fredrix
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Post by fredrix on Jul 14, 2017 7:32:25 GMT -8
I wanted to do this ages ago, and sbloyd's reading of Mage has prompted me into action. I’m going to be exploring the new edition of the other contemporary Magickal weirdness RPG, Unknown Armies. I'm also posting these on my blog too, because my group, who are not Happy Jacks listeners, don't come here and I plan to run a game with them soon. Its a game I’ve wanted to run for a long time, and when the third edition was Kickstarted, I was an eager backer, vacillating between digital and expensive Deluxe printed editions as my financial commitments waxed and waned. In the end I went digital only and later bought the Deluxe set in retail saving a considerable amount in both shipping and exchange rate fluctuations. The original version came out in 1998, and as a fan of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, my interest was sparked. But there wasn’t much gaming going on in my life at the time, and what there was, was as a player, not GM, so I couldn’t justify buying a game I’d likely never run. But it was always there nagging at the edge of my consciousness. A few years ago, I bought a PDF of the second edition, through Bundle of Holding, but not with any intention to run it at the time, rather to read about the magic system. I have a problem with magic in RPGs. Magic and rulesets don’t sit well together, given that magic is about breaking the laws of nature. Since my earliest days playing RPGs, I hated the magic in D&D, which felt far too limited and codified to meet my expectations of magic. I remember being eleven, and not being able to think of a possible “realistic” reason why magic users would forget spells after casting them, except to balance the game play so that fighter and other none magic users had something to do. I discovered later of course that the system did at least have a literary precedent, and a name, “Vancian” magic, to describe it. But by that time I had abandoned AD&D for the “better” magical systems of Runequest (and Traveller, which avoided the whole magic thing in the first place). Only fifth edition has brought me back to the D&D fold, but I still have no desire to play a magic user. Of course the magic I wanted would “break” the game: if one player character can change the world, would any player want to do anything else? Can you mix magic users and mortals in a game where everybody has fun? It seems game designers wrestled with similar questions, and I eventually found a magical game I enjoyed – Mage: The Ascension. There was Ars Magica too, both of them taking the “easy” route to solving some of the challenges of magic in RPGs, making every player character a magic user. I liked what I read in Unknown Armies 2. Yes, the magic was codified, but only as an example of how “out there” your magic, as a player character could be. The way was open for creating your own system of magic – something that really attracted me, not just as a player but as a GM, wondering what my players might do. That said, I was still actually sitting at a table to rarely to add it to my “must play” list. In the last year or two however, I got to play weekly again. Only three hours at a time, but I’d managed to scratch a number of system itches. I’ve enjoyed playing Feng Shui, which I’d only run before. I’ve run Night Black Agents: The Dracula Dossier, and I was ready to add Unknown Armies to the list of things I’d like to run, just in time for the new version to be announced… So I had to Kick In, didn’t I? And its got to be the new version I run. But there’s a problem. And its one I recall from Version 2. Greg Stolze writes very … well, yes. I think. Its a very entertaining read. But, damn, its hard to grok the rules from among the thousands of words. Everything seems scattered randomly among the pages. For example, Stoltze wanton refuses, anywhere, to give a simple step by step guide to creating a character. The closest he gets a one page summary which frankly isn’t that helpful, he calls “The Lonely Singles Club version”, which suggests a somewhat condescending attitude to people that might want such a thing. Instead he spreads the process across two volumes. Which is OK for me as GM, because I have all three books, and it highlights the importance of doing this thing in the company of other players and the GM. But if I was a player, assured that everything I need to play is in book 1, and I bought that book, I think I might be a little pissed. Anyhow, next post, book 1, chapter 1.
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sbloyd
Supporter
WHAT! A human in a Precursor service vehicle?!
