No Dumb Questions

Yesterday, a friend asked about designing a "testicular torsion" spell, and despite not being framed as a particularly serious question, I've been thinking about it way more than I should. After all, it's a pretty good example of game design in microcosm.

What do you hope to accomplish? What are you trying to model? What genre are you emulating?

Let's start with what it is, in case you don't want to click the above Wikipedia article: as the name suggests, testicular torsion describes a twist in the spermatic cord, cutting off blood flow to a testicle. This usually causes extreme pain, and if not treated quickly, can result in necrosis of the testicle within hours.

As for a magic spell, that's going to depend a little on how the game designer views magic. Does it actually cause the medical affliction? Does it just cause the associated pain? Is it temporary or permanent? Can it affect only people with testicles, or does it cause an equivalent sensation in everyone?

Genre will also have an impact. In heroic fantasy, like Pathfinder or post-WotC Dungeons & Dragons, it seems right that the spell might just cause the sensation and it will probably only last a short while. In sword-and-sorcery or horror or other "low" magic settings, it might cause the actual affliction and require medical attention to fix.

Frequently, systems with supernatural powers already have an appropriate pain spell, so that's a great starting place. 

In no particular order, here are some thoughts across a couple of game systems: 

• A friend in the same conversation is much more conversant in Pathfinder 2e than I am, and so went with that system. He made it an Incapacitation spell with a Fort save that probably progresses in stages like a disease. Critically succeeding on the Fort save negates it, while any lower degree of success inflicts worsening penalties of Clumsy and/or Enfeebled.
• For D&D 5e-ish games, I'd probably take inspiration from symbol; it lasts a minute requiring a Con save to avoid the incapacitated condition. Save again at the end of each round to negate it.
• If it's a really low level spell, maybe it only lasts a short time or grants disadvantage, similar to (but not the same as) the frightened condition.
• Different editions handle pain differently. AD&D 2e has symbol grant a -2 Dexterity penalty and a -4 attack penalty for 2d10 rounds. D&D 3e has a low-level power word, pain spell that just does damage over time for a handful of rounds.
• It's more fiddly than I tend to like my rules, but I'd probably allow an appropriate medical roll or healing spell to alleviate the pain. We're talking something like a Healing check in AD&D 2e or a Wisdom (Medicine) check in D&D 5e. In games lacking defined proficiencies, it might involve your character's background, or it might be outside the realm of things that player characters can accomplish. Better get to the local hospitalier as soon as possible!
• Outside of the D&D paradigm, I'd be more likely to just drop penalties on someone until the situation is resolved. For example:
• In Unknown Armies, third edition, a testicular torsion spell is probably a minor spell causing immense pain (I might assess a -20% or -30% penalty), minor injury (maybe 1d10 wounds), and perhaps even a stress check (rank-3 or rank-4 in Violence or Helplessness). It might last a few minutes, although I tend more toward the "you need to go to the hospital" end of the paradigm. Maybe it depends on the number of charges?
• My memory of World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness is a little fuzzy around the edges, but a substantial wound penalty (say -3 to -5) feels right. As above, the specifics of the power used determines if there's a duration or if you need medical attention. The victim might take a little bashing damage.
• The spell Wrack in Call of Cthulhu is pretty similar to what one would want from a testicular torsion spell; it might be less intense, and won't have the physical side effects. On the other hand, the duration is probably longer than Wrack, lasting until treated. 
• The further you get outside of traditional systems, the more abstract the effects are going to be.
• I tend to shy away from using hit points/wounds/etc. to model pain, but in a paradigm like Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark, a point of Harm might actually get the point across: it makes you less effective when acting and brings you closer to something really bad happening. Get out of the action and to a healer as soon as possible.
• A storygame that's even less focused on physical reality and more focused on emotional reality might wholly eschew physical consequences for such a spell. Instead, it focuses more on the experience of your friends getting you to the doctor and helping support your recovery. In fact, in contrast to many games that remove the afflicted character from the action, this spell in a storygame might actually thrust the afflicted player into the spotlight.
• For any of the grittier systems, I'd probably also put something in place to model the severity inherent in leaving the situation untreated. Maybe something like, get medical attention within six hours or you might need surgical removal.

In addition to considerations of genre, you probably also have to think about your table. Tables more used to heroic systems probably find "save or suck" spells to be anathema to their play style, while tables more on the survival horror end of things probably consider such things a consequence of combat anyway. In a Pathfinder game, a spell that takes you out of the action for a prolonged period is an impediment to the combat sport. In a Call of Cthulhu game, a spell that takes you out of the action might be the lynchpin of another wild story revolving around horrible things that happen in a cosmic horror game. (I personally like to imagine that one character gets hit with the spell so another character helps them to the hospital; predictably, these two investigators are the only survivors of the scenario, as everyone else tries to carry on and so mysteriously disappears.)

This rumination doesn't solve anything, but in terms of game design, it's an intriguing question. What are you trying to model with a piece of design? What do you hope to accomplish? How do your goals change with the game you're currently playing?

Review: 2026 Io, Lupercalia Jam

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.

Twenty Questions on the Sorrowfell Plains

Barking Alien's campaign tour is a little more deep in the weeds than I tend to get on world-building, but it's still good to review the state of the campaign setting every once in a while. Almost fifteen years ago, I answered Jeff Rients' twenty questions regarding the Sorrowfell Plains. As often happens, information blooms, changes, and evolves over expanded timeframes, so those questions now have different (and hopefully more precise) answers.

1. What is the deal with my cleric's religion?

It's the standard Renn Faire, D&D-style polytheism nonsense. There's a whole pantheon of gods great and small, but people traditionally choose a patron deity (or two) and worship them like household spirits or patron saints. (Although plenty of folks venerate the whole pantheon, as needed.) Individual temples aren't typically networked into organized religions, but they're also not not networked; a cleric of Ioun can pray at any temple of Ioun without risk of defying tradition. That having been said, if a church has a seat of power, it's probably in Scandshar; a pilgrimage is likely in order if you have the time and money.

2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment?

There's bound to be at least one general store in your average city or town. Villages are a little more dicey, and might only have supplies if a merchant caravan passes through. (Or if Old Harold is willing to part with his grandfather's breastplate.) There are some trading posts in the borderlands, but it's best to stock up before your next expedition.

3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?

Scandshar, the major city in the region, is still your best bet. Grimwald, far to the northwest, mostly comprises what hardliners still sometimes call "monstrous humanoids" and so has many armorsmiths who cater to inhuman body plans.

4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?

A surprisingly difficult question. Historically, the answer is Archmagus Iandak Voiddrake, Supplicant of the Quaint and Curious Spheres, but he has been unseen so long that it is no longer even clear if he's alive. (Of course, he held so many secrets and so many magical contingencies that it seems unlikely that he's actually dead.) Ebenezer Cascata Mararnith Jepson, headmaster of the University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences in Duchy Jepson, is the "safe" answer.

Of course, Baron Adeptus Bezaldooz of the adventuring company known as the Shields of the Sorrowfell might have surpassed the Headmaster and the old Archmagus. And nobody is entirely certain what to make of recently-seen planar travelers like Barnabus Sleet or Pete Loudly.

5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land?

Also a difficult question. The best answer, assuming he's a real person and not just a legend, is probably Swordsaint Rishi, an immortal devotee of the god Kord who is alleged to be such a skilled swordsman that he is capable of fighting Death itself to a draw, preventing it from claiming him. (If the tales are true, he's been alive for millennia.) The gladiator Thalia the Bloody-Handed is perhaps better known, although with the uncertain future of the gladiator matches in Scandshar, who knows what that means? Although she is not as well known as the previously-listed people, the fey noblewoman Lady Graunwen Dwin'altin is also an incredibly formidable warrior.

Of course, Baron Sergeant-at-Arms Peren and Baron Sergeant-at-Arms Torinn, both of the Shields of the Sorrowfell, might be more accurate choices. Some also claim that recently-seen planar traveler Malice A'forethought fits the bill. Still others wonder at the bloody swathe carved by the escaped gladiators of the Scandshar Six, especially Nobody or Southie.

6. Who is the richest person in the land?

Until recently, the answer was probably one of the lords of the crime syndicate known as the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks — most likely Lady Victoria Loveless MacBeth, also known as Lord Key. However, with the collapse of their operations and the death of their leadership, the answer is probably someone with access to government treasuries: Duchess Sophia Taika Jepson, Governor Svetlana Zupan, or similar. It could also be a merchant or a noble whose intrigues lead them to avoid disclosing their true wealth.

Of course, groups like the Shields of the Sorrowfell and Those Who Remember have been pulling treasure out of the depths of the earth, so it's possible the actual answer is one of those nouveau riche adventuring companies.

7. Where can we go to get some magical healing? 

Several villages have a faithful priest or a village witch who can aid you, but if you want The Good Stuff™, a major temple in a city or town is your best bet. Expect to "donate" or pay, of course.

8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?

As above. Some of those are easier to heal than others, so the village witch might be able to help you with a minor poisoning, while you might need a priest of great faith in a major population center to heal some curses. Some of these things are beyond the ken of most established religions, even in major population centers like Scandshar.

