Unknown Armies: Hateboxing

Author's Note:  Holy crap, I can't believe I found this. I wrote it in another lifetime, and the computer where I kept it had a fatal hard drive crash [this was WELL before Google Documents existed], and the mailing list it was on went defunct. Praise be to the Internet Archive Project and the Wayback Machine! And let's all enjoy the irony of being able to recover a forgotten story which starts with the phrase "Because sometimes, you just want to forget."

Because sometimes, you just want to forget...

I've lost track of how much money I've spent trying to deal with the shit I've seen. It's been ten years since Poughkeepsie, and I still can't eat spaghetti. Sometimes I wake up screaming, the taste of blood thick in my mouth like tomato sauce.

Did I mention I'm Italian? Shit. I can't even eat Sunday dinner with my mama without having shakes.

Anyway. I see an ad in the paper one day, says Eliminate harmful dreams and memories using only common household tools, $100 for initial session and startup kit. Address is some third-floor walk-up in Queens. I figure, what the hell, worth a look, right? Considering how much I've flushed on goddamn therapy, a hundred is just another sheet of toilet paper at this rate.

So I get over there, find the brownstone's been converted to some kinda artists' commune. The entire place reeks, but its not weed, it's machine oil. They're all industrial types, making statues outta scrap metal with power tools. And this godawful German shit is playing, like they're hammering a goat on an anvil or something.

I manage to make it upstairs without getting tetanus, find apartment 33, bang on the door. This little tweedy guy opens it, and I swear to God he can't be more than twenty-five but he's dressed like my goddamn grandfather, with the suede patches on his jacket and a thick black tie and a pair of birth-control glasses like they had in the fifties. Except, of course, he's listening to the anvil-fuck chorus or whatever.

So he introduces himself as Trent, has me sit, makes me coffee. Now let me tell you, guys like this I expect to be twitchy as chihuahuas, but this bastard was relaxed. Smooth, even, like he had a 38D blonde girlfriend tied up in his bedroom.

So I drink his almond-flavored coffee and we talk for a bit. No, not about my problems, he doesn't give a shit about those. He asks to see my hands, seems pleased to see that I have callouses. He asks me if I've ever worked with machines before, and I say yeah, I tune my car's engine, change the oil, yadda yadda. He smiles this freaky-calm smile and says good, you have what it takes to build a hatebox.

About this time I think maybe, just maybe, I've stumbled into a fetish shop by mistake, and start to get up. No no, he says, I know what you're thinking, and it's not like that. He says, You know that sense of peace and satisfaction you get when you tune your car? and I say Yeah. So he says, Hateboxing is like that, but instead of working on a car, you're building a box to hold your emotions. Doesn't have to be hate, can be pain or fear or whatever, but he thinks hateboxing sounds best.

So I go, Okay, I sorta get you, but I've been working on my car for ten years, and it hasn't helped me sleep any better. He says, The trick is in the training. He points to a milk crate full of greasy parts and says, that's going to be your hatebox, and I'm going to help you build the frame.

There are rules to hateboxing, he says as he's taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. The first rule, he says, is that we can't use any tools that use electricity or hydraulics, it's all gotta be hand power. It's the sweat and effort, he says.

The second rule is that it's gotta be metal and wood. No plastic.

The third rule is that when I'm hateboxing, I can't think of the box. I have to think about the memory I want to get rid of. Because we aren't really trying to build anything, it's just something for our hands to do so that our minds can fall into, get this, a meditative state.

So I say, Wait a goddamn minute. This is meditation? Like clearing the mind, chanting, all that happy horseshit?

He says, Close. Chanting is for mystics, this is for practical people like him and me. This is Transcendental Mechanization. And he gives me that freaky calm smile.

So what the hell, I think, and he and I, we start the hatebox, there on his apartment floor. I dunno how long we work at it, because the time just seems to slip away. When we're done, it's dark outside, and I've got this cubic-foot box that looks like a reject from a high school metal shop. but for the first time in my life I don't feel like there's something breathing rotten anchovies down the back of my neck.

He says, That's your hatebox. Put all your negative emotions in it. Build on it, add stuff to it, expand on it. Then he gives me a strange look and says, Got a garage?

Got a garage? I live in fuckin' Brooklyn.

You'll need one, he says. And then I get this weird idea that maybe this entire building is his hatebox. And then I really fucking want to leave right then.

Whatever, I say. So I ask how much I owe, and he says, A hundred bucks for the materials. And any time I need more, I can come see him.

So, yeah. Anyway, I'm gonna go home, and work on this fucking thing, and maybe when I'm done I'm gonna have a big bowl of spaghetti.

