3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars is a truly fascinating game which is also heartbreaking in its broken promise.

The game is set around a science fiction military force: Something of a cross between Starship Troopers, Aliens, and Warhammer 40k. To quote from the rulebook:

Their whole mission was to fight, and defeat, anything in the Universe that they could find. Alien civilizations, intelligences, and life of any kind were to be wiped out to protect the future safety of the people home on Terra. Threats were to be neutralized at their source.

Terra is a prosperous place. (…) Paradise is a reality. When the Council formed the Expeditionary Forces they found it easy to recruit. After all they offered a life of excitement and adventure. See the cosmos, travel and live life to the full. Don’t drop yourself in a suicide booth, serve your fellow Terrans by joining the Force.

I want to emphasize the stuff that this game gets right: It positively drips with atmosphere. Its simple mechanics work hard to reinforce that atmosphere and to encourage creative character development. It even includes strong procedural content generators to keep the game fresh and easy to prep. Even more impressively, the mechanics and content generators are structurally subtle: There is a “hidden” game that lies behind what appears, at first glance, to be a simplistic game of “blow up the aliens”. As that game emerges, 3:16 will naturally (and unexpectedly) grow in depth and detail. What the players choose to do with those revelations remains up to them.

I want to emphasize all this stuff, because I’m now going to talk almost exclusively about the fatal flaws that, ultimately, cripple the game.

SHALLOW EXPLORATION

A 3:16 campaign is broken down into planetary expeditions: For each alien planet, the GM is given a budget of threat tokens. These threat tokens are spent to create encounters.

Mechanically speaking, however, any encounter with fewer threat tokens than players seems completely anemic (not necessarily pointless, but certainly not any kind of credible threat). Assume that you nevertheless use three of these anemic encounters and then follow the rulebook’s guideline of having the final encounter on a planet use threat tokens equal to twice the number of players: The way the math works out, this means that you only get 6 encounters per planet, half of which will be speed bumps.

This pacing results in the game being a lot more shallow than the rulebook implies: If you create an interesting planet and an interesting alien, you basically have no time to actually explore the dramatic possibilities of either one.

NON-FIGHTING ABILITY

The core stats of the game are Fighting Ability and Non-Fighting Ability.

The character choosing to take a high NFA, however, is basically screwed. NFA is only used for three things:

(1) Dominance checks

(2) Changing range in combat

(3) Development rolls

Changing range is almost meaningless because you can also change your range with a successful FA check if you also beat the aliens. And because encounters don’t last that many rounds, it’s simply a suboptimal choice.

The other two options are slightly more useful, but don’t contribute kills. This causes two problems:

First, the NFA characters can’t compete with the FA characters for kills. Because advancement is primarily based on kills, this means that the FA characters keep getting better and better at kills… while the NFA characters keep lagging further and further behind. It’s like being stuck in a death spiral.

Second, the NFA characters have little narrative impact. While reading the rulebook I felt that NFA would give characters some out-of-combat spotlight time, but there’s no structure for that: Expeditions are based entirely around removing threat tokens, and the only way to remove a threat token is to rack up the kills.

At the most basic level, this just means that the game becomes uni-dimensional: Everybody specializes in FA; nobody specializes in NFA.

But it’s not that simple, because someone in the group needs to have a high NFA so that the group can score at least one success on Dominance checks. (Because if at least one player doesn’t succeed, the aliens will likely ambush them. During an ambush, every single PC takes 1 “kill”. After suffering 3-4 kills, on average, a PC will simply be dead. Healing during an expedition rarely happens, which means that if you can’t succeed on at least 50% of the dominance checks on a planet, the result is a TPK.)

This means that someone needs to fall on the NFA grenade and take one for the team, otherwise everybody gets fragged. This becomes the old “cleric conundrum”: Someone needs to pick this unfun chore because otherwise nobody has any fun.

CONCLUSION

The designer’s response to this is that, basically, mechanics don’t matter: If the GM includes all kinds of activities that have absolutely nothing to do with the game and have the PCs make NFA checks that don’t actually do anything, then somehow that non-mechanical pseudo-use of the mechanics will solve the mechanical shortcomings of the game.

Unfortunately, I just can’t agree. A broken game is a broken game, no matter how much you improvise around the broken mechanics.

