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.

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.

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.")

Zen and the Art of Triage: Revised Objectives for UA3

This idea is only half-formed, so expect a small amount of brainstorming, especially toward the end.

One of the major innovations in third edition Unknown Armies is the Objective system. It's both a method by which the players can delineate their goals, while also giving everyone a countdown and a road map to fulfilling those goals. (In play, it acts a little like collaborative tools for scenario generation, a little like clocks in Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark, and a little like a convenient quantitative method by which characters can fulfill their goals by improvised magick, which was notably lacking in previous editions but exists in the source material like Tim Powers' Fault Lines trilogy.)

However, while making and switching Objectives is relatively cheap and easy, anybody with a modicum of GM experience knows how players get about their character sheets: once you put something on a character sheet, players will do anything in their power to keep it, no matter how foolhardy. So, even if players turn out to be lukewarm about the Objective they've chosen, they will almost never abandon it, even if something more interesting comes along.

In essence: the Objective rules work as designed, but not as intended thanks to the sunk-cost fallacy.

(Plus, characters invariably accumulate personal goals, but in my personal experience, it's particularly rare for a player group to focus on such individual goals, so they just tend to languish in the background unless they are especially easy to adjudicate.)

Enter: Juggling Objectives

I haven't playtested these or even fully formed them, so I don't know how players will respond to them, but the jist is this: the Objective rules still largely work as described in Book Two: Run, with the exception that you can take on as many Objectives as you like. Your cabal is no longer limited to just one Objective. For the purposes of these rules, you are only considered to have additional Objectives if there are points in them. So, if you have "Assassinate the Mayor 56%" and just declared "Successfully cast How to Cut Off Your Own Head 0%" on your character sheet, you still technically only have one Objective. It's only when you increase "Successfully cast How to Cut Off Your Own Head" above 0% that you now have two.

(I don't quite know how to determine when a new Objective is declared, though. Can individual players determine a new Objective whenever they want? Should it be a simple majority? A unanimous declaration? My sense is that it should be a unanimous decision, just like regular Objectives, but different groups might be all about letting individual players determine their own goals without the intervention of the rest of the cabal.)

If you just have one Objective, the normal rules apply.

If you have more than one Objective, pay attention to which Objectives accomplished milestones this session. At the end of every session, if a given Objective is left untouched, it loses percentage points. (All others gain Objective points as described in Book Two.)

I haven't quite decided on the number. I figure either the Objectives lose 1d10+5 points (like a petty milestone), or roll a number of d5s equal to the number of Objectives minus one. (So, if your group is juggling four Objectives, you roll 3d5 and subtract that number from all inactive Objectives for the session.) The former is straightforward and mimics the rest of the extant Objective system, while the latter disincentivizes players from juggling too many Objectives simultaneously. (Rolling Xd5 is less of a penalty in the 2-4 Objective range, but becomes more likely to penalize the cabal at 5+ Objectives. If that seems too low, perhaps roll d10s instead. Again, I'm just noodling through an idea that still needs testing.)

You might want to try both and see how players respond to them.

If an Objective drops to zero points, it goes away. Of course, you can always re-declare it and try again, or just abandon it and continue on your way.

My sense is that this would encourage players to juggle one or two Objectives at any given time while also providing a method by which they can abandon Objectives that no longer suit their purposes without going through the rigmarole of declaring that they're abandoning an Objective. But it might just be additional bookkeeping or underutilized. In any case, if you try them, let me know how it goes!

That Old Silk Hat

And now, a bit of Christmas magick: an artifact for Unknown Armies, third edition.  Enjoy!

