The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I was lucky enough to get Ken Hite's recommendation on this game at Gen Con, otherwise I never would have heard of it. While I haven't had the chance to playtest this out yet, the rules look fine, and even if they aren't, the background is immensely lootable.

In short, if you enjoy games or fiction about occult conspiracies and shadowy goings-on, get this game. Specifically, if you enjoy Mage (either the White Wolf game or the Matt Wagner comic), Grant Morrison comics, or Tim Powers novels, the setting won't disappoint you. The rules are quite loose; it's not as fuzzy as Over the Edge, but it's in that neighborhood, where the system is there to give a loose skeleton to the story. If you're looking for a realistic, detailed ruleset, keep on looking. However, the book is a good background and a darn entertaining read in and of itself. I give it a 9 out of 10, but then again I have eccentric tastes.

Format: I won't say too much here because Archon's printer screwed up and they didn't have any copies at Gen Con (in fact, they're still waiting for a ship date), so I'm working from a black-and-white Xeroxed version they were selling for half price. One cute thing I noticed was that there are two dovetailing intro stories woven through the course of the book, and each section of the story has page numbers directing you to the previous and following installments. That's such a useful and common-sense idea that I'm astounded I've never seen it used before.

A quick note on the prose style; this book is written in a breezy, conversational tone that never ends up obstructing the actual game-mechanical information, so not only does the game seem enjoyable to play, the book itself is an enjoyable read. The last game I felt that way about was Feng Shui, and I think UA is somewhat FS-influenced (Robin Laws and FS do get cited in the indicia, actually). Stolze and Tynes mesh really well together, too; the book reads with one consistent voice.

Chapters 1&2: These are pretty much the intro sections of the book; Chapter 1 is more for the beginning gamer, with the standard what-is roleplaying sections (and Tynes provides the neatest one-sentence description I've ever seen, by way of Greg Stafford) and some remarks on the three essential flavors they see the game leaning towards: Street-level (where PCs focus on achieving immediate goals, and the Big Questions either don't get asked or are irrelevant to their daily lives), Global-level (PCs are more aware of movers-and-shakers outside their immediate vicinity, and also focus on the ramifications of their and others' actions), and Cosmic-level (which is basically Illuminated, where *everything* can be a manifestation of higher forces, and the secrets of the universe are yesterday's news), although they also note that a given campaign could well go up and down levels frequently.

Chapter 2 lets us in on the forces that make the UA world tick, and the people looking to control or at least hitch a ride with them. To be vague (since I don't want to totally spoil the fun of discovering things in play), the world is caught between its desire for order and its tendency towards entropy. What this means is that the world destroys itself every so often, but the actions of its inhabitants create a new one each time, at least so far. In every cycle there is a set number of people who embody humanity's best and worst natures; the archetypes. Once all the archetypes have been established, the world ends and a new one is born from their karma; so if the current world is so messed up that the majority of the archetypes are depraved or negative, the next world will be even *worse*.

Right now the ranks of the archetypes are just about full, and those in the know are pretty sure the end is coming soon, but no one knows just how far off it is. The occult underground is reaching a critical mass of backstabbing and power-lust, and it may just take one more spark to set the whole powderkeg off. So from a street-level POV, things are heating up, but a smart guy could take advantage of the chaos, the global view is that no matter how much power you have, there are a bunch of other groups out there with just as much, who may or may not be your pals, and cosmically this iteration of the world is reaching its end, so this is your last chance to try and make certain that the next world is a better place. I think those concepts have enough possibilities in them for me to get a good few campaigns going, and that's the main thing I look for in my RPG buys.

Chapters 3-6: The rules portion of the game. Mechanically this game is dead easy-- I thought Feng Shui had simple mechanics until I saw this. The entire game is percentile-based; no rolls of any other kind. To do something, just roll as high as you can while still under your skill or stat level. 00 is a botch, 01 is a critical success (mind you, they give them goofy names I'm not going to bother typing), and matched rolls (22, 55, 77, etc) are either great or terrible depending on whether it was a success or not.

However, if you're dealing with something that you are passionate about or obsessed with (more next paragraph), you can flip-flop your roll-- swap the values of the ones and tens dice and turn a failure of 91 into a success of 19, say. In combat, a successful hand-to-hand attack does damage equal to the sum of the dice, and a firearms attack does damage equal to the percentile roll (so an attack roll of 34 would do 7 points of damage if it was hand-to-hand, and 34 points if it was from a gun).

