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I had a brilliant idea today for a UA Adept school based on fetishizing motorized vehicles (cars and motorcycles primarily). Is that already in one of the books?
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Jun 13, 2015 21:58
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| # ¿ Jan 18, 2026 08:33 |
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So I just finished writing up this UA Adept School. How'd I do? Any suggestions? The Motor-Shaman
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Jun 15, 2015 14:37
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oriongates posted:The "taboo vs charging" seems a bit off. The charging method is somewhat lengthy (requiring about 20-30 minutes per charge if you're just driving along highways) and is somewhat situationally limited. The taboo on the other hand is extremely harsh. There's quite a few places where actually getting a parking space that close to any given building is quite tough and/or it encourages you to pop in and out of buildings periodically to reset your distance. Not to mention simply being very, very limiting on your general actions. Notably most adepts don't have taboos that force them to sit out on adventures or severely limit their options day to day. Even dipsomancers can do most anything so long as they have a concealed flask on them. The idea with the charging is that it encourages riskier driving. By saying "one hour or 30 miles, whichever comes first", it presents the Motor-Shaman with a temptation to drive faster because it racks up charges quicker as the miles count down. I knew that it needed fine tuning, of course, but I'm fond of the idea of characters like this getting hoisted by their own petards because they can't resist going for more charges when it would be both easier and safer to get them more steadily. For the Taboo, my goal was to emphasize the Driving aspect rather than purely car fetishizing, but by attaching their taboo to their vehicle it introduces a new tension, which is that they build charges by driving recklessly, but in doing so they endanger the very tools they need to accomplish the task (which works if you factor in their origin as Entropomancers). I'll work on the Significant charges some. Again the notion sort of comes from a combination of Entropomancy (involving people in your Charging ritual) and Urbanomancy (the more people involved, the better), but I may not have thought it through fully. EDIT: Actually driving fast to build Significant charges makes a lot more sense because the idea behind Motor-Shamanism should be that Magick comes from one's connection between himself, his vehicle and the road, not with the people around him. Strange Matter fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 15:04
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Excellent suggestions folks. Here's my revisions for the Motor-Shaman:quote:Paradox: You believe that your vehicle bring freedom, yet in devoting your life and soul to the road you are shackling yourself to an unfeeling mass of steel and plastic, without which you are powerless. quote:Generate a Significant Charge: Drive a vehicle without heeding any rules of the road for thirty minutes or 10 miles, whichever comes first. Break the speed limit, change lanes without signalling, run red lights and stop signs, and don’t for any reason pull over for the cops. You are the unfettered master of the road, not the other way around. If you exit your vehicle or stop moving for more than thirty seconds, the charge fails. The time/distance on the Significant Charge is something I just kind of threw together and could be adjusted, of course. It also makes it hard if not impossible for Motor-Shaman to build charges by being a professional racecar driver, because there are far fewer rules to break compared to just driving through downtown Chicago. Strange Matter fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jun 15, 2015 |
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Jun 15, 2015 17:22
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I've played two games of UA, and overall the game works best when everyone is kind of following their own course. The first game I played had everyone playing average joes who had only the very slimmest perspective into the Underground, and that played fairly normally as you'd expect. In the second game, I played a Personamancer, another guy played an Avatar and a third guy basically just knew ritual magic and had general street smarts. Since I was the only Adept I was the only one who needed to worry about building charges and avoiding Taboos in any serious manner. When the game is played that way, an Adept's obsession is a great storytelling tool because it promotes tension between the characters. In both games, interparty relations oscillated strongly between cooperation and extreme paranoia and mutual distrust. What was significant about the second game is that none of the characters really knew what the others were capable of, nor how deep we were into things. Since I was an Adept I was obviously the most distrusted, to the point where one of the players was much more afraid of what I was capable of than what the actual antagonists were trying to pull, which was fun. I can't really fathom how a game where everyone is on the same foot magickally speaking would work. As has been said, if half the game is spent chasing after Charges then the party breaks up. But a clever GM combined with a well constructed and balanced party can create some really interesting experiences.
