doing it, nobody else is content to just sit around posting about it.

In Boston things go off without a hitch. Crews vary who spawns the bodies so that there�s never a DNA link between the John and Jane Does. They tap Cliomancer and long time friend of the Rite Genesis Peru to retroactively forge identities for the stiffs, so that they look like people who actually matter. They use sociomancy to control the narrative, making it clear that the city is no longer safe for rich people.

In San Francisco it�s a disaster. Police find the �parents� of the first corpse using information in commercial genetic databases, and end up with a fifty year old mother and nineteen year old father, who somehow produced a thirty year old son together. This �unsolvable crime� grabs the Sleepers� attention. They recognize the ritual as one of their old tricks, pulling them into the investigation.

In Miami the bodies are misinterpreted as gang related killings. Which upsets a fragile truce between the very real crime syndicates operating in the city, leading to real violence. The downtown crew acknowledges they hosed up and tries to make peace, putting them in the awkward position of explaining what happened without turning the ruthless narcos onto the existence of magick.

In DC the whole thing is hijacked for culture war purposes. A couple checkers who have list access but aren�t actually part of the Rite use the ritual to engineer false flag attacks in the nation�s capital, hoping to bring down the security apparatus on the opposition. The lethally competent Maks of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum get the call to shut the would-be accelerationists down before they hurt somebody.

In Seattle nobody notices. Despite the U Village crew�s best efforts to gussy them up, the stiffs are written off as homeless drug addicts. They spice things up with nastier causes of death and a more obvious MO for a fictional serial killer preying on wealthy Amazon coders. The result is a bump in police spending and zero impact on rents. A copycat killer commits a genuine murder. The crew�s escalation inadvertently inspires a real movement.

In New York Monica Barberry puts a stop to it. She�s not going to put up with this poo poo on her home turf. This doesn�t endear her to the local crews trying to make NYC rent on a burger flipper�s salary, especially when someone on the list posts all the property she owns. Which is something she�d be happy to help with if they just loving asked.

In San Jose the Tully Road crew uses the bodies to settle scores. They�ve been taking poo poo off the Bascom Avenue Cadre for years and they�re fed up. A couple inconveniently placed corpses and calls to the cops will sort them out with a frameup. Center drops a cease and desist spell when she finds out what�s going on. Which just makes things worse when the implanted memory of her fire and brimstone speech gives the crew�s urbanomancer a psychotic break, convincing him the boss is going to kill him - unless he kills her first.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2022 23:33

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

I really like the comedic timing for the last few items in "33 ways to piss off the clown"

I think that list was one of the first things that Tormsen wrote for the Rite. One thing I wish we had finished in time for inclusion is the updated list of random Special Order phenomena that happen when people eat the charged burgers. There's one in the original Break Today book, but ideally the GM shouldn't have to reference a 2e splat. I might just write something up on my blog for people to use.

Speaking of things from my blog, here's one I put together with a friend after the book came out.

Jenny Wex posted:

In her mind's eye, something made Jenny want to recoil even before it came into focus.

A man. Mustard. A mustard m- no, a man in a mustard pin-stripe shirt... the room smelled vaguely of mustard. Old, like the kind around the rim of a squeezebottle.

The man was nondescript, sitting in a room like Darth Vader's chamber in Star Wars... meditating? But the horrific thing... the horrific thing was that he sat on a pink mass. The pink mass was slick and soft and luminous with a meaty sheen all over its carpetlike surface...

Jenny's mind ejected itself from her astral form.

"Nope," she said definitively, reaching for the Tums in her purse. "Too close, even at that distance."

The Man in the Suit posted:

A light came on in his head, disrupting the symphony of flesh surrounding him. There was a smell like tiny cubed onions, frying. In his shadow body, a thousand light years away, a fresh stream of drool issued from the side of his mouth, joining the layer of effluent caking his chin and neck. The edges of his jaws hurt in anticipation of the taste. The carpet rippled under him like it was alive.

Then he was away from the sealed chamber and back in the mass, moving toward the spot where the light had come from.

What You Hear posted:

Mak Attax wasn't the first conspiracy hidden under the Golden Arches. Jenny Wex remembers. It did not leave a good impression. The thing in the sphere, swelling until it blocked out the horizon in her mind's eye. 7 mages dead by strokes and aneurysms, another 3 reduced to brainless husks.

50 years later, Jenny is alarmed by the sound of sizzling meat and the distant pulse of pureed cow vibrating behind her third eye. The thing in the chamber is back, hunting the dreaming minds of unsuspecting mages on the astral plane.

