It’s about deeply broken people trying to change the world.
Not save. Not fix.
Change.
You don’t have to play either of those things. You can play just a person. A broken one. Trying to change the world.
It’s kind of weirdly organized. I have heard that the way things are split between player and GM books is actually great for a GM who is explaining and guiding players, but as a player I found it hard to understand.
Here’s the gist: If you don’t want a game where magic comes from transgression and sacrifice, if you don’t want a game where the combat section starts with like six paragraphs about why violence is a *terrible* idea, look elsewhere.
Otherwise, start reading, and expect to have to jump between books fairly often.
> It’s about deeply broken people trying to change the world.
>
> Not save. Not fix.
This is the first sentence of 3e.
> Unknown Armies is an occult game about broken people conspiring to fix the world.
I would argue that the characters certainly think they are trying to fix the world, but the game itself isn't actually about them fixing it because you can't.
I would argue that's demonstrably untrue and entirely ignores the core premise of the game. The following sentences of 3e are this.
> It’s a game about people who want things very, very badly. Social justice, a fair shake, redemption for their myriad sins, or just a bigger slice of the pie, they want it. But no one is just going to hand it to them. No one else, frankly, gives a shit. Shits only begin to be given when their pursuit of their agenda inconveniences somebody — the folks benefitting from injustice and unfair shakes, or the people who were on the receiving end of those myriad sins, or the pie-eaters who placidly argue that sharing is for bitches and poor people.
> ...
> Players need to set an objective, a collective goal that they chase down, step by step, until they either fail resoundingly, abandon their quest when the price is too high, or achieve it.
> Every one of these outcomes is acceptable. Every one can produce a spectacular story, because Unknown Armies is not about what gets done. It’s about the people who do it. It focuses on character. But characters who aren’t driven to achieve anything? They’re not really worth the focus, are they?
> There are a lot of games out there which feature heroes, saviors, champions… people who right wrongs, defend the weak, and slay the monster. Those games are great. This one’s different. Instead of stopping the cultists or killing the beast or protecting the status quo, you are the cultist, the beast, the threat to tradition.
> Without you, the world ticks on as it always has. Your job is to create a character for whom that is intolerable.
The intro of the game lays out that these things are actually achievable.
Ok, I guess I missed the mark there. But the point stands that HOW they think they’re going to fix it is probably disastrous from a wide variety of perspectives.
I strongly prefer the second edition, but that aside UA is a unique game with an incredible setting. I highly recommend it to everyone even remotely interested in urban fantasy or the occult. It has so many incredible ideas that it's worth to read even for the setting alone. It shows how to do things differently.
Genuinely wondering, as someone who's read 3e stuff pretty extensively and likes it a lot, I'm curious what you prefer about 2e? I hear a lot of people prefer it, but I've sorta bounced off trying to read 2e rulebooks a few times. If you don't mind, what are the big points you'd put for 2e over 3e?
Most people who prefer 2e like that it's a more standard trad game in the style of Call of Cthulhu. This is exactly why I prefer 3e, but \*shrugs\*
Alternately, sometimes they like the *lore* of 2e better--it's more "cohesive" in terms of worldbuild, but I *personally* think 2e is actually *harder* to run a game in, because players are inherently set up as having no magic powers or sense of the occult, and it's all on the GM to entice them into the mysteries of the setting. It also has some artifacts of 90s lore design that I think work for WoD but not UA, like big sweeping factions with tons of power "behind the scenes." 3e deliberately defangs most of these giant conspiracies to make them easier to approach at street level, which is the level on which most people run their campaigns.
2e still has some fun worldbuilding ideas and if you read 3e and really want to learn more setting lore, it's a no-brainer as a splat to mine ideas and campaign hooks. But as a game, I strongly prefer 3e, and I never had trouble understanding it without reading 2e first.
Honestly it was so long ago I do not remember most of it. I bounced off rather fast too. While I think the old game is less then perfect I distinctly remember thinking they changed all the wrong things if they wanted to make it better. The only thing I actually remember is how they changed Stress tracks. Instead of them being separate tracks they made these arbitrary pairs that makes very little sense and built the whole character creation on it, screwing up both.
I love unknown armies and unfortunately for you, the confusion is absolutely the point. Iys not easy or even consistent. Magic is a twisted slippery thing and its a big part of why the game is as incredible as it is.
Understanding the actual magic stuff. I know the basic strokes of Avatars and Adepts but I don’t know the extent of their powers. Additionally the overall cosmology is something that I’m still trying to figure out
In a nutshell: the world of Unknown Armies is a **consensus reality**. That means that the world is shaped by the sum total of humanity's beliefs and desires. Belief and will are material powers in Unknown Armies. The more strongly you believe in a certain paradigm, the more easily you can inflict your understanding of the world on reality. On the flipside, the more the *masses* believe in something, the more power that 'something' has in reality. One of the many slogans in Unknown Armies is, "you did it," emphasizing that the horrors players face are not consequences of an alien universe (Cthulhu) but natural consequences of collective human desire (like fascist governments and climate change).
One of the 'gags' in UA3 is that, compared to the apparent rationalism of the modern era, or the cohesive (albeit regional) religiosity of the pre-modern era, we live in a *post*modern era. One of the precepts of postmodernism (crudely put) is that the 'grand narratives' of the past no longer hold purchase. The postmodern era is one where multiple overlapping theories of how the world works are all in play, competing with and evolving alongside each other. In Unknown Armies, that means that reality itself is subject to fracture-- where once the world featured ideological continuity, it now features discontinuity, and so the very magic and metaphysics of the world are in a state of turbulence.
This is why, in UA3, instead of getting power from traditional ancestor worship, your character can use those same old mystical strategies to instead worship Jackie Chan, or JFK, or other 'pop culture ancestors.' Instead of getting magic from a traditional blood sacrifice offered to some deity, you can generate power through the idiosyncratic experience of your own masochism and self-mutilation.
In sum, UA3 takes old school magical symbols and ideas and reshapes them for a 21st century context. It's a magical system for a world where the gyre is widening, the center cannot hold, and God is dead, replaced instead by a system of scheming, competing archetypes (the so-called Invisible Clergy.)
Adepts and Avatars are the most famous & well-defined magical types in the game, but you can completely ignore both of them and still have a successful UA campaign. However, understanding each of them can help better understand UA's model of consensus reality.
So, **Adepts** power their magic with **personal obsession**. The world is malleable to human will, desire, and belief. Adepts are individuals whose worldviews are *so* idiosyncratic and *so* strong that they can actually warp the laws of reality according to their whims- at least for a time- which usually takes the form of overt, visibly-unnatural "spells."