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Post by sbloyd on Jul 14, 2017 8:06:21 GMT -8
This is my experience with the 20th Anniversary Mage. Brucato is verbose and couches everything in metaphor.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
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Post by fredrix on Jul 15, 2017 4:02:19 GMT -8
This is my experience with the 20th Anniversary Mage. Brucato is verbose and couches everything in metaphor. Glad its not just Stolze. This is up for a "best writing" Ennie, and I'm hard pressed to decide whether it should win brilliantly or lose badly.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
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Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Jul 15, 2017 4:03:56 GMT -8
As I said, I'm going to take these books slow, chapter by chapter, writing a post for each. The first chapter is called Go. As the introductory chapter, it of course kicks off with a what is roleplaying section. Like many games it uses a percentile dice system, and suggest where newbies might find them. It does point out some differences to other RPGs very early though. In the fourth paragraph it puts the onus on players to set the objective - normally something in the GM's remit. Later on it indicates what sort of objective that might be:
The game really pushes hard that its about characters in Unknown Armies are different. In many games characters are define primarily by what they can do - abilities and skills. In UA, they are defined by their objectives, by their history and how its affected their psyche, by their obsession and by their passion. They do get abilities, but these come first of all from their "shock gauges" and their identities. This last might sound like character Class, or Archetype, but unlike a lot of games, its not their first thing you do in character creation.
Then we dip into the world, and its our world, this one, now. Except your characters know better, because they believe in magic. They know that the "normal" world the rest of us see is just a thin veneer over what is really going on. They know that the world is defined by the Invisible Clergy, who used to be human but they ascended to embody something that the whole world recognizes as a social role: the Mother; the Fool; the Firebrand; and, the Star to name just a few. Your characters don't know what they are all called, or even how many there are.
They know this though: they know there aren't (yet) 333 of them. Because when there are, the world ends.
Beneath the Invisible Clergy, in power terms, are Avatars, Adepts and Gutter magicians. These are all things that player characters can be, but they don't have to be any of them.
After the brief introduction to the world, there's an pretty full description of the mechanics. Success is determined by percentile dice - preferably two d10 of different colours. If you have a a rating of 45% in Lie, you need to roll that or under to succeed. If you roll 00, that counts as 100 and a fumble, even if your rating was 100%. If you roll a matched success or failure, 44 or 55 for example, something unusual happens. Unusually good if its less than your rating, unusually bad, if you failed. If you roll 01, that's a critical success. In certain circumstances you can flip-flop the dice, turning a 54 into a 45 for example. There are also circumstances where you you get a hunch roll. You roll the dice and have to use the result for your next action. So if you roll high, you want to do something where the consequences of failure are minimal.
The chapter finishes with a discussion of triggers and a piece of fiction.
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fredrix
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Post by fredrix on Jul 16, 2017 4:05:24 GMT -8
There is much to love about character creation in Unknown Armies. It is both structured and freeform, it can create anything from a suburban housewife to a god, it can create a god that is a suburban housewife, or the god of suburbia, is you so choose. It can create modern-day magic users that are truely powerful, and flexible – the magic can be and do pretty much anything you want, while ensuring that players who choose more mundane characters are not outclassed by their colleagues. In short it’s pretty damn amazing.
The problem with chapter 2 of the the players book though, is it doesn’t really tell you how.
For players coming from more traditional RP games, that can be a challenge. Lots of modern games have collaborative character creation nowadays though. What’s surprising about this book, is the chapter on collaborative character creation is inthe GMs book, Run, so it’s a real challenge for players who (like me I must admit) like to work through character creation as they grok the system. This chapters isn’t really about creating a character as much as understanding your character sheet. But they don’t even show you an example character sheet.
