330 - Ongoing Objectives

Optional Rules: Ongoing Objectives

Not all goals have a defined end point, quite a few of them require sustained effort in order to be maintained once they're up and running. Operating a business, running a support group, keeping the thing slumbering underneath the graveyard from rising up and eating everyone in town. This runs contrary to the default assumption in Unknown Armies: that players must always have goals defined by change. One way to address this within the established context is to use it as a background element or framework and make dealing with individual issues their own objectives or milestones within a larger objective (i.e. keep a roof over your cult compound by running a successful bake sale).

Another is to use milestones to shore up the objective percentile as though it were a Wound Threshold, taking hits based on trials and tribulations that threaten its integrity: hand-to-hand damage for petty hits and firearm damage for weighty hits (capped at 40 unless the harm is catastrophic).

In return for sacrificing the opportunity to pursue something proactively the psychological anchor of the objective provides both tangible support and mental shelter. Once per session it can substitute for protection against a stress check or provide material support as though it were a relationship, so long as it’s relevant in either case. Conversely if it hits zero anyone sufficiently invested to benefit from that suffers a rank 4 (plus 1 rank per relevant passion or obsession) stress check to either Isolation or Helplessness at the GM’s discretion. Zeroing out your objective to wreck someone else’s party works as normal, it just hurts more when you’re tearing down something that’s a part of you.