PREVIEW: Rhetoratism (Unknown Armies)

UPDATE 4/7/23: Rhetoratism is live on DrivethruRPG! You can snag it here!

 

I'm making good progress on designing my second adept school for Unknown Armies 3e: rhetoratism! Here's the rundown:

    "The miracle of language is not to be understated. We are essentially ambulatory heaps of meat that can, against all odds, convey wonderful and complex ideas to each other by flapping that meat in just the right ways. Without this miracle, civilization would not exist. And yet, how often does it come back to bite us? Sometimes we accidentally say something out loud that we meant to keep in our thoughts. Sometimes, in the heat of an argument, we let loose an insult that we wish we could rescind to our dying day. And sometimes, Jeff just won’t wrap up his quarterly budget report, even after running 20 minutes into lunchtime.

     Well, rhetoratists recognize all these nuances, and they choose to be like Jeff. They embrace the power of speech in all its forms; it can be just as useful to bore someone to tears with a droning monologue as it can to scream them into submission. It’s not just about what you say, but how you say it. And more importantly still, how long you say it for. Speech is a tool of domination, of subdual. It can be used to exert one’s force of personality over those who respect convention and good taste. If you never let someone get a word in edgewise, you have power over them. And if that fails, you can just dance around their argument with a bunch of florid epithets that don’t actually mean anything.

     The central paradox of rhetoratism is that we evolved to use speech as a way to communicate nuance and meaning, but it’s just as often used as a blunt instrument whose actual contents are unimportant. For every intricate discussion, there’s a lecture devoid of substance. For every persuasive and heartfelt argument, a relentless tirade that only ends when the speaker gets what they want. Our words have meaning, but that meaning is often drowned out by the tambor of our voices."

 

 

 

Hopefully that's caught your interest, but to sweeten the pot, I'll leave you with the names of some of the school's formula spells. Who wouldn't want to cast:

 

• Balderdash!

• Dramatic Monologue

• Drown Out the Screams

• Mommy? Sorry. Mommy?

• Shahrazad Style

• Words Can Hurt Me

• You'll See! You'll All See!
  

I'll be posting here when it's finished and up on DTRPG. The writing is pretty much good to go, so I'll be moving on to layout soon.