There is a recent tale that if you can find the lost city of Argent, Valna of the Shields of the Sorrowfell resides there and can heal any ailment.

9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?

The University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences in Duchy Jepson is the appropriate answer, although critics say that it's just a "wizard mill" designed for rich patrons in Scandshar, so there might be an expectation of service after graduation. Dirthzea'via University in Scandshar and Morgrave University in Sorgforge both have minor magical colleges, but you won't gain much in the way of arcane secrets there.

There are, of course, always rumors of secret societies that may function more like magic guilds. (Maybe skip ahead to Question #17 if you want a more nuanced answer.)

10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?

Any of the three aforementioned universities (Dirthzea'via University, Morgrave University, and the University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences) are good sources, as are most major temples. Of course, specific subjects might require specific sages, which could be very rare indeed. You might have to travel to a remote village or monastery to learn answers to the most obscure questions.

11. Where can I hire mercenaries?

Back before they collapsed, the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks was the preeminent mercenary guild in the region. Of course, the economy is bad enough that plenty of folks are looking for work; major cities are more likely to have people with actual martial training, but you can always outfit a crew with your own money and get them experience that way...

Weirdly, there are a handful of reports regarding a Blackearth Mercenary Guild, found primarily in the northern Sorrowfell Plains and the Hoarfrost Ridge. They're all alchemical automata, leftovers from the Cackledread War, and they're soldiers in search of a war to fight. That might not be a terrible place to look if you're trying to build a warband.

12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?

The roads are dangerous enough that armed travelers aren't considered all that strange, although they might expect to be questioned if a crime is committed in the vicinity with no obvious culprit. There are some foreign lands where arms and magic are more problematic, however.

It is also an unfortunate truth that the law is more likely to hassle certain sorts of demihumans depending on how rare they are; best not to travel alone if you're from the Deepearth or some similarly exotic place.

13. Which way to the nearest tavern?

It's probably close. If a settlement is too small for a tavern, there's probably a public house. If there's no public house, perhaps the one of the locals will give you a meal and a pint of homebrewed beer in exchange for work or a bit of coin.

Of course, if you want a proper tavern, head to your nearest city or town and go wherever the tourists and merchants hang out.

14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?

Gnolls. Despite the time that has passed between now and the Cackledread War, enough people remember the war that gnolls are still among the most feared creatures around. You could make a career as a professional gnoll hunter, no problem.

Also, there's still technically a sizable bounty on the Scandshar Six even though no one has seen them in months.

15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?

Pundits and armchair sages are always running their mouths, saying that the future trouble is coming from the gnollish warbands scattered across the borderlands, as well as the various goblin and orc tribes to the east. Plenty of respected tacticians have made careers saying that the gnoll or orc attack is coming "any day now."

But it's hard to actually see what's happening in the borderlands when you're a philosopher going to aristocratic parties. Here are some spots people should be worried about, but aren't, in order of most threatening to least:

• A couple of traders are sounding the alarm about massing goblin armies to the south. The adventuring company known as Those Who Remember has recovered intelligence referring to a new "Boss" and "Asset" that appear to be driving this rapid militarization, but apart from a few tantalizing glimpses, there is relatively little information on this emerging threat. But rest assured: if not handled soon, it will become a problem for everyone.
• The Blackearth Mercenary Guild isn't well-known and isn't causing trouble, but everyone should probably be a little nervous about a growing group of immortal soldiers with no war to fight. Why are they gathering now, fifty years after the war ended?
• Nainimdul also isn't currently a problem, but this backwater burg features some weird, isolationist elves. If an elf supremacist is going to emerge anywhere, they're going to start in Nainimdul.
• It might not help that faith in a new half-elf deity has started to appear. Religious schisms always make for unstable times.
• Slavery is outlawed in Scandshar, which means that the economy of the Plains and the Sea of Sorrows just reorganized overnight. That is likely to increase tensions among 'Ichi, Nadhi, and the Sorrowfell Plains, which could result in a trade war or even an open naval conflict.
• There are always a bunch of conflicts brewing on the Isle of Anhak to the west. Fortunately, those conflicts don't tend to spread beyond the island, but if you really want to be a professional mercenary right now, board a boat to one of their major port cities. (Just make sure you don't get shipped off to demon-haunted Qelong.)
• There's a rumor that dark elves were organizing warbands of giants in the Hoarfrost Ridge, but the Shields of the Sorrowfell put a stop to it. But they didn't massacre the giants: the Three Corners withstood a siege while the Shields killed the giants' leadership. That means the routed armies are still out there, waiting for some charismatic leader to organize them. That probably won't happen soon, but someone should be thinking about the next couple of human generations...
• Speaking of the dark elves, a lot of Scandshar war hawks want to launch a campaign against the dark elves for their attempted invasion of the surface. The only thing really stopping them is logistics: outfitting armies and building supply lines for an extended foray into the Underworld is a foolish proposition. But if somebody figures that out — or if the right politician can effectively use the drow as scapegoats for enough problems facing Scandshar — then the tacticians are going to start training Scandshar Militia as tunnel-rats.

16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?

All that stuff is in Scandshar. It's not entirely clear how the gladiatorial combat system is going to work now that slavery is outlawed, but that probably just opens the door for gladiators to get a bigger slice of the pie. Lucky for you.

17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?

The official word on the street is that the dread conspiracies are shattered. The Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks was equal parts organized crime syndicate, pyramid scheme, and freaky apocalypse cult, but the group folded and its members scattered when the top brass was all slain over the span of a handful of months. The Broken Chain, a terrorist organization that was also a cult of personality around Morana the Forsaken — yeah, the same "Weeping Morana" from the child's nursery rhyme — likewise collapsed around the same time when a couple of members died and Morana the Forsaken was destroyed. (Uh, I guess she was real, by the way.)

But if you know the secret signs, there are a bunch:

• The Zookeepers/The Children's Crusade/The Sisterhood of the Swan. Not sinister, but they are technically secret societies. Primarily focused on slavery abolition (among other things), it is unclear what will become of them in the coming years. (One expects the Sisterhood of the Swan to keep defending the natural world, while the Children's Crusade will likely become a thieves' guild in the Peacocks' absence. It isn't entirely clear what will become of the Zookeepers, however.)
• The Banite Inquisition. A "secret" cult dedicated to the tyrannical god Bane, positioned at the top of the Scandshar Watch's leadership. (As the air quotes suggest, this isn't common knowledge, but the Banite Inquisition isn't exactly secret, either.) You have to be a guardsman in Scandshar to join.
• The Saraman Voluptuaries. A secret society with ties to organized crime and the literal Hell, they've been trying to position themselves for years to take out the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks, even having infiltrated their organization. Now that the Peacocks have fallen, they're in the best position to take advantage of the chaos.
• The Raktamar. Although not native to the Sorrowfell Plains, their plans are far-reaching enough that you might still brush against them. Organized under the ancient vampire known in legend as the Blood Lotus, this cabal of vampires have co-opted Nadhi's state religion for their own purposes, essentially turning the whole continent into their private game preserve. With ties to undeath, infernalism, and Orcus-worship, they maintain fingers in many pies via their relatively ironclad control over Nadhi's government.
• The Bulwark of the Hypostases. This is the cabal of illusionists and enchanters teased a few years ago, and their aims are vast and cosmic: they're altering memories and manipulating geopolitics in the hopes of a total paradigm shift. In the long-term, they hope to bolster the membranes among the planes, finally allowing humans and demihumans to stand on their own two feet without extraplanar entities interfering in their affairs. It's a lofty goal, and it is unclear as to what would happen in the long-term. Would there still be magic? Would demihumans survive?
• This isn't a bad choice for a Magic-User guild from Question #9, if you plan on becoming an Enchanter or Illusionist. And don't mind having bosses with weird agendas.
• The Sodalicium Remegni. A group of vampire wizards, formerly a secret faction embedded in the University of the Study of the Arcane Arts and Sciences but forced to leave for greener pastures. Their current whereabouts are unknown, but since the rumors say they traditionally number thirteen but are down a member, they might be recruiting...
• They have ties to the Raktamar, which should be troubling to absolutely everyone. 
• This might also not be a bad choice if you're looking for a Magic-User guild from Question #9, as long as you're whimsically evil and willing to become a vampire.
• The Disciples of the Barrens. A cult dedicated to the demon lord Oublivae, they seek the downfall of Scandshar as part of their program to dismantle civilization as we understand it. They weren't taken all that seriously until they purged most of the other demon cults in Scandshar over the past year or so.

In addition to the above factions, the noble families of Scandshar and the mercantile families of Sorgforge probably also count as secret societies, given their vast resources and far-ranging schemes.

18. What is there to eat around here?

Culturally, the Sorrowfell Plains are the standard European, Renn Faire-style amusement park you have come to expect, so the food is an anachronistic morass of things that should never share an ecosystem. (Especially since the presence of the Olman suggests that the oldest human cuisine in the area is similar to Aztec or Hispanic food.) Root vegetables, grains, and meat and dairy harvested from livestock form the base of the diet. Beer and clean water are plentiful. Trade with 'Ichi, Anhak, and Nadhi mean that urban centers or trade routes may enjoy exotic dishes, while local customs (such as the corpse cakes of the western Sorrowfell Plains) may prevail in certain spots.

