Tapeheads

This is a school of magic for characters in Unknown Armies, “an occult game about broken people conspiring to fix the world”, which is my personal favorite tabletop roleplaying game. It is directly inspired by my favorite horror movie, Videodrome and also relevant to the micro-genre which includes Archive 81, The Ring, and the V/H/S series. I created it for a campaign set circa 1990.

Lemnismancy (documentarian)

a.k.a. Tapeheads, Cassette Cowboys, O'Blivions, Videographers

Whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality, and reality is less than television.

— Professor Brian O’Blivion

Lemnismancy is actually a cluster of practices with variants on charging / taboo / spells. The magical idea animating all lemnismancy is that for most people, what they see on television outcompetes reality itself. Videotape is a magical fetish which represents this TV experience which tapeheads can use for magic.

This particular strain of Lemnismancy — the Documentarian school — focuses on emotionally significant real human experiences, and primarily manipulates memory and attention. One charges by watching tapes of important events in real people’s lives, and breaks taboo if one sees broadcast television. 

Stats

Blast style

Lemnismancy has no freehand Blast, but one can make tapes which attack physically using specific spells, below.

Minor charge

Be the first Tapehead to spend twenty minutes watching a tape recording of a memorable event from someone’s life: something like a first date or a fierce argument or getting a raise or breaking their leg. 

The tape can be a copy, but the tapehead must be the first tapehead to pull a charge from any copy; once the event has been used for a charge, any tape of that event becomes useless for more charges. (In this it is a bit like Cliomancy.) A tape can contain more than one event, but watching each event only works once. If half a dozen or more people are all shown in the segment with the event, and the event is memorable for all of them, the segment is worth two charges.

Significant charge

Be the first tapehead to spend an hour watching a tape recording of a major event from someone’s life: getting married, graduating college, a gunfight, a serious car crash. 

The rules for copies, consuming charges, multiple events on a single tape, and double charges are the same as for minor charges.

Major charge

Be the first tapehead to spend thirty minutes watching a tape recording of a world event of enough significance that millions will be able to answer “where were you when you saw that?”: the JFK assasination, the Challenger explosion, the fall of the Berlin wall.

Taboo

Get a clear look at a TV screen showing current broadcast television. For a tapehead, the cathode ray tube is for showing tapes, not for showing “TV”. 

Random magic domain

Memories, attention, videotapes, and TV displays. 

Spells

Most spells take effect when people watch a TV playing a tape prepared by the tapehead, generally in a lair of recording & playback equipment. Such spell tapes can only be used once; the tape can only run for as long as the tape format permits (20 minutes for a small ¾" cassette, or up to six hours for a VHS cassette). It takes twice the runtime of the tape to make a spell tape. The tapehead rolls to see if the tape creation process worked at the end of the time spent making the tape; if the spell fails, the tapehead of course keeps the charges and can try again, but has lost the time it takes.

A spell tape can be stopped and started, but once ejected it becomes inert, without magickal effects, unless otherwise specified in the spell description.

Minor spells

Plenty Of Tapes — 1 minor charge

The tapehead gets an infallible hunch about the nearest / most convenient way to get their hands on a tape.

Plugged In — 1 minor charge / effect

Ordinarily a tapehead manipulates tapes with a bunch of equipment, and plays or records them normally, but if necessary they can spend charges to forgo the gear. Each of these effects costs one minor charge; they can stack (but that gets expensive fast!)

• Record onto a tape, or play from a tape onto a CRT, by holding the tape in the tapehead’s hands and “plugging in” the machine cable to the tapehead’s mouth (or other orifice, because Cronenberg).
• Enact the effect of a tape using a player but not CRT, again by “plugging in” the cable to the tapehead’s mouth. The tapehead’s face serves as the CRT; though the tapehead’s face will look normal (rather than playing tape images), looking at their face has the same magical effects as if looking at a screen playing the tape.  
• Omit the wire from either of the wired effects above. This can connect things within [tapehead skill] feet. This effect will also switch on and power a device which is switched off … or even unplugged.
• Play the content of a tape directly into the mind of an individual the tapehead is touching, forgoing a CRT. Note that this still requires a tape player, unless the tapehead also spends additional charges.
• Instantaneously record a tape, or produce an enchanted tape’s playback effect.
• Erase a tape, magical or otherwise, without any equipment.

