Unknown Armies is a great little RPG. As I once wrote in a review, “UA is, I’ll be the first to admit, possessed of some flaws — but it bubbles with such creativity, originality, potential, and brilliance that it overwhelms those flaws.” Unfortunately, it never caught on in the way it probably deserved to. (And it probably never will: Too many other games have stepped in and stolen its stuff over the past decade.)
One of the (many) great things about Unknown Armies, however, was the “What You Hear” section. In the world of Unknown Armies all the half-crazed conspiracies and crack-pot theories and urban legends you’ve ever heard are true at one level or another, but in a way completely alien to anything you might have expected. “What You Hear” was basically a rapid-fire conglomeration of one- or two-sentence rumors that peeled back the mundanities of the world and revealed them to be something horribly different. They were a distorted lens through which the world could be viewed and used.
The great thing about them was that they could be used in any number of ways: Disinformation. Intriguing background detail. Full-fledged adventure seed. Idle chit-chat from a nervous underworld contact. All kinds of stuff. And all of it mysterious and enigmatic and awesome.
Circa 2004, a guy named RemyBuron started a thread on RPGNet for people to post UA-style rumors. Here a couple examples:
There is no state of Wyoming. I mean, have you ever met anyone from there?
If you had been crucified would you ever want to see a cross ever again? The common symbol of a crucifix actually wards off the power of Christ rather than invoking it. That most people believe differently is one of Satan’s greatest successes, just above killing a carpenter by nailing him to a wooden structure.
A few months later I started a thread for UA-Style Rumors: Dungeons & Dragons. Recent free-associating resulted in memories of the thread surfacing out of the deep murk of my brain, and I thought it would be fun to track the thread down and loot the stuff I had posted in it. When I did, I was pleasantly pleased to discover that the thread has been periodically revived over the past several years — with the most recent spurt of activity coming just a few weeks ago (and including someone describing it as the “best thread ever“).
Without further ado, here are my UA-style rumors for D&D (including a couple of new ones that never appeared in the thread). Check out the original thread for lots of good stuff from other people.
Mages were all born centuries ago. In fact, they’re not even human. No, seriously, think about it: Have you ever known a kid who grew up to be a mage? Nope. All the mages you’ve ever known are already adults, and most of them are old. Apprentices? Most of them are duped slaves. The few who can actually cast spells are actually archmages. They’re just putting on an act to keep up appearances.
Dragons aren’t really that impressive. In fact, even the biggest of ’em don’t grow any bigger than a large dog. The rest are just bullshit spun by would-be heroes trying to look important.
Why are there are only nine towns in Ten Towns?
You ever notice how the king is never seen without the queen? That’s because he’s really a living mannequin. The real king died years ago. If you watch closely, you can see the queen’s fingers twitching the invisible strings.
Underdark? There’s no such thing. The dark elves just live on the other side of the planet. (Although it’s true that you can get there through the dungeons — some of them go deep enough, although you have to watch out for the gravity shift.) And they’re not evil. That’s just racist elven propaganda. They don’t like anybody without pointy ears and alabaster skin. They think we’re all orcs.
All those monsters who prowl the wilderness? They were put there by the king. The court wizard makes ’em, and most of them are mutated from prisoners. You can see the lights in the wizard’s tower every night from the rituals. Why does he do it? To keep us commonfolk stuck in the cities and the villages. If we were able to travel safely and talk to each other we’d be free of him soon enough.
The gods are a sham. A couple hundred years ago some powerful elven spellcasters set themselves up as “gods”. Now the elves effectively rule the world, and their duped priests don’t even know they’re doing it. The dragons know the truth. That’s why they’re hunted.
Somewhere in the Duchy of Colbane there’s a village. Everybody there is a mind-slave controlled completely by a lich. Everybody.
Bags of Devouring don’t actually destroy anything. They just transport it to another bag. The most powerful person in the whole multiverse is the guy who owns the bag all the Bags of Devouring empty into. I only know this because a friend of mine told me. I’ve never seen him again.
Look, you’ve gotta stop casting fireballs. They’re dangerous. No, seriously, stop laughing. I mean they’re dangerous. There’s this dungeon you can’t go to any more. It’s full of fire. All the time. Some wizard cast three fireballs in quick succession and they all kind of… collapsed into each other. Ripped open a vortice to the Plane of Fire. I used to go delving with a wizard who was scrying on them at the time. He told me that if it had happened on the surface it would have wiped out the whole world. Seriously.