That's it, aside from a few bells and whistles for obsessional martial artists, and some common and useful cinematic maneuvers. In general, unarmed combat isn't lethal and gunshots are extremely lethal, but medical attention (quick treatment, anyway) can patch you up more-or-less ok, eventually. This is meant to be a fast-paced, intrigue game with a heavy dose of action along with the plot; these may not be the world's best rules for an action game, but they certainly don't impede the flow of combat. This is probably much too abstract for some people, but I tend towards the loose end of the rules spectrum anyway, so I like it fine.

Character creation shows a definite influence from Feng Shui and Over the Edge (which is a good thing in my book); PCs have stats in Body, Speed, Mind, and Soul (which governs the emotions, charisma, and magic), and have percentile-based skills as well. Each stat has a descriptor added to it (for example, is your Body high because you're "Wiry", "Ripped", or just a "High Pain Threshold"?) mainly for flavor. "Skills," however, are more like "A trait the character is good at"-- sample skills include Firearms, Hold Your Liquor, Photographic Memory, and Fast Draw. Each skill covers the physical, mental, and social aspects of that skill-- say, if you had a Hold Your Liquor skill, you'd roll it when actually drinking, when trying to recall alcohol-related knowledge, and when trying to find contacts in bars or wine-tasting circles.

Also, you should pick your character's Rage, Fear, and Nobility passions (that is, specify the PC's pet peeve, worst fear, and the thing that brings out the best in her) and a skill to be obsessed with (which should obviously be a skill central to the character concept-- and if you want to have magic, you must make your magic skill your obsession). This makes chargen more centered on personality than numbers, which ideally leads to more well-rounded personalities and a game that emphasizes stories over dice-rolling (which is also borne out in combat-- the players know how much damage their PCs can take, but only the GM knows exactly how hurt they currently are in numbers, which makes the players reliant on the GM's descriptions).

I'll note in passing that the combat chapter has a nice section on the ramifications of firearm legalities (for the US, anyway) before moving on to the sanity mechanic. This is, I think a much more elegant way of depicting the effect of mental stresses on PCs than I've yet seen-- it beats Vampire's Humanity hands down, and is much more useful in modeling average or only slightly traumatized people than Kult's Mental Balance. It also gleefully deconstructs one of gaming's oldest assumptions, that antisocial behavior is only bad when done by NPCs. I'll quote one of the sections from Chapter 1 that made me buy this book:

"Typical gaming campaigns have the characters committing murder, burglary, and any number of other acts that most societies-- even the societies in the campaigns themselves-- would consider reprehensible. Yet there's usually some sort of dubious justification for almost any crime the characters might commit. Kill three people in a bus station? They had the devil's taint! Break into a mansion and steal valuable old books? Their owner was an evil sorceror! Burn down a building full of expensive equipment? It was a mind-control microwave laser that programmed people to assassinate politicians!

"In the real world, people who follow this kind of logic wind up in asylums.

"In the name of plausibility, we try to avoid these kinds of dubious rationales in UA. Your characters have free will, and choose their paths according to their personal beliefs and goals. If your character occasionally kills someone, it'll be up to you to justify why this is ok-- and if you can't, the game's rules will penalize your character by hardening him to the notion of murder. If you're playing a sociopath, even unintentionally, then a sociopath is what your character will become. Your actions have consequences for your character."

What this means in practice is that each UA character has ten "hardened" spaces and five "failed" spaces for each of the following stimuli: Violence (which includes both witnessing and committing it), the Unnatural, Isolation, Helplessness, and the Self (that is, doing things that violate your own self-image). Stress challenges are rated from 1-10 (to pick an example, a rank-1 Helplessness challenge is on the level of "Unintentionally humiliate yourself in public", while a rank-9 is like "Watch someone you love die because you tried to save them and failed.") and are represented by a roll against the PC's Mind stat. Succeed and you get a hardened mark, fail and you freak out (player's choice as to fight or flight, based on the stimulus and how the PC would react) and get a failed mark.