A few untested thoughts on how some of these problems might be addressed:

LIMIT RANGE CHANGES: Make it so that the only way to change your range in combat is with an NFA check. Now characters at a sub-optimal range with their favored weapon have a more meaningful choice: Stay at their current range with the chance to remove a threat token (but taking fewer kills while doing so); or move to a better range while risking that other players will suck up the threat tokens or that the aliens will start landing frags.

MISSION OBJECTIVE TOKENS: MOTs are like threat tokens, but they can only be removed with NFA checks. They’re added to encounters to represent objectives (such as hacking a computer system or triaging injured troopers). Maybe have a number of MOTs per planet equal to the number of players.

(This is only a partial fix, however: I think it would be necessary to find a way to tie the MOTs into the advancement mechanic.)

FLEXIBLE NFA USE: Allow NFA checks to achieve kills and remove threat tokens. For example, in our session we had situations where NFA checks could have been used to commandeer the enemy’s holographic soldiers or to take control of an automated factory and turn it against the bugs. But there was never any mechanical advantage to doing so because it could never actually contribute to ending the encounter or racking up kills, so it never happened. (Double penalty: NFA sucks and awesome is discouraged.)

Microscope is a fractal storytelling game by Ben Robbins which allows you and your friends to collaboratively create vast, fictional histories: The rise and fall of galactic empires; the vast sweep of barbarian hordes; the byzantine rule of magical emperors.

The core of the game focuses on the creation of Periods, Events, and Scenes: Periods describe large swaths of time. Events are specific things that happen within each Period. And Scenes are designed to answer specific questions about particular Events.

This isn’t a review, so I’m not going to go into a great amount of detail. But what makes the game work is that it mechanically disrupts both planning (thus forcing you to improvise) and creative ownership (so that players don’t split up and all work in their own private turfs). I highly recommend it.

What I’m presenting here today is the “log” from the first session of Microscope I ever played, back from when the game was still in playtest. (As a tip: I would recommend not including ubiquitous time travel in your first game of Microscope. It was fun, but it also broke our brains.)

THE TIME PORTALS OF MARS

TIME PORTALS OPEN ON MARS

• Titanic Machines emerge from the Portals and begin killing off native fauna.
• The Qzelti, a group of native martians, evade machines and travel through Time Portals to Earth.

THE CLOSING OF THE TIME PORTALS WAR

• Creation of a coalition between native and immigrant populations to study the portals.
• Defector from Qzelti discloses to Martian scientist that the only way to close time portals is through suicide attack.
• Time portals destroyed through kamikaze strikes.

ERA OF CRYSTALLINE CITY-STATES

• Time echo kamikaze ghost utters technomantic prophecies of crystalline machines
• Titanic Machines construct the crystalline cities.
• In search of immortality, the native martian population integrate biological life with Titanic Machines.
• Anti-immortalists in native martian population, after proests of creation of bitanicals fail, head underground to start new civilization in ancient underground cities.
• Schizoid meme plague strands early bitanicals in narcissistic virtual worlds born out of self-destructive mental dominance wars. Rusting hulks litter the Dust Seas where they migrate aimlessly.
• Kamikaze Cult, in a martiatarian effort, genetically engineer dinosaurs as cheap slave labor.
• The kamikaze’s dinosaur slaves stage global riot, shaking all crystalline cities to the ground.

AGE OF THE DINOSAUR EMPIRE UNDER THE GOD-KINGS

• Martian-machine bitanicals become sentient and the new dinosaur populist lords begin to worship them.
• Kamikaze cultists declared anathema by Ulric I, founder of the Dinosaur Empire.
• Lone bitanical rescues last Qzelti from Dinosaur prisons and they retreat to caverns in the Deep South.

ERA OF UNDERGROUND CITIES (THE PRESERVING WARMTH)

• Dinosaur scholars discover time portal research notes 5,000 feet underground.