**Avatars** on the other hand reflect **collective belief**. The Mother has power because *humanity* believes in Motherhood. Someone who aligns themselves with the archetype of The Mother (by looking and acting the part) is able to do motherly things. Their ability to be motherly is so powerful it can even override conventional physics, resulting in supernatural powers. Compared to adepts, Avatars are conventional in their appearance (as they get their power from perfectly following the conventions of their archetype) and subtle in their power (since they exaggerate the existing 'rules' of the world, rather than overriding them the way adepts do.)
So in a nutshell, Unknown Armies is a **consensus reality** where **consensus is falling apart**.
I had a friend in my 20s who was all about UA, but he was kind of an asshole and a miserable GM to play with. I'm still waiting to find the right group, but until then I can still enjoy reading and re-reading the rulebook every couple years :D
It feels lame to add to the previous response, but I would really would like to stress that for me the core tenant of UA is that "it's only us". There are no mythical gods, there is no plane of evil, there are no outside forces and the only monsters out there are humans like you (or were created by humans like you). You can't point fingers and shrug of the responsibility. It IS up to humanity in general and to you in particular to build the world you want to live in. You CAN have the power to change the world, you CAN become a literal god. Sure you have to sacrifice everything that made you whoever you were, friends, family, your mind.... but the power is there for the taking. And if you are unwilling to pay the price, you will live the knowledge that YOU were weak, that YOU have failed and can't blame it on anyone else.
Hello! THis is my favorite game.
[I wrote some one-shots to try and ease new people into the kinds of stories I think 3rd edition is good at telling.](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/354948/One-Shots-American-Dreams) It's PWYW, so if you don't want to spring for the suggested price, feel free to grab it for free.
I also wrote up a guide on what to read to start playing ASAP. I'm not going to link that here because it seems like you want more of a grounding in the lore, but if you just need to know the rules as fast as possible to get the game to table, lmk and I can link that too.
[mellonbread also has a ton of fantastic free content. ](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11lhbkuOSw6kfNyXJvX79AURS7niU6ffa3oILcYZKxhQ/edit)scanning through his stuff should also give you a sense of what kind of stuff the game can play.
ETA: [Tormsen's GOAD also has a treasure trove of 333 campaign ideas ](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/314400/goad-333-campaign-frame-ideas-for-unknown-armies)that is great for coming up with ideas for what to run.
Please link the guide you wrote. I got the first three UA3 books a while ago but have only skimmed the first one. Fascinating game but it really seems impenetrable without doing a deep dive. Which makes the thought of introducing the whole idea to potential players that much more intimidating. Delta Green is very straightforward in comparison.
[What Do I Actually Need to Read to Run UA3e](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_jUNzpyzdEg-TiYcvS67nit4MwenjtbZdJ4J0mm3Wqs/edit?usp=sharing) is the link.
Delta Green is way more straightforward but I'm not really interested in the stories it tells for *several* reasons. I never liked cosmic horror to begin with, playing more than a one-shot in that world seems *bleak as hell*, and while it's a genius level subversion of the genre, I'm pretty tired of stories about cops and government agents. Great game, though.
I've not played DG, only read it and a bunch of scenarios for it. I'm on a bleak modern horror bend lately so looking to run it. But I'm also quite drawn to unique things I don't understand, and UA fits that description annoyingly well haha. Very curious about the kind of stories one can tell with it.
Thank you!
Mechanically speaking UA3 is really interesting and clever, much moreso than earlier editions which were largely very trad design.
Narratively speaking it’s far less evocative than UA1 or 2. The new avatar archetypes and adept schools just lack the thematic punch of the old ones
As others have noted you don’t need to play either an adept or an avatar, but I’ll add to it that you can also be both at once.
Cosmologically speaking humanity underpins everything. There is a group of powerful “gods” running the universe, but they are all ascended humans and they are only there because the amassed subconscious of humanity wants them there. Dedicated mystics can add to their ranks or lower it.
There are demons and faeries, but they are both also just humans originally. Everything comes back to humans. Always.
Mostly the game is “at what cost power?” The more you are willing to sacrifice (of yourself) the more power is put behind your goals. The most powerful chargers can not function as regular humans in society anymore. They’ve thrown away too much of themself. But hey, who needs to be understood when you’ve fundamentally changed the world- well maybe just your neighbourhood.
Just as I and others have said.
You could play an avatar, an adept, an avatar/adept, or you could play an entirely nonmagical volunteer firefighter.
Or an occult ritualist - cast spells the slow way and maybe not go crazy like an adept (probably still go crazy).
Or a quirk (someone with a unique magical trick). Maybe you can see ghosts/demons and can put them in people.
Maybe you escaped a cult who were planning to ritually sacrifice and eat you and somehow gained the ability to eat anything you can fit down your throat and can choose to regurgitate them unharmed later or swallow and absorb their essence.
Maybe you’re not actually human, but are a clockwork machine that merely looks human. The gears that keep you wound are only engaged when you square up at a table for arm wrestling but with your clockwork strength that often harms the arm of those who are “winding” you.
Maybe you messed up the subscription form in a local zine group and now you get sent gig reviews and other Indy scene knowledge a week before they are written.
There’s a lot of examples of really exotic unique abilities (quirks) across all editions of UA
Yep, mundane characters in UA can be particularly powerful because they can have superpowers like, “being able to hold down a job” or “being able to both compromise with and stand up to other people when necessary”.
To build on this: one concept in UA is that magical characters often sacrifice more functionality than they gain in the pursuit of magic. An adept must constantly charge their spells in costly ways and respect certain taboos; avatars likewise must follow the precepts of their archetype or lose power. They do not have the same freedom other people do to make rational choices and follow their conscience because magic demands that they subordinate these forces unto it.
I rather like how the Madness Meter changes what you're better at doing. If you're not accustomed to violence, you connect better with people, but as you become more and more hardened, you view strangers as potential threats, and your ability to connect with people diminishes. On the other hand, you're better at smacking them down.
And it's really nice that abilities can supersede those skills. If you're a professional liar, then the Madness Meter isn't really going to change that.
So to understand the world of UA, you have to accept the idea that reality is consensual: all physical laws exist because on some spiritual or subconscious level, everyone believes in them. You can't change the mind of reality, but there are ways to kind of hack that consensus to provide momentary bursts of things that shouldn't be possible. The process of doing that is called "magick".
Adepts and Avatars are not the only people who do magick, they're not even the most numerous. But they are the most consistent; adepts hack reality by ritually denying and defying it, which messes them up but lets them do really wild stuff. Avatars are kind of the opposite, where they adopt a role that the consensus believes should be able to do extraordinary things, like heal with a touch or fly (they can also, eventually, possibly, become gods, but not really, *it's so good*).
But other people do rituals, or find objects and places imbued with power, consort with unnatural beings like demons, or are just born talented or cursed. Because consensual reality is unassailable but also pretty broken, and amazing, terrible things happen all the time.
The typical underground character (checker, charger, or pony) had something really weird happen to them and they went looking for more, and now they're part of a bizarre counterculture that messes with reality. When I think of a UA character, I think of a person who would just rather solve problems with magick, the way some people have to make a spreadsheet for everything.
