MRD2 PR 5: Captain Cobra crashing the castle in 5...4...3...2...1...

Despite a few hiccups on my part, this was another good session bringing some new stuff to the table. In fact, one of the players said it was their favorite session yet, and the others also really liked the direction of things. I'll clarify where I think I went wrong, but on the whole I feel good about it. Anyway, this might not be my best play report, but the scenario around Neo Siberia Bead is really cool and will be followed up on next session so if nothing else check that part out!

Current Index

Play Reports

MRD2 PR 4: Political Intrigue in Non-Violent Dimensions

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

MRD2 PR 2: This Time With Golem

MRD2 PR 1: Maximum Recursion Depth 2, or Sometimes Less is More and Sometimes More is More

Some other posts for context

MRD2 Campaign Setup

MRD2 Nazarite Contracts

Mecha Gear with Tarsos Theorem Crafting

Jewish American Identity and Jewish Philosophy in Maximum Recursion Depth 2

Color Codes:

Design Notes
Hyperlinks

THE CAMPAIGN

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

On the verge of bringing the Upstartups into the fold, the Team must now deal with the Space Settlements. The Corporate Alliance and Ziegler Bead are on the verge of war, and the Amalekite Fleet lingers ominously just beyond their reach...

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 met with the other Corporate representatives in the Vessel of Tehom known as Venus City, where violence is physically impossible. The Stakes at hand were:

• Form a Corporate Alliance or work independently.
• Fold the Upstartups into the Corporate hierarchy or crush them.
• Consolidate power on the space settlements or appease them.

The Team took the Positions to form the Corporate Alliance, Fold the Upstartups, and Consolidate power on the space settlements, and tracked down the stakeholders for the other Corporations and through various means convinced them all towards a majority vote in favor on their Positions.

Scales of Conviction

As a result of their efforts in the previous session, all of the votes work out in The Team's favor. THE EMISSARY* (now given a name and description) invites The Team to come to Ziegler Bead on Tomino's Array to discuss terms of war civilly. The Team are reminded of the Amalekite Fleet near the Space Settlement, and also consider first discussing this matter with their manager Baz Beetz, before ultimately deciding to accept the offer.

*Cyril Ziegler (THE EMISSARY): Distantly royal dandy and martial arts master who is competent and ambiguously unambitious.

Discussing with my players in our debrief at the end of the session, the Players did not feel like they were fully aware of their options- e.g. investigating the Amalekite Fleet independently, trying to infiltrate Tomino's Array rather than going along with Cyril, or leveraging other resources like Baz for more information. Some of that they felt was on them for not thinking of those things, but I felt like it was more a failure on my part in not making the options more salient or having more hooks for them.

Miscellany

Meanwhile, Ikarus holds a private conversation (via Discord DM's during our in-person game) with Barney Bates, the nepotistic patron and uncle of Finny Bates, the Manager from QuinceSoft who the Team caught attempting to sell secrets to The Amalekites. The conversation is kept private from the rest of The Team.

Tomino’s Array

One of several space settlements near Earth. An Array consists of individual city-sized settlements called Beads, which are combined as they develop, forming an Array. Tomino’s Array is the oldest Array at nearly 20 years old, and has developed a culture of its own.

Ziegler Bead

The most affluent and well established Bead of Tomino’s Array. Has a quaint charm like a rural Slavic countryside, ignoring the exposed technological infrastructure supporting the Bead. Has a beautiful but also somewhat disturbing aesthetic reminiscent of old Eastern European aristocracy.

The Team discuss briefly with the Ziegler Family, all of whom are present aside from the de facto dictator of Tomino's Array Redic Ziegler. They learn a little more about the Ophan, the bioengineered slime molds crucial to the functioning of Tomino's Array, that were starting to turn feral and overpopulate. They learn that the Ziegler's had put out a bounty, but that Captain Cobra and the Pirates of Perversity were abusing the bounty in some way. However not long into their conversation, THE ADMIRAL predicts the exact moment in which Captain Cobra and The Pirates of Perversity will infiltrate the castle, in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Captain Cobra: Effortlessly charming space pirate and former government agent who is always pursuing half-baked schemes that work until they don't. Black and gold costume like a cross between Yatterman and Cobra Commander with kinky leather overtones. Domino mask with aviator sunglass lenses.