RENAISSANCE OF TIME PORTAL TECHNOLOGY

• Scientists discover time portals have created run-away planetary cooling.
• Anti-Global Cooling Fanatics invent Titanic Machines and send them to assassinate time portal scientists.
• Fringe scientists discover proof that ancient Kamikaze strikers did, in fact, survive the destruction of time portals.
• Dr. Kimchee is surprised to discover a time ghost of his favorite guinea pig appear in his lab after sending him through a time portal!
• Bitanical assistance to Dr. Kimchee infuses time portal with decelerated muon gel causing time rifts to rupture, sending all underground cities to the distant past.
• Kamikaze anathemists emerge from Shard Sea (remnants of crystal cities) leading the temporally tri-furcated army of cloned time ghosts to heal temporal rifts.
• Resusciated bitanicals mindwipe remaining dinosaurs of the empire and throw them through time portals to ancient Earth.

REMAINS OF EMPIRE ESCAPE FREEZING PLANET

Tagline: Best game of the year.

The opening paragraphs of this review launched a subtle salvo against what can only be described as the insanely bad reviews for UA which were getting posted to RPGNet at the time. These were reviews which, for example, were excoriating the game for not being as complex as GURPS. Or claiming that the game was completely unacceptable because its systems for magick were not practiced by real people in the real world. Seriously mind-numbingly bad reviewers.

Unsurprisingly, this salvo was not warmly welcomed by some.

I wish the original discussions had survived. They were… lively.

Reviewers should always keep in mind the creator’s goals.

It doesn’t matter what you’re reviewing – whether its a novel, a play, a movie, or a roleplaying game – the first thing you should ask yourself is: What was the creator trying to create? The reason you ask yourself this is because it is as pointless to judge Independence Day as a serious attempt to comment on the burdens of the presidency as it would be to judge Hamlet as a children’s story. Often you will hear a negative review of something not because it failed to accomplish what it set out to do, but because the reviewer didn’t like what was being attempted. Such a review is useless. Because it attempts to judge the creation as something which it is not it is as useless as a review of poker which explains why the game fails terribly at being the Great American novel.

Figuring out what was being attempted isn’t always easy. Sometimes you’re forced to ask yourself whose creative impulses you should honor. For example, if you’re reviewing a production of a Shakespearean play should you judge it based on how well it accomplished the director’s goals or how well it accomplished Shakespeare’s? (Personally I feel the director’s goal should be to fulfill the playwright’s goals – otherwise he should be doing a different play; hence I would go with the latter.) At other times it is necessary to call into question the surface goal itself and dive beneath the surface – for example an artist might fully intend to create a giant pink phallic symbol in Times Square, but you have to ask whether or not this is a good idea based on the underlying goals of art and the function Times Square. Nor is it always easy to figure out what a particular person’s goals were in creating something. More often than not you must rely on intuition to ordain what was intended.

Sometimes, though, you get lucky. Something in the work will clearly state was being attempted. You know that GURPS was designed to be a generic, universal system not only from the title, but because the designers included a short explanation of what was being attempted and what they hoped the game would accomplish.

The reason I bring all of this up is because after taking a look at the varied extant reviews of Unknown Armies I think it is necessary to explain where this review is coming from. Knowing where Unknown Armies is coming from is easy: Greg Stolze and John Tynes tell you specifically what their design goals were in the conveniently titled section “Design Goals” on pages four and five. Despite this several reviewers have flown in the face of commonsense and judged intentional decisions as “mistakes” or “flaws”.

So, just to be perfectly clear: If you don’t like simple systems, you won’t like Unknown Armies. (“Pages and pages of rules for ballistics-based damage and a complete flowchart-governed sub-system for picking locks are just some of the realism-focused rules you won’t find in UA.”) The fact that there is a detailed tracking system for character personality in this game is intentional, not a mistake or an anachronism. (“If your character occasionally kills someone, it’ll be up to you to justify why this is okay – and if you can’t, the game’s rules will penalize your character by hardening him against the notion of murder.”) If you don’t like roleplaying settings which attempt to be completely original (I’m not kidding – I actually saw someone complain because the game setting was too creative), then Unknown Armies isn’t a game you want to be playing.

“It’s time to stop playing games.”

OVERVIEW

Atlas Games has become a pretty impressive company. The 1990s have seen the origination of a couple of trends in RPGs: One, the World of Darkness and the host of games which have been inspired by it. Two, the simple, cinematic rule systems packed full of action-potential (usually with an anime or John Woo/Jackie Chan/Hong Kong influence). Atlas Games now owns the two games which providing the lightning rod to these two trends (Ars Magica and Feng Shui), and with the production of Unknown Armies they may very well have created the game which provides the perfect merger between them.

