Existential Evolution (Weird & Wonderful Ecology Generator)

There's Natural Selection and Sexual Selection, and on this world, there is also Existential Selection. Beyond simply sex and survival, creatures on this world have innate, seemingly irrational drives. However, like a Rube Goldberg Machine, the ecosystem depends on these existentialist impulses in order to function. Although any given organism may be hindered in sex and survival because of their existential impulse, beyond these constraints, life takes on all sorts of Weird & Wonderful turns.

How to Use

Roll a handful of creatures, think about how they interact, and write a paragraph for each entry. While developing a creature, look to the others and think how they might fit together. Combine the entries at the end into a single story about the Existential Ecology.

Admittedly the number of features for each entry can be a little overwhelming, but I find that even after creating one or two creatures, it becomes easier to just fill out the rest of the ecology with original creations- no need for the generator.

Most of the features of the generator are of a physical nature with some supernatural elements, but the Existential Niche, specifically the Synchronicity, are the "Rube Goldberg" mechanisms of these Existential Ecologies.

Inspirations

• Richard Prum's Evolution of Beauty (linked above): Inspired me to consider other mechanisms of evolution besides Natural Selection.
• Designing a Genetic Algorithm because learning the rules allows one to break them with greater intentionality.
• Scavengers Reign, which takes the increasingly over-used Moebius "aesthetic" and actually does something unique and interesting with it; a superficially realistic world with an impossible and awesome ecology that defies the typical fitness mechanisms of evolution.

Logistical Notes

This was made in coordination with Gemini. It was super helpful for structuring the tables and filling the more mundane entries, and also with the html and javascript code.

There was a lot of back and forth, zhuzhing it up, not just taking some random stuff it generated as-is.

Notably, I even tried to get Gemini to build an ecology with the generator, and it crashed repeatedly- the existentialist concept is apparently too complex for the model, which I found encouraging :p.

More than that, using the Existential Niche Synchronicity to facilitate the Existential ecological interdependence requires human creativity.

Example Existential Ecology

Creature 1: Dragon Turtle

Physical Description

• Body Shape: Amorphous
• Size: Gargantuan
• Limbs: Zero
• Movement Type: Element Bending
• Speed: Very Slow
• Special Adaptations: Venomous

Diet

• Type: Scavenger
• Feeding Adaptations: Digestive enzymes in gut

Social Structure

• Size: Small groups
• Organization: Nomadic

Ecological Role

• Primary Role: Keystone species
• Interaction: Acts as a food source

Reproduction

• Method: Sexual (internal fertilization)
• Existential Influence: Symbolic Gestation: Reproduction is induced after a symbolic representation of the offspring is created or destroyed.
• Frequency: Constant
• Offspring Quantity: Numerous, small
• Offspring Development: Metamorphic
• Parental Investment: Moderate

Existential Niche

• Behavior: Modifies physical appearance through elaborate self-decoration or body modification.
• Synchronicity: Presence or behavior anchors the ecosystem towards some teleological trajectory, and so long as the species survives, the ecosystem will inevitably 'regress to the mean'.

Creature 2: Byakhee

Physical Description

• Body Shape: Conical
• Size: Medium
• Limbs: Four
• Movement Type: Telekinesis
• Speed: Fast
• Special Adaptations: Echolocation

Diet

• Type: Filter feeder
• Feeding Adaptations: Filtering structures

Social Structure

• Size: Small groups
• Organization: Hierarchical

Ecological Role

• Primary Role: Producer
• Interaction: Contributes to nutrient cycle

Reproduction

• Method: Sexual (internal fertilization)
• Existential Influence: Synchronized Cycles: Reproduction is tied to a rare synchronization of natural cycles.
• Frequency: Constant
• Offspring Quantity: Variable
• Offspring Development: Independent
• Parental Investment: Minimal

Existential Niche

• Behavior: Engages in ritualistic displays or dances, often synchronized with natural events.
• Synchronicity: Serves as or facilitates the introduction of an immigrant species into the ecosystem.