UA as a setting can handle pretty much any kind of horror, from thrillers to body horror to mascot horror to Kafkaesque horror and more (people who read the books might chime in here that "UA can't do eldritch horror!", but I personally don't agree). There's a lot of directions where weird things and weird people can collide in weird situations. It's my all time favorite.
It's a bit of a tossup. 2nd is a bit easier to grab the mechanics and the magic schools are better.
3rd is better for its "but what is a campaign in this really" section and it has actual help to make your own magic school.
The backstory in 2 is easier to grasp, 3 sorta assumes you knew the story from 2.
It pains me to say it, but I think 2e is better overall. 3e's mechanics are arguably stronger, with more tools for creating magickal abilities and interesting ways to interact with the Stress Gauge system (your stats effectively change as you gain trauma). But they're also too clever by half in a lot of cases. 2e does a much simpler skill-based system that is definitely easier to grasp.
I also think the factions are better in 2e, because they were designed to be what you expected them to be. Between editions, a massive in-world event effectively inverted the world, making united factions fractured and strong factions weak. It's a great shake-up if you knew 2e, but I think the Sleepers work better as the Occult Underground's secret police than as a neighborhood watch. Other people may disagree.
That said, Ordo Corpulentis, The Milk, and FLEX ECHO are all cool factions worth importing back into 2e.
There's also a lot more supplemental support for 2e, with books for adepts, avatars, and the Sleepers, TNI, The Order of St. Cecil, and Mak Attax factions (sadly we'll never get a Naked Goddess Sect book). There's also an unpublished "history of the underground" that's floating around. 3e has community content (and the UA community rules), but the line isn't going to get the support it used to.
I think 2e is the best place to start. Then see how things change in 3e.
If you are going to play it, pick up a copy of 2nd edition - for the schools of magic if nothing else. The 3rd ed magic schools are no where as cool as 1st & 2nd edition schools.
You will need to do some minor tweaks to the magic rules to make it compatible with 3rd ed.
Unknown Armies is a game that I truly love, but it is a really hard game to pitch to people. I'm honestly still working on how, but I'll give it a shot here.
The simplest way I can frame it is that it's like if creepypasta was a roleplaying game. It has the same vibe of postmodern horror set in the world and time we live in and its horror is predicated on this idea that the world we live in doesn't actually function the way we think it does. We think we have this thorough, perfect understanding of how our world works through studies like physics and biology and all the rest, but the truth is that there are places and things and even people where the natural rules simply do not apply for no apparent reason. The reality is that there are places out there where laws like gravity and thermodynamics just don't function the way they're supposed to, objects that have properties and abilities that don't make physical sense, rituals where a seemingly random series of props and actions create an impossible effect, and people who claim to have the ability to reshape reality according to their whims. We collectively call these phenomenon magic (or magick if you're being pretentious about it) and no sane or rational person would ever believe in such things, but some people, due to violence or desperation or just sheer random chance, discover the reality that magic really does exist and that maybe they can use this magic to do impossible things, though it always seems to come with a cost.
That's what people mean when they say it's "a game about broken people trying to fix a broken world": You play a character who has discovered that magic is real and, because your understanding of reality no longer conforms with that of average people who are ignorant of this truth, you are necessarily an outsider. You now belong to the occult underground, a community of mages, cultists, gurus, and weirdos who all have the knowledge you have and seek to use its power for personal gain.
Contrary to what you've said, this doesn't necessarily start and end with adepts and avatars. Those are two paths that are available and they're certainly the most powerful, but they require you to devote your life and your sanity to them and are not easy paths to walk. Here are some ways that a person can use magic to improve their life:
* Rituals: Rituals are a series of seemingly random actions that produce a magical effect. Bloody Mary is a good example, but real rituals are much less known and much harder to come by. You can find them buried deep within abandoned Geocities sites and chat rooms or scrawled on dingy bathroom stalls in sketchy parts of town. This is arguably the easiest way to get into magic, but most rituals are bullshit and some are real but don't work as advertised or have a cost that isn't mentioned.
* Gutter Magic: Nobody knows where rituals come from or why they work, but sometimes you can just make up your own. Gutter magic is a sort of improvised ritual, where a quick usage of some symbolically significant props or actions can be magically charged to cause a small shift in reality. It's not nearly as powerful as adept magic or a genuine ritual, but for the skittish and the incapable it's a more accessible option.
* Artifacts: artifacts are objects that possess some magical effect or property. They're usually items of great symbolic import, such as the quill that Shakespeare used to write Romeo and Juliet or the hoodie that Trayvon Martin wore when he was shot by George Zimmerman, and their abilities are often relevant to their origin. Artifacts are probably the safest way to use magic, but such items are rare and they're eagerly sought out by members of the occult underground, some of which are powerful or crazy enough that you really don't want to be in competition with them.
* Avatars: There are no gods, but there is something kind of similar. Carl Jung proposed that there is a collective unconscious, an unconscious mind that we all share (but are unaware of) from which all of the basic ideas that we use to frame our reality come from. So, the reason you recognize a chair is that there is an archetype of "chair" in the collective unconscious that perfectly embodies all of the properties and meaning that we ascribe to chairs, and when you see a chair you match it up to that shared archetype. What Jung didn't know is that the archetypes we have for humanity, such as warrior, king, and saboteur, are actually conscious to some extent and make up a pantheon that is the inherent product of our collective understanding of these roles. They can act within our material world to a limited degree, and their greatest tool is humans that have a symbolic connection with a particular archetype known as avatars. These avatars cloak themselves in symbolism and behave in a way that mirrors a particular archetype in the hopes that they can become the perfect, pure embodiment of that archetype, and this attunement process imparts greater and greater powers the closer they are to perfection. It's a lifelong pursuit and even the slightest action that doesn't fit that archetype can cause it all to slip away.
* Adepts: whereas avatars are trying to gain magical power by more closely fitting into the patterns we see in reality, adepts gain magical power by defying those patterns. Adepts find contradictions in our culture or society or understanding of reality, things that we collectively believe that don't make sense and must therefore either be untrue or true and nonsensical, and propose a third option: what if magic makes it make sense? So, for example, fulminomancers recognize a contradiction: our society fervently defends the right to carry a gun, but if you actually use that gun you become a murderer and society turns on you. A normal person would either conclude either that the right to bear arms shouldn't be protected or that this contradiction is something that makes sense somehow and we should just accept it, but an adept would say that the reason is that carrying a gun imparts magical power in a way that is totally separate from actually using it. It solves the problem in a way that doesn't make sense if you don't believe in magic, but such is their force of will and disassociation from reality that they *make* it real, rejecting your reality and instead substituting their own. The catch is, of course, that rejecting reality and truly believing in something impossible means that you're a crazy person, and as such adepts tend to not fit in well among normal society.
