MRD2 PR 3: You Weren't Supposed to See That Yet

Previous PRs and general MRD2 context

The Corporation

RegeXperience: “Live for the RegeXperience”. Childishly edgy experimental entertainment and defense company that doesn’t want the world to know what’s really behind their algorithm. EXPERIENCE, ALGORITHM, ENTERTAINMENT

The Manager

Baz Beetz: Infectiously enthusiastic “artiste” and true believer in the company mission who is as profound as nonsensical.

The Cyblessed Liaison

“Tastes like eating out the ass-end of human progress.”: Like a cheap flaccid little candle dripping wax down an otherwise glorious cake wearing a tacky suit reminiscent of a 1980’s faux-wood-paneled station wagon.

The Issue

The Quarterly earnings report is coming up soon, and The Corporation is anomalously underperforming.

• Several brand launches this Quarter were undercut by a previously unknown startup in San Francisco. The Corporation wants The Team to investigate The Startup on the pretense of a buyout.
• The Startup somehow acquired the licensing rights to the old Jingo Jangles cartoon, undercutting The Corporation’s upcoming Tempeh Toons licensed products line, just as the Jingo Jangles Museum is reopening.
• Several other corporations, including The Rival Corporation, have been hit by a similarly bad Quarter. The Cyblessed Liaisons intend to arrange a meeting in neutral territory, Venus City of Tehom.

And last but not least...

The Team

Ben: Larry

Nazarite Contract: Fast Lane Fintechnomancer

Golem: Lycaon Strain

Larry's past life was one of public mission in conscious contrarianism to his peers partying with the money of their employers. The brief accolades received from new acquaintances never quite made up for the lack of money and freedom. When he'd ask what others were doing to make the world a better place, they'd stare as if they had never considered the question before. What's the point of caring if no one else does?

Lukas: Icarus Tromp

Nazarite Contract: Infrared Ranger

Golem: Chemysterious Cascader

Was an heir to a crime family but betrayed them when his conscience caught up to him. In need of structure and a sense of justice, but without any good frame of reference and few other options, he shortly thereafter accepted the Nazarite Contract with The Corporation.

Huffa: Ernst

Nazarite Contract: Psychonautical Sub-Mariner

Golem: Forgetting Pile - An oozey amorphous Golem collective made of empowered trash and detritus.

An old man who trawls through the unconscious sea gathering the things people forget from their dreams. Sometimes its material that The Corporation deems useful.

Where we left off...

The Team investigated the Jingo Jangles Museum to glean insights into how The Startup scooped The Corporation on their quarterly strategy. After encounters with Transdimensional Toons, they travelled through a portal into a Vessel of Tehom, a strange place with an inhospitable environment and competing forces that would crush a human body. Summoning their Golem, they traversed the spinning rings in this plane towards the core, making Karmic Attachments along the way with the likes of Doughboy and the Dreadnaughty, a broken-legged Leaping Lorenzino (given a Dreadnaught for a peg leg), and a mysterious figure in a sub-sub-dimensional shadow who The Team suspect is The Cofounder of The Startup. Finally, the core ruptured, revealing an enigmatic foe, The Entropy Elancer.

The "Boss Fight"

Design Notes

The majority of this session ended up being a "boss fight". I don't intend to rely too much on these, but I wanted to stress test some of the mechanics of the game. We've decided to forego Golem Ability Scores altogether, finding them redundant. Instead, Nazarite Ability Scores apply to their Golem. The Players can choose one Ability Score to get a d6 Damage Die for their Golem (the rest would be d4), and there are no ability score modifier bonuses or anything so it's really just for thematic purposes, if they want to further differentiate their Nazarites and Golems.

This is something that is not so much a mechanical rule as a design goal, but I made a point of saying, yes you can always just roll for damage, but in most regards, if you try to use your Gear in interesting ways and do something more than just attacking, it will generally be more beneficial to do so.

Gladly, they took that to heart and not a single basic attack roll was made! In fact, they dealt literally 0 Damage to the Entropy Elancer, instead focusing on systematically breaking its Gear. I still think a traditional attack and HP system makes sense as a fallback, but I actually really like the idea that this should be probably the primary approach to Golem Conflict, where enemy Golem have extremely high HP, and it's usually more worthwhile to target their Gear rather than attacking directly (and maybe breaking Gear can equivocate to some large amount of Damage so that they aren't disincentivized altogether from mixing approaches). While the core of this Gear system is built on Concept Crafting, I do think this idea of Gear Targeting was inspired by Batteries Not Included.

Entropy Elancer (Inner Ring)

The core ruptures, and the auto-erotic necro-rgasmic moan of an entire civilization whines at a jarring frequency like poking at a blister, before turning tinny, and abruptly and prematurely ceasing. Amid the destruction, a merely normal-sized Golem not unlike The Team’s elances onto the Inner Ring as if it were a stage. Strobing lights flutter like bugs in the sky and the Entropy Elancer dances in myoclonic jerks masquerading frames between moments of light like a kinesthetic zombie artform. Dead bodies and viscera in detailed Transdimensional Toon form slough off its sleek body apathetically.

• HP: 30; Hits each PC each turn with one of three attacks randomly. Immune to physical damage so long as it remains in motion.
• Wd8 (Strobing Lights)
• x3 Strobing Lights: (1HP each) While the strobing lights are present, Entropy Elancer can bypass obstacles between flickers of light.
• Nd6 (Phosphene Slipper Kicks): NAT Save (or maybe a different Save if feasible) or else Gear is disabled. 
• Partial Success: Gear/Mod not disabled; Entropy Elancer gains one of that Gear’s Words as a Mod.
• Full Failure: Destroys Mod permanently (if there was a Mod); Entropy Elancer gains the destroyed Word as a Mod.
• Pd8 (Zoetropic Thunder- wowing the audience)
• A Discordant Curtain phosphene can be sensed at the edge of consciousness, and from beyond the fourth wall the shadows of an audience can be seen.
• They are enraptured by the performance, but will be moved to support Entropy Elancer or The Team depending on circumstances, providing morale boosts or even throwing things onto the stage. They’ll throw Words onto the stage which can be used as Mods or other things.
• Leaping Lorenzinos holding hands thrust-kick back and forth between the middle and outer rings like meteors (Nd8). 
• Occasionally they get stuck in place and become obstacles on the ring.
• They appear to be specifically targeting The Team, but may be used to trap the Entropy Elancer in place.

