History TabletopGame / UnknownArmies

* KatanasAreJustBetter: Semi-averted; katanas are good, but not better than any other sharp weapon of similar size.

* BadPowersBadPeople: Thantomancers, people who gain power over life and death through HumanSacrifice, are not recommended as player characters.

* BadPowersBadPeople: Thantomancers, people who gain power over life and death through HumanSacrifice, are naturally not playable.

* RunningGag: A subtle one: almost every adventure book refers to an ambulance driver named Jesus who rescues people from alternate timelines or otherspaces.

* {{Archetype}}s: To consciously Ascend into the Stratosphere, one has to find an unclaimed & widespread archetype that exists in the collective unconscious and then embody it.

''"You did it!"''

This game contains examples of:

* ButIPlayOneOnTV: a Personamancy spell. It lets you use any professional skill as long as you can convince those present that you ''are'' a professional.

* {{Deconstruction}} - The game plays with most of the tropes you see in modern fantasy games, but makes sense of them the most mundane ways possible. If they can change reality, why aren't Adepts in charge? Because the very nature of their power makes them loony, and the price they pay to work their miracles makes them as useful as a carefully chosen tool, only weirder. Why is magic falling behind technology? Because technology is just better, and more reliable. Why isn't the supernatural more widespread? Because it makes you batshit crazy, and you don't trust what batshit crazy people tell you.

* GutturalGrowlerL The Freak, as a result of drinking acid.

* MemeticMutation: COSMIC BUM FIGHTS! (One of the possible adepts powers is fueled by alcohol and you can fight on a cosmic level.)

* AdultFear -- Possibly more common than unnatural fear. Sure, you might have your body torn to bits by an [[EldritchAbomination Unspeakable Servant]], but there's a much higher probability that you'll just lose your mind, become a recluse whose divorce from society is directly tied to a divorce from reality, and watch everything you loved or cared about slip away from you, until all you've got left is [[LonelyAtTheTop your power]]. And that's if you're ''successful.''

* AmbiguousGender -- The shtick of avatars of the Mystic Hermaphrodite. At upper levels, this evolves into instant sex changes.
* AmusingInjuries -- The Laff Riot videomancer spell protects everyone in the area from gunshots, reduces other types of attacks to five damage, and can turn a fall from a skyscraper from street pizza into an embarrassing pantsing. Watching the Detectives can retroactively turn any major injury short of death into a single point of damage. {{Game Master}}s who enjoy the RuleOfFunny can have quite an lot of fun here.
* AnotherDimension -- The Otherspaces are like alternate realities where the rules of existence are fundamentally different. Since they're disconnected from real time and space, they can be useful for transport... but they're generally difficult to reach, and they're often very dangerous, if not [[SanitySlippage maddening]].
* AntiMagic -- The sample NPC, Eustace Crane, is a walking fifty yard bubble of this that ironically wants to believe in magic. Other sources exist.

* ArcNumber -- 333, [[spoiler:the number of seats in the Invisible Clergy. Once it's filled, the world will be reborn.]]
* ArcWords -- "You did it." In every sense of the phrase.
* AscendedFanboy -- A whole team of them: the Team Salvation is a team of occult do-gooders who used to play [=RPG=]s and read comics together as kids. The team leader's motivation is explicitly defined as "Be a superhero".
* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence -- A very popular goal in the game is to ascend as an Archetype, a fundamental principle of the universe. [[spoiler:This is the ultimate goal of many cabals, since they can then shape the next ''universe'' under their own principles.]]
* AttackDrone - A common Mechanomancer toy.
* BadassNormal - Most non-Adept and non-Avatar [[PlayerCharacter PCs]] in a Cosmic game.

* BecomingTheMask - A constant worry if you're a Personamancer.
* BerserkButton - The Rage passion for a character is whatever seriously pisses that character off.
* BetterThanItSoundsTabletopGames - If David Cronenberg, Tim Powers, Christopher Nolan, Thomas Pynchon and the late Robert Anton Wilson met at a role-playing convention, that's what they would play.

