#unknown armies

[chinmaster]

premium content

[silverdreamdancer]

Whilst granular mechanics are very much out of fashion these days, I am surprised at how bad any sort of sanity system is compared to other mechanics, considering how important a role it plays in horror games particularly.

I feel that Call of Cthulhu particularly fails to capture anything that makes its antagonists terrifying in the sanity mechanics and it usually just manifests as a penalty for interacting with otherworldly creatures.

Alien does a fear mechanic that's similar to sanity but with a strong short term panic focus.

The only system I know that seems to have made a real effort in innovating here is Unknown Armies.

However I might be out of the loop. Are there any systems with nuanced sanity mechanics?

[spectrolitha]

Some mages from different mage ttrpgs

From left to right, in names (and ttrpgs they're from):

• Mikkel (Mage: the Ascension) – guy from Celestial Chorus, you might've seen him here. Simplifying here and further, he belongs to religious monotheistic mages.

• Ava (Mage: the Awakening) – girl on Path of Mastigos: arcane path of desires, thoughts and mastery over them.

• Hayate (Unknown Armies) – adept of Ustrinaturgy, smoking magick. Unknown Armies have some of weirdest magic schools known to ttrpg.

• Eir (Scion: becoming as gods) – chosen of Baldur, deity of light and all that is good in Norse mythology, who was killed by Loki.

[disquiet-dream]

it's kinda like this

[neruomancer]

High Strangeness in Delta Green: There is a small section of a drywall corner in the rented office space at a strip mall that has been shut down for "environmental concerns". When in front of the wall and looking at the effected corner, under the right circumstances it can act as a temporary gate to somewhere else and suck you in, the problem is that the gate that forms is way too small and so anyone who gets caught in the gravity of it experiences something equivalent to a Delta P like phenomena. Very gross.

High Strangeness in Unknown Armies: Yeah I have a friend who has a Rhinoceros Beetle the size of a small cat who balances on a inflatable ball like a seal in his basement. He is really obsessed with it, he spends all day down there. He stays up all night looking at it and watching it balance. He will say things like "sorry I have to get home to my beetle, you wouldn't understand". I have only seen it once and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen ever. I have begged him if I can see it again but he is being too selfish to let me look at it

[kaminari-taimei]

The Guy With Pencils Stuck In His Eyes and Josh

quote:

There’s a new duke on the scene who claims to be channeling The Guy With Pencils Stuck In His Eyes. He can see just fine, though; nobody really believes him, but nobody wants to mess with him either—just in case.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you Played UNKNOWN ARMIES ?

By Greg Stolze and John Tynes

Postmodern magic urban horror

Unknown Armies is a game about broken people conspiring to fix the world. It's a character-driven game of occult weirdness, taking place in a world driven by obsession and symbols--based under the assumption that the collective unconscious holds power, and that You Did It.

In terms of who you are and what you actually do, you and your fellow players--your "cabal"--are in what's called the occult underground, an ever-present underbelly of creeps and weirdos who have it "all figured out". Chances are, you're a creep and/or a weirdo, too, don't worry about it. You're typically pursuing an objective, which can be anything from "find our friend who went missing last week" to "form a grand, withstanding ward beneath the state of Delaware to dispel all demons", or even something like "create a new color".

You have adepts, wizards who cast magick-with-a-K through paradoxical commitment (gun mages can't shoot anyone, movie mages have to commit to the bit/trope, sex mages can't have sex for pleasure), and avatars who embody platonic archetypes with the off-chance of becoming modern gods (like The Mother, The Fool, The Survivor).

Put simply, being an Avatar is like playing the role of Hamlet, while being an Adept is like BEING Hamlet.

You can also play as a "mundane" person perfectly fine. It's a game that's all about getting in too deep.

For a quick and easy pitch, imagine something like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia if The Gang were a bunch of fucked up wizards, or Twin Peaks if it was directed by the Coen Brothers.

Have you played ?

Yes I have played it

No but I've read it

No but i've heard of it

Never heard of it

Voting ended onFeb 24, 2025

[downwithpeople]

call of cthulhu was delayed YET AGAIN on sunday so we did a UA corkboard for giggles. a lot of good ideas went up but as soon as the word 'nekomancy' came out of my mouth i knew it deserved more attention