Let’s cut to the chase: I love this game.

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. There are games which fail because of their flaws; their are games which are tolerable in spite of their flaws; their are games which suffer slightly from their flaws; and then there are games where the flaws are beside the point. UA is the last of these.

More on this in a bit.

THE SETTING

Unknown Armies is the Illuminatus Trilogy.

This is an analogy which I have not seen broached before, but the tone of the Trilogy resonates throughout the game. I don’t mean that this is a setting inspired by the World of Darkness with elements of the Trilogy incorporated into it – for that game you should take a look at the disjointed Immortal. I mean that when you first enter the world of UA it feels very much the way it does when you first enter the world of the Trilogy: 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. For the first hour you keep thinking you’ve got it figured out, only to have the rug ripped out from under you. Even by the time you’ve finished exploring the place you’ll still find things hidden in the corners that’ll make you doubletake (or run screaming in terror).

The basics concept is this: Magick is real and the world is a much more unnatural place than your common mortal ever imagines. The only people who know this are known as the “Occult Underground”, sharing only the common trait that they all know “the truth” (or at least parts of the truth).

The Big Truth is this: Karma and Reincarnation exist, but only at a universal level. When the world comes to an end it is reborn in a way consistent with its karma – we get the world which we deserve. The mechanism by which this takes place is the Invisible Clergy, who unite into the Godhead as the universe is reborn, guiding its creation. Humans “ascend” to the Clergy by fulfilling the role of an “archetype”. Each archetype represents some primal element of human society; these archetypes are not set in stone, but are rather mutable from one incarnation of the world to the next. To make things more interesting humans still on earth can follow in the footsteps of ascended archetypes, gaining powers through the association. Sometimes an archetype can be replaced, but that’s a story for another time. There are other big truths out there (such as the conflict between Entropy and Order which drives all of this), but that’s the barebones of what’s going on.

There are three other important elements: The Unnatural, the Unexplained, and Magick (technically you could consider Magick part of the Unnatural, but its important enough we’ll spin it off by itself). The Unnatural are those things caused by otherworldly forces. The Unexplained are things which, at first glance, may appear to be unnatural, but in truth have rational explanations (these are fun because they’re red herrings which keep you from being completely comfortable – you can’t just dismiss anything unknown as being mystical).

Magick is one of the areas where UA really shines. It is based on three Laws: Symbolic Tension, Transaction, and Obedience. Symbolic Tension means that all magick is “based on some form of paradox” – a central irony or contradiction. For example, entropomancy (where you have to injure yourself to create a magical effect) has a paradox in that to gain control (power) over the universe you have to surrender control over yourself.

The Law of Transaction is the magical equivalent of Newton’s third law: Magick doesn’t let you get something for nothing; what you get out is equal to what you put in.

The Law of Obedience means that no one can follow more than one magickal path. This makes logical sense in the game setting because magick is driven by your personal convictions about how the universe functions – being able to follow more than one magickal path would mean that you were simultaneously holding two incompatible convictions about how the universe functions. It’s like believing totally and completely in both creationism and evolution; it can’t be done (you can fake it – but faking magickal discipline gets you nothing but fake magick).

Those may seem familiar to you, but trust me when I say that magick in UA is about as unique as you can get. Each school of magick requires some form of sacrifice to build up a charge and then you can use these charges to cast magick. The schools themselves are the unique part though – pornomancy, for example, requires to engage in very specific sexual acts (but not to take pleasure in them); plutomancy requires you to earn money (but not spend it); etc.

(A brief side note: Some have raised complaints about the magick system because an adept (one who can practice magick) can attempt to do anything. It has been insinuated that this means that those with experience are no better than those who are newcomers. Anyone who has actually bothered to read the rules, though, would realize a couple of things: First, the game assumes anyone playing an adept is just that – adept in the use of magick; if you want to play someone who isn’t optional rules are provided. Second, those with a higher skill in magick are capable of succeeding at more difficult magickal tasks and doing more with them – saying that they are “both the same” is like saying that AD&D possesses no differentiation between 1st and 20th level wizards because they are both capable of casting damaging spells, despite the fact that 1st level mages cause 1d6 damage and 20th level mages cause 20d6.)