Creature 3: Star Monkey

Physical Description

• Body Shape: Radial
• Size: Tiny
• Limbs: Two
• Movement Type: Brachiation
• Speed: Slow
• Special Adaptations: Camouflage

Diet

• Type: Herbivore
• Feeding Adaptations: Claws

Social Structure

• Size: Large herds/flocks
• Organization: Migratory

Ecological Role

• Primary Role: Symbiont
• Interaction: Distributes minerals

Reproduction

• Method: Asexual (fission)
• Existential Influence: Existential Trigger: A specific, seemingly unrelated event triggers reproduction.
• Frequency: Opportunistic
• Offspring Quantity: Numerous, small
• Offspring Development: Metamorphic
• Parental Investment: Minimal

Existential Niche

• Behavior: Meticulously collects and arranges specific objects (pebbles, shells, bones).
• Synchronicity: Low-probability events become slightly more likely, causing divergent natural selection like an anti-carcinisation effect.

The Dragon Turtle, contrary to its name, is actually a complex slime mold that katamaris itself into a mobile "island", and small bands of Dragon Turtles form something like an island chain. Although it hosts many species, it protects itself through venom and digestive enzymes that seep out of cracks or fall from foliage when threatened. They reproduce sexually, creating mild tremors when they meet and exchange genetic information. While one Dragon Turtle gestates, the other breaks off a piece of itself as the shell for the offspring.

Named after the Lovecraftian monsters, wolf-bat Byakhee use a sonic force to glide within the Dragon Turtles, safe from their venom and enzymes. They filter impurities from the slime and their waste attracts species from outside the Dragon Turtle island chain, such as Star Monkeys. Their reproductive cycle is tied to that of the Dragon Turtles, bathing the Dragon Turtles in a sing-song sound bath like a cooing theremin.

Star Monkeys are tiny creatures that look like starfish on two legs and with an uncanny pareidolic simian-humanoid face. Normally camoflauged, they become visible when they swing with their feet claws around the flora of a Dragon Turtle in a wave of stars and faces. They collect star shaped objects for fun, inadvertently pollinating and otherwise distributing resources around the Dragon Turtle. The hoarding behavior of the Star Monkey inadvertently normalizes resources in such a way that Dragon Turtle island chains rarely exhibit the kind of gigantism or dwarfism of species often found on island ecosystems.

Existential Creature Generator

Dynamic Reality Gaming

Dynamicland and Dynamic Reality Overview

As someone who is interested in the intersection of STEM and the arts, I'm a big fan of Nicky Case's blog, and in their most recent post (as of writing) they reference Dynamicland (I would also recommend checking out their youtube).

Tl;dr it's an approach of humanistic computing, taking compute off of a screen and out into the world.

They do this through a tech stack that seemingly involves lighting and cameras, and mapping physical objects to code, it's not open source but that's how I understand it, but anyway it's less about the tech and more about the approach.

The creators seem like brilliant people and they make some profound insights about computation and this notion of dynamic reality (as compared to virtual reality, augmented reality, or of course physical reality).

So Dynamicland inspired this post, but this is about TTRPGs now. If you want to learn more about Dynamicland I'd encourage you to watch their youtube videos.

The TTRPG Stuff

Presumably this is what you came here for. Basically, what are some presumptions about game design that use mathematical or linguistic abstraction, that might be better represented visually or kinesthetically?

Character and Inventory Management

You ever lose track of your abilities and items? Not anymore you don't.

Meet Orcus Johnson. He has a laser axe (A1), shoulder mounted blaster (B2), and the Johnson Crown (C3). More details can be found mapped to those keys.

It would probably be both easier and more in the spirit of DR to use a hand drawn figure, or like some combination of a drawing, paper cutouts, tokens, minis, etc., but I'm still a very digitally oriented person. Also, if you can draw, you can do something besides a stick figure.

It would be especially fun to do this for Mecha.

Wounds

We were talking about this on my discord server so that's part of what came to mind. The idea of having targeted attacks, like being able to wound arms, legs, etc., with various status effects like burning, bleeding, acid, always sounds like fun, but it can be a huge pain to keep track of. Until now.

We can see clearly that Orcus Johnson has lost his leg and is bleeding profusely. Additionally, Thor Goldberg struck him with lightning and he is now electrocuted and stunned.

The point here is not to get rid of the mechanics or math or whatever, this figure corresponds to bleed effects, lightning effects, etc.; it's not less crunchy, it's just more immediately identifiable what is happening. Rather than a bunch of abstract numbers or words and having to dig through it all, you can see very clearly what's going on, and then trace it back to its references.

I'm not really into crunchy games anyway, but if I were to try to reincorporate some crunch into my gaming, I'd probably try things like this.