This played out very differently than I expected. I don't remember what queued it up, but it was not my intention to have Captain Cobra arrive that soon and in that way, it just kind of worked out organically.

A couple mecha, Captain Cobra, and some Pirates of Perversity foot soldiers crash through the castle, immediately killing THE ADMIRAL.

I had designed the scenario with the idea in mind that The Team would have to decide whether or not to side with the Ziegler's in their own self defense (the Pirates attacking on-site) and for the sake of setting the terms of war (basically the pre-war "Geneva Convention"), or turn on the Ziegler's because they are fascist assholes and Pirate Queen Prismasha (Empress of Space) asked them to look out for Captain Cobra, and then it would turn into a conflict. Instead, they tried to use their various mind-altering Nazarite Features, Golem, and Mods to create a ceasefire and discuss terms. This was successful, but really muddied my plans and this is where I feel I choked a bit and kind of railroaded them. They were happy with the direction things went, but agreed it was a little railroad-y. Which is especially bad because I had more than enough prepped to where if I hadn't railroaded them it would have still been totally fine >.<.

It plays out where they learn that Captain Cobra is at least partially responsible for the devastation that has occurred in the Neo Siberia Bead with the overpopulating Ophan, by engaging with a Perverse Incentive / Cobra Effect around the bounty.

Ikarus' Karmic Attachment to IQ Warburton III (THE COFOUNDER) leads him towards a book on the Ziegler's bookshelf, a folklore book about 

Hibernating Hyberia: A long-dead prehistoric super-civilization that encrypted itself in what would become history. The manuscript was found mysteriously in one of the early space settlements. Not given much acknowledgement on Earth, but has become popular modern folklore in the settlements. It is prophesied that the 111th generation prince of Hyberia will be a genius warmonger, and alongside their spirit companion, will decrypt the civilization and bring it back to its former glory. Some speculate that Hyberia was an Amalekite Kingdom, or contemporaneous with them.

Some kind of glowing pink flora overtakes the Bead, consuming everything except The Team, Cyril Ziegler, and Captain Cobra, who all collectively agree to take the escape hatch towards Neo Siberia Bead, seemingly led that way by the flora itself. Captain Cobra reluctantly agrees to work with Cyril as they have no recourse.

They learn that all the royals besides Cyril were actually body doubles, that the reason why Redic was not present is because he is the most famous / recognizable and would have been hardest to fake. The Ziegler's and their army left for Asimov's Array which they have overtaken, and triggered a Solar Scorch on Tomino's Array. The Array will be gathering a surplus of solar energy over the course of the next month, honing the energy into a solar beam to wipe out Washington DC (and also burn out Tomino's Array to a husk, taking out the Ophan and Pirates of Perversity and the remaining population of the Array all at once).

Trapped in Neo Siberia Bead, they must first learn to survive, and then escape, within a month.

So ya I admittedly bungled that part above, I mean they still had fun establishing the ceasefire, but I muddled how it played out, but once they got to Neo Siberia Bead, that's where they all really enjoyed things.

Neo Siberia Bead

Overtaken by fuzzy glowing pinkish flora like a forest, a sickeningly addictive sweet and floral aroma surrounds the space like an olfactory aura. Few humans found out in the open, those out seem to have gone insane, or are afraid, hostile, and unwilling to interact. The Team are attacked by Ophan Bugs immediately unless they seek/make shelter or find some other solution.

The Ophan flora knowingly seal the Bead exits immediately after The Team arrive, even barricading the extradimensional vertices of Tehom and spacetime. The only escape is to make a Sacrifice to the Shamir at enormous cost, destroy the Ophan, or something more ingenious.