-----------------

Game Rules
It's mechanomancy, only without the realization that something is being built. If you're a rules freak, I suppose you could say that a hateboxer is building a device that acts as a psychoanalyst and helps to remove failed notches in accordance with the madness rules. But really, the entire point of hateboxing is turning the charging structure of mechanomancy into a tool for eliminating memories.

(For some strange reason, I have an image of Dexter, from the Dexter's Lab cartoon, and his continuous tightening of the same nut-and-bolt assembly, as a kind of hateboxing.)

Trent assumes that most hateboxers will break taboo enough times to keep anything truly scary from being built. But eventually, a hateboxer will find a way to infuse his box with a major charge. The results of a Major-Effect Clockwork, infused with negative emotions, should be as spectacular as they are destructive.

-----------------

Here are some follow-up notes and ideas, based off the feedback I received:

1) "I keep seeing a man working on his artificial leg. Half way through, he forgets how he lost his leg, tears apart the artificial leg, remembers, and begins to work again."

2) "What happens to the trapped memories? Can those failed notches be slapped around random if, say, the box is lobbed like a grenade? Or what happens if little Jimmy finds Grandma Pandora's little hopechest and, thinking there's pirate treasure inside, opens the lid? Does little Jimmy get a headful of bad memories and failed notches?Could be a good plot hook and trigger event."

3) "I saw the word 'hopechest' and immediately thought of a hatebox usedfor the opposite of its intended purpose.

"Imagine, say, an undercover cop. He's infiltrated a gang of real bastards, and found out he's just not enough of a bastard himself to keep his cover for long. One day when he's feeling superstitious, he remembers Trent, and remembers him saying you can store any emotion in a hatebox. So he builds one to store everything that's good and decent in him.

"It worked like a charm, and now this guy is the ultimate bastard, Hardened all the way, so extreme he manages to neatly fill the requirements for one of the nastier archetypes. And he's right in the PC's backyard, learning just enough about the Occult Underground to become a threat for everyone involved.

"Learning about the hopechest and making him into a good guy again seems like a good idea for a few adventures - it would be the best option for dealing with him, since direct combat would result in a very high body count."

4) [follow-up to #4] 

"Nice thought... when all his good memories return, he realizes how far down he's fallen, and eats his gun in grief.

"You did it."

Unknown Armies-style Stress Gauges for Vampire 5e

As you probably know, I'm a big fan of Unknown Armies. Even though the setting isn't for most gamers, there's just something about the core mechanics of the game which I find satisfying in its utility and adaptable to different genres (for example, were I run a game set in the Firefly 'verse, I would use UA).

I think the most evocative part of UA are the Stress Gauges, which were called Madness Meters in previous editions. They're like the Sanity system of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, only better, because not only are the sources of stress/madness broken down into categories like Violence, Helplessness, and so on, they also give you the choice of being unable to cope with the stresses (and therefore going insane) or become hardened to them (and risk becoming an emotionless sociopath).

In fact, I like it so much that I converted it to use with Vampire: the Masquerade, another of my favorite system. It was a fair amount of work, but I thought it was a great idea and so did my GM, so I did it.

That said, here's a Google Doc for Stress Gauges in V5. Not only did I re-calibrate some of the benchmarks because I didn't agree with them, I also added a sixth gauge called Addiction. Not only is this great for games without supernatural components (like the aforementioned UA Firefly game), but it's also a natural fit for Vampire where hunger for blood, itself an addiction, rules the player characters.

If you like V:tM and you like granular measurements of insanity and sociopathy, I think you'll like this adaptation.

No More Unknown Armies Posts

This is most likely the last post you'll see about the campaign I've been running. The main reason for that is because I will not be recording and posting future sessions. If you're one of the handful of people who enjoyed this, I apologize.

For those who are wondering why, it's because one of my players told me that being recorded makes them very uncomfortable and less likely to say anything, which results in decreased participation. While I wish I'd been told earlier about this, the simplest and kindest thing to do is to simply stop recording the sessions altogether. Which is a pity for me, because given that there's at least a week between each session, listening to the recording is a perfect way to refresh my memory.

If I'm being honest, I don't think this campaign will survive much longer anyway. As I referenced last week, my GM style and what the group wants appear to be two different things. This leaves me with the following choices:

1. My GM style doesn't suit what kind of game the PCs want to play and I'll have to re-tool the adventure and how I run this game. 
2. I'm the wrong GM for this group and I need to bow out. 
3. This is the wrong game for this group and I need to run something else. 