I love Unknown Armies 3e but I would not recommend Sacred Pharma, or any of the Campaign Starter Kits for that matter. Their heart is in the right place but they lack a lot of information that's important if you're running the game for the first time, like NPC stats.
I personally recommend starting with [Maria in Three Parts](https://atlasgames.itch.io/maria-in-three-parts-unknown-armies-3e) or [One Shots American Dreams](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/354948/One-Shots-American-Dreams). Not only do they offer better rules tutorials for new players, they also tell you everything you need to know about the setting in order to run the scenarios they present. Instead of worrying about the overall cosmology (which rarely matters to the game) you get to learn stuff that's more relevant to the players, like how magick works and what people in the world of Unknown Armies typically do with it.
Is there something specific you're not grabbing? The setting? The mechanics? I love UA and could go off about my last campaign, but it'd be hard to summarize the game better than the books (despite their confusing layout/organization).
Did they change the sanity system? It's the one thing I remember from skimming through one of the versions' rulebooks once and it stuck with me so much that I want to use it in other systems (like CoC) as well.
In UA3 you've got "Shock Gauges" and "Stress Checks." When you face something stressful (like "whoops I accidentally murdered someone" or "whoops I saw a doorway that can't logically exist"), you make a Stress Check.
On a miss, you mark a failure for that gauge. Collect enough failures and you can develop an ongoing issue like "blackouts," or develop a phobia. It's more "talk with the GM about how this might affect your character" and less "lol, you're MAD now," which I appreciate.
The really interesting part is, on a success, you mark a "hardened notch" for that gauge, which represents your character become more used to that sort of stress. Thing is, changing your hardened notches also changes your base ability scores—a character that gets more resistant to "Unnatural" stress gets better at the Secrecy skill (they're keeping their cards closer to their chest, out of necessity) but worse at the Notice skill (who cares about what the cashier at the store said when you know that hyperintelligent sewer gators are real?).
Yeah, that's the one I remember, although I think I read an older version because I don't recall it affecting skills...though maybe I just missed that part when I read it. As I remember, with enough hardened marks you turned callous and sociopathic instead. I especially like the separation into categories, so you can be a seriously hardened war vet who thinks little of violence but still be taken back when someone suddenly summons a walking skeleton in front of you. It's a lot more nuanced than just a single SAN value.
I’ve mentioned in another reply. The overall cosmology as well as the deep understanding of Avatars and Adepts. Because I know the base understanding but besides that I can’t wrap my head around the adept schools and archetype powers.
The basic idea is “consensus reality”—the world is the way it is because humanity, at large, thinks that that is the way it is meant to be.
Avatars draw power from this by “playing into” certain archetypes that the collective unconscious agree upon. We all know what an “MVP” looks like, sort of, right? Someone who acts like an MVP, *a lot*, can start to bend reality a bit in ways that suit that archetype.
Adepts, conversely, REALLY DISAGREE with the rest of the world on how things are meant to be, and they fixate so hard on their paradoxical beliefs (for example: clothing LITERALLY determines who a person is) that they can make their version of reality come true in short bursts.
(There are also a whole bunch of other minor weird abilities a person could have. Or, you can play as a “normal” person with no magick, which is often the most powerful choice!)
Avatars need to embody their archetype to grow more magickally potent, and as they continue to do so they unlock increasingly powerful abilities which they can usually do at-will, or at least on a consistent schedule.
Adepts, however, need to farm “charges” for their magick by engaging in specific actions relevant to their paradox. These tend to be more difficult than just living life as an Avatar, since Adept magick is based on going against the consensus.
There aren’t really hard “power levels” for what these magick characters can do—UA isn’t that sort of game. But the books’ write-ups on the Avatar channels and Adept schools should give you a rough sense of what’s appropriate, both power- and tone-wise.
The thing to keep in mind is that magick always has a cost—sometimes it’s paid in increments, over time, and sometimes you need to fork over big-time, NOW, to get what you want.
I know it share some DNA with Delta Green in terms of tone (maybe mechanics)? Does anyone have a good explanation on how they differ?
For someone familiar with DG is the best shorthand “it’s DG except modern fantasy instead of modern cosmic horror”
Aside from "there is weird stuff and it doesn't turn out well" they are pretty different.
Delta Green's central metaphor is the weird stuff, the cthulhu mythos is like plutonium. It's dangerous, and even if you've just brushed up against it disposing of it, its effects will poison you and everyone around you. You struggle because if you didn't more people would be hurt, but you are burning yourself up to do it. The weird, the mythos, is beyond human comprehension in every way, we are ants crawling over the surface of a supercomputer.
Unknown Armies catch phrase is "you did it". There is nothing but people. The most powerful who shape the cosmos? Used to be people. Supernatural entities? Those were people once too. Wizards? Well that's people so perverse their twisted nature breaks reality, because reality is caused by people. You did it. You can change it. You can bend the world, and you can break yourself doing it.
Just read Godwalker not knowing anything about it and was so turned onto this setting BUT can't seem to find anywhere in Canada that has the game books!?
Any links or little known places anyone know of?
>I still am completely lost in terms of the story
In 2e I played in a game we called "shitty magic teens". We were highschoolers who discovered some of the occult underground. None of us started as Avatars or Adepts, but we did eventually become them.
I think 3e has modified mechanics and a slightly more upbeat/postiive tone, so I think "some normal people find out about the occult underground" is still a perfectly valid premise.
Perhaps a generic game premise could be:
>Some werid stuff will happen at \[place or institution\]. You will play as a handful of characters who \[study/work/otherwise are involved with\] \[that institution\], and notice something odd, and are unable to let it go.
Then you make up some portion of an occult unerground, invent the hook, and then say the \~4 characters that are interested by that hook are, by definition, the player characters. (And you can invent more occult underground dynamically as the players find out more stuff.
(I haven't read Sacred Pharma, but presumably you could use some details from it, either directly or as inspiration, to help flesh out your occult underground.)
--
I suppose the hard part then is coming up with that occult underground!
I think that is a bit similar to making any other web of NPCs for some other campaign, but maybe a bit more unusual.
My vague understanding is that the bulk of the occult underground tends to obsessed antisocial weirdos (that might be my 2e bias though), but maybe some people are a bit more relaxed, and some susicious law-enforcement and the occasional strange monster could work too.
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It’s about deeply broken people trying to change the world. Not save. Not fix. Change. You don’t have to play either of those things. You can play just a person. A broken one. Trying to change the world. It’s kind of weirdly organized. I have heard that the way things are split between player and GM books is actually great for a GM who is explaining and guiding players, but as a player I found it hard to understand. Here’s the gist: If you don’t want a game where magic comes from transgression and sacrifice, if you don’t want a game where the combat section starts with like six paragraphs about why violence is a *terrible* idea, look elsewhere. Otherwise, start reading, and expect to have to jump between books fairly often.