Audience Word List:

1. PERFORMANCE
2. DANCE
3. APPLAUSE
4. SPARKLE
5. LIGHT
6. STAGE
7. CURTAIN
8. AUDIENCE
9. TOMATO
10. CHAMPAIGNE
11. WALL
12. BACKSTAGE
13. ANIMATION
14. MOTION
15. ILLUSTRATION
16. OPERA
17. SONG
18. OVATION
19. HECKLER
20. EMPTINESS

Design Notes

As part of encouraging the Players to use the Words as Mods for their Gear and engage with the environment in interesting ways, if PCs do something which would grant them new Words, they can use one Word as a free action. kind of like how in FATE you get a free evoke on an Aspect when you create an Aspect (or it's been a while since I've played FATE but it's something like that).

Additionally, I decided that they can use the Words to do individual, specific effects, not as a Mod for their Gear, but in such a case it's a one-time use (and they can also use Words in this way as Nazarites outside of their Golem). It gives them more opportunities to use the Words in interesting and fun ways, while still incentivizing them to use them as Gear Mods more often than not.

This is a rough approximation of events, I remember some particulars and not others offhand...

The PCs figured out quickly that they needed to drum up support from the audience, so Lycaon Strain used one of their Gear that produces a fear-inducing howl, along with the ENTERTAINMENT Mod, to turn the scenario into something like a horror movie with The Team as the protagonists and Entropy Elancer the monster, and the audience threw several Words onto the ring for them: DANCE, APPLAUSE, OVATION. They used APPLAUSE to create a raucous soundwave to destroy one of the Strobing Lights, and as a result the Entropy Elancer's phasing ability was diminished.

My memory of the middle of the fight gets fuzzier, but I remember that Forgetting Pile used their previous Mod HONEY with one of their Gear to break the Tesselating Zoetrope Gear, disabling that attack, and later the Entropy Elancer uses the Phosphene Kick to break Forgetting Pile's UNCONSCIOUS+OOZE Gear into just OOZE, but then I think Chemysterious Cascader used a Gear to drum up more excitement from the audience to get more Words: OPERA, ILLUSTRATION, WALL, CURTAIN, and Forgetting Pile creates an OOZE CURTAIN to disable the Discordant Curtain Gear. At some point a Leaping Lorenzino is used to break a Strobing Light.

Around the end, Forgetting Pile and Chemysterious Cascader use their Gear collectively to summon a manifestation of Harry the Honeybadger and Barrys the Bees, the Jingo Jangles Transdimensional Toons they met at the museum, to break the Phosphene Slippers, and then bees consume the Entropy Elancer.

I'm definitely not telling it right, but it played out along these lines.

Design Notes

Obviously the Players themselves didn't have everything laid out in front of them, but you can see here how, because the Entropy Elancer has one attack associated with each Gear, along with some other miscellaneous stuff, they're incentivized to target the Gears vs. just dealing Damage directly.

I also tried to make each attack interesting. The Strobing Lights are what give Entropy Elancer it's phasing ability. The Phosphene Kick can break Gear or steal Mods. The Zoetropic Thunder can drum up the audience in its favor. The Leaping Lorenzinos can hem in the PCs, but also be leveraged by them.

Before being defeated, the Discordant Curtain falls. 

Star Wars-style text crawl overlays like a laser word projector (The Transcending Descender [a creature made of projected words, from previous session]):

Outnumbered and viciously attacked by the treacherous Villains of Regexperience, our Hero makes their valiant exit stage left as the Discordant Curtain falls like a guillotine a hair’s breadth before the evil Nazarites. Thwarted for now, the malicious lot return to the mundane reality of The Startup Office, finding themselves in the midst of The Founder. While they lie and scheme to undermine the rebel upstartup, where has our hero gone? Fret not, our hero will return, mightier than ever, for progress never fails in the end! Stay tooned my fresh friends. Fraxinus!

Back to Reality

At the startup, mid conversation with The Founder, Doughboy alongside them, and The Leaping Lorenzino in the guise of a phone app like an incredibly homoerotic 90’s 16-bit fighting videogame port.

I finally name and characterize THE FOUNDER and THE COFOUNDER:

THE FOUNDER

Ash McLaren: Prettyboy up-and-comer with dorky predilections and glassy eyes seeking long lost wonder.

THE COFOUNDER

IQ Warburton III: Sharply dressed and sharply cunning coder rich in name only with a salty chip on his shoulder.

The Team are informed that they can either attempt to close on the buyout / snoop around the office or head uptown to Fort Mason to investigate the fallout of the Kaiju attack that they missed from session 1, that was apparently in the form of Teagan Tenderloin the Tempeh Toon, The Corporation's licensed toon brand that got scooped by The Startup's Jingo Jangles licensed toons. The Venus City pre-meeting will be starting in a few hours, so they only have time to do one of those two options in San Francisco, or both if they are ok with skipping the big meeting.

They choose to stick around at the office.

Larry and Icarus get into PRO Conflict with Ash McLaren, where they can leverage the various information they've sleuthed to benefit their argument in favor of buyout.

Meanwhile Ernst engages in WetOps, stealing a keyfob to get onto the company Wifi to access the augmented reality space [from previous session]. Then, they retrieve The Cofounder's unique keyfob from the memory of an employee who once saw The Cofounder use the key, to unlock The Cofounder's Office, all to decrypt the rest of the data they stole.

After decrypting the data, they get the following intel:

Files discuss the meeting in Venus City, funds being diverted quasi-legally, and references to a large number of secret investors across Earth and Tomino’s Array* with no obvious connection except to someone or something referred to as “Hibernating Hyberia”.

* Tomino's Array is one of the Space Settlements and was a HOTSPOT for one of the other ISSUES. Given the nature of ESCALATION in the campaign, when they pursue some ISSUES over others, the others continue to ESCALATE without their involvement...