Which unfortunately boil down to "Quit or do a lot more work." Thing is, I only started running this game because the GM of my Wednesday Pathfinder game became overwhelmed with Real Life Issues and needed time to get things in order. I volunteered so that we'd have something to do on the off-weeks, and I
specifically picked UA because it's a game that's easy for me to run. I know from personal experience how much effort it takes to set up and balance a Pathfinder session -- I run one every Saturday night, after all, and a good bit of the Saturday afternoon before and Sunday afternoon after are used in preparation. I simply couldn't do the same for another game, so I went with a game which is rules-light and more about story and setting and role-playing than about mechanics and combat.

But people aren't having fun, and frustrated players mean a frustrated GM and that means no one is happy. So right now, UA is on hiatus as I try to figure out if I have the energy and desire to re-do the entire campaign.

If I decide to end it, I'll write up a synopsis of what was going on and how the plot could have unfolded for my Patreon patrons so that they can have their questions answered.

Thanks and goodnight.

Unknown Armies Episode 11

So... that didn't go as I expected.

Sigh.

Let me tell you a story. Back in 1995, I was asked to GM a game of Vampire: the Masquerade at the local engineering college. They were all members of a local RPG group who really wanted to play this hot new game but didn't have anyone to run it for them. I was active on the various World of Darkness mailing lists at the time (ah, mailing lists. How 90s) and someone saw I was in their area, said "Would you like to run for us?" and I was all "Sure!"

So I showed up and saw that most of them had made their characters. OK, cool. I get an idea of who they are and what kind of characters they're running. I start an introductory scenario where they, newly made vampires, present themselves to the head vampire of the city (the "Prince" in V:tM lingo) and meet the local clan heads (movers and shakers of power). Then I say to them, "OK, what do you do next?"

I was met with blank stares. Apparently the idea that they, as player characters, should have goals and motivations was foreign to them. They wanted to be told what to do. They wanted to given a quest, go do it, then come back and get a reward and another quest.

They were D&D players in a very NOT D&D game. I was frustrated by this and tried to make it work, but I failed. I was told by one of them (who was a good friend of mine for many years after) that I was expecting a "very advanced form of roleplay" from them.

I feel like that's what is happening in this game. I put the players in a strange place, and instead of trying to blend in, lie low and figure out why they are there, they fight it and do their best to opt out of the scenario. I think you can hear it in my voice as I die a little bit inside in what is supposed to be the climax of the scenario.

Honestly, the only thing I thought was successful was when they (probably unwittingly) crafted an ad-hoc ritual to pull them back to Texas. They technically shouldn't have been able to do that without a magickal charge, but at this point I was basically "Oh thank goodness, they're actually working together and engaging in ritual symbolism" and I decided it was better to reward them for desirable behavior rather than drag out an obviously unfun and unhappy scenario for purposes of rules.

I don't really know what to do. These are D&D players in a very not-D&D game, and I don't know if I can change this game to suit their playstyle without eliminating the elements that make it fun for me to run.

Thanks for letting me vent.

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Unknown Armies Episode 10

I want to assure my listeners of a few things:

• I didn't suddenly decide to run a Star Trek game instead of Unknown Armies. 
• There's a reason why this happened. However, like all good UA stuff, it's never initially apparent. The PCs might find out why it happened, or they might not. 
• There's actually reasoning and a pattern going on here, although it's difficult for my players to see. 

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Unknown Armies Episode 9

More weirdness at UT Austin and the PCs are beginning to wonder just what exactly is going on and what they've gotten caught up in.

My biggest criticism of this game is about myself: we're using the Unknown Armies rules and setting, but it doesn't feel like a UA game to me. I feel like I'm not giving an authentic UA experience, mainly because I just can't seem to express the theme and flavor of UA that I get from the books and so I end up with creepy weirdness instead.

It's hard to describe what that theme and flavor ought to be, because if I knew specifically what was wrong I think I'd be able to fix it. The best I can do is say that when I read UA, there is a very distinct flavor to it,  like maybe a Hunter Thompson novel but with magic instead of drugs, and I can't seem to evoke that flavor. It instead feels like a bunch of normies walking around going "Huh? What?"

I'm trying to give them a taste of Power And Consequences, but -- probably due to inexperience with the setting, or perhaps fear of getting screwed by the GM, they aren't grabbing it by the throat. So instead they're just trying to understand all the Weird Shit going around as other people do their thing, and it feels a lot more like a World of Darkness RPG only with fewer monsters. Or perhaps a Ken Hite conspiracy game but with magic.

