A World in Two Times

Each player is two characters, an Ancestor and a Successor. 

This is a world of circular time, or at least for the PCs. Actions in one time affect the other. If it's easier, think of it like a surrealist dream. A whole other life, a world with its own rules, and maybe no less significant. Quite literally, this is how luck is made. 

Like Karma, attaching to the present at the expense of the future (or past, as it were) accrues debt. Even though you represent both interests, sometimes it feels like you just don't have a choice.

The Ancestor and Successor are each other's spirit familiar.

Lucid to each other's dreams.

Both images by the Surrealist Max Ernst

Possibilities

• Luck, synchronicities, spiritual phenomena all operate within the circularity of time.
• Ancestor and Successor are arbitrary terms. Ones' history is the others' prophecy.
• Causality as we think of it is merely a heuristic; a reasonably predictive and explanatory model for something much more complex.

Maximum Recursion Depth Vol. 3, or Everybody Wins if We're Having Fun: The Animapunk RPG

The new and hopefully improved MRD Vol. 2 (Gameplay Loop, Dev Log) is still in the works, but I think it makes sense to just call the Animism Setting MRD Vol. 3, which I'll be working on simultaneously.

In wanting to have my cake and eat it too, it's running away a bit from the original idea of being like a Weird & Wonderful take on Pariah, but it should be clear how those ideas and others I've blogged about previously are all getting rolled into this; it's still true to the original spirit of the thing.

Previous posts of varying degrees of relevancy:

Anima Concept Crafting (the actual Anima stuff is in this post)

Termina: Animist Necromancy

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix (the psychedelic "cyberspace" stuff is in this post)

Appendix N for Animist Setting

We are Building a Religion

The Game is Alive

Worlds out of Phase: There is Only Forward Here

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Tl;dr

Psychedelic Time Lords across a bunch of mini-Krakoas in frozen moments collecting Pokemon and going on adventures across spacetime, stalked by horror monsters, facing punk rock moon witches, Infernal insectoids, Orwellian pigs, The Imperium of Man, an alien dark web, and the oppressiveness of a world unexamined.

The Surrealists believe that the place of dreams is as real as the material world, and in some ways they are correct. The Dreaming observe the moment. Really, observe it, the full canvas of it, phase rotating it so that what is normally fuzzy and obscured in peripheral vision is brought to the center of focus. It's like rotating around a Penrose Triangle Sculpture, except it's all of reality around a single moment.

Penrose Triangle Sculpture for reference. It only appears like a paradoxical triangle from a particular angle.

It's amazing how different things can appear when observed from different angles.

The Dreaming are a living community. When The Dreaming coalesce around a moment, the ecosystem uniquely transforms around them, pooling into a geologically transient Dream Lake. 

But most of the time, they wander in small bands from moment to moment like ships passing in the night, like blood cells or worker bees, independent yet coordinated on a scale beyond what any individual can perceive.

The Dreaming explore moments out of want, not need.

The only universal meanings of life are those that can be mutually agreed upon, an absurd and seemingly irresolvable problem. In lieu of a solution, The Dreaming embrace the Sisyphean struggle, making meaning for themselves. Nonetheless each of The Dreaming, in their own way, are working towards the betterment of The Dreaming as a whole.

‘Weirdness for weirdness’ sake’ is a criticism that has often aimed at my own work over many years. It’s a phrase I find lazy and borderline meaningless.

I’ve yet to read ‘it’s weirdness for story’s sake’ or ‘for effect’s sake’ or ‘for fuck’s sake’…

Grant Morrison

The Dreaming face opposition.

The problems The Dreaming invite upon themselves are faced with joy, but otherwise conflict is generally avoided. Even so, some uninvited problems must be faced eventually.

The Personal Horror

Everyone has a Time Self (current incarnation), and an Eternity Self (superorganism across time).