Maximum Recursion Depth... in 3D!!! (Proof of Concept)

While I did not design the algorithm, I've been playing around with the StereoscoPy open source codebase to create anaglyph 3D images. I've talked about my interest in anaglyph 3D before with my Positive and Negative Planes Concept so it was fun to do this. I actually bought red and cyan glasses to try this out (you can find them pretty cheap online).

The results are by no means perfect, but short of designing it from scratch with anaglyph 3D in mind, the fact that it works at all and I can more or less automate it is pretty cool.

How does Anaglyph 3D Work?

Anaglyph 3D takes two images offset from each other, like imagine a photo of a scene, and a subsequent photo taken from a foot to the left, or something like that. It then aligns and merges the images, and color codes them, most frequently with red and cyan. Then, when wearing red and cyan lenses, the respective colors are filtered from one eye or the other, such that your eyes receive competing information that makes it appear 3D.

Tbf since I did not code the algorithm myself, this is a bit of a weak sauce explanation, this is among the reasons why I prefer to do things from scratch like with my Genetic Algorithm that Learns the Konami Code, but for now this is fine.

Anyway, after installing that StereoscoPy module, and after experimenting with several different parameters, I used the following command to generate an anaglyph 3D version of the MRD Cover:

  StereoscoPy -A -S 20 0 -a ./MRD_Cover.jpg ./MRD_Cover.jpg
    ./MRD_Anaglyph.jpg

Rather than using two images, I just used the one cover, but offset it to the left (-S 10), and used their auto-alignment algorithm (-A).

In addition to installing this module with the auto-align optional dependencies, I did also have to install some linux packages for this to work, and only was able to figure that out by tracing some errors and googling around, so it's not as user-friendly as it could be. Perhaps I could submit a PR to make it more user friendly, in lieu of writing it from scratch...

Maximum Recursion Depth in 3D!!!

Reminder that this requires red and cyan glasses.

Anaglyph 3D conversion

JPG of original cover

I Wrote a Genetic Algorithm to Learn the Konami Code!

It's been a pet interest of mine for years to learn how to write Genetic Algorithms, but it was never quite clicking for me. I ended up stumbling upon this video (embedded below but if you don't see it it's also the previous hyperlink), and it finally clicked. This video is entirely no-code, just a simple and intuitive explanation. They said there'd be a code walkthrough video as well but unfortunately it doesn't look like they ever posted it.

My Genetic Algorithm to Learn the Konami Code is open source, available on github here. With a little work this could probably be fitted to an emulator to actually trigger in a game, or maybe even with a real game console if the controller inputs are programmable, that's a little outside my purview. It would be cool if somebody wanted to try that, but really this is just intended as a technical demonstration.

Genetic Algorithms use the principles of genetics; fitness, reproduction, and mutation, to converge on solutions given some task.

They have a lot of applications, such as robotics, neurocomputation, and machine learning, but this is just a simple Genetic Algorithm, no ML involved here.

I also have some ideas for using Genetic Algorithms for worldbuilding, TTRPG stuff, or quasi-videogames, but still need to give all of those some thoughts.

Keeping it simple, I thought it would be fun to train a Genetic Algorithm to learn the Konami Code.

I give a simple explanation of it here, but if you follow the link above to the github repo, the README explains it in more detail and also shows an example.

Konami Code

["↑", "↑", "↓", "↓", "←", "→", "←", "→", "B", "A", "START"]

The Konami Code is a common set of user inputs in videogames to activate cheats or secrets, most famously old Konami games.

We can think of these 11 inputs as the genes making up a strand of DNA.

Players

We have some number of players. We can represent each player as a strand of DNA composed of 11 genes of seven types: ↑, ↓, ←, →, B, A, or START.

Our initial population has entirely random genes; any 11 inputs among those seven values.

Fitness

We can imagine each player presses their controller inputs one by one (i.e. their genes), and each time their current input matches the Konami Code, their score goes up by one. If they press the wrong button, they lose a life, and they only have one life, so whatever score they had before the mistake is their final score. 

There are certainly more efficient fitness algorithms, but I like the simplicity of this one and the way it works for our metaphor, as if literally pressing the buttons one-by-one on a controller.

Selection and Crossover

We take the players with the top X score and drop the rest of them. 