Jenny is eighty years old and slowly sliding into dementia. Her astral sight is as sharp as ever, but her memory is cloudy. She has confused the aura of the Scottish Rite with the all absorbing singularity of flesh emanating from the no-chamber. And she's fighting back the way she did in 1971: by tricking it into eating itself.

The first case is reported on the Rite board, a cashier at the Carson avenue franchise in Vegas who woke up from a dipsomantically enhanced bender and chewed her own hand off. The second comes a week later: a Liverpudlian burger flipper puts on his Gribkov ruby spectacles and two minutes later tears the throat out of a bicyclist using his teeth, gorging himself until beaten into a coma by law enforcement.

It doesn't stop.

All the victims are capable of aurasight, astral projection or other enhanced perception that allows them to see the other side. The ones still sensate, who haven't destroyed their own tongue and hands, tell the same story. They looked to the invisible world, and found a woman waiting for them, with a face that flashed like a seizure. The shining woman drew closer and they were immobilized as though by a horrifying sleep paralysis nightmare. They tried everything to escape, casting spells, moving their body. The only thing that worked was biting down as hard as they could - at which point they woke up, mouth full of meat.

The Think Tank posted:

What about the meditation chamber?

The old McDonald's office in Oak Brook, Illinois was knocked down in 2019. They missed the underground chamber with the think tank. It's behind a wall in the basement unit of the condos they built.

What about the man inside - in the Mustard suit? He gave strict orders that he was not to be disturbed for any reason while he was in the chamber. His servitors greatly feared him and, like the Monarch Typhon, when he quietly died behind the screen in 1971 they dared not enter.

The corpse is still down there, sat lotus position on the calcified carpet like a dead coral reef. His suit has faded to a deeper yellow. The wrist of one arm is still jammed in the mouth. The hollow of the stomach filled with the bones that were once the hand.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2022 22:45

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Belated Safe, Happy New Year Sale on the Scottish Rite book.

While I'm here, a preview of a ritual site from the upcoming Special Orders Book 2: Court of the Burger Queen

AMARNA BOUNDARY STELA C posted:

POWER: Major

DESCRIPTION: Nestled in the Northern cliffs of the ancient Egyptian ritual city of Amarna, Stela C is unique among the Boundary Stelae of Akhenaten. Unlike the other Stelae, C was concealed from public view by its location in a gorge not easily visible from the city itself. Stela C is six meters tall and ten wide, carven from the native stone of the cliff. Most of the face is occupied by a bas relief depicting an androgynous human figure on their knees below the sun disc Aten. The figure is holding their stomach, intestines, lungs and liver in their open palms. The majority of the accompanying Hieroglyphic script is effaced, either by deliberate vandalism or weathering (though neither explain why the image is still visible). The only decipherable text reads �ATEN�HIS THRONE�GATHER POWER�VESSEL�.

Below the relief, at ground level, is an arched indentation in which rests a carven alabaster throne. Like the relief, the throne is suspiciously unweathered. The seat of the throne is stained with a black, pitch like substance and a dusting of unknown pinkish residue. On each side of the throne are two indentations sized for urns or jars, for a total of four.

EFFECT: Sit on the throne while the four indentations are occupied by canopic jars containing your preserved stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver. Recite the full text of the Stela (not just the surviving fragment). You can then combine ten minor charges you�re carrying into a significant charge, or ten sigs into a major.

WHAT YOU HEAR posted:

A lesser treatise by 15th Century chronicler Al-Maqrizi provides the earliest recorded mention of Stela C, a local legend of a �white stone chair� that granted wishes. David Roberts sketched the site in his 1838 visit to Egypt, but didn�t include it in his final book of lithographs after the concept drawings were lost. By the time Sir Flinders Petrie established a taxonomy of the Amarna Stelae in 1901, the location had been forgotten again. Stelae C was first comprehensively described in 1997 by surveyors from the Zurich based Society of the Friends of the Royal Tombs of Egypt. Plans for further research were curtailed by the death of 36 Swiss citizens at the hands of Islamist militants during the Luxor Massacre, which prompted the Society to withdraw its researchers from Egypt. Further excavation attempts have been stymied by lack of funding, political instability, and obstructionism from the Egyptian antiquities authorities.

This obstructionism is not typical government foot dragging, it�s a deliberate ploy by Egyptian cabal O Time Thy Pyramids to keep Stela C under wraps. This loose alliance of Egyptian chargers formed to prevent (or monopolize, depending on who you ask) occult exploitation of Ancient Egyptian historic sites. While magickal Egyptian artifacts (or Ptolemaic artifacts, or Roman, or Mamluk, or Hittite, or Hyksos�) are themselves extremely rare, mundane ancient ruins hold massive symbolic power, prompting visiting wizards to plunder, deface, and fight over them. Someone had to do for the mages what the Ministry of Antiquities did for the tourists and smugglers.
Amid Soliman Pasha, Brigadier in the Tourism and Antiquities Police. Once a brain rinsed servitor of a Cliomancer who wanted law enforcement backup in a petty dispute with a rival cobwebber. Now a senior member of the cabal. Collects pottery fragments.

