I recently aquired the books for a system called Unknown Armies. More of the whole paranormal thing that you know I'm fond of, but minus all that angst crap. I mean, rallying your psyche against the slings and arrows of supernatural responability makes a great game, but there are some times when you just want to cut loose, fuck the rules, and just have some fun in a paranormal, magickal way.
(Note: Yes, magick with a k. I didn't choose it, don't hurt me.)
Anyway, Unknown Armies has a unique setting to say the least. The end of the world is nigh, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. What you can do, however, is decide to join the upper ranks of the universe (The Invisible Clergy) and have a hand in shaping the next world. If it's full of good people, you get a Paradise. If it's full of bad people...you get the idea. There's 333 spots to be filled, so space is limited, and it's an all-out war to see who's gonna be able to determine the next iteration of reality. In order to be one of the Big People (who keep themselves busy waiting for the end by playing God/Goddess), you have to be the embodiment of a certain Archtype of humanity, like the Mother, the Savage, the Flying Woman (Amelia Earhart, anyone?), or the Executioner. The requirements for acceptance aren't much more definate than fate, and that has lead to some rather interesting people joining their ranks over the millenia, like a recent addition, a porn starlet who ascended right in front of the cameras, who's bootleg tapes of various generations have sparked off new interest in the occult, and an entire new school of magick (Pornomancy).
Speaking of magick, there's plenty of different schools of magick, like an infinite amount, since you can make one up. Some of the given examples are Dipsomancy, which literally is the Drunken Style of magick, Entropomancy, which is based off of chaos, Plutomancy, which derives it's power from money itself, Iconomancy, powered from worship/stalking of celebreties, Annihilomancy, think Tyler Durden's philosophy as a magick type, Urbanomancy, where you can derive power from the living entities known as cities, and more.
Enter you, a magick adept/bruiser/hooker/burger flipper/clockwork automaton/whatever. You don't necessarily have to use magick to get ahead, so you can just as easily be a gun-toting hood. Besides, it takes a lot of magick to stop a bullet. You don't have to want to join the Invisible Clergy, in fact, many characters have no interest in it whatsoever.
There's quite a few organizations out there, and all of them may have some interest in you (one way or another), like The New Inquisition, a bunch of toughs, thugs, and crazies hired by multi-billionare Alex Abel to help him do who-knows-what, and the Sleepers, kinda the MiB/Keyser Soze-esque group of the occult underground, killing off those who get a little too close to letting the public know about what's really going on behind the scenes.
All in all, the attitude of the game is very loose, pulp-fictiony, paranormal, conspiriatorial, fun stuff. The game is VERY loose on mechanics (33 pages out of 224 to be precise), you can and are encouraged to make up your own spells, skills, schools of magick, and archtypes as we go along, and it's all very free-form. If you want, we could do a custom campaign or a one-shot I have.
So, what do you think?
If you're interested, email (preferrably) Punkey at punkey@evilemail.com, or me at generalflynny@yahoo.com