The Eternity Self stalks the Time Self patiently, sometimes hiding and sometimes allowing itself to be seen, to strike fear. The Time Self knows there will be a moment when it must defend itself in mortal conflict against the Eternity Self, and that moment will likely not be of their choosing. Until that moment, the Eternity Self is their Personal Horror, an uncanny reflection of everything about themselves they must overcome.

Defeating one's Personal Horror is a rite of passage for The Dreaming, and a gift of choice, whether or not to continue the struggle or allow it to transform them.

To be defeated by one's Personal Horror is to be consumed by the Eternity Self and reincarnated as a new Time Self.

Termina

Termina is to Anima as Undead is to the Living. It is "Unnatural", animation without meaning or only a hollow pretense, and incapable of growth or change. Like undead, no single Termina is as threatening as the idea it represents and its ability to spread like a disease.

Supernature

The myth of humanity's supremacy becomes undeniable when one rotates a moment and sees for themselves the vastness that surrounds them.

Humanity, Anima, the Natural World, Physical Laws, and all the other things compose Supernature.

The Pigs are useful allies who capably handle the dirty work The Dreaming generally don't like to deal with. Things like fighting, politicking, and worst of all "leading" (when one must engage with hierarchy). Even so, The Dreaming have faced no threat greater than when a Pig Warlord consolidates power. The Pig Gangs raid, pillage, and enslave, but also disseminate misinformation, engage in political sabotage, and foment populist revolution.

The Dark Forest is like a shadow of the Mycelium Matrix, a distributed psychedelic superorganism hostile to The Dreaming, seemingly by design.

The United Spacetimes of America is a multiversal empire that  believes it is their manifest destiny to colonize all of existence, including The Dreaming. Their size, rigid hierarchy, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and single-mindedness make them easy enough to outmaneuver, but if caught in their grasp, their mad weapons and unstoppable bureaucratic inertia make them a dangerous force of supernature.

The Radioactive Hive are both empowered and consumed by a grudge they've long ago forgotten. Their sheer biomass, explosive nuclear power, and algorithmic genius would destroy all of existence, if not counterbalanced by the aimlessness of their endless rage; rebels without a cause; the dog that chases a car without thought towards what ends. Incapable of being reasoned with, their only means of communication is their chemically infectious anger which spreads exponentially like wildfire or explosions.

The Infrasonic Moon Witch is a living presence, like the qualia of a song or skin to skin touch. It oscillates in beams of light, the gravity folds of spacetime, and the Humanist interrelationship between all Anima. The tides and moonlight are its greatest familiars, but most beings with a cyclical nature pay some homage to it. A nurturing force that must be relied upon even when one knows, inevitably, it will betray them.

Termina: Animist Necromancy, Gestört, Radiation of the Nihilist Supra-Organism, a Waste Product of Capitalism, The Sleeping, and other things

In Animist beliefs, life and death are non-binary; Ancestor Spirits carry a presence as nodes in the Superorganism network, the spirit in all things. Communing with the dead is a natural and spiritual practice.

Termina is not that.

Termina is to Anima as Undead is to the Living.

It is the Null-Spirit, the Gestört, the Nihilist Supra-Organism. A collection of things without parsimony, collectively less than the sum of its parts.

A radiation, a waste product of rampant expansion towards meaningless ends. An inefficiency, the churn of capitalistic profiteering.

A linear extrapolation of a spirit at its end. Ambulating without change or purpose, an Undead Cancer.

An Anti-Mutation, a hungry abomination monopolizing future potentialities.

The miracle of Anima, the self-organization of a universe in a low-entropy state, is its improbability. Termina are the creeping tendrils of entropy— eldritch enzymes unraveling proteins, molecules, and ideas, leaving behind a high-probability, undifferentiated state where everything equals nothing.

Broad Categories of Termina

1. The imagined idea of another person, and parasocial relationships.
2. Inert bureaucracies.
3. "Content" generated solely to be consumed.
4. "Solutions" in search of a problem.
5. Advertisement per se.
6. Generative AI as weaponized by capitalists or consumed by those who neither understand nor care to learn ML.
7. Christianity as weaponized by colonizers to genocide peoples and ideas, or the shibboleths of religion.
8. Unconscientious artifice.
9. Measures in violation of Goodhart's law.
10. Weapons of warfare and state violence.