Ernst also gets the Mod BACKDOOR for the successful hacking and decryption.

After agreeing on The Buyout (in part by convincing The Founder he has no choice, that The Corporations will swallow them up eventually so better to take the deal now while the terms are good, and also they lie to him that The Cofounder already agreed to be bought out himself), they receive the Mod SALE. Also, Icarus makes a Karmic Attachment with The Founder (now being Karmically Attached to both Ash McLaren The Founder and IQ Warburton III The Cofounder).

The successful hacking into the augmented reality and the Karmic Attachment co-occur, at which point something strange happens. Ash McLaren (The Founder) wears a special helmet, which they learned about in the augmented reality in the previous session. They see underneath The Founder’s helmet a draconic, chitinous moth-like monster has eaten through the back of his skull and hijacked him like a parasite.

“Oh, you weren’t supposed to see that yet”. Reality itself goes fuzzy for a second, and then he appears normal, and acts as though nothing happened.

Icarus pulls a stunt of sorts with his Eternal Flamethrower to get some analytics on whatever is underneath the helmet, and it becomes apparent that whatever they saw is no longer in reality, that underneath the helmet is relatively normal brainwaves and organic tissue.

And this is where we leave off, but next time it's off to Venus City! Fraxinus!

New Kinds of Magic

No, this isn't about Vancian vs. such-and-such. I guess it's more like different schools of magic like Illusion, Evocation, etc., but it's not bound to those classifications either. It's just meant to get you to think about weird abstract things, and what magic can mean, and how different principles of science and philosophy and cognition and perception operate.

My character in Mike of Sheep & Sorcery's Weirdways Campaign (previously discussed in this post) also more recently gained powers relating to the first entry, so that's cool.

There aren't that many of these because I've been busy and tired lately and trying to prioritize shorter high quality posts over forcing out longer ones, but I'm happy with these.

Cool art to draw the eye, to break up the page, to give you a reason to click. Empty and unsatisfying, disconnected from my words because I don't know how to draw. A memetic parasite burrowing into your brain imposing itself onto your perception, in place of my words. Hollow eyes desperate for a connection they cannot see and will not understand. An anaglyphic simulation of three dimensions where only two exist. Boastful promises behind tinted lenses yielding nothing.

1. Necroneiromancy: These are no mere prophecies. Dead dreams aggressively forced onto the future, feeding off of time like an ouroboros.
2. Ennui: A magic imprisoned invisibly by the ignorant, closing in tightly, oppressing only those who perceive it. A deprivation, lack of stimulation, a self-generated counterforce compressed until it bursts. A violently unleashed imagination.
3. Graphomatica: Philosophers seek unknowable Truths fruitlessly, where real magic is in modeling reality via approximation. Graphomatic representations realize radical realities in higher dimensional spaces.
4. Alone: Reality is a shared delusion, where for each contributor, any given contribution is lessened. Alone, one's own magic magnifies, reality warping around preconceived notions and preferred prophecies. More efficient than the compromised magic we share, more effective too, until challenged.
5. Soberotica: The girl next door of magic, the paradoxical sexy in the unsexy, the attainable if unglamorous, utilitarian utility of serviceable services in the unflattering light of sober sensations.
6. Dissonant Dissociative Multitudes: The magic of an unabashed, unashamed detachment from reality. Embracing cognitive dissonance, dissociated self from space, inversion of subject and object, magnified madness made manifest, multitudinous; magical power pawned from pathology.

Mike also created several cool New Kinds of Magic which with his permission I have also included.

1. Egregoristry: Mages gather to create a higher being out of their collective consciousness: a being submissive to their will, but have they created this being truly or merely given body to something old and dangerous?
2. The Craft: Just as a genius sculptor has the power to do what most see as impossible so there is a level above the genius sculptor where they can truly give life to marble or even a higher level where they sculpt time and dimension. This is the magic of pure excellence in a particular craft until it exceeds the boundaries of possibility.
3. Mom Magic: Some moms genuinely have eyes in the back of their heads and they can definitely take you out of this world just like they brought you into it: with blood and screaming.
4. Quantum Catalog: Undo choices and force the universe down a different path through mastery of the Dewey Decimal system of the Akashic Library.
5. Dimensional Theurgy: like Rick and Morty with the microverse car battery. The wizard creates a pocket dimension in which they are God, feeding on the worship of the creatures there to fuel their magic.

5 Minute Challenge Anew: Incursion

Library of Attnam has started doing Quarter Hour of Writing (QHW) Challenges in the vein of my old 5 Minute Challenges. I like the idea of bumping it up to 15min, but I also have not quite 15min before I need to start work, and I try to post on at least a weekly basis, and as Save vs. TPK said recently I'm trying to be more comfortable with shorter posts.

I'll use one of Attnam's prompts, and in this case I rolled Incursion, so that's what we're doing.

And... GO!

• A spectrum of light perpendicular to light as we know it, intersecting at green, breaches the electromagnetic barrier.
• Reality is in fact a dream, and for the first time, you experience oneiric wakefulness.
• The universe is an Ouroboros. As it comes closer to consuming itself, entropic unraveling exponentiates.
• Breaching the wall of life and death like puncturing choking cellophane, a pleasant and disturbing compression.
• Transduced consciousness into soundwaves and decomposed along frequency-power axes via Fourier Transform.

These were adequate. Until next time...

Getter Robo Armageddon Not-Review

I'm moving in a couple of days, not very far, but still stressful, so in my procrastination on packing and prepping, here's another not-review of an obscure-ish Mecha anime.

Getter Robo Armageddon came out in the very late 90's, but like with Iczer-One, it has this beautiful hand-drawn art style that you just don't see anymore, which I've always really loved. This would have been the very tail-end of that style of animation.

My understanding is that the original Getter Robo, along with Mazinger Z*, were the two original and still most archetypal "Super Robot" Mecha anime, but Getter Robo Armageddon is more like a sequel or spiritual sequel to the original series, set after a Getter-related apocalyptic event. I haven't seen or read the original manga/anime so can't say for sure but that's the impression I get. I will also say, clearly I didn't feel like I needed to know more about the classics to enjoy this.