That Old Silk Hat

Power: Significant

Description: That Old Silk Hat is usually treated as a joke or urban legend (it seems soundly ludicrous to think the holiday song "Frosty the Snowman" holds mystical significance), but some checkers in the occult underground claim it's an actual thing.
     That Old Silk Hat appears as an old, unassuming, and somewhat battered top hat, made of cheap felt.  Any story depicting it usually indicates it's found in the garbage or has been otherwise abandoned — it usually smells like refuse, and is occasionally described as being crusted with blood.  The stories claim That Old Silk Hat rarely stays in one place for long, as misfortune tends to befall those who use it.  It won't be long before it shows up in some dumpster, or abandoned basement, or forgotten corner of someone's garage...
     Chargers in the know claim there are many such hats, each with a limited number of uses.  In that case, the magick is not in the hat, but in the ritual that empowers them.  The chargers who tell such tales claim a ritual to empower That Old Silk Hat is a significant one, and requires the ritualist to murder someone and entomb them in a snow effigy.  The hat placed atop the snow effigy is then empowered as That Old Silk Hat.
     (Such a ritual would probably take 2 significant charges, and would empower the hat for a number of uses equal to the sum of the dice.)

Effect: When That Old Silk Hat is placed on a mound of snow that has been sculpted to resemble a human shape (typically at least given a face and rudimentary limbs, although most people who receive That Old Silk Hat are under explicit instructions to make the snowman "as lifelike as possible;" some of them are quite elaborate), the hat summons the nearest demon to animate the snowman.
     While demons are always hungry for experiences on this side of the Veil, That Old Silk Hat does nothing to make the snowman stronger, or grant it significant structural activity.  As such, snow golems animated by the hat are pretty fragile, and will still melt if the ambient temperature gets too far above freezing.
     As a result, demons are usually pretty annoyed with being trapped in a snow-body.
     Still, it beats being on the other side of the Veil.  Clever (and stupid) checkers can use this to communicate with demons, and particularly smart ones use this as a negotiation tactic; after all, a summoned demon probably needs the occultist to enact any particular schemes it has in mind, so it allows a would-be demonologist to negotiate from a position of strength.
     While in a snow body, a demon's wound threshold is only equal to 20% of its Urge (round down), and it only deals an amount of damage equal to the tens place of the roll when making hand-to-hand attacks.  When a snowbound demon makes a melee attack, it takes the same damage itself as it shakes its snow body apart.  A snow-body only takes hand-to-hand damage from guns, although any explosions or sufficiently large trauma will probably deal full damage.  (When in doubt, the snowman is fragile and probably just falls apart.)  If you're tracking movement, snow-bodies can typically only move at half-speed (check out "Running Around" on page 63 of Book One: Play), and take 1d10 wounds if they move at full speed.  Likewise, if it's too warm outside, the demon can take anywhere from 1d10 wounds per hour to 1d10 wounds per minute.  (Although the degradation of a snow-body in high temperatures is ultimately up to the discretion of the GM.)
     A would-be snow-sculptor can potentially heal a snow body by re-packing the snow, restoring a demon's full wound threshold with a few minutes' work.
     A demon is released when its snow-body is destroyed or when the hat is removed.  Sensation-junkies they are, however, no demon will willingly remove its own hat.  (If, as some stories say, That Old Silk Hat has limited uses, any given found hat probably has 1d10 uses.  A single "use" ends when the demon is banished; there is otherwise no time limit.)
     At the GM's discretion, a particularly skilled snow-sculptor might be able to make a sturdier-than-normal body.  If a character has an Identity uniquely suited to building a particularly-sturdy snowman, then the snow-body has a wound threshold equal to the character's roll or 20% of the demon's Urge, whichever is higher.  Likewise, such a snow golem might deal additional damage on a successful Struggle roll, such as dealing half standard hand-to-hand damage, whole damage, or even weapon damage (for a sculptor adding sticks and knives to the snowman's construction).  Such a snow golem might even maintain its integrity when it makes hand-to-hand attacks.
     It is exceedingly unlikely someone could make a snow sculpture sturdy enough to use a gun, but who knows?
     A character living in a cold climate or otherwise with access to a sufficiently-large, frozen place could potentially keep a single snowbound demon around for a long time, if they so chose.  It's possible that a particularly demented charger has a demonic snowman familiar stashed away in an old restaurant freezer somewhere.

