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Urban Fantasy Fridays: The Unexplained (2009)
AH! It is October again. My favorite time of the year. Last year, on my Fantasy Fridays, I spent some time with urban fantasy games and, in particular, with the idea of using games as a sort of life-path development for my various characters. I actually did a few characters, but I only posted one, my witch, Larina.
Something very interesting happened while I was doing that. I grabbed a couple of Pathfinder characters and was doing the same experiment on them. I remember sitting in my car one night, waiting for my oldest to get off work, and I began writing a bit on what those two characters would have been like as teens. Then I took it a step (ok, a big step) further and thought: what would they have been like as teens in high school, not in a fantasy world, but in an American high school, specifically in the Midwest.
Those two Pathfinder characters became Stephanie and Faye. I resurrected a bunch of other ideas, and by December of 2025, I had a very good idea about what my town of Jackson, IL, was starting to look like. It has been my obsession ever since, and here I am nearly a year and several thousand words later. If you go through those posts, you can see the ideas that eventually took shape as the Jackson I am talking about now.
With this collection of **Urban Fantasy Fridays,** I want to explore other games in my collection that do similar, but not quite the same, things as **NIGHT SHIFT** does for my Jackson setting/Night World. I am committed to Jackson as a NIGHT SHIFT Night World, no other game fits it quite so well. But, I do want to see what these other experiences give me. I want to make sure I am capturing not only what makes NIGHT SHIFT special, but what makes Jackson so special to me. For the Fridays in October I am going to pull some Urban Fantasy/Horror RPGs from my shelves and see how they work for me. Some are older games, others are newer but obscure, but all approach the "modern magical world" from different points of view, and all can teach me something.
Last year I went in order, more or less, of life span development. This year I am generally going in order of involvement with the supernatural. From least to most. For example, today's game, The Unexplained, largely deals with normal people dealing with abnormal things. In the last game, Night Life, the characters are the "abnormal things."
So lets get to it!
**The Unexplained**
by Bradford Younie,
2009 Carnivore Games, 298 pages.
I talked about the FUDGE game, The Unexplained, way back in 2010. Or, more to the point, I talked about its sister game, Now Playing. Back then, I described it like this: if The Unexplained is the reality, then Now Playing is the TV series based on it. Both are FUDGE games and use FUDGE dice. They are 100% compatible with each other and both top my list as my favorite FUDGE games to date.
While I am looking at this game for possible ideas, I do want to point out that it is, by itself, a perfectly wonderful game. I have not looked at it in detail for over 15 years, and I am surprised at how playable it still is.
Character creation is easy using a simple point-buy system. I was able to generate NINE characters in under an hour. Likely, I would have been faster, but I was trying to maximize the differences in my characters.
The Unexplained posits that the characters are part of an organization dedicated to hunting supernatural monsters. Now, the nature of my Jackson kids kinda precludes this. That is fine; it is not a requirement of this game, merely a feature they are adding.
**The Foundation for Paranormal Investigation**
The FPI is an in-game conceit that allows the players to get their characters together. It is part "You characters meet in a tavern" and part "You have been recruited by S.A.V.E. or A.R.T.E.M.I.S. or the FBI od SCP or whatever alphabet organization the characters need to join.
That said, there are some really good ideas for putting together an organization like this and using it in a game. Maybe I'll revisit them someday, but right now I don't need them. My characters meet because they are all in the same school.
But if this is your thing, then The Unexplained is worth picking up for these ideas. The underlying system is FUDGE, but really, as I showed already, replace the words with numbers and you can play this almost as if it were Unisystem.
**My Jackson Kids**
Character creation was so fast and easy that instead of doing one or two of my Jackson kids. I stated them all. Well. Most of them. Plus the Character Concept Questionnaire I used from Now Playing was also a huge help.
I won't add all of them here, but I will give two examples. My witch, Larina, and the reluctant ally, Vera. Why? Vera Rook is becoming a LOT of fun over here. She is just a great frenemy who adds some tension to the group. Plus, she irritates Stephanie and Larina, and that is always fun.
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**Larina Stephanie Nichols**
Profession: The Scholar* (I am using the Professions more like archetypes)
Paranormal Society: Jackson Public High School
~~Rank~~ Age: 16
Income: Good
Luck: 3
Size: Medium/0
**Attributes**
Brawn: Mediocre
Agility: Fair
Stamina: Fair
Reasoning: Superb
Perception: Good
Will: Fair
**Gifts**
Attractive
Single Minded (Magic)
**Faults**
Curious
Obsession: Magic
Quick-Tempered
**Psychic Abilities**
Mental Psi: Psychometry (Fair), Telepathy (Fair)
Physical Psi: Telekinesis (Fair)
**Skills**
Astrology (Fair), Athletics (Mediocre), Concentrate (Good), Computers (Fair), Decipher Script (Fair), Drive (Mediocre), Gather Information (Good), Language, Greek (Poor), Language, Latin (Poor), Mythology (Good), Occult (Great), Parapsychology (Fair), Research (Good), Ritual, Wicca (Fair), Search (Good)
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**Vera Diane Rook**
Profession: The Reluctant Ally* (I am using the Professions more like archetypes)
Paranormal Society: Jackson Public High School
~~Rank~~ Age: 16
Income: Great
Luck: 3
Size: Medium/0
**Attributes**
Brawn: Fair
Agility: Fair
Stamina: Fair
Reasoning: Good
Perception: Great
Will: Fair
**Gifts**
Attractive
Increased Income
Patron: Rook Family
**Faults**
Blunt and Tactless
**Psychic Abilities**
Mental Psi: Psychometry (Good)
**Skills**
Astrology (Good), Bluff (Fair), Cryptozoology (Fair), Drive (Good), Gather Information (Fair), Ghost Hunting (Fair), Intimidate (Good), Occult (Fair), Persuade (Good), Religions (Good), Research (Fair), Ritual, Wicca (Fair), Sense Motive (Good)
This run is where we learn that Vera's family is Jewish. She is a witch yes, but her religion is Jewish. Much like Larina's religion is Wicca. Vera is a bit of a lapsed Jew, but I think I want to work more of it into her character later on.
The images, as it turns out, are from the day after Larina's 16th birthday. Her birthday was on a Friday, and this would have been the next Saturday.
Remember, with all these "Poors" and "Fairs," they are still just kids.
Though looking at the art of these two, they seem to be less Larina "Nix" and Vera "Raven" of Jackson and more Larina "Creepy" and Vera "Shadow" of Carbon Vale.
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The Unexplained is a lot of fun. I have never really connected with FUDGE, but this game makes me want to try it again.
**Links**
* PDF from DriveThruRPG
* Carnivore Games
* Sheets
* Facebook
* Willow & Tara stats
