History TabletopGame / UnknownArmies

** Biblomancers gain power from reading books, the rarer the better. All those books can get mighty expensive, especially if you're looking to do the more powerful spells.

** Mechamancers sacrifice memories to gain power, and there's only so many memories you can lose before you start having to sacrifice the ''important'' ones. And if you want to accomplish something that really changes the world, the price ''starts'' at the important memories.

** Kleptomancers gain power from stealing. They can't stop. ''Ever.''

** Mechamancers sacrifice memories to gain power, and there's only so many memories you can lose before you start having to sacrifice the ''important'' ones. Want to do something that changes the world? The price ''starts'' at the important memories.

** Pornomancy gains power from performing porn. Note, ''not'' sex, ''porn'', which can get fairly awkward and uncomfortable to do. It also means that if you want to keep your powers, you can't have sex in any other way.

** Epideromancers draw their power from SelfHarm. That's bad enough, but their Taboo is that they're not allowed to let anyone else change their bodies in ''any'' way. Need surgery? Tough break.

* VancianMagic: Adepts kinda work like this. They're directly compared to Energizer batteries.

** Urbanomancers gain power from the city they live in. ''Only'' that city - if they leave, they're powerless.

* Kleptomancers gain power from stealing. They can't stop. ''Ever.''

** Mechamancers sacrifice memories to gain power, and there's only so many memories you can lose before you start having to sacrifice the ''important'' ones.

%%* ChunkySalsaRule

* CursedWithAwesome: Plutomancers have as their Taboo that they can't spend more than a certain amount in a single transaction. The game makes a massive deal out of how the school of magik obsessed with money has to live like paupers. The problem? That limit is ''$1,000''. ''Per transaction.'' You can't live like a rockstar with that limit, but it's not exactly poor-house material either.

* SanityMeter: Five of them (Violence, Unnatural, Self, Helplessness, Isolation), each with two aspects (Hardened, Failed).

** SmokingIsNotCool: On the other hand, any use of the spells basically has a 1% chance of letting the GM screw you by supernaturally giving you cancer, leading to a quick death for any practicing adept.

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* 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''. This trope runs rampant in the Weep scenario "Garden Full of Weeds". The city district of Garden View is an example of extreme urban decay made worse by supernatural phenomena. This means that there's a serial killer who traps peoples' souls in his sunglasses, but it also means that just about everyone is below the poverty line, every family is abusive, and extreme racism is coupled with rampant gang violence. Oh, and a Loogaroo running around murdering children under six months old.

* BecomingTheMask: A constant worry if you're a Personamancer. The entire basis of Personamancy is pretending to be someone else - it's how they charge up their magic. One of the easiest ways to do so is to imitate someone else in front of a mirror. Over years of continually being someone else, the original "you" has a tendency to shrivel up and fade away. Truly experienced Personamancers embody the Peter Sellers quote: "There is no 'me'. 'I' do not exist."

* FisherKing: Known as "The True King" in this game, and one of several sample Avatar types.
* TheFool: Another Avatar type. Known specifically for doing foolish things and somehow surviving.

* SocietyMarchesOn: Quite a few changes to Adept schools in 3rd edition stem from changing attitudes. For instance, while Pornomancy has traditionally been associated with the Cult of the Naked Goddess, recreating Her work severely constrains the avenues for queer Adepts. So, the school has split into two parallel streams for charges: one for recreating the Naked Goddess’s work, and one for being your own god or goddess by taking full advantage of Pornhub. The former gains power from trading love for ritual, the latter from making an act of love primarily transactional.

* BittersweetEnding: Mak Attax is in the aftermath of one in 3rd Edition: [[spoiler:They pulled off the Ritual of Light, resulting in a global DeconReconSwitch for the entire Occult Underground and making it so optimism is the driving force of most political agendas... but they couldn't stop the September 11th attacks, and the Underground is no less dangerous-nobody said "optimism" couldn't be "hopes of TakeOverTheWorld"...]]

** The Freak from the novelization ''Godwalker'' demonstrates this power via shapeshifting, gendershifting as well as {{healing|Hands}} of self and others.

* TheConspiracy: Unknown Armies' theme that the supernatural world was, in many ways, a lot less amazing than it might first sound extended to its conspiracies. Whereas settings like ''Franchise/TheWorldOfDarkness'' were filled to the brim with occult organizations so ancient and powerful [[BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy it's a wonder history happened without them]], the conspiracies that dominate the Occult Underground tended to be rather down-to-Earth. The very biggest one consisted of about 400 people, total, and considered comparatively powerless due to the impracticality of trying to keep track of so many "agents" (it didn't help they were mostly clueless amateurs in it for the lulz). Most couldn't even scratch 100. The "ancient" conspiracy [[spoiler: was less than a century old and just thrumming up its own reputation as mystical badasses]], and even the ones with millions of dollars to throw around were simply too ''practical'' to bother with Hollywood bullshit like sending attack helicopters and squads of mercenaries after people where a hired thug with a silenced pistol tends to be enough to do the trick. It goes without saying that there's not a single organization in the entire setting that wouldn't be ''squashed like a bug'' if they ever pissed off the mundane authorities. There's a reason the Occult Underground remains that way.

* ContractualGenreBlindness: The former is the taboo of the Cinemancy school-they see a potential for a cliche, they must finish it. Nothing says they can't ''avoid'' situations where a cliche would likely present itself, however, and all of their spells are based around invoking tropes in real life to their ultimate benefit (for example, using He's RightBehindMe to teleport another individual to their location, or TemptingFate to summon rain despite a drought).