There have been a couple of anime adaptations of Getter Robo since this one, but honestly the other ones didn't look or sound as good as this one and this is the one that the Super Robot Wars videogames keep coming back to, so it's probably the best modern-ish adaptation.

* I have also watched some Mazinger anime adaptations, should maybe do a not-review of those some time as well but I don't have as much to say about them, but I did reference Mazinger in my MRD2 Campaign Setup. I guess I don't have much to say here either, but oh well...

Like with Iczer-One, this anime looks and sounds really good, and while it's 13 episodes, I don't think it overstays its welcome, and it has really excellent Mecha and Kaiju designs. Also like with Iczer-One, despite how well it's produced and how much setting is implied, I will say it doesn't feel like there's a lot of there there, which I think I also said about Iczer-One.

Unlike Iczer-One, it does at least at first seem like it's going to be about more, it feels like there's intended subtext, but by the end it kind of devolves into typical shonen-adjacent Mecha action anime stuff, which is a bit of a shame. That said, this would have been a great show for the classic Adult Swim anime Saturday night lineup back in the day, would have fit right in.

Superficially, especially at first, it feels actually a lot like Evangelion, despite it's more classic designs for some of the characters and Mecha, although it's just as likely that Evangelion was inspired by earlier Getter Robo than this series was inspired by Evangelion, but it seems plausible given when it came out that it went both ways. But whereas Evangelion is about something, is an exploration of real themes or dare I even say a deconstruction of those themes, I don't think Getter Robo Armageddon really capitalizes on what it sets up.

It seems like it's trying to explore nuclear or other human-made devastation a la Godzilla and plausibly also the classic Getter Robo, and maybe commenting on Japanese Imperialism or American Imperialism, but ya it never really goes anywhere as far as I could tell, but I still enjoyed it.

I don't have much more to say about it than that, but if you like good animation and great Mecha and Kaiju designs and want to know more about the history of Mecha, check it out.

I actually struggled to find great screenshots, but hopefully these have gotten the point across.

Weird Mecha: An Exercise in Nihilism

I've enjoyed creating these Weird Mecha / Golem for MRD2. Two of the PCs in my MRD2 Campaign are using them (Chemysterious Cascader and Lycaon Strain), and one of them showed up as an enemy in a cliffhanger in the previous session. Those two are arguably more concrete than some of the other ones, which is ok, but I do really want to test the viability of abstract "Mecha" and exploring those possibilities both subtextually and in terms of how they open up the game in new ways.

The two current posts include tables for superorganism mecha and embodied cognition mecha. In this post, I'll create a few mecha combining both of these tables. 

TL;DR Creating weird "Mecha" (including more symbolic extrapolations of the body like superorganisms and cognition) where combinations of words are used to craft them.

I didn't have a preconceived notion of what this would entail thematically when I started, but on reflection, there seems to be a kind of anti-theme, an undercurrent of nihilism and a rejection of the two previous posts' themes. Also, to be clear, I'm using the word nihilism very colloquially here.

I chose to avoid using Words I've previously used, but otherwise the words were generated randomly (as were the table combinations, except that each consists of one from one post and one from the other).

GOLEM 1 (WEIRD + PSYCHOACTIVITY tables)

CORE: (ANNIHILATION + POPPY)

Climax Heroine

The ultimate saccharine lovey-dovey feel good pop song to end all pop. Not just a song; a movement, a moment, a memory. Something so profound and so profoundly empty; a fleeting satisfaction in the form of an inescapable earwyrm on a pretty red flower smiling.

GEAR1: (EUPHORIA + ALCOHOL)

Mixomania Turntable

Music and mood and concert and club in colorful liquid form shaken or stirred with zest or bitters and poured onto a turntable. A bath of sounds and spirits and colors and patterns transcending spacetime, controlling the mood of the party with precision, like an MC or DJ, or GM.

GEAR2: (TRANSMIGRATION + AMPHETAMINE)

Black Carpet

The walkway across the Heart Attack Dimension for all the Hollywood harlots and heartthrobs. The steps between heart beats in flicker fusion. Channel the adoration and accomplishments of those who raced against death and lost.

GEAR3: (COMEDY + STILTON)

Varicose Vanity

The disrobing of the Climax Heroine reveals bacterial blue varicose veins. Underneath the pomp and circumstance, a cruel joke of the empress' beaten body, inducing drowsiness and vivid dreams in 27 minute naps. The long overdue comedown.

GOLEM 2 (DISTRIBUTION + EMOTION tables)

CORE: (JOIN + DULL)

Univertrax the Brownian Singularity

The last surviving entity of another universe, or the previous loop of our universe, or our future. The accidental drift of all the life and love across all of their universe, every beautiful majestic creature, poem, work of art, technological achievement, world wonder, averaged and reduced into a mindlessly replicating, incomprehensible, incompatible, irrelevant brown sludge of cosmic insignificance.

GEAR1: (GESTALT + ENNUI)

Brown Note Broadcast

The collective sigh of an innovationless mega-monoculture. An overly long series of derivative ads for long-forgotten reboots of reimaginings of old stories that weren't actually very good to begin with. The embarrassing fart that breaks a crying fit. A message out of place and without a place, breaking up joy and tension equally like an unstoppable anti-empathetic force, leaving behind an emotional wreck and oppressive stillness.

GEAR2: (HUMAN + RESTLESNESS)

Spineless Hedgehogs

The beings of Univertrax long ago gave up the pretense of individuality, even as echoes of dissatisfaction and compromise forever belies the failure of their being. Some can be prodded and coerced to action, agitated to leave the Brownian Singularity. Though they eventually dissolve in their impotent rage back into the filth swamp of their own making, for a brief moment they channel what they once could have been in a single glorious and undeniable gesture.

