To Go (Unknown Armies) Review

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To Go (Unknown Armies) ReviewIt's rare that I come across a role-playing game that expands my mind like Unknown Armies has. It's even more rare to find a prepackaged adventure or campaign for any RPG that can blow your mind as much as the RPG itself does. To Go is a full campaign for Unknown Armies that sticks the dynamite right in at the base of your brain and twists the detonator.
What's it about? Here's the back cover blurb:
"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."
Basically, To Go is a road movie and all that it entails. The PCs go chasing after the kundalini spirit from coast to coast, with episodes in seven cities along the way. Each city symbolizes (as a chakra point) some element of America so the events that take place in those cities tend to be metaphors. This is sometimes subtle (in the episode dealing with justice) or gaudy (in the episode dealing with luck and fortune). The thematic connections between the events and the locations they take place in is a really nice touch.
The overall feel of To Go reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman's American Gods in theme and tone. There are also a good deal of gonzo Hunter S. Thompson moments as well. I like the kitschy feel the campaign lends itself to. I can easily imagine the PCs in road trip mode, driving across the Nevada desert in a beat up old sky-blue Chevy, listening to some static-y easy listening station on the radio. The spaces between the main episodes in the cities a GM can fill with his own ideas, and once you start grooving on the riffs the campaign itself is laying down, you can come up with some really whack scenarios to lay on your PCs. Driving across the U.S. can be a very surreal experience!
The opportunities for role-playing in the campaign are numerous and sometimes quite involved. There is plenty for good group of players to chew on. All the major NPCs are well developed with real motivations and goals. Even the minor NPCs provide good characterizations. One thing I like about the characters in Unknown Armies scenarios is, when they're crazy, they're really crazy. Some of the characters in To Go are pretty funny (despite being dangerous lunatics). This fits well with the sort of black comedy you often seem to find in Unknown Armies scenarios.
There are a couple of set piece action scenes, but this isn't Feng Shui and I wouldn't try to play it that way. If your players are taking the Unknown Armies approach to violence seriously (that is, try to avoid a fight) they'll probably come through unscathed (though a couple of times, you just gotta do what you gotta do). But really, this campaign is all about the role-playing and the bulk of the episodes give the PCs plenty of tough choices and interesting moral questions.
Another thing I like about this book is the art. There isn't a lot, only one full-page piece per chapter. But each picture is a snapshot of events in the chapter. The done in a clean, comic book style, that is both detailed and efficient. What I like about it is the pictures follow four "PCs" through the campaign - a big bald tough guy, a sort of skateboard chick, a guy in a suit, and an old granny. As the campaign develops, so do these characters (in the pictures). By the last picture, a couple of them are bandaged from injuries taken earlier in the campaign. The diversity of the characters suggests the comedy inherent in the kind of cabal of characters likely to get involved in an Unknown Armies campaign. Very effective artwork if you ask me.
I can't find too much wrong with this campaign. Maybe I'm biased. Having written something like this myself, I know how hard it is to write a full campaign for publication. Perhaps the only fault could be the railroading necessary to all prepackaged campaigns. In To Go, the plot rails aren't so rigid anyway, and Stolze gets away with it mostly by simply setting scenes and goals for the characters and letting everyone go to it, then figuring out the results afterwards. This is not a campaign for beginning GMs. Given the kind of leeway the PCs have in resolving events in this campaign, the GM had better be able to deal with the unexpected.
The other sticking point might be the power level. To Go is written for the "cosmic" level of play, and assumes the PCs (and thus the players) are familiar with the way things work in the Unknown Armies world. Actually I don't think this is such a problem for a crew of smart players who are into UA, but it could present a bit of a learning curve to newbies (though zooming around that curve could be fun!)
I hate Greg Stolze because he's so damned good! I want to write like him! He catches the essence of the UA game world and puts it all into this campaign. To Go is a real gem and I'm looking forward to running it.To Go (Unknown Armies) OverviewFor 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?

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