Beck, talking crocodile. Kept chained in an underground pit by Frontal Ptolemy, a group of antiquities smugglers who used him to dispose of magickal rivals. Ate enough charged bodies to develop sentience. Rescued by OTTP. Sensitive, loves to sing.

al-Kephri, devout Muslim Cryptomancer who awoke one day and found himself transformed into a monstrous insect. Loves being a giant beetle, does most of his work online. Translates and recovers lost texts.

Dr. Maysoon Lahab, archaeology professor at University of Cairo, supremely competent organizer. Wears a Hatchepsut style Pharaonic false beard during rituals, a visual pun on her role providing academic cover for the group�s secret operations.

Dr Omar Ali, Geomancer. Directs restoration of ancient sites to farm significant charges. Really wants to ball these up into majors using the Stela and start rebuilding ancient megastructures using magick, but the cabal won�t let him.

Qutb bin Kronos, kebab seller and wizard with a knife. Can cut without killing or kill without cutting. His surgical skills get more use than his swordsmanship, along with his unique blend of spices that preserves living tissue.
Although insular and often openly racist against darker skinned visitors from Asia or Sub Saharan Africa, O Time Thy Pyramids recognizes that some checkers have legitimate uses for the charge combining powers of Stela C. The first step to getting access is a short interview with Dr Lahab, to determine what the supplicant wants to do with their combined charges. This is a cursory discussion to avoid complete wastes of the group�s time. Next is a sizeable cash payment. The whole ritual process takes time and energy from several people, who have to be compensated. Then comes the real purity test. The aspirant�s heart is removed and weighed against a feather, a Koran, and a King James Bible written in Coptic (an awkward ecumenical compromise between the differing faiths of the cabal�s members). If the petitioner�s intentions are pure, their heart is reimplanted in their body. If not, Qutb keeps it and they die.

Those who pass the test have the requisite organs removed, preserved still living in the appropriate vessels, for use in the ritual and later reimplantation. They are taught the words of power, which the Pyramids pulled from the defaced Stela using magickal reconstructive methods. Finally, under supervision, they are permitted to sit in the chair and fuse their charges together.

Burger King has a sizeable presence in Egypt, and so does the Court of the Burger Queen. The courtiers of Profession: King hold a commanding position at the Al Haram BK franchise in Giza, a twenty minute drive from the Great Pyramids. Their initial objective was magickal research into the True King in Pharaonic Egypt, and the potential to enhance Erica�s own bid for the big seat. Then they learned about the Stela. The Court of the Burger Queen needs major charges for Erica Fisher to dispense as boons, as fuel for her more grandiose schemes, and as prizes that induce people to participate in the Surfa system of debt bondage.

So far, both Profession: King's attempts to gain access to the Stela legitimately have failed. Neato Chris was turned away when the Pyramids figured out he was working for an international burger conspiracy. The Great Devourer made it as far as the purity test, which she failed and died. The Burger Queen is impatient. If playing nice doesn�t get results, a reliable source of Majors is worth going to war over.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2023 20:59

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

For Dungeon23 I have completed several Unknown Armies drafts that were sitting in the commonplace book in half-finished states.

Scenarios
ICONODULES
Temple of the Crying Buddha
You're Not Alexander!

NPCs
Jamaldin, the Last Neanderthal
O'Saa, Would-Be Avatar of the Destroyer
Peppino Spaghetti, Veteran of the Pizza Wars
rudeMechanical, Explorer of the Furthest Realms
Three Bear, Predatory Dipsomancer

# ¿ Mar 11, 2023 00:20

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

I did that a couple weeks ago. It's easy enough when all you have to do is balance a handful of pregens against each other. Building a whole setting specific spell list with new schools would be a lot more work.

The metaphysics of the Avatar system are hard to transplant, but it's not necessary to do so because Godwalkers and the Invisible Clergy rarely matter in UA anyway. Adhere to a code of conduct, get powers, everything else is superfluous.

# ¿ May 12, 2023 18:24

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

If you're set on forcing the players to roleplay a specific historical scenario rather than doing what they please, you need to give them a crop of pregens that are all hooked into the story you want to tell. Like Hellenistic Era Troy or The Sino Japanese War

# ¿ May 16, 2023 18:27

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

That sounds like a single objective, either local or weighty depending on how important you believe the unpublished novel is in the grand scheme of things.