There are four phases (each ~1 week). At the end of phase four the Solar Scorch would happen, requiring Sacrifice to the Shamir or death.

Ophan Bugs: Without shelter or protection, get bit by BuzzWords. Must be taken; if over Mod capacity, must remove another Mod. Using these BuzzWords takes 1d6 Damage of the respective kind, or sometimes they just trigger randomly, getting used up but incurring Damage.

1. PAIN (NAT)
2. HUNGER (NAT)
3. SICKNESS (WIS)
4. MADNESS (PRO)

They first tried to summon their Golem to protect themselves from the Ophan Bugs, but this attracted the attention of Pipeline Pigs (like this but as giant robots) which burrowed out from under them. When they unsummoned their Golem, the Pipeline Pigs left them alone. 

Ernst uses the Mod HONEY to create a protective balm from the Ophan Bugs, using up the Mod at the end of this scenario, but they must still establish shelter by the end of Phase One.

The Survival Zone consists of the Dilapidated Dome Domicile in an open plains area by the Bead entrance (where they arrive), and it is between the other two areas, the Magenta Lake and Ophan Forest.

Dilapidated Dome Domicile

They investigate the Domicile first as that's where they're starting, and it's their phase one survival requirement. The Dome must be repaired in order to provide shelter, such as using METAL or PLASTIC. The shelter has one METAL and requires one more resource to repair. Has a Defense Turret (DEFENSE + TURRET) which can optionally be repaired by creating a Gear for it (affecting its final form), or salvaged for one of its mods. The turret can be used as a free action for the Team as a whole once per round of Conflict. A small murder of Ophan are digesting a few Smiling Boy Cultists and are hostile to The Team.

They use the Mods ALGORITHM+PARASITE to create a Gear repairing the Defense Turret, where it shoots out slugs (literal parasites not "slug" as in bullet) that can decode a genome and break down an organism into goop. They then use the turret to goopify the murder of Ophan, and they use one of their Mods WALL + the available METAL  to do the repairs on the Domicile.

Given how efficiently they handled the Ophan Bugs I gave them a little extra time to explore Magenta Lake before the end of phase one.

Magenta Lake

They learn that Magenta Lake offers POLLUTION+WATER until cleaned, and can be fished for livestock Ophan. A Pipeline Pig is trying to clean the lake but is in a clearly dysfunctional subroutine cycle. It must be destroyed and removed in order to clean the lake, but will be hostile to Golem.

End of Phase One

The Team each experience a nightmare and/or malnutrition/anxiety delusion, creating either a Karmic Attachment or taking Enhanced Damage (d12) of the respective kind.

"Patriarch": Gaunt old man in a blue collar shirt naked from the waist down... 

"Patronizer": Gaudy but good-looking middle aged professional, entirely in gold, ..., wearing too many expensive watches telling different times.

"Protector": Ernst chose this one, and had to take the Nature Damage because they already have 6 Karma. By taking the Damage, they got no further description of this nightmare.

I believe Ikarus took the Karmic Attachment with "Patriarch" and Larry with "Patronizer" but I should really double check that 😬.

End of Session

The Players really liked this survivalist / base-building turn of events. I'm annoyed at myself for how messy the Ziegler Bead scenario went, but they still had fun and like I said they were very into the Neo Siberia Bead. Concept Crafting lends itself well to this kind of thing, and the world of MRD is so weird and abstract that it's arguably even more so effective because it grants the level of diegetic flexibility in how the Mods are handled and what they can do. One of the Players said this was their favorite session yet, and another said that this was unlike anything they've done before in another RPG, and the latter especially is one of my favorite things to hear so I'm happy with that :).

There are still a few more phases to go in this Survival Zone so I'll try to use the time between now and next session to polish that up even more, and I've also got the Amalekite Fleet scenario largely prepped, so I think the next handful of sessions will be really good. And given how much they are enjoying the survival / base-building stuff, I will likely try to add more of that into the Campaign going forward.