* FaceHeelTurn[=/=]HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler:One of the biggest events in 3rd edition was the Freak and the Comte Saint-Germain switching places and inverting morality. The Freak is now an idealistic androgine that calls hirself the Human Eternal and is in charge of being the new First and Last Man (the only constant between universes), and the Comte is a [[GrumpyOldMan bitter, cranky old lady]] called Old Mother [[MeaningfulName Apocalypse]] who wants to make the current universe eternal and stop new ones from being created, by killing all of humanity if necessary.]]
* FisherKing: Known as "The True King" in this game, and one of several sample Avatar classes.

* GadgeteerGenius: Mechanomancers are ClockPunk adept versions of these.
** Third Edition adds avatars of the Hacker, whose taboos include literally not being able to use things they haven't tinkered with. As they get more channels, they start going into full SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic territory.

* {{Archetype}}s: Avatars gain supernatural power by consciously emulating Archetypes that exist in the collective unconscious and function in reality. (So you can be an Avatar of TheCaptain, thoughtful and respected, or TheExecutioner, unrelenting and grim, but not of the GreatDetective, because Great Detectives only exist in fiction.) An impressive route to power [[spoiler:and later ascent into the “Statosphere”]] is to find an unclaimed but widespread archetype and then embody it to the full, but that’s difficult these days, when most slots are taken; a riskier route is to become an Avatar so perfect that you replace the existing Archetype [[spoiler:in the Statosphere]] — but [[spoiler:the existing Archetype will see that you’re trying this, and Archetypes have godlike powers]]…

* {{Archetype}}s: Avatars gain supernatural power by consciously emulating Archetypes that exist in the collective unconscious and function in reality. (So you can be an Avatar of TheCaptain, thoughtful and respected, or TheExecutioner, unrelenting and grim, but not of the GreatDetective, because Great Detectives only exist in fiction.) An impressive route to power [[spoiler:and later ascent into the “Statosphere”]] is to find an unclaimed but widespread archetype and then embody it to the full, but that’s difficult these days, when most slots are taken; a riskier route is to become an Avatar so perfect that you replace the existing Archetype in the Statosphere — but the existing Archetype will see that you’re trying this, and Archetypes have godlike powers…

* {{Archetype}}s: To consciously be an Avatar [[spoiler: and later ascend into the Stratosphere]], one has to find an unclaimed & widespread archetype that exists in the collective unconscious and then embody it.

* 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.]]

* BadassNormal: Most non-Adept and non-Avatar [[PlayerCharacter PCs]] in a Cosmic game. 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.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: [[spoiler: Uder Krazmersky]] from the One Shots scenario "Jailbreak" appears to be just a gentle, kindly old craftsman who merely wants to be left in peace with his [[UglyGuyHotWife improbably beautiful young wife]] and fix watches in his home, struggling against a bunch of escaped prisoners who have barged in and holed up. [[spoiler: He's an old, powerful Mechanomancer, and is every bit as insane and callous as one would imagine a person whose obsession is with a clockwork universe and whose magic is fueled by sacrificing memories. That wife of his? He killed her in a rage one day. What did he do? Why, he took her corpse and stuffed it full of gears, bringing it back to life as a clockwork automaton who will love him unconditionally [[TomatoInTheMirror without even knowing that]]. The memory he sacrificed to accomplish that feat? Why, that of murdering his own wife, of course! Living with the guilt would've been awful! And pray to God that you don't accidentally open the bedroom closet [[ShmuckBait emitting scary banging sounds]], or you might find yourself facing the clockwork abomination that is Bors Slavandrov, the last person to [[BerserkButton threaten Uder's wife.]]]]

* MutallyExclusiveMagic: You get one school of magic, either adept or avatar. Trying to learn more than one, or trying to be both an adept ''and'' an avatar, invariably drives you completely nuts (to the tune of an utterly blown-out Unnatural stress gauge). The mind just can't handle it. (The one exception is that avatars of the Mystic Hermaphrodite, whose entire basis for being is ambiguity, ''can'' also be adepts, so long as their magick isn't built around anything logical. The Freak, for example, is both an avatar and an Epideromancer.)

* IntrinsicVow: Supplement ''Statosphere''. The Invisible Clergy cannot make a mortal (such as a human) to do something against their will or prevent them from doing something they really want to do.

%%* UnreliableNarrator

* 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. Entropomancers love revolvers though. To their minds, what good is owning a gun if you can't play Russian Roulette with it?

* CursedWithAwesome: Plutomancers have as their Taboo that they can't spend more than a certain amount in a single transaction. The game makes a massive deal out of how the school of magik obsessed with money has to live like paupers. The problem? That limit is ''$1,000''. ''Per transaction.'
You can't live like a rockstar with that limit, but it's not exactly poor-house material either.

* SocietyMarchesOn: Quite a few changes to Adept schools in 3rd edition stem from changing attitudes. For instance, while Pornomancy has traditionally been associated with the Cult of the Naked Goddess, recreating Her work severely constrains the avenues for queer Adepts. So, the school has split into two parallel streams for charges: one for recreating the Naked Goddess’s work, and one for being your own god or goddess by taking full advantage of Pornhub.

%%* BecomingTheMask: A constant worry if you're a Personamancer.%%Is?