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   Tinstargames (tinstargames@dice.camp)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 08:44:55 JST Tinstargames

   Unknown Armies is a well designed game, especially 3E, but I have some big beef with it in a few key ways, one personal and one structural. The personal one is that the game is about stories I don’t really connect to much, and the best example of that has always been these paragraphs. I cannot think of any part of those setting more interesting or exciting than being the tiger.

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     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 08:44:52 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     @tinstargames WoD Storyteller checking in. You're not wrong but I also feel in later editions there's way more focus on "telling your own story", whatever it is. There's more support for doing what you want. An example in VtM 5 is the "you're a touring rock band" story concept.

     I think the focus on NPCs comes from the fact that VtM and WtA are most typically about political struggles. But, indeed, my favorite Chronicles are ones that aren't so political. 1/2

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     Tinstargames (tinstargames@dice.camp)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 08:44:53 JST Tinstargames

     in reply to

     Now this is where we get into structural issues. Until recently I knew almost nothing about the World of Darkness games but I’ve now realised that UA has a lot in common with them. Vampire and Werewolf particularly - though they refuse to explain this directly - are about being a terrible person but being surrounded by people who are way worse and being forced to intrude your version of asshole to try to stop things getting worse. As such they tend to be heavily driven by NPCs…

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     Tinstargames (tinstargames@dice.camp)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 08:44:54 JST Tinstargames

     in reply to

     What’s more, I think the tiger are the good guys. And the kinds of RPGs I run are about good tigers. Unknown Armies is fundamentally uninterested in good, sensible, compassionate people. I put them at the centre of my GMing. It is not boring. The whole point of Warhammer I think is the world is a terrible place where literally everyone is an asshole EXCEPT the PCs. That’s also where I tend to pitch my Cthulhu and Buffy games. Nobody cares except You.

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     Kit Rhett Aultman (roadriverrail@signs.codes)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 08:47:40 JST Kit Rhett Aultman

     in reply to

     @tinstargames My family's weekly game of Mage (which sounds quite like UA) is actually set in a world that's in disenchantment and decline so that the number of otherworldly NPCs is sparse, and their story is mostly about having fun and learning about (and possibly rebuilding from) this state of disenchantment. It's meant to be a "the world has broken, but I can help" tale. 2/2