If you did see one, you’d notice that a big difference between UA3 and older systems is that there are no physical stats like strength, constitution or dexterity, nor indeed mental stats like intelligence or wisdom or will. Even the last edition of UA had four such stats: Body; Speed; Mind; and Soul, but this version doesn’t include them. Instead this version of the game about broken people changing the world, describes those people by they state of their mind. And I think it’s better for it. At the heart of the character sheet are the Shock Gauges: Violence; Self; Unnatural; Helplessness; and Isolation. In the last version of the game these were a sort of psychological hit-points called the madness meter. But now, each comes with two Abilities, one upbeat, and a downbeat one. The more hardened you are to Violence, for example, the better you are at the downbeat ability, in this case Struggle. If you are less hardened you are the better you are at the upbeat ability, which for Violence is Connecting with people. Hardened notches can also protect you from stress checks, which is important because failed checks represent serious psychological damage.
As we’re using Violence as our example, a low level stress check could be triggered by something like being attacked with a weapon. To many of us innocents that might give us nightmares, even if we hadn’t been hurt, but to someone with three or more hardened notches in Violence, its nothing they haven’t seen before. Even a hardened veteran though might be affected by witnessing a brutal mass execution, or seeing a loved one tortured to death. Fail four Violence stress checks and you are likely to be diagnosed with PTSD. But hardened notches also affect the way you behave though exactly how is up the the player- lots of hardened notches in Violence may make you “bitter and harsh, feverish and vehement, or icy cold.”
Something that you can use to protect you from stress checks are your Identities. These can be almost anything you want, but the most obvious choices are professions and roles, for example Veteran, or Caring. Character creation starts you off with two, generally, but you can have up to four. Identities work as catch-alls for all sorts of more specific skills, using the mantra “I’m ____, of course I can ____!” So for example, “I’m a veteran, of course I can speak in military jargon, endure discomfort etc. Each identity can also substitute for one of the shock gauge related abilities above. So if your hardened notches in violence make it difficult to Connect with people now, you can roll on your Caring identity instead.
Each Identity also comes with two Features, picked from a pre-defined list that have specific mechanical effects in the game. For example, anybody can shoot a gun, but within the rules of this game, you have to have “Provides Firearm Attacks” as a feature to be any good at it. One of your identities may well be supernatural, a magical adept, or and avatar, and these are handled slightly differently.
Another thing that defines your character are Relationships. You start off with at least two of the five most important relationships in your life defined – your Favourite, your Guru, your Mentor, your Responsibility or your Protege. These can be with people – NPCs or other player characters, or organisations and groups. So your Responsibility might be your child, your Kung Fu class, or your employer. Relationships, like Identities have percentile measures attached to them, and you can use them for Coercion which is the Unknown Armies social combat system, or to substitute for some (but not all) Abilities; and even to say “Of course I can ___”.
You also choose three Passions, your Fear, your Noble passion and your Rage. But these are not covered in Chapter 1, not here, except a mention of them being burned to keep it together when your failed stress checks push you into Madness.
And that’s the frustrating thing about this book, which claims to be for players. Most players I know will want to turn to the character creation pages first, if only to get a handle on what they need to be thinking about as they read the rest. But this chapters doesn’t tell you how you actually put your Shock Gauges, Passions, Relationships and Identities together to make a character. You don’t even get to see a character sheet.
Granted, character creation should be a group activity, done under the auspices of the GM, because it doesn’t only create the characters, it creates the world, and the adventure too. So the process of character creation is covered in the GM’s book. There is a sort of summary in this volume, on page 54 “Creating Characters: The Lonely Singles Club Version” (which tells the player exactly what the author thinks if them), but if I were a player, and my GM had persuaded me to pick up just this book, I might well be confused and pretty cheesed after reading this chapter.
Which is why my next post on the subject will leap forward to Book 2, Run, and the rest of the rules on Character creation.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
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Post by fredrix on Jul 16, 2017 23:59:56 GMT -8
This is going to be a long one.
As I mentioned in my last post, the process of character creation in Unknown Armies is a group activity, led by the GM. So obviously (if somewhat annoyingly), that process is detailed in the GM’s book, Run, rather than the book sold as everything players need to know (harrumph). Therefore I’ve jumped forward to cover the relevant chapter now.