THE RULES

The basic rules for UA are dead simple. But unlike many other simple systems on the market they don’t require GM fudging to fill in the gaps – these are a solid set of rules. Here’s the breakdown of the page and a half of core game mechanics – the shortest chapter in the book.

1. Roll percentile dice.

2. A roll of 01 is an extremely great success.

3. A roll of 00 is a complete failure.

4. If result is equal to or less than your skill you succeed. The higher the role, the better the success. Some tasks will need a minimum roll to succeed (so, for example, you’d need to roll higher than 30, but under your skill).

5. If the result is less than your skill you fail.

6. Matched numbers are exceptional results – either extremely good if it was a success or extremely bad if you fail.

7. In some cases (such as you “obsession skill” – the skill you specialize in essentially) you can “flip-flop” a bad roll to make it good (turning a 91 to a 19, for example).

8. The GM may apply “shifts” to your roll – changing the number you rolled. (A -10% shift, for example, would turn a roll of 50 into a roll of 40.)

Combat, as usual, adds a few extras. Most importantly damage is handled by adding the two dice together from your skill roll (if you rolled a 43 and succeeded you would do 4+3=7 points of damage). Firearms are a special case in which your damage is equal to your skill roll within a certain range (so that if you succeeded with a 43 you would do 43 points of damage, unless the weapon’s maximum was 40 or its minimum was 50) – hence a shotgun can do a lot more damage than a .22, but not always.

Character creation embraces the same standard as the core rules – simple, but complete (with a noticeable exception, see the note below). It breaks down into the following steps:

1. General Brainstorming.

2. Personality.

3. Obsession: What your character is very good at – the skill which defines who your character is.

4. Passions: There are three passions – Fear, Rage, and Noble. You create your own passions, each passion causing the appropriate reaction in your character when it is encountered (unless, of course, you can give good reason otherwise). Hence your character might be frightened of spiders, enraged at the sight of a child in pain, and committed to saving the environment. In addition to being able to flip-flop your obsession skill, you can flip-flop any skill when it is being employed in regards to one of your passions.

5. Attributes: There are four attributes – Body, Speed, Mind, and Soul. You split up 220 points between them.

6. Skills: The skill system is almost entirely freeform (see note below). Essentially you can take as many points in Body skills as you assigned points to your Body stat.

7. Obsession Skill: Pick a skill which is related to your obsession and make it your obsession skill. If you want to practice magick your magick skill must be your obsession (because unless you are devoted to magick you won’t be able to make it work).

8. Cherries: Cherries are “special effects” which are attached to the matched double results of combat and magic skills. This has caused some complaints, but when you realize that violence and magick (the unnatural) are the focus of the game it makes sense that these are the skills which are given particular attention. Nothing stops you from assigning cherries to other skills, per se – especially since the cherries are designed in a freeform manner.

9. Your Wound Points equal your Body score.

(Another side note: Several reviews have taken exception to the fact that the skill system is almost completely freeform – a handful of “freebie” skills are detailed and a list of suggestions is given, but nothing is laid down in a concrete fashion. Some have claimed this to be a weakness, but actually it gives a huge amount of power to the player in terms of finely tuned control over their character. Since everything is veto-able by the GM it can’t have any drawbacks except that you actually have to think about and personalize your character. Even new players find this type of system easier, in my experience, then attempting to pick and choose from a list of skills they don’t fully understand. I wouldn’t want to try it with a detailed, complicated system; but for a simple system like this it’s the perfect fit. As for the whacko who complained about overlapping skills – what drugs are you on?)

There’s one other important mechanic to consider: The Madness Meter. The situations you encounter as a member of the Occult Underground are fully capable of driving your average person beyond the bounds of sanity. A character’s Madness Meter keeps track of five distinct areas – Violence, the Unnatural, Helplessness, Isolation, and Self. Each area has ten “hardened” slots and five “failure” slots attached to it. When a character encounters an abnormal situation (such as someone’s head being blown off in front of them or their first encounter with magic or being held captive or losing all your friends or being forced to take actions which you previously believed you would never be capable of) they make a check – if they succeed they become hardened to that type of event; if they fail they react either with “panic, paralysis, or frenzy” (at the player’s discretion) and gains a failure slot. The more hardened you become the more extreme situations have to be to cause a check, but the negative drawback is that you become less connected with the world (and this has a very real game impact). If you max out any of your failure bars you go psychopathic – which is not to be confuse with riproaring insanity or any such stereotype. This is a subtle and evocative game, not a slaughterfest.