Third Factions for FIST

Another FIST-related post, this time a set of "Third Factions", inspired by some conversations we were having on the FIST discord server. FIST (the faction in the setting) feels heavily inspired by the paramilitary factions in the Metal Gear series (I get them all confused...), a sort of anti-establishment but mostly not quite radical group, with CYCLOPS being more like an extension of the CIA or other pro-status quo groups by way of GI Joe's Cobra. You could sort of flatten it into a good guys / bad guys type thing, but I like that the books keep it relatively unconstrained and you can make a lot of interpretations out of it. But either way, binaries tend to lead to binary thinking, so I thought it might be interesting to conceive of "third factions" for FIST; not just in the sense that they are more factions, but specifically in that they should represent some ideology that might be contrasted against some interpretation of FIST and CYCLOPS. Of course, you could just throw them all together too, why not?

Figured I'd give the new FIST module a plug while I'm at it.

PRIME: Recently IPO'd social experience-making cult phenomenon quickly taking the world by storm. Augmented reality ARG, dating app, social media network, and lifestyle philosophy, existing equally in and of the physical world and the metaverse. An alien superorganism refugee cleaning up the world and protecting it from eldritch threats. It accrues human capital and mindshare, and wealth, hunting wild corporations and fishing fringe religions for survival. It is planning for the future, cultivating a hyperconscious noosphere, terraforming the world for something beyond human conception.

RANGER: Anarcho-socialist commune colonists of dreamspace. They inadvertently protect the world from astral aliens, but this is not their purpose. Wary of outside Orders imposing onto them, they'll bind FIST and CYCLOPS alike in gordian knots if threatened. A loose collection of "non-violent" mathemartists and morphengineers not to be trifled with.

LOOP: Fringe timelooping radicals who loop not though linear time, but through the cyclical nature of things; the patterns of myth and history and human behavior. They are always one step ahead of every market trend and every fascist regime and every disaster, because they've seen it all before. Seeking to break free from the root of human suffering, they have no time for the petty and mundane concerns of any given present, or the immediate consequences of their actions. They operate in a paradox, desperate to break free from the cycle, yet the closer they come to achieving their goals, the less they can rely on their experiences to guide them.

USA: The United Spacetimes of America. An imperialist intermultiversal civilization of Americas and its colonies. They use entire universes as nodes in a network monitoring and predicting all financial transactions. They did not understand the observer dilemma of what they had created, a divine fiat economy; an extradimensional god of capitalism. Full of extraneity and innovation, equal parts gaudy and beautiful, functional yet straddling obsolescence, undeniably evil, yet comfortable for those within its span.

HEART: Empathy extremist runaways from illegal military experiments. Exposed to mind-altering substances from unknown places, they have a sense of empathic awareness that has atrophied in the rest of us; a higher emotional consciousness not unlike the gap between animal and human intelligence. They exist in solitude, in inaccessible places, overwhelmed by the suffering and callousness of the rest of the world like a foul stench or repulsive image of a rotting corpse or an arrhythmic loud beep. Meanwhile, in their corners of the world, they build a utopia and commune with higher lifeforms, who have developed ways of dealing with uncontrolled anti-empathic animal populations like baseline humans.

EXIT: Cult of nihilists, most of whom have committed shameful or violent acts, seeking a kind of redemption, tenuously coupled to wealthy narcissists seeking immortality, and a minority of some desperately depressed. They intend to pierce the film between life and death, popping consciousness like a bubble. Their research extends across quantum physics, philosophy, theology, psychopharmacology, extreme sports, or anything else which might enlighten the way beyond conscious existence. Their aims are personal, but if popping the bubble affects everyone else as well, so be it, what difference does it make?

EDIT: Almost forgot! If you like this post and are new to my blog, check out my previous post of 5 FIST Characters. I made them just from random rolls from the main FIST book, but gave them original codenames and writeups to make them suitably Weird & Wonderful.