You automatically pass any challenges equal to or less than your number of hardened marks in that gauge (So if you have 4 hardened marks against violence, it would take a rank-5 stress to make you roll), and if you fill all five failed marks in a gauge, you develop a mental disorder (also player's choice). Obviously going crazy is bad, but becoming callous is going insane as well, just more socially acceptable; the more hardened you are in a gauge, the more noticeably abnormal your reactions are to that stimulus, and if you ever get all ten hardened notches in all five gauges, you can't use your passions or obsessions any more (your emotions are so well walled off you can't give much of a damn about anything any more).

Starting PCs can pick some hardened notches, but have to take a few failed ones of they do. Therapy can help you scratch off marks (both failed and hardened), but the PC has to actually want help and get it. I think this system is useful, elegant, models different kinds of mental strains and abnormalities well, and also forces players to consider exactly how their PCs actions affect their well-being, which can only improve role-play. This is a two-edged sword; a group that doesn't care about this kind of psychodrama won't get the most out of it and will likely crock the system. I think it's a great idea and well executed, but it needs mature players who are willing to consider their characters' internal lives.

Chapters 7-14: This is basically the GM's turf; campaign advice, important NPCs, and the magic system and all its goodies and ghoulies. This is also the bit I want to give the least away about, because the occult portion of this game is, I think, sheer dead brilliance and I'm loath to give away any of the gags. I'll just hit a highlight or two.

The magic system itself is somewhat descended from Ars Magica (magic-workers know a few formulaic spells that are reliable but have relatively narrow effects, but can also use random magic on the spur of the moment that is less effective but lets them use a wider sphere of effect), but with its own twists. Spells are powered by charges, which are of three types, Minor (the base unit of magic. In general, getting a minor charge is only a minor hardship), Significant (for powering bigger juju. Working up one of these is either a major hardship or some kind of minor but permanent sacrifice), and Major (plot devices. Good luck generating one [for example, one school requires you to touch the actual face of the moon], but if you do the sky's the limit). Different spells require different amounts of different charges (so one spell might require just one minor charge, but another, more powerful one might want several, or maybe some significant charges).

There are eight major schools of magic in the book (and there are guidelines for making your own, since part of the point of UA is that power is what you make of it, and a strong will and good imagination can be just as effective as old, time-tested methods), each with its own methods of generating charges, sphere of influence, and taboos (violating your school's taboo makes you lose *all* your charges). The schools are versatile, fun, and totally irreverent to "occult tradition"-- it's a big modern world out there, and inscribing pentagrams may have worked in the old days, and may work still, but you have to move with the times or be left behind.

I'll use the school of Plutomancy as an example. A Plutomancer has influence over acquisition, even acquiring intangibles (like information or luck), and somewhat over control. They generate minor charges by getting a sum of $100-$1000 all at once, generate significant charges by getting $1000 or more in a lump sum, and can theoretically work up a major charge by acquiring a hundred million dollars, also in one sum. Plutomancers swim in cash, but the catch is that they are forbidden to spend it-- any time they make a payment of $1000 or more, they lose any charges they happen to be carrying. Thus, they tend to be extremely rich misers. Plutomancer formula spells can let you divine someone's future from the money in their wallet, instantly know what a given person would require to perform a certain action, put a hex on a dollar bill so you can scry on whoever's carrying it, or even make people hurt or kill themselves.

The rest of the book is as inventive in mangling myths and updating the occult for the modern era (for example, the Magic Bullet that killed JFK may not have been magical then, but it definitely is now). Even nonmagicians can get into the occult fun-- it is possible to emulate one of the archetypes, and the more you act like it, the more of its attributes you take on (represented as a skill in that archetype that lets you do different things at different levels). However, there's only a limited amount of avatar to go around, and if you want to advance past a certain point, you need to kill or depose the person who's currently most like that archetype. And it's possible for you to act more like the archetype than the archetype itself, which makes *you* the new archetype... Anyone who's read Tim Powers' Last Call can see the campaign fodder in this.