19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?

A few. Some claim the Crux of Eternity, the weapon forged by the gods to slay the Primordials, has recently reappeared in the Sorrowfell Plains; if true, it is a treasure with powers beyond measure. Its antithesis, the Doom of Divinity, is also a frequent target for Primordial cultists and blasphemers. Other legendary treasures include Cage (a luckblade that imprisons the efreeti Padishah Nurhan Solak, allowing the wielder to utilize his wishes); the Giantbane Hammer of Onyxarm (a standard dwarven thrower but with a legendary backstory rendering it as dwarf Excalibur); the Seeker's Staff (a wizard's staff developed by demonologist Gingor the Seeker and possibly containing his soul); and the snailstones (artifacts from the Temple of the Snail that draw dreamers across time and space to ally with the holder).

20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?

Make no mistake: dragons are here, but they haven't been seen in a long time. Go back a few hundred years and the big news in Scandshar was the reign of terror of Benthosruthsa before he either left the area or went to sleep. More recently, there are a few sightings of younger dragons like Vilustuminen the White (which has since been slain) or Daurgoth the Toxic Foetor (last reported in the Feywalk Woods). A few legends of mature dragons spread, but they are likewise spotty (like sightings of silver and topaz dragons in the Hoarfrost Ridge) or describe dragons that have since been slain (like Urytenurarveia the Bogbeast of the Bogbeast Fens). In theory, Urytenurarveia's sister Silhouette is still at large, although she has not been seen in many years.

But if you want to go after big game, here are a few of the tales occasionally told around campfires:

• Hjertavbeybrannen the Smoldering Ember. Said to have disappeared many centuries ago. This raises the uncomfortable possibility that it is sleeping, and may yet awaken. Interested parties look to the recent schisms in the kobold lair of Okarthelvrant in the foothills of the Hoarfrost Ridge with no small amount of trepidation.
• Jalanumerrurr the Bastion of Bahamut. Said to lair in a secret place guarding a treasure known only to the dragon-god Bahamut. Clues in old tomes suggest this secret place might be in the Sorrowfell Plains, and the occasional tall tale is told regarding a gold dragon of enormous size in the borderlands.
• Stórskjaldbaka the Invincible. A dragon turtle of enormous size, worshiped as a god by some tribes and said to be the offspring of the World Turtle described by the sea peoples. If it exists, it is both ancient and powerful, and might not even reside in the world anymore. (Some obscure records suggests it makes its home "among the stars.") Some tales claim the lost city of Orpokoti rests on its back, so it likely carries its hoard with it.

Other monsters with large amounts of treasure might include the legendary vampire known as the Blood Lotus; the lich Lazghul, the Opal of Chaos with Teeth of Jet and the Dress of Silence (presumed destroyed, but a couple of recent anecdotes suggest he is still around); and the undead beholder Lord Sepsis, one of the few remaining lords of the Illustrious Menagerie of Peacocks.

2026 Io, Lupercalia! Jam

There is another Game Jam over at the Unknown Armies Fan Club Discord, but you can participate no matter on what platform you find yourself:

Io, Lupercalia! Jam

The most important part of Lupercalia is to have fun and be yourself, so start with that.

Sharpened Hooks: The Bloody Contests of Tanadara

The real-life Frank Dux of Bloodsport fame claims that the Kumite is a secret 60-round single-elimination tournament held every five years. A sixty-round single-elimination tournament would require over a quintillion (~1.2 × 10¹⁸) participants, which is several orders of magnitude more than the total number of humans who are estimated to have ever lived on earth (~1.2 × 10¹¹ as of this writing) and would obviously be impossible to keep secret.

But of course, in imaginary worlds, fighting tournaments can remain unconstrained by size or secrecy. What if the whole world were embroiled in a fighting tournament?

Aeons ago, the apocalyptic elf cabal known as the Thorns of the Haemophage succeeded in their ages-long goal to summon the Blood Gods to the world of Tanadara. The forces of Chaos ran roughshod across the surface of the world, only stopping when the elves—rightly horrified at the destruction they had wrought and realizing that the end of the Age of Man would probably also be the end of the age of everything—invoked desperate spellcraft to bind the Blood Gods long enough to bring them to the negotiating table.

The price of peace was ultimately the Malraninin, a vast tournament requiring the participation of all able-bodied sapients on Tanadara. Occurring only once every hundred years, the Malraninin takes years to finish, comprising a single-elimination tournament featuring every healthy humanoid in the world. (Just wrangling everyone and pairing them takes weeks if not months.) Although most fights are not to the death, there are no restrictions, and enough fights are deadly that the Blood Gods remain quiescent for now.

As the longest-lived race, the elves are the keepers of the Malraninin, charged with ensuring all participate. (The average human is born and dies without ever participating in the Malraninin, which is more than enough time to forget the grave import of the contest.) Participation is mandatory; any who refuse, or who run and are caught, or who voluntarily maim themselves to avoid the contest, are executed. Cutting a deal with your opponent ahead of time to throw a fight is considered poor form and also a form of refusal, but it also tends to be rather hard to prove and so is somewhat commonplace in the early rounds. (But then again, sadistic opponents might take advantage of you taking a dive, so make sure you trust your fight partner before you coordinate a fight.)

It will probably surprise no one to learn that high-level magic-users are exceedingly rare on Tanadara, because they usually flee when they first learn teleportation or planar travel. Conversely, unknowing planar travelers may find themselves in a The Return of the Archons situation, being conscripted into the chaos of the Malraninin without a full understanding of the situation. (And the locals are unlikely to believe your claims of being from another world or dimension, because that sounds like exactly the sort of tall tale someone would spin if they were trying to claim an exit from the tournament. Not that it would help you even if they did believe you; the Blood Gods hunger for you just as well as any native-born Tanadaran.)

Incidentally, even those cosmologists who know of other worlds don't know about the Malraninin, because the folk of the world do not often speak of it, especially with strangers. The spies of the elves are always watching for tournament-dodgers, and it is best to avoid their scrutiny.

Unsurprisingly, however, Tanadara has a much higher concentration of martial artists than most other worlds; most inhabitants know at least the rudiments of boxing, swordplay, offensive magic, or some other self-defense art, even if they are not especially skilled.

During any given Malraninin, thousands if not millions of people can die, so the Malraninin is equal parts celebration and mourning ceremony. Despite the violence, the final rounds of the Malraninin bring pilgrims from across the world, so there is a certain level of cultural exchange brought by tournament season.

After the tournament, survivors often return to their lives a little more harrowed than before. (Which is especially unfortunate, given the silence and shame around the Malraninin. Domestic violence and suicides often spike after a Malraninin, not that anyone keeps track of such statistics.) Life continues apace, at least until the next tournament.

It goes without saying that the Malraninin requires years of planning, and that several large-scale projects (like war) stop for it. Farming and other necessities of course continue, although such responsibilities do not prevent participation. If your community needs you, you had better fight like it.

Story Hooks:

• Your village's headman was just and giving, but he died during the Malraninin and his sons are not quite so altruistic. You and your band have undertaken a quest to retrieve him from the lands of the dead (and maybe to get revenge on his killer along the way). But the elves claim bringing back one of the Malraninin dead risks the Blood Gods' wrath. Will you risk taboo to restore your village's fortunes? Will the elves allow this trespass to go unanswered?
• In the midst of adventuring in your GM's typical setting, you somehow stumble into Tanadara and are recruited into the Malraninin. (Perhaps you delve too deep into the Deepearth and emerge on the surface of Tanadara, or perhaps a wizard's trap sends you very far away.) Do you fight, or do you attempt to flee? If you flee, can you return to the anomaly that sent you here? And if you fight, what if one of your opponents seeks to fight to the death?
• Your remote tribe was uncontacted by the outside world until thirty years ago, when trade opened with your neighbors. Your village prospered under the trade agreements until now, when elves appeared and said all must participate in a fighting tournament or die. Will you go along with the strange foreign elves' wishes to avoid trouble, or will you resist their demands?

Four Kingdoms

A friend was soliciting ideas for foreign dominions, and I came up with four kingdoms plus their attendant problems. Use them as you see fit:

Mercantile Stratocracy. The kingdom bought its independence with blood, selling its mercenaries to the other nearby states. The gold from these campaigns has made the country rich beyond its wildest dreams, and enhanced the lives of its people. But everything has a price: the land's leaders are haunted by the things they have done and seen (sometimes literally!), and the kingdom's neighbors now look upon its natural resources and newfound wealth with hungry eyes. The merchant-generals are skilled enough warriors to earn their wealth, but are they skilled enough to keep it?

The Warren. Beneath the forests and glades, the tunnel-folk carry out their endless digging. What they cannot grow in the forest or in the mushroom farms, they trade using gems mined from the long night below. No enemy can penetrate their labyrinthine tunnels, and no natural disaster has yet threatened their kingdom. But all the tunnel-folk know is to dig, dig, dig. Do they dig towards their doom? Will they awaken something that slumbers below, or might they move so much earth that the forest above collapses into the pits below?