The PC group is referred to as the Cabal. But the process of character generation does not just create that group, its creates the word they adventure in. That world is our world of course but with the addition (or if you like, the revelation) of magick. What the players do as they create their cabal is set the stage; “the important locations, themes and relationships.”
This isn’t something you do at the beginning of your first session, it deserves the whole of your first session. And it you have one, a cork-board, pins and bits of string – like a proper conspiracy theorist, If not, some big sheets of paper and markers. Oh, and everyone should bring some images that inspire them…
Then we are ready to begin with the cabal defining their objective. What is this story going to be about? It can be about pretty much anything you can imagine. The examples they give are things like removing a politician with mind-bending powers from office (this was written before last year’s US elections); escaping from a terrible situation; changing the world through magic rock and roll; tracking down and destroying every copy of a reality warping book; or, bringing dragons back into the world. Everyone round the table takes a turn at proposing an objective, and then the group (hopefully) agrees on one, which I guess could be an amalgam of more than one suggestion. Then they sketch out a rough idea of the milestones along the path to meeting that objective.
"For best results, work within the framework of desperation, obsession and occult weirdness."
Then, they start defining their character by “notching their Unnatural meter” (ooh-err missus). They describe the event that convinced their character that the unnatural is real, and add up to five hardened notches in the Unnatural meter. Its entirely up to them but you might suggest that being pretty convinced you saw a ghost might be worth one hardened notch, while being brought up since childhood to be a sacrifice in a weird cult’s ritual might warrant the full five.
Back in the world, each player adds either a character or location and connects it to their character or any of the other elements that have already been put down.
Switching back to their characters, each players names their character’s obsession. Magick-using adepts have to make their form of magick their obsession. Then they define their first Identity, and give it anywhere between 15 and 90 percentage points.
"The image of the game is blurry at this point. You have disparate elements, half-formed character who are little more than bundles of urges, funneled together in pursuit of a shared objective."
So stage two involves each player connecting their character in a relationship with another PC, there are five types of relationship to choose from: responsibility; guru; favourite; mentor; or, protege. Next, they give themselves a second identity, with a percentage value as before.
Then they turn back the the world, and each takes a turn at connecting to elements that were not connected before. If they want to connect one of the elements to another players character, they have to ask that player’s permission first. And, with four possible relationship types left, each player takes a turn to use one of them to describe their character’s relationship with the group as a whole.
Moving on to step three, each players distributes up to ten hardened notches across two of their shock meters. They don’t have to use all ten, they don’t have to distribute any points, if they want to play a less hardened character. Then they define their passions: “what pisses him off, scares him, and inspires him?” They can add more identities if they want, and if they have any percentage points left out of the original 120 that they started with. And its at this point they decide which identity best supports their obsession.
The final stage involves adding up to ten hardened notches on their last two meters. Then each player adds another element – GMC or place to the world, and another connection (which doesn’t have to be with the element you just added). They should make sure that each identity has its two features, and that the total number of points allocated to identities adds up to 120.
Then its time to pay the piper. Each player counts up the number of hardened notches on their meters. The total divided by five (rounded up) is the number of failed checks they must allocate. The player can allocate these however they wish across the five meters.
And we’re done.
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Post by The Northman on Jul 17, 2017 0:34:42 GMT -8
My girlfriend kickstarted the game, so we've had the physical books around for a while now. I LOVED the old versions, but haven't had a chance to crack them open with life being busy. Thanks for taking this on.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
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Post by fredrix on Jul 19, 2017 9:34:28 GMT -8
Back to book 1, chapter 3: Conflict
We know how this chapter normally works – explaining initiative, to-hit rolls, damage and healing first. Then other ways to get hurt, and maybe at the end a couple of paragraphs on social conflict, assuming that wasn’t covered in the skills chapter under Persuasion…
But that ain’t how this game rolls, oh no.
The first section is all about Coercion which is presented as the main form of conflict that you are likely to use. It’s not surprising, given that this is a game where the PC stats, measure your state of mind, not your strength and constitution. So how does in work?