Appendices A&B: Appendix A is a rundown of the well-known figures in the occult world (well-known doesn't always mean most powerful, either), and Appendix B is the low point of the book, a sample adventure. While it isn't a bad adventure per se, it is very poor as an introduction, as basically confusing things happen and players aren't likely to understand what happened even after the session. UA is a great game, but running this scenario first might turn new players off.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Unknown Armies
Author: Greg Stolze (holycrow@mindspring.com) and John Tynes (rev@blarg.net) Category: game Company/Publisher: Archon Gaming (archongame@aol.com) Cost: $21.95 Capsule Review by Joe Iglesias on 09/04/98. Genre tags: none	I was lucky enough to get Ken Hite's recommendation on this game at Gen Con, otherwise I never would have heard of it. While I haven't had the chance to playtest this out yet, the rules look fine, and even if they aren't, the background is immensely lootable. In short, if you enjoy games or fiction about occult conspiracies and shadowy goings-on, get this game. Specifically, if you enjoy Mage (either the White Wolf game or the Matt Wagner comic), Grant Morrison comics, or Tim Powers novels, the setting won't disappoint you. The rules are quite loose; it's not as fuzzy as Over the Edge, but it's in that neighborhood, where the system is there to give a loose skeleton to the story. If you're looking for a realistic, detailed ruleset, keep on looking. However, the book is a good background and a darn entertaining read in and of itself. I give it a 9 out of 10, but then again I have eccentric tastes. Format: I won't say too much here because Archon's printer screwed up and they didn't have any copies at Gen Con (in fact, they're still waiting for a ship date), so I'm working from a black-and-white Xeroxed version they were selling for half price. One cute thing I noticed was that there are two dovetailing intro stories woven through the course of the book, and each section of the story has page numbers directing you to the previous and following installments. That's such a useful and common-sense idea that I'm astounded I've never seen it used before. A quick note on the prose style; this book is written in a breezy, conversational tone that never ends up obstructing the actual game-mechanical information, so not only does the game seem enjoyable to play, the book itself is an enjoyable read. The last game I felt that way about was Feng Shui, and I think UA is somewhat FS-influenced (Robin Laws and FS do get cited in the indicia, actually). Stolze and Tynes mesh really well together, too; the book reads with one consistent voice. Chapters 1&2: These are pretty much the intro sections of the book; Chapter 1 is more for the beginning gamer, with the standard what-is roleplaying sections (and Tynes provides the neatest one-sentence description I've ever seen, by way of Greg Stafford) and some remarks on the three essential flavors they see the game leaning towards: Street-level (where PCs focus on achieving immediate goals, and the Big Questions either don't get asked or are irrelevant to their daily lives), Global-level (PCs are more aware of movers-and-shakers outside their immediate vicinity, and also focus on the ramifications of their and others' actions), and Cosmic-level (which is basically Illuminated, where everything can be a manifestation of higher forces, and the secrets of the universe are yesterday's news), although they also note that a given campaign could well go up and down levels frequently. Chapter 2 lets us in on the forces that make the UA world tick, and the people looking to control or at least hitch a ride with them. To be vague (since I don't want to totally spoil the fun of discovering things in play), the world is caught between its desire for order and its tendency towards entropy. What this means is that the world destroys itself every so often, but the actions of its inhabitants create a new one each time, at least so far. In every cycle there is a set number of people who embody humanity's best and worst natures; the archetypes. Once all the archetypes have been established, the world ends and a new one is born from their karma; so if the current world is so messed up that the majority of the archetypes are depraved or negative, the next world will be even worse. Right now the ranks of the archetypes are just about full, and those in the know are pretty sure the end is coming soon, but no one knows just how far off it is. The occult underground is reaching a critical mass of backstabbing and power-lust, and it may just take one more spark to set the whole powderkeg off. So from a street-level POV, things are heating up, but a smart guy could take advantage of the chaos, the global view is that no matter how much power you have, there are a bunch of other groups out there with just as much, who may or may not be your pals, and cosmically this iteration of the world is reaching its end, so this is your last chance to try and make certain that the next world is a better place. I think those concepts have enough possibilities in them for me to get a good few campaigns going, and that's the main thing I look for in my RPG buys. Chapters 3-6: The rules portion of the game. Mechanically this game is dead easy-- I thought Feng Shui had simple mechanics until I saw this. The entire game is percentile-based; no rolls of any other kind. To do something, just roll as high as you can while still under your skill or stat level. 