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Jun 15, 2015 19:37
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See there are so many good spells that you can come up with for a car adept that it's hard to narrow them down! Is there like a normal limit for Adepts in UA?
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Jun 16, 2015 12:07
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Been thinking about the possibilities of a Major Charge for a Motor-Shaman; what about becoming such a legend that your name is imprinted upon some aspect of the global driving culture? I.e. you get a car named after you or a race track or someone makes a movie about your exploits. In that way a lot of people in the past could have had the potential for getting a Major Charge if they knew what they were doing, but even if they did they would have lost it almost immediately thanks to the limits of the taboo. Eval Kineval certain snagged one at some point in his career as a proto-Motor-Shaman but would have forfeited it pretty quickly. This would make it awfully difficult for the average street racing Motor-Shaman to get a Major Charge, but that's okay considering the possibilities of what a Major Charge can do.
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Jun 16, 2015 13:10
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Omnicrom posted:I'm willing to say maybe this would work, but only if its built entirely on your driving since that's the core of the motor shaman. There's a certain method to the minor->significant->major charge progression going on with other schools. How do other schools get charges? Bibliomancers get it from increasingly rare and valuable books, Cliomancers get it from increasingly more significant bits of history, Personamancers get it by fooling greater numbers of people, Epideromancers from injuring themselves with increasing severity, and so forth. There's a progression even in schools that aren't a straight "this, more of this, most of this", an Urbanomancer gets a minor charge from watching a city, a significant charge by affecting a city, and a major charge from drastically changing a city. Motor Shamans have "Drive" for a minor charge and "Drive crazy" for a significant charge so as the write-up suggests presumably a major charge would be something along the lines of "Drive Superlatively Crazy". A feat of driving that makes you famous and renowned across the entire world for its madness might qualify for a major charge, but unless it is above and beyond the pale it might not. I'm guess then that them becoming famous for their feat is a natural side effect, rather than the desired end result.
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Jun 16, 2015 14:33
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oriongates posted:Each official Adept has 13 Formula spells included in their write-up. That's not a hard limit or anything, but once an individual character has more than 14 formula spells known they suffer a penalty to using Random Magick as their concept of their magick becomes more concrete and stiff. quote:Getaway (minor)
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Jun 16, 2015 15:00
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oriongates posted:Its hard to argue with this stance.
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Jun 17, 2015 13:24
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So is it accurate to say that Adepts don't really have much of a place in the Cosmic scheme of things? It seems like the Cosmic game requires a degree of perspective that their obsessions cloud them from.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:43
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Kai Tave posted:It's worth pointing out that the Unknown Armies adventure Fly to Heaven from One-Shots, which good luck ever running that nowadays, is all about an rear end in a top hat Cliomancer who decides that he wants to bootstrap himself to Real Cosmic Power and concocts a quick-and-dirty scheme to ascend as The Terrorist in the most brute-force way possible. And it actually has a chance of working if the players don't stop him.
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Jul 2, 2015 19:21
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That's fantastic. It's actually sort of a refreshing take on cosmic horror that its true nature is not, infact, simply beyond the limits of human comprehension. There's a whole dimension of uneasiness surrounding the fact that the laws of reality don't really care at all about who is more deserving of reward or punishment-- the universe is a massive game with definite winners and losers, and just knowing what the rules are gives some people a decidedly unfair advantage. It really fits well with the whole "You did this" theme that it has going for it.
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Jul 2, 2015 19:53
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Doresh posted:Super Console Question: I noticed that you said that the Archer changes based on the era that you're playing in. Is that the same for any other classes?
