To Go

Unknown Armies

by Greg Stolze

For a decade, the occult conspiracy known as Mak Attax has been infusing America with magickal power, one super-size fast-food meal at a time. Now the symbolic batteries of the nation are charged up and crackling. The seven chakras of the American body politic have come alive, and the great kundalini serpent is winding its way across the landscape. The lords of the occult underground are riding its tail, fighting for a prize so big nobody even knows what it is. And this is no mere street saga. All the heavy hitters are stepping up to the plate, while the ascended archetypes of the Invisible Clergy choose sides and dispatch their avatars to the front lines. The stakes have never been higher and when the dust settles, your cabal of mystic high-rollers will cast the dice.

This massive campaign packs more action, adventure, horror, and mystic intrigue into one book than anything Unknown Armies has done before. It's an epic that takes you through the spiritual power centers of America and beyond, to a final confrontation in a reality like nothing on this globe of earth. What will you risk to change the world?

Genres: Role Playing Games, Games, Horror

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Greg Stolze (born 1970) is an American novelist and writer, whose work has mainly focused on properties derived from role-playing games.

Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.

Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.

Reviews

[Kalin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though there were parts where I caught myself yawning (it was either the effect of the more mundane US cities, or my very own sleep deprivation :D), I finally settled on four stars because of the maturity and the wry humor. Heehee, just check out the newly Ascended in the appendix. The Holy Prole is so right-on. Also, the High, Middle and Low Roads in describing contemporary US gave me a hearty chuckle:

America is the land of opportunity, freedom, democracy and equality under the law.

vs.

The USA has, traditionally, meant well but perhaps been a bit naive, boorish and insensitive on the international scene. Individually its citizens value materialism and comfort--and, when practical, they want their standard of comfort for all.

vs.

America is apathetic, selfish, lazy except when vicious and cynically corrupt except when ignorant. The cult of individual aggrandizement is alive and well (...)

"Kids, don't do drugs," said by a 20-foot winged snake to a group of accidental teen witnesses in the middle of Washington, DC, was another favorite.

A worthwhile experience, for both gamemasters and wannabe game designers (like me ;).

[Mikael Cerbing · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usuall, I love the ideas in the UA books. And, as usuall, I dont think I ever will be able to play it. I thknk its to abstract for both me and my players, with so many great ideas that I dont know what to do with.
I do find parts of this book to be a bit to railroady and others perhaps a bit to loose. On the other hand, it was one of the best written rpg campaings I have read. But that does not make it the easiest to run, I think.
I really wish Stoltze (or Tkm Powers...) wrote a 250ish page book based on this campaing doe, that could be amazing.

[Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I recently got back into RPGs (role-playing games). I used to play RPGs (Dungeons and Dragons, specifically) with a friend when I was a little kid, and then again when I was in junior high. In High School, I realized they weren't cool, and I contemporaneously discovered girls (without girls discovering me), so RPGs receded to the back of my book shelves, along with books in general. But I never gave up my love for RPGs.

I love storytelling, love making up stories on the spot, and love interactive storytelling. And that's what RPGs are all about.

So this book, To Go, isn't really a novel - it's more of a recipe for a novel. It's an adventure outline. It's a story without any protagonists - or an outline of a story where YOU add the protagonists. It's an unintentional post-modern solution for making a novel, but oddly, no avant-garde writer that I know of has used this model, which is a shame and a pox on our contemporary writers.

So To Go is a magic-filled, bat-shit crazy, action-movie version of a road-trip story. Think Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but in a world where people use porn, TV watching, and self-cutting to make magic. Not only does magic exist, but there's a group of magic-obsessed (or "magick" with a "k") kids (and some adults) who are idealistic obsessives who want to create a "magical renaissance." And the way they're going to do that? By dumping magical "charges" into Happy Meals. So for the last many years, they've been doing just that. If you get one of these Super Happy Meals, you'll most likely simply have a low grade trip and see transient shamrocks float out of your shake, or have visions of sentient corn and coca plants with your Coke. Their one great accomplishment was on Jan. 1st, 2001, when these magical anarchist-kids managed to direct that magic to make sure that 2001 was a safe and happy new year. They missed 9/11, of course, but they still dump these charge. And all that magic has been accumulating along the highway where those charge have been floating.

If that sounds silly - well, it is, but it's a fun conceit.

So the intersecting lines of our interstate highways are now forming a kundalini across the U.S. A massive magical charge is going to go from LA to NYC, and the U.S. might magically awaken. All of that depends on you, the reader/player.

Again, this is just an outline. It tells you roughly what could happen. It gives you descriptions of places (a slaughterhouse in LA, a backroom high-stakes poker match in Vegas, a frat-retreat in Philly, and an intense scene at a Micky D's). It gives you the dramatis personae, but not all of the main protagonists. It gives you a rough timetable. It gives you a road map, basically, but you have to connect the dots and tell the story.