Utopian Mortocracy. It's a real nice place to raise your kids up: crime is low, manual labor is carried out by the Honored Ancestors (read: your grandpa's zombie), and people are finally free to fulfill themselves in arts and philosophy. But the undying wizards who run the place are focused on arcane studies and don't like surprises; upward mobility is practically non-existent, and the secret police ensure that nobody upsets the status quo. There's a lot of pressure to solve your disputes out of sight, away from the vigilance of the state's panopticon, and resentment simmers among the intelligentsia. Beneath the veneer of utopia lies the seeds of revolution, awaiting fertilizer.

Steam-Powered Theocracy. The wonders of a new age! Praise be the Intersection of Fire and Water! Their capital city is built around their god and the source of their technological wonders: a steam vent fed by underground aquifers and uranium deposits to form a natural nuclear fission reactor. If the underground rivers ever run dry (or if sappers from hostile nations dam them up), the uranium deposits could grow hot and reach criticality, destroying the city and spraying toxic effluvia across the land. 

Secret Paths of Silver

Man and the related humanoids are pattern-sensing creatures, time-binding animals. So it is of little surprise that they determined how to bind concepts into words, how to bind words back into concepts, and how to link these to the Tapestry that holds reality together. (Modern physicists would call this Tapestry "spacetime," but fantasy sages don't usually include spacetime in their worldken.)

The first humanoids to do this can be considered the first natural philosophers, as their conclusions arose from careful study of the natural world. Beyond the mere archival qualities of the sage, however, these were experiential, empirical philosophers. They go by many names, but players and game rulebooks typically call them druids.

The druids of Khaldun were the first to wrest the secrets of magic out of the land, the root from which the other magical traditions spring. (It makes sense when you think about it. They channel divine magic from the land like priests, but wrap their arcana in secrets and codes like wizards.) The druids were among the first to enumerate (and then, over the aeons, forget) the slow, green war. And in the Age Before Ages, they were the most powerful magic-users on the face of Khaldun.

They shaped the world.

Before the war between gods and Primordials, they created strange wonders, chief among which is the system of Moonpaths that once connected the far-flung corners of the world. Available wherever moonlight shines, the Moonpaths were relatively stable shortcuts allowing nearly instantaneous travel among disparate locations. They usually connected between druidic sacred sites and other important places, allowing druids to meet and defend these strategic locations at a moments' notice.

But such magic was long ago. The gods and Primordials made war, the Tapestry changed, and the Moonpaths collapsed. Most that remain are broken, dangerous, and unstable, often appearing only at certain times or when summoned by ancient chants and blood rites.

Strangely, archaic records suggest that druids often met on Khaldun's moon, implying that it was not the lifeless ball of rock it currently is. But this may be poetic, as archaic records often claim many metaphorical things that are not true, like saying there were two moons.

(Of course, some of these things may be true. The Dark Powers of Ravenloft claim that the ancient elves hid thousands of years of history in the hopes of destroying a potent world-emperor. And while most sages blame the ancient war between thought and matter for catastrophes like the convergences, they were instead caused by this forgotten empire — meaning that all manner of history might be lost to time. Likewise, the Archfey Vance recently informed his subjects of a civilization on the Faerie reflection of the moon, so maybe there is something to the moon once having held life...)

Repo Men

Inspired by R.E.P.O., this is the usual XP-for-treasure format with a hook to tie the adventures together.

Aeons ago, various boss monsters borrowed money from some entity (probably a powerful fiend like Mammon or an ultroloth, although you can obviously use whatever entity you wish if you're avoiding canonical Dungeons & Dragons factions), and now the time has come to collect. You are agents of the entity in question, delving into dungeons and trying to repossess treasure for your infernal masters.

The characters would gain XP for treasure, as usual, although the twist is that they probably aren't keeping any of this treasure themselves. I imagine they receive a commission in scrip (maybe 10% or so) which can be spent at the company store. In addition to standard equipment, the company store also carries hirelings and magic items. (I would probably randomize the latter so that there's a constant churn of weird items coming through.)

Obviously, the GM has to determine how magic items from dungeons work. Can you keep them? Can you squirrel them away? Do they enter the company store after the adventure?

It's essentially the same idea as standard class-and-level adventure games: enter the dungeon, loot everything to the bare walls, and get out. This setup has a few benefits that might make it worthwhile for certain groups:

1. If your players aren't interested in overland travel, this is a good excuse to give them various dungeons in the same campaign without having to travel to them. The central "hub" of the campaign is Hell's mercenary barracks, or whatever other extradimensional base of operations you devise.
2. The company store allows you to put whatever weird items into your campaign you want without altering the original adventures. It's Hell's lost and found, essentially.
3. The format allows people to drop in and out as desired.

I haven't quite figured out what adventures I'd like to use. (Obviously, if you get to it before I do, you can use whatever you like.) I'm thinking of dungeons that have "boss monsters" in them, a creature around which the dungeon is built (and who might be in debt to a powerful fiend). As such, the capstone is likely to be something like I6: Ravenloft or S1: Tomb of Horrors, but everything before then is open to suggestion. A cursed house like The Cursed Chateau or Tegel Manor? A frontier ruin like Prison of the Hated Pretender or The Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper? A larger village investigation leading to a dungeon like Against the Cult of the Reptile God or The Village of Hommlet?

Apart from needing a central figure whose stuff can be repossessed, you can really run any adventure you like.

A final note: this also seems like a good campaign frame to have in your back pocket if you run something like Fires of Dis or The Shrike, where the characters go to Hell and so might end up indentured to some powerful demon. In which case, just start throwing dungeons at them with a mandate to deliver all of value to their master. Of course, intrepid players will probably try to determine how to wriggle out of their infernal contracts, which seems like an interesting wrinkle to this campaign...

The Slow, Green War

The slow war is all around us, but few of us can see it.

Some few druids of Khaldun know about it; those who can cast speak with plants or awaken sometimes come to understand the outer edges of the slow war. The dreaming druids of the Foxfire Forest were vexed (but somewhat sympathetic) when their fellow druid Bardo Urrok announced that the slow war of the wood is too noisy for him, and left their company for less-forested climes. Some travelers have since reported running into the eccentric halfling in the Hoarfrost Ridge, above the timberline.

Those Who Remember awakened a hawthorn bush, and were surprised (and amused) to learn that its morality was totally alien, with a very pragmatic view of murder and a lack of understanding of their own, seemingly-contradictory moral stances. (The bush didn't understand the elf druid's concept of an "invasive species," for example; a creature that outperforms others in an environment is clearly the victor to be lauded rather than lamented.) The bush's exploration of animal-scale life was sadly cut short by a group of dark elves as part of the far-reaching consequences of the Battle of Scandshar.

The key is this: plants are involved in an aeons-long struggle to survive amidst dwindling resources and increasing predation. There is plenty of sunlight and nutrients, but "arbitrarily large" is different than "infinite." They have defenses against herbivores, and are evolving new ones all the time, but herbivores are also adapting at the same glacial pace and move much more quickly. Humans and their ilk choose some plants and inhibit others, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. (And those selfsame creatures will often cultivate land in ways that make it inaccessible to plants of any sort.)

All of this to say that there is a war out there, happening much more slowly than any of us can readily bear witness. This is the slow war of plants. And while plants in folklore and stories are often ancient and placid, depicted as living in harmony with their environment, real plants are bloodthirsty, impatient, and downright Darwinian. They compete for resources, parasitize each other, or even engage in biological warfare. (To say nothing of defenses against herbivores such as poisons and spinose teeth.)

More grist for the mill of common druidic misconceptions.

Troikan Effluvia

My Troika! players are currently running through Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs, and while they have successfully solved the problem of a Parchment Witch trying to steal the package they're delivering, they still have another problem: the Maxillary Uslurper from the original published adventure. It hasn't targeted them yet, but if it does, they're ready for it, having acquired several cilantro-laden burritos from the café. (They initially hit the Parchment Witch with a burrito, assuming it was somehow connected to the Maxillary Uslurper. It, uh, didn't work.)

While cilantro doesn't help, here's a fun tip for you if you're ever fighting a Parchment Witch: the Sorcerer of the College of Friends used the Animate spell on its stolen skin, causing the face to deform and rendering the Parchment Witch blind during most of the fight until it ate its own face.

Troika! rules, by the way.

As part of my prep for Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs, I made two handouts: the Ice Tomorrow advert quoted in the book, and a political pamphlet for the ice miners on Out-of-Order and Myung's Misstep. If you're running it (or even if you're not), you might find them useful.

Design Notes:

• The reverse of the Ice Tomorrow advert features a portion of an article regarding the creation of CompoGel, a Troikan version of pykrete. Canonical references include the Ice Cream Sphere from Axes & Orcs' High Fructose Hyperspace and Winters-Thawing Collegium of Eldritch Academics, a randomly-generated wizard college from Academies of the Arcane. Shakespeare-Marjanovic Heavy Industries and The Prince of Seven Moons are from our campaign, as The Prince of Seven Moons is a recurring antagonist and it is occasionally useful to remind the player characters that he's doing stuff about which they probably ought to worry. The details of his devious plans are left to your own devising, although the seed kernel of The Prince of Seven Moons is The Moon King from The Moon King Wants to Party. (In our game, they are separate but likely related entities.)
• I was originally considering having the Myung Icers' Liberation Front be a greater presence while on Out-of-Order, thus the pamphlet, but I ultimately decided to stick with Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs (and The Forest Primordia on the return trip). As such, fleshing out their ranks is best left to the individual gamesmaster, If you need stats, Knights of the Road from Troika! are probably a fine start, although several of the working class factions from Get It at Sutlers (such as Codwallopers, Oligopolists, Palyngers, Rippiers, and Victualers) might be better.