Then, we generate new players, up to the number of the original playerbase size, by crossing the winners of the previous round. We take any two winners at random, and for each of our 11 genes of the DNA strand, we pick randomly from one parent or the other.

Since all of the new players were created from the selection of the highest scoring players of the previous generation, the genes they inherent are more likely to be correct, so they generally show improved performance over previous generations.

If all of the highest scoring players had a score of two or higher, this means they all inputted ↑ ↑ of the Konami Code correctly, and as a result all of the new players will also get at least a score of two, because they can only inherent ↑ for those first two genes.

On the other hand, if none of the starting players had START as their last gene, then no future generation of players will ever be able to win, because they can never inherent START in the final gene.

This is why we add Mutation.

Mutation

Mutation creates a percent likelihood that any given gene will change into any of our possible inputs, even if they did not inherit that input. With a mutation rate of 0.05, there is a 5% chance that any of the 11 genes of a player's DNA will mutate into any of the seven inputs.

Mutation can cause a good gene i.e. a correct input of the Konami Code to change, meaning it might take more generations of play before a sufficient number of players win. However, it also means that if you start with a low-scoring or non-viable starting group of players, that they can catch up more quickly, or succeed where it might otherwise have been impossible.

AND THAT'S IT!

If you want to know more about the particulars, check out the open source github project, or feel free to ask more questions here.

Sure this is cool I guess, but what's the big deal?

If you think coding and technology is black magic, nothing I say is likely to change that and while I think that's a shame, I'm not trying to change your mind.

All the same, if you're at all interested in natural philosophy or understanding the world, this is a cool demonstration. The fact that we can abstract the principles of genetics and use them to solve problems analogically demonstrates the existence of these systems and how they operate, and by extension informs our understanding of the world. The mathematical or algorithmic representation of them is just a language to make it easier to understand.

To me, conceiving of and training an algorithm to solve the Konami Code, it's like a puzzle, or a poem. It's a little piece of art. That's not to deny that these things can be used poorly, but both things can be true, and these systems exist in the world whether we use them or not, and also, people are using them, so isn't it better to find ways to find the beauty in them and use them for good? Even if you believe there is no good way to use them, if you really believe they're so powerful and so dangerous, isn't that all the more reason to understand what they are and how they work, so that you can better protect yourself from them?

Gematria (Jewish Mysticism) Concept Crafting and Divination Mechanics

Gematria is a kind of Numerology in Jewish Mysticism. It's basically just an interpretive thing not unlike I Ching or Tarot, but what I find uniquely interesting about it is that there is an actual algorithm you can work with.

Of course any meaning you derive is going to be of an interpretive, personal, symbolic, etc. nature, but it can be operationalized quantitatively and used to produce reliable results, and I just find that really interesting; it's like divinatory math poetry.

I wrote a Gematria calculator in python that does some unique things compared to some of the other Gematria calculators available online, but real Gematria is a little too complicated as a game mechanic, so here's a much simpler Gematria Cipher, which I will use for Gematria Concept Crafting and Gematria Divination, bolt-on mechanics for any game using Concept Crafting (which can already be bolted-on to any rules-light game basically), but in particular for MRD Vol.2 (for a deeper discussion on Concept Crafting in MRD Vol.2 see Mecha Gear for Maximum Recursion Depth Vol. 2).

Maximum Recursion Depth Vol.2 incorporates elements of Judaism into the setting and mechanics in the first place, so Gematria is uniquely suited, but this could be a really cool and unique magical or occult framework for any game.

EDIT: Of course I immediately caught some bugs, then introduced some new bugs, then fixed those (I am not good at javascript...), but now it should all be working as expected but if you see bad results please let me know!

Gematria Concept Crafting Cipher

(SUM(c for c in W) % 6) + 1

Where W is a word and c is each character in the word.

% means modulo:

a % b = r

Think of it like division, where:

a = numerator
b = denominator
r = remainder

So for "max":

m=13
a=1
x=24

13+1+24=38

(38%6)+1=3

38/6=6.33

or in terms of integer division:
38//6=6

meaning, 6 goes into 38 6 times with remainder 2:
6*6=36
38-36=2

And then we add 1, so that any word could have a value between 1 through 7
(rather than 0 through 6).

Excuse any weird formatting, I only just added this CSS template for code blocks to my blog and still figuring out all the weird side-effects with blogger...