* BoozeBasedBuff - Dipsomancers, and most of the artifacts they make. Pity you have to be drunk to gain the benefits.
* BrandX -- [[spoiler: Mak Attax]] is using a certain multinational corporation ([[spoiler: [=McDonalds=]]]) to further its agenda. The corporation is almost never mentioned by name. Ostensibly, this is because of the power of {{True Name}}s.
* BrownNote -- The Alter language, and the book Das Garten.
* ButIPlayOneOnTV -- a Personamancy spell. It lets you use any professional skill as long as you can convince those present that you ''are'' a professional.
* CastFromHitPoints -- Epideromancy works this way, as do certain rituals. ''All'' magic schools, however, are fundamentally self-destructive in some manner, whether physiologically or psychologically.

* ClockworkCreature -- nearly anything made by Mechanomancers.
* ChainsawGood - Chainsaws do a lot of damage, up there with katanas. See KatanasAreJustBetter further down.

* CityOfSpies -- While not ''explicit'', the Sleeping Tiger (ie. The general public) pretty much turns any game of Unknown Armies into spy central. With weird ass magic.
* CosmicHorrorStory - subverted. It's the anti-Lovecraft : you aren't scared because the cosmic powers that can crush you like a bug without noticing it are inhuman horrors from the depth of the cosmos. You are scared because they [[spoiler:were humans like you, and are living metaphor of what being human means. You aren't mortified because you're helpless, but because [[ArcWords you did it]]!]]

* CriticalExistenceFailure - Averted; you automatically pass out/otherwise go unconscious at 5 HP and die at 0, but you take cumulative stat penalties depending on how messed up you are.

* {{Determinator}} - One of the powers of the Masterless Man.
* DeusSexMachina - Pornomancy. Subverted in that pornomantic sex rituals aren't much fun at all to their practitioner, and having ''regular'' sex is taboo to them.

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu - You can face the very principles of reality one on one. You can even take their place.
* DisabilitySuperpower - Some schizophrenics actively channel the backwash from any magic cast nearby, which can be [[OhCrap a Very Bad thing]].
* EasterEgg - [[spoiler:Page 333.]]
* EasyAmnesia - The Personomancer spell The Mirror, Crack'd is a magical case of retrograde amnesia with some interesting side effects.

* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt - [[spoiler:what happens when the number of Invisible Clergy hits 333.]] Not necessarily a bad thing, if the right people are in charge.
* EquivalentExchange - There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. To do magick, you have to pay the price. Controlling probability means you have to take insane risks now and then, you have to hurt yourself to mold flesh, and you can't spend your money if you want to magickally manipulate the stock market.
* EyeOfNewt - Ritual Magick. Sample ingredients in the GM section include [[NoodleImplements "A lock of hair from a red-headed lover", "Those Groucho glasses with the fake nose and moustache", and "A copy of the Torah, translated directly from Hebrew into Klingon"]].
* FisherKing - Known as "The True King" in this game, and one of several sample Avatar classes.
* TheFool - Another Avatar type. Known specifically for doing foolish things and somehow surviving.
* FunctionalMagic - Mostly rule magic, although ritual magic is popular and wild magic shows up.
* GadgeteerGenius - Mechanomancers
* GenderBender - Avatars of the Mystic Hermaphrodite.
* GenreSavvy - An avatar gains power by acting out a particular archetype. Unlike adepts, an avatar doesn't have to believe in his role, only be willing to act it out.
* GhostlyGoals - A ghost's personality has no subtlety; they can only act to fulfill their Obsession. If they want revenge, they will chase you to the end of the earth. If they want to collect every last Pokemon card, you better not have a tight grip on that Charizard.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation - "Sanity cannot exist for long under conditions of absolute reality." There are a lot of things that can cause you to gain some notches on the madness meters, but suddenly gaining an understanding of some cosmic truth is the most likely to cause a FreakOut.
* GodWasMyCopilot - The [[spoiler:Comte De Saint-Germain]], immortal [[PhysicalGod uberpower]], [[SociopathicHero sadistic bastard]], and appearing in at least half the stock campaigns as a bit part, sometimes in simultaneous roles halfway across a state. Often provides DeusExMachina and DiabolusExMachina.
* GunsAreWorthless - averted, at least for more skilled users. Someone with poor skill needs extreme luck to do much damage with a gun, though.

