... this worries me

<AlcarGM> "The surgeons were terrified. I had not thought them capable of terror, and yet they hid. The world rang with bells, the floor shuddered. Entire places were -- broken." He tenses, then reaches out to grab your arm.
<Joe`> d100 Dodge 35%
<Sparkie> Joe` d100: 99 Dodge 35%
<Joe`> (( arg, doubles fail ))
* Sparkie kept the 99! SCORE!
<Joe`> (( at least it wasnt a 100 :p ))
............
<AlcarGM> So, last session Sparkie did one roll for chaos. And rolled a 99.
<AlcarGM> <Chaos`^> 1d100
<AlcarGM> <Sparkie> Chaos`^ 1d100: 3
<AlcarGM> <Chaos`^> I'm saving that roll for later
<AlcarGM> <alcar> lol
<AlcarGM> <alcar> I might just allow it, after that 99 :p
<AlcarGM> <Sparkie> WHAT?!?!
<AlcarGM> * Sparkie is going to keep that 99 and use it next session too, then.
* Sparkie is beyond awesome now.
<Joe`> lol

Signum Jot Note: 5 sessions in

Currently we have three players, one dicebot and the game has 5 sessions in the bag. NPCs have been created, the world is slowly getting fleshed out. Characters have made dubious choices (yay!), performed rituals (woohoo!) and begun investigations into scenes of mass murder. As one does. The general idea is that the game will function in more of a slow-burn way rather than, say, 'meet Cthulhu and go mad' way. Everyone makes decisions that seem to make perfect sense and slowly but surely lead them down slippery paths -- and then you do more things, and even more to justify the one you did before and some day look back and have no idea how you came to be who you are.

It should be a wild ride for the players at least, even if the poor PCs might well have cause to disagree.

Sinal City: Notes

Notes for the game inspired by players creations; contributions welcomed. 

          Taxicabs in Sinal City.

Taxis in the city are run by several companies regulated by the mayor’s office.

Sinal Cabs, run by one Damian Dalessio, is the oldest and arguably most famous cab company in the city, famous for its black and white checkered cabs and fact – not boast – that not a single cab has GPS since his drivers know the city inside-outside, able to act as tour guides and supply useful facts as well as the best routes through the city. It takes at least a year of training to be become a cab driver and at least 3/4 of the applicants flunk out.

The company has run into problems lately due to having few vans and having not kept up with having accessible rides and the like, but it is the only company to offer 24-hour cab service and the drivers are well-paid and competent. Sinal Cabs only accept cash payments.

Luxe: No other name. A small fleet of white luxury sedans who offer convenience, exorbitant pricing and special services to most anyone who uses them. They company is filthy rich through not that large as a great deal of profits go into bribing many officials to look the other way over incidents involving their vehicles and/or passengers.

Fleet Street: The yellow taxis of Fleet Street are famous, even though the company is no longer situated on said street in the business district. Fleet cabs are bright yellow, accessible, modern, though the drivers are poorly paid and the turnover rate is high. The owner, one Chiang Yu, recently bought it and has been trying to modernize the company even further by offering delivery of parcels and probably work for the mob, if rumours are to be believed.

Chet’s Cheapike: A bicycle courier service in the city, Chet’s company delivers packages, letters, and sometimes even people on the back of smaller bikes. They have scooters and some motorcycles in their inelegant ensemble and are run cheaply. The company is reportedly near-bankrupt most of the time and Chet is desperate for funding and a way to break into the ‘big leagues’, as he sees taxi companies, as well as prevent any bike sharing scheme from operating in the city.

Minicab Inc. Licensed private vehicles that operate as cabs. A lot of illegal ones exist but there are some legal ones that get to use designated rush-hour lanes and carpooling ones at all hours, the same as actual taxis. The company has come under fire recently for allowing illegal minicabs to function with their blessing.

The black cabs. There are some, reportedly working for some of the high-end clubs and hotels. Black cabs take any passenger, accept different forms of payment and ask no questions. Nothing is known for definite about the company and some claim it is just a rumour certain minicab operators started.

More to be added as needed/warranted. 

Signum Notes

Unknown Armies is, at the core of it, a horror game. It's about the horrible things people do in the pursuit of their goals, and often the equally horrible things that must be done to stop them. That's the horror of it all: what people will do. The weird shit is the setting, the nature of the world the PCs exist in. For Signum, this is the PCs starting off as functionally normal people who exist in the everyday world, who interact easily with normal people. How long the remain that depends on what they do, and why they do it.

Because normal people are crazy. They believe the world is sane, that it's not possible to say "Fuck you" to reality and actually succeed. They don't understand that the world is about you, that you can shape the universe into new shapes, make things happen by dint of luck, effort, and probably some unpleasant memories afterwards, but omelettes and eggs. And if you can do this: what do you do with it? Do you become the horrors, however noble your goals? Do you fight against them and try for any success, no matter how small?


Your character is, effectively, Edward Snowden. You have learned Secrets. You have some idea of how the world really works. You know the mundane explanations are a lie: so what do you do with it? Do you reveal secrets to others, use them for yourself, pretend you never knew and let it eat you away inside? Do you wonder why no one else revealed these secrets? And if you're asking those questions, how far will you go to find answers?