Eh, I'm probably overthinking this. As long as my players are having fun and keep coming back, that's the important thing. I just wish I could shake this feeling that I am doing it wrong and if I could only figure out this one thing, it'll be the game that I want to run.

Anyway, here's the audio. General NSFW warning, mainly for language.

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Unknown Armies Episode 8

Hopefully the weirdness is building as the PCs investigate UT Austin and realize that not all is as it seems on campus.

Now that Weer'd Beard is a player (although he missed this session), he's able to clean up to audio for me and reduce the dead air. So a track which used to be 2:46:18 is now 1:55:13. That's much better, both in terms of storage space and listener frustration.

In time I'll go back and correct previous episodes.

Oh, I almost forgot: there's swearing in this one (and, I think, in all previous episodes, but this one specifically had a player ask me to put up a warning) so consider it NSFW.

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Unknown Armies Episode 7

This is a "building" episode. I've realized that my PCs simply aren't proactive and need to be told "This way towards the adventure", so I have accommodated them by having their reward from last week being "Here's the adventure, go do it, you'll learn stuff."

I also added a new player to the group:  my podcast co-host Weer'd Beard. He's been enjoying listening to these episodes (in fact, I think he might be the ONLY person who listens to them) and wondering why the players didn't ask X or do Y, so I just asked him straight up if he wanted to join the game. As you can see, he said yes.

So now the players are investigating strange going-on at the campus of University of Texas, Austin. Again, I worry that I'm not properly capturing the feel of the Texas Gothic aesthetic and/or the mood of Unknown Armies. I know how those things ought to be in my head, but I'm not sure how to express them properly.

Advice is welcome from my listeners -- but does anyone else listen to this? Or am I just shouting into the void?

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Unknown Armies Episode 6

I know that Unknown Armies is supposed to be about "furious action and transcendental horror", but I really enjoy throwing in loads of Grand High Mystical Weird Shit at the PCs and seeing if they make any sense of it.

Unfortunately, it feels like in this case the PCs didn't have any interest in making sense of things. UA works best if the PCs are proactive, but I think I'll need to break out the Plot Whip (Hyaa! Git along, li'l PCs!) and drive them into "Do stuff or die" territory.

The really interesting thing about this session is that most of the background material is real. The Beto 2020 campaign really is ripping off the Whataburger asthetic, and there really is a profile portrait of him made in a farmer's field outside Austin. I just gave it some magickal significance.

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I'm really trying for a "Texas Gothic" aesthetic. Not sure if I'm succeeding.

Unknown Armies Episode 5

As you may have noticed, I enjoy giving my NPCs interesting voices. I might not be able to do an adequate impression of someone, but at least it sounds distinct when they speak.

I was disappointed that the evening ended when it did, but we were a player short and another one was crashing from fatigue, so it really couldn't have gone on longer.

I'm also not sure when we'll play again, since next week I'll be in Virginia giving a speech for UMW's second annual 2A Day, and the week after that I'll be in Indianapolis for the NRA Annual Meeting. So I guess sometime in May?

Regardless, enjoy the episode!

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Unknown Armies Episode 4

This episode is greatly abbreviated, due to my players wanting a light session involving role-playing and talking about goals instead of adventuring (which I was more than happy to give them, considering I haven't had a lot of free time due to my increased workload from mom's surgery) and then having one of those players leave after 45 minutes to go see a movie (harrumph!).

So settle back and listen to the characters introduce themselves and their backstories:

• Nick Sisu, old-fashioned gent and survivor of a supernatural attack;
• Eion (pronounced Owen) Mahoney, former Marine who's well on his way to becoming a hardened sociopath;
• Adrestia Pruitt, adrenaline junkie trauma nurse with a secret;
• and Mildred Opp -- Milly to friends, "Dred" to her students -- a middle-school teacher whose goal is KNOW ALL THE THINGS and who claims to have built the Library of Alexandria.. in a past life? in an alternate reality? The details are vague. 

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Unknown Armies Episode 3

This episode has a few potential titles:

• Infodump
• Wandering Jude
• Scavenger Hunt
• Just Because It Isn't Illegal or Immoral Doesn't Mean It's Not Some Freaky Shit

Unlike last week, this episode is a self-contained adventure. Episode 4 will be in 2 weeks (I'm trading weeks with my Pathfinder GM who is dealing with family issues).

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Failure is Advancement: A House Rule for Unknown Armies

I've been thinking about my UA game and listening to the recording as a kind of after-action report, and I've come to a few conclusions:

1. PCs are going to suck at most skill rolls in a stress situation unless they're either really high or are fore an Obsession skill, and
2. Advancement, while regular, is pretty slow. 