Note how this spell enables tapeheads to deliver a spell without resorting to equipment at all … if they have three extra minor charges to burn. 

Duplicate — 1+ minor charge

A tapehead may create a perfect duplicate of any existing tape, mundane or magical, in just a few seconds. This costs one minor charge … plus whatever charges necessary to create the original tape if it has magical effects. (Note that this enables a tapehead to duplicate a magical tape even if they cannot create those magical effects themselves!) 

The tapehead ordinarily uses recording equipment to do this, but may employ Plugged In effects at additional cost.

Mixtape — 1+ minor charge

A tapehead may decant charges they are carrying back into tapes. The charges can go into any tape, not just one which originally provided them.

This is time-consuming: it takes the same time to capture charges back into tapes that it takes to take them out (20 minutes for each minor charge, an hour for each significant charge) … and then the tapehead will eventually need to spend the time yet again to take the charges back out. And one minor charge is burned casting the spell to do the transfer. 

I Am A Camera — 1 minor charge

Create a tape of events the tapehead witnessed. This tape does not present the tapehead’s memories, it presents what the tapehead actually saw and heard as if they were a skilled and careful camera operator using very good equipment.

Seeing That Fucked Me Up — 1+ minor charge

Creates a tape of images so disturbing that it forces a check on the Madness meter of the tapehead’s choice on anyone who views it (except the creator) at a rank equal to the number of charges the tapehead spent.

Later viewings are still distressing but do not force a stress check.

The Screen Is Distracting — 1 minor charge

Creates a tape of a video so fascinating that anyone who sees it playing on a screen will not be able to look away for the duration of the tape, and will be preoccupied enough to suffer at least -20% for any actions they try to take while watching.

If a person does not know to try to avoid looking at the screen may go one round in its presence without being affected if they fail a Notice check, but they will be affected the following round. People who know to try to avoid the screen must succeed at a Notice check each round they are in its presence to not look; after they have failed once they cannot avoid it again.

This can be applied to a tape with any content. People who watched it during the first, enchanted viewing will have very good retention of the contents of the tape — including things which were on it before or after the segment they actually watched — such that they can recall even the smallest and most fleeting details with a Mind roll.

Reach Into The Screen — 1 minor charge

While any tape is playing, a tapehead may pass any object small enough to fit through the frame of the screen into the video, or to retrieve an item which any tapehead has placed in this way. 

Such a tape does not suffer the usual single-use behavior of tapes; it may be replayed repeatedly. The object will appear in the video starting at the point in playback when the tapehead placed it. It is usually possible to deposit the object just out of frame at the moment when it it is placed, such that its sudden appearance is not immediately conspicuous … but if, for example, a table appears in the recording, the view pans away a bit for a moment during which a tapehead places an object onto the table, and then the view pans back, the new item on the table may well be inexplicable or at least puzzling, such that an Unnatural check may be required. 

A tapehead may retrieve an object they themselves placed by reaching into the video at any point. A tapehead watching a tape with an object placed by another tapehead will always be able to recognize such objects, and can retreive them, but doing so at a point in playback when the object is not actually onscreen will require spending an extra minor charge.

Other people witnessing a tapehead performing this operation in either direction must make a rank-3 Unnatural check.

The Screen Is A Window — 2 minor charges

Creates a pair of tapes which can be used for communication. 

If both tapes are played simultaneously, the TVs act as a videoconferencing system. Nothing can block the “signal” between them. Each CRT acts as a camera sending to the other tape; it behaves like a broadcast-quality camera with a skilled operator, even intelligently zooming and directing its attention, though it must take a viewpoint from “inside” the screen. Likewise, on TVs with speakers, the speakers act like microphones for the tape on the other end, acting like high-quality broadcast mic arrays in the hands of skilled operators, capable of capturing the whole sound of the room, as directional mics pointed at people, and such.

As usual, if one or the other tape runs out the spell effect ends.

Both tapes retain the messages from the other side after they have been used. This can be harvested for charges if they capture a relevant event.

If a tapehead is near a Screen Is A Window tape whose pair is being played, they will “hear” it ring like a telephone and know what is happening.

Significant spells

Retina Of The Mind’s Eye — 1+ significant charges

Enacts a minor spell which would require a prepared tape, without the prepared tape, by spending significant charges instead of minor charges. Effects which require targets to look at a CRT require them to be able to see the tapehead’s eyes.