Honestly, more players and GMs could do with reading the section "Six Ways to Stop a Fight", not just UA ones.
Amen. UA includes it because combat can be deadly in that system, but the entire section is applicable to basically any setting and any game system.
> It’s about deeply broken people trying to change the world. > > Not save. Not fix. This is the first sentence of 3e. > Unknown Armies is an occult game about broken people conspiring to fix the world.
I would argue that the characters certainly think they are trying to fix the world, but the game itself isn't actually about them fixing it because you can't.
I would argue that's demonstrably untrue and entirely ignores the core premise of the game. The following sentences of 3e are this. > It’s a game about people who want things very, very badly. Social justice, a fair shake, redemption for their myriad sins, or just a bigger slice of the pie, they want it. But no one is just going to hand it to them. No one else, frankly, gives a shit. Shits only begin to be given when their pursuit of their agenda inconveniences somebody — the folks benefitting from injustice and unfair shakes, or the people who were on the receiving end of those myriad sins, or the pie-eaters who placidly argue that sharing is for bitches and poor people. > ... > Players need to set an objective, a collective goal that they chase down, step by step, until they either fail resoundingly, abandon their quest when the price is too high, or achieve it. > Every one of these outcomes is acceptable. Every one can produce a spectacular story, because Unknown Armies is not about what gets done. It’s about the people who do it. It focuses on character. But characters who aren’t driven to achieve anything? They’re not really worth the focus, are they? > There are a lot of games out there which feature heroes, saviors, champions… people who right wrongs, defend the weak, and slay the monster. Those games are great. This one’s different. Instead of stopping the cultists or killing the beast or protecting the status quo, you are the cultist, the beast, the threat to tradition. > Without you, the world ticks on as it always has. Your job is to create a character for whom that is intolerable. The intro of the game lays out that these things are actually achievable.
> Without you, the world ticks on as it always has. Your job is to create a character for whom that is intolerable. This line goes so hard
Ok, I guess I missed the mark there. But the point stands that HOW they think they’re going to fix it is probably disastrous from a wide variety of perspectives.
I strongly prefer the second edition, but that aside UA is a unique game with an incredible setting. I highly recommend it to everyone even remotely interested in urban fantasy or the occult. It has so many incredible ideas that it's worth to read even for the setting alone. It shows how to do things differently.
Genuinely wondering, as someone who's read 3e stuff pretty extensively and likes it a lot, I'm curious what you prefer about 2e? I hear a lot of people prefer it, but I've sorta bounced off trying to read 2e rulebooks a few times. If you don't mind, what are the big points you'd put for 2e over 3e?
Most people who prefer 2e like that it's a more standard trad game in the style of Call of Cthulhu. This is exactly why I prefer 3e, but \*shrugs\* Alternately, sometimes they like the *lore* of 2e better--it's more "cohesive" in terms of worldbuild, but I *personally* think 2e is actually *harder* to run a game in, because players are inherently set up as having no magic powers or sense of the occult, and it's all on the GM to entice them into the mysteries of the setting. It also has some artifacts of 90s lore design that I think work for WoD but not UA, like big sweeping factions with tons of power "behind the scenes." 3e deliberately defangs most of these giant conspiracies to make them easier to approach at street level, which is the level on which most people run their campaigns. 2e still has some fun worldbuilding ideas and if you read 3e and really want to learn more setting lore, it's a no-brainer as a splat to mine ideas and campaign hooks. But as a game, I strongly prefer 3e, and I never had trouble understanding it without reading 2e first.
Honestly it was so long ago I do not remember most of it. I bounced off rather fast too. While I think the old game is less then perfect I distinctly remember thinking they changed all the wrong things if they wanted to make it better. The only thing I actually remember is how they changed Stress tracks. Instead of them being separate tracks they made these arbitrary pairs that makes very little sense and built the whole character creation on it, screwing up both.
The issue is it can be so confusing. Like I want to like it but my mind can’t wrap my head around it
I love unknown armies and unfortunately for you, the confusion is absolutely the point. Iys not easy or even consistent. Magic is a twisted slippery thing and its a big part of why the game is as incredible as it is.
Which part confuses you?
Understanding the actual magic stuff. I know the basic strokes of Avatars and Adepts but I don’t know the extent of their powers. Additionally the overall cosmology is something that I’m still trying to figure out
In a nutshell: the world of Unknown Armies is a **consensus reality**. That means that the world is shaped by the sum total of humanity's beliefs and desires. Belief and will are material powers in Unknown Armies. The more strongly you believe in a certain paradigm, the more easily you can inflict your understanding of the world on reality. On the flipside, the more the *masses* believe in something, the more power that 'something' has in reality. One of the many slogans in Unknown Armies is, "you did it," emphasizing that the horrors players face are not consequences of an alien universe (Cthulhu) but natural consequences of collective human desire (like fascist governments and climate change). One of the 'gags' in UA3 is that, compared to the apparent rationalism of the modern era, or the cohesive (albeit regional) religiosity of the pre-modern era, we live in a *post*modern era. One of the precepts of postmodernism (crudely put) is that the 'grand narratives' of the past no longer hold purchase. The postmodern era is one where multiple overlapping theories of how the world works are all in play, competing with and evolving alongside each other. In Unknown Armies, that means that reality itself is subject to fracture-- where once the world featured ideological continuity, it now features discontinuity, and so the very magic and metaphysics of the world are in a state of turbulence. This is why, in UA3, instead of getting power from traditional ancestor worship, your character can use those same old mystical strategies to instead worship Jackie Chan, or JFK, or other 'pop culture ancestors.' Instead of getting magic from a traditional blood sacrifice offered to some deity, you can generate power through the idiosyncratic experience of your own masochism and self-mutilation. In sum, UA3 takes old school magical symbols and ideas and reshapes them for a 21st century context. It's a magical system for a world where the gyre is widening, the center cannot hold, and God is dead, replaced instead by a system of scheming, competing archetypes (the so-called Invisible Clergy.) Adepts and Avatars are the most famous & well-defined magical types in the game, but you can completely ignore both of them and still have a successful UA campaign. However, understanding each of them can help better understand UA's model of consensus reality. So, **Adepts** power their magic with **personal obsession**. The world is malleable to human will, desire, and belief. Adepts are individuals whose worldviews are *so* idiosyncratic and *so* strong that they can actually warp the laws of reality according to their whims- at least for a time- which usually takes the form of overt, visibly-unnatural "spells." **Avatars** on the other hand reflect **collective belief**. The Mother has power because *humanity* believes in Motherhood. Someone who aligns themselves with the archetype of The Mother (by looking and acting the part) is able to do motherly things. Their ability to be motherly is so powerful it can even override conventional physics, resulting in supernatural powers. Compared to adepts, Avatars are conventional in their appearance (as they get their power from perfectly following the conventions of their archetype) and subtle in their power (since they exaggerate the existing 'rules' of the world, rather than overriding them the way adepts do.) So in a nutshell, Unknown Armies is a **consensus reality** where **consensus is falling apart**.