5 FIST Characters

I've been growing interested in FIST, a rules-light RPG with a very Metal Gear Solid vibe, but in a way that feels true to Kojima and not just derivative, and taking other influences from the likes of Lovecraft, GI Joe, and Doom Patrol, which of course drew my attention even before I saw it referenced as an inspiration.

I may want to do a bigger FIST post down the line, or maybe a micro-setting using FIST as the core system, but in the mean time, here is my attempt at a few premade characters randomly generated:

Codename: Anti-Mutant P

Tachyonic "mutant" whose DNA was chipped and blasted with psychonine, the nucleotide from the center of all spacetimes, reduced like a block of marble into the teleological True One towards which all life unknowingly aspires. It modulates itself with genetic blocks like a robot via horizontal gene transfer, imposing its nature onto what it appends.

Role:

Icon (5): Terraform the world into a Dadaist, Surrealist, Psychedelic ecosystem.

Traits:

Veteran (97), Mutant (51)

Inventory:

Assault Rifle

Toxic Grenade

Attributes:

0 FORCEFUL, -1 TACTICAL, 0 CREATIVE, 0 REFLEX, 1 ARMOR, 8 HP

Codename: MATRIX Dominatrix

ENM Switch and sapiosex terrorist triggering sensory meridians and erogenous zones in a Multisensory Autonomic Tantric Rigging Idiosyncratic Xenophilic field of flavors and pheromones, whispers and whimpers, hallucinated handcuffs, and indecent illusions. A decimated duo warmongering the noosphere.

Role:

Avenger (1): Their Lover was modified by CYCLOPS into a necroneiropath, aggressively consensually, yet nonetheless they seek revenge.

Traits:

Illusion (40), Lover (45)

Inventory:

Whip

Silver Handgun

Attributes:

0 FORCEFUL, 0 TACTICAL, 1 CREATIVE, 0 REFLEX, 1 ARMOR (protecting others), 10 HP

Codename: Spoiled Kool-Aid

They used to work in the KSF (Kraft Special Forces), but turned whistleblower when they learned about the military-funded Kool-Aid experiments. This is also the source of their addictions.

Role:

Wildcard (9): Multi-substance abuser who mixes their substances into Kool-Aid, and this is an important part of the ritual of their addiction. In their drug-addled state they believe themselves to be the Kool-Aid Man, and when they burst through objects they yell "Oh yeah!"

Traits:

Turncoat (91)

Heavyweight (34)

Inventory:

Enemy Uniform

Shotgun

Attributes:

0 FORCEFUL, 1 TACTICAL, 0 CREATIVE, 0 REFLEX, 0 ARMOR, 12 HP

Codename: Deep Indigo

An Artificial Empathy (AE) android. The pocket dimension is where they store the bad emotions, which they photograph before deleting the memory. The invisibility cloak is for emotional support.

Role:

Chessmaster (2): Use the pocket dimension in their head as a Phantom Zone Prison for the most despicable despots.

Traits:

Retreat (63)

Empathy (23)

Inventory:

Durable Camera for memories

Invisibility Cloak

Attributes:

-1 FORCEFUL, 0 TACTICAL, 1 CREATIVE, 0 REFLEX, 0 ARMOR, 10 HP

Codename: Nate Nickel

They see themselves as a super-statistician who leverages their brilliance towards both intimidation and negotiation, but actually most of their skill comes down to their mindreading and bombsuit. Their only weakness in such matters is their unwillingness to be perceived as anything other than a statistical genius.

Role:

Gladiator (3): The warrior they model themselves off of is the statistician, writer, sports analyst, and professional poker player Nate Silver. They use their knowledge of stats along with their mindreading and bomb suit to be the best bluffer.

