Posts Tagged ‘unknown armies’

As I said yesterday, I decided to post up the two articles I wrote in Pyramid Magazine years ago.

This is from December 8, 2006.

- Ryan

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Countermancy

A School Of Magick for Unknown Armies

You know the horror of the magick. It makes slaves of people, consumes them, and turns them into monsters that bring reality crashing down on the innocent. You understand their power, and use it against them. If you must become the monster to fight the monster, so be it.

For every person who is successfully brainwashed — “trained” — by an adept, there are a hundred students who “fail,” and get ditched for the next punk who might have “an open mind.” These poor souls are left battered and broken, having stared into the abyss and lost their minds, their souls. They’re left unable to function in the real world, useless to the occult underground, and have nothing to show for it but a look of disappointment and pity.

You were almost one of those. When you stared into the abyss and saw it staring back, you didn’t smile with newfound insight, nor did you cower or let yourself be consumed. You screamed “NO!” with every ounce of your being. Your mentor ditched you, but you didn’t become another victim. You stood up, recognized the horror for what it was, and lashed out.

The Unnatural is anathema. You learned how to fight it, how to stop it, but to do so you had to become it. It doesn’t matter anymore you can’t ignore what you saw or try to pretend it didn’t change you. The only alternative is to live as a broken shell. If you must become a monster to fight monsters, you’ll drag as many of them down to Hell with you as you can.

The central paradox of Countermancy is using the unnatural to stop the unnatural. You are friend and foe to the occult underground at the same time. They’re the only ones who can understand and accept you and your “curse,” but they’re also the ones you’re fighting.

Countermancy Blast Style

Countermancers (also known in the occult underground as “buzzkills”) don’t have a blast. Instead, they have an “anti-blast” — a spell that undoes the effects of a blast spell. This takes the form of a miraculous recovery when the damage isn’t obvious to an outside observer. When there is visible physical damage, then the person recovers rapidly, but not unnaturally or alarmingly so. Dead people cannot be affected by an anti-blast.

If someone is hit with a blast and anti-blast at the same time, the blast is reduced or completely neutralized. A significant anti-blast will neutralize any blast. A minor anti-blast will neutralize a minor blast and reduce a significant blast into hand-to-hand damage.

Anti-blasts cannot be done with tainted charges (see Generating Tainted Charges below).

Stats

Countermancers must pick the school their teacher attempted to pass on, which may be any school except Countermancy. This is known as their Affinity School. Record this alongside the skill name: “Magic: Countermancy (Entropomancy) 55%”.

Buzzkills also have at least two Hardened and two Failed Unnatural notches, rather than the standard one.

Generate a Minor Charge: Live the “normal” life. Every 24 hours spent without contact with magick or the Unnatural generates a minor charge for a buzzkill, as long as he is able to keep magick out of his thoughts as well. Every day that the Countermancer remains abstinent from magick and the Unnatural, the GM secretly rolls against the buzzkill’s Magick skill without flip-flopping or shifts. On a success, his inherent magick blocked the chare from forming. On a failure, he gains a charge — but he doesn’t know about it until he checks on his charges, which ruins his charge for that day. There are no additional effects for matches or critical successes or failures.

Countermancers can also gain tainted minor charges from their affinity school. See “Generating Tainted Charges.”

Generate a Significant Charge: Stop an adept from gaining a charge, disrupt a charge ritual, or force a charged-up adept to break taboo. The Countermancer does not have to be the direct cause of the disruption. He could have a dipsomancer thrown out of a bar by talking to the bouncer, instead of slapping the drink out of his hand, but he must have instigated the disruption.

The buzzkill cannot gain any more charges from the same adept during the next hour. Since the adept can still try for more charges, the wise Countermancer subdues his target or gets the Hell out of Dodge.

The biggest drawback to intervening (aside from the lethality involved in getting between an adept and his charge) is that the Countermancer cannot stage it. He must truly be stopping an adept for the sake of keeping magick at bay, not to accumulate power himself. Others may stage this and trick him into getting a charge but he must fully believe in the act.

Countermancers can also gain tainted significant charges from their affinity school. See “Generating Tainted Charges.”

Generate a Major Charge: Disrupt an adept from your affinity school from gaining a major charge, or force him to break taboo while he’s holding the charge.

Countermancers cannot gain tainted major charges from their affinity school.