Termina is also not this, but it'll look good in the thumbnail.

The Sleeping

Necromancers of Termina, in contrast to The Dreaming.

Their power comes from striving for power; auto-catalytic; the shrewdness of a single-minded predator; weaponized ignorance self-replicating.

The Relationships between The Sleeping and Termina are of a transactional nature, thoughtless, coercive, and isolating.

Example Termina

1. Forged painting.
2. Smartphone with designed obsolescence.
3. Snake oil.
4. Homeopathic water.
5. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.
6. NFT Bored Ape.
7. E-Meter.
8. Reproduction of the original Colt Revolver.
9. Property deed of stolen lands.
10. Private Equity LLC.

One day I'll actually properly write up this setting, but for now it'll just keep coming out piecemeal...

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix

Huffa and I have been working on something called The Mycelium Matrix, like a psychedelic animist cyberspace (perfect for my animism setting whenever I get around to properly writing that up besides anima crafting and the appendix-n).

Part of the Mycelium Matrix are the Freaky Fractals, these weird micro-events that are like psychedelic incursions, augmented realities layered on top of one's perceptions, crossing the boundary between physical reality and dream.

As part of the full set of tables and features of The Mycelium Matrix, we're planning on chopping up these writeups into bullet-points that will hopefully be a little more obviously usable, but I still like these writeups as-is and wanted to share them, so here they are.

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix

Within the Mindscapes of the Mycelium Matrix, reality and rumination intertwine in a synesthetic transposition. What at first appears as mundane reality infinitely unfolds into a kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings, each layer replicating onto the subsequent layer like a rainbow. Imagine any one (or two, or three…) illogically interweaving with reality like a dream.

1. A red sky and portents of crisis. Red-faced anger and shame on incongruous faces. Butt-busty baboons bawling incessantly; nagging and distracting and out of place. The baboons are really getting in the way of things. Individually they are not too powerful, but they multiply through murder. For every baboon murdered, two more fall butt-first from the red sky like little bright red comets. The baboons have the taste and nutritional value of cinnamon candies. An incorrigible chaos, at best its proliferation may be aimed before being set loose.

2. Avaricious ASMR anteaters, long tongues licking orange juice slime and nuggets of gaudy gold glitter from unsuspecting ears. A deliciously disgusting smacking sound. The more polite anteaters will trade treasures for your delicious ear stuff. For every nugget of ear stuff dug out, a chunk of perceived reality is replaced with orangeness. Battalions from the fire ant military industrial complex pour from the orangeness with a mission to colonize cleaned ears.

3. Streaking yellow arrows guide you along clear cut paths bending over the horizon. While traversing the yellow arrows, you never grow tired, hungry, thirsty, or taller. The sun shines brightly. Everything is soft, round, bouncy, smiling, and everything sings. Heatwaves burst like bass beats from Mr. Sunshine Man, everything vibrating in a heat haze. Mr. Sunshine Man is a font of knowledge, but will never tell you anything you don’t want to hear. For every truth he shines a light upon, another truth becomes a saturated parody of itself, a clearly misremembered memory, a crisp mirage seen through a polarized lens. The yellow arrows guide you down a path that could neither be more clear nor more clearly wrong.

4. A lush forest of deep time folded around the present moment like an emerald ring. Glittering mineral richness, neon bioluminescence, absinthe dew and chartreuse ponds; floating freezing superconductor monoliths, geometric patterns on circuit board forest floors. Glutinous mossy flora, fatty fauna feeding on fruits and each other, full of life and vibrancy and danger. An algorithmic maze where monsters hunt the ignorant as easy prey, stalked in the shrouding shadows of their own minds, their small worlds closing in around them. A mathemagical forest, predator and prey, man and monster. Those seeking only an exit will fail to find one; this is a survival game that must be played, but the clever define the rules for themselves.