This hopefully doesn't sound too complicated, it's a fairly simple cipher and way easier to automate as embedded javascript than the Mispar gadol cipher I pushed to github. The calculator below automates the whole thing.

Gematria Calculator for Gematria Concept Crafting and Divination

Calculate Gematria for Word:

Gematria Concept Crafting

This is a bolt-on mechanic that could be added to any game with Concept Crafting, and MRD Vol. 2 in particular. Any two Words with the same Gematria Value can be combined to make any new Word with the same Gematria Value.

This differs from normal Concept Crafting in that the new Word isn't necessarily related to the preceding Words, but instead the shared Gematria Value.

Example: WOOD and METAL both have a Gematria Value of 4, but AXE has a Gematria Value of 1, so you couldn't craft WOOD+METAL=AXE like you might normally with Concept Crafting. However, DEMON does have a Gematria Value of 4, so you could summon a DEMON from WOOD+METAL using the awesome occult powers of Gematria! What does it mean to summon a WOOD+METAL=DEMON? Perhaps it's a mechanical monstrosity, a metaphor for deforestation and the effect of humanity on ecosystems?

Obviously this requires some refereeing, like maybe don't let PCs continue to use the same Words all the time, or they need to elaborate on it sort of like I did with DEMON above, but I'm not putting hard rules on it at the moment.

Gematria Divination

Another mechanic using the same Gematria Cipher.

Each Gematria value (1 through 7) has some tarot-like prophetic meaning, where I'm defining these meanings loosely from the numbers' significance in Judaism:

1. One is all, all is One.
2. Two is the line dividing One; The Knowledge of Good and Evil (and everything in between).
3. Three is a priestly blessing; the laying of hands (two) on the individual (one). Holy, Holy, Holy!
4. Four is the perception of spacetime; the cardinal directions, the three dimensions of space, and one dimension of time.
5. Five are the grains and the abundance they provide, civilization, and growth.
6. Six are the days of work and also of creation.
7. Seven is the day of rest, the completeness of the world, luck, and love.

A Gematria Divination entails using two Words with the same Gematria Value, but instead of creating a new Word, one creates a prophecy interpreted by the combination of the Gematria Value's meaning as described above and the two Words.

A WIS Save (or whatever other resolution mechanic) might determine degree of success, unexpected positive/negative externalities, etc., but it's a way for a PC to affect the world in a more metaphysical way by divining things.

Example: A Gematria Divination for the Words TRAIN and TEA have the Gematria Value 3. Three is a priestly blessing; bring a green tea on your next commute and offer it to a stranger. This stranger will provide you with the knowledge you were looking for.

This is all still untested/WIP, but I also want to create a new Nazarite Contract for MRD Vol. 2 leveraging these mechanics in some unique ways, so that might be a future blog post.

Soft Warhammer 40K

A world like Warhammer 40K except where the lore doesn't implicitly justify the Imperium.

I realize this is a somewhat contentious topic; I'm not judging anyone for liking WH40K- while I am no lore expert I do enjoy the setting, but I believe it is important to at least acknowledge or confront this, in much the same way that one must as far as I'm concerned confront the xenophobia of Lovecraft and how that is largely inextricably linked to his works, no matter if you still appreciate the work in itself in the end. 

Anyway, right now we're just taking that as a given and exploring the worldbuilding implications. If you disagree with the premise that's fine, but just roll with it so we can have fun worldbuilding.

At risk of alienating even more people, I asked on my server if anyone could generate art of Warhammer 40K meets Hieronymus Bosch and Jack Kirby, and Peakrill obliged with some wonderful pieces, to help bring this to life. Do I think these are as good as, or as close to the ideal of what I'm looking for, as what a human artist could make? Probably not. But I was never going to commission an artist to make these anyway.

If The Imperium is almost like a dark ages post apocalyptic take on the post Roman empire world, this would be more like a post post apocalyptic take, something closer to the more modern understanding of history or at least my understanding, that while in some ways it was a period of loss of knowledge and infrastructure, in other ways they were more progressive and functioning reasonably well just on a smaller scale. In this world, it would be like Star Trek almost, like magical philosopher explorers, encountering all the craziness out in the universe with technology they only barely understand, wonders and reminders of what they can one day become.

The space orks are like rowdy punks in some cases, or psychedelic social anarchists, the Eldar are a little uptight but they'll take you out for a good meal and even if it's just to show off just take the lunch ya know? The tyrranid are an invasive species that need to be dealt with by social environmental institutions, like Space Rangers of galactic parks and recreation.