Bite sized adventures that contribute to the success of the overall scheme are handled via UA3's milestone system. Your proposed investigative introduction could be a series of petty milestones, or a single intense milestone depending on how you want to spread out table time.

According to Book Two, you're supposed to just hand out milestones when the players accomplish something that contributes to mission success. I've run one campaign and played in five, and in all of those we premade a list of milestones after we finished corkboarding. The GM chipped in a couple and then vetted suggestions from the players on things they wanted to do to accomplish the objective.

This is helpful because

It ties the contents of the corkboard back to the objective, transforming an initially random collection of plot and setting elements into gameplay.
The players know what they're supposed to be doing, which is a perennial problem in investigative/sandbox games.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2023 06:40

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Xiahou Dun posted:

While I caught you, you got anything I should be on the look-out for mechanically? The system looks pretty put-together, in many ways better than 2e, but you can never really tell until you get it to the table. Off hand, my worries are mechanically filling out the GMCs quickly and that the grid-iron system, while flexible, is pretty anemic mechanically. The first I'm just gonna throw prep-time at, and the latter I was going to just be quick about it and keep the focus on the narrative. These sound reasonable from your experience?

Also, I have not purchased books 4 and 5 and probably won't unless a player specifically wants a mechanical widget from there. Which is a shame, because your F&F's were one of the big reasons I'm running the system. I don't remember anything particularly helpful in there, but if you do please feel free to remind me.

Thanks again, hoss.

NPC statblocks are definitely a hassle. Three passions, five stress meters and a spread of identities with features can add up fast. Book 4 has random NPC professions and identity features to quickly stat up characters, but you still have to do passions and hardening yourself.

Not every NPC needs to be fully statted from the starting gun. Aside from their utility as roleplay prompts the passions mostly matter because of the coercion minigame, and the players aren't necessarily going to try that on everyone they meet. Hardening is a little more important since it determines how NPCs react to stress damage. Especially violence and magick, the two most common sources of SAN damage in UA. Failing SAN in Unknown Armies is an instant freakout, and modeling that with the NPCs is important to sell the impact of the action happening onscreen - and the setting's core conceit that normal people are only ever a single d100 roll away from a riot. Having a blank copy of the character sheet by your side is helpful because you can quickly reference what level an NPC's ability scores should be at based on their hardening, and which abilities attack/defend what meters. I think UA3 had a GM screen with the dueling stress meters on it, but I never picked up a copy.

When in doubt, just steal an NPC someone else already wrote. The best source for these is Oddities and Endlings. That's the second best resource I can point you at for the game, after the unnoficial SRD at On Armies Unknown

Book 5 has the "iconic" caster schools that people who have not played UA might recognize. Epideromancy, Pornomancy, Entropomancy. I think these are generally better than the Adepts in Book 1. The Book 1 Avatars are largely fine, and the Unique Supernatural rules are one of the best "power creation" systems I've seen in an RPG.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2023 17:46

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

mellonbread posted:

The idea with the Claim of the Clergy is that you can come up with your own Claims of the Clergy for the other Avatar Channels in the book, or from Unknown Armies generally. The obvious pull is a Claim for the Avatar of the Mother, at the prehistoric cult site in Malta where they found all those MILF statues. A roadhouse where True King Dion Isaacs held bloodrites with his biker gang, the sauna where a drunken Savonian sweated herself into Godhood as the Shaman� Of course the challenge is coming up with special buffs for all these locations to apply to pilgrims.

As promised, Claims of the Clergy for

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 17:10

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

I'm going to run a short Unknown Armies Halloween writing jam, starting on the 24th. I'll post the instructions then.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2023 23:44

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

Unknown Armies 2023 Halloween Jam is live. Details in the attached document.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2023 16:45

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

The jam wrapped last week. We got fourteen submissions, plus three I wrote as an example and three I wrote while the jam was running. I posted my thoughts here. Everyone I talked with after wanted to do more jams and contests, so I'll have to think of something else we can do in the future.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2023 18:04

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2024 15:08

mellonbread: Dec 20, 2017

DPM posted:

Very cool reading. Thanks mellon and all contributors, this has inspired me to get off my arse and finish reading the 3E rules

Thanks for reading!. Here are a couple things I've done since the jam wrapped.

Assorted Pregens for when you need characters fast and don't have time to chew through Unknown Armies' elaborate character/NPC building process.

Kurta the Androgyne, a Mystic Hermaphrodite living it up in the Weimar Republic.

The Surgeon Bug, an Otherspace angel of death.

The Cage Cup, a drinking game set during the Roman Republic's suppression of the Bacchanalia in 186 BC.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2023 20:05

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