It's time for another Unknown Armies 3e jam review. The event ran from October 7th through October 23rd and the specifications can be found here. The event received fifteen submissions. The ones shaded blue are my own.
PROVENDER: Rites of Death and Terror for Unknown Armies (mellonbread)
The Danse Macabre ritual began life as a magickal technique used by the Yellow Mages, like the guys in Fear and Hunger. I would have taken that post down long ago but several people have told me how much they liked it. The Immortal Science is based on a real incident, imbued with the power of the Ageless Feast spell from Delta Green. The Lullaby is one of the serial killers of the week from the Hannibal teevee show. The term PROVENDER for human prey comes from The Imago Sequence.
UA - 2025 Jam O Ween - Red, Delicious (madjaymilton)
This one is cool. It reminds me of an explanation I heard from Stolze or Tynes or some other Pagan Publishing guy about why people suspend themselves from hooks. It feels so awful that it creates a lasting high afterwards where nothing bothers you, because nothing could even approach the pain you felt in that moment.
Faceless non-entity (Mockraven)
UA3 needs more monsters. Rather than giving any blast spell a chance to create one I would just stick with the ritual designed by the Personamancer as the method of creation. Immunity to gutter magick isn't that useful because gutter magick rarely does anything beyond cursing people with tiny debuffs. The rest is cool.
Provender: False Retreat(mellonbread)
A blend of Bulldozer and Mysterium Tremendum that you can play with the pregens I wrote a few months ago. The big advantage of UA2's metaplot conspiracies was they gave characters a reason to participate in almost any scenario, even if it was just "the case officer told us to".
The Danse Macabre ritual began life as a magickal technique used by the Yellow Mages, like the guys in Fear and Hunger. I would have taken that post down long ago but several people have told me how much they liked it. The Immortal Science is based on a real incident, imbued with the power of the Ageless Feast spell from Delta Green. The Lullaby is one of the serial killers of the week from the Hannibal teevee show. The term PROVENDER for human prey comes from The Imago Sequence.
UA - 2025 Jam O Ween - Red, Delicious (madjaymilton)
This one is cool. It reminds me of an explanation I heard from Stolze or Tynes or some other Pagan Publishing guy about why people suspend themselves from hooks. It feels so awful that it creates a lasting high afterwards where nothing bothers you, because nothing could even approach the pain you felt in that moment.
Faceless non-entity (Mockraven)
UA3 needs more monsters. Rather than giving any blast spell a chance to create one I would just stick with the ritual designed by the Personamancer as the method of creation. Immunity to gutter magick isn't that useful because gutter magick rarely does anything beyond cursing people with tiny debuffs. The rest is cool.
Provender: False Retreat(mellonbread)
A blend of Bulldozer and Mysterium Tremendum that you can play with the pregens I wrote a few months ago. The big advantage of UA2's metaplot conspiracies was they gave characters a reason to participate in almost any scenario, even if it was just "the case officer told us to".
Canned Laughter (UA3e) (Katts)
The world is ready for Chinese Northernlion, but is it ready for Egyptian George Costanza? This is a fun setup but it would benefit from a little more stage direction. There's a section labeled "setup" but it isn't until the end of the document that we learn the players are supposed to be the reenactors. The sequence of events section is a couple sentences which imply the characters begin spread out over their Seinfeld sound stage apartments, but the introductory text starts with everyone at the table at Monks. A GM facing executive summary would tie it all together.
BUTTER KNIFE (traskomancer)
There was an old story on SCP about a woman lying awake in fear of the guy climbing in through her window with the knife that makes you incapable of resisting its wielder. The story seemed like just the usual 1:00 AM awoken by a strange noise paranoia, until the end where it reveals that the perpetrator killed everyone while they lay there doing nothing. I like butter knife better because something actually happens.
PROVENDER: From These Dreams You Don't Wake Up (mellonbread)
Three magick items that sat in the commonplace book folder for a year, awaiting game mechanics. I decided it was better to give them subtle but evocative effects than to come up with bombastic superpowers, and that freed me to finish this entry.
PROVENDER: Dharmapala (mellonbread)
This one is based on a throwaway line from an episode of the 33.3 show about Argentine salvagers poaching scrap from Nazi antarctic bases. I love "evil Buddhism" like in Labyrinth of the Demon King, Cosmology of Kyoto, Procession of the Black Sloth, the old stories about Palden Lhamo... Hell eventually ends but it's so, so easy to be sent there.