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Jul 6, 2015 12:52
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Erebro posted:2) They look like generic infernal baddies at first glance (they possess people, they're utterly ruthless, they make deals that almost invariably favor themselves), but on closer inspection seem completely unexpected and new (they're not a race of fallen angels or physical negative emotions, they're what people otherwise call ghosts, and they're more desperate and selfish rather than truly malicious). Then you think about it, and you realize your first impression wasn't actually wrong, just lacking nuance. Sufficiently unempathetic people are how we develop a baseline for evil to begin with, and they're the antithesis of the gods (the book actually outright says they're the opposite of Archetypes; rather than losing their selfhood and material goals to become a part of humanity, they lose their humanity to retain their selfhood so that they may continue pursuing their material goals...and in another parallel, become rather small fry on a cosmological level as opposed to an almost certain chance of drafting the rules for the next cosmos). And then you've got the demon element which rips that whole notion apart-- that some people can't free themselves and are dragged down into a base state by their desires and delusions. That also makes me think that a creative GM could take their story in a direction that doesn't render Adeptry into a metaphysical dead-end-- that just as the Clergy wants to affect the world from above, there is a host of mystical forces orbiting them in the Stratosphere who like things just the way that they are, except for all those pesky people who don't perceive the world through the lens of their distorted beliefs.
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Jul 7, 2015 20:04
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Kellsterik posted:I really like this as a danger that PCs have to be aware of before they use strange artifacts. I think the setting chapter says that there were once lots of effective rituals, but in the era of postmodern magick the majority of effective rituals circulating around are dangerous junk that just summons a demon. I always imagine some poor naive duke breaking a mirror and scratching out their name and photo on all their ID cards because they think it will tell them the winning Powerball numbers.
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Jul 7, 2015 22:46
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Pope Guilty posted:Artifacts, hell, rituals are described as being like a piece of pizza in the gutter: are you hungry enough to eat it?
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Jul 8, 2015 17:24
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In your opinion, does Super Console acknowledge and utilize the fact that in 99% of all JRPGs, the central protagonist is some kind of sword wielding fighter type as opposed to a mage type and empower Martial classes accordingly? Or are Mages by far the best source of damage, which is the pratfall that the Returners RPG suffered from?
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Jul 9, 2015 18:47
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Doresh posted:I always think about Khorne when it comes to Khador pictures. Must be a combination of their color scheme and their symbol.  I hope some of the Returners guys are still around and have read this to see how badly they are getting schooled in game design. The level of self-awareness that went into this game is a serious breath of fresh air.
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Jul 11, 2015 00:39
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God, the Star Wars RPG podcast you guys did just killed. I was driving when Jon started doing his impression of the Imperial Probe droid and I swear I almost got into a car accident I was so blinded by tears.
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Jul 23, 2015 21:44
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oriongates posted:Unknown Armies: Postmodern Magick Adept Rundown, part 1 To me, a lot of these rituals read more like plot hooks for street level campaigns than anything else. No player character or group of player characters would ever willingly pursue the Pentacost Ritual, but you could make a pretty exciting session based on the characters trying to stop some lunatic from pulling it off.
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Aug 14, 2015 13:17
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theironjef posted:
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Aug 18, 2015 17:30
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Count Chocula posted:I seem to remember Iconomancy being a bigger part of UA than it is, since it's such a cool, obvious idea that walks the line between kitschy and cool. It also seems easy to make up Iconomancer icons but I can imagine players being really annoying while imitating their pet celebrity.
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Sep 2, 2015 17:25
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I feel like the answer to this question is obvious, but would it work for an Iconomancer to go around murdering famous people to build an arsenal of Major Charges, provided that he was never caught?
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Sep 2, 2015 20:22
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As someone's whose childhood is an island amidst a sea of Car Talk, that introduction was pitch perfect.
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Sep 8, 2015 20:16
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Zereth posted:Yeah that goes beyond just "self-destructive" to "completely non-functional in society". That said I have a hard time conceiving of how an Infomancer could be an effective hacker. How can you bring down Youtube when just navigating there is like traversing a minefield where one false click could delete your entire Charge supply? I mean maybe that's the point but it definitely doesn't feel particularly fun or anything.