Generating Tainted Charges: Buzzkills who need power in a hurry can gain minor or significant charges by following the rituals for their affinity school. This is a dangerous, desperate act. First, any non-tainted (or “clean”) charges he has are immediately lost since participating in a charge ritual breaks taboo. He cannot gain any more clean charges until he’s rid himself of all the tainted ones and spends three days away living a normal life, as if generating minor charges. Gaining a tainted charge is a deliberate act — a Countermancer of Plutomancy doesn’t get a charge everyone he receives money, only when he does so with the intent of gaining a charge.

That’s the good news. Tainted charges cause severe problems for those who utterly reject the Unnatural. The Countermancer suffers a negative shift on every stat and skill while holding the charge, -10% if only holding minor charges, -25% if holding any significant charges as him soul is rejecting the charge like a bad implant. This doesn’t end until the adept loses all the tainted charges. Because of this, these charges are unstable. When using tainted charges, they are spent every time a spell is attempted, even if the Magick roll fails.

Regardless of whether the charges he is carrying are clean or tainted, he can only fuel Countermancy spells with them.

Taboo: Countermancers have two taboos. First, they may not be a willing participant in an unnatural effect, magick spell (aside from their own Countermancy spells) or ritual. Only clean charges are lost when breaking this taboo. Buzzkills may partake in the company of adepts and their ilk without breaking the taboo (if they can stomach each other in the first place), but that’s as far as it goes.

Second — and here’s the kicker — they share the same taboo as their affinity school. There is enough of an imprint of his former teacher’s school that he is bound by those rules. This is a never-ending source of frustration for buzzkills. Breaking this taboo affects both normal and tainted charges.

Random Magick Domain: The cosmic status quo reinforcement of the Natural. Strange noises in your home? It’s just old floorboards. Get mauled by some unspeakable thing? It was just a bear, and you’re recovering a lot faster. Countermancy has no effect on avatar channels avatars are the paragons of the cosmic status quo.

Starting Charges: Newly created Countermancers start with as many charges, all clean, as new adepts in their affinity school start with.

Special Effect: If the Countermancer is holding any clean charges, an adept from his affinity school who attempts to affect his with a spell has their magick roll flip-flopped if it would make the roll fail or be less effective, even if the adept flip-flopped it already. This effect works against every spell, not just harmful ones. Only running out of charges turns this off. If the spell is suppressed, the Countermancer doesn’t know he did it, and the adept treats it like a normal spell failure.

When the buzzkill is charged (clean or tainted), adepts from his affinity school sense him as a malevolent force when they see him. Those who have dealt with Countermancers before knows what this means, though the message is clear enough to those less educated.

Countermancy Minor Formula Spells

Unlike other adepts, Countermancers rarely give their formula spells interesting or inspiring names. Some even go as far as to not name them at all, to avoid the idea that they’re actually doing something unnatural. The names below are as inspiring as most Countermancers get.

Peace and Quiet

Cost: 1 minor charge

Effect: The Countermancer can suppress a minor unnatural phenomenon or the effects of a minor artifact within visual range for a number of minutes equal to the magick roll. If the phenomenon or effect would expire by then, it does not return.

Soul Healing

Cost: 1 minor charge

Effect: The Countermancer can cause minor charge charges to leak out of an adept by pushing one of his charges in, causing them both to cancel and disappear. He must grab the adept flesh-to-flesh and focus — not just mere casual contact or have any clothing in the way. He can only cause one charge to be lost at a time, but can continue until there are no charges left.

Soul Healing does not affect significant charges directly, but if the target doesn’t have any minor charges left, any significant charges will be converted down until there are some minor charges to lose.

This spell does not work against Countermancers with clean charges, and cannot be done using tainted charges. If the target has no charges to affect, the spell fails and the buzzkill’s charge is not lost.

But Fear Itself

Cost: 2 minor charges

Effect: The target of this spell becomes immune to Unnatural madness checks. He doesn’t suddenly become fearless, but ignores non-threatening effects (even If they are shoved right in his face) or rationalizes any dangers as mundane threats. This lasts for the sum of the dice, in minutes.

If the target also recently failed an Unnatural check, this works like Psychological First Aid (p. 69), by having the target forget the unnatural event or rationalize it as something mundane. While many people do this on their own, this spell makes that concrete.

Since the target saw the event differently than others (or blocked it out completely), he may be subject to Self or Isolation checks if confronted aggressively by other witnesses.