Neither one of these is inherently bad, but in concert they can be frustrating.

For example, Adrastia has a Drive skill of 25%. That's not the best in the group, but it's pretty good and better than the default score of 15%. Now in Unknown Armies, there are three kinds of rolls: Minor, Significant, and Major. 

• Minor skill checks are trivially easy and the kind of thing that we do all the time, like driving through traffic. With a minor check, if you have a 15% in the skill, you succeed automatically, so you'd only fail if you were learning the skill, didn't have the skill, or were impaired from drugs or damage. 
• Significant skill checks are harder than trivial but there's no stress to them. These are what I call "job checks" because you do them on a regular basis, like at your job. If you roll under your skill then you succeed strongly, but so long as you roll under your stat, you succeed weakly. The average stat in a UA game is 55%, so that gives slightly better than average chances at success. 
• Major skills checks, though, are serious life or death things. They happen in combat and any other kind of stressful situation where a screwup could mean injury or worse. Players MUST roll under their skill rating to succeed, and this is where disaster lurks, because while Adrastia is better at driving than most people she isn't a trained combat driver, and in situations where such driving is necessary she has a 75% chance of failure. 

Like the combat rules, these numbers are harsh and probably realistic. It's one of the things which make UA a horror, or perhaps terror, game. There's a good chance that if the shit hits the fan, you're gonna die. 

Now all of this is cool. I can enjoy high-stakes games, and UA characters aren't especially hard to make. But I wonder, I worry, if that realism paired with slow advancement and limited XP will result in players frustrated at their inability to get things done. 

So I think I'm going to take a cue from my game Unknown Ponies: Failure is Awesome (which, ironically enough, is based off the UA game engine, hence the name) and use the concept of "We learn more from our failures than from our successes" to give my PCs a slightly faster form of advancement that won't make them too powerful too quickly. 

Here's the rule: Every time a player character fails a Major skill roll, the player puts a check next to that skill. There can never be more than one check next to a skill, so multiple failures earn nothing. At the end of game session, each skill with a check next to it increases by 1%. 

Here are the limiting factors:

1. It has to be a Major skill check, meaning in combat or similar. 
2. The skill only gets one boost per game session. 
3. It cannot raise a skill above the hard cap of an attribute stat, and those can only be raised through XP. 

Yes, I am aware that this can be abused by player fishing for skill checks in combat. If they want to waste their turn whoring for advancement at the risk of failing the mission and/or the lives of their characters, that's on them. 

I expect there will be rapid improvement in low-level skills that get used a lot during stress situations -- as is proper, I feel -- which will taper off once the 50% level is reached. Of course, if the players spend XP to improve a skill further, that will only accelerate the drop-off. 

There may be other ways to game this system, but I'm not thinking of any. If you can I'd like to know about them. 

Unknown Armies Episode 2

The conclusion to the adventure I began last week!

My players enjoyed the weirdness and mindfuckery, so it looks like I'm going to be running (and recording) more episodes of Unknown Armies in the future.

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In hindsight, I probably should have had the homeless man sit bolt upright and deliver his lines right as the bus was spinning out of control, just to add to the general WTFery and to head off the expected "PCs want to murder him now" motions. Having him simply not be there when they wake up would have given them more agency than him leaving before they'd recovered their wits.

Ah well, live and learn. I've made a note of it for next time.

Unknown Armies Episode 1

So I've acquired a bit of a reputation as a weird-yet-skilled RPG gamemaster, and people frequently say things like "Your games must be a blast" or "I wish I could play with you."

Well, while I can't let everyone in the world play with me (oo-er, missus!) I can let you listen in on a game session.

Last Wednesday, I ran an adventure for the Unknown Armies RPG to fill in for my currently Pathfinder GM who's been dealing with family problems. UA is a weird, fun little game that not many people have heard about. It's an urban fantasy role-playing game that's hard to describe, so I'll toss out a few similes:

• It's the game people wanted Mage: the Ascension to be, all gritty and street level instead of high-minded and cosmic. 
• It's the game you'd get if Hunter S. Thompson wrote a Vertigo comic. 
• In the words of one of the game's writers, it's about "Power and Consequences". 
• In the words of another, it's a game about a "Bunch of skeevy weirdos trying to undermine the fundaments of reality because no one else had the brass to try it".

So yeah, that's the game. Urban fantasy with some horror and brutality and high weirdness... and I recorded our first session. I've been given permission by all of my players to make the recording public, so if you're interested in giving it a listen, here's the link to download it, or you can just hit play below.

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