FATAL and Friends Reviews Condensed

 

I sometimes get requests to repost my reviews from the FATAL and Friends thread. People have trouble sifting through the forum posts, or the site goes pay to read, or they just want everything in one place. Copying all the reviews would take work, and I don't like some of my writing from five or six years ago. My early work was too people-pleasing. Even when I argued with other posters it was because I wanted them to like the game I was talking about, or at least the parts of it I liked. The point of an RPG review is not to sell the book, that's the publisher's job. I am flattered that people like to read my longform writing with lots of pictures and examples but I also think I could make the whole thing shorter and skip to the conclusion. So here's that.

 

Thank you to everyone in the thread and elsewhere who read and replied to my work over the last eight years, I wouldn't have gotten this far without you.

 

Unknown Armies Halloween Jam 2025 Feedback

 

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.

mellonbread reviews Starwater Strains

I wrapped the Starwater Strains collection a month or two back. I didn't believe the cover art was real until I actually had the book in my hands. I love Endangered Species but the best stories are squirreled away at the end and there are a lot of duds to wade through. Wolfe At The Door has some bangers, but also several stories I only enjoyed reading in conversation with his other work (and some juvenalia that's only worth reading out of historical interest). I think Strains strikes the right balance of rich-but-approachable. Like in At The Door the stronger entries are strategically placed to prop up the weaker ones so there's never a losing streak, and the longer entries are bookended by shorter ones so the reader never leaves exhausted.

As usual, I'll skip the summaries and go straight to my thoughts.

mellonbread reviews Shotguns vs Cthulhu

Shotguns Vs Cthulhu is a 2012 short story collection by Pelgrane Press, full of pulp action stories where humans fight supernatural forces. I won't be providing full plot summaries because I believe reviews like this are only fun for people who have already read the story.

Unknown Armies Pashacon Jam Results

Another Unknown Armies jam wrapped a couple weeks ago. Parameters will be familiar to anyone who's been following this series. Let's see how we did.

 

SWAP MEAT Jam Results

Following up on Zomnocon, the 9/11 Jam and last year's Halloween event, the Unknown Armies SWAP MEAT Jam wrapped a couple weeks ago. Participants had 333 to 1,296.3 words to write about at least one of the following prompts.

• Man vs Technology, Nature vs Civilization, Grief and Loss 
• Genre: Folk Horror (1800s to Modern Day), Urban Horror, Corporate Horror 
• Inspiration: The Witches Sabbath by Francis Goya, The Dust Bowl, Faustian Bargains 
• What you hear about Occult Underground during Halloween

We got six entries this time. The Unknown Armies fan community is not large and has been demoralized in recent months by Atlas Games inadvertently shuttering the Statosphere community content program. But what are you gonna do?

Unknown Armies 9/11 Jam Results

Results from the Unknown Armies 9/11 jam. Submissions were limited to 3,333 words, set some time in 2001 to 2008, and linked to a series of prompts chosen by the contest organizer.

Zomnocon 2 Feedback

Zomner ran an Unknown Armies jam last week. It was supposed to just go for a weekend but he got tied up before closing submissions, so we got a whole week to send entries. The word count was 2,333 and stat blocks didn't count against the total. Submitters got to choose any of the following prompts 

• Film Noir (1940s genre of film)
• Inspired by a song
• Nepotism
• Old friends
• Positive change over negative
• Something important has been stolen
• Green thumb

There were fourteen submissions to the jam.

 

2023 Unknown Armies Halloween Jam Results

The 2023 Unknown Armies Halloween Jam is over! 

Participants had one week and 1333 words to write whatever they wanted for Unknown Armies 3rd edition, provided it fit one or more of the six prompts. We got fourteen entries, plus three examples by me and three more I wrote during the week. The most popular prompt was Subway (seven entries) and the least popular was Non American Occult Underworld (three entries).

 

Thank you to everyone who submitted. I've posted my feedback on the submissions under the cut.