NO!

Cost: 2 minor charges

Effect: This is the Countermancer’s minor anti-blast. It may be used to heal damage done by a blast spell, whether the damage was done to Wound Points, Soul, or something else. The damage healed is the sum of the dice or the amount of damage done by the blast, whichever is lower. The anti-blast cannot heal anything but the damage taken from magickal blasts. It also neutralizes a minor blast thrown at the target at the same time, and turns a significant blast into hand-to-hand damage.

If the effects of the blast are not outwardly visible (like the pornomancers’ blast), the healing is instantaneous. If the effect is outwardly visible (like the epideromancers’, or any blasts that direct physical threats such as the dipsomancers’ or urbanomancers’), the wound points are gained back immediately, but the physical evidence remains, though it heals faster than normal (bruises fade and cuts heal faster, etc.).

Anti-blasts cannot be done with tainted charges.

Minor Counterspell

Cost: X minor charges

Effect: Disrupt a minor spell as it’s being cast. The cost is the same as the cost of the spell being nullified, though the buzzkill only finds out the cost after the fact. If he doesn’t have enough charges to stop it, the spell goes off as normal and he doesn’t lose any charges. The target adept spends his charges, even if the spell is nullified.

Against a minor spell from his affinity school, this only costs 1 clean minor charge, regardless of the target spell’s cost.

Countermancy Significant Formula Spells

I Said Shut Up!

Cost: 1 significant charge

Effect: Like Peace and Quiet, but for significant unnatural phenomena and effects from significant artifacts. You can also use this against minor unnatural phenomena and effects from minor artifacts, for a number of hours equal to the sum of the dice.

Bring Peace Unto The People

Cost: 1 significant charge

Effect: Works as But Fear Itself, but for a group of people the Countermancer can see, up to the number the dice rolled.

Reality Correction

Cost: 2 significant charges

Effect: The Countermancer can undo the effects of any minor spell that has already been cast, as long as he knows a spell was cast, and is either in the vicinity of where the spell effect took place or knows who the caster was. The target adept does not regain his charges. For every 10 people affected or witnessing the original spell (aside from any adepts), this costs another significant charge.

Note that the longer it has been since a spell was cast, the number of people affected by countering it increases. Practical limitations are usually around one hour for very obvious spells, a day for subtle spells that actually affected someone, to a week for information-gathering spells.

The Countermancer remembers the spell having been cast, and any events based on it, rather than the altered reality. This could result in Self or Isolation checks when dealing with people remembering the past differently.

This costs one less significant charge when used against spells from his affinity school.

That Didn’t Happen!

Cost: 2 significant charges

Effect: This is the Countermancer’s significant anti-blast. It works like the minor anti-blast, only the damage healed is equal to the dice rolled or the damage done from blasts, whichever is lower. It also neutralizes a minor or significant blast thrown at the target at the same time.

Anti-blasts cannot be done with tainted charges.

Punish the Traitors of Reality

Cost: 4 significant charges

Effect: Adepts near the Countermancer (within 33 yards) who are holding any charges take damage as the charges explode out of them. Adepts containing only minor charges suffer damage equal to the same of the buzzkill’s Magick roll, just as if hit with a minor blast. Those who are holding significant charges are affected with firearms damage, as they would be by a significant blast. The damage manifests as trauma and burns from the charges literally exploding inside their body. Bystanders near the adepts are not physically affected, though they may be shocked to see people around them suddenly convulse or die.

No one is exactly sure what happens when an adept holding a major charge is affected. Theories range from them being immune to the magical equivalent of a nuclear weapon.

Countermancers are not affected by this spell, unless they are holding tainted charges. This includes the buzzkill casting this spell, if he’s holding any taint. Adepts affected may make a Magick roll to feel something wrong with their charges, and can let them go before they’re damaged — provided they actually understand what’s going on.

Significant Counterspell

Cost: X significant charges

Effect: As Minor Counterspell, but for significant spells and charges.

Countermancy Major Effects

Undo any spell. Permanently nullify any artifact or an unnatural phenomenon. Cause all practitioners of a school of magick to lose their charges. Remove an adept’s ability to do magick. Remove all the memories of an unnatural event.