5. Beyond the fourth wall, the world reveals itself to be a stage. Structures made of flimsy paper diorama and cardboard cutout character collage. The sky is lapis lazuli, the stars periwinkles, streaking petal comets inducing visual snow and CRT static. Like a paper fortune teller or a game of he loves me / he loves me not, frivolous premonitions and portents alike reign from the whims of the astrological astronomical Witch Qing. The Silly Stage is a duel, dance, and discourse between the Witch Qing and their audience. Who rules and who fools? Only those who do both receive a standing ovation.

6. Ultraviolet ultraviolence in a blinding white light discothèquenological mosh pit. Physically demanding freedom, free-form destruction, fertile frenetic femininity in ballroom vogue. No grudges are kept, even those are destroyed. Spiral-shaped primordial anti-monsters ambulating in non-integer dimensions like plants in hypertime, meta-rainbow mantis shrimp mod squads, a genetic sequence unhinged in the universe for good and ill, solidarity through singularity, and other such things. The only escape is through destruction. When you return to reality, something is missing, but the gaps have not been left unfilled.

Anima Concept Crafting: Pokemon-like TTRPG Game Design Pattern by way of Animism

Following up on my "Animism Appendix N" for my still unnamed "Pariah by way of Maximum Recursion Depth" setting (although the setting might be running away from that a bit...), this is a game design pattern using Concept Crafting for Anima, the spirits of things, from an Animist perspective. I'm still deciding whether / how the setting will be some combination of modern, the imprecise state between paleo/neolithic, or post post apocalyptic, so this is written in a setting neutral manner, but all of it assumes a dream-like, surreal, psychedelic, Weird World.

Appendix N aside, it's also inspired by Shaman King (almost too literally...), Pokemon, Megaman Battle Network, the Dane Komljen movie Afterwater, and the Rolando Klein movie Chac: Dios de la Lluvia.

In Worldbuilding with Pokemon I actually tapped into this idea quite a while ago, I even specifically make the Shaman King and MMBN connections and the connection of Pokemon as like nature spirits, but this takes it in a more specifically Animist direction, which works even better.

As mentioned in that post as well, my old micro-settings I-Cons, Monsters and Madmen, and maybe even Stonepunk Adventures (as Enziramire keeps reminding me!), may be influencing this setting as well.

This setting, and by extension this Anima Concept Crafting system, reflects ideas I'd had well before I really had any meaningful understanding of Animism. It's really cool how we can converge on all of these big ideas from multiple directions, and also how each brings some new facet, or makes certain aspects more salient.

Shaman King. Never finished this manga when I was younger but it deeply influenced me. The recent anime on Netflix was just ok. I suspect the manga is better, but also that it's probably not quite as good as I remember it either. One could argue there's dicey stuff around cultural representation and appropriation, but I think it was coming from a good place.

Some previous Concept Crafting posts

Mecha Gear Concept Crafting

Gematria (Jewish Mysticism) Concept Crafting and Divination

Science Fantasy Mecha PoC Game with Pregens

MRD Vol. 2 Campaign Play Reports

Anima and The Dreaming

NOTE: None of this has been playtested, and I'm sure much of the terminology and other particulars will change over time or be adapted for the setting as I build it out.

There is a will in all things, the Anima. A rock, lake, animal, person, idea, celestial body, divine being; all of these things have Anima. The Dreaming are curious, they ponder the universe; they see the beauty in the interconnectedness of things, and in understanding the nature of these interconnected systems. Most people acknowledge the Anima, and perhaps 10% of the population are among the Dreaming, developing Relationships with Anima and Manifesting as a way of life. The only thing separating the Dreaming from the rest, is the willingness to Manifest.

When a Dreamer develops a Relationship with or Manifests an Anima, they are not expressing dominance or ownership over the material origin of the Anima. Manifesting requires understanding, a submission to the will of the Anima; at its worst, a kind of para-social relationship. Even so, given the interconnectedness of things, the Manifestation of Anima can materially effect its origin; there is a balance of power, a dance or ongoing conversation, between the Dreamer and the Anima they Manifest, and also to its material origin. Every time an Anima is Manifested, its true nature changes, even if just a little bit.