Video Mail — 1 significant charge

Creates a tape of the tapehead which can hold a conversation with the person who plays it, as if the tapehead were there, knowing what they knew and thinking how they thought at the time when they prepared the tape.

Watching such a tape is a rank-1 Unnatural check if one is familiar with the Video Mail spell, and a rank-4 Unnatural check if one is not. Unfamiliar viewer(s) will presume that the Video Mail tape is some kind of surprising but cunning trick until the tape has concluded, at which point they will suffer the psychological shock as they realize that the conversation was impossible.

A Video Mail tape will only show static if played again, unless the tapehead obtains the tape and plays it back, which will then reveal the conversation to them. If the tapehead does not recover the tape, they will not know what took place in the conversation.

Reach Out Of The Screen — 1 significant charge

A programmed version of Reach Into The Screen which will deliver an object the tapehead has placed into it, if triggered by a condition programmed onto the tape when it is created. (For example, “if no one is looking at the screen”, “if played by Jane”, “if played inside an office building”, “if someone says the word ‘Videodrome’”.)

The tape can only produce the object according to its program the first time it is played. Thereafter, only the tapehead who created it can remove it, using Reach Into The Screen.

While playing, the tape just shows a series of shots of the object in an array of settings: on a table, on the sidewalk, inside a refrigerator, and so forth.

Subliminal Messages — 1+ significant charge

Produces a tape which gives viewers a belief or compulsion of ten words or less, programmed by the tapehead when they create it. The compulsion has a level equivalent to the number of charges used to create it.

Characters given a compulsion automatically break the compulsion if they face a conflict between the compulsion and a shock check of the same rank of the compulsion spell or higher. (Thus it is hard to program someone to kill; in Videodrome Bianca O’Blivion spent a lot on turning Max Renn into an insane assassin.) 

Characters may also resist a compulsion with a Self check. If they succeed they simply break the compulsion. If they fail they must either obey the compulsion or accept a freakout & failed notch in disobeying it, and the compulsion remains in place.

While playing, the tape can show anything the tapehead chooses.

You Are The Camera — 1-2 significant charge(s)

A tapehead may produce a tape of events which another person witnessed, as in I Am A Camera. 

If the subject is cooperating:

• The subject takes a rank-3 Unnatural check; they will not have a fight/flee/freakout shock response but they will face adding failed/hardened notches
• This costs the tapehead 1 significant charge

If the subject is not cooperating (say, in the room while the tapehead fusses with their editing gear):

• The subject must be prompted to think about the memory, though not to concentrate on it
• The subject does not face an Unnatural check …  unless they see the tape later, at which point they take both a rank-3 Unnatural check and a rank-2 Self check 
• It costs the tapehead 2 significant charges

While playing, the tape shows the events the person witnessed, as if they were very skillfully using a good camera at their point of view.

Explosions Are Good TV — 1 significant charge

Creates a tape which effectively makes the CRT playing it into a bomb. 

The tapehead sets the bomb power when creating the tape, to a maximum governed by their Lemnismancy skill. The tapehead may either accept their skill as that maximum, or gamble on a roll against their skill; if they roll under, they can flip-flop the roll if that produces a more powerful bomb, while if they roll over they must accept the sum of the dice as the maximum.

The explosion does [bomb power]+2d10-2d10 damage to people within the max damage radius of [bomb power] feet of the explosion, -1 damage/foot beyond the maximum damage radius.

The explosion may be placed at any point in the tape’s playback, and this may be combined with other effects on the same tape in the lead up to the explosion. But only a real asshole would combine The Screen Is Distracting with Explosions Are Good TV, right?

The tape may show anything up to the point where the explosion occurs. Technically the moment of truth shows an explosion, but no one will ever see it.

The Screen Is A Gun — 2 significant charges

A weaponized variant on Reach Out Of The Screen.

The tapehead places a gun into the tape. The gun will shoot at people it has been programmed to attack by the tapehead when creating the tape. (“John Smith”, “anyone but me”, “cops”, or “anyone threatening me or my friends”, for example.) The tape has Shoot skill equal to the tapehead’s Lemnismancer skill and all of the characteristics of the gun used to create it: max damage, ammo, range. If the gun has been used in previous crimes, police will be able to do a ballistics match.

When played, the tape shows anonymous hands holding the gun, against an indistinct background.

