Back in February, I organized the Io, Lupercalia! Jam at the Unknown Armies Fan Club Discord, and I promised to offer feedback. The same disclaimers apply from my feedback on the 2023 Halloween Jam: namely, that Unknown Armies is a game of modern occult horror, so entries might have weird and off-putting stuff in them.
Time of the Wolf by Stuart
That's me! This is a "rebirth" ritual that isn't quite as advertised. In addition to cleaving to the bloody death-and-rebirth theme of the jam, I wanted to include a trap ritual since there aren't a ton of them offered in the base game. Functioning rituals that act as promised are implied to be the rarest rituals, with trap rituals (rituals that do something unexpected and often negative to the ritualist) being more common and nonfunctioning rituals (rituals that no longer work or never did) being the most common. Trap rituals are like cursed magic items in D&D in that well-designed cursed items make you feel like you ought to have seen the curse coming, and clever parties might find inventive uses for them. In this case, the ritual is a trap for everyone involved: it doesn't return the dead to life as advertised, nor does it give a demon easy access to the material world. Smart players might notice that you could use this ritual in tandem with demon control rituals to summon and bind a wolf companion, and they might also notice that it's a great way to dispose of a body (while potentially adding an extra forensic complication down the road).
The Scarlet Woman by Katts
Katts gives us another take on The Naked Goddess avatar from Book One: Play, exchanging the idea of a woman who is more an archetypal image of desire and instead playing with the Thelemic idea of the liberated, sexual woman. If The Naked Goddess isn't working in your games as-written, you might prefer this take on it with the caveat that The Scarlet Woman could use some revision. It doesn't have an introductory write-up to say what the author's take on The Scarlet Woman actually is, and the middle channels could use some revising. Evaluates a Gauge is an unpopular feature in the community, and although I happen to like Evaluate and appreciate it being showcased here, how likely is it to show up in a game? Often enough to be useful as a second channel power? Likewise, forcing someone to say, "Yes," is a great power — it's the effect of the Red Sauce ritual in Book Three: Reveal — but I'm not sure it's all that useful as an avatar's third channel, especially when The Scarlet Woman can already coerce someone into agreeing with her. I dig the ability to teleport into dreams, though. Were this a final draft, I imagine that final channel would get wordy, delineating exactly what the dreamscape is like.
The Bitter Taste of Vengeance by Traskomancer
In this scenario, the PCs get into trouble when they ask an Etsy witch to hex a local cop and then learn that she's an actual witch and her hex causes more problems than it solves. The scenario includes brief write-ups of several characters involved, as well as a brief timeline of events. It suffers from the problem of a lot of one-shots where the action is railroady and fairly contrived: the inciting incident puts the player characters in the cops' crosshairs even though there isn't anything tying them to the scene (and smart characters probably wouldn't even be there), and police forensics are almost more efficient than magick in this scenario. But apart from those quibbles, it has the bones of a strong scenario; when the witch is inevitably arrested, she rats out the player characters, sending a group of cops and Nazis on their trail. In a full-blown scenario, you would probably want a couple of threads to juggle, or something more immediately tying the player characters to the action, but this is certainly a good starting place.
Conjugal Immortality by Stuart
Another "rebirth" ritual that's actually a trap ritual, hopefully even more obviously a trap than the previous one I submitted. While I could see Time of the Wolf being used by a player character, Conjugal Immortality is probably more of a story hook, being used by a GMC or even being an event in someone's backstory. ("I know how to pilot a plane from a past life. It's... a long story.")
Ritual: The First Robin of Spring by magnificentophat
A ritual with two effects: it subtracts a year of age from you while making a baby older and more resistant to disease. One can imagine the latter effect being the real selling feature of this ritual in the past, but these days, it's no doubt primarily used as an anti-aging ritual. Despite being a minor ritual, you can probably use it to become immortal if you find a steady supply of babies and robins. Any ethically dubious ritual with weird components is a winner in my book.
The Room of Cycles Renewed by Cliomancer
A Room of Renunciation wherein those who have forsworn child-bearing and child-rearing are seduced and sacrificed in a cycle of death and rebirth. I'd be tempted to adapt this as its own cult rather than a Room of Renunciation — although maybe that's impacted by recent thoughts about the Breeders Cryptic Alliance in Gamma World, sixth edition, as well as every weirdo tech billionaire who's bought into Camus' Great Replacement conspiracy theory — but the writing is evocative and the idea is solid. The story hooks at the end are a nice touch.
Hail, Caesar! by itsarborday
A piece of short fiction (that could easily be used as a story hook) about a heretofore undocumented film of the Naked Goddess back when She was mortal, a pornographic adaptation of Orson Welles' play Caesar. The video includes tantalizing hints of the Naked Goddess' future ascension in addition to the typical interplay of low art and high art one has come to expect of descriptions of the Goddess' videos. I'm not personally into the constant revision of the Goddess' mythology by finding yet another undocumented tape of Her performances, but if you are, you might enjoy this short story. My only actual critique is pretty minor: November 13, 1976 is a Saturday, and The Tonight Show only taped Monday through Thursday at the time.
Desolation Angels by Katts
The Plain of Peerless Fires is a Room of Renunciation wherein those without connection have an opportunity to build it. I would again be tempted to adapt this as its own weird Otherspace rather than a Room of Renunciation — it isn't entirely clear how the Room renounces its subjects, as there doesn't really seem to be a choice involved for the participants, and the powers granted to Agents are pretty different from those of other Rooms — but Rooms are among the more subjective portions of the game's cosmology, so what do I know? The writing is poetic and mysterious in the mode of John Tynes' writing, so I'm a fan. Probably the entry I'm most likely to think about after this exercise is done.
No comments:
Post a Comment