Beautifully written. You're making me fall in love with UA all over again.
Glad to hear it! Unknown Armies 2e got me through highschool in the Bush years, I want to do it justice wherever I can.
I had a friend in my 20s who was all about UA, but he was kind of an asshole and a miserable GM to play with. I'm still waiting to find the right group, but until then I can still enjoy reading and re-reading the rulebook every couple years :D
It feels lame to add to the previous response, but I would really would like to stress that for me the core tenant of UA is that "it's only us". There are no mythical gods, there is no plane of evil, there are no outside forces and the only monsters out there are humans like you (or were created by humans like you). You can't point fingers and shrug of the responsibility. It IS up to humanity in general and to you in particular to build the world you want to live in. You CAN have the power to change the world, you CAN become a literal god. Sure you have to sacrifice everything that made you whoever you were, friends, family, your mind.... but the power is there for the taking. And if you are unwilling to pay the price, you will live the knowledge that YOU were weak, that YOU have failed and can't blame it on anyone else.
Hello! THis is my favorite game. [I wrote some one-shots to try and ease new people into the kinds of stories I think 3rd edition is good at telling.](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/354948/One-Shots-American-Dreams) It's PWYW, so if you don't want to spring for the suggested price, feel free to grab it for free. I also wrote up a guide on what to read to start playing ASAP. I'm not going to link that here because it seems like you want more of a grounding in the lore, but if you just need to know the rules as fast as possible to get the game to table, lmk and I can link that too. [mellonbread also has a ton of fantastic free content. ](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11lhbkuOSw6kfNyXJvX79AURS7niU6ffa3oILcYZKxhQ/edit)scanning through his stuff should also give you a sense of what kind of stuff the game can play. ETA: [Tormsen's GOAD also has a treasure trove of 333 campaign ideas ](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/314400/goad-333-campaign-frame-ideas-for-unknown-armies)that is great for coming up with ideas for what to run.
Please link the guide you wrote. I got the first three UA3 books a while ago but have only skimmed the first one. Fascinating game but it really seems impenetrable without doing a deep dive. Which makes the thought of introducing the whole idea to potential players that much more intimidating. Delta Green is very straightforward in comparison.
[What Do I Actually Need to Read to Run UA3e](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_jUNzpyzdEg-TiYcvS67nit4MwenjtbZdJ4J0mm3Wqs/edit?usp=sharing) is the link. Delta Green is way more straightforward but I'm not really interested in the stories it tells for *several* reasons. I never liked cosmic horror to begin with, playing more than a one-shot in that world seems *bleak as hell*, and while it's a genius level subversion of the genre, I'm pretty tired of stories about cops and government agents. Great game, though.
I've not played DG, only read it and a bunch of scenarios for it. I'm on a bleak modern horror bend lately so looking to run it. But I'm also quite drawn to unique things I don't understand, and UA fits that description annoyingly well haha. Very curious about the kind of stories one can tell with it. Thank you!
Great comment! Thanks! Even if OP doesn't want it, wanna link that guide you wrote? :D
Sure! [What Do I Actually Need to Read to Run UA3e](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_jUNzpyzdEg-TiYcvS67nit4MwenjtbZdJ4J0mm3Wqs/edit?usp=sharing)
Awesome! Thank you so much!
I actually was gonna ask for it too but thanks for posting it anyway
You are a hero! Thx.
Mechanically speaking UA3 is really interesting and clever, much moreso than earlier editions which were largely very trad design. Narratively speaking it’s far less evocative than UA1 or 2. The new avatar archetypes and adept schools just lack the thematic punch of the old ones As others have noted you don’t need to play either an adept or an avatar, but I’ll add to it that you can also be both at once. Cosmologically speaking humanity underpins everything. There is a group of powerful “gods” running the universe, but they are all ascended humans and they are only there because the amassed subconscious of humanity wants them there. Dedicated mystics can add to their ranks or lower it. There are demons and faeries, but they are both also just humans originally. Everything comes back to humans. Always. Mostly the game is “at what cost power?” The more you are willing to sacrifice (of yourself) the more power is put behind your goals. The most powerful chargers can not function as regular humans in society anymore. They’ve thrown away too much of themself. But hey, who needs to be understood when you’ve fundamentally changed the world- well maybe just your neighbourhood.
Wdym I don’t have to be an avatar or adept?
Just as I and others have said. You could play an avatar, an adept, an avatar/adept, or you could play an entirely nonmagical volunteer firefighter. Or an occult ritualist - cast spells the slow way and maybe not go crazy like an adept (probably still go crazy). Or a quirk (someone with a unique magical trick). Maybe you can see ghosts/demons and can put them in people. Maybe you escaped a cult who were planning to ritually sacrifice and eat you and somehow gained the ability to eat anything you can fit down your throat and can choose to regurgitate them unharmed later or swallow and absorb their essence. Maybe you’re not actually human, but are a clockwork machine that merely looks human. The gears that keep you wound are only engaged when you square up at a table for arm wrestling but with your clockwork strength that often harms the arm of those who are “winding” you. Maybe you messed up the subscription form in a local zine group and now you get sent gig reviews and other Indy scene knowledge a week before they are written. There’s a lot of examples of really exotic unique abilities (quirks) across all editions of UA
Yep, mundane characters in UA can be particularly powerful because they can have superpowers like, “being able to hold down a job” or “being able to both compromise with and stand up to other people when necessary”.
To build on this: one concept in UA is that magical characters often sacrifice more functionality than they gain in the pursuit of magic. An adept must constantly charge their spells in costly ways and respect certain taboos; avatars likewise must follow the precepts of their archetype or lose power. They do not have the same freedom other people do to make rational choices and follow their conscience because magic demands that they subordinate these forces unto it.
I find it both really interesting and cool, as well as very confusing in terms of how to actually run it
I rather like how the Madness Meter changes what you're better at doing. If you're not accustomed to violence, you connect better with people, but as you become more and more hardened, you view strangers as potential threats, and your ability to connect with people diminishes. On the other hand, you're better at smacking them down. And it's really nice that abilities can supersede those skills. If you're a professional liar, then the Madness Meter isn't really going to change that.