Into This House We're Born

Hey, over at the Unknown Armies Fan Club, we ran a one shot game on Discord and recorded it!  It's been described as being, "Like Noises Off, but with significantly more cannibalism."  If you still want to listen to it, you'll find it after the jump:

Just an Occupational Hazard of the Speed Business

Don't forget: you have a week left to sign up for Just an Occupational Hazard of the Speed Business, another thrilling play-by-post race at the Unknown Armies Fan Club.  The top three winners get access to fabulous prizes, so get hype!

Just an Occupational Hazard of the Speed Business

So over on the Unknown Armies Fan Club on Facebook, I'm running a play-by-post illegal street race in Los Angeles — think The Fast and the Furious meets Tim Powers.  In addition to bragging rights and in-character glory, the top three winners get fabulous prizes, potentially including a copy of Maria in Three Parts!

If you're interested, come join us:

Just an Occupational Hazard of the Speed Business

If you want to join, you have until September 25, 2018 to submit a character.  Join us!

State of the Madicon 2018: Three Months' Dead

The state of the Madicon is strong.

It's been three months, but I'm just now getting this on the blog.  Nicole and I made the annual pilgrimage to Harrisonburg, VA for Madicon 27 from March 9 to March 11, 2018. (Interested parties can read about Madicon 22, Madicon 24, Madicon 25, and Madicon 26.)  Since we're so far removed, this will likely be short and sweet.

Friday night saw hang outs and light board gaming (we tried the Mage Knight Board Game, which was probably a little more complicated than we ought to have tried to tackle at the time, but was still entertaining), but the meat of my con memories come from Saturday.

A last-minute substitution on Friday led to me running an Unknown Armies one shot rather than my usual Lamentations of the Flame Princess nonsense.  (Fortunately, I was aware of the eventuality, so I had both prepped.)  Tying in with my usual campaign, the players were high school students whose friend went missing, apparently into a mysterious cave that wasn't there just the other day.  Examination of said cave led to an Otherspace depicting a strange Soviet Los Angeles, replete with weirdos, velociraptors, and morlocks.  I think people had fun, but it also went in an unexpected direction: to find their friend and escape, the teenagers ended up cutting a deal with some mystics on the other side, who returned to our side of the gate.

The setup.  Click to enlarge.

The Objective board.  Click to enlarge.

The character sheets.  Click to enlarge.

That evening saw a continuation of Arashi's long-running 7th Sea game, which was just intense as usual.  There were costumes, there was wine, there were tears, there was awkwardness, it was a hell of time.  (And we've been dealing with the emotional fallout for three months now.  Compounded, of course, by the fact we haven't been able to play as often.)  Not as many pictures as previous Madicons, but I believe there are more unflattering pictures lurking on the internet somewhere.

Sunday we played Nevermore, which is pretty fast once you get the hang of it, and then we headed home.

Sadly, this will likely be our last regular Madicon, as the group with whom we travel probably isn't going in quite the same arrangement.  But we will no doubt set foot in that glorious land again.  If only for Glen's Fair Price.

Fear and Loathing in Indianapolis: GenCon 2017

"My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights – or very early mornings – when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at 100 miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) ... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that...

"There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. ... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...

"And that, I think, was the handle – that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..."

— HST, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

GenCon 50 (August 17-20, 2017) has come and gone.  (And it only took me a month to publish this after-action report!)  In most ways it was less frenetic than the previous version, and lacked the same nervous energy.  There are still ways to optimize planning for future expeditions, but they are able to be tweaked without difficulty.

Soberer minds have already given the straight dope on GenCon — a post from Zak S. over here, a post from Patrick Stuart over there, a wild Mike Evans post somewhere in the middle.  Expect this, then, to largely be a travelogue.  I'm not sure if we'll be back next year, but we will certainly return.