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Sep 10, 2015 18:27
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Xand_Man posted:The Infomancer taboo passes out of the sweet spot of 'inconvenient and awkward for you' to 'inconvenient and awkward for the entire party'.
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Sep 10, 2015 18:56
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oriongates posted:Probably a better taboo would be to simply limit the infomancer when it comes to communicating via "unscrambled" media. That is, an infomancer can read a book, watch a TV show or receive an email without busting their taboo (and thus can charge without having to worry about understanding things too much and violating taboo)...but they can't send information to someone else through media in a standard way. Call someone on the phone and you violate taboo. Send an email. Leave a written message. You can get around it by "encoding" your message in non-standard ways such as leaving a note in the form of a rebus, or sending emails in heavy "leet" speak (although since the early 2000's that has likely become a more standard form of communication, preventing use without breaking taboo), make a call but don't speak and just send morse code messages.
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Sep 11, 2015 12:25
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A hording school might be best represented as a combination of Bibliomancy and Videomancy. The hoarder could build minor charges by adding to a specific collection, and significant changes by completing this collection, with the trick being that the objects he's collecting are the vessels for his charges. There are even built in paradoxes here: -A hoarder could rack up huge numbers of minor charges by collecting something commonplace like newspapers, but that would mean he can never earn a Significant charge from them because there is a new one each day. -Earning a Signficant charge from a collection means that you can never earn new charges from that collection, because it has been completed. -If the hoarder would have to carry his stuff with him to use them for charges, he risks breaking his collection in the same way that a Dipsomancer's significant vessel is a target for in-the-know rival cabals. There's definitely some compelling material there. I'm actually tempted to write something...
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Sep 14, 2015 01:52
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I just realized the common thread we've seen so far in Postmodern Magick. It's full of stuff that would be really interesting and compelling for player characters to encounter, but not to actually play as. As such it's no doubt a great asset for GMs but kind of impractical for players. We've already seen this with the crazy rituals described, but that also includes stuff like Iconomancy (playing as an Elvis impersonator would get real old, whereas it would be a real fun encounter for players to go up against one), Irascimancy (how do you break this Adept whose's wrecking your cabal? Find a way to provoke him!) and, as stated, Oneiromancy (where the GM fully controls whether he or she gets Major charges). Tasoth posted:Eh, if you're going to gain power from hoarding, making holding onto all the junk you pick up throughout the day for a minor charge makes sense. The next level is annual things, something that are rare to get but still get outdated like Sears catalogs or end of year tax info. The final one is holding onto things like vacuum tubes from an ENIAC style super computer or a ledger from a business that went under a long, long time ago. Set the though behind it to holding onto things that could have a use, in theory, but you know deep down inside they'll never be used again. And it all goes to hell when that twisty tie you've had in your pocket for three days really did come in handy. See to me the thing about hoarding is that it is an element of obsessive-compulsive disorder, meaning that it is a.) an obsession, b.) a compulsion and c.) rooted in mental illness. I don't think it would have quite the same impact if the character knows deep inside that what he's doing is pointless. Instead it should be exactly the point. I've got to hold onto these yellowed newspapers because they're important, dag-nabbit! Anyone can see that! It also embraces the compulsive shopper aspect of many hoarders, where they will have bags and bags and bags of new, unworn clothing filling their home. I was thinking about this while doing morning exercises and I think I'm going to write it up like I did the Motor-Shaman. The problem is making it distinct from the Bibliomancer, since my first through is you gain a minor charge whenever you add $100.00 of value to a Minor Collection, which encompasses things that are commonplace and that anyone can acquire, like current run comic books. Significant Collections are comprised of things that are of limited availability and where each piece of the collection is in some way distinct, like first issues of famous comic books. If you have Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #1, those are both worth one Significant Charge, but if you already have DC #1, you don't get a charge from collecting another one. Major Collections are comprised of things that are one of a kind and have major cultural significance like Bob Kane's original drawing of Batman, or, like, presidential skulls or something. The Taboo could be that if you encounter a piece that belongs in your collection, you must collect. For Minor Collections, you can make a Self-check to resist this Taboo if you've already collected a Minor Charge in the past [Soul] hours, but for Significant and Major Charges, you don't have a choice. If a comic book collecting hoarder sees Giant Size X-Men #1 in a picture frame in his employer's office, he must collect it within [Soul] Hours, or all his charges are voided.