First of you you establish a credible threat. Now this last word is an unfortunate choice, it suggests violence, but that’s not the only lever you have to coerce people. You could threaten them with withdrawing your love, with the idea that the supernatural is real, with taking away their sense of control, with isolation or even an attack on their sense of self. Whatever your threat, you roll against the relevant identity, relationship or ability. If you fail they don’t believe your threat is real, and it’s us to you to decide if it is or not. If you succeed, they have a choice, do what you want or take a stress check. Its worth pointing out something mentioned later in the chapter, concerning less coercive attempts at persuasion – whatever you do, to GMCs or each-other’s characters,
And so to combat, but even that section starts with six ways to avoid a fight. The impression here is that you REALLY don’t want to start one, but of you insist…
There’s no initiative, players just announce what they want to do, when their want to do it. If there’s an argument about who goes first, the character with the highest relevant ability or identity wins. To attack you roll the appropriate identity, and if you succeed you inflict wounds. The number of wounds is based (mostly) off your attack roll. You have, say Soldier 40%, so you must roll 40 or under to hit. If you roll 32, you hit. If you were punching your opponent, the damage would be 3+2 or 5. If you are using a weapon, you get bonuses depending on whether its sharp, big and/or heavy. +3 for each of those that apply: a stilletto knife would deal 3+2+3 or 8 wounds (and indeed as its sharp, one wound even when you miss); a tree-felling axe (sharp and heavy and big) 3+2+3+3+3 or 14 wounds. If you are shooting at them, the damage is 32. A critical hit, unarmed or with a melee weapon can kill, or with a gun, deal max damage for the gun (which in most cases, will kill).
Most people can take 50 wounds before dying, but the GM, not the player, monitors the wounds – describing the state of the character – so the player will never be entirely sure how close he came to death.
There’s a short discussion on the effects of non-lethal weapons, tasers and the like, before getting into less common things you might do in fights, throwing furniture, aiming, grappling etc. and how they are handled within the rules. If I have one reservation at this point, its that there are a lot of exceptions to the basic mechanic appearing. The crits being different for guns thing for starters, and the fact that matched success doesn’t get you any bonus unarmed. I can’t argue with any of them, they make sense in the game world, making guns a lot more deadly than fist fights, but they do leave the GM with lots to remember. Grappling introduces “the gridiron” which a tool for all the less martial or psychological conflicts – car chases or arguments for example.
Then there’s the usual section on other things that can do you harm: car crashes; being set on fire; electricty; falling objects; being a falling object, drowning or being smothered; getting sick. Finally the section on treatment, both medical and psychological. Long story short, there is no short story, recovery takes time, and often hospital.
Or of course, magick.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
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Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Jul 25, 2017 23:20:15 GMT -8
I'm not sure quite what the purpose of this chapter is, apart from to introduce the next couple of chapters to players. It starts with a rehearsal of what we read in Chapter 1: that behind the "normalcy" of our crowdsourced reality is another weirder one, but it firmly makes us, society, humanity, whatever, responsible for the creation of that weirder world as well as the vanilla one most of us experience.
We created the Invisible Clergy, you see?
It then explains why Atheists are wrong, the Invisible Clergy may not technically be "gods" but they certainly are higher powers that impact upon the world of men and women. That's said Religious people have it wrong too, by oversimplifying things, and more importantly, by expecting the gods to be benevolent. If you accept the universe was designed by committee, you can exploit the inefficiencies and contradictions, and that's what magick is.
All of that introduced a section on Unnatural Phenomena which seems mostly written for the GM's benefit, and slightly out of place in this book for players. It is a pretty useful introduction to the flavour of weirdness that Greg Stolze is aiming for, with some great examples. I particularly like the minor phenomenon, The Wrong Vomit, wherein somebody spits up something impossible, from razor blades to a fresh egg with a yolk made of gold-dust, apparently with no harmful effects. The section concludes with a piece that is written for players, which explains how they might make use of Unnatural Phenomena, as a source of insight, resources, or just something to show to people to freak the norms out.
