{"id":1435,"date":"2013-08-08T06:01:55","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T13:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2013-08-08T09:24:36","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T16:24:36","slug":"jason-morningstars-the-ixiptla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/2013\/08\/jason-morningstars-the-ixiptla\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Morningstar\u2019s \u2018The Ixiptla\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Morningstar is most famous for Fiasco<\/i><\/a>, an amazingly fun and darkly funny game. But my favorite of his works was an earlier game called Grey Ranks<\/i><\/a>. Grey Ranks<\/i> is about teenage resistance fighters in the doomed Warsaw Uprising of 1944<\/a>. It\u2019s astonishingly bleak, but its very hopelessness encourages players to explore the best and worst in humanity.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be any surprise that I found Grey Ranks<\/i> so moving. I mean, I love Call of Cthulhu.<\/i><\/p>\n

A couple of years after Grey Ranks,<\/i> Jason contributed to the terrific liner notes in Graham Walmsley\u2019s Stealing Cthulhu<\/a>,<\/i> along with Kenneth Hite and Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan.<\/p>\n

Naturally I was thrilled to run Jason\u2019s scenario \u201cSukakpak\u201d in TUO 21<\/a>. It\u2019s one of my favorites things that we\u2019ve published, and since relaunching the Oath <\/i>we have published some terrific things.<\/p>\n

So naturally I approached Jason about contributing a bonus download for the 2013 Unspeakable Oath<\/i> subscription drive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With \u201cThe Ixiptla\u201d (no relation to the Whispering Vault<\/em> scenario<\/a>), he didn\u2019t disappoint.<\/p>\n

\"From<\/a>

From \u201cAlchemist\u201d by Richard Ashrowan: www.ashrowan.com\/works\/alchemist<\/p><\/div>\n

Jason described \u201cThe Ixiptla\u201d to me as \u201cone of the bleakest, ugliest, most hopeless things I\u2019ve ever written. Inspirations: Queen of Versailles, A Simple Plan, District 9, Cocoon, The Fly, The Dunwich Horror, La Historia Universal de las Cosas de Nueva Espa\u00f1a.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ixiptla\u201d is not an investigation. It\u2019s not about deliberately confronting danger. It has no sturdy professors bravely facing the mind-blasting revelations of forbidden books to thwart a vast evil. It is instead about seeing what happens when appalling horror comes to ordinary people \u2014 people who don\u2019t deserve it, and aren\u2019t equipped to face it, any more or less than anybody else.<\/p>\n

As Jason says in the text, \u201c\u2018The Ixiptla\u2019 is a tightly constrained atmospheric one-shot. There are some notes on using it for campaign play at the end, but it probably plays better as a claustrophobic exploration of pride, degeneration, and weird fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange adventure, shivering with slow-burn terror. When we reach 600 Unspeakable Oath<\/i> subscribers, we\u2019ll share \u201cThe Ixiptla\u201d with all of them. I can\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to The Unspeakable Oath<\/i> in PDF for only $24<\/a>, or in print with a free PDF of each issue for $30 plus shipping and handling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jason Morningstar is most famous for Fiasco, an amazingly fun and darkly funny game. But my favorite of his works was an earlier game called Grey Ranks. Grey Ranks is about teenage resistance fighters in the doomed Warsaw Uprising of…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[266,13],"tags":[283,150],"class_list":["post-1435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scenarios","category-subscriptions","tag-ixiptla","tag-jason-morningstar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/ObsidianMirrorStill2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OyM1-n9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1435"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1440,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1435\/revisions\/1440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theunspeakableoath.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}