I like the Madness Meter mechanic because it never forces a character action, it merely provides a guideline. Like the rest of the game it is simple, but powerful and effective at reinforcing its designers intents.

ANALYSIS

Every so often I come across a game which is so amazing that it makes me sit up and take notice of who was responsible for designing it. Jonathon Tweet for Ars Magica, Robin D. Laws for Feng Shui, the team of Dream Pod 9 for Heavy Gear — these are a few of the games and designers which immediately earned my respect and appreciation. They are the designers from whom I would pick up a new porduct simply on the basis of their name being on the cover.

With Unknown Armies Greg Stolze and John Tynes join that list. Not only the simple, powerful masterpiece which the engine of the game is. Nor for the rich and original world which they have created. No, what really raises this game to the next level is the immense expertise and masterful understanding of the foundations of roleplaying design which they demonstrate.

Stolze and Tynes are masters. I knew I had something in my hand which had been designed in brilliance when I read the Definitions of Roleplaying which are included in the introduction (one from each designer). Tynes’ definition — improvisational radio theater — particularly struck me. I had gotten the “improvisational theatre” part down, but the “radio” bit was the simple label which had escaped me for distinguishing between the table-top structure and the live action structure (and, sure, you might be able to say “that’s obvious”, but you didn’t say anything before, did you?). They then proceeded to confirm my impression by laying down in very precise terms what their design goals for the game were – something far more designers should take advantage of.

And it just didn’t stop. Throughout the entire product Stolze and Tynes expertly provided guidance without falling into the trap which Rein*Hagen did in designing Vampire — formalizing their suggestions and guidance into rules. When Stolze and Tynes provide a set of personality guidelines based on the signs of the zodiac they put them aside into an optional box – a convenient shorthand for NPCs, a potentially useful tool for new players. Rein*Hagen institutionalized it into a set of necessary labels.

Indeed the entire character creation system is an excellent example of this – by subtly encouraging character creation with killing the creative process through formalization — but this isn’t the only place it happens. The chapter on Campaign Creation, for example, does the same thing for the GM’s creative process – encouraging, guiding, but never “mandating”. The chapter on “Running the Game” is actually a useful summary of rules which are gathered together in one place along with concrete examples of how to handle common play situations, not a hodgepodge of questionably vague advice.

Finally the layout is great – with information clearly laid out an important information emphasized and isolated for easy reference during gameplay. Although the artwork is occasionally less than perfect it is expertly crafted and placed. The whole product is rounded out by what I consider to be the the most brilliant introductory scenario I’ve ever seen.

And all of this brings me, regrettably, to the weaknesses in UA: First, several key concepts lack an explanation. Specifically the concept of “synchronicity”, the astral plane, and the age of hermeticism are all mentioned in relation to other things several times in the text, but never given a description of their own.

Second, the flip-flop mechanic (discussed above) becomes less and less effective once a skill has gone beyond 50. This is odd for a mechanic which is meant to reflect a character’s intense devotion to a particular skill or cause.

Third, the index is lacking, although this ameliorated slightly by a detailed Table of Contents.

Finally, a set of very simple core rules is marred in a couple of places by unnecessary complication.

None of these weaknesses are particularly serious (especially if you’ve read the Illuminati Trilogy for the discussion of synchronicity, played any pseudo-mystical RPG including AD&D for the astral plane, or taken a gander at Ars Magica or the World of Darkness for the general feel of what the age of hermeticism must refer to) – even the flip-flop mechanic is little more than a slight annoyance which crops up only occasionally and is still generally intuitive.

CONCLUSION

Unknown Armies is the best game of the year. If all goes well it will be remembered as one of the best games ever. If you don’t put down the $25.00 for this treasure trove then you don’t deserve to call yourself a roleplayer.