Being a UA PC is about doing the right thing, yes, but it's also about consequences. Always, it's about consequences. What you do, what you're willing to do, and just how far down the rabbit hole of madness you will go to find a perfect sanity.

signum somnia

“Life is about the wrong turns. Down side streets, back alleys, the roads maps won’t admit to having. There are beaten paths people know to avoid, paths through words and worlds not meant for human use. People see weird shit all the time: shadows that don’t seem to be normal, sudden noises where no one is standing, that feeling of being watched even when you’re alone. The thing is, see, there is something. We shape the world, the world we make shapes us. There aren’t words for it. Sometimes there are barely feelings. But if we forget how to unsee things, they are there:

The babysitter no child ever spoke back to, the street bum people treat as if he was a king, the child with the creepy eyes and the smile full of sharpness, the teenager who sliced her own arm and swore blind that her cuts could speak to her, the boy who ran across broken glass without a single injury. We dismiss it as miracles when we see it, but it’s something other. There is a way to bend the world to your desires, to bend yourself to the world, and if you do it – if you can become it – maybe it’s worth it. I don’t know.

“I used to work for a bank. I won’t tell you which one. I took this wrong turn in the open street, met a homeless man in a cardboard box he’d scrawled mathematical symbols on. “To keep the angels of angles away,” he said, as if it made all the sense in the world. I gave him ten dollars because his eyes were so worn out. Ran into him across town two days later, a week after that. I started reading his box, God help me. It was there. The rise and fall of stock markets, predicted a week in advance, all scrawled out on a cardboard box.

“He had friends, took me to meet them. I followed. I couldn’t not follow. Hook, line, sunk. There were twelve of them, no idea what they were doing, predicting the future on cardboard. I added a few lines, just – well, honestly, just because. I won’t say what happened. I had to quit, accused of insider trading. I never met him after that. But I have my own box now. I’m inventing my own math. I think I can do it, if I forget enough – get my life back, I mean. I don’t know. I just need two bucks, for a new Sharpie. I could make you famous. Two lines. That’s all I need to write.

“It’ll last until it rains on my box. I wish I was lying. You should go. If you look too hard, if you pay attention – just go. It’s safer. It’s safe. I don’t know if I want safe again.”

Signum Somnia [Signal Dreams] is a street-level Unknown Armies campaign set in Sinal City, a sprawling metropolis of skyscrapers and slummed ringed by suburban nightmares where dreams go to die. The city is old and run-down. Think Detroit but with a population that’s more New York melting pot. The city isn’t a bankrupt ruin, but some can see it from where you are – and others are doing their damnedest to prevent that. Things fall apart, but some centres can hold. People can make a difference, even if it is in ways – and by means – that they never knew.

System notes: Standard 220 point UA character creation (poke Sparkie for a sheet). Adept schools won’t exist; it’s very much more that each adept does their own thing – some adepts of one school will know one spell, some another, each approach it in different ways. Avatars are more powerful, though quietly so. Regardless, one is still bound to a system (taboos) or a paradigm (adepts) and normal people are not.

A lot more weird than flat-out horror. People with odd talents, genuine psychic shit, people with just some odd/strange knack and the like exist. The PCs may number among them or they may not. Artifacts exist and are pretty damn weirdly dangerous (think The Lost Room) and people know a lot more than they ever admit. The world is chock-a-block full of the weird and the ways people deal and cope with it. If you’re a PC, you deal with it by becoming part of it, by grabbing the tiger by the tail and using it for your own ends, however mundane or glorious they may be.

Setting notes: the game is conceived as being more occult ghetto than underground; the internet has only helped the spread of dis- and misinformation and for every person with a cell phone pic of weird shit there’s a dozen others with photoshop and too much time on their hands. Everyone is stumbling in the dark, but some people are stumbling in the right direction.

Characters: Street-level UA. You have a trigger event(s) in your background, you may be a bit weird or have run into weird but you’re not wandering about leaping in front of cars to juice yourself up with power. At least, not yet. Keep in mind that the PCs need goals and aspiration and what separates PCs from NPCs is often that PCs do go out and get stuff done. Most of the world sees weird stuff and flees to their local church or a psychiatrists office: you buck up and deal with it. However you do. Skills should be less generic and more fitting into the tone of your character and what they'd do with them.

(Friends and family are both encouraged and useful in the same. Give the GM plot-fodder and he will be happy. So will Sparkie.)

Campaign: The world will be built based around the PCs, given the characters and NPCs you make. MSG me/each other with stuff you want/don’t want to see and the game shall build itself around all of that. The core of the campaign is that the PCs are discovering about Weird Shit and doing things about it: they’re learning more about who they are, how the world works and what do do with that knowledge. 

Players: Thus far, Caltak. There will be no set time for sessions, unless players desire it. Time ending up a little weird will be just be one more things for PCs to get used to, after all....

Fear the dicebot!

<AlcarGM> u5
<Sparkie> AlcarGM u5: 6 from [3, 2, 2, 6, 5]
<Tommie`^> sparkie
<Tommie`^> when'd her dice go up to 5?
<AlcarGM> Ah, ooops. Meant 4.
<Tommie`^> sure
<Tommie`^> whatever
<Tommie`^> i'm afraid what a u4 might roll anyway