Anima

Anima are composed of WORDs, the number of words corresponding to their level. The power of Anima scale geometrically by level at base 2, i.e. a level 1 Anima has a power of 2, level 2 has a power of 4, level 3 has a power of 8, and level 4 has a power of 16; however, these numbers don't effect rolls, it's merely conceptual.

Level 1 Anima (Power 2)

One WORD. Trivial or circumstantial, may be Manifested at no cost and don't require an ongoing Relationship. Manifesting the flavor of a MEAL, the number of skips of a ROCK tossed against a body of water, the LUCK of the draw.

Level 2 Anima (Power 4)

Two WORDs. Manifested through some object of personal importance or utility like a staff (STRENGTH+SUPPORT), pair of glasses (SALIENCE+GLASS), fetish/token (LUCK+FOCUS), utility knife (UTILITY+KNIFE), etc. 

They may be used freely, and are integrated into daily life. 

There is no limit on the number of level 2 Anima Relationships, but they must be Manifested in some meaningful way at least once every three sessions or else the Relationship is Broken (if the Player can't remember, they're Broken, so keep track!).

Level 3 Anima (Power 8)

Three WORDs. Manifested through spiritual communion with a superorganism, a collective consciousness representing one or more other Anima as an Anima in itself. A lake (LOVE+WONDER+TRANSIENCE), apex predator (HUNT+FEED+BALANCE), or venerated ancestor (DEEP+TIME+GIANT). 

Level 3 Anima may be Manifested with the passing of seasons (i.e. once per season). Usually, they require some sacrifice, appeasement, or quest. 

There is no limit on the number of level 3 Anima Relationships, but after Manifesting any one level 3 Anima, all other level 3 Anima Relationships are Broken.

Level 4 Anima (Power 16)

Four WORDs. As with Level 3, these are superorganisms Manifested through spiritual communion, but also requiring greater material cost; the attainment of many rare commodities, the recruitment of true believers or a greater number of paid workers or an even greater number of those servicing under the threat of violence. Freedom (INFINITY+CHAOS+IMAGINATION+UNKNOWN), Economy (MONEY+TRADE+ENCRYPTION+VALUE), Community (PEOPLE+SOUL+SELF+OTHER). 

Level 4 Anima may be Manifested as one crosses forks in the roads of life (perhaps once a decade, or reflecting some major life transition). 

A Dreamer may have only one level 4 Anima Relationship at any one time.

Although the material origin of an Anima influences its level, ultimately the level is determined by the Relationship between the Dreamer and the Anima. It is possible to have a low-level Anima with a profound material origin if the Relationship is trivial or para-social, and likewise it is possible to have a high-level Anima with a simple material origin, if the Relationship runs deeply enough.

Megaman Battle Network, a more scifi/modern take on the idea, no less valid. Megaman Star Force didn't hit the same tho.

Anima Concept Crafting

While not the exclusive means of building Anima Relationships, Concept Crafting may be used to create Anima.

Anima Crafting

Any two Anima of the same level may be combined into an Anima of the same or one higher level by taking at least one WORD from each Anima, and for creating level 3 Anima or higher, at least one new WORD inspired by the context or by the interconnectedness of the two component Anima.

Crafting a level 2 Anima may require a day or a few days, level 3 Anima a moderate quest, and level 4 a paradigm-shifting, life-changing adventure.

Anima Mutation

Given the interconnectedness of things, any time an Anima is Manifested, its very nature is subtly changed. Likewise, if the material origin of the Anima is itself changed, depending on the degree of change or how aware the Dreamer is of the change, this may also cause Mutation. Manifesting two Anima within temporal proximity frequently, or any Anima Manifested under some extreme or traumatic context, is likely to Mutate. 

This merely involves replacing one (or more) WORDs of the Anima with one from or inspired by the other Anima, or the context.