‘Nuff said.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Title: Unknown Armies: A Roleplaying Game of Transcendental Horror and Furious Action
Writers: Greg Stolze and John Tynes
Publisher: Atlas Games
Price: $25.00
Page Count: 225
ISBN: 1-887801-70-7

Originally Posted: 1999/04/13

In retrospect, was Unknown Armies really the best game of 1999?

Yup.

As I mentioned in “UA-Style Rumours for D&D“, the fact that Unknown Armies didn’t catch on the way it deserved to remains one of the great mysteries of the roleplaying industry. But when you look at all of the other games which have pilfered its pockets in the last decade, its importance and its quality becomes very clear. If you’ve never seen it, then you should really, really take the time to check it out.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Go to Part 1

These tools are designed to be of use when prepping or improvising with the tactical hacking system.

GENERIC TERMINAL STAT BLOCKS

These generic terminals can be quickly plugged in while quick-stocking or improvising a location. Alternatively, they can serve as tweakable building blocks. (For example, you could snag the stats for a security hub and then crank up its access cap to reflect the fact that it gives access to the video archives for the building’s security cameras.) In any case, they should give you some sense (however vague) of what the system is capable of.

Employee Terminal (access cap 10, intel value 1, security modifier +0): These are the types of generic units you can find strewn around any typical office complex.

High-End Terminal (access cap 20, intel value 1, security modifier +0): Either specialized machines that are more likely to be used on sensitive projects or computers belonging to corporate managers, gang lords, or other key personnel.

Secured Terminal (access cap 30, intel value 3, security modifier -2): This is a system with highly sensitive information and the user knows it. Tough to crack, but worth it.

Hacker’s Dream (access cap 30, intel value 2, security modifier +2): Operated by a user with access to sensitive information, but no sense of security. (The kind of guy who leaves his workstation logged in overnight or who uses “123456” as his password.)

Personal Assistant (access cap 25, intel value 2, security modifier +0): A smartphone, datalink, cyberhub, or similar portable device. People will run their entire lives through these thin wafers of silicon… but often not give a lot of thought to properly securing them. They can be harder to get physical access to, but are often easily cracked.

Corporate Server (access cap 40, intel value 5, security modifier -5): Either a repository of the organization’s sensitive data or allowing access to a broad array of systems. Corporate servers are like treasure chests for the tactical hacker.

Security Hub (access cap 15, intel value 1, security modifier -4): Security hubs usually aren’t repositories of sensitive data, but they often provide access to valuable functionality (in the form of special features).

RANDOM TABLE OF SPECIAL FEATURES

This table of terminal special features is far from exhaustive, but can hopefully serve as a source of inspiration. They’re presented as a random table to facilitate their use during stocking or improvisation. (Assume 1 terminal in 6 has a special feature if stocking randomly.)

I’ve recently been playing through Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’ve been enjoying it so much that I’m virtually certain that there’ll be a replay of the original Deus Ex in my near future.

One of the really great features in both titles is your ability to hack dozens or hundreds of computer terminals throughout the game, revealing data – from the variety of electronic communications you eavesdrop upon – that can provide you with valuable operational intel, deeper insight into the conspiracy, and access to unique resources.

This kind of “information in depth” works wonders in terms of immersing you into the game world; it’s also a lot of fun. But replicating this kind of experience in a tabletop RPG is really difficult: Even if you don’t go so far as to prep individual handouts for every e-mail and chat log the PCs uncover, it would still require an almost insane amount of prep work in order to customize the contents of the dozens of computer terminals in a typical complex.

To solve this problem, I’ve thrown together a simple-to-prep game structure for tactical hacking. This system assumes a couple of things are generally true: First, the hacker is opportunistically targeting systems to compromise. Second, the primary goal of the hacker is to accrue information. (The structure includes some minimal support for other hacking strategies, but they’re not the primary focus of the structure.)

For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume a D20-style system with a single Hacking skill. But it should be fairly easy to modify these guidelines for any RPG with discrete action checks.

NETWORKS

Each network is defined by a Network Intel Table (NIT). Each entry on the NIT is a discrete piece of information with an associated difficulty class. (In practice, it looks very similar to a Gather Information table.)