Traits:

Detonator (18)

Mindreader (49)

Inventory:

X-Ray Specs

Bomb Suit

Attributes:

1 FORCEFUL, 0 TACTICAL, -1 CREATIVE (+1 mindreading for specific info), 0 REFLEX, 2 ARMOR, 11 HP

MRD2 PR 4: Political Intrigue in Non-Violent Dimensions

I was worried how this session would go, because there was very little in the way of "encounters" in the traditional sense or anything that would require them to use their character sheets, and a FUCKTON of NPCs and logistics. But it went better than I could have hoped. This was some good Social Intrigue, which I am all about. I don't know how well this will translate to a PR, despite my efforts to make these PRs more interesting.

I was inspired by the Scales of Conviction system for the videogame Triangle Strategy, where key plot events are decided on a vote, and the player has to talk to the various NPCs and gather information to try to sway the votes of the rest of the party. I figured that would work even better in a TTRPG, and it did. At some point either here or on Iconoclastic Flow I'll make a post about that in the abstract.

For the NPCs, I used a lot of real actors voices as "touchstones". I am infamously anti-touchstone, but in this case it did make sense for me. With the number of NPCs being juggled, I really needed each NPC to be distinct, and while I'm very satisfied with how my voice acting and improv went for someone with no professional training, I was afraid to rely on my abilities, so at least providing the touchstones as a failsafe I do think helped in this case. Also, for most of them, I tried to subvert the touchstone, like one NPC who is like if Mr. Rogers had serial killer vibes, or one who looks like Freddy Mercury but sounds like Ben Stein, or one who is like an anime space heroine but sounds and acts like Natasha Lyonne / Nadia in Russian Doll.

A lot happened this session, hopefully I don't end up forgetting anything in this PR...

This is the most recent MRD2 post, containing a hyperlink to the previous PR, etc.

Color Codes:

• NPCs, the actors I try to embody with my so-called "voice acting"
• Design Notes
• Hyperlinks

THE CAMPAIGN

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 Corporations were hit by an anomalously bad Quarter. The Cyblessed Liaisons are arranging a meeting in neutral territory, The Vessel of Tehom: Venus City.

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 got into a Golem fight with the Golem Entropy Elancer in a strange Vessel of Tehom bathed in red light, only to be whisked away back to reality, in San Francisco, in the office of The Startup, mid-conversation with The Founder Ash McLaren.
• Larry and Ikarus engage in PRO Conflict with Ash, eventually convincing him to accept a buyout.
• Meanwhile, Ernst breaks into The Cofounder IQ Warburton III's office, learning that The Startup may have some entanglement with the Space Settlements, and a mysterious entity known as Hibernating Hyberia.
• After Ikarus makes a Karmic Attachment with Ash to seal the deal, some spacetime anomaly occurs, revealing underneath Ash's helmet a draconic, chitinous, moth-like monster which has eaten his brain and hijacked his body, but after being told "you weren't supposed to see that yet", reality reverts, Ash seems oblivious, and Eternal Flamethrower scans suggest there is no such anomaly.
• The situation with The Startup mostly resolved, The Team heads to their meeting at the Vessel of Tehom: Venus City.

How to get to Venus City

The Manager explains the three options (Baz Beetz in his Wernor Herzogian affect):

• You must find one of the mysterious rabbinical orders of the lost tribes, prove your worth in a mortal combat of legal wits, take their secret blend of psychedelics, and wander the Sinai Desert until near death of dehydration, while contemplating your deepest loss. Or…
• Expose yourself to the superhot toxic gasses of the planet Venus while reaching sss-exual climax to the thought of your parents fornicating your birth. But…
• Unfortunately we cannot afford the time for these de-lic-iously ab-horrent experiences, so this one time we may expense the Quarkerizer Machine. We will be torn apart by our very subatomic particles and reconstructed from the same quarks in another plane of existence, in but a blink of an eye. If only one could remain conscious for the agony of Quarkerization, but alas this is not so.

Vessel of Tehom: Venus City

The opulent Venus City, home of the superorganism Asherah*, is like a science fantasy Ancient Israel. In Venus City violence is physically impossible, and so it has become a neutral ground for diplomacy and trade across Tehom.

* Later some of the Asherah may be differentiated, but for now they all sound like Daria.