All pictures are by Nicole and I, except wherever obvious exceptions occur.

Bookends.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

There is a set of stone gates that mark the end of the lands of my ancestors.  That is the gauntlet to be traversed to reach Indianapolis.

If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been.

Of course, there is no threat greater than...

...the raw, existential horror of the Midwest.

The accompaniment on this year's drive was provided by The Secret History of Twin Peaks.  I've heard dissatisfaction with the book, given that it doesn't do much to peel back the layers of mystery around Twin Peaks, and it ties in the entities of the Black Lodge with UFOlogy and John Keel's ultraterrestrials.  However, I felt those were features rather than bugs (and not all that surprising, given the identity of the Archivist).  Of course, getting into the new series would be a whole other blog post.  Ahem.

Finally, we arrived.

Strangers on a train.

We were in the Crowne Plaza, in one of the rooms in an old train car, which is kind of neat, because you can pretend you're a hobo if you want.  And they give you earplugs because it's directly under the train tracks.  So there's that.

Also, we were in the Charlie Chaplin room.  They name all of them after celebrities; I'm guessing the feature in this one is that HUAC kicks you out if you stay too long.

If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill the Buddha.

We had a couple of tickets to pick up from the will-call line, and since badges were sold out, that took no time at all.

Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges!

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Indiana’s First Dragon & I welcome everyone to #GenCon2017! pic.twitter.com/ETuBRGW7v9

— Eric Holcomb (@GovHolcomb) August 17, 2017

The teeming throng of humanity strains against its bonds, searching only for one thing: commerce.

Before the Dealers' Room opens.

Thursday morning Nicole and I wandered around the convention and hit the dealers' room dressed as Hugh the Barbarian and the Flame Princess.  A couple of pictures out in the wild can be found here, here, and here.  Pictures inbound:

Hugh conquers GenCon 

The Flame Princess conquers GenCon

The Flame Princess and James Raggi

Hugh and Michael Curtis

Hugh and the Dark Master!

Hugh and the True Hugh

Also, in our wanderings, we came across a group of gnomes.  Nicole had to take a picture, as we recently played through The Gnomes of Levnec, and she now plays a horde of gnomes in that campaign.

Protip: Gnomes are delicious.

The dealer's room was not nearly as frantic as last year; we picked up the new Goodman Games releases, the Lamentations of the Flame Princess shirts, and a Lost Pages zine I had somehow missed.

But first, a brief cosplay interlude:

Praise the Sun!

A friendly capitalist robot.

After retreating to the hotel to change into civilian clothes, we tried to get into Thunderhead Mesa, Greg Stolze's Unknown Armies game.  We failed, but fortunately, somebody captured audio of one of the sessions.  I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, although I know there's a ton of background noise; the gaming rooms at GenCon are loud.

That night, we were scheduled to hit the They Might Be Giants concert at 8 PM.  Some GenCon press folks interviewed people waiting in line, and you can hear my stupid voice at about the 1:37 mark, doing a Shatneresque "Dr. Worm."

Unsurprisingly, they put on a kickass show.  (Although I still should've opened up the pit.)  I was greatly amused that they kept making Indianapolis references, though; I'm guessing nobody told them that most of us wouldn't be local.  The obligatory pictures:

Audience selfie time!

They wanted people to tag their audience selfies with #DepecheMode, evidently starting the musicians' feud nobody knew they wanted until now.  Like you do.

Then we went back to the hotel, because the next day was going to be a long one.

Friday, August 18, 2017

I swore we saw this graffiti on Saturday, but the timestamp says Friday.

Nicole had an event in the morning, so I wandered around a bit before realizing that the convention center is huge and I should probably head to the game we have at 1 PM to claim seats.  We played in an Unknown Armies, second edition, game called Couples, Retreat! written and run by Cameron Hays for 37 Zombies.  The game featured four couples going to a couples' retreat to strengthen their marriages.  Unfortunately for them, the pop psychiatrist who runs the place had certain occult leanings, and the eight people he invited all had various foibles of their own, so the whole thing turned into a fiasco.  It was a lot of fun, and featured a lot of neat background on psychology.  He'd have to update it to 3rd edition, but he should really put it up on Statosphere.