Oh and Chaos are just space Nazis of course.

Rather than looking like a mix of grimey industry and dark fantasy, it would be whimsical and Weird and Wonderful, like Hieronymos Bosch. Eh and throw Jack Kirby in there too. Decidedly not Moebius I think that would actually be too obvious and take away from it.

In the same way that I want for instance the tyrranid to still be a threat, but the way they confront that threat is profoundly different, and I think dealing with fascism and hate and violence is still something they should have to confront and I like the play on "Law and Order" types actually just creating Chaos, that the dichotomy of Order and Chaos is often just a fabrication or means of weaponization.

Weird Mecha: A Metaphor for Embodied Cognition

This is the second batch of tables/Mecha, see first post here and an explanation of how this word-based Mecha Gear system works here.

Mecha are sometimes described as being a metaphor for the body- which makes sense, they are humanoid giant robots, often unnecessarily anthropomorphized, and often used to tell stories about the adolescent experience or the brutality of war. I don't mean to suggest this is all that Mecha entail, but this alone can be explored in ways that I have rarely if ever seen.

In the first post, the Golem (the MRD2 term for Mecha) were mostly extrapolations of humans as units within greater superorganisms- Entropy Elancer existing partially in the Fourth Wall outside spacetime, Lycaon Strain a macroscopic distributed organism, and Hibernating Hyberia an encrypted civilization.

In this post, I explore the Golem as extrapolations of an individual consciousness and the mind-body connection, which I described as Embodied Cognition in the title although I'm only using that technical term loosely. These Golem are externalizations of thoughts, feelings, states of consciousness and their intermediaries; the biological expressions of them, and how they drive perception.

First, the three tables:

Golem 1 (Emotion + Psychoactivity tables)

CORE: (DREAD + BARBITURATE)

Silent Scream Surf

A perturbation across spacetime; a cry for help never to be answered. A sharply cresting wave crashing and collapsing along the intermediary state of consciousness between terror and resignation. These are its emanations, but it is not the wave, it is the perceptual distortion in the act of surfing along its transient edge.

GEAR1: (LONGING + ANALGESIC)

Karmic Orbitoclast

A blunt but effective solution to resolving Karma but not its root cause. A tool for puncturing, especially through the third eye socket. It will dull the pain of loss and desire, but also any wisdom or joy accrued from it.

GEAR2: (APOLOGETICNESS + DISSOCIATIVE)

Tsunami of Truth Serum

Rising of the multidimensional tide separating consciousness from the corporeal. Those within this dissociated state may finally detach from their pride and guilt and shame, apologizing as much to themselves as others. Though there may be consequences, few regret the release.

GEAR3: (COMPULSION + LIMINALITY)

Exit Field

A glossy forcefield euthanizing those within and trapping them between life and death. There is a thrill in the novelty and immortality of this undead hypo-existence; a compelling and alien perspective. A drug like any other, not to be taken lightly.

Golem 2 (Sensation + Psychoactivity tables)

CORE: (CHEMORECEPTION + CAFFEINE)

Chemysterious Cascader

Convoluted chemical cascade like a Rube Goldbergian neural synapse. A coffee-powered paradox summating serialized events into absurd outcome chains, proportionally as powerful as complex. A mobile platform like a deconstructed humanoid head.

GEAR1: (MIRAGE + ETHANOL)

Porcelain Prayer

Fermented feelings fuel tantalizing truths from a technicolor yawn. In the hazy, yeasty, fruity field of disinhibition, desires supersede reality. This is not always such a bad thing, until the vomitted fuel particles crystallize into shards like slamming jaw-first into porcelain.

GEAR2: (SMELL + DREAM)
Mucus Morpheus Missiles

A slimy schnoz apparatus bursting macroscopic odorant particles fractally extruding, crawling up noses, extracting dreams never to be remembered again. The memories transduced into chemical messages train the Chemysterious Cascader's AI.

GEAR3: (TASTE + SSRI)

Synesthetic Serotonin Starshine

A lolling tongue apparatus beaming starshine. Piercing tendrils seeking slick tongues to rest beneath, inducing bright light synesthestic explosions, washing out emotions and replacing them with a taste like a pina colada on vacation or a big ball of bubble gum in the mouth of a child.

