A sample of something I’ve been working on to bring the game into the modern era, and a call for assisstance
Obviously, if you’re reading this, you think UA is a fantastic game. However, it’s about a decade old, and as a game based on the world we inhabit- and worse still, one based on zeitgeist- it’s showing its age worse than most other games.
Thus, I’ve got a .doc on my computer I’ve uploaded a few scraps of below: an errata of sorts that could bring Unknown Armies into the modern era. There’ll be timelines explaining major events in the world and their mystic implications. I also plan to add major events in the histories of the major factions- the Sleepers, Cult of the Naked Goddess, TNI, etc. Major events in a character’s history will also be represented- what has the Freak been doing for the past ten years, for example? I am including, as well, a few unnatural creatures and items that players may want to use.
If you’re interested in assisting me in this project, do drop me a line or comment below. As promised, here’s a few scraps of what I’m working on:
TIMELINE:
2004
Events of Godwalker.
2006
July 7: The Freak mysteriously disappears. All attempts to contact it are met with no success- it is assumed that it either died or committed taboo, as its Godwalker spot is open. This sparks a three-year war for the Godwalker of the Avatar of Magick itself.
2009
October 10: The Freak (or another extremely powerful being claiming to be it, depending on who you ask) reappears from its three-year, three-month, three-day hiatus. It announces its return with the slaughter of three competitors for the Godwalker spot, and returns to its place as the Godwalker itself.
RUMORS:
Street
Wikipedia is sentient! Hit the random page option until you hit something long and boring, then listen carefully. You can hear it snore!
Global
A cabal based in Washington D.C. and New York known as Incompemancers helped cause the 2008 recession.
A Baltimore duke named Jack Richardson once got his hands on the Day Planner of the Gods, and wrote in a meeting with the Comte. No one knows what was said during that meeting, but no one’s heard from Thompson since, and some dukes have noticed minor charges disappearing when his name is brought up.
There’s a story that some minor duke in Wyoming figured out what the Naked Goddess ascended as in 2008, and he promptly Ascended himself. No one knows if this is the truth or just a jab at the still-clueless Cult of the Naked Goddess.
Cosmic
The Godwalker of the Rebel is not a single entity, but the “hacktivist” group Anonymous as a whole. The Guy Fawkes mask has come to symbolize rebellion, and anyone who dons one immediately draws the eye of the Rebel.
——–
That’s a handful of the things I’ve got so far. Lemme know if anyone has any criticism or is interested!
Heya. Am looking to kick off a UA campaign early next year so happy to kick around ideas. Bonus – I live in Australia so I can offer info on a decade’s worth of Antipodean weirdness.
– Wire
This is an excellent idea, of which I heartily approve. I too have recently started a UA game, and actually set it in the recent past, so as to avoid the very problems you’ve mentioned.
I’m very interested in reading a timeline of recent events, like you sampled here. I’d also be interested in how folks handle the size of the Occult Underground in various cities. (eg how many Entropomancers are in Miami?) An atlas of the Occult Underground within various cities would be great.
I remember reading somewhere about how many avatars/adepts there are in a given city on one of the old UA mailing lists / forums. Though I cant seem to remember what the ratios were exactly, but i figure it is something like 1:1000 people is a true blue avatar, where 1:5000 is aware of it. And i have to figure it is something like 1:500 is an adept of some sort.
I’d be happy to toss around some ideas for new stuff; I just don’t have many off hand. But for some starting suggestions for additions/changes…
I’d honestly like to see Anonymous as more of hivemind than a rebel. The current Rebel seems to be The Freedom Fighter (instead of The Terrorist becoming that). Besides, most rebels aren’t seen like Anonymous is.
If Anonymous became an archetype/school/mystical skill, I’d probably suggest the first channel be “Roll your Avatar: Anonymous skill to get an idea of what all Anonymous would do in that situation”, similar to the Mak Attax skill.
Considering the Arab Spring, I think The True Executive did ascend. Either that, or The Freedom Fighter (my suggestion for The Rebel).
The Masterless Man still hasn’t been replaced, although he’s suffered a lot.
I think The Fool has turned into The Ditz.
Occupy Wallstreet! was started by a pissed off Plutophage with a major charge.
We have The Flying Woman, the Archetype of the liberated female, which is dandy and all, but we don’t have the Archetype of the overly sexualized female; The Female Object. The WECHBY kinda fits, I guess, but the fact that she’s an outright enigma doesn’t work with that. Archetypes need Avatars.
We need some kind of combination of Videomancy and Infomancy, probably along the lines of Mediamancy, which demands that you nearly constantly be “connected”.
Mechnomancy may not be dead, but I think we should fix up that Electromancy idea that someone had, that charged on getting shocked and using cutting edge tech for devices, couldn’t use stuff that wasn’t cutting edge, and relied on the user giving the machine charges.
