[UA] Greg Porter review

[John Tynes]

For the curious and the damned, here's Greg Porter's review of UA from 
last summer.

Best Line: "If you can't understand the game world thoroughly by the time 
you're done going through the book, it's because you're illiterate or 
terminally dense."

Thing That Most Resembles A New School Of Gaming Magick: "Kiloword Cost 
Equivalent. Non-art page count times words on a full page of text divided 
by 1000, divided by cover price."

---

Unknown Armies
Published by Archon Gaming Inc.
Designed by Greg Stolze and John Tynes
Price US$21.95

This review ©1998 Greg Porter. It may be distributed freely in print, on 
disk or electronic network provided no charge is applied to the end user.

Disclaimer: This is a ³karma review². I got a comped copy at GenCon and 
this is payback. I haven't had a chance to run or play the system, so 
look at this as an overview rather than a hands-on field test.

First impression: Hefty. 224 pages for 22 bucks. Competently done color 
cover (with wasted spaghetti).

Genre: ³Transcendental horror². What this means is a modern-day world 
with magic emerging as a force, the cosmos beginning to strain at the 
seams and the immediate possibility of the end of everything as we know 
it. Shadowrun it ain't. Infinite potential, infinite risk.

Complexity (1-5): Average (3). Most of the mechanics are simple (2), but 
it has some advanced concepts (4). Some mature themes (³recommended for 
mature readers² is on the back cover), but given the authors, what else 
would you expect?

Flavor quote: ³...Boris coughs up blood from the gunshot you delivered to 
him. ³You think you've got me, don't you?², he asks raggedly. ³You're 
wrong. I'm going to ascend now. I can feel it.² You snort derisively. ³Oh 
yeah? What's your archetype, sucker?² Boris smiles grimly. ³The innocent 
man, killed for a Œhigher cause¹². Before your eyes, he vanishes.

Art & Layout: Line art and computer-mainipulated photographs. Nothing 
special one way or the other. A small font size generates about 900 words 
per page, for a quite respectable KCE* of around 7.1.

Background material: Lots. Specifically, about 40 pages of the 224 are 
game mechanics, character generation and combat. The rest is background. 
World background, magic, game-mastering, and so on. If you can't 
understand the game world thoroughly by the time you're done going 
through the book, it's because you're illiterate or terminally dense.

Mechanics: 
General - Simple. Character generation is a matter of alloting points 
between four attributes and picking some skills. No skill list for all 
practical purposes, just pick what you can do. Call it ³martial arts², or 
³can o'whoop ass², doesn't matter, does the same thing. Combat? Simple. A 
percentile system with lots of critical hits and misses (roughly 10% of 
rolls are especially good or bad). Get used to really good things and 
really bad things happening several times a play session. Expect the 
unusual, not the realistic or even the consistent. Time will tell whether 
this works in the game's favor or against it. Magic? Wierd rituals, 
backfires and a lot of self-abuse. It fits with the game world and isn't 
hard to figure out in game terms. Magic power has to be paid for somehow, 
and you only get out what you put in. Want the power to manipulate the 
flesh? It's going to hurt...

High points - Magic, psychological stress and the mundane repurcussions 
of things from magic to getting caught with a concealed firearm are all 
handled specifically rather than glossed over. I especially liked the 
psychological stress factors, a sort of souped up version of Call of 
Cthulhu's sanity system. Characters run the risk of becoming either 
callous or unhinged in a variety of ways. A person who becomes callous is 
on the way to becoming a sociopath, for instance unable to understand or 
care about the suffering of others. On the other hand, a person unhinged 
by exposure to violence could freeze or freak out when confronted. Being 
able to function in the presence of the extreme is good, but taking your 
tolerance too far is bad.

Low points - I'm not particularly thrilled with the combat system. Those 
who know my style know I prefer the realism end of the scale. You *can* 
have systems that are simple *and* realistic, but this isn't one of them. 
Percentile dice for skills seem an excessive amount of detail for such a 
simple system. Also, weapon damage is based on your skill roll. The 
higher you roll without exceeding your hit chance, the more damage you 
do. The problem? An unskilled person can empty a magnum revolver into 
most characters and do negligble damage, even if they hit all six times 
(If my skill is 10%, the most damage I can do shy of a critical hit is 9 
points. If my skill is 60%, I can do up to 59 points per hit). Damage is 
similarly skewed, but perhaps it fits with the fast and furious ³get back 
in the action² style of the game. Odds are that you can *completely 
negate* many gunshot wounds if you can get to an emergency room within an 
hour of the injury. On the other hand, the rules *do* remind you that 
hospitals are required to report gunshot wounds to the police, and there 
also have *permanent*  injury effects...

A minor peeve is the amount of wasted space. Every chapter (and there are 
14) has *two* pages dedicated to less than full-page pieces of art (right 
and left facing pages). Add in Appendix A, and that is 30 pages devoted 
just to stylish chapter intros. I can't bitch *too* much, however, as the 
game price is reasonable, and the small text size and reasonable margins 
allow a lot of information in the remaining pages.

Recommendation - On the newly minted Porter review scale of 1 to 5:

Style:
Layout and art: n/a (I have a pre-press copy, which lacks both table of 
contents and index, but it is still fairly easy to find things. With ToC 
and index, give it a 3, otherwise a 2.)
Background: Cool (4)
Background support: Lots of flava (5)
Overall: Cool (4)

Substance:
Character mechanics: Average (3)
Support mechanics: Cool (4)
Combat mechanics: So-so at best (2)
Overall: Average (3)

On the subjective ³Do I like this game?² scale: Yes.

*Kiloword Cost Equivalent. Non-art page count times words on a full page 
of text divided by 1000, divided by cover price. Effectively, if 1000 
words were crammed into each page and all art were removed, how many 
pages you get per dollar of cover price. It doesn't take into account 
binding types (hardcover vs. soft) or aesthetic appeal, just text 
content. ³Fluffed-up² or overpriced games will have low numbers, 
³Info-dump² or cheap games have higher numbers. Feel free to use this 
³standard² in your own net.reviews if you want and add to the list I've 
started below.

Sample             KCE
GURPS 3rd. ed.    13.8
Unknown Armies     7.1
CORPS 2nd ed.      6.4
Hell on Earth      4.2
*Spookshow*        3.3



<- John Tynes - rev at tccorp.com - http://www.John.Tynes.com/ ->
She's crying. "What do you want me to do, Patrick? Tell me. Please,"
she begs. * "You should ... oh god, I don't know. Wear erotic
underwear?" I say, guessing. AMERICAN PSYCHO, Bret Easton Ellis