* GreyAndGrayMorality - In spades. Among the key factions are a private army of a dictatorial plutocrat (who genuinely wants to make the world a better place; albeit with him running it), a devoted hidden order determined to protect the world from magic's excesses (or just stop the flamboyant mages from ruining the game for everyone else, OR maybe just a pack of serial killers with a justification), and a gang of idealistic youngsters looking to make the world a better place (but who might have turned themselves into the perfect tool for someone looking to rule it). True examples of purely malignant or benign groups are very thin on the ground. [[spoiler:Well, other than demons. They're pretty much bastards. But even then, they're selfish and ruthless, not serving a greater evil.]]
* GutturalGrowler - The Freak, as a result of drinking acid.
* TheHecateSisters - These are said to be "masks", or recognized spiritual icons that mirror the Archetypes. It's an open question as to which is which (though "The Mother" is fairly unambiguous).
* HumansAreSpecial - One definite given in any UA game, on account of how the cosmos pretty much revolves around the collective will of humanity and its chosen representatives.
* {{Immortality}} - One goal to aim for; apparently, if Dirk Allen could ever get this for the Freak, the Freak would stop hating him so much...

* KatanasAreJustBetter - Semi-averted; katanas are good, but not better than any other sharp weapon of similar size.

* KnightTemplar - Literal example in the Order of St. Cecil, who may simultaneously begin to brainwash the party adept and [[EnemyMine take on quite a number of nasty critters for you]]. Other groups can serve, especially The New Inquisition and the Sleepers.
* LetsGetDangerous - [[spoiler:Mak Attax]] were the joke of the Occult Underground. Then they managed [[spoiler:to get two dozen terrorists arrested in a single night and perform the single largest magical act in recent memory]]. (And then they proceeded to [[spoiler:do bugger all afterwards]], until [[spoiler: the events of the To Go campaign, the culmination of their Great Work. Depending on the outcome of the campaign, one of their higher-ups may ascend as the new True King.]])

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards - Averted. Adepts require not only a decent skill level to cast any sort of spell successfully, but also must charge up by doing particular ritual acts. Attacking via magic is less efficient than just using a gun. Avatar magic is flat-out linear, providing particular effects at a particular level of skill. Ritual magic progresses randomly, depending on the whims of the GM. Psychics are generally even more limited.
* LiquidAssets - Played more literally than most, as an avatar of the Merchant can trade any intangible good between two other people.

* LonersAreFreaks - Mechanically, any individual who is alone for prolonged periods of time ''will'' fill up the Isolation failed bar to go insane or head a long way toward going sociopath.

* MadeOfIron - While combat is very deadly, certain adepts and avatars, such as an epideromancer or a masterless man, can become very hard to kill indeed.

* MamaBear - A powerful avatar of the Mother gets big bonuses whenever defending someone that sees them as a mother figure.
* {{Masquerade}} - The occult underground stays hidden because whenever magic is discovered by the public, murder is soon to follow. The core book cites numerous instances throughout history in which accused magic-users have been lynched ''en masse''. They even have (pretty elegant) rules for angry mobs and their consequences.