Then we hustled to the Unknown Armies panel.  (Audio is here.)  There were few revelations, as most of the stuff was covered in last year's panel, although we did learn that the intensely popular Sleeper meeting minutes in Book 5 come from long-time Unknown Armies writer Chad Underkoffler. The other thing is that there are no specific plans to publish the long-buried first edition supplement Town Without Pity, but Greg said he'll try to contact Tim Toner again.

After dinner, it was time to head to the ENnie Awards.

The stage is set.

You've probably heard the news in the past month, but Chaosium swept the awards for Call of Cthulhu (it became a running gag for Nicole and I), and John Wick Presents did quite well for 7th Sea, as did Free League Publishing for Tales from the Loop.  As UAFC co-administrator, I'd naturally be remiss if I neglected that Unknown Armies won the Silver ENnie for "Best Production Values," probably because their deluxe set comes wrapped in a GM's screen.

Several of the Atlas Games crew accept the "Best Production Values" award.

Of particular note, Spellburn won the Silver ENnie for "Best Podcast" (particularly noteworthy as they were up against Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff — winning a silver against Ken Hite is basically like winning a gold any other time).

Judges Jen and Jeff accepting the Silver ENnie

Ken and Robin win about stuff

Mike Evans won the Silver ENnie for "Best Electronic Book" for his book Hubris: A World of Visceral Adventure, and gave a brief (but apparently controversial) speech:

It's the company logo!

And as you might expect on this blog, we're most excited about Lamentations of the Flame Princess.  Up against some heavy hitters, they did incredibly well — Patrick Stuart's Veins of the Earth won Silver ENnie for "Best Monster/Adversary" (Chaosium took gold), and the Silver ENnie for "Best Writing" (Tales from the Loop took gold, as it did in each category in which it was nominated).  Not too shabby.  Jeff Rients' Broodmother Skyfortress received a Judges' Spotlight award from Reece Carter.  Most notable, in a huge coup, Kiel Chenier took the Gold ENnie for Blood in the Chocolate (beating the unstoppable juggernaut of Chaosium).

Just repeat this photo four times.  Left to right: Zak S., Patrick Stuart, James Raggi.

Next up: the main event.  Zak S.'s party.

The promised land.

Trollsmyth hosted.  Nicole quickly started talking with Jim's wife Maria and Trollsmyth's wife (Tam, I believe; it was noisy and there was a lot of whiskey) while I wasn't looking.  Eventually, the Raggis left, there's more whiskey, I talked to some drunk people about D&D, Nicole started talking to Ela Darling, and then there's a noise complaint across four floors and we have to move the party downstairs to the bar.

Downstairs, Nicole and I continue to talk to Ela, and I'm pretty sure we're all just living in Plato's Cave while she's living in the realm of Solids.  She does the camming thing, and is working to develop integrated VR and automation tools for it (because we live in the cyberpunk future).  Once those are full functional, she'll probably take them to their logical conclusions in other applications outside of entertainment.  (Assisting people with disabilities is probably the most obvious one.)  Along those lines, you can hear her talking about Apple, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality on The Future Is Virtual here.  Fascinating stuff.

[Edit (November 9, 2017): Ela talks about her work in Rolling Stone, if you're interested.]

Charlotte Stokely was also there, and she's pretty hilarious.  I know I asked her about gaming, but the edges of our conversation are fuzzy, probably because of the Maker's Mark.  Pictures in-bound:

Nicole, Zak, and I before moving downstairs

Myself and Ela Darling.  I don't even know what's happening here.

There was a stone backdrop and shields for some reason.

Ela, Nicole, and Charlotte, prepared for battle.

Throwing up the horns.