Even more useful though are Artefacts. This section explains that some artefacts are natural and some constructed (but we'll discover how to construct them in a later chapter). It describes a few, like the Magic Bullet which always hits (but not round corners for through walls or anything like that, its only a minor artefact), or the Nightingale Watch, which protects you from death, though not from being mangled, maimed, blinded etc. There's a slightly strange diversion into the mystical properties of the penny or cent at the end of the chapter, but it works quite well as inspiration fro how you can turn proverbs and idioms into gutter magick and ritual.
As usual before the next chapter there's a piece of fiction. The story being told here is beginning to get compelling.
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fredrix
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Post by fredrix on Aug 13, 2017 6:46:05 GMT -8
I've not forgotten this. Those RPGaDay posts are keeping me busy.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
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Post by fredrix on Sept 5, 2017 23:31:07 GMT -8
So, we know how to create characters, and indeed how the rules work ... for normal people. But you don't want to be "normal" do you? Well actually, this game might well be one where you do - as the players set the campaign tone and objectives, it's a flexible enough system to help normal characters have a lot of scary fun. But of course, lots of players play RPGs to escape from reality, so Unknown Armies offers two sorts of "superhero" to play.
Interestingly, you can argue that the first type, the Avatar, is normal. In fact it's ultra-normal, it's so normal it goes right through normal and comes out the other side. Remember how we said that society creates the Invisible Clergy? Well the Invisible Clergy are (up to) 332 Archetypes, embodiments of societal norms - The Mother, The Fool, The Firebrand, The Hacker, The Solid Citizen etc. They come to define society just has society has defined them, altering the collective unconscious and bending humanity to their will.
When there are 333 of them, the world is destroyed and remade and society starts defining new norms, new archetypes.
But let's not worry about that, let's live in the now. Players characters can choose to follow in the path of any Archetype, to live their life so exactly in the footsteps of their chosen archetype that they get to borrow some of its power. You are a walking, talking cliché. Players can pick an Avatar identity at creation, assigning a percentage rating like any other identity. The get mystical powers depending upon the level of their identity. For example, from 1% an Avatar of the Warrior does not need to make stress checks while perusing their purpose. From 51% anyone fighting along side them for their cause, gets +10% to a relevant ability or identity. From 71% they can substitute their Warrior identity for a chosen useful ability. And from 91% can not be harmed by individuals who represent the opposition.
Players can choose to become an avatar surfing play, starting at 0% and simply choosing to live the life of the archetype.
Improving your identity doesn't work like other identities. With most, when you fail a roll you get a chance to improve, because you are learning. As an avatar, you only get that chance to improve when you succeed, because you are becoming ever more like that archetype. You can also improve your rating but setting it as an objective. Succeed at you get +1-10%. But your rating can also drop, if you break the taboos of your archetype. In the example of the Warrior your taboo is compromise with your enemies. You can be a warrior against anything you choose: people from France; Big Pharma; Nazis; student debt; whatever, but cut any sport of deal with the enemy, even give up a fight from them and you risk dropping 1-5%.
Get up to 98% in your avatar identity, and you have a shot at becoming the top dog, the Godwalker of your archetype. To actually do that though, you have to kill the current Godwalker, or force them into breaking your shared taboo enough to knock him off the top spot.
It is possible to become an archetype, through Ascension (creating a new archetype, bringing us one closer to the 333 that trigger the end of the world, or Assumption, the latter being a plot to displace the current archetype with a more relevant new variant. Either way, you don't get to play as an Archetype - your character's arc is ended.
The book then lists 16 archetypes to get you started, from The Captain to The Warrior, and including: The Hacker; The Mother; The Solid Citizen; The Survivor and The True King among them. Each comes with the sort of things you must do to follow its path; the Taboos, the things you MUST NOT do; Symbols, that you should wear/use to better follow the path; suspected Avatars from history; Masks, fictional or mythological versions of the Archetype; and the Channels, the powers you get for being an Avatar.
