Komoda
The John Tynes Isn't Dead Contest just wrapped. Submitters had a couple months to write submissions based on entries to the Unnatural Phenomena page, an Unknown Armies fansite dating back to the early 2000s (and mirroring content from other, now defunct fan pages).
The jam was initiated after Atlas Games allowed the Statosphere community content program for Unknown Armies 3e to die by neglect, ignoring DrivethruRPG's communications on the subject and subsequent fan communications asking about the status of the program. UA3 was basically abandoned anyway, but the disappearance of Statosphere through bureaucratic incompetence added insult to injury.
SUBMISSIONS
Drown With Me by me
The anglerfish woman collecting men to perpetually inseminate her started as a Delta Green adventure a few years ago. Her master strategy for collecting and drowning men is a riff on the Undines from the New Sun franchise. Annie Achebe is from an upcoming Special Orders book.
The Gathering by me
This one started with a discussion on the Special Orders discord. Originally it was going to be a Ritual Game where you could assume other peoples' charges by beheading them. But I didn't want to directly adapt the movie, so I came up with another reason for them to have swords.
Sadie Baptiste by me
The 33.3 FM devs criticized Ustrinaturgy for being too easy to charge with and not antisocial enough. You do an everyday activity and you get charges. It's like Fulminaturgy except the spells are much more powerful. The cancer chance on casting is a cool idea on paper but is strongly mitigated by all the die manipulation Unknown Armies characters get from their passions, taking it from a 1/100 chance to a 1/10000 chance if rerolls are available. Emphysemancy, by contrast, does not fuck around. The charging scheme is basically the same but more expensive, the taboo stricter.
...Until you get a historically significant lighter, then the cost drops substantially. Maybe too substantially. You have to smoke twenty cigarettes to get a minor charge, but only one with a historically significant lighter to get a sig. A sig can be broken down to make ten minor charges. That means with the lighter you get 200 times as much benefit from a single cigarette. This is a similar problem to the old school Dipsomancy formula, where a significant vessel takes the school from costly but powerful into something-for-nothing territory.
Pointy Shoes by me
I did not like Rooms of Renunciation when I first read Unknown Armies, I generally dislike anything whose sole purpose is to zig when the players zag (I'm looking at you, Janedoes). But I've come around on Rooms thanks to some cool examples of room agents, scary rooms, rooms that players might enter voluntarily...
I did not like Rooms of Renunciation when I first read Unknown Armies, I generally dislike anything whose sole purpose is to zig when the players zag (I'm looking at you, Janedoes). But I've come around on Rooms thanks to some cool examples of room agents, scary rooms, rooms that players might enter voluntarily...
I wrote the Eunuch Avatar for Temple of the Crying Buddha,
based on a throwaway line in one of the upcoming Special Orders books
about the Archetype's fall from the Statosphere. There's a scenario that
might never see the light of day where the players are Eunuchs in a
Mamluk harem during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. I decided I didn't
care about the Invisible Clergy and the metaphysics of Avatars and
Ascension, and would rather give the players an interesting choice.
Unknown Armies has a lot of magickal taboos that inconvenience the
character a lot and the player very little. The Eunuch taboo is one of
them, but this one is enough to make people hesitate.
Derry Resnick by me
Like the entry he's based on, Derry is a fun concept but not useful for the majority of campaign frames. You could start the game with him exploding and killing the president and spend the rest of the game dealing with the sudden public revelation of magick under unfavorable circumstances.
Like the entry he's based on, Derry is a fun concept but not useful for the majority of campaign frames. You could start the game with him exploding and killing the president and spend the rest of the game dealing with the sudden public revelation of magick under unfavorable circumstances.
Room 27 by me
I wanted to write a Silent Hill style continuation of the original entry, but there was nothing to add besides stat blocks for various characters at the porn parlour - or a bunch of pregens to investigate and destroy it. I took it into the future and only had to write one NPC.
The Last Argument of Kings by me
The original article with the King of Swords was weak, but I had the ARC DREAM tarot card on the brain even before the deck shipped. I always considered Unknown Armies' use of astrology and tarot as a shorthand for NPC personality types a cheap trick, but I've learned not to resent cheap tricks. Better to get it done and move on than let it sit at 90 percent completion because I don't have an idea I like for the last character. The sword vomiting is partially inspired by Zardoz, and partially from a scene in a Madness Combat animation where a character vomits up a gun and ammunition.
The original article with the King of Swords was weak, but I had the ARC DREAM tarot card on the brain even before the deck shipped. I always considered Unknown Armies' use of astrology and tarot as a shorthand for NPC personality types a cheap trick, but I've learned not to resent cheap tricks. Better to get it done and move on than let it sit at 90 percent completion because I don't have an idea I like for the last character. The sword vomiting is partially inspired by Zardoz, and partially from a scene in a Madness Combat animation where a character vomits up a gun and ammunition.
The Test Firing by me
The voodoo gunslingers are from a short story by Chad Underkoffler. He may have written the worst sourcebook for Unknown Armies, but his reinterpretation of the Loa as literal Spirits of the West was inspired. 2003 Tormsen got the dates wrong on his Roman Legion though, the empire was at peace with the Parthians during the reign of Caligula. He never worked in the business again after that blunder.The Bull Pen by me
The original was a ritual in search of mechanical effect. I settled on the antimagick field because I wanted it to be useful enough to be attractive despite the demanding ritual operation conditions and short duration. It also had to be something that wouldn't have been immediately apparent to the original users in the 1940s, although there was probably a Navy sorcerer or two who got his powers temporarily shut down as a result.
JTID: Gabriel "The Snow Angel" Blanco by Cliomancer
A great use of an artifact I skipped the second I realized it was just the Frosty the Snowman hat. I can't think of a time I ever saw players summon a demon for knowledge. It's one of the primary uses listed in the corebook, and central to the plot of Maria in Three Parts. How often does it happen in-game?