Note that the term “network” is not necessarily being used in a literal sense, but rather as a convenient way of referring to multiple systems or accounts that are somehow meaningfully related to each other. (For example, the home computer of Sansasoft’s district manager may not be directly wired into the corporate infranet, but the e-mails on her computer could easily contain compromising information, so for the purposes of this system it would be considered part of the “Sansasoft Network”.)

TERMINALS

Terminals refer to any computer, cellphone, access point, or user account that the PCs can attempt to hack. Each terminal is rated with an access cap, an intel value, and a security modifier. Some terminals may also have special features.

Access Cap: The maximum DC that can be achieved on a Hacking check using that terminal. If a higher result is rolled, the excess is ignored. (For example, a hacker named Panda is using a terminal with an access cap of 15. Rolling her Hacking skill, she gets a result of 22. Despite that, the result of her check is treated as a 15.)

Intel Value: The intel value of the terminal determines the maximum number of entries that can be gleaned from the Network Intel Table.  (For example, Panda’s DC 15 result on her Hacking check is high enough to theoretically access the first six pieces of information on the Network Intel Table. But if the system she’s using only has an intel value of 2, she’ll be limited to two pieces of information.)

Security Modifier: Modifies the skill check made to hack the system. For example, a cellphone with a -4 security modifier applies a -4 penalty to a hacker’s skill check.

TERMINAL SPECIAL FEATURES

These special features (and any others you can imagine) can be added to any terminal. In fact, a single terminal might have several special features.

Communications Control: The terminal allows monitoring and/or control of local communication channels.

Data Tunnel: A data tunnel connects one terminal to another terminal. Each data tunnel is rated with a DC. With a successful Hacking check, a hacker can use the data tunnel to access the remote terminal. Some data tunnels might also grant bonuses when attempting to hack the remote terminal they link to.

High-Value Content: A high-value system grants a bonus to the hacker’s highest result on the Network Intel Table to date. (The more valuable the system, the higher the bonus.)

Specific Content: Although the point of this tactical hacking system is generally to avoid coding specific information to specific systems, in some circumstances it may still be valuable to do so. Specific content could also refer to security maps, data network maps, or other mission-valuable intel.

Systems Control: The terminal can be used to control surveillance cameras, robots, gun turrets, environmental controls, navigation systems, or any number of other “real world” systems.

PREP LIST

For the purposes of tactical hacking, think of each “network” as a body of related information. Each terminal on the network is a system or account which either houses part of that body of information or has access to it. It is assumed that there are a multitude of ways to discover each piece of information in the network. (For example, a hacker could discover Sansasoft’s illegal digital smuggling by reading compromising e-mails; performing forensic examinations on black book budgets; decrypting incriminating communication intercepts; discovering off-book shipping manifests; or any number of other possibilities.) If a piece of information can really only be discovered in a specific way, then that’s specific content that should be keyed as a special feature to a particular terminal.

When prepping a network for tactical hacking, you first need to prep the Network Intel Table. Here’s a sample:

(I’ve included a potential explanation for how the hacker could access each piece of information. You could expand on that by creating full handouts for each piece of information; or you could skip that and just improvise the details during play.)

Second, you need to prep a list of the terminals on the network. (Such a list could also easily be integrated into a location key or other reference as appropriate.) For example, you might stat up the customer service terminals at Sansasoft like this:

CS Terminals (access cap 15, intel value 1, security modifier +0): There is a 1 in 10 chance that any given customer service terminal will instead have no access cap (due to an unusually compromising internal e-mail). Otherwise, hackers can gain no more than 3 pieces of intel in total from all customer service terminals.

RUNNING THE SYSTEM

When a PC wants to hack a terminal, follow these steps:

(1)   The character makes a Hacking check.

(2)   Modify the check by the terminal’s security modifier.

(3)   Check to see if the terminal’s access cap applies and reduce the effective check result if necessary.

(4)   Use the character’s effective check result to determine the number of previously unrevealed pieces of information they can discover. If this number is larger than the terminal’s intel value, randomly determine which pieces of intel they receive.

Alternatively, you could randomly determine between all possible pieces of intel (which could result in them learning nothing new due to duplication from previous efforts).

Go to Part 2: Tools for Tactical Hacking