THE PRE-MEETING

Just the Cyblessed Liaisons, Nazarites, and other Corporate interests. Handful of issues need to be voted on at The Meeting, so The Team will need to suss out who believes what and convince them to vote whichever way they think suits their interests.

• Pro- or Anti- Corporate Alliance.
• Crush Upstartups or bring them into the Fold.
• Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements, or Appease the dominant families.

The Team's stances:

• Pro-Alliance: Seems generally advantageous; typical cartel stuff.
• Fold Upstartups: They already bought out The Startup and Ikarus has Karmic Attachments with The Founder and The Cofounder.
• Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements: The Team are initially ambivalent, but as they learn more about the situation in space and get entangled in the intrigue, this is what they decide.

VOTERS

The other Corporations have their own Nazarite Teams, but there are already waaaay too many NPCs here as-is, so for now they are decidedly nameless and featureless, although they can be assumed to be wandering around and/or with their Managers or Cyblessed Liaisons not unlike The Team themselves. For simplicity, it could be said that the QuinceSoft Team is undergoing a restructuring and unavailable, and one or both of the other Corporations’ Teams could also have had other priorities.

The other Voters may try to sway each other, so even an NPC with an already favorable voting pattern should still be sought out to be sure. This can be on an as-needed basis or randomly rolled or whatever.

The Team / Baz Beetz (Regexperience)

Ezra Black -> Delilah Samson

Supportive professional who is a perfect manager but for the fact that he MUST be a serial killer.

Mr. Rogers type but murder-y.

• Pro-Alliance
• Crush Upstartups
• Consolidate power in the Space Settlements

“Beauty is all around us”. Transgressive cosmetics brand and pharma company allegedly complicit in the underground transmigratory drug boom.

Freddy Mercury -> Eden-Cheney Processing

Unfortunately named dullard with a terrible voice who is the spitting image of his more famous namesake and begrudgingly uses it to his advantage.

Like if Ben Stein were reskinned as Freddy Mercury.

• Pro-Alliance
• Fold Upstartups
• Appease Space Settlements

“Honest measures for honest folk”. Old energy company providing affordable fuel and meat both derived fresh from the beasts of Tehom.

Finny Bates -> QuinceSoft

Unqualified beneficiary of nepotism and conniver with a speakeasy smile who knows how to play the game.

Patrick Bateman type.

• Anti-Alliance
• Crush Upstartups
• Consolidate power in the Space Settlements

“A little chaos is good”. Formerly fun software and social media company desperately pursuing dangerous biotech augmented reality.

(Asherah in dry, sarcastic, monotone Daria voice) "Thank you so much for introducing yourself Finny, we are all well aware of who your Uncle is, and how great you are as a Manager. We are sooo grateful you were able to come today."

Pirate Queen Prismasha ("Empress of Space") -> Independent

Sardonic and slightly unstable smoker in a suave sportcoat who is surprisingly successful.

Natasha Lyonne type.

• Anti-Alliance
• Crush Upstartups
• Consolidate power in the Space Settlements

Why is she here? Why does she get a vote? The Cyblessed aren’t telling…

KAO: If one PC wants to say they have a pre-existing relationship with Prismasha…

Larry accepts the Karmic Attachment Opportunity, establishing that he and Prismasha are old frenemies.

The Scenario

They have some free time before The Meeting. They are told of three locations, but they don't know who will be where, so they can just go to wherever sounds interesting. There are also some "random encounters" along the way.

The Court of Those Who Live and Die on Technicalities

A Court of Hell nested within Venus City, where Legal Precedent and Fine Print define reality.

The Team decides to head here first. On the way, their NPC campaign, the Jingo Jangles Transdimensional Toon Doughboy, experiences an episode of shell shock and must be calmed down. Not played for laughs. Something in the environment triggered him, it can be anything because Doughboy isn’t real, he’s a “False Idol” manifestation from a Vessel of Tehom, the embodiment of the idea of Post Traumatic Stress and the dehumanization and trauma of war and conflict.