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Sep 14, 2015 12:54
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Count Chocula posted:I watch too much American Pickers, so I'm wondering if you should limit it to just one collection. Plenty of the guys they visit will have a garage full of old cars, a few boxes of buttons, a room full of signs, a barn full of old toys, etc.
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Sep 14, 2015 13:28
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oriongates posted:The Cardboard Palace (Major) 
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Oct 8, 2015 12:34
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Bieeardo posted:I admire HERO for its dedication to point-buy, for the idea that if you drill deep enough, you really can stat a coffee cup. I've seen other games get weird when it comes to mundane equipment vs. innate powers, but building everything out of that same mass of primal points definitely helps to keep that under control. You really need a fair number of examples to work from though, be they equipment lists or rogue's galleries. It's also got the problem where mundane equipment is pretty much ignored when it comes to character creation, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. There's nothing stopping a beginning character from having an arsenal of stinger missiles apart from the GM sort of telling them "hey don't do that."
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Nov 2, 2015 20:05
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Halloween Jack posted:I think my favourite thing about Wild Talents is that it has an easy resolution method for just using any kind of ability against any other kind of ability..for example, if a villain throws a bunch of bombs into a crowd and you're trying to grab them all with super-speed, or block them by ripping up the sidewalk with super-strength, etc. you roll your dice pool to cancel out dice from his pool. The hard part of Wild Talents is trying to balance the various powers and characters you create against each other. Once you get that down, it's effortless. (I'm currently making a homebrewed space opera supplement for Wild Talents, because the system has so flexible).
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Nov 2, 2015 21:59
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Wapole Languray posted:Transhumanism as a Sci-Fi concept is perfectly rad and cool, and the biggest issue with modern day Trans-humanists is that they are expecting technology that isn't even theoretical to happen any-time near now. I mean, prosthetics are advancing nicely, but they still suck compared to the original limb for basically everything. Most Transhumanists are people who want it to be 300 years from now next year, which is dumb. They are mostly harmless though, as their ideas are literally not possible. And if rich people wanna dump cash into some stupid tech-thing then go right ahead, we might be able to use that tech for other things.
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Dec 3, 2015 13:24
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Doresh posted:This is what I want my dream project to be. Each made-up fantasy name in the glossary spread randomly throughout the book only leads to two other made-up fantasy name. It will only be through a meaningless passge somewhere in the book that you can reverse-engineer this whole nonsense and find out that you've been playing as a plumber all along.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:10
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| # ¿ Jan 18, 2026 08:33 |
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Doresh posted:Everyone's some samurai dude with a sword. If you're lucky this sword can turn into some other kind of neat weapon. If you're unlucky, it's either an incredibly stupid weapon (like an ICBM for the ninja girl of the cast), or it's "I can do whatever I want an always win - unless I become a bit stronger and decide to turn into a dumb brute so the main character can actually defeat me". It started off with Soul Society, where there are twelve squads with 2 main guys (captain and vice-captain), so there's 24 dudes to remember and keep track of. Then Aizen comes along and he's got a crew of 10 guys each with at least one second in command, so that's like another 20-30 characters. These guys were actually okay because they had superpowers whose names had meaning both in Japanese and Spanish, which I guess is pretty cool. Oh and I guess the Vizards are here too and that's, like, 10 guys I think. I stopped reading sometime during the fullbringer arc, but it appeared to be another like 10 guys thrown at you all at once. I just looked at Wikipedia and now they're up against a group with 26 members, one for each letter in the English alphabet. 
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Dec 14, 2015 21:28
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