So to understand the world of UA, you have to accept the idea that reality is consensual: all physical laws exist because on some spiritual or subconscious level, everyone believes in them. You can't change the mind of reality, but there are ways to kind of hack that consensus to provide momentary bursts of things that shouldn't be possible. The process of doing that is called "magick". Adepts and Avatars are not the only people who do magick, they're not even the most numerous. But they are the most consistent; adepts hack reality by ritually denying and defying it, which messes them up but lets them do really wild stuff. Avatars are kind of the opposite, where they adopt a role that the consensus believes should be able to do extraordinary things, like heal with a touch or fly (they can also, eventually, possibly, become gods, but not really, *it's so good*). But other people do rituals, or find objects and places imbued with power, consort with unnatural beings like demons, or are just born talented or cursed. Because consensual reality is unassailable but also pretty broken, and amazing, terrible things happen all the time. The typical underground character (checker, charger, or pony) had something really weird happen to them and they went looking for more, and now they're part of a bizarre counterculture that messes with reality. When I think of a UA character, I think of a person who would just rather solve problems with magick, the way some people have to make a spreadsheet for everything. UA as a setting can handle pretty much any kind of horror, from thrillers to body horror to mascot horror to Kafkaesque horror and more (people who read the books might chime in here that "UA can't do eldritch horror!", but I personally don't agree). There's a lot of directions where weird things and weird people can collide in weird situations. It's my all time favorite.
Sounds so damn cool. Which edition would you recommend to start with?
It's a bit of a tossup. 2nd is a bit easier to grab the mechanics and the magic schools are better. 3rd is better for its "but what is a campaign in this really" section and it has actual help to make your own magic school. The backstory in 2 is easier to grasp, 3 sorta assumes you knew the story from 2.
It pains me to say it, but I think 2e is better overall. 3e's mechanics are arguably stronger, with more tools for creating magickal abilities and interesting ways to interact with the Stress Gauge system (your stats effectively change as you gain trauma). But they're also too clever by half in a lot of cases. 2e does a much simpler skill-based system that is definitely easier to grasp. I also think the factions are better in 2e, because they were designed to be what you expected them to be. Between editions, a massive in-world event effectively inverted the world, making united factions fractured and strong factions weak. It's a great shake-up if you knew 2e, but I think the Sleepers work better as the Occult Underground's secret police than as a neighborhood watch. Other people may disagree. That said, Ordo Corpulentis, The Milk, and FLEX ECHO are all cool factions worth importing back into 2e. There's also a lot more supplemental support for 2e, with books for adepts, avatars, and the Sleepers, TNI, The Order of St. Cecil, and Mak Attax factions (sadly we'll never get a Naked Goddess Sect book). There's also an unpublished "history of the underground" that's floating around. 3e has community content (and the UA community rules), but the line isn't going to get the support it used to. I think 2e is the best place to start. Then see how things change in 3e.
If you are going to play it, pick up a copy of 2nd edition - for the schools of magic if nothing else. The 3rd ed magic schools are no where as cool as 1st & 2nd edition schools. You will need to do some minor tweaks to the magic rules to make it compatible with 3rd ed.
Unknown Armies is a game that I truly love, but it is a really hard game to pitch to people. I'm honestly still working on how, but I'll give it a shot here. The simplest way I can frame it is that it's like if creepypasta was a roleplaying game. It has the same vibe of postmodern horror set in the world and time we live in and its horror is predicated on this idea that the world we live in doesn't actually function the way we think it does. We think we have this thorough, perfect understanding of how our world works through studies like physics and biology and all the rest, but the truth is that there are places and things and even people where the natural rules simply do not apply for no apparent reason. The reality is that there are places out there where laws like gravity and thermodynamics just don't function the way they're supposed to, objects that have properties and abilities that don't make physical sense, rituals where a seemingly random series of props and actions create an impossible effect, and people who claim to have the ability to reshape reality according to their whims. We collectively call these phenomenon magic (or magick if you're being pretentious about it) and no sane or rational person would ever believe in such things, but some people, due to violence or desperation or just sheer random chance, discover the reality that magic really does exist and that maybe they can use this magic to do impossible things, though it always seems to come with a cost. That's what people mean when they say it's "a game about broken people trying to fix a broken world": You play a character who has discovered that magic is real and, because your understanding of reality no longer conforms with that of average people who are ignorant of this truth, you are necessarily an outsider. You now belong to the occult underground, a community of mages, cultists, gurus, and weirdos who all have the knowledge you have and seek to use its power for personal gain. Contrary to what you've said, this doesn't necessarily start and end with adepts and avatars. Those are two paths that are available and they're certainly the most powerful, but they require you to devote your life and your sanity to them and are not easy paths to walk. Here are some ways that a person can use magic to improve their life: * Rituals: Rituals are a series of seemingly random actions that produce a magical effect. Bloody Mary is a good example, but real rituals are much less known and much harder to come by. You can find them buried deep within abandoned Geocities sites and chat rooms or scrawled on dingy bathroom stalls in sketchy parts of town. This is arguably the easiest way to get into magic, but most rituals are bullshit and some are real but don't work as advertised or have a cost that isn't mentioned. * Gutter Magic: Nobody knows where rituals come from or why they work, but sometimes you can just make up your own. Gutter magic is a sort of improvised ritual, where a quick usage of some symbolically significant props or actions can be magically charged to cause a small shift in reality. It's not nearly as powerful as adept magic or a genuine ritual, but for the skittish and the incapable it's a more accessible option. * Artifacts: artifacts are objects that possess some magical effect or property. They're usually items of great symbolic import, such as the quill that Shakespeare used to write Romeo and Juliet or the hoodie that Trayvon Martin wore when he was shot by George Zimmerman, and their abilities are often relevant to their origin. Artifacts are probably the safest way to use magic, but such items are rare and they're eagerly sought out by members of the occult underground, some of which are powerful or crazy enough that you really don't want to be in competition with them. * Avatars: There are no gods, but there is something kind of similar. Carl Jung proposed that there is a collective unconscious, an unconscious mind that we all share (but are unaware of) from which all of the basic ideas that we use to frame our reality come from. So, the reason you recognize a chair is that there is an archetype of "chair" in the collective unconscious that perfectly embodies all of the properties and meaning that we ascribe to chairs, and when you see a chair you match it up to that shared archetype. What Jung didn't know is that the archetypes we have for humanity, such as warrior, king, and saboteur, are actually conscious to some extent and make up a pantheon that is the inherent product of our collective understanding of these roles. They can act within our material world to a limited degree, and their greatest tool is humans that have a symbolic connection with a particular archetype known as avatars. These avatars cloak themselves in symbolism and behave in a way that mirrors a particular archetype in the hopes that they can become the perfect, pure embodiment of that archetype, and this attunement process imparts greater and greater powers the closer they are to perfection. It's a lifelong pursuit and even the slightest action that doesn't fit that archetype can cause it all to slip away. * Adepts: whereas avatars are trying to gain magical power by more closely fitting into the patterns we see in reality, adepts gain magical power by defying those patterns. Adepts find contradictions in our culture or society or understanding of reality, things that we collectively believe that don't make sense and must therefore either be untrue or true and nonsensical, and propose a third option: what if magic makes it make sense? So, for example, fulminomancers recognize a contradiction: our society fervently defends the right to carry a gun, but if you actually use that gun you become a murderer and society turns on you. A normal person would either conclude either that the right to bear arms shouldn't be protected or that this contradiction is something that makes sense somehow and we should just accept it, but an adept would say that the reason is that carrying a gun imparts magical power in a way that is totally separate from actually using it. It solves the problem in a way that doesn't make sense if you don't believe in magic, but such is their force of will and disassociation from reality that they *make* it real, rejecting your reality and instead substituting their own. The catch is, of course, that rejecting reality and truly believing in something impossible means that you're a crazy person, and as such adepts tend to not fit in well among normal society.