GEAR3: (ALL + SADNESS)

Big Crunch

Univertrax compresses itself tightly into a micro-gravity field, tugging on the universe and crushing it like an implosion, like its marriage with Univertressa. Leaves a permanent mark on the universe, like a knotted scar or crumpled piece of paper. Anything that can survive the Big Crunch is changed permanently, and if multiple beings survive, there is a good chance they've merged into one, like the necromantically revived corpses of a crushed ant colony connected by a pool of lymphatic fluids.

GOLEM 3 (ELEMENT + SENSATION tables)

CORE: (ORDER + PERCEPTION)

Apophenic Arrangement

This Golem does not exist. It is the illusion of a pattern, like a gambler staking their last dollar because they've got a good feeling, or a person of meager means paying the entrance fee to see Jesus' face on toast. It exists where there is want and means to believe, to fill the empty spacetimes, and the occupied.

GEAR1: (LIFE + STIMULATION)

Hypothetical Babbler

The improbable dreams laid upon an unwanted child made in bad faith. Almost like a real baby, it crawls forward in spacetime naively, experiencing senses unadulterated- an intellectual madness. It grows and learns, but never develops an ego, or any filter on perception, purely life and sensation. Quicker to learn and more powerful than human, yet never more nor less than the sum of its experiences. An unbounded thing that grows massively, but only with linearity.

GEAR2: (ACID + HEARING)

Genetic Backmask

Genes are not merely patterns of organic acids, but exist in any medium of sequences, including audio waves. There are secret messages of life hidden inside music. Do the observers create them, or does the living music plant the expectation? Either way, they are a novel kind of life yearning to be heard, and glad for their new friend. If only everyone else could hear them.

GEAR3: (VOID + ELECTROCEPTION)

Shadow Generator

Our experience of reality is merely the reflection and refraction of signals bouncing off one another, a world of relational patterns and shadows. The shadow generator models sources of higher reality signals into perception, creating a shadow space like objects pinging off radar, revealing approximations of hypothetical things in higher places. Even in their lowered resolution, transduced into shadows, there is a bittersweet beauty in the things beyond our ability to conceive.

Fight! Iczer-1 Not-Review

I've previously discussed being a big fan of the Super Robot Wars videogames, and especially since MRD2 is partially Mecha-focused, I've been trying to expose myself to more obscure, or at least less popular in the US, Mecha anime and manga, especially those which have been featured in SRW. I saw this one among a list somewhere, and for whatever reason it called to me.

As is the case with most of the other not-reviews, I'm not giving you a plot synopsis really, just my general impressions.

Iczer-One seems like one of those anime that has been lost to time, and I do get why, but I also think it's a shame, because it's pretty cool. It's only three 30ish min episodes, or there's an OVA that's basically just the three episodes, I think maybe with some scenes rearranged. Tbh I'd recommend watching it as the OVA but I've watched both and it's good either way. The short length gives them little time to develop things and leaves you wanting more, but I think that works in its favor, and it also keeps it from being too decompressed.

I am a sucker for that late 80's-90's anime style, where it has that grainy hand-drawn look, a lot of painterly backgrounds and colors and details, a little more realistic, not so super-deformed, while still recognizably anime. This is a really gorgeous anime, has an amazing soundtrack, excellent character and creature designs, just oozes style. It's got this very of-a-moment style of citypop, cyberpunk, gonzo science fantasy. There's a creepy weird ominous vibe that permeates the whole thing.

I don't think all of these screenshots do it full justice; there was a lot of cool stuff that I'm struggling to find in screenshots.

There's lasersword fights in subspace dimensions, Mecha fights, body horror, and creepy monsters. I will say the Mecha designs are just ok and they don't get to do much, which I suspect non-trivially contributes to why it has not had much resonance over time. In general, there's just not a whole lot of "there" there, which is fine, it's only three episodes, and for someone like me, all the unknowns and open questions of what this is and what's going on actually just makes it better (as opposed to some uninteresting or trite background on this or that).

Big Gold is a creepy motherfucker, really left an impression on me. You really have to watch it to appreciate it. It makes this... groaning/whining sound. Also, what a name.

The anime was apparently based on a manga that was serialized in a hentai magazine, but I haven't been able to find many particulars on which issues, if they've been translated in English, etc. I will say that while the anime has some "ecchi" elements, like the pilots of the Mecha being shown naked inside the cockpit, but it didn't really come off to me as hentai, but maybe the manga is more graphic. Anyway, many of my favorite elements of the anime were the music, sound design, colors, and painterly backgrounds, so I would like to read the manga just to have that context, but I'm inclined to think I'd prefer the anime anyway.

Also, there were two "sequels", neither of which were great but not terrible, but I'll briefly comment on those too. There were also apparently some spinoff manga and audio dramas and stuff like that, but I'm not gonna bother with any of that.

Iczer Girl Iczelion was I think nominally connected to Iczer One, but it felt more like a spiritual sequel / retelling than an actual sequel. It takes a lot of the same core plot beats, but does it as more of like a magical girl thing, no mecha, and with a lighthearted tone compared to the weird, dark, ominous vibe of the original. It has a few clever ideas, and it's short (only two episodes) which also works in its favor, and it does have a style of its own, but I can't say it left as strong of an impression. Both in animation and in art design it feels much more 90's to me, with sort of a gothic science fantasy vibe that I do appreciate in itself but not as much as Iczer One's. I dunno, if you like Iczer One it's still worth checking out I guess.

Iczer Reborn / Adventure! Iczer-3 was easily my least favorite of the three. It's six episodes, which still isn't long, but even under that strain I think it struggles compared to the three and two episode runs of the preceding shows. It has an animation style closer to Iczelion, while merging the two art directions in a way that feels like neither more nor less than the sum of its parts. It's more so a sequel to the original, while also feeling weirdly like a retelling. It just... doesn't add anything. Most of the plot beats and even designs are taken almost directly from the original, but Neos Gold is a poor-man's substitute for Big Gold, and Iczer Three herself I found kind of annoying. It also has more of that goofy / lighthearted tone of Iczelion which to me clashes with the stylings of Iczer One. I didn't hate it, and it's only six episodes, so if you enjoyed Iczer One and Iczelion well enough, then go ahead and watch it, but don't expect anything more than more of the same. I dunno, thinking back on it, I could imagine a version of this that's more like Vampire Hunter D, if it brought more new ideas rather than feeling like a retread, but as-is there's no "there" there.

