Customer Reviews

Unknown Armies (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I got to test a white-bound version of this a few GenCons ago, and i've been hooked ever since. If you have ever played a game like Nephilim or Immortal, you will come to grips with this one quickly. You can pick it up rather fast if you really have any experience with non-fantasy RPGs. The world they have created (with the 'chorus' of various avatars, conspiracies upon conspiracies, etc) is a very compelling one that is uniquely flexible. Want to run a shadowy game full of backstabbing, intruigue, and mystery? No problem. Feel like blowing away magickal automatons? No problem. We usually run sessions filled with conspiracies, cults, and a general noir atmosphere, but the world also adapts to occasional horror or dark humor themed one-shots as well.

I actually find myself reading this book frequently as general source material for games I run in other systems, and it serves as a wonderful well to draw from.

A special mark has to be made of the magic system. This is, hands-down, the most enjoyable magic system i've ever used. The concept of "earning" your magical charges (where magicians who use chaos have to do chaotic things to get magic, and dispomages need to get drunk, etc), is a very inventive game system that always makes for interesting scenarios for your players to play through.

The character creation/advancement systems are well thought out, combat is handled well (I particularly like it how the GM keeps track of actual damage levels rather than the player to avoid metagaming). The general dice-rolling is kept to a minimum of tables and such, and the game captures a great element of "flow", where the mechanics rarely serve to bog the game down.

In short, I give this game my highest reccomendation.

I can't speak too highly of Unknown Armies. My favorite aspect of role-playing games has always been the chance to explore the very human nature of my characters. Unknown Armies is all about human nature. Sure, it's a crazy world full of magic, monsters and horror; but it's human-created magic, monsters and horror. We (literally) created the world, and we'll make the next one. All the horrors of this world stem from us, but so does all the good. It is both empowering and humbling. This game comes with a recommendation for mature readers, and they mean it. Not just because it's got naughty words, but because it's trying for a grittier, more thought-provoking kind of play.

Unknown Armies is the game that brought me back as a RPG enthuisiast. When the first edition of this game came along I had grown tired of the overly popular games such as Dungeons and Dragons and all the World of Darkness games. I read an online review of Unknown Armies and its intrigued me so much that I got the game. I read it over and instantly was drawn in. Unknown Armies seemlessly blends its setting and its system. Its truly a character driven game where the beliefs (obsessions and passions) of the characters can affect the outcome of the game and the success of dice roles. The modified percentile system that the game uses works great and stays in the background, not intruding the roleplaying and plot development. Tynes and Stolze created a unique cosmology that sets UA a head above the rest of the modern occult, horror, and conspiracy games that are out there. The 2nd Edition of the game corrects a couple of bumps in the system such as spending experience points. More importantly the 2nd Edition sets the framework for very exciting and interesting UA campaigns. This is the best modern setting RPG out there and I am serious in saying that it has the potential for being the best paper-and-pencil RPG. I hate to use the words "instant classic", since that is such an oxymoron, but this definitely will be a classic of RPGs.

This game is well worth it, and that's putting it mildly.

The game's mechanics are simple whether you play street, global, or cosmic, and the fact that you're not limited by JUST what's in the book as far at character types makes it take your creativity to a whole new level; the only limits here are those of your imagination, and what your GM will allow. Over all, the game strikes me as a combo of Mage; the Ascension, Call of Cthulu, with a healthy dose Jung,(the man, not the game:) thrown in.

The trick here is that the simple game mechanics may not work for game players who come from "traditional" statistic laden systems that simply require a dice roll to solve most problems; players must think originally, creativly, and the game indulges you to go places that some folks may fear to tread, so it may not be for everyone. It'll be a grand and enjoyable challenge for both GM's as well as players.

Myself, I like it a lot, as it challenges more than just a few traditional ideas about life, the universe and everything; be prepared to be changed by this game, if ye dare!!!

What I like best about this system is how flexible it is. The characters are broken up into simple yet realistic attributes, and the skills are virtually limitless. All dice rolls are percentile based, with simple but clever twists for decreasing or increasing difficulty. I was delighted to see a system that included 'soul' as one of the attributes, and that focused as much on the mental/psychological development of characters as it did other aspects (if not more). Perhaps the best part about this system is its portability. You can keep the book's setting or write your own, keep or ditch the (very innovative) magic system, increase or decrease the power of the characters with great ease. As long as your goal is more good storytelling than dice rolling, you should enjoy this book. On top of it all, the writing is excellent, and the authors' sense of humor surprisingly engaging for such a grim setting.

This is one of the most fun RPGs I've had the pleasure of GM'ing. It's dark, fun, sometimes humorous, and overall a blast to play.

How should I start praising this glorious game?

The rules provide a method for creating characters with life and depth beyond that which you can obtain by simply rolling dice or allocating dots. Part of the creation system requires players to form motivations for their characters, and what causes them fear and pride, all having specific in-game effets.

The game system itself is perfect. UA's simple dice rolling system doesn't bog down roleplay. One percentile roll incorporates both the accuracy of the action and the resistance of its target. The magic system is a thing of beauty - very well balanced, wide open, and less subject to endless debate than Mage: the Ascension.

The framing of the world in which the game takes place is frightening, exciting, and written exquisitely. Modern day games are the easiest to play, and the illuminati-type power struggle outlined in the core book provides enough variation for a game master to make any type of story he likes. Unlike many games that like to leave no world details to its players' imaginations, this world-system is written more to let you fill in the blanks or choose what works best for you. In this way the world is very adaptive - The storylines need not have anything to do with the struggle itself, yet can still incorporate its elements.

The word commonly used to describe this system is "gritty", but it's such perfected, polished grit that it might be called glass. The rules lawyer or powermonger will find no happiness in this game, however, if you love to role play, you'll have a new yardstick by which to measure all your other games.