A great use of an artifact I skipped the second I realized it was just the Frosty the Snowman hat. I can't think of a time I ever saw players summon a demon for knowledge. It's one of the primary uses listed in the corebook, and central to the plot of Maria in Three Parts. How often does it happen in-game?
UA - JTAD Jam - Jack West, The Cantophage by MadJaymilton
I like new powersets that don't follow the Adept, Avatar or Unique Supe schema. I've always felt that schools like Iconomancy and Anagram Gemmetria would be better if they abandoned the standard Unknown Armies scheme of charges entirely and went all-in on improvisation. That's what the original Headphone Jack did, and that's what this entry does.
Catroptromancy by Fairlyhyperman
I dig the spell list and sig charging method. The minor charge system is underwhelming but the taboo is a good Tim Powers style inconvenience that forces you to change how you live your life. As with all new caster schools, a sample character would be cool. The Catroptromancer obsession with fighting the mirrorworld is basically its own objective and campaign, meaning this is either an NPC school or something you structure the whole game around.
Fessusurgy by Fairlyhyperman
This caster school perfectly summarizes my feelings about traveling, especially the dread of the return trip poisoning my enjoyment of far away lands. A sample character would go a long way to show how a character like this would actually function in-game.
UA - JTAD Jam - Part of a Complete Breakfast by MadJaymilton
A solid What You Hear entry. Breakfast cereal was basically invented by a guy who believed that flavor was evil and the secret to good health was a flavorless and repetitive diet. If we lined up the most popular cereals what archetypes would we see? Is there a cereal tarot?
A solid What You Hear entry. Breakfast cereal was basically invented by a guy who believed that flavor was evil and the secret to good health was a flavorless and repetitive diet. If we lined up the most popular cereals what archetypes would we see? Is there a cereal tarot?
UA - JTAD Jam- A New World Order by MadJaymilton
I'm 50/50 on this type of continent-spanning conspiracy. The lettered cell structure is a clear riff on Delta Green. A couple street level operatives would be a lot more useful than stat blocks for the conspiracy's leadership. It's like if Unknown Armies 3e wrote up the Sect of the Naked Goddess, but only included stats for their IT guy.
More generally think magick in Unknown Armies is already modernist, with prebaked formula spells that cost a predetermined amount based on a universal price sheet that ranks their power levels. And the actual underlying mechanics of the universe are modern or premodern rather than postmodern, with universal archetypes dating back to the earliest recorded history and adept powers essentially functioning according to Schopenhauer's philosophy of the will. From a perspective of branding and controlling magick they'll never succeed, but philosophically they've already won.
I like the Invisible Man style light globe inside the sphere.
Big Lenny By Arbor Day
The Nephilim TV entry was on my short list but I didn't end up finishing anything. This is the opposite of how I would have done it, and that's a good thing. Based on his example the reader can immediately imagine how other genres would create their own Rephaim, or other mediums like Tiktok and Youtube.
Big Lenny By Arbor Day
The Nephilim TV entry was on my short list but I didn't end up finishing anything. This is the opposite of how I would have done it, and that's a good thing. Based on his example the reader can immediately imagine how other genres would create their own Rephaim, or other mediums like Tiktok and Youtube.
Algamancy by Mechristopheles
This is a good start, but the taboo is so strict and the charging method so insular that it's not immediately obvious how it could ever appear in a game. A caster school that plays with itself, like Praviturgy on steroids. Maybe the animated dolls could act as the mage's agents? Like I always say, an example character would really help.
Unknown Armies: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil by Alice Valiant
Evocative, but not super gameable due to its isolated location and the difficulty of entry. The Tigris/Euphrates region is associated with the beginning of humanity and with some parts of the Bible, but the apple as a symbol is associated with many regions that are more accessible to the average cabal. Eastern Washington, Upstate New York... Lots of places in the United States are named after Bible locations. Ever eaten apples from Eden, Tennessee? Though maybe not everything has to be in America. The first domestic apples were supposedly bred from the wild mountain fruit of Kazakhstan, although that doesn't solve the location issue.
Evocative, but not super gameable due to its isolated location and the difficulty of entry. The Tigris/Euphrates region is associated with the beginning of humanity and with some parts of the Bible, but the apple as a symbol is associated with many regions that are more accessible to the average cabal. Eastern Washington, Upstate New York... Lots of places in the United States are named after Bible locations. Ever eaten apples from Eden, Tennessee? Though maybe not everything has to be in America. The first domestic apples were supposedly bred from the wild mountain fruit of Kazakhstan, although that doesn't solve the location issue.
Unknown Armies: The Rainy Day Fled Market by Alice Valiant
I think trying to produce a generic version of what was originally a piece of local flavor makes this one weaker than the original. The parking garage setting reminds me a lot of the one they do in Fremont every weekend, although at the prices they charge that one is more a trendy vintage clothing outlet masquerading as a flea market. It's hard to do "updated" versions of classic Unknown Armies stuff when so many of the subcultures involved have effectively disappeared or become unrecognizable.
Unknown Armies: Satellite Astrology, 2025 by Alice Valiant
I have a soft spot for modern divination rituals ever since zomner showed me the Hexen 2.0 Tarot. This one would benefit from examples. I'd love a "reading" of a particular satellite or satellites from the linked website to show me how it manifests in-game.
JTAD Jam - The Lewd Mechanicals by Cliomancer
This is what Algamancy is missing: A way for the magickally animated waifutrons to become relevant to the players. The whole concept is similar to a Japanese Image Club, a type of roleplay brothel that would be immediately useful to magick users with complex and demanding (or demeaning) charging rites.
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