Plot Hooks

• There’s a buzzkill hunting the Freak in Chicago. They’ve duked it out once, and he walked away with all his body parts in the right places. He’s got quite a few people in Chicago nervous.
• Rumor has it that there are a number of Countermancers working for the Sleepers, but they don’t do the run-of-the-mill jobs. If you’re an adept, and you kill a Sleeper, you can expect a few to hunt you down, happy to rid the world of another abomination.
• A Countermancer in Vancouver is challenging the Godwalker of the Pilgrim. Most of them don’t play the avatar game, but he’s hoping to ascend and make magick more difficult, if not impossible.

During the Moral Ambiguity in Gaming panel at NorWesCon, the charismatic Clinton J. Boomer — a fellow Unknown Armies fan — made a great point about creating characters of depth using some ideas from UA: specifically, the three passions. This came from a conversation about how everyone is the hero of their own internal story, and no one self-identifies as evil except for the mustache-twirling villains[1].

For those unfamiliar with the best RPG in existence, I say to you to buy it. It’s available in PDF now. Still, it wouldn’t be much of a blog post if I just said “hey, buy it, mic drop.”

There are three Passions: the Fear Passion, the Rage Passion, and the Noble Passion. (They are also called Stimuli in the text.) Each is something that is a hot button for a character: what terrifies them, what enrages them, what causes them to raise above their id. The important thing is that every single character has all three[2]. And that’s something that can be brought to a game to make every character something beyond a cardboard cutout of good or evil.

They are always form the imperfect perspective of the character, sometimes internal struggles and sometimes external issues. I’ll skirt the spirit of copyright by pasting the example passions below:

Fear Passion Examples

• Fire. Fire claimed your house, and with it your wardrobe, your record collection, not to mention all your photos and yearbooks. It’s bad stuff, not just dangerous and painful but unpredictable as well.
• Foreigners. When you were overseas, you always knew they were talking about you behind your back, jabbering away in that weird monkey language. Now they’re all around you, even in the streets of your home town.
• Temptation. You don’t drink anymore. When you get drunk you do terrible things, so you don’t drink. Much. No, not at all. In fact, you’re careful to stay away from bars, restaurants, and that liquor store on Third and Main.
• Possession. You don’t like to talk about the exorcism. You don’t like to say the creature’s name. You know it’s still out there and calling it could bring it right back.
• Dogs. You’ve got marks on you from the red jaws and white teeth. Even those barky little shit dogs make you nervous, and big beasts like a Doberman or Saint Bernard? Forget it.
• Victimization. You weren’t the one who got hurt, you were just the one they made talk. You tried to be tough, and that made it all your fault. Now you can’t stand to see people get hurt. To you, watching the victim is worse than being the victim.

Rage Passion Examples

• Backchat. Is it too much to ask that people be polite? You understand someone who throws a punch at you, but a sarcastic loudmouth really gets your goat.
• Enemy Drivers. You’re an excellent driver. You wish all the bad drivers around you would just realize it, hang up their cell phones, and get the hell out of your way.
• Laziness. When someone does a half-assed job, they’re not just disrespecting their duties or their boss. They’re flipping the bird to everyone who has to put up with their shoddy work. God help one of your employees if you catch her slacking.
• Sleaze. Booze. Pornography. Foul language. Toilet humor. The country is swimming in filth, and no one’s doing anything about it. It’s time someone took a stand. Someday a real rain is gonna fall.
• Stuck-up Assholes. Just because you didn’t go to college and don’t drive a Lexus doesn’t mean those rich fucks get to look down at you. Goddamn snobs. Someone ought to take them down a notch.
• Those Fat Cats in Washington. Democrats and Republicans are just the competing teams in the “Screw the Taxpayer” Super Bowl, brought to you live by the Army, the Post Office, and your local Police Department.

Noble Passion Examples

• Entertainment. How much better would the world be if people devoted as much effort to making one another happy as they do to getting rich or becoming powerful? You believe laughter is the best medicine—so if you cheer someone up now, the future takes care of itself.
• Historical Preservation. If we can’t learn from the past, we’re doomed to repeat it, and all those who suffered did so in vain. Preserving our links to the past gives us a firm foundation to build a better future.
• Landmine Removal. Landmines are deadly, indiscriminate, and a bitch to remove. You’ve seen their carnage firsthand and you’re dedicated to removing them physically (by working as a minesweeper) and politically (through activism to get landmines banned).
• One for All. Most people are crap, but you’ve made a tight bond with your friends. They’re all right, and your loyalty to them is unshakeable.
• Pedagogy. Education is the key to it all. Knowledge rinses away prejudice, eases misery, and exalts all that is good about the human condition. Educating others is your mission in life.
• Protect the Elderly. Most old people have already had seven courses of misery and heartache in their lifetimes without an extra helping in the eleventh hour.