So ya, that's the Iczer series. It's a shame that there isn't more of it, particularly in the style of the original. I'm glad for the original as it is, bad or mediocre sequels don't take away from that, but it would be cool to see someone with a vision for the franchise revisit this.

MRD2 Campaign PR 2: This Time With Golem

Second session, first in the Golem! I was a bit worried about this one because we're still getting in the groove and I didn't have much time to prep, but once again I felt really good about it.

MRD2 Campaign Setup

First Session PR

Also for whatever reason Blogger HTML is all screwed up in this post and despite my best efforts the formatting is a mess. Or maybe it's just on my device? I dunno, such is life.

RECAP

The Team are Nazarites, individuals contracted by The Corporation to serve various needs across Earth, the Space Settlements, and the metaphysical depths of Tehom. They are empowered by a Wyrm Shamir symbiont provided by The Corporation granting them metaphysical abilities, as well as a Golem, a mecha, or a magnification of something more abstract.

In this Campaign, they chose the following for the respective roles:

The Corporation

RegeXperience: “Live for the RegeXperience”. Childishly edgy experimental entertainment and defense company that doesn’t want the world to know what’s really behind their algorithm. EXPERIENCE, ALGORITHM, ENTERTAINMENT

The Manager

Baz Beetz: Infectiously enthusiastic “artiste” and true believer in the company mission who is as profound as nonsensical.

The Cyblessed Liaison

“Tastes like eating out the ass-end of human progress.”: Like a cheap flaccid little candle dripping wax down an otherwise glorious cake wearing a tacky suit reminiscent of a 1980’s faux-wood-paneled station wagon.

And of the two Issues available to them on their job board, they chose:

The Issue

The Quarterly earnings report is coming up soon, and The Corporation is anomalously underperforming.

• Several brand launches this Quarter were undercut by a previously unknown startup in San Francisco. The Corporation wants The Team to investigate The Startup on the pretense of a buyout.
• The Startup somehow acquired the licensing rights to the old Jingo Jangles cartoon, undercutting The Corporation’s upcoming Tempeh Toons licensed products line, just as the Jingo Jangles Museum is reopening.
• Several other corporations, including The Rival Corporation, have been hit by a similarly bad Quarter. The Cyblessed Liaisons intend to arrange a meeting in neutral territory, Venus City of Tehom.

In the meantime, events unfold in the Issue they did not choose, so expect to see an intersection of events at some point!

The Team

Ben as Larry

Nazarite Contract: Fast Lane Fintechnomancer

Golem: Lycaon Strain

Larry's past life was one of public mission in conscious contrarianism to his peers partying with the money of their employers. The brief accolades received from new acquaintances never quite made up for the lack of money and freedom. When he'd ask what others were doing to make the world a better place, they'd stare as if they had never considered the question before. What's the point of caring if no one else does?

Lukas as Icarus

Nazarite Contract: Infrared Ranger

Golem: Chemysterious Cascader

Was an heir to a crime family but betrayed them when his conscience caught up to him. In need of structure and a sense of justice, but without any good frame of reference and few other options, he shortly thereafter accepted the Nazarite Contract with The Corporation.

Huffa as Ernst

Nazarite Contract: Psychonautical Sub-Mariner

Golem: Forgetting Pile - An oozey amorphous Golem collective made of empowered trash and detritus.

An old man who trawls through the unconscious sea gathering the things people forget from their dreams. Sometimes its material that The Corporation deems useful.

Altchester (still unavailable :( )

Where we left off...

After playing Monty the Python's game, they successfully opened the door to the private office in the Jingo Jangles Museum, only to find themselves in a strange place bathed in red light...

Vessel of Tehom: Virtual Zoetrope Superhighway

• Three glistening ruby red rings, each the size of a five-lane kaiju-scaled superhighway, each lane separated by grooves, spinning around a spherical city-sized core like a record.
  
• A force like intense gravity would crush any normal human, and even Golem can barely jump in place. The atmosphere is also unsafe for humans.
  
• The core is an inky black, wet and slimy sac in a near-frozen state of mid-rupture.
  
• From a slit in space, an expressive eye watches, weeping with furious ambiguity.

Immediately The Team must summon their Golem or else be crushed! They were each asked to describe the process:

Larry: Pulls out a pocket knife and pricks his finger. The stream of blood flows, blood vessels expand to massive proportions, forming the Lycaon Strain.

Icarus: Ices himself, pouring out the last drops, and in an alcoholic psychedelic haze forms the Chemysterious Cascader.

Ernst: Whistles to the high winds, calling forth the trash from all across the Earth and space and the metaphysical depths of Tehom, merging into the magnificently malodorous Forgetting Pile.

They drop onto the Outer Ring where weird pixelated kaiju and transdimensional toons zoom along, and must describe how they navigate the traffic.

Larry (Lycaon Strain): The circulatory blood vessel mesh separates into congealed sub-masses and coalesces as it glides right through the traffic.

Icarus (Chemysterious Cascader): Uses his Disorientation Mirror (MIRAGE + ETHANOL) to induce drunkenness in those in his path, creating havoc and destruction in his wake.

Ernst (Forgetting Pile): Like with the Lycaon Strain, his trash piles separate and reconnect to pass right through traffic, leaving detritus and slick trash grease behind.

Design Notes

The purpose of having them suddenly dropped into this place, summoning their Golem, and describing how they navigate through this traffic, was intended to get them oriented with their Golem. Thinking about how they summon it and what that says about them and the Golem, how it moves, how it interacts with environments and objects, etc.

Outer Ring

• Doughboy and The Dreadnaughty
• Office Cube
• Drag-On Dragon
• Leaping Lorenzinos

I gave them a brief description of the events above, described in further detail below. Doughboy was in their immediate vicinity, the others got loose descriptions but they'd have to go closer (or wait for them to get closer) to get the full details.