* MilkmanConspiracy - This is the game where one of the major dealers in the Occult Underground is [[spoiler: a fast food chain that uses its meals in an attempt to align the chakra points of the American consciousness.]] And it only gets weirder from there.
* MindRape - Entropics, demonic possession, and dozens of adept spells like the one that instantly spread a rumor to every one on Earth.
* MindScrew - And how! With extra strength in any scenario written by John Tynes. In one notable case, [[spoiler: he wrote a scenario in which you run into a woman who fires bullets from her mouth by screaming "I'm a gun!", heal a man by binding pages of the bible to his body, free a young girl from a circle of corpses who drop coins from their mouths in a constant trickle, before fleeing in an ambulance ride with Jesus from murderous cars who can only be hurt by tossing the aforementioned coins at them. Man, all I wanted was some change. I don't love you anymore. (Said scenario is "A Few of My Favorite Things", from Weep.)]]

* {{Muggles}} - But don't you mess with them. They are officially referred to as "the Sleeping Tiger," and the book includes some sobering tables outlining what happens when they wake up.
** MugglesDoItBetter - But adepts do it in ways that [[ConfusionFu defy logic]]. Nobody gets to have it both ways.

* NighInvulnerable - A powerful avatar of the warrior becomes immune to physical harm - but only when fighting those he is ideologically opposed to.

* OnlyAFleshWound - The Videomancer spell Watching the Detectives is intentionally designed to invoke this trope.
* OurDemonsAreDifferent - They're actually this world's version of [[OurGhostsAreDifferent ghosts]], and are universally [[strike: quite bitter about not being able to move]] terrified of moving on to the next life.
* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent - victims of demonic possession by a demon that had previously possessed an animal, which spontaneously and [[RetCon retroactively]] change shapes.

* PaperThinDisguise - A high-level avatar of the Trickster can disguise himself perfectly with just a few token props.
* PersonalityPowers - Adept magic has to match the adept's obsession, and avatar powers match the archetype's theme and personality.
* PostModernMagik - The TropeNamer. Adepts twists the meaning of culturally relevant phenomena, like TV or booze, to achieve their enlightenment. Some rituals are based on VHS tapes, or Bruce Lee paraphernalia.
* PowerBornOfMadness - Magic works by taking something that isn't ''supposed'' to work and ''making'' it work.
* PoweredByAForsakenChild - The Hotchkiss Compass from ''Godwalker'', an artefact that utilises an aborted hermaphroditic foetus to detect Mystic Hermaphrodites.
* PowersAsPrograms - Skills can be stolen in a number of ways, both temporarily and permanently, even supernatural ones. The infomancy skill to do so is called Download, [[{{Lampshade}} pointing this out]].
* PowersThatBe - the [[spoiler:Invisible Clergy]] have incredibly vague motives other than those tied to their Archetype, operate from ineffable levels of the cosmos, and [[spoiler: [[TheGodsMustBeLazy can attack only indirectly, mostly by affecting probability, causing lucky coincidences, or siccing associates on you]]]].
* PunctuatedPounding - The Freak does this to [[spoiler:Jolene]] in ''Godwalker'':

* RealityWarper - the Entropomancy spell Edit the World. Also the random magick of many schools, if you've got enough charges.

* {{Retconjuration}} - a few of the high-powered magicks can do this. If you sell something to Thorvald Drake, the past changes so that you never had it in the first place. A werewolf has either always been a human, or always been a wolf, depending on what it is right now. While Cliomancy can't ''actually'' change the past, it can change what everyone ''thinks'' happened.
* RetGone - Pissing off the House of Renunciation, or a particularly powerful Infomancer or Bibliomancer might do it. In addition, this weirdly happened to [[spoiler:The Naked Goddess]] and nobody's really sure why.
* RevolversAreJustBetter - Averted. Revolvers have all the flaws they do in real life (low ammunition capacity, bulk, and ect.), making pistols and, for that matter, automatic weapons far more usefull.

* RhetoricalRequestBlunder - Less scrupulous (and less sane) Avatars of the Executioner have been known to interpret statements like "that guy really pisses me off!" as an excuse to murder someone- an Executioner can't kill anyone they haven't been ordered to by someone they consider an authority.
* RocksFallEveryoneDies - The players piss off The Freak, [[spoiler: the number of Archetypes in the Invisible Clergy hits [[ArcNumber 333]]]], pop in a CD full of Alter language...

