Every character in Unknown Armies has had some kind of experience with Unnatural forces, places, people or things in the world. In this step:
- each player will briefly describe their character’s Unnatural origin or ‘trigger story’.
- the experiences are translated into 1-5 hardened notches on the Unnatural shock meter.
Reference: UA3 Book 2: Run (p26 | p25 pdf).
The Trigger Event
A character’s origin story or trigger is described as “the event that convinced them that the unnatural was real and could not safely be ignored.”
There is no restriction as to what the trigger event is, within the boundaries and tone that have been agreed by the playing group.
Some ideas can be found in this rpg.net forum thread
and this online document, which also includes examples from UA1. The Unnatural stress check ranks can also help gauge appropriate intensity levels.
Mechanical Consequences
How far they became exposed to the weirdness of the world before the campaign kicks off will have a mechanical bearing on their character:
- their experience will be translated into hardened notched on the Unnatural shock meter.
- what they choose to do about their knowledge of secrets may well motivate their obsessions and passions in the game.
The overall Unnatural hardness across the cabal will also influence whether the game sets off at a relatively mundane or ascended level.
Mark Unnatural Notches
Each story reveal how much a character is aware of the Unnatural. It also tells us how intensely and repeatedly they have experienced it since the original trigger event.
With more exposure incidents, a character will probably have faced multiple stress checks against their Unnatural shock meter. That means they are likely to have a number of hardened and failed notches.
We deal with failed notches later. For now, each player should add between 1 and 5 hardened notches to the Unnatural meter.
How many notches a character gets is up to the player. Each one erodes their reliance on natural senses and empirical Knowledge, and pushes them closer to the Secrets of the Unnatural.
Sample Unnatural Stress Ranks
The sample Unnatural stress check ranks give some ideas about the intensity of experiences a character is likely to have experienced and resisted for each hardened notch. For each notch they mark, expect to have passed a higher, more intensely ranked, stress check, such as:
- Rank 1-2: Experience a preternaturally strong déjà vu.
- Rank 2-3: See a creature or machine that cannot logically exist.
- Rank 2-4: Realise that a vision they had has come true.
- Rank 3-5: Observe someone move impossibly – vanish from sight, go through a wall, open a door that wasn’t there a minute before.
- Rank 4-6: Be successfully attacked with magick.
- Rank 5-7: Watch someone they know be inexplicably killed by magick.
- Rank 6-8: Have a conversation with a dead loved one.
- Rank 6-8: See an animal with human features.
- Rank 8-10: Witness the dead rise.
- Rank 9-10: Realise that you spouse is not really a human being.
A full list of stress checks, along with hardened and failed notches charts that suggest behavioural consequences, can be found in UA3 Book 1: Play (p22 | p21 pdf).