00 is a botch, 01 is a critical success (mind you, they give them goofy names I'm not going to bother typing), and matched rolls (22, 55, 77, etc) are either great or terrible depending on whether it was a success or not. However, if you're dealing with something that you are passionate about or obsessed with (more next paragraph), you can flip-flop your roll-- swap the values of the ones and tens dice and turn a failure of 91 into a success of 19, say. In combat, a successful hand-to-hand attack does damage equal to the sum of the dice, and a firearms attack does damage equal to the percentile roll (so an attack roll of 34 would do 7 points of damage if it was hand-to-hand, and 34 points if it was from a gun). That's it, aside from a few bells and whistles for obsessional martial artists, and some common and useful cinematic maneuvers. In general, unarmed combat isn't lethal and gunshots are extremely lethal, but medical attention (quick treatment, anyway) can patch you up more-or-less ok, eventually. This is meant to be a fast-paced, intrigue game with a heavy dose of action along with the plot; these may not be the world's best rules for an action game, but they certainly don't impede the flow of combat. This is probably much too abstract for some people, but I tend towards the loose end of the rules spectrum anyway, so I like it fine. Character creation shows a definite influence from Feng Shui and Over the Edge (which is a good thing in my book); PCs have stats in Body, Speed, Mind, and Soul (which governs the emotions, charisma, and magic), and have percentile-based skills as well. Each stat has a descriptor added to it (for example, is your Body high because you're "Wiry", "Ripped", or just a "High Pain Threshold"?) mainly for flavor. "Skills," however, are more like "A trait the character is good at"-- sample skills include Firearms, Hold Your Liquor, Photographic Memory, and Fast Draw. Each skill covers the physical, mental, and social aspects of that skill-- say, if you had a Hold Your Liquor skill, you'd roll it when actually drinking, when trying to recall alcohol-related knowledge, and when trying to find contacts in bars or wine-tasting circles. Also, you should pick your character's Rage, Fear, and Nobility passions (that is, specify the PC's pet peeve, worst fear, and the thing that brings out the best in her) and a skill to be obsessed with (which should obviously be a skill central to the character concept-- and if you want to have magic, you must make your magic skill your obsession). This makes chargen more centered on personality than numbers, which ideally leads to more well-rounded personalities and a game that emphasizes stories over dice-rolling (which is also borne out in combat-- the players know how much damage their PCs can take, but only the GM knows exactly how hurt they currently are in numbers, which makes the players reliant on the GM's descriptions). I'll note in passing that the combat chapter has a nice section on the ramifications of firearm legalities (for the US, anyway) before moving on to the sanity mechanic. This is, I think a much more elegant way of depicting the effect of mental stresses on PCs than I've yet seen-- it beats Vampire's Humanity hands down, and is much more useful in modeling average or only slightly traumatized people than Kult's Mental Balance. It also gleefully deconstructs one of gaming's oldest assumptions, that antisocial behavior is only bad when done by NPCs. I'll quote one of the sections from Chapter 1 that made me buy this book: "Typical gaming campaigns have the characters committing murder, burglary, and any number of other acts that most societies-- even the societies in the campaigns themselves-- would consider reprehensible. Yet there's usually some sort of dubious justification for almost any crime the characters might commit. Kill three people in a bus station? They had the devil's taint! Break into a mansion and steal valuable old books? Their owner was an evil sorceror! Burn down a building full of expensive equipment? It was a mind-control microwave laser that programmed people to assassinate politicians! "In the real world, people who follow this kind of logic wind up in asylums. "In the name of plausibility, we try to avoid these kinds of dubious rationales in UA. Your characters have free will, and choose their paths according to their personal beliefs and goals. If your character occasionally kills someone, it'll be up to you to justify why this is ok-- and if you can't, the game's rules will penalize your character by hardening him to the notion of murder. If you're playing a sociopath, even unintentionally, then a sociopath is what your character will become. Your actions have consequences for your character." What this means in practice is that each UA character has ten "hardened" spaces and five "failed" spaces for each of the following stimuli: Violence (which includes both witnessing and committing it), the Unnatural, Isolation, Helplessness, and the Self (that is, doing things that violate your own self-image). Stress challenges are rated from 1-10 (to pick an example, a rank-1 Helplessness challenge is on the level of "Unintentionally humiliate yourself in public", while a rank-9 is like "Watch someone you love die because you tried to save them and failed.") and are represented by a roll against the PC's Mind stat. Succeed and you get a hardened mark, fail and you freak out (player's choice as to fight or flight, based on the stimulus and how the PC would react) and get a failed mark. You automatically pass any challenges equal to or less than your number of hardened marks in that gauge (So if you have 4 hardened marks against violence, it would take a rank-5 stress to make you roll), and if you fill all five failed marks in a gauge, you develop a mental disorder (also player's choice). Obviously going crazy is bad, but becoming callous is going insane as well, just more socially acceptable; the more hardened you are in a gauge, the more noticeably abnormal your reactions are to that stimulus, and if you ever get all ten hardened notches in all five gauges, you can't use your passions or obsessions any more (your emotions are so well walled off you can't give much of a damn about anything any more). Starting PCs can pick some hardened notches, but have to take a few failed ones of they do. Therapy can help you scratch off marks (both failed and hardened), but the PC has to actually want help and get it. I think this system is useful, elegant, models different kinds of mental strains and abnormalities well, and also forces players to consider exactly how their PCs actions affect their well-being, which can only improve role-play. This is a two-edged sword; a group that doesn't care about this kind of psychodrama won't get the most out of it and will likely crock the system. I think it's a great idea and well executed, but it needs mature players who are willing to consider their characters' internal lives. Chapters 7-14: This is basically the GM's turf; campaign advice, important NPCs, and the magic system and all its goodies and ghoulies. This is also the bit I want to give the least away about, because the occult portion of this game is, I think, sheer dead brilliance and I'm loath to give away any of the gags. I'll just hit a highlight or two. The magic system itself is somewhat descended from Ars Magica (magic-workers know a few formulaic spells that are reliable but have relatively narrow effects, but can also use random magic on the spur of the moment that is less effective but lets them use a wider sphere of effect), but with its own twists. Spells are powered by charges, which are of three types, Minor (the base unit of magic. In general, getting a minor charge is only a minor hardship), Significant (for powering bigger juju. Working up one of these is either a major hardship or some kind of minor but permanent sacrifice), and Major (plot devices. Good luck generating one [for example, one school requires you to touch the actual face of the moon], but if you do the sky's the limit). Different spells require different amounts of different charges (so one spell might require just one minor charge, but another, more powerful one might want several, or maybe some significant charges). There are eight major schools of magic in the book (and there are guidelines for making your own, since part of the point of UA is that power is what you make of it, and a strong will and good imagination can be just as effective as old, time-tested methods), each with its own methods of generating charges, sphere of influence, and taboos (violating your school's taboo makes you lose all your charges). The schools are versatile, fun, and totally irreverent to "occult tradition"-- it's a big modern world out there, and inscribing pentagrams may have worked in the old days, and may work still, but you have to move with the times or be left behind. I'll use the school of Plutomancy as an example. A Plutomancer has influence over acquisition, even acquiring intangibles (like information or luck), and somewhat over control. They generate minor charges by getting a sum of $100-$1000 all at once, generate significant charges by getting $1000 or more in a lump sum, and can theoretically work up a major charge by acquiring a hundred million dollars, also in one sum. Plutomancers swim in cash, but the catch is that they are forbidden to spend it-- any time they make a payment of $1000 or more, they lose any charges they happen to be carrying. Thus, they tend to be extremely rich misers. Plutomancer formula spells can let you divine someone's future from the money in their wallet, instantly know what a given person would require to perform a certain action, put a hex on a dollar bill so you can scry on whoever's carrying it, or even make people hurt or kill themselves. The rest of the book is as inventive in mangling myths and updating the occult for the modern era (for example, the Magic Bullet that killed JFK may not have been magical then, but it definitely is now). Even nonmagicians can get into the occult fun-- it is possible to emulate one of the archetypes, and the more you act like it, the more of its attributes you take on (represented as a skill in that archetype that lets you do different things at different levels). However, there's only a limited amount of avatar to go around, and if you want to advance past a certain point, you need to kill or depose the person who's currently most like that archetype. And it's possible for you to act more like the archetype than the archetype itself, which makes you the new archetype... Anyone who's read Tim Powers' Last Call can see the campaign fodder in this. Appendices A&B: Appendix A is a rundown of the well-known figures in the occult world (well-known doesn't always mean most powerful, either), and Appendix B is the low point of the book, a sample adventure. While it isn't a bad adventure per se, it is very poor as an introduction, as basically confusing things happen and players aren't likely to understand what happened even after the session. UA is a great game, but running this scenario first might turn new players off. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Unknown Armies