* {{Room101}} - The Otherside Room is a mystically empowered version, showing any fool trapped in it the very worst of his or her beliefs. This is non-partisan and all-accepting, by the way; stick a hardline Christian and a hardline Communist in there, and both will walk out with their beliefs torn down.

* RunningGag - A subtle one: almost every adventure book refers to an ambulance driver named Jesus who rescues people from alternate timelines or otherspaces.
* SanityHasAdvantages - No [[WeaksauceWeakness Taboo]] to break, for example. Playing a BadassNormal in this game is perfectly feasible.
* SanityMeter - Five of them (Violence, Unnatural, Self, Helplessness, Isolation), each with two aspects (Hardened, Failed).
* SanitySlippage - A consequence of gaining "notches" on your sanity meters. Getting hardened notches makes you more and more emotionally dead to a given stimulus, culminating in a complete immunity to stresses of a given kind along with total sociopathy. Getting failed notches makes you more acutely sensitive to a given stimulus, culminating in a severe phobia and total madness.
* ScaledUp - The Herpemancy formula, "I am become Typhon" - "Sometimes you just gotta turn into a giant snake."
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney - Plutomancy, where holding down a good-paying job fuels your magic (and spending too much for any one object is taboo; most live in modest homes to avoid wiping their power with their mortgage payment).

* SeriousBusiness - Adepts in general, as well as their lower-powered siblings, Mageekians. To be fair, said Serious Business causes actual magick powers.
* SleepsWithEveryoneButYou - One theory behind the [[spoiler: Naked Goddess is that she ascended as The Girl Everyone Can Have But You.]]

* SquishyWizard - Subverted with fleshworkers, who are usually enormously tough...but go down all too easily all too often because they CastFromHitPoints. Especially true if they go for the Major charge, which involves permanently damaging themselves in some hideous way. (Amputation's a popular one. The Freak ''drank acid.'')
* SympatheticMagic - Rituals and tilts use this heavily.
* TheTrickster - Another one of the archetypes a character can channel. The powers of an avatar of the Trickster are pretty much straight from the trope, which is of course the idea.
* UnexpectedGameplayChange - The most obvious consequence of casting the Ritual of Light is that Unknown Armies changes from being a "rules and dice" RPG to a pure story-telling RPG. Instead of rolling d10s to determine the outcome of any given check, the gaming group votes on whether they think the outcome should be a success or failure. The GM's vote does not count for more than the players'. This is because the player characters who cast the ritual are linking directly into the Statosphere: for a short time, reality is defined purely by their will, and their choices.
* UnfazedEveryman - [[spoiler: Depending on the outcome of To Go, this archetype may just ascend to the pantheon.]]. Further spoilers: [[spoiler: A side-effect of this is that adepts can suddenly turn ten minor charges into sigs, making magick immeasurably more powerful.]]

* VancianMagic - Adepts kinda work like this. They're directly compared to Energizer batteries.
* TheVillainMakesThePlot - Averted. While there are cool, ManipulativeBastard factions [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans trying to create a perfect world by any means necessary]], they are presented very sympathetically and as PC options, particularly for global and cosmic games. Real, pure villain groups are actually kind of pathetic (infernomancers are portrayed as more dangerous to themselves than anything, while demons are immensely petty creatures who are actually harmless in the grand scheme of things).
* {{Whatevermancy}} - Used heavily. Every magic school is some kind of "-mancy." Examples include the entropomancer (who powers up through risking her own life), dipsomancer (power from alcohol), bibliomancer (power from acquiring rare books), and many others.

* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes - The Fear passion encompasses both the fears listed in this trope with others such as victimization, losing control, and other things that key off one of the Stress meters.
* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity - And with great insanity comes great power.