Design Notes

This whole space is quite weird, and I was worried if they would be able to understand how to navigate the space. We discuss how the core has a gravity, but there's a competing centripetal force from the rings, so the Golem can move along the grooves or jump slightly, but can't fly between rings which have as much space between them as the size of each of the rings themselves.

I actually realized as we talked it out that I was thinking of the rings as laying horizontally, but that description didn't make sense given the competing forces.

That said, it required barely more than 30s conversing to get on the same page and collaboratively define the space. Yes it's weird, and ya it's likely we're all seeing it in our heads slightly differently. But if the Players define for themselves how they interact with the space and I confirm or disconfirm their assumptions and we continue to stick to our own rules reliably, it all goes smoothly enough.

Doughboy and The Dreadnaughty

The Transdimensional Toon Doughboy (from previous session) is piloting a precarious tower of WW1-era Dreadnoughts held together by a scaffold of oversized sexy mannequin legs in pantyhose and garterbelt.

Don’t worry, I’m here to help! (Save or take Td6 from a jumble of dreadnought guns set off prematurely). I swear that doesn’t usually happen!

Karmic Attachment Opportunity: Rather than leave Doughboy to fend for himself, accept his “help”, and be “grateful”, even as he bumbles his way into making more problems for you.

The Team chose to ignore Doughboy at the onset. However, because they're driving on a spinning ring, they were able to circle back to him, and Ernst ends up accepting the Karmic Attachment Opportunity with Doughboy before they leave the Outer Ring.

Design Notes

I like the mechanics of Karmic Attachments and how it affects encounter design and player agency. I have mixed feelings about continuing to use the Buddhist concept of Karma in MRD2, not for any philosophical reason but because it might be confusing since that's more the focus of MRD1 than MRD2, but for now I'm just going with that and I might later change it to something more rooted in Jewish philosophy but still mechanically the same or similar.

Office Cube

An office cube glides across the grooves of the ring, inside which are tacky low-res VR holograms. The cubes are human-scale on the inside, but The Team would need some kind of protection to safely exit their Golem to enter the cubes.

• The office workers are from The Startup, and seem as surprised by The Team’s presence as The Team are likely to be by theirs.
• The Founder is not in the office at the moment, and The Cofounder is on a business trip to Venus City.
• As far as the employees knew (or are willing to admit), this was just an AR/VR-space, not a Vessel of Tehom.

Ernst uses the Forgetting Pile to create a trash corridor connecting to the cube to enter inside. After some confusion, he is mistaken for an AI janitor created by The Cofounder. He gets some information as above, and learns that there are more Office Cubes on the other Rings, including Office Cubes for The Founder's and Cofounder's offices on the Inner Ring.

Meanwhile, Icarus and Larry encounter The Drag-On Dragon on a collision course right towards them!

Drag-On Dragon

Draconic DeLorean-esque drag racing Transdimensional Toon Kaiju. Claws press into the grooves of the rings, shearing spacetime in sparks and flames of entropy revealing a sterile white business conference room with a full audience, once per rotation (i.e. round). 

• An ambiguous shadow of a person gives an autobiographical one-person show account of their first failed business while a laugh track mocks them. They had developed an algorithm for interpolating frames of animation that also incorporated style transfer (DWAI [Don't Worry About It] except that they work in animation), but a corporation lowballed them for a buyout and when they refused the corporation reverse engineered it for themselves.
• On a loop, the Drag-On Dragon drags and clings, fails, spins out in a roll, eventually to re-right itself and do it all again.
• 20 HP; Sd6 (transdimensional friction entropy), Phid6 (claws/body)
• If The Team engages the Drag-On Dragon, have some debris or something else escape across the dimensions, demonstrating how they can affect the show.
• Each round the one-person show loops. The facts can’t be changed, but the interpretation of them can. The Drag-On Dragon will dissipate if the outcome of the show is successfully altered.
• KAO: Help the shadow see the story from a new perspective, but know that there will be ramifications in the material world.

After about one round of physical Conflict with the Drag-On Dragon, The Team decide to engage with the one-person show instead. They hypothesize from Ernst's information that the shadow is likely The Cofounder.

Icarus chooses to accept the Karmic Attachment Opportunity, leading to the dissolution of the Drag-On Dragon. He alters the perception of the shadow using one of his mind-bending Gear of the Chemysterious Cascader (I don't remember which offhand anymore...) so that the shadow sees these events as more of a learning experience, and to be more careful with their intellectual property in the future.

Design Notes

I had been starting to have doubts about whether it made sense to give Golem their own Ability Scores as I had originally intended, and we discussed this in our debrief at the end of the session. As is, this would mean six Ability Scores to keep track of (three for the Nazarites and Golem each), with each acting as their own damage pools. The Gear already make the Golem interesting enough, and we also discussed maybe a stripped down version of a "tapping" system similar to Batteries Not Included to force PCs to engage more tactically with how they use their Gear. 

That said, at least in this session, there will be references to the Golem Ability Scores Physical (PHYS/Phi), Technical (TECH/T), and SPECIAL (SPEC/S).

Leaping Lorenzinos

Kaiju-sized pixelated chromatic creatures with petit dancers’ lower body, bodybuilders’ upper body, and UFO for heads, leap-dance from ring to ring, giggling “ho-ho!” with joy, perfectly coordinated and without regard for The Team.

• KAO: One Leaping Lorenzino has a broken(-off) leg, and is getting trampled, crying “oh-noh!”. Fix his leg, but also, help him bring joy through anachronistic art.
• “How can I bring joy to the audience when I’m ruining the choreography!?”
• A disembodied audience like a pre-recorded track can be heard booing.
• If his leg is fixed, he’ll carry The Team between rings whenever he revolves to their position.

The Team actually ignored the Leaping Lorenzinos on the Outer Ring, instead using Forgetting Pile's trash and Lycaon Strain's blood mesh to create a bridge. Doughboy in The Dreadnaughty runs up begging to come along, which is when Ernst makes the Karmic Attachment, which then leads to Dreadnaughty accidentally blowing up the bridge as Icarus in Chemysterious Cascader is crossing, leading to a desperate and daring leap, barely sealing the landing, and losing one of his Mods, but otherwise crossing unscathed.