Finally the chapter offer characters advice for exploiting Avatars and Archetypes, including flattery, manipulation and alliances.
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fredrix
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Posts: 2,142
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Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Sept 14, 2017 6:51:24 GMT -8
This may be the meatiest chapter in the book. And I guess, in an RPG about magick, the chaper on magick deserves to be. It distinguishes between gutter magick, ritual magick, and the postmodern schools of magick that are part of the raison d'etre of the game.
There eight of these schools explored, with the promise that we'll find more in book 3, and a system for inventing your own (though I wouldn't recommend that until you've played a few of the existing ones). At its core, each school works by behaving in a certain way - which to a "normal" person might look a lot like OCD, to collect charges, minor, significant and major, which fuel spells. The behaviours that create charges break the rules of reality, and society - an Adept's life will be odd, obsessed with something, but not using it in the way that others do.
For example Fulminaturgs are obsessed by guns, but their magick only works if they never actually shoot anybody. That said the way they collect charges - openly carrying guns in public - might make it too difficult to play a Fulminaturg in a UK set game.
My favourite of the schools presented in this chapter is Cinemancy. The cinemancer is obsessed with cliché. When they get somebody else to describe a cinematic cliché, or quote a clicéd line, they get a minor charge. Acting as a cinematic cliché, for example, The Hooker with a Heart of Gold, for five hours will earn the Cinemancer a significant charge. A major charge can be earned by getting people to act out a clichéd scene without realising what they are doing. They lose all their charges if they fail to follow through on a clichéd behaviour - if they are driving in a chase and they see a fruit cart, for example, they must ram it.
The spells available to cinemancers are clichés too; Charge a banana skin as you drop it on the ground and name someone, and they will slip on it an pratfall; Charge any cloth and hold it over somebody's mouth, and they will be knocked out; Cast "What could go wrong?" when somebody says something won't happen, and it definitely will. You can make the bad guys terrible shots, and finish complex tasks in the the takes to play a song too, with the Cinemancer's power of cliché.
The book goes into some detail about inventing your own school. If you have an idea about a theme for your school, your GM will ask you to think about a paradox that turns something quite normal into something magickal. That leads to to start thinking about the behaviours that earn the adept charges, and the taboo, the behaviour that looses your charges. The example they offer is Refumancy, where a player had suggested they want to base a school of magician upon freeganism, and so suggests that the taboo would be "meaningfully partake in consumer culture. The GM asks for or even suggests some specific examples, like taking any job where tax is withheld (so cash in hand jobs, or favours would be OK) or buying any new mass produced product. Minor charges would be acquired by protesting against corporations (real street level protests count, not simply liking and angry post on Facebook), and significant ones by causing a stock market crash or burning a factory. Or killing a cop.
The GM gives the taboo and charges an "omega value" based on how difficult they are to do in normal society, to balence out the school against the others. In the example above, the taboo is average, omega zero, but the charge collection is hard enough to be worth -1, the higher the omega value, the more charges will be needed to cast spells.
Spells are costed according to duration, range and effect. The book lists some broad catagories of minor and significant effects to help you cost out the player's ideas. To get the cost down the player can suggest extra restrictions, such as, in the previous Refusemancy example some of the spells only work against tools of "The Man", policemen, security guards etc. (Healing spells are VERY difficult.)
There are also rules for making magical items, and finding and performing forgotten rituals. Rituals can, do have effects beyond the caster's school. In fact you don't have to be an adept to perform ritual magick. Some "normal" people have the casts rituals feature, as does the Avatar identity. Minor rituals don't even need charges to cast, but significant ones do. A box-out also offers the "Authentic Thaumaturge" identity as if you fancy being a Crowley type secret society member.