That’s all I have so far. What do ya think?
The Occupy Wallstreet! idea is spot on – I didn’t get Plutophages at first, but when I really considered a “House of Renunciation” move from a Merchant or Plutomancer, it started to fall into place for me.
New schools, like Mediamancy or Electromancy, as you’ve described, don’t need to be fully baked. A school with some litany of taboos, only 2 or 3 formula spells – which might be Minor only, no need to rush/require Significant or Major spells until the concept is strongly grasped. A budding school would be interesting to see.
I don’t know enough about Anonymous, but the idea of an insulated group of one mind is cool. Perhaps a potent enough member could do something akin to Gnostic Gossip or the Demagogue channel – but the knowledge is kept within the group. It would be neat to track the Hive Mind with its own Madness Meters! with the groupthink diving toward insanity!
For some reason, the Occupy idea was just one of those out of nowhere, “hey, that kinda fits” things. I mean, it doesn’t exactly fit their Major usage, but the underlying theme of the movement just fit too well with the Moneypit attitude.
For Mediamancy, after sitting down and thinking about it, although I can easily justify the collapse/decline of Videomancy:
Nowadays, anyone can easilly whip out a camera and film a poorly scripted comedic piece, write a short story involving an imported version of themselves getting down with their favorite character, etc. and gain the attention of hundreds. One can easily catch their favorite show online, too. This meant that TV, although it was still prevalent, wasn’t this thing that EVERYONE was laughing at simultaneously anymore (kinda hurting the symbolic tension)
I can’t justify Infomancy disappearing at all. If anything, even though the media is EVERYWHERE, the fact that media surrounds us like a rubber suit makes the 2000’s a breeding pool for Infomancers, especially due to the popularity of media jamming (amping up the Symbolic Tension like a boss.)
But yeah, we can figure out something.
A quick primer on The Hivemind, from The LURKMORE Wiki:
“semi-frequent /a/ meme pointing out that people who spend too much time on 4chan have internalized certain memes, and when given familiar stimulus (like flamebait) different Anonymous will respond with similar answers in rapid succession. Ironically, pointing out examples of “hivemind” has also been subjected to hivemind phenomenon. Came from the concept of individual insects having no personal thoughts and relying only on collective instinct; possible derivation of /v/ memes involving the Zerg from Starcraft.”
The rules for what qualifies as a Hivemind post:
Has to be in the same minute in 4chan’s poster time stamp
Can’t be a simple answer to a question (I.E. Yes or No)
Must contain at least 3 words
So, one option for running anon could be to give NPCs some kind of Anon stat/meter, and so whenever certain events happen, all Anons in the same area respond the exact same way. Could make for an interesting mini-campaign.
So yeah, count me in. This is getting to be too much fun. I look forward to seeing the .doc, and to contributing. If I need to slow down/back off a little (I mean, it sounds like you’ve got a good set of ideas yourself), just let me know.
Wow, I seem to have struck a bit of a chord!
Alright, so the best solution I could think of was to create a wiki, and upload my ideas plus the ones mentioned in these comments to it. You can find it here:
http://21stcenturyua.wikia.com/wiki/Unknown_Armies_Update_Wiki
I’m not trying to downplay the awesomeness of this website, but since almost every comment has been an offer of collaboration, wikis are one of the best ways to do that. Take a look around the wiki, edit it with your own ideas, and let’s see what we come up with, yeah?
Ok, I signed up as Writerwolf, and I posted my further thoughts on Mediamancy. And yeah, I think the wiki has a pretty good setup. We might want to drag some of the older contributors into this, if possible.
2010 — late summer: Dirk Allen finally got his new body– or died, no one is really certain yet. In any event, he hasn’t been heard from in a while. Could be laying low, could be dead, could be some combination or neither.
2008ish-Arkane finally made it in as the Hisenburg messenger. Which really explains the quality of news today.
Also, in a totally related note, this pretty much took Cryptomancy out to the woodshed.
I’ve been working on an update of Videomancy that takes into account Tivo, and mixes in a bit of Infomancy through participation in internet forums like TWOP or AV Club – but it still isn’t gelling properly.
Maybe I’ll put up what I’ve got, and somehow something workable can be cludged out.
I’ve also worked up some Adept-school specific rituals – not truly Formula spells, but not usable by any other schools either – such a Dipsomancer rituals to beat a breathalyzer which requires sucking on pennies.
Excellent idea! Thank you for this, and thank you for the wiki. It’s now bookmarked. Since I’m not currently running or playing this baby, I doubt I’ll have much to contribute, but I’m quite happy to lurk about!
You are only too correct about the shelf life of UA. OtE had the same problem, which is a pity…