PROVENDER: A parka worn backwards (mellonbread)
I had this one half finished in my drafts folder for months. I went back and forth on how to make the three perspectives distinct and settled on different fonts. I originally used real tupilak carvings for the pictures (which you can see in the description of the monster's jaw at the beginning) but they looked too goofy, so I swapped in one of Coma's Inuit horror drawings.
PROVENDER: From These Dreams You Don't Wake Up (mellonbread)
Three magick items that sat in the commonplace book folder for a year, awaiting game mechanics. I decided it was better to give them subtle but evocative effects than to come up with bombastic superpowers, and that freed me to finish this entry.
PROVENDER: Dharmapala (mellonbread)
This one is based on a throwaway line from an episode of the 33.3 show about Argentine salvagers poaching scrap from Nazi antarctic bases. I love "evil Buddhism" like in Labyrinth of the Demon King, Cosmology of Kyoto, Procession of the Black Sloth, the old stories about Palden Lhamo... Hell eventually ends but it's so, so easy to be sent there.
PROVENDER: A parka worn backwards (mellonbread)
I had this one half finished in my drafts folder for months. I went back and forth on how to make the three perspectives distinct and settled on different fonts. I originally used real tupilak carvings for the pictures (which you can see in the description of the monster's jaw at the beginning) but they looked too goofy, so I swapped in one of Coma's Inuit horror drawings.
Coma
Bury Me At Makeout Creek (cliomancer)
A cool reverse Pornomancy charging ritual which artificially suppresses desire rather than initiating it. You can leech charges off strangers by ruining their hangout spot, or you can generate the charges yourself by repeatedly luring people out for amorous encounters and then disappointing them.
meddling kids (UA3e)(Katts)
A fun investigative dungeon crawl that uses its wordcount to give ample detail to a small play space and a couple cool characters. The man and the dog only he can speak with remind me of the Scooby Doo parody from Venture Brothers, albeit not based on a serial killer.
A fun investigative dungeon crawl that uses its wordcount to give ample detail to a small play space and a couple cool characters. The man and the dog only he can speak with remind me of the Scooby Doo parody from Venture Brothers, albeit not based on a serial killer.
A strong setup, though I wonder if too much of the good stuff has already happened by the time the players arrive. This is always the challenge with investigative games. An intro that shows the players something exciting without giving everything away at the crime scene.
As for the objective system, it's a good start but I wouldn't keep all the milestones hidden. The most common failure mode of open ended RPG adventures is the players sit around endlessly discussing what they should do next, with no idea whether any of the options will help them or lead to anything relevant at all. This is especially true in investigative games where the players often do not know how to even gather the clues that will lead them to the point where they can make an actual informed decision about what to do next. The big strength of the milestone system is it gives the players a big fat glow in the dark checklist of things to try next when they're stuck. All three of the suggested player groups have an excuse to know the absolute basics of the situation, and that would give them an initial list of milestones which could suggest other avenues of investigation. Like the guy in Disco Elysium giving you a list of "initial interviews" to get the investigation started.
Guy Davis
A Deed Without A Name(Arbor Day)
I dislike hearing about bots and AIs and so on in Unknown Armies. I understand there's a character that does all that stuff in Weep and a 3e caster school that's all about an incipient super AI, but if I wanted that stuff I'd play Eclipse Phase.
I dislike hearing about bots and AIs and so on in Unknown Armies. I understand there's a character that does all that stuff in Weep and a 3e caster school that's all about an incipient super AI, but if I wanted that stuff I'd play Eclipse Phase.
Having said all that I like this story because it shows that being clued in to how magick works does not actually make you better at solving supernatural mysteries, because you can go off on a paraoid tangent and miss the obvious culprit. The tainted items all came from the All Mart, which Campaign Starter Kit knowers will immediately recognize as a source of dangerous artifacts unrelated to the machinations of the Invisible Clergy.
Ritual Sacrifice Syndication (UA3e)(Katts)
Ritual Sacrifice Syndication (UA3e)(Katts)
A simple puzzle, but one the reader feels clever for putting together. There's a guy on this forum who uses this video to get people to kill themselves and nuke their relationships by means of a magical worm. Some example victims and perpetrators (since this guy uses a web of intermediaries to do the deed) would make it more useful and give the players a better chance to follow the chain of clues back to the perpetrator.
Frankenthread (Cliomancer)
I didn't like this one until the example, which is superb and sold me on the premise.
THE END?
No way to track what prompts everyone used because not everyone included them in the submission text. I wasn't going to write feedback this year because I got sick of being the only one doing it. Then the organizer wrote reviews of all the submissions, which revived my enthusiasm for the whole thing. Thank you to Praenomine and to all the submitters.
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