Avatar: The Lover

CW: Stalking, implied domestic abuse and sexual assault

The Lover

Attributes

There are countless great loves in stories. Romance itself is an entire genre itself. What these relationships look like vary wildly for each individual. Some people seek things they lack, others look for wild passion, and many look to be content. There is an idealized version of it that exist in the hearts of those who desire it. Yet, when we look to our stories about romance, things don't come together all that easily. The lovers of fantasy go through wild swings of emotions. An idyllic meeting often sets the tone, a rival schemes to break them up, a messy reveal threatens to end their relationship, and then things are made right for their final reunion - taking the form of a wedding or other important commitment.

Death Note Campaign Set + Cat and Mouse Gridiron

If you're not interested in this, I recommend jumping to the Cat and Mouse Gridiron below.

What's the Deal?

What would you do if you could kill anyone? For me, that's the appeal of playing Death Note in Unknown Armies. Take a group of normal people and give them a single powerful artifact with a limited premise. The manga itself is a mix of things: a crime drama, a police procedural, a supernatural detective tale, and a serial killer thriller. Death Note has a relatively simple premise: a Shinigami (god of death) gives a high school student (Light Yagami) a notebook that allows him to kill anybody. He decides to use it to enact his ideas of justice to create a perfect society. After an international chain of mysterious deaths targeting violent criminals takes place, the perpetrator becomes known as Kira across the globe. What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase as the world renowned detective L tries to uncover Kira's true identity. Mostly, I wanted to write this up because I thought it would be fun. I don't have a strong attachment to the manga, but I think as a drama it uses it's premise well. Plus, this is good practice for UA3 design, so some of my thoughts on the process are included at the end. 

Speaking to the Leaves (Ritual + Supernatural Identity)

My entry for the UA3 game jam ZomnoCon2
Categories: Green Thumb, Something Important Has Been Stolen

This plays off the minor ritual I Have Become Phobetor (Book 2, pg 75). Its main purpose is to show that the format for the Sleeper identity is actually surprisingly flexible. Unknown Armies frequently has characters with weird sets of abilities outside of what Adepts or Avatars can do, like the Cigarette Hag from To Go. Maybe someone met a god or married Death or accessed invisible bands of energy or learned the secret language of flowers. Powers that seem like they may not come from the Clergy or the collective unconscious, for whatever reason. It's called “the world of our desires.” Our desires are contradictory, and we frequently chase after things we can’t have. Sometimes that involves making a pact with a garden for the purpose of tormenting a wealthy family who is responsible for the urban development that paved over the tenement you were living in. Whatever floats your boat.