Transcendental horror: Unknown Armies RPG
Written: Jul 29 '05 (Updated Jul 29 '05)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Fast and Cinematic combat, easy rules
Cons: Background not as detailed as other Horror RPGS (ie Call of Cthulhu).
The Bottom Line: If you enjoy games or fiction about occult conspiracies and shadowy goings-on, get this game.
|
|
|
| maza's Full Review: Unknown Armies RPG Books |
I have been abusing EBAY lately. I am now catching up with Roleplaying game rulebooks I wanted all those years, but didn't have the cash to buy. Living in Greece, tends to limit the selection of available RPGs around. So, I got a copy last week, read the rules (haven’t had time to extensively play the game though), but I am very impressed.
Unknown Armies is by Atlas and written by Jonathon Tynes and Greg Stolze. UA has a twisted modern day seting, a Dark world where horrific and Magickal things are real. You might say, "oh no, not another one" and although a lot of its basis has been seen in other games there are many things about it that make it stand out.
Firstly its very well written. The setting has a warped sense of humour that makes you think "this is going to be fun to play" The rules are fairly simple and follow the main rules of RPG (as far as I'm concerned. The rules on personality checks are well thought out, making certain situations particularly stressful for certain characters, and adding a level of "emotional realness" which can sometimes be missing, especially in relation to violence (UA can be a violent game, but if you're not careful, or you're unlucky too much can drive you mad, or make you so callous you become sociopathic, both have their disadvantages) There are roleplaying guidelines for when you character reaches levels of callousness, or cowardice. These rules are a good way to make players aware of the consequences for their actions to their own personalities.
You can play various types of PCs, including the normal collection of thugs and gun wielding maniacs, but the character generation system is nicely geared up to make characters interesting to play. You have to choose an obsession, which is the driving force in your life, a fear, something that makes you angry, and something that brings out the good side in you.
A couple of the more interesting character type ideas UA has are:
Archetypes
Not dissimilar to In Nomine "words" these are personality archetypes to which characters can aspire. They get certain advantages if they are particularly good at them. If they become the best in the world, they become a "Godwalker" with extra funky powers. But there can be only one, if someone else already has the job then, you may just have to get rid of them...
Mages
The magical rules are particularly interesting. Firstly all Mages have to be obsessed with magic. Magic in UA is not just a way to get your own way, but a way of life. Each School has a central paradox which fuels the magic and stakes out its domain. In other words magic makes you powerful, but screws you up. E.G. Entropomancers, they can control random chance, but inorder to get "charges" for spells they have to make real gambles (unaffected by magic). If they gamble their life, they get more power. If they gamble their own life and the life and that of a loved one they get big buckets of funky power, as long as they survive that long. Twisted but I like it. All of the schools work in a similar manner, Fleshworkers have to hurt themselves, Cliomancers get power if they make money, but lose it if they spend it.
Background material
Lots. Specifically, about 40 pages of the 224 are game mechanics, character generation and combat. The rest is background. World background, magic, game-mastering, and so on. If you can't understand the game world thoroughly by the time you're done going through the book, it's because you're illiterate or terminally dense.
Mechanics
In general mechanics are simple. Character generation is a matter of alloting points between four attributes and picking some skills. No skill list for all practical purposes, just pick what you can do. Combat? Simple. A percentile system with lots of critical hits and misses (roughly 10% of rolls are especially good or bad). Get used to really good things and really bad things happening several times a play session. Expect the unusual, not the realistic or even the consistent. Time will tell whether this works in the game's favor or against it. Magic? Wierd rituals, backfires and a lot of self-abuse. It fits with the game world and isn't hard to figure out in game terms. Magic power has to be paid for somehow, and you only get out what you put in. Want the power to manipulate the flesh? It's going to hurt...
High points - Magic, psychological stress and the mundane repercussion of things from magic to getting caught with a concealed firearm are all handled specifically rather than glossed over. I especially liked the psychological stress factors, a sort of souped up version of Call of Cthulhu's sanity system. Characters run the risk of becoming either callous or unhinged in a variety of ways. A person who becomes callous is on the way to becoming a sociopath, for instance unable to understand or care about the suffering of others. On the other hand, a person unhinged by exposure to violence could freeze or freak out when confronted. Being able to function in the presence of the extreme is good, but taking your tolerance too far is bad.
Low points - I'm not particularly thrilled with the combat system. Those who know my style know I prefer the realism end of the scale. You *can* have systems that are simple *and* realistic, but this isn't one of them. Percentile dice for skills seem an excessive amount of detail for such a simple system. Also, weapon damage is based on your skill roll. The higher you roll without exceeding your hit chance, the more damage you do. The problem? An unskilled person can empty a magnum revolver into most characters and do negligible damage, even if they hit all six times (If my skill is 10%, the most damage I can do shy of a critical hit is 9 points. If my skill is 60%, I can do up to 59 points per hit). Damage is similarly skewed, but perhaps it fits with the fast and furious “get back in the action” style of the game. Odds are that you can *completely negate* many gunshot wounds if you can get to an emergency room within an hour of the injury. On the other hand, the rules *do* remind you that hospitals are required to report gunshot wounds to the police, and gunshots also have *permanent* injury effects...
I really enjoyed reading and playing this RPG (although I wish I had spent more time playing it, but free time is a a luxury for me for the time being. A minor peeve is the amount of wasted space. Every chapter (and there are 14) has *two* pages dedicated to less than full-page pieces of art (right and left facing pages). Add in Appendix A, and that is 30 pages devoted just to stylish chapter intros. I can't complain *too* much, however, as the game price is reasonable, and the small text size and reasonable margins allow a lot of information in the remaining pages.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
maza
|
|
Member: Nick Maza
Location: Greece
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
I live in Greece. I hate the summers.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.