"Someone doesn't make a place where violence is physically impossible, unless they've experienced a lot of violence..."

Ernst uses his Nazarite features to pull an object from Doughboy's subconscious, a flipbook comic that is like the Maus of Doughboy cartoons, helping him to confront his trauma, his own victimhood in the face of war, his genuine attempts at heroism. This Resolves the Karmic Attachment, but Ernst chooses to make a new Karmic Attachment with Doughboy to continue developing this relationship.

When they arrive at the Court...

They find the entrance is a massive projection of an encrypted pseudo-code on microfiche, and underneath it a podium with an empty wine glass.

A line of Amalekites and stranger beings are escorted by Asherah, explaining how pricking one’s finger and pressing into the wineglass, the glass will fatally extract all the blood to overflow. Holographic lighting reflects off the blood as it overflows, and if the spectral analysis of the blood matches the code based on one’s Karma, it is determined whether they will receive a favorable reincarnation, or be sentenced within The Court.

The Team catches IQ Warburton III aka The Cofounder exiting a conversation with The Lawyer and The Emissary.

The Emissary: From Tomino’s Array. Wears the symbol of the Ziegler Bead, a majestic and romanticized ophan (bio-engineered slime mold). They're supposed to have like Czarist Russian Aristocracy vibes but I ended up RPing him more like a Dandy.

Ernst approaches the Emissary. The Team has not yet dealt with the Issue from the first session involving the Space Settlements, and are clueless as to how things have Escalated.

They learn that Ziegler Bead is gaining power across the space settlements, and their Solar Tech and Ophan would be useful for the Corporations, but they want a seat at the table. According to The Emissary, Space is the future.

"There are rumors going around, titter titter, tatter tatter, <finger beak gestures> I'm surprised you haven't heard yet."

"Give us a seat at the table, or, you can keep your shitty little dirt rock, while we take the future."

Ernst non-commitally agrees to consider the offer.

Ikarus approaches IQ Warburton III. Given their Karmic Attachment which becomes confirmed, they bond over an implied shared background; in Ikarus' case having left behind his crime family, with IQ it is unknown. He expresses regret having given up that power, only to later be exploited by The Corporations, and seems amenable to the buyout if it gives him power. Ikarus and IQ work out a deal that if they can Fold the Upstartups, IQ and Ash will be put in charge of the other Upstartups and maintain control of their IP. Ikarus was offered to Resolve the Karmic Attachment, but if the deal fell through, the consequences would be greater, so he chose not to Resolve it yet. When confronted, IQ claims he was talking to The Lawyer because he was interested in getting in The Court but it turns out things are more complicated when Nazarites try to Recurse, and was talking with The Emissary because the Ziegler Bead had also been bidding for a buyout of The Startup.

Ezra Black (murdery-y Mr. Rogers) is poking around, clearly interested. When confronted by Larry, he offers to change his vote in favor of Folding the Upstartups, if Larry can make a Karmic Attachment with The Lawyer on his behalf, and after a discussion with The Lawyer, Larry accepts the Karmic Attachment, left open-ended for the time being.

"Why do I want to go to The Court? Well, folk generally think of me as a good neighbor I try to be nice. To give the youth a positive role model. But sometimes... I'm not very nice."

THE LAWYER: An Amalekite Recurser with the Poltergeist Form Pyramid Shining Brightly. He is a lawyer who offers his services in exchange for Karmic Attachments, facilitating getting in and out of The Court safely (probably), for those desperate enough to take a bum deal.

• Shorter up close than they appear from a distance.
• The environment around them is magnified, saturated, emboldened, like a gaudy aura.
• Face like a leprechaun, corpse blueish hue and wispy navy blue goatee, gold reptile skin zoot suit over a blueish skirted blouse, fedora with a whole feathered serpent taxidermy ornament on top.
• Carries a cane with a pyramid shape on top.
• Bill Burr type.

"Who is he to me? Fock you! Who is he