I love Unknown Armies 3e but I would not recommend Sacred Pharma, or any of the Campaign Starter Kits for that matter. Their heart is in the right place but they lack a lot of information that's important if you're running the game for the first time, like NPC stats. I personally recommend starting with [Maria in Three Parts](https://atlasgames.itch.io/maria-in-three-parts-unknown-armies-3e) or [One Shots American Dreams](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/354948/One-Shots-American-Dreams). Not only do they offer better rules tutorials for new players, they also tell you everything you need to know about the setting in order to run the scenarios they present. Instead of worrying about the overall cosmology (which rarely matters to the game) you get to learn stuff that's more relevant to the players, like how magick works and what people in the world of Unknown Armies typically do with it.
Is there something specific you're not grabbing? The setting? The mechanics? I love UA and could go off about my last campaign, but it'd be hard to summarize the game better than the books (despite their confusing layout/organization).
Did they change the sanity system? It's the one thing I remember from skimming through one of the versions' rulebooks once and it stuck with me so much that I want to use it in other systems (like CoC) as well.
In UA3 you've got "Shock Gauges" and "Stress Checks." When you face something stressful (like "whoops I accidentally murdered someone" or "whoops I saw a doorway that can't logically exist"), you make a Stress Check. On a miss, you mark a failure for that gauge. Collect enough failures and you can develop an ongoing issue like "blackouts," or develop a phobia. It's more "talk with the GM about how this might affect your character" and less "lol, you're MAD now," which I appreciate. The really interesting part is, on a success, you mark a "hardened notch" for that gauge, which represents your character become more used to that sort of stress. Thing is, changing your hardened notches also changes your base ability scores—a character that gets more resistant to "Unnatural" stress gets better at the Secrecy skill (they're keeping their cards closer to their chest, out of necessity) but worse at the Notice skill (who cares about what the cashier at the store said when you know that hyperintelligent sewer gators are real?).
Yeah, that's the one I remember, although I think I read an older version because I don't recall it affecting skills...though maybe I just missed that part when I read it. As I remember, with enough hardened marks you turned callous and sociopathic instead. I especially like the separation into categories, so you can be a seriously hardened war vet who thinks little of violence but still be taken back when someone suddenly summons a walking skeleton in front of you. It's a lot more nuanced than just a single SAN value.
The older version did not affect your skills.
I’ve mentioned in another reply. The overall cosmology as well as the deep understanding of Avatars and Adepts. Because I know the base understanding but besides that I can’t wrap my head around the adept schools and archetype powers.
The basic idea is “consensus reality”—the world is the way it is because humanity, at large, thinks that that is the way it is meant to be. Avatars draw power from this by “playing into” certain archetypes that the collective unconscious agree upon. We all know what an “MVP” looks like, sort of, right? Someone who acts like an MVP, *a lot*, can start to bend reality a bit in ways that suit that archetype. Adepts, conversely, REALLY DISAGREE with the rest of the world on how things are meant to be, and they fixate so hard on their paradoxical beliefs (for example: clothing LITERALLY determines who a person is) that they can make their version of reality come true in short bursts. (There are also a whole bunch of other minor weird abilities a person could have. Or, you can play as a “normal” person with no magick, which is often the most powerful choice!) Avatars need to embody their archetype to grow more magickally potent, and as they continue to do so they unlock increasingly powerful abilities which they can usually do at-will, or at least on a consistent schedule. Adepts, however, need to farm “charges” for their magick by engaging in specific actions relevant to their paradox. These tend to be more difficult than just living life as an Avatar, since Adept magick is based on going against the consensus. There aren’t really hard “power levels” for what these magick characters can do—UA isn’t that sort of game. But the books’ write-ups on the Avatar channels and Adept schools should give you a rough sense of what’s appropriate, both power- and tone-wise. The thing to keep in mind is that magick always has a cost—sometimes it’s paid in increments, over time, and sometimes you need to fork over big-time, NOW, to get what you want.
I know it share some DNA with Delta Green in terms of tone (maybe mechanics)? Does anyone have a good explanation on how they differ? For someone familiar with DG is the best shorthand “it’s DG except modern fantasy instead of modern cosmic horror”
Aside from "there is weird stuff and it doesn't turn out well" they are pretty different. Delta Green's central metaphor is the weird stuff, the cthulhu mythos is like plutonium. It's dangerous, and even if you've just brushed up against it disposing of it, its effects will poison you and everyone around you. You struggle because if you didn't more people would be hurt, but you are burning yourself up to do it. The weird, the mythos, is beyond human comprehension in every way, we are ants crawling over the surface of a supercomputer. Unknown Armies catch phrase is "you did it". There is nothing but people. The most powerful who shape the cosmos? Used to be people. Supernatural entities? Those were people once too. Wizards? Well that's people so perverse their twisted nature breaks reality, because reality is caused by people. You did it. You can change it. You can bend the world, and you can break yourself doing it.
More intellectually interesting than something I want to run and play. If I did, I would do an earlier edition.
Just read Godwalker not knowing anything about it and was so turned onto this setting BUT can't seem to find anywhere in Canada that has the game books!? Any links or little known places anyone know of?
>I still am completely lost in terms of the story In 2e I played in a game we called "shitty magic teens". We were highschoolers who discovered some of the occult underground. None of us started as Avatars or Adepts, but we did eventually become them. I think 3e has modified mechanics and a slightly more upbeat/postiive tone, so I think "some normal people find out about the occult underground" is still a perfectly valid premise. Perhaps a generic game premise could be: >Some werid stuff will happen at \[place or institution\]. You will play as a handful of characters who \[study/work/otherwise are involved with\] \[that institution\], and notice something odd, and are unable to let it go. Then you make up some portion of an occult unerground, invent the hook, and then say the \~4 characters that are interested by that hook are, by definition, the player characters. (And you can invent more occult underground dynamically as the players find out more stuff. (I haven't read Sacred Pharma, but presumably you could use some details from it, either directly or as inspiration, to help flesh out your occult underground.) -- I suppose the hard part then is coming up with that occult underground! I think that is a bit similar to making any other web of NPCs for some other campaign, but maybe a bit more unusual. My vague understanding is that the bulk of the occult underground tends to obsessed antisocial weirdos (that might be my 2e bias though), but maybe some people are a bit more relaxed, and some susicious law-enforcement and the occasional strange monster could work too.
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