Sharpened Hooks: Santa Claus vs. Troika

December is shaping up to be quite busy, so I suspect I won't have an opportunity to use these, but you might! Here are two Troika! adventure hooks for Yuletide:

Dead Letter
Centuries ago, a delivery meant for Santa's workshop arrived at Whalgravaak's warehouse instead, and Santa's elves only just tracked it down. Can you retrieve the parcel from its resting place?

I haven't decided where to put Santa's misplaced package, but Rooms 12, 13, 14, or 15 all seem like potentially good resting places.

Kidnap the Sandy Claws
Can you help? Rudolph approaches the player characters, having wriggled free from his harness. Santa entered a building to deliver packages hours ago, and hasn't returned! Can you rescue him?

Santa has been kidnapped by a gang of cocksure gamins (as described in Get It At Sutlers, page 67) who seek to use his intended presents for their own pleasure. If you're stuck for a hideout location, I might start with Dyson Logos' South Sewers Hideout, stocking it with gamins, guard animals, sewer monsters, and a beefy lad to act as the local boss. (I might go with the stats of an ogre from the core rulebook.)

Advice in Practice: On the Simulacrum Spell

I've talked before about what I think makes for effective games that keep players wanting more (namely listening to the players and establishing real stakes as described in this blog post), but I recently encountered a Reddit thread wherein the original poster was asking about advice for trying to limit the 5e version of the simulacrum spell. The rule for 5e simulacrum is that a given caster can only cast one instance of simulacrum at any given time, but those simulacra could use their one cast of simulacrum on the caster, creating an infinite army of wizards given enough time and powdered rubies. The redditor in question was worried about this "exploit," and was asking for advice.

While a lot of advice in the comments suggests, "go ahead and limit it, you're the GM," I don't find that satisfying, because I tend to think the inflection points of a thing are usually the most interesting part. So in keeping with establishing real stakes, here was my response. A specific example that is potentially broadly applicable; when your players can do something wild and creative that seems like it will upend your carefully crafted world, let them do it! But also, brainstorm the ripple effects this action will have. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and the world keeps moving while the players wait.

(Also, part of the joy of being a powerful wizard in any role-playing game system is doing wild, impossible things. Don't take that from your players!)

I replicate my response below:

As the DM, you are perfectly within your rights to limit aspects of the rules or setting. That's technically the end of the discussion, although I might canvass the entire player group and see what they think.

But personally? I wouldn't limit simulacrum. I'm usually in favor of whatever nonsense my players want to do.

However, there is always a cost.

Each casting of simulacrum costs 1,500gp and takes twelve hours, which means you can functionally only cast it once per day despite your spell slots. (If your characters have folded time or don't need to sleep, then maybe you get two castings if you have the spell slots. Wish obviously changes the calculus of these assumptions, but it does that anyway.)

That means your magic-user's clone army takes weeks to amass. If anything else is happening at the moment, it continues to happen while they're doing this. If the other players don't want to wait, then they get to go have adventures while the wizard sits in their laboratory and makes simulacra all day.

And what about ruby dust? Your player might have plenty of rubies (a single "typical" 5,000gp ruby as described in the treasure portion of the Dungeon Master's Guide yields enough powder for 3 1/3 castings of simulacrum), but will probably have to get more to amass an army over the course of months. That means they have to go delving, or mining, or trading. How many rubies are in a typical settlement, anyway? A typical mine? Is the queen willing to pry every ruby out of her crown to power your simulacra?

All of this to say: the spell is not instantaneous, and it's not without cost. Casting simulacrum takes time and resources, the sort of large-scale project that someone notices and tends to engender strong opinions. What do the NPCs do when they realize a wizard is casting simulacrum over and over again? What do they do when they realize a wizard has 50 rubies on hand? (Worth at least 250,000gp; the GDP of whole city-states.) What do the other player characters do when they realize the wizard is going to spend the next two months blasting through their wealth to build clones?

Are things so quiet in the world that the characters can afford to wait while the wizard performs their Great Work in their ivory tower? Is there no political or religious organization in your setting that would be very interested in these activities? Is the villain merely sitting idly while the players gather a magical army vulnerable to antimagic?

I don't know the parameters of your campaign. But I do know that player decisions don't happen in a vacuum, and in high-level games, they have consequences. Big consequences. What are the consequences of this choice?

Play to find out.

A Lone Dungeon Room

Back in the spring of 2020, I was involved in an abortive project to present an Exquisite Corpse dungeon. As often happens in the world of table-top role-playing games, the organizer disappeared from the internet, a bunch of people left Facebook, and that appears to be the end of that.

Since I assume that project will never see the light of day, here's the room I contributed. (I present it as originally written, resisting the urge to edit the thing for length and clarity.) Stats are vaguely B/X-ish — if you're converting to another system, the most important thing to know is that a turn is ten minutes long. You can probably figure out the rest.

You could theoretically drop this room into any dungeon in a dead-end room containing a pool.

Chamber #8

Hallway: From Chamber 3, this is a stone archway wrapped with vines that leads into a relatively low-ceilinged arched hall with a bone motif cut into the stonework. The stones closer to Chamber 3 are mossy, with the occasional vine entwined among the carved bones. The stone door leading into Chamber 8 appears to be more recent than the surrounding stone. The door bears a flaking fresco of an androgynous blue-skinned being, clad in river grasses and pulling a dark-skinned man from a river. The man's right side is submerged while the being's left hand grips his left arm. The door (which opens into Chamber 8 so the hinges are not accessible from the hallway) bears two doorknobs. The doorknob on the right is false and trapped with magic; manipulating it requires a save vs. Spells, or else the victim begins drowning as brackish water generates in the lungs. The victim makes a save vs. Paralysis each round or dies from drowning. The doorknob on the left is locked, the key long since missing.

Room: This chamber bears frescoes depicting scenes of daily life in a village by a life-giving river. The two alcoves to the left and right of the stairs are stuffed with offerings of cordgrass and mangrove fruits, long since desiccated and rotted. The stairs lead down into a pool in which reclines an ethereal, androgynous humanoid with greenish-blue skin, clad in river grasses and muddy silt. This being is Streenadi, once a minor deity worshiped by the now-extinct River-People. Clerics conveyed the deity here for safe-keeping after the river was dammed and the riverbed dried, but the loyal priests died before their god could be safely retrieved. Streenadi will implore travelers to find a way to transport them from their prison. They must be at least half-submerged in brackish water (roughly 10 - 20 ppt salinity) at all times. If separated from brackish water for more than a turn, Streenadi will sicken and die. If the travelers can safely transport the deity to a suitable habitat (preferably an estuary, although any appropriately saline body of water will do), Streenadi will grant them a wish.
If the characters deliberately kill Streenadi for some reason, the murderers find water and fish salty and inconsumable thereafter, even if treated with purify food and water. (Alcohol is safer than water anyway.) A suitably sketchy magic-user might pay 3d6 × 100 gp for the river-god's corpse.

Streenadi: AC 5, HD 2 (7 hp), Move 120' (40'), Swimming 240' (80'), 1 claw attack: 1d8 damage (2d8 if the victim is in water), Save As: Fighter 4, Morale: 10, Alignment: Neutral.
Streenadi cannot be damaged so long as they are standing in water. They take double damage from fire. They can perform many minor magical workings related to their sphere of influence, such as rendering water potable or brackish and summoning nearby fish from connected waterways to themself. Once per year, Streenadi can grant a single wish.

The Chicken of Duplication

Although typically found in fantasy space, there is no reason why one couldn't find terrestrial Chickens of Duplication.

There are those who revere the divine entity called the Chicken of Creation, a deific chicken who birthed the world and all within it. (Some believe there are many such chickens, although whether or not there are many Chickens of Creation or merely one is probably not useful for most people.) Among its many progeny is the Chicken of Duplication, a semi-divine chicken of monstrous size. (As with the Chicken of Creation, it is unclear whether there is one Chicken of Duplication or several.)

The Chicken of Duplication is often found flying through other dimensions or even the void of space. If by some strange circumstance you need stats for one, your system probably has an equivalent of a Tyrannosaurus rex; just add a flight speed and you're basically all the way there. They typically don't bother astral ships or other large objects or creatures; they might approach a vessel and give it a curious peck before moving on. Of course, if the occupants decide the peck is an attack and fight back, they will face the full fury of this semi-divine chicken.

Lone travelers are in more peril, as the Chicken of Duplication is roughly as vicious as a regular chicken.

(For Chicken of Duplication stats in 5th edition-style games, I'd start with a regisaur, change the type to celestial, add a fly speed of 120 ft., and change the tail to some manner of stomp or talon attack, dealing slashing damage instead of bludgeoning.)