Major spells

Decant the tapehead’s consciousness into a library of tapes, like Brian O’Blivion in Videodrome, so that they extend their consciousness to any screen where one of their tapes is playing, and become effectively immortal so long as tapes of them still remain.

Create a tape which completely rewrites the minds and bodies of people who see it.

Create a tape which absorbs someone bodily into a permanent Video Mail tape.

Make events in a tape a part of everyone’s memories.

Edit the events in every copy of a given tape … including people’s memories of seeing it, written reports informed by it, et cetera.

Dan Secord

Dan, the character for whom I created this school for an UA 2E campaign, is a 36 year old tapehead, freelance video editor, maker of odd little art videofilms, and bassist for local Eagles cover band Hotel California. He lives in San Carlos, a fictional city inspired by Santa Cruz, California, in 1990.

Stats & skills

40 BODY — Scrawny		60 SPEED — Deft
General Athletics 15% Fight A Little Dirty 25% Stay Up Long Hours 20% Climb 20%		Dodge 25% Driving 15% Shoot 15% Initiative 30% Cameraman 10% Lockpicking 25% Sneak Around 25% Sprint 20%
65 MIND — Clever		75 SOUL — Reflective
Video Editor 25% General Education 25% Remember Stuff I Saw 25% Conceal 15% Notice 20%		Lemnismancy 60% Charm 15% Lying 15% Rock ’n’ Roll Band 35% Local Boho Fixture 20%
where Dan thinks he is at any risk of breaking taboo, he does not wear his glasses, so for visual checks he needs to roll under 20% to get just minor success as if rolling under Mind

Passions

Rage: Abusive relationships
Fear: (Unnatural) Losing touch with reality
Noble: Revealing necessary truths

Madness

failed		hardenend
☑☐☐☐☐	Violence	☑☐☐ ☐☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐
☑☐☐☐☐	Unnatural	☑☑☐ ☐☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐☐☐☐	Helplessness	☐☐☐ ☐☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐
☑☐☐☐☐	Isolation	☑☐☐ ☐☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐☐☐☐	Self	☐☐☐ ☐☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐

Relationships

The PCs’ cabal

Dan regards the whole crew as his protégé, as he thinks of himself as the most down-to-Earth and sensible among them.

Janet Philips

Producer of KSCO Eyewitness News San Carlo, who draws on Dan’s editing assistance and personal tape library … and allows Dan to skim raw tapes for his library.

Dave Gold

In-House Editor at Praxinoscope Studios who also daws on Dan’s editing assistance and personal tape library, allows Dan to skim raw tapes for his library, and is amused by Dan’s odd art films.

Alice Morrow

The cabal’s young punk entomancer, whom Dan introduced to the cabal after he saw a recording of her doing magic on video shot by a KSCO reporter. Dan feels responsible to look after her.

Hotel California

Dan’s mediocre Eagles cover band. He plays the Randy Meisner role: bass (and for “Journey Of The Sorcerer”, the banjo) and sings harmonies. Half the reason why he does these gigs is to show his cut-up style art videofilms on a cluster of old TVs, and to shoot candid video of the crowd. Shows typically act as mixers for folks in the local occult underground.

Resources

The DanCave

Dan lives and works in what was a storefront in the bohemian old part of town.. It has a largish “public” portion which was once the front retail space, his workspace (and tapehead lair) with video editing gear and tape library, and a little living space in back.

The Screen Ying Room is the former retail space in front. He has put old TVs and artistically arranged junk in the window displays and boarded up, light-sealed, and soundproofed the big space. Hotel California practice here, and he has it set up for occasional showings of his and others’ art films; he has a couple of dozen folding metal chairs, and if he’s willing to violate fire codes he can squeeze in almost 40 people. The room has a big TV, a bunch of little TVs, and a screen and video projector; all are rigged to play tapes loaded here … or played from inside Dan’s workspace.

The Back Yang Room, Dan’s workspace, is cluttered but orderly … in a way that is almost entirely incomprehensible to anyone but him. The large former storeroom has video editing equipment for several tape formats (plus an 8mm film editing table gathering dust), many of them eccentrically rigged from combinations of half-broken machines. Most of the volume of the room is dominated by metal shelves stacked with tapes, all of them carefully but inscrutably labeled. Dan is not superstitious about it, but he rarely lets anyone in here; it locks with its own key. Dan’s living space is small and tidy. There is just enough room for the bohemian splendor of a carefully-organized kitchenette, a queen-size futon, and a large old wardrobe/dresser. He has one of those weird radios which can play AM/FM/Weather/Shortwave/TV audio so he can listen to Star Trek. There is a back entrance which Dan rarely uses.