Examples

"What Would Taylor Swift Do" Charm (DISTANCE+LOVE): Manifests an Anima of Taylor Swift, whose wisdom is based on the para-social relationship between the Dreamer and Taylor Swift. While the real Taylor Swift would not acknowledge the Relationship, often her actions will align (or notably fail to align) with the nature of the Anima.

Anaglyph 3D Glasses (DIMENSION+PERSPECTIVE): Red and Cyan anaglyph 3D glasses that when Manifested allow one to frequency-modulate into the Positive and Negative Planes. Each lens has a different flavor of Anima, one more manic, and one more depressive.

Twin Mask of Play and Win (PLAY+WIN): A mask of two faces merged together, one of the iconoclastic spirit of Play (dolphin face), and the other the disciplined spirit of Win (dragon face). Manifests as suggestions like the Devil and Angel over the shoulder.

Serenity Plugs (SERENITY+NOTHING): Waxen earplugs Manifesting an Anima like the shadow of sound. An inner peace deriving from the absence of sound and a willingness to absolve oneself of willful action.

Cancer Carapace (ABOMINATION+INEVITABILITY): Carapace armor crafted from a large aquatic arthropod. Manifests as the mutant monster Cancer, an Anima of a pitiable abomination. Empowered by acts of humility and love in the face of perceived evil.

Forgiveness Bow (ACCURACY+REGRET): A bow that will always hit its mark, but its mark is driven by the unconscious of the wielder. The bow Manifests as a time Anima, a frozen moment infinitely trapped between being an non-being.

Dragon Quest Monsters. Watabou, that little fuzzy blue guy, is actually plant-type, and if I remember correctly, one of the hardest monsters to get, one of the most powerful, and was strongly implied to be some kind of eldritch god, and I love that for him. Dragon Quest Monsters is Pokemon by way of Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragon Ball), with a really interesting monster breeding (in later games fusion) system, and it was awesome, I really loved these games when I was younger.

Summary

Probably unconsciously inspired by Shaman King long before I made the conscious connection, but also my general love of the collecting and generative/crafting aspects of Pokemon-likes (even more emblematically, Dragon Quest Monsters), and of settings where humans have personal relationships with "magical" beings (including Megaman Battle Network in this), it seemed logical to me to combine the Pokemon-like gameplay loop with Animism.

I like this philosophically as well, in that while one could choose to simply treat it as a re-flavored Pokemon-like if one so chose, because of the nature of Relationships and Manifesting, there is an intentional emphasis on this system as not one of ownership and conquest, but of intra- and inter-personal examination, which is obviously my jam.

Pokemon-likes in TTRPGs tend to struggle because of the multiplicative complexity it imposes on other gameplay mechanics, or even in rules-light form, it's just a lot for any Player or GM to keep track of.

Given the soft-limitations on Anima, that any level 2 Anima must be Manifested at least once every three sessions, that Manifesting any level 3 Anima Breaks the Relationships with all other level 3 Anima, the way acquiring Anima generally involves some kind of quest, I'm hoping it will lend itself naturally to a certain balance, but it will likely need to be tweaked during playtesting.

I allude to the philosophical aspects of Animism more in the Appendix N, and in future posts I'll discuss the setting and by extension philosophy in more detail, but this post is focused on this Anima Concept Crafting game design pattern.

Considerations

1. I've intentionally chosen not to use the word Shaman, or Druid for that matter. I had originally wanted to call the "Dreamers" the Wisdom, but since I use Wisdom as an Ability Score in MRD I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to that term. Dreams tend to hold a lot of significance in Animism and other kinds of spiritualism, but I dunno for some reason it feels maybe too generic or too corny, I'm just not sure how I feel about it.

2. I'm very comfortable with Concept Crafting and the abstractness of the Anima as presented here, and also in calling them Anima, but I'm not sure if I'm overly limiting myself with the levels of Anima and some of the constraints in terms of the gameplay loop.

Also, you know I intentionally chose not to include a Pokemon image in a post where I specifically call it a Pokemon-like because that is how I roll.