Golem 3 (Emotion + Sensation tables)

CORE: (SCHADENFREUDE + SWEET)

Blue Raspberry Crush

Partially projected collage of ever shifting bodies of many-valued beauty and many uncanny faces smiling with ambiguous intent. An ozone field of artificial fragrances and fresh plastic from flitting cherubic projectors. A hologram simulacra ever on the verge of embrace. An ethereal thirst for touch that cannot be quenched. A sickly aftertaste.

GEAR1: (LOVE + VISION)

Eros Pulse

Beaming waves on broadband frequencies of love, spurned and reflected back like radar. The full tapestry of love and all its shades laid bare. Seen but not touched, yet impactful like a voyeur exposed.

GEAR2: (DISGUST + FORM(PLATONIC))

Love Bomb

Mashing meat and putrid hormonal lubricants and invasive proteins. A suppressed immune response for the sake of carnality. A necessary compromise of the self in service of another. An exchange of spit dribbling down onto the erotic shadow. Lowers inhibitions and opens up those in its exposure to the experience of another, in any genuine sense, and only with mutual consent.

GEAR3: (TENDERNESS + TEXTURE)

Icy Hot Touch

A tingling sensation from a reiki touch. A kaleidoscope of textures like silk and matte and fur. Provides positive pleasure-pain, invigorating but not restoring. A compelling constraint drawing desire, subversively disempowering.

MRD2 Mecha Gear Thematic Spark Tables

In moving forward with the idea of using Tarsos Theorem's Concept Crafting for the basis of my Mecha Gear system in Maximum Recursion Depth 2, I have run a series of "Mock Session 0 Playtests", discussing the setting, game mechanics, and character creation with people as if we were going to run a game (and in one case, it actually is going to be an ongoing IRL Campaign!).

I've been pleasantly surprised the extent to which people have responded really positively to the Playtests- it feels like I have demonstrably learned from MRD1 and have gotten better at conveying information and setting expectations, and also in game design itself. One of the playtests was with the first group I ran the earliest version of MRD1, and they said they liked the idea of MRD2 even better and were interested in playing it with me for real some time! Granted there's a sampling bias here obviously- the people who participate in the playtests are necessarily people who are at least somewhat interested in the first place, but even so.

That all said, one consistent issue I've run into, which I knew would be an issue, is that Players felt like it was difficult to come up with a Golem (the MRD2 version of Mecha) Core and three pieces of Gear, without any word lists or spark tables or whatever to jumpstart things.

I had avoided doing it, because at least for me, putting together the tables themselves seemed more difficult and daunting than just free associating on the spot, but I realize that's not viable for the game. But, of all the words in the English language and however many more outside it, how can I create a finite and manageable table? If I make not one table but several tables based on different themes, how do I decide the themes?

After discussing with the Players in my upcoming Campaign during the for-real Session 0, an idea we had was that I should create a set of tables that are Weird, and meant to evoke the kinds of Golem one might not normally consider, the kind of stuff that I most enjoy and that best reflects my own sensibilities, with maybe one or two general tables for comparison, and then point people to other sources for inspiration (such as the many spark tables in Between the Skies).

Here is my first pass at doing exactly that. Some of them might seem mundane but have unusual associated words, there will likely be some repeats across them, also I'm fairly inconsistent about part of speech- so it goes (and actually I don't think these inconsistencies are necessarily a bad thing anyway). Generators were created in part using Slight Adjustment's List to HTML Generator.

Element: Words based on traditional elements or words more unique than that but reflecting the fundamental nature of things in some way.

 

Distribution: Words relating to a Mecha that is not one thing but rather a distribution of things. Can be literal like a collection of smaller Mecha, gear like Gundam-style Funnels or autonomous missiles, multiple AI systems, or things weirder or more abstract like a business or organization or some kind of superorganism.

Weird: Words that are weird, abstract, psychedelic, pareidolic, dadaic, uncomfortable, grotesque, sexy, unexpected, euphoric...

Using these tables, I'll create a handful of MRD2-appropriate Golem. Players will not be expected to be limited to these tables, and can combine them freely, but for the sake of example I'll only use the words in these tables (but still combine them freely). Other than rejecting repeats, these were otherwise entirely random.