How to Use This Elsewhere

This should be straightforward: when you have a significant character, come up with their passions. It doesn’t matter if there’s a mechanical hook, though some games (like Fate) make that easy to do.

It’s easy to make a one-dimension good or bad person. It’s far more interesting if there’s more going on. Take one of the heavy NPCs in Unknown Armies, Eponymous. He’s a straight-up sociopath[3], and as described: “When Abel says jump, Eponymous throws you off a building.”

• Rage: Betrayal.
• Fear: Poison. Dying of a stab wound or gunshot doesn’t scare Eponymous nearly as much as the thought of dying from some slow, agonizing venom.
• Noble: Throughout it all, Eponymous has always wanted to do a good job

Now we have something more interesting that “powerful sociopath that will kill you as soon as look at you.” We now know what makes him mad — enough to motivate or enough to cause a mistake. We know what he’s deathly afraid of. We know what he believes in.

That’s a take on a villain. What about the other side, someone who is on the surface totally good?

Lili Morgan, agent of the House of Renunciation (which doesn’t need more explanation for this), who believes in helping people:

• Rage: People who are as selfish and uncaring as she used to be.
• Fear: Unpredictable ascensions scare Lili.
• Noble: The abstract, general welfare of humanity. She doesn’t care about individual people.

The noble one is obvious, much like Eponymous’ rage one. But seeing how this genuinely nice person would get angry & break her sense of peace gives us a bit more. And her fear stimulus is the sort of ones that creates a drive, something beyond “hey, everyone should be compassionate and caring.”

What About Your Game?

Do you have a villain in your game that just exists as a foil for the PCs? What’re his/her/its passions?

Do you have a benevolent character in your game that just exists to help the PCs? What about his/hers/its?

- Ryan

[1] The first time I remember seeing this in full effect was in playing Final Fantasy VIII, where Seifer, after capturing your party, exclaimed about how he was the hero and his day of bringing the villains — your character — to justice was at hand. Fuck yeah.

[2] There’s a mechanical incentive to make interesting ones, but that’s beyond the scope of this. Again, go buy it. :)

[3] Which UA has mechanics for. And they aren’t positive ones.

I decided to put up a place where I can post useful, downloadable stuff I make!

The first thing I’m adding to it is an Unknown Armies 2/e fillable PDF, because I love running Unknown Armies for people and my handwriting sucks. :)

Note that there’s a weird bit with the Hardened & Failed text, because the fonts there in the original PDF are weird. Sorry about that! I also removed the lines under the notes section, to let the text flow as needed.

If you have any comments, let me know! Also, feel free to take this and make a better version, if you like. That’s always awesome.

Thanks to Jess Banks over at Atlas Games for giving me the green light to post it up!

- Ryan

I love Unknown Armies[1]. Anyone who has ever known me knows this, including the charming and svelte Rich Rogers from the Canon Puncture podcast. He has this really cool segment series on the show called Game Advocates, where fans of a game talking about why they love that game. So he grabbed me to talk about my most favorite role-playing game ever.

You can check it out here: http://www.canonpuncture.com/?p=1869

The episode runs 22:41, and is just my talk with Rich. I hope you enjoy it.

For those who love the game like I do, I posted this UA-style rumor on my Facebook feed the other week, as it popped into my head (while walking, so I had to type it on my phone):

Unknown Armies rumor: there’s a fortune teller (assistant manager for the Scotsman by day) in western Ohio who can predict your future by listening to your Pandora station on your smartphone for an hour. He can only predict one thing, though: the day and time you’ll leave this world. Godwalkers have sought him out to learn how much time they have left. And he is not aware of the Max Attax cabal that watches over him.

This shit hits my brain all the time. I love this game, because it’s memetically infected me like no other game has.

Also required reading: Kenneth Hite‘s essay on Unknown Armies is Green Ronin’s Hobby Games: The Best 100.

- Ryan

[1] Fans also know to check out John Tynes’ UA site. Man alive, so awesome.

[2] A footnote to a certain podcaster out there: Rich turned that around in a couple weeks. Just FYI. :)