If the legends are true and there is only one Chicken of Duplication, killing it doesn't stop it: it is reborn in a few days from one of its own eggs. (And like a terrestrial chicken, it lays eggs periodically without fertilization. These eggs are often in remote places in other dimensions. As such, there might be many, many eggs that have not yet been found, and one cannot truly kill the Chicken of Duplication without finding and smashing every such egg.)

The divine beast is rarely seen, but the eggs are the primary reason why anyone knows or cares about it. (It's possible the "Chicken of Duplication" isn't even a chicken; if someone saw a giant chicken and someone else saw a giant hen's egg, a third scholar could have connected the two.) An Egg of Duplication appears to be a hen's egg that is a little larger than human size, somewhere in the seven-by-five-foot range. It feels like a hen's egg, too, although it is significantly stronger — cracking the shell requires a concerted effort, as the shell is harder than steel. It is vulnerable to acid, however. Destroying or cracking the egg renders it inert and kills whatever is inside. (Although if it has not yet been activated, it might produce a truly prodigious amount of yolk. Scholars and sages no doubt would have plenty of uses for the yolk and shell of such a potent celestial egg...)

However, touching the egg with bare flesh causes a reaction. The creature who first touches the egg is enervated, taking a handful of damage, ability score drain, a level of exhaustion, or some similar mechanic that would easily heal in a day or two. No further touches have any effect on either the egg or the person touching it.

If the creature is too large to be contained by the egg, the egg remains inactivated until a creature of the appropriate size touches it.

After being touched, the egg hatches in 1d6+4 days, producing a nude duplicate of the creature who touched it. The duplicate has the same statistics as the original at the time they touched the egg, and the duplicate likewise has access to all of the target's memories until the moment it touched the egg.

As far as anyone can tell, such duplicates have no sinister agenda. However, apart from being birthed from an egg, they believe they are the original, and so will no doubt be very confused and possibly upset by whatever happens next.

State of the Union

"Sir, a second state-run space research organization has released a tabletop RPG."

It was inevitable.

We have seen idiosyncratic weirdos and megacorporations releasing RPGs for decades now, so it was only a matter of time before nation-states became involved in the role-playing game hobby.

A couple of bits of role-playing game-related effluvia have come to my attention over the past few days, both of which were released by national organizations focused on space research:

1. Releasing earlier this week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released The Lost Universe, an adventure clearly designed for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons but simple enough to transfer to your analogue adventure game of choice. The adventure is designed to be educational, covering information about the Hubble Space Telescope and various cosmological phenomena.
2. Releasing sometime in the past six months (I found a tweet from September about this game despite only hearing about it yesterday), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan released Sandcastle, a full fantasy role-playing game system that they plan to use for outreach purposes while encouraging other organizations to do the same and likewise encouraging individuals to use the system for their own enjoyment.
   

What a difference fifty years makes, huh?

The Leap Yeap

Evansville Press, Indiana, February 5, 1912

The leap yeap is considered native to the plains of the lush world of Varasla, although scholars have documented the creatures on other worlds. A leap yeap appears as a cross between a rabbit and a kangaroo, albeit the end result is as large as a Clydesdale. Although the creatures roam wild across the plains, they have also been domesticated as mounts and pack animals and so may be found in settlements outside their native range. (For example, although they are not native to the mountains, travelers have found them to make good, sure-footed mounts in uneven terrain. Some long-haired varieties have even been bred for colder climates and higher altitudes.)

Although they tend to be skittish rather than aggressive, the occasional leap yeap-related death is not unknown; their hind legs can deliver a powerful kick, and their claws are sharp enough to disembowel victims.

BECMI-style stats:

No. Enc.: 1d6 (5d6)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 180' (60')
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 2 (1 bite, 1 kick)
Damage: 1d4/1d4
Save: F2
Morale: 6
Hoard Class: None
XP: 50
Leap yeaps are skittish animals, found both roaming in herds or alone as mounts. They can leap up to 30', and often do if frightened—a riot of stamping feet and screeching.

5e-style stats:

Leap Yeap
Large beast, unaligned
Armor Class 13
Hit Points 22 (3d10+6)
Speed 50 ft.
Str 13 (+1), Dex 17 (+3), Con 15 (+2), Int 2 (-4), Wis 11 (+0), Cha 7 (-2)
Skills Perception +2
Senses passive Perception 12
Languages —
Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)
Standing Leap. The leap yeap’s long jump is up to 30 feet and its high jump is up to 15 feet, with or without a running start.
Actions
Kick. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (2d4+1) slashing damage.
Bonus Actions
Skittish. The leap yeap takes the Disengage, Dodge, or Hide action.

FIGHTS WILL BE BATTLED

Mike Mearls started a Patreon, which of course reminded me of the majesty that is Fight Battle. My friends and I have been laughing about Fight Battle for over fifteen years, and now so can you!

Review: 2023 Unknown Armies Halloween Game Jam

Over at the Unknown Armies Fan Club Discord, mellonbread organized a 2023 Halloween Game Jam for Unknown Armies and asked me to review the results on this blog. (Where stats appear, the entries assume the theoretical audience is using the third edition of the rules.) Whether or not that was a good idea is an exercise best left for the reader.

Three disclaimers before we get started:

1. If you find yourself seriously using reviews to discern whether or not you will enjoy a work, you will achieve best results if you find someone whose writing you enjoy and whose values more-or-less appear to align with your own. Fortunately in the case of this game jam, you have plenty of choices: Frahnk, mellonbread, zomner, and 33.3 FM all have contributed reviews, and their style might better inform you whether you're going to like a given piece of art or not.
2. Reviews aside, you should read all of the entries anyway, because people worked hard on these and the longest is just shy of 1,333 words. Most are shorter than that.
3. If you are unfamiliar with Unknown Armies, it's a game about power and responsibility, set in the modern world but taking place amidst the secret occult milieu behind our everyday world. As you might imagine, that's going to sometimes involve violence, sex, occultism, and fictions being presented as truths. I will try to call out specific things in some of the entries that I think people might want to know before they read them, but I will probably miss stuff because my own view of what is and is not distressing in art is no doubt different than yours. (For example: when recommending, say, horror movies to people, a frequent refrain is inevitably something along the lines of, "Ah, fuck. I forgot about The Heathen's Stand scene." So, tread carefully in these entries, in case there's something you find deeply distressing that I overlooked.)

Without further ado, here are the 20 entries of the inaugural 2023 Halloween Jam:

Four of Chimneys by mellonbread
Every beggar knows that you put a little change in your begging cup before you go out on the street to entice people to give, so mellonbread starts the game jam with three entries to help facilitate the project. This first entry is a solid story hook including a cabal and a location. A classic of the genre, "Four of Chimneys" describes the standard "backroom occult poker game" schtick familiar to fans of Last Call. As a bonus, the scale is left intentionally vague so you could put it in any game: it could as easily cater to the local sad sack losers as it could to a table of powerful high-rolling occultists. (As written, the entry implies that all sorts of people across the spectrum may be found here, but you could easily have it cater to only one crowd.) I would absolutely drop these guys into my game in a heartbeat with no changes. My only complaint is that I would change "splat" to "sourcebook," but that's a personal preference as time (and language) march on without me in the fast-paced world of internet discourse. Since I'm an easy mark, "Crassus Belly" made me laugh.

The Greggs and the Graveyard by mellonbread
A zombie survival horror scenario featuring grad school academics who have delved into forbidden secrets. While the writing is solid and surviving zombies is gonzo fun in any RPG, this feels more like an Esoteric Enterprises story hook than an Unknown Armies one. (In the sense that this scenario has an OSR sensibility of "lots of stuff for the PCs to mess with" while ignoring the specific themes that really make Unknown Armies unique. You can use the game as a generic horror engine if you want, but I already had a couple of broad-spectrum occult horror games when I came to Unknown Armies, and I think the idiosyncratic setting sells the game.) Surviving mindless zombies in Unknown Armies doesn't really do much with the system or the setting that you couldn't do somewhere else. If Dr. Frost and Bell Breaker had ambitions beyond random mayhem, this might have worked for me, but as it stands, this is a generic horror scenario. (Stats for the zombies might also be nice, although I am sympathetic to the limitations of space.) On the positive side, I like that the instigators of this tragedy are a professor and grad students. Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green get a lot of academic horror scenarios given the source material, but Unknown Armies has been begging for more since the first edition core rulebook included that example plot of a professor tangling with the First and Last Man, and since the second edition core rulebook included that story hook about Professor Morbius and Lab Section Six.

Darla Jean by mellonbread
An NPC (often rendered as a "GMC" or "Game Master Character" in typical Unknown Armies parlance) for the canonical cabal known as the Sect of the Naked Goddess, Darla Jean typically acts as a bodyguard for members of the Sect. Since the Sect is a cult based around the worship of an ascended goddess who also happened to be a grindhouse porn star in the 1990s, Darla also has the skills one might expect of a sex magician. One of the limitations of the rulebooks and the typically-tight page counts of RPG books is that there often isn't enough space to include a full GMC write-up and plot hooks, so the comparative freedom of Google Docs gives you plenty of room for both. Darla is a little more Identity-heavy than I typically like my GMCs, but I also disagree with most conversations about character stats and rules in the Unknown Armies Fan Club Discord so take that critique with a grain of salt.