Stokely, screaming while pressing a T-shirt on my face, for reasons that made sense at the time.

Jacob Hurst with an awesome shirt.

No pictures, but I also had the chance to meet all-around cool D&D dude Dan Domme.  As we were leaving — we had an early event the next day — we also ran into Satine Phoenix of Maze Arcana fame (although she'll always be Mirror* to me).  She talked about joining Geek & Sundry, and how generous everyone was even though she was the new kid on the block with a somewhat nontraditional entertainment background.

The obligatory selfie.

*Jesus.  If you want to read some ornery bastards griping on the internet, read the comments on the first episode of I Hit It With My Axe.  Amusing, as now everybody loves Let's Plays like Critical Role and The Adventure Zone.

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Technically, part of the party should go here, but it's not the next day until you sleep.  The next morning, we did something touristy and went to the City Market Catacombs, an old storage space under Tomlinson Hall (at least before it burned in 1958).  It was neat; the most important thing from the perspective of a gaming blog is looking at the old architecture.

Creepy chair circle.

The last standing portion of Tomlinson Hall.

"Voodoo Corner," so named because it flooded back in the day and was therefore bad market space.
Although I'm just going to assume it was cursed.

The Indiana State Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument

There was generic convention wandering, as we had no scheduled events until the What's New at Goodman Games seminar that evening and we weren't organized enough for a pickup game.  They talked about Into the Borderlands (the In Search of the Unknown and Keep and the Borderlands compilation, published in cooperation with Wizards of the Coast), the DCC Annual (it's apparently coming), a new magazine for pulp fiction called The Magician's Skull, the next Judge's Guild collection, and Grimtooth's Trapsylvania (a DCC setting featuring the infamous Grimtooth from Flying Buffalo).  The footage is below:

Next, we had to hustle to see d20 Burlesque at 9 PM.  It was a solid show, but in retrospect, I should have budgeted more game time, as this would have been a perfect time to play Doug Kovacs' Inferno Road.  There were a couple of brilliant routines — a deconstructed Black Widow who started mostly nude and then put clothes back on, and a Bugs Bunny routine (inspired by this bit, but also reminiscent of Frank Zappa's hand signals) requiring the audience to make the music a capella — but the standout was DC-area native Maki Roll, who not only put on a kickass routine, but did so having driven to Indianapolis that afternoon (seriously, she got there just in time to get onstage at intermission), and then having to drive back to DC the next morning.

We originally had a Driftwood Verses event at midnight, but Clint Krause was in a car accident on the way to GenCon (he's fine, fortunately), and so had to cancel.  With that, it was time for bed.

Sunday, August 20, 2017

We skipped returning to the con and started driving home; a good thing, too, as apparently all the road construction in the Indiana/Ohio region starts at 4 PM, which explains the long, grueling drive home last year.  The most notable thing from the return trip was this graffiti, a clear indicator that we were in America's heartland:

I bet they thought of that comeback themselves, too.

Apocrypha

Lessons for future years include hyper-focusing (seriously, trying to divide attention among OSR, Unknown Armies, and random seminars meant that very little gaming happened), and potentially leaving Monday.

Thus ends GenCon.  Being less frenetic and vaguely overwhelming than last year's convention, it didn't feel as magical as the first time, although I guess there's a joke in there somewhere.  But by the gods, we shall return to that broken jaw of our lost kingdoms as conquerors.

Kickin' rad.

And now, cosplay:

A priest of Adeptus Mechanus.

Stan "The Man" Lee

Why not Zoidberg?

Royal rainbow!

Vraska the Unseen.  (Thanks to Jenx for identifying this one.)

Spock's wedding party might be my favorite costume.

Breath of the Wild cosplay!

Raoul Duke, living the American Dream

This is bat country!

One piece of bonus material.  Since Hunter S. Thompson has been referenced a couple of times, and Harry Dean Stanton just passed away, have the 30th anniversary audiobook of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, narrated by Stanton himself:

Fin.