The DanVan

Dan drives an old bakery van; he likes the leftover internal shelves. There is seating for two up front and one in back, though the back can hold six if five of them don’t mind sitting on the floor. He keeps a couple of battered old video cameras in it and has a couple of tape players connected to a TV running off of a battery system scavenged from an RV, so that Dan can shoot video or watch a video to pick up charges away from home. When he uses it to take Hotel California to gigs, they complain about “all that junk taking up space”.

Magic tape library

Dan always has at least one tape prepared for most of the major spells he knows, stashed in the Back Yang Room, all on six hour SP VHS tapes:

• Seeing That Fucked Me Up at rank-4
• The Screen Is Distracting
• Reach Into The Screen with a large knife and an envelope with several hundred dollars in cash planted in it
• The Screen Is A Window (pair)
• Subliminal Messages with “Ignore Dan and the people with him”
• Video Mail from 1989

On a successful Lemnismancy roll Dan also has a second prepared tape of whatever type is useful.

Note that Dan has never had the nerve or occasion to make either an Explosions Are Good TV or The Screen Is A Gun tape, though he knows how. He does not even have a gun.

Dan’s backpack

Dan carries a largish backpack with him almost everywhere. It always contains at least an RF converter for connecting a tape player to an ordinary TV, a VHS tape with a significant charge waiting on it, and a 6-hour SP VHS tape enchanted with The Screen Is Distracting which does not show video which might identify Dan; he often will have another tape in it as well.

Dan’s Tapehead Life

Dan has been a tapehead for six years now. He corresponds with about a dozen tapeheads across the country from from other lemnismancy sub-schools he knows — Reporters who always shoot their own videos, Pornhounds who never have actual sex, Performers who try to get tapes of themselves broadcast, Programmers who do some creepy thing with mind control he does not understand — and has heard that there are others.

Between KSCO and Praxinoscope, Dan gets an erratic but voluminous enough amount of video editing work to pay the bills and keep him in tapehead charges. Hotel California, his video showings, occasional events for other folks he allows in the Screen Ying Room, plus the San Carlos bohemian scene this connects him with enable him to maintain a little more social life than he really needs, bring in a little pin money … and gives him an excuse to show up with video cameras which capture “drama” on tape for him to harvest for more charges. If his charge library thins out, Dan is not above creeping on weddings, funerals, and other events, but he generally does not lug a videocamera around.

Charges & tapes

The “economics” of tapehead magic are a bit different from most Unknown Armies adept schools. It is possible to store a large library of potential charges, but it is hard to gain charges out in the world. A tapehead can have a large arsenal of prepared tapes without having to worry about that spellcasting ability getting disrupted by taboo, but they require very particular conditions to deploy, unless the tapehead is prepared to burn through a lot of charges.

And Dan has arranged his life such that he has a steady supply of charge-bearing tapes.

Rather than start with a precise accounting of Dan’s charges, unless explicitly established in play, I played him with a set of rules for charge availability when circumstances call for accounting:

• When Dan is not expecting trouble, he only carries a handful of minor charges: roll 2d10 and take the lower roll under 4, or zero if neither roll qualifies
• When Dan might expect trouble, he will generally be better supplied.
• He can roll Lemnismancy to have an enchanted tape he reasonably could have thought to have prepared in his backpack; if he fails he has an extra tape, but it is enchanted with a spell chosen by the GM.
• He can roll Lemnismancy to see how many charges he is carrying. On a successful roll, he has the sum of the dice in minor charges and the lower die in significant charges (treating 0 as 10); on an unsuccessful roll he only has the 1s die in minor charges and no significant charges.
• If we need to know how many charge-bearing tapes Dan has in his library at the Back Yang Room at the moment, he has a reserve of tapes in his library worth 2d10 significant charges and d100 (flip-floppable) minor charges, d10 of which are double charges.
• If we need to know how many charge-bearing tapes Dan has in the DanVan, he ordinarily has 2d10 minor charges plus two significant charges.
• If we need to know what Dan can harvest from KSCO and Praxiniscope, in a week he ordinarily will bring in 1d10-1d10 significant charges (doubles yield one double tape) plus 2d10 minor charges (rolls of doubles also produce an additional significant charge).