Also, since there are three more mellonbread entries at the end of this contest, this feels like as good a place as any to note that there's a certain quality to the authorial voice that I call, for lack of a better term, '90s edge. (Irreverent or flippant, often about sensitive or taboo subjects. You catch whiffs of it now and again in the first and second editions of Unknown Armies, and scattered throughout the various '90s White Wolf books.) I honestly didn't notice it in mellonbread's work until I read the other fourteen entries and then read the final three entries, but if that's the sort of thing that grates on you like nails on a chalkboard (and the various online complaints about '90s RPGs seem to suggest that it will for some of you), you might find mellonbread's writing or attitude off-putting in ways I didn't.

Alexander Head and the Undercroft by Traskomancer
This is a GMC that had something bad happen to him, but now finds that he can do something bad to other people in turn. Alexander is a solid character concept that is a pure wildcard: while he could end up as an ally to a player cabal, his prickly demeanor makes it likely that he acts as a minor antagonist, or even a major antagonist to a fledgling cabal. (Of course, if you're desperate to threaten someone but lack the gumption to do it yourself, you could probably hire him. Just make sure that he doesn't get turned against you later...) He reminds me a little of the journalist Carl Streator in Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby, which of course endears me to him to no end. My one complaint is that the stat block includes a custom power that refers you to another document rather than just telling the GM what it does, but on the plus side, Me, Myself & You (which describes the Terrorize supernatural Identity) is Pay What You Want at DriveThruRPG.

STYX SUBWAY by Indigo
Short and sweet, this is a travel ritual that can take you between any places that have subway stations, even in other dimensions (called Otherspaces in Unknown Armies). No GM can ever have enough functioning rituals, and this one is short and to the point. My one edit is that, given how travel (especially to and from Otherspaces) is usually considered a potent thing in Unknown Armies, I might make this ritual a significant ritual rather than a minor one, but that's more of a "vibe" thing than a "game balance" thing. And I imagine the escalating cost in material components is meant to counteract the fact that the ritual only costs minor charges. Good luck finding more silver dollars in Ricketyland...

Otherspace Sickness by Valiant
A mystical illness that afflicts people who delve too frequently into Otherspaces. I'm partial to diseases in general, and think that interesting consequences are always of value, but as the author writes in the penultimate paragraph, "Otherspace Sickness is extremely disempowering. Be aware of the amount of control that you're taking away from your players over their ability to affect the world. Or lean into it." To keep it fair, you would have to heavily telegraph its presence before springing it on a PC, and if a GMC is infected, then you don't need the rules, just the consequences. Assuming an inexperienced GM, this entry could benefit from some design notes describing how it is used.

Of note: shortly before editing this, I saw a comment on Discord that Valiant was inspired by the Carcosa stuff in Impossible Landscapes for Delta Green, which makes perfect sense. If you see Otherspaces as an eldritch infection that's spreading, this would be a perfect entry point to facilitate that.

The Secret Saints of the Cecilites by tormsen
The title tells you exactly what you're about to read: a concise and evocative collection of heretical saints venerated by the Vatican's secret exorcist squad, the Order of St. Cecil. If you're looking to make the Order of St. Cecil more esoteric, this is clearly how you do it: add more secret histories, give additional options for church miracles, that sort of thing. (And while St. Cecil is fictional, many of the other saints described here were actual people, which I always think adds a lot of texture to a game.) My main complaint about the structure of this entry is that I don't think GMs need any special rules to describe Cecilite miracles: any recorded "church miracles" easily fit within the existing Unknown Armies paradigms of gutter magick, supernatural Identities, and avatar paths. (And the unofficial Cecilite sourcebook Thin Black Line even includes a Christian adept school.)

Ultimately, this one fell flat for me. There's a perennial conversation in the Unknown Armies Fan Club Discord about making the Order of St. Cecil weirder to bring them in line with the more esoteric factions of Unknown Armies. And while I applaud any efforts to make a role-playing game one's own by hacking the rules or altering the setting, I think a lot of the "Order of St. Cecil is boring" discourse ignores the role the canonical Cecilites play in the game's ecosystem. I'll spare you the details on why I think the Cecilites are a clever subversion on par with the other occult horror deconstructions in Unknown Armies, as that's a little outside the scope of these reviews.

Obviously, if you're one of the people who thinks the Order of St. Cecil needs to be weirder, this is a good place to start. If you're not, give it a pass. (But maybe still steal the secret saints for a splinter sect, or another esoteric cabal of Christian mystics.)

Felix Kaufman, Not a Medium by Ben
Felix Kaufman is a normal guy who imagines conversations with the dead as a coping mechanism. He's not a medium, but some people think he is because of how vividly he imagines these conversations. That makes Felix a great target for paranormal investigators who think he's just a medium in denial, and an even better target for cabals who know just enough to be dangerous and think he can help them talk to ghosts or demons. I am always a huge fan of mundane GMCs who are going to intersect with the occult underground badly, as well as potential hoaxes for player groups operating in the paranormal investigator mode. The writing is evocative, and the character is up for grabs. Is he going to become the subject of inquiry for a high-level cabal who sees occult symbolism everywhere? Is he going to be the (accidental, unwitting) push for a street-level cabal to fall into the occult? Will his coping mechanism explode into a full-blown supernatural power when he finally intersects with the occult underground? Some rumors or story hooks might be useful, but sometimes you just need a guy who isn't quite supernatural but might be interesting to someone who is.

University Street by Justin Miland
Those who know the secret paths can enter the secret Otherspace beneath the rail station at 3rd and University in Seattle, finding their way to an alternate Seattle where University Street is still part of the University of Washington campus. This was one of my favorite entries: clean, evocative prose describing an Otherspace with GMCs and story hooks! This is the sort of entry that should make a GM start scheming as to how they can get their players' characters to Seattle. Justin does a lot with the limited space, and this is practically begging for a full treatment as part of DriveThruRPG's Statosphere program. I want more, but such are the vagaries of a Game Jam. (And it's better to leave an audience wanting more than to tire them before they reach the ending.) 

The Cleaners by Kate C and mellonbread
The PCs are shinkansen cleaners (and obsessive sorcerers based around cleanliness called Katharomancers) whose union is being undercut by a bunch of scabs working for some company called Mokusouji based out of Tokyo. But the secret is that CEO Rin Maeda can afford to underbid the competition because his workforce are ghostly slaves pushed into earthly shells!

If you liked Sorry to Bother You but thought the plot could use less gonzo science-fiction and more necromancy, you'll like this one. While I think this is a clear candidate for expansion into a full pdf on Statosphere, it bites off a little more than it can chew as a humble Game Jam entry. There's nothing wrong with being ambitious, of course, but if the authors left this as "asshole manager and his weird necromancy scam" without turning it into a full-fledged scenario, I would probably want more in the good way rather than the bad one. An experienced GM can figure out stats for the dummies (I'd probably start with Phasma from Book Two: Run) and sort through the group creation of a cabal of Japanese Katharomancers, but including those dummy stats and pregenerated characters would make this complete and ready-to-run. (If the authors have to omit something, I could even live without Rin's stats, since in my experience, a GM is more likely to need the minions than the boss. Especially since he's just a rich guy with one supernatural gimmick; if I'm pressed for time, that's the sort of character who might not get full stats, only a couple of notes.) Given the limitations of space, the authors chose to include four different ways to differentiate the PC Katharomancers rather than include pregenerated characters, which is a nice compromise.

On Discord, mellonbread mentioned that the secret way to defeat the dummies would be culturally known to the characters and Japanese players, but likely obscure to players from other countries. (And of course, just volunteering that information gives away one of the scenario's secrets.) If one were to expand this into a full Statosphere thing, that's probably an important problem to solve, especially for inexperienced players; experienced players will probably either already know enough Japanese folklore, deduce that the clues are adding up to something and either do research or ask about it (which might prompt a Knowledge check or some other GM contrivance), or determine some other solution.

Galatea by Valiant
An AI startup in San Francisco has been training their large language model on occult texts and is getting some weird results.

Unknown Armies has the occasional cyberpunk flavor, given the millennial timeframe and the focus on postmodern magick. From the books themselves, the second edition core book includes a story hook about the dot com bust that sounds similar to Galatea (or at least what will probably happen to them within the next couple of years), while Book Two: Run for third edition includes GNOMON as one of the factions. (And that ignores other cyberpunk elements like The Hacker from Book One: Play, or the fact that Alex Abel employs a private army of troubleshooters like some sort of Cyberpunk 2020 CEO.)

If you have space in your game for that sort of stuff, this is a solid fledgling cabal concept with plenty of story hooks to get characters involved. (Or you could just as easily take these notes and play the characters given, fleshing out their stats and backstories during your group's initial corkboard creation.) As you've no doubt noticed by now, I'm a big fan of wildcard GMCs and cabals who are ultimately clueless rubes about to unleash a serious problem beyond their ability to control. (And in this case, they clearly have some in-the-know dark money behind them, meaning they could tie into any other faction in your campaign.) My only complaint about this one is that I could use a little more: since the author is 400 words below the word limit, there is plenty of room to define the computer acronyms used, and anything that makes an entry easier to use gets it on tables faster. Likewise, that extra space could probably be used to give an additional detail or two for each character in the cabal to make them pop. (Although if a GM were to use this as the template for a character creation corkboard, less detail is likely a little better.)

