Salvaging Unknown Armies

[Knight]

I dislike Unknown Armies. I really, really dislike it. But, I think I've hit on a way of getting a good game out of it - use the Dying Earth system. It just fits, somehow.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Knight,

Give us some more information, so this thread doesn't break down into a "what I like" fest.

What happened when you played Unknown Armies?

What prompted you to play it in the first place? Was that expectation not met?

Did you play the Dying Earth version with the same people?

And that sort of thing. It's the Actual Play forum, after all.

Best,
Ron

[Mytholder]

What Ron said. Doubly. :smile:

And Dying Earth? What the hell? Both UA and Dying Earth are games I like (UA's one of my Big Games), but they're very very far apart, and I really can't see how Dying Earth's system would suit.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, and I'll go Mythie one better and say that the system is a very important part of the feel and style of UA. In fact, if you were to use another system, I think that you'd have altered it in such a way as to make it nigh unrecognizable. The setting is just not all that distinct without things like Madness meters to drive it.

Hey, I know what's wrong with Sorcerer! It would be better if you used GURPS! :wink:

(Sorry Ron)

Mike

[Ian O'Rourke]

I'd agree, without the core of the UA system tracking the progress of the characters status in terms of madness and their reaction to violence.

In fact, though I've never read Dying Earth this system has nothing to do with the moral (or otherwise) status of one's 'soul' and is all to do with driving witty exchanges? It don't seem like a horror game to me :smile:

It brings up an interesting question though, how many games with settings/premise have that rippled through to their mechanics.

I love the whole Fading Suns setting, but it seems very divorced from its system?

Interesting.

[Knight]

I think that you'd have altered it in such a way as to make it nigh unrecognizable.

Well, that's sort of the point.  What I expected UA to be was very different from the actual article.  I felt it lacked focus.  Using the Dying Earth system and playing it as a black comedy seems to solve that problem.

[ This Message was edited by: Knight on 2001-10-08 11:39 ]

[Ron Edwards]

Knight ... I'm really interested, because I think that Unknown Armies is quite surprising in GNS terms. I consider it to be Simulationist with its focus on Exploring Character. Thus I could see, *IF* one were to bring Narrativist leanings to it, it could turn out to be disappointing. I could also see that *IF* one were to bring Setting-Exploration as the priority (another way to be Simulationist), that it could turn out to be disappointing.

But your account so far leaves us totally in the dark. We have a whole thread here - obviously people are interested. Help us out! I repeat: what actually happened in play? What expectations did you bring to play?

Best,
Ron

[Knight]

Knight ... I'm really interested, because I think that Unknown Armies is quite surprising in GNS terms


I don't believe that the GNS can be applied to written game materials* in that manner. It's a poor metaphor, but it only works in relation to a process, rather than a program. As such, I don't think I can discuss that usefully.



As for the actual game, it was a pleasant surprise that it worked so well.  I'm normally wary of games that specifically set out to achieve comedy, but Dying Earth's approach - especially the catchphrase thing - came through in play.  

There was a definite stand-off from the characters on the player's behalf, but not to the drastic extent I normally find in comedy games. The modern-day occult setting was a lot more familiar than the basic Dying Earth one, which seems to cause a tendency towards random and wacky amongst my group. Overall, the game had a kind of caper-movie feel to it that I really enjoyed.

[Mike Holmes]

Were you somehow under the impression that UA was supposed to be humorous? From reading what you've written, it seems that you might be saying that you found the game better when it had a humorous feel rather than the horrifying one that UA provides. Am I misreading you? UA is very widely known to be a game of gruesomeness, horror, all sorts of things; but comedy is definitely *not* one of them.

A comic UA would seem to me to be a very strange idea. The game seems to me to be about personal horror. What you have created can't possibly be; you even stated that the players had become partially detatched from their characters. I'm not saying that what you've created couldn't be fun to play, but in what way is it still Unknown Armies? The setting? The setting is designed to promote all sorts of occult introspection and violent interpersonal interaction (which is strongly supported by the system as it stands). What's funny about that?

Lacks focus? It seems that the game focuses sharply on the personal horror thing, much more sharply than the average game. What does it focus on using Dying Earths?

Mike

[Epoch]

I suspect that the "humor-oriented system" that Knight was referring to was Dying Earth's, not UA's.

[Ron Edwards]

Mike H,

Oh, I think I can see Knight's point, or if I don't, at least I can address the issue of humor in Unknown Armies from my perspective. Black-humor, gallows-humor, and most particularly a lot of "clarifying absurdity" in a Brechtian sense, all seem like fruitful approaches to the ... well, setting isn't the right word, shall we say, spectrum of the human psyche represented by the game.

The way I'd see this happening would produce kind of an Over the Edge / Unknown Armies blend (which I consider to be very easy and historically supported, conceptually) - and I can also see that the mechanics of Unknown Armies would resist such a usage. So Knight's point is making more sense to me each time he clarifies it.

I'd sure like to see a summary or description of the Dying Earth variant he used for playing it.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

As I said, it's not that I don't think that the game would work. In fact, given that I'm not interested too much in playing UA because of the nature of some of he subject matter, I'd probably be more likely to play Knight's game. But why did he even start with UA if he didn't want to play anything like it? What he's done takes something so essential out of UA that it is essentially gutted. He's just playing with bits of it's dead corpse. He'd probably have done as well if he had just made a setting from scratch.

I'm guess I'm just sort of objecting to the notion that this is even remotely Unknown Armies anymore. What he has sounds like something completely unique. He should have said that he played a game of his own devising that used the Dying Earths system to run the Unknown Armies setting, and, boy, does it work great. The problem is the implication oin his original statement that UA needs fixing, that somehow it is flawed, and that his method corrects the flaw.

But this notion is something akin to the idea that a way to fix a dog is to take the front half off and replace it with a cat's front half, and then say that that is how the dog should have been created. I'm not saying that the dat (cog?) wouldn't be an interesting creature, I'm just saying that it's not a dog. And that I'd still like dogs (at least conceptually, even if I won't have one in my own home).

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Mike,

What you say would be true if we had some idea of what his original take and expectations on Unknown Armies was, in more detail - but we never really got that, so in my opinion there isn't much to say.

In the Publishing forum, a while ago, we had a big discussion about expectations for RPGs. I think that remains a central issue and it should get some more time, one of these days.

I agree with you (or with what I think you are saying) that one cannot blame an RPG for "not being what I expected," unless something about the game's packaging or introductory content is demonstrably misleading.

Best,
Ron

[Jason L Blair]

I got the whole "not what I expected" thing from people when I started talking more in-depth about Little Fears in the fora and IRC channels and whatnot. In fact, I still get it from people. What I find funny is that I haven't done anything, to my knowledge at least, to give people the impression that Little Fears is anything other than... well, what it is.