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Hi folks, I was just reading an Unknown Armies (2nd Ed) review on rpg.net (see link below) and was greatly interested to see that the reviewer describes something that sounds very like kickers in character generation!

Just thought I would highlight it for your interest!

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_6827.html


Regards
Rusty

Yup. Sigh ...

Best,
Ron

I assume "sigh" is due to the lack of credit where credit was clearly due?

UA always needed Kickers. I organized character creation for 1st ed UA around Kickers long before I ever heard of Sorcerer. It seemed intuitively necessary.

Eh, the "Kickers" as presented don't seem to be that much of a rip off (lots of games have "key events"; what UA 2nd ed has seems to be pretty weak when compared to Sorcerer kickers).

But how about what's apparently written on the back cover:

WHAT WILL YOU RISK TO CHANGE THE WORLD?

That seems somehow familiar...

Mike

Hey,

I was under the impression that the additional material in UA2e was mostly culled from supplements published for the first edition. Does anyone know if the so-called Kickers in the 2e rulebook didn't first appear in some obscure first edition supplement?

Paul

The didn't.

The material in 2nd edition seems a LOT more focused toward getting the characters enmeshed in the Occult Underground and giving them impetus to try and "change the world."

It's also got relationship maps, by the way, although they're closer to the old WW coterie charts.

Incidentally, I believe they've officially changed the subtitle from "A game of transcendental horror and furious action" to "a game of power and consequences." Definitely moving in on your territory.

Nah; that's always been the idea, they're just getting more focused. Of course, I might be biased in their favor, being a small-potatoes contributor to the book.

Hi there,

Based on some emails I've been getting, people seem to be reading a lot into that reaction on my part. Here's the deal.

When role-playing games have similar rules/techniques, it's because they (a) utilize similar principles, independently, or (b) crib from one another.
It doesn't matter to me which is going on in a particular instance. It really doesn't matter.

What I like to see is a game author knowing other games well, rather than writing or working in a vacuum, and I like to see games that have previously utilized similar techniques get credited. Notice - credited, regardless of whether the author of the new game "got it" from this one.
It has nothing to do with who got the technique from whom. It's a matter of getting some professional acknowledgment and institutional (textual) memory established in our hobby.

When I see that specifically not happen, it makes me sigh.

Best,
Ron