Unknown Armies is a pretty flexible system when it comes to poking your sanity. It should handle most ‘urban weird horror’ situations pretty well. But even within that genre description, there’s a huge variety of horror you can play with.
The thing is, nobody’s going to be happy if they set out expecting eerie supernatural conspiracy and they wind up in a gonzo schlock gorefest.
You can avoid this by making sure your group is pitching in the same ballpark for the tone of campaign you want to play.
Before Cabal Creation
If you can, start this before the collaborative world-building process that’s described in chapter 3 of Book 2: Run.
That process is the character phase. Each player brings some inspiration to the table to kick it off. Everyone (including the GM) should come to it with some visual or multimedia stimulus – a handful of plot elements they want to see in the game, in the shape of characters, organisations and places.
Doing that is likely to involve some degree of research and investigation, or at the very least, some digging around your archive of juicy game material.
If the group can get or set even a loose sense of direction, that should smooth the process. Some collective focus (around inspiration and constraints) can help save a bit of precious out-of-game time and get everyone playing faster.
A Voyage of Influences
This step isn’t about being prescriptive, final or definitive about the type of game the group will play.
It’s about starting to mark the boundaries and shape the landscape that will be explored during world-building, and making sure that everyone sets off on the same voyage.
More practically, it’s about sharing the broad influences and touchstones you’re each thinking of: the TV shows, books, films and music that epitomise the tone you want to emulate for the campaign. And – just as important – the ones that break it, which you want to avoid.
As the character phase progresses, the collaborative process will throw up setting details. Campaign themes and plot hooks will emerge. All these combined, including playing style preferences, will hone the tone of the game to something that everyone is happy with.