Liches? Not really undead. In fact, most of them aren’t even that powerful. They’re posers. I heard that a bunch of apprentices who couldn’t master more than basic weavings cooked up the whole “lich” thing as a secret society. They used a couple of simple illusion spells to wow a couple of hick villages and build a rep. Some adventurers managed to take out a couple and, hyped up on their own egos, built up the rep of the Liches even more. But now things are changing: The group is attracting more powerful members. And my friend Jacob heard some nasty rumors about that coup in Covartain last year. Something about “lich-ghouls”…
Have you ever noticed how there are always exactly 6 members in every adventuring party? That’s the number of the Beast. Think about it.
Tell me about it. My friend got hooked on those things. This would have been back before I lost my eye. It got to the point where he couldn’t get through a day without drinking one. Then it got worse. He had to use more and more powerful cure wounds potions to get the same kick. He was downing two or three potions every hour. And then they stopped working altogether. That’s when he switched to inflict wounds. Gods, that’s an ugly way to die…
I find designing these rumors for D&D particularly interesting: With UA you can just look a the world around you and add a spice of oddness or magic. But D&D is innately strange and magical. You can’t just say, “There’s a dungeon with weird stuff in it.” Dungeons are supposed to be filled with weird stuff. Shapeshifters and covens and illusions are all part of the package. In order to get that full UA-style punch, therefore, you need to look a the typical expectations of a D&D campaign and then deliberately invert those expectations. Force ’em to look twice and re-evaluate their preconceptions.
Got an idea for your own UA-style rumor? Hit the comment button.
ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS
Kaprou
I bet you didn’t know that orcs can mate with elves. Yeah. Why don’t we see any around? Because those babies are delicious, man. Both elves and orcs know it, and have a million recipies for them. If you’re ever at an elven feast, and you’re some kind of dignitary, and you get a taste of what the nobles eat? You won’t be able to identify the meat, man. It’s elvork veal. They have these mating colonies, very discreet, just to keep the wealthy supplied. It’s addictive, too. At least, ever since I tasted it, I havent’ been able to think about anything but getting the next bite. Forget sharing magic; that’s the real secret of how elves control human rulers. The orcs, though, they just wont’ share. Greedy bastards.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 9:16:03 AM
Kaprou
There’s an earlier god, one they don’t tell you about. He was murdered by the other gods, because he gave the world metal. With metal, people had a choice; they could live without the gods if they wanted to. Don’t you see? That’s the only reason the gods share energies with mortals; they want mortals back. They want to undo the damage one of their own did by giving us metal.
I don’t buy it, personally. Don’t need the gods. Got something better. Metal is power–coins, weapons, armor, tools. Everything we need to make ourselves masters of what the Gods created.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 9:13:17 AM
Kaprou
Elves don’t keep you out of the woods because they’re protecting the woods from you. Their true masters–well, they need a lot of legroom. Elves breed as fast as humans do, but they have to give a lot of sacrifices to their true masters. Why would they do that? Why keep up the act? Well, you know they’re good at magic. That’s just a special little bonus from hooking into the hive mind.
Don’t believe me? Five druids went into the Urtetchia Glade. Snuck in as sparrows. One came back. White hair, can’t stop laughing, totally nuts. All he’ll do is make a weird croon before eating. My buddy went into his mind to see what he saw. And he never spoke again. Three days later, elves made the whole thing disappear. I mean, what would you think?
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 9:10:07 AM
Kaprou
Sorcerers have to have sex with dragon-blooded creatures once a year to keep their magic. Yeah, some go looking for shape-shifting dragons. Others hold their noses and do a trog. But you see those three over there? They have their own cave in the local kobold settlement. You didn’t hear it from me.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 9:02:50 AM
Kaprou
You might want to be careful when you take a cleric with you. You know how they can summon stuff? Right out of thin air, that goes back into thin air? Yeah, well, there’s stuff out there that can summon them. Right into thin air, and back. So you never know when they might disappear. Or what shape they’ll be in when they get back. Why would it matter? Well, you see this leg stump here?
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 9:01:36 AM
Kaprou
I personally wouldn’t strap all that magic stuff to myself. A wizard in Arrowdellith, or was it Minkasa, I forget; anyway, he had a spell go wrong once that fused all that magic crap into a cocoon around its wearer. Thought it was cool, figured out how to do it at will. And when your meat gets locked up in all that magic metal? Well… I’ve been some places, seen some stuff. You don’t get to be you anymore, that’s for sure. And you may not like who you turn into. Or what.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 8:58:29 AM
Kaprou
The gods are playing poker with your prayers. Biggest pile of devotion chips wins the world. So if you’re gonna pray to a god, you better pick one that can bluff worth a damn.