This chapter lists a number of rituals, which I find a bit strange as this is the players' book, and rituals have to be acquired by most PCs they are not already "known" like an Adept's spells (though Authentic Thaumaturgs do get a couple). Also, some rituals have unintended consequences - ritual to make a man irresitanle to women, for example, actually gets him possessed by a random demon. I guess this may actually be a satirical warning to players: "don't even try this sort of shit, even in a game of let's pretend."
Indeed just reading these rituals opens up an aspect of the game not bad explicit before: there is apparently a hell, get on the wrong train in a ritual involving the Subway(underground) and you'll find yourself there. And obviously there are Demons too.
So far, all the magick we've seen has been codified. Not quiet Vancian, but restricted to lists of known spells. Yes, we've been show how a player can make a whole school of magick up, but so far there's been nothing about characters being able to create magick on the fly. Gutter magick, or "reality bruising", is something everyone can try. Or at least everyone with at least one hardened notch in their Unatural meter.
To do magick this way you need to collect a number of symbolic elements, things that respresent you, your target, and the collective unconscious. Then you make up a ritual involving these elements.
There are six broad catagories of effect: Blessing an endeavour makes it more likely to succeed; forming a Bond between you and another; giving yourself or someone else a Boon; or conversely, givening them a Whammie; Curseing them; or creating a Proxy for yourself so that "bad juju that comes your way from afar may be redirected at them".
Of course the actual effect may not be the reason why you do a ritual. The chapter concludes with three ways one might exploit rituals: to freak the squares; to validate your magickal credentials; or, to convince people to do strange (stupid) things.
And that's it. The end of the chapter, and book one.
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Oct 1, 2017 8:26:51 GMT -8
The first chapter of book two, Run, is an introduction to GMing, but a more useful one than in many games. Actually that’s unfair. My perception is being bamboozled by the three book structure of this game. Lots of games have GM sections that are just as good, but they are towards the back of the core book. It’s a very long time since I picked up the Dungeon Master’s Guide, or anything similar, but that’s what I should be comparing this book with.
I’m not going to though. As I said I haven’t seen a DMG in years. The first page of this book does allude to that one though:
The role of the GM is says is to get the balance of antagonism and challenge right, too much challenge and the players will never achieve anything, too little and their victories will feel hollow.
But this chapter is mostly about setting the tone of the game. And it starts off with mystery, which it says is not investigation, rather it’s the sense of something unknown. Which is difficult when the mechanics of the world, how magick works etc. is explained in the players book, and indeed the whole world is built during character creation.
The remedy is to throw away all the stuff that the players have been told, once their characters are made, and populate the rest of the world with things they haven’t heard of. Make new stuff up as you go along, keep notes so that you are consistent (mostly - later Stolze talks about gaslighting), and only think about working out the details when it really matters.
The section also offers some advice on atmosphere: stark, monochromatic decor; decay; and occasional grotesquerie, played absolutely straight (Ken Hite recently tweeted that the latest Twin Peaks series made him want to pick up UA again) are the spices that favour his game apparently.
There is a very apposite discussion on sandbox vs railroad. Stolze points out that many mystery games, especially horror games like Call of Cthulhu, and earlier versions of UA tend towards the Railroad.
This third edition tends towards the sandbox, with some direction set by the players deciding an objective before they have even created their characters. This approach gives the players some of the control they lose to railroad adventures, while offerin the GM the luxury of a bit of pre-planning too.
Then there is a big discussion of “Fairness”
Given that truth, how does a GM tread the fine line between challenge and dickishness? Stolze suggests a fair GM can be: random; mean; and confusing, but not: personal; ignorant; boring; or, claw back objectives... caverlierly.
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Post by chronovore on Oct 2, 2017 4:01:57 GMT -8
Where did Hite mention that? I'm a few episodes behind in KARTAS…
There's so much crazy stuff I've heard about TP: The Return, and I was a huge fan back in the day. As I'm also a cheerleader for UA, your statement really got my brain firing!
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Oct 2, 2017 6:40:03 GMT -8
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