Bartlett and Sprouse, College Thaumaturges by Traskomancer
This entry describes three rituals left behind when a budding college cabal violently imploded. Given that, let's start with my complaints about this one: the author really buries the lede, as my initial assumption was that this was going to be about two collegiate wizards rather than three rituals. The title and opening page describe two thaumaturges, but you don't learn until the end that one is dead and the other is missing, having left behind these rituals. (If I were editing this, I would probably start with the final paragraph letting the audience know that the pair is dead or missing, then put the rituals, and then give their backstory.) Aside from that jarring bit of authorial legerdemain, I liked this entry: one of my other biases is that I think no GM can ever have enough functioning rituals, and the thematic links among the three rituals are strong. (They're all based around college tropes.) I imagine the time dilation ritual (designed for studying, naturally) would get the most use, although that's probably more revealing about how I run games than anything else.

Ultraflat by Cliomancer
Sometimes, buildings with non-sequential numbers—like places that omit the number thirteen for superstitious reasons—grow an extra room. (But watch out!) This is a magickal trap, and while I'm often wary of traps because it's easy to telegraph them too little, I like this one because it does three things I enjoy: it gives the victim plenty of chances to realize something is wrong and escape (I would probably allow at least some of that without rolling, but I tend towards fewer rolls anyway); it does something cool with non-sequential numbers in buildings; and it's a pun! (Flat and flat, get it?) Besides, I ultimately suspect that it's unlikely that a PC would get trapped in here. It seems more likely to be used as a story hook: someone important to the PCs goes missing and they were last seen at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel...

CÁBALA DEL REY DEL INVIERNO by Mechristopheles
Based out of Los Angeles, Oscar Fuentes is a refrigerator repair man who has also developed a way to trap las lloronas in old refrigerators. (Which is good, because the ghosts are a plague across the city.) Mechristopheles had the absolute gall to release a truly excellent Los Angeles story hook a mere three months after my seven-year-long Los Angeles game ends. Tight, evocative writing with solid hooks and ties to existing folklore. (Unsurprisingly, this was one of my other favorite entries.) The entry even ends with a sample scenario that is almost ready to use. The only thing I would want out of this one is some structural stuff to make it a little more friendly to a new GMs: take another editing pass or three, because I bet Mechristopheles can cut some of the word count and make this even tighter; and then use that reduced word count to put the ghost the PCs are hunting into the scenario. Unknown Armies stats are simple enough that a sentence of background and a sentence for the revenant's Urge would make the included scenario ready-to-run right out of the box.

Gert by Dennis Kearney
There's a booze wizard who haunts the last train before the rail shuts down: give her a drink, tell her your troubles, and she'll unburden your soul. This is as simple as it gets: terse, tight writing for a GMC that could fit into any game. While I normally would ask that a short background on a GMC also includes stats since there's plenty of space, that feels hypocritical, since I might never actually give a character like this any sort of numbered statistics. I wouldn't say no to a bit more, though: What does she do with the secrets? What happens if someone takes a stress check for telling her a secret? (I guarantee there's someone who would take a Self or Helplessness check for telling their secrets.) But I also don't think there's anything wrong in this case with leaving that stuff for the GM.

Urizen Shaft by Cliomancer
An urbex tour guide in the London underground, Urizen Shaft is a hair's breadth away from the occult underground. By this point, you can probably guess that I liked this one, as it's another character who is just on the cusp of the occult underground, and so is likely to intersect with PCs at any level of activity. (Plus I'm a sucker for a GMC with both a William Blake reference and a pun in the name.) It's complete, it does what it's supposed to do, and it makes me wish I was running a game in London (or at least in a place with a ubiquitous subway system). Including a ritual in his stat block as "something this guy has seen several times but hasn't performed himself" is an excellent bit of color.

The Mascot by Gatto Grigio
The Archetype of The Mascot. If "The Secret Saints of the Cecilites" is an entry that I thought was good despite not personally liking it, "The Mascot" is an entry that I personally liked despite thinking it needs more work and not even being sure if I would ever use it. Real talk: making an avatar Archetype or adept school is hard. With rituals, GMCs, story hooks, and maybe even simple scenarios, an experienced GM can probably eyeball them and expect them to work without much downstream processing. It's conceivable that you can develop them during the span of a week-long game jam. But Archetypes and adept schools really need time, lots of eyes, and playtesting to get the flavor just right, so dropping one for a game jam is a gutsy move.

(An aside: Although adept schools require much more work, I might argue that Archetypes are harder, because you're theoretically limited to concepts that are universally applicable, and getting folks to agree on those is a tall order. Of course, you have a little wiggle room: a given concept might always be deliberately placed into the Statosphere by a sufficiently dedicated wizard.)

So with that preamble, it's a decent concept and I generally liked the channels. (And connecting the modern mascot or fursuit to the Commedia dell'arte is a bonkers connection in the best Unknown Armies tradition.) I don't know that The Mascot is likely to appear in my own games, but I have a handful of changes I would consider if it did:

1. That "never appear outside of the suit" taboo is too rigorous for an avatar path. Having to spend a certain amount of time each day in communion with the suit, or never becoming recognizable outside of the suit is a more reasonable taboo for The Mascot. If a GM loosens the taboo, I believe mellonbread suggested that the powers don't work outside of the suit, which is a good limitation.
2. I keep waffling on the "original character" only bit. That's probably right—there's a clear differentiation between, say, Gritty and somebody in a Mickey Mouse costume at Disneyland—but I don't know if that difference is enough for the Statosphere. Then again, it's probably just a question of dedication: if you're just putting on the Mickey Mouse suit for a paycheck, you're probably not dedicated enough to become an avatar of the Archetype anyway. If you're putting on the Mickey Mouse suit because doing so makes you feel different, it probably still fits.
3. I would tighten the wording on that first channel to make it clear that The Mascot can walk around in the suit without people feeling weird about it. The avatar still needs an invitation or a reservation or whatever, but nobody is going to tell you to take off the suit once you're there.
4. I would likewise tighten the fourth channel to be more in line with the coercion rules. Making the fourth channel something like, "You have to pay attention to the Mascot avatar or else take a Helplessness (9) stress check," feels more appropriate than eating a random Violence (9) check because SonicFox glared at me. (I would probably change the targeted meters from Violence and Helplessness to Helplessness and Self.) I'm also not sure about this channel only being used three times per day; a lot of fourth channel powers just work, or work with higher limits. I'd probably let it work indefinitely with a successful avatar roll. (But in such a case, the avatar would do well to remember that attention is not always good, so you don't want to use it all the time.)

Samuel Pin Bone by mellonbread
A GMC who owns a tribal lending company. Here we end as we began, with three more mellonbread entries. As noted back in the "Darla Jean" entry, after being away from mellonbread's writing for several entries, I only noticed The Dreaded '90s Edge™ when I returned to it. And I mention this because mellonbread's flippant tone about an indigenous hard-boiled loan shark might rub a reader the wrong way, so dive into this entry with your eyes open.

By this point in the narrative, my "GMC who is mundane but is positioned to stumble into the occult underground" bias is probably now well-documented. This guy isn't anywhere near the occult underground (apart from being marginalized, which admittedly describes a fair number of Unknown Armies characters), but he clearly operates in adjacent spaces—someone's scumbag player character probably benefited from a shifty payday loan scheme, and now this is the poor schmuck who came to collect. (Although it's easy enough to flip that script if the PCs are native, in which case they could easily be the people he calls when expecting trouble. "Cabal that formed after some really angry occultist appeared at the Steelhead Lending offices," has a lot of potential as an inciting incident.)

Uncut Gems by mellonbread
A genital mutilation ritual that enhances the caster's athletic prowess. This is the entry that reminded me that I should probably put some sort of warning on these, so once again: this is the genital mutilation entry. My well-documented bias toward functioning rituals—especially including rumors and story hooks—means this one was a winner for me. An onerous minor ritual is a good hook for any PC or GMC, especially since the benefits are potentially quite tangible for any party. (And I disagree that the timeframe is too long for a PC to see real results, but then again, I typically run long campaigns.) My only change is that I'd add a casting cost, probably just 1 minor charge.

The Midnight Screening by mellonbread
This scenario describes a midnight screening of Night's Templar (originally described in Lawyers, Guns, and Money) that is likely to turn into a free-for-all with plenty of factions and chaos. This is the entry that reminded me to talk about The Dreaded '90s Edge, because I bet the glib, goofy tone of this entry will offend somebody—especially in the case of cabals like the Challah Cost Deniers and Living Zabiha Loca.

Nevertheless, were this entry sitting in my back pocket months ago, this is probably another scenario that I would have dropped into my overstuffed Los Angeles game. It's a solid premise with colorful GMCs and vibrating with potential energy, all the things one would expect from an Unknown Armies scenario. The more goofy or gonzo elements might not fit in your particular conception of Unknown Armies, but there's a consistent authorial voice and a clear target audience in mind, and so hopefully this will reach the right people. (And I guarantee someone reading these reviews is in that meaty Venn diagram overlap between "people who know Kin-dza-dza!" and "people who know what The New Inquisition is.")