Golem 1 (Element + Weird tables)

CORE: (HEAT + LOSS)

Entropy Elancer

Ballerina Golem, bands of heat and dissolution stream behind its steps. A component of a yet to be written opera of the story of the universe from beginning to end in the form of a dream or psychotic break like one's life passing before their eyes in their final spark of awareness before death.

GEAR1: (LIGHT + DREAM)

Phosphene Slippers

Entropy Elancer darts between physical spacetime and Tehom like a myoclonic jerk in the moment between consciousness and sleep, creating its liminal stage. The phosphenes it produces are like spotlights, and so long as the show goes on, that which is not in the spotlights fades out of conscious awareness.

GEAR2: (MUSIC + DEATH)

Discordant Curtain

When Entropy Elancer or its Nazarite near their destruction, the Discordant Curtain falls for Curtain Call, veiling them momentarily behind death in the form of an eerie tone. But fret not! They will return for a final bow, and perhaps even an encore. Of course, by then much of the audience will have already filed out.

GEAR3: (TIME + PSYCHEDELIA)

Tessellating Zoetrope

Entropy Elancer pirouettes counterclockwise, like a gear, turning the Tessellating Zoetrope existing just outside of time. The animatics of the Zoetrope are profound, but only to the extent they are catered to their audience.

Golem 2 (Distribution + Weird tables)

CORE: (WOLF + BLOOD)

Lycaon Strain

Disembodied circulatory system of a mutant wolf pack of Tehom like an elastic wire mesh network of monstrous beasts sliding and undulating and spurting.

GEAR1: (PACK + CYBORG)

Coagulant Gland

Injects a hormone into the Lycaon Strain, creating steel-hard Lycaon Skins of coagulated blood. The Lycaon Skins are genetically encoded with simple instructions, but otherwise act autonomously from the Lycaon Strain, and have a finite lifespan before drying out entirely.

GEAR2: (COMBINATION + SEX)

Eldritch Incubator

A sub-strain nested inside the Lycaon Strain, where sexual materials are injected to rapidly incubate a litter of Lycaon Spawn. The Lycaon Spawn are more powerful than the Lycaon Skins of the Coagulant Gland and can survive independently. However, they are more prone to unintended mutation, require more time and energy to produce, and will turn hostile before inevitably running off.

GEAR3: (COMPANY + SURREAL)

Lycaon LLC Certificate of Status

Encoded in the Lycaon Strain is a sub-organism that is both the legal document certifying the existence of the Lycaon LLC (an otherwise undocumented and unknown corporation), and the mechanism of a howl-like fear response propagation system that serves to propagate the will of the corporation in others as a memetic thought virus.

Golem 3 (Element + Distribution tables)

CORE: (COLD + GOVERNMENT)

Hibernating Hyberia

Cold-storage encryption superorganism of the prehistoric civilization Hyberia, preserved at its peak just before stagnation and eventual societal ego-death (ascension?). Hibernating Hyberia takes the form of anomalous market trends, commodities futures, and doomsday cults. Although some astute observers may perceive around its edges, only its Nazarite (or more accurately, their Shamir) can effectively conceive of it and compel it, serving like a Head of State.

GEAR1: (NULL + TRADE)

Knights of Solomon Nuclear Football

A Nuclear Football that can be used to activate the collection of sleeper agents; bureaucrats, spies, soldiers, mecha pilots, and all sorts across the world and Tehom who unwittingly serve Hibernating Hyberia. They sabotage trade routes and information networks, perpetrate insider trading, engage in piracy, or whatever else, to disrupt the supply chain of a given commodity as assigned by the Nazarite in short order.

GEAR2: (NEUTRAL + ECONOMY)

Shofar of the Invisible Fuchsia Fist

A shofar used to summon the Invisible Fuchsia Fist, a mythical kaiju of Tehom seeking to stamp out all economic inequality. For the short duration that the Invisible Fuchsia Fist is summoned, all laws in any society that empower the rich or suppress the poor are invalidated, and this is consciously understood by all in its presence, and so ensues the market purge.

GEAR3: (UNHOLY + MULTIPLICATION)

Twilight Talmud

A mistranslation or lossy decryption of the holy book of Hibernating Hyberia. The doomsday cult of the Twilight Talmud maintain the necromantic rituals and preparations necessary to raise corporate brands from the dead. The clever new slogans and focus tested logo redesigns can bring the brand to rapid ubiquity, but can only mask the utter lack of product or profit for so long before once again going defunct.