Unknown Armies (2nd Edition) [Hardcover]

Greg Stolze (Author), John Tynes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2002

What will you risk to change the world?

The acclaimed RPG of modern occult intrigue returns in a stunning new hardcover edition. Completely reorganized, largely rewritten, and jam-packed with new art, the second edition of Unknown Armies isn't just better. It kicks metaphysical ass!

We've remixed the book based on the level of campaign you want to play: Street, Global, or Cosmic. At street level, you're outsiders to the secret world of magick, ordinary people entering a land of mystery and peril. At global level, you're mojo-wielding cabalists in the occult underground, pursuing your arcane agendas and plotting against your rivals. At cosmic level, you're in tune with the cosmos itself, fighting to shape the next incarnation of reality. Background material is divided up as well, so new players in a street-level campaign only read what the

GM wants them to know.

But the beats don't stop there:

Much more information for new players, to get them into the mindset of the game and help them make better characters and stronger campaigns.

* New character-creation options, including Trigger Events, Paradigm Skills, and power levels scaled to match the level of campaign you're playing.

* Numerous rules tweaks, including a new initiative system, Fuzzy Logic skill checks, player-directed combat modifiers, amped-up martial arts rules, a new experience system, and more, all dedicated to upgrading UA's innovative percentile system into a lean and precise tool for fast play and player empowerment.

* More magick for non-adepts: Authentic Thaumaturgy, new rituals and artifacts, and revised versions of Proxy Magick and Tilts allow the freewheeling use of symbolic, sympathetic magick by anyone with the will to make it happen.

* Twelve schools of magick (up from seven in UA1) for obsessed adepts, including revised versions of published schools (Bibliomancy, Personamancy, and Urbanomancy) and two new schools (Videomancy and Narcotic Alchemy).

* Fourteen avatars (up from eight in UA1) for archetypalists, including revised versions of published avatars (The Messenger, The Mother, The Mystic Hermaphrodite, and the True King) and two new avatars (The MVP and The Warrior).

* More resources for the GM, including specific guidance on combat, wounds, skill checks, campaign building, and other critical issues.

* New cover art and design, new interior art and design, and a hardcover binding to keep this game in line.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The system is simple and easy to use, the magic and sanity systems are nearly revolutionary, and the book by itself is worth the $25 just to read it -- John Fiala, RPG.net

"[T]his is simply one of the most perfect meldings of system and setting, of writing and world, since Call of Cthulhu. If you trust my judgment at all, do yourself a favor and buy this book, if only to revel in its muscular prose and in the epiphanous, horripilating, smoldering, potent cosmos of Unknown Armies." -- Ken Hite, Mania Magazine

"[Unknown Armies] will easily be the best occult roleplaying game of 1999. I'll cover any bets now." -- Michael Daisey, RPG.net --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Atlas Games; 2nd edition (July 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589780132
• ISBN-13: 978-1589780132
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A True Horror Game, September 7, 2002

By 

"scottgcar" (Birmingham, AL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unknown Armies (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

Unknown Armies is great. If you are a fan of Tim Powers or Ken Hite, or even know who they are, then you want this book. The various levels the game can take (street, global, or cosmic) add a good twist. My players keep saying: We don't know what that is because you wont let us read ahead! For tone, setting, and over all feel this is a great RPG.
The downside: Unless you have played Unknown Armies 1st Edition, this is a completly new system. The broad possibilites of skill sets are great, if you have people who like making those things up. My group is a mix and so we had some people who were not as happy about that. One of the biggest complaints so far is in the descriptors of levels for madness and skills. Especially the skills. The difference between a 40s Speed Stat (picking one at random here) and a 60s Speed stat is difficult to understand. Number wise its no problem, the descriptions could have been better.
So far thats the main problem, but we are still learning the system. Overall the ideas are great, but some of the mechanics, at least in their descriptions, are a bit disappointing.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine modern horror RPG, September 15, 2003

By 

Judd Karlman (Ithaca, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Unknown Armies (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

It isn't often that I can read an role-playing game cover to cover and find that the game is playable and it reads well. Unknown Armies, UA, is a fantastic game with ten gaming ideas for every paragraph.

The system is a simple percentile system but the system is elegant, letting the player characters flip numbers under certain role-playing situations. It plays dramatic and fast.

The combat chapter begins with ways to avoid a fight. Then it launches into the way combat works. Beautiful.

Magick is brutal and extracts a price.

The world is fun and has a captivating cosmology while still allowing the DM and the players to make some choices about how the world really works and the headlines of the paper are fine adventure fodder.

I cannot stress enough how well written and fun this game is. I have both played and run it. Please pick it up and find out for yourself.

The works of Tim Powers are where many of the metaphysical ideas of the game come from. Check out his novels if the game appeals to you.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very cool, January 12, 2004

By 

David A. Farnell (Fukuoka, Japan) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Unknown Armies (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)

If you're a roleplayer, and you're tired of the same-old stuff, give this a look. The first edition of Unknown Armies was good, but the 2nd edition is much improved--the elegant rules are somewhat simplified and easier to grasp now (and thereby more elegant). The book is organized more logically, and the writers provide much better information on how to run a campaign, giving this book a lot more direction.

It's a very setting-specific game: It seems that the world we know is full of secrets, and when you start to learn of some of them, everything changes for you. That in itself isn't original, but the details often are. The "feel" of the game is that choices have consequences.

The rules focus properly on role-playing over rolling dice. Character generation is fast and simple, with only 4 characteristics, and no definitive skill list (players can make up their own skills, subject to GM approval). Combat requires only two rolls per round: initiative and a single attack/damage roll--whether you hit and how much damage you do is resolved in the same roll. There are three different and fascinating systems of magic, all easy to use, believable within the context, and highly flexible. The "sanity" rules are an improvement over the already-good Call of Cthulhu rules.

A comparison to Call of Cthulhu is apt--both Tynes and Stolze have written quite a lot of Call of Cthulhu material in the past, and it seems almost a cliche now that so many people who read this book immediately start to think of how to incorporate Call of Cthulhu into it. But while there are many correspondances, at their hearts, Unknown Armies and Call of Cthulhu are opposites, and merging them is a difficult (but worthy) task. CoC is about a nihilistic spiral into madness and death; Unkown Armies is about desire, hope, and what you'll do to get them--and the consequences of your actions. As dark as it can be, Unknown Armies is set in a human-centered world; CoC is set in an alien-centered world, in which human hopes are utterly irrelevant. Both are wonderful games.