That’s where spells come from, too. So next time you cast some big divine maelstrom, you better understand you used up Celwyn’s prayers from widows for a whole year. Good work. Better hope you don’t make your god fold on a critical hand. Nerull is a hell of a bluffer, and nobody wants him in charge.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 8:51:48 AM
Kaprou
Making magic weapons is easy. Wizards find somebody who is a good fighter, or steals power from gods, or whatnot. Then they suck them into an object and force them into slavery. Let’s just say that fancy sword you’ve got has a reason to cut deep, and it’s a damn good thing you don’t have a way to hear how the guy inside there is screaming… damn wizard probably got rid of him to take his woman. Gimmie another drink.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 8:49:46 AM
Kaprou
Resurrection is fine and good if your buddy gets killed. But you better believe the gods don’t turn loose of a soul once they get it. Everybody you think you brought back from the dead? Yeah, when the stars form the Hammer it’ll fall, then we’ll see what they really are. I go down on this one… you leave me dead. Just leave me dead.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 8:47:42 AM
Kaprou
Wizards want to make a big deal about how arcane magic is different from divine magic. What they won’t tell you is that they are all clerics to the God of magic, who keeps the elven goddess as his concubine. You heard me. Studying spellbooks? Hell, that’s how they WORSHIP. The time will come when the god of magic won’t want to share with all the other gods anymore, too.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 8:45:40 AM
Guest
There was only ever ONE troll. Then some idiot adventurer hacked off it’s arm with a sword. Then we had TWO trolls. Than the troll figured out that a finger worked as well as an arm. Now we’re lousy with the things…
Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 3:57:17 PM
You didn’t hear it from me, but clerics are just deluded sorcerers. They all cast the same magics, it’s just whether or not you believe it’s coming from you or some big man in the sky. There are no gods.
In every action you take, everything you do, there are hidden patterns: repeating numbers, arcane mathematics that all creation is founded upon. If you keep a record of all the things you try to do, and their results, you can see the patterns appearing in your own life.
The gods DO play dice with the universe.
Giant spiders? You’re scared of them? Why? Bob keeps a whole ranch full of ’em. Even has a bunch in his basement. Makes loads coin from the silk and venom too. Haven’t seen him for a while now. Just go ’round his place and check out the basement.
Vampires, they’re everywhere. That’s why I stay up at night and sleep during the day. Its the only way to get to know the locals and avoid the night visits you know? Oh, and the thing with the mirrors? That’s them having a laugh. They spell some poor bugger so he doesn’t show up in a reflection. Childish eh?
I heard that earth is round, and they just assume it’s flat to stop us from rising up. Same person said the earth revolves ‘round the sun, too!
You ever think about where humans come from? Not like the individual humans, I mean the human race. I mean, we know who made the dwarves, the elves, the halflings — but humans? You never hear of any god who made the humans. So what did? Well, lot of old human texts say that orcs, goblins, whatever, were made by corrupting some other race with foul magic. Sounds like a crazy idea right? But it shows up in every human culture, everywhere. Stories of some evil wizard or god taking elves or dwarves and twisting them, and that’s where the evil races came from. The actual elves and dwarves never had those kinds of stories — just humans. That’s ’cause those are memories. Racial memories, from way back. When the unspeakable things from beyond reality came — you know, the ones those crazy cultists worship — and took elves and dwarves, and orcs, and twisted them. That’s where humans come from; they’re literal perversions of reality, and deep down, they know it. They have to project it onto orcs and stuff, ’cause their brains can’t handle the truth.
Oh, and one last thing. You know how kuo-toa worship made-up gods, and some of ’em get magic powers like clerics? They can do that because mind flayers did something to their brains. And mind flayers are just little cousins of those things that made humans. All those hundreds of gods that humans worship? Ever notice how it’s only humans who worship them? Keep an eye on that human cleric you’ve got with you. It’s always the craziest one who gets the powers.
There is only one real God, creator of the heavens and the earths and everything in them. All the other gods are just fakes, kids who’ve broken into daddy’s tool chest and are playing with his things. But the time will come when Daddy comes home and demands that they clean up their mess. When that happens, everything will be smashed into nothingness and then the real God will make it all anew, properly this time, without pain or suffering or death.
And as for mortals like us? We’ll be erased with the rest of this world, except for the ones who were smart enough to realize the truth and worship the real God. Them he’ll preserve, make new bodies for them and use them to populate his perfect world.
Call on the name of Elsh’Addai and be saved, before it’s too late.