That said, on the Middle Ring they end up doing something that incidentally breaks a Leaping Lorenzino's leg, giving me the opportunity to reintroduce the KAO, at which point Larry ends up accepting the Karmic Attachment.

Design Notes

While The PCs did use their Gear quite a bit, they did not use their Mods much. They only have I think one Mod each right now anyway, and there was one encounter in the Middle Ring where they may have gotten more but they mostly bypassed that encounter. I will try to be better in future sessions about giving them more Mods and creating circumstances which encourage their use.

My hope is that, like with Karmic Attachments, once a GM gets in the habit of supplying them, and Players get in the habit of engaging with the game in that way, that it'll be more seamless.

Middle Ring

• Office Cube
• Leaping Lorenzinos
• Transcending Descender

The Team are immediately confronted by The Transcending Descender.

Transcending Descender

Words scrolling left to right, down, left to right, down, like if a vector monitor were a typewriter. The words narrate themselves, this very statement. They also say, or rather, I say, that I know why you’re here. Perhaps, I know better than you do. Do you know why you are here? How did you end up in this place? What decisions led to this moment? Will it have been worth it, in the end, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, following the user generated content catered to your wants and interests, to sell you things. Did you enjoy the things they convinced you to want? Are you happy? How much has your “happiness” cost others? Was it worth it? My words descend and descend, and they have every intent to crush you, and if they fail, they will loop back to the beginning, and do it all over again, endlessly. There is no escape, only confrontation. You must confront this. You must confront me.

• KAO: Choose not to confront. Know that the Transcending Descender will follow. It’s not about denying the thing, as much as recognizing that confrontation per se solves nothing.
• HP: NA, Sd8. Each attack deletes a sentence. Sentences that have other sentences below them can’t be attacked. 
• When a sentence is destroyed, a Word representing its meaning falls (e.g. “You must confront this”: Confrontation; “Was it worth it?”: Retrospect).
• These Words can be used as Mods, or used to attempt to communicate with the Transcending Descender.
• The Transcending Descender can’t be defeated through Conflict alone; either it must be fled, ignored, or successfully communicated with.

I gave The Team basically one "free round" before the sentences would be in range, giving them essentially two turns each to confront it or escape to the Inner Ring. While they did not choose to confront it, they also didn't really engage with it at all in a way that would apply for the KAO.

On the one hand I was a little disappointed that they bypassed this encounter because I think it would have been fun, but ultimately the session didn't feel worse off for it so oh well. It is unfortunately ironic that this got disregarded, so I might try to do something devious with this in the future...

They also skipped the Office Cubes in this Ring (consisting of a cafeteria and lobby area, not The Founder and Cofounder Offices that they were interested in), so they basically just talked with the Leaping Lorenzinos as previously described, before arriving on the Inner Ring.

Inner Ring

• Office Cubes
• Leaping Lorenzinos
• ???

The Inner Ring is comparatively barren, with just the Office Cubes and Leaping Lorenzinos. Dreadnaughty accidentally destroys one of the cubes, and I offer The Team to make a Karma roll to decide which Cube is destroyed. They wanted to investigate The Cofounder's Office more, but failed the Karma roll, so they get The Founder's instead.

Inside the virtual space is a simulacrum of The Founder's actual office, and a bunch of free-floating encrypted files.

Icarus uses Infrared Immolation Nazarite Feature to apply a "brute force algorithm" approach to decrypting some of the files. They also investigate some objects in the office. They learn that The Founder, despite previously being described in the other Office Cube as being "dreamy", is also a big dork with Gundam action figures, Star Wars posters, Jingo Jangles memorabilia, etc. He also has a case for a high-tech helmet that he wears, seemingly for medical reasons. 

The files allude to some time off after “the illness”, and subsequently the big technical breakthrough leading to the Jingo Jangles deal. Additional references to the “transfer of power” on Tomino’s Array and what role The Startup will play in it.

Tomino's Array is one of the Space Settlements and was at the heart of the other Issue that they did not choose. They learned that Tomino's Array was dealing with a piracy problem, an outbreak of genetically engineered creatures gone rogue, and an encroaching fleet of Amalekites, a human civilization long-lost in Tehom which has come back to try to take Earth which they see as rightfully theirs.

They attempt to leave with the remaining encrypted files, and Larry uses his Nazarite Feature Transcranial Tachyonic Stimulator to cause the security wall to trigger prior to the action of attempting to cross the wall with the files, allowing them to escape with the rest of the files to decrypt later.

Design Notes

I think the Transcranial Tachyonic Stimulator is a really cool Feature, but one that is conceptually kind of difficult. I was prepared to play fast and loose with it, but I was genuinely concerned if it would be viable or not, so I'm glad to see it get used effectively already in session 2!

In general, the Players felt like they got to use a lot of their Features and Gear pretty freely and felt good about how they were able to interact with the game, so that's all very encouraging.

Entropy Elancer

The core ruptures, and the auto-erotic necro-rgasmic moan of an entire civilization whines at a jarring frequency like poking at a blister, before turning tinny, and abruptly and prematurely ceasing. Amid the destruction, a merely normal-sized Golem not unlike The Team’s elances onto the Inner Ring as if it were a stage. Strobing lights flutter like bugs in the sky and the Entropy Elancer dances in myoclonic jerks masquerading frames between moments of light like a kinesthetic zombie artform. Dead bodies and viscera in detailed Transdimensional Toon form slough off its sleek body apathetically.

Wrap-Up

The "Big Boss" of this Vessel of Tehom. We chose to leave this off as a cliffhanger for next session, so that should be a fun way to start things off!

I've been writing Design Notes throughout this post so I don't have too much wrap-up stuff to say, except that I'm really satisfied with how this is going.

Also, in addition to the aforementioned Design Notes, I tried to be more detail-oriented in this PR in terms of not just posting my GM Notes but also explaining how things actually played out (I drafted this only a couple days after the session this time which probably helped).

I also tried to make this post more fun to read, so I hope I was successful in that regard. If you think I was successful in making this PR more fun to read, please let me know.