* YourHeadASplode - Get hit by a minor Entropomancy blast, and it carves words or symbols into your flesh. Get hit by a significant one that's enough to kill you, and you ''explode.''

* CosmicHorrorStory - subverted. It's the anti-Lovecraft : you aren't scared because the cosmic powers that can crush you like a bug without noticing it are inhuman horrors from the depth of the cosmos. You are scared because they {{spoiler:were humans like you, and are living metaphor of what being human means. You aren't mortified because you're helpless, but because [[ArcWords you did it]]!}}

* CosmicHorrorStory - subverted. It's the anti-Lovecraft : you aren't scared because the cosmic powers that can crush you like a bug without noticing it are inhuman horrors from the depth of the cosmos. You are scared because they [[spoiler:were humans like you, and are living metaphor of what being human means. You aren't mortified because you're helpless, but because]] [[ArcWords you did it]]!

* CosmicHorrorStory - subverted. It's the anti-Lovecraft : you aren't scared because the cosmic powers that can crush you like a bug without noticing it are inhuman horrors from the depth of the cosmos. You are scared because they [[spoiler:were humans like you, and are living metaphor of what being human means. You aren't mortified because you're helpless, but because [[ArcWords YOU DID IT]].]]

* CosmicHorrorStory - subverted. It's the anti-Lovecraft : you aren't scared because the cosmic powers that can crush you like a bug without noticing it are inhuman horrors from the depth of the cosmos. You are scared because they were humans like you, and are living metaphor of what being human means. You aren't mortified because you're helpless, but because [[ArcWords YOU DID IT]].

* BodyHorror -- Various, but Epideromancy is the #1 source in the game. It's a magic style revolving around molding the bodies of others like clay and powered by self-mutilation... think about it. Its signature attack spell ''isn't'' the one that lets you break bones or tear flesh just by touching someone, it's the spell that lets you mold flesh about the area of your palm. Its most common use? ''Seal someone's mouth and nose.''

* BadassAbnormal - Most Avatars can qualify, with Masterless Man being based off of this.

** Since their goal is [[spoiler:the creation of a new age of magic, one of the outcomes where their higher up dosn't ascend is the one they'd really want.]]

*** You can't piss off the Comte. It was all a part of his plan, after all...

*** [[OurAngelsAreDifferent ...maybe?]]

* CrazyHomelessPeople: There's plenty of these, but watch out. UnknownArmies has a disproportionate number of hobos who are also powerful wizards.

* CrowningMomentOfFunny - The ''rulebook'' has one, of all things. In the description for Videomancers:
-->Paddy Orleans has [[StealthPun fetishized]] a number of shows, and he needs a lot of significant charges to fuel his habit of calling fictional characters to life for half-hour increments. Usually he does this for purposes of [[RuleThirtyFour bizarre sexual gratification]], but at least one guy who pissed him off is now in an asylum, convinced that Mr. Clean and the Pillsbury Doughboy are going to jump him again the next time he sleeps.

* GodWasMyCopilot - The [[spoiler:Comte De Saint-Germain]], immortal [[PhysicalGod uberpower]], [[HeroicSociopath sadistic bastard]], and appearing in at least half the stock campaigns as a bit part, sometimes in simultaneous roles halfway across a state. Often provides DeusExMachina and DiabolusExMachina.

* AnthropomorphicPersonification: Each member of the Invisible Clergy is one of these, personifying an idea of what a human being can be. The very concepts of things like TheFool, [[TheHecateSisters The Mother]] and TheTrickster (among others) are represented by ascended mortals in the Clergy.

** Hell, being one is a prerequisite for being one of the true leaders of The New Inquisition. Their leader realizes that putting [[CloudCuckooLander actual mages]] in charge of his group is a very, very bad idea.

* MadeOfIron - While combat is very deadly, certain adepts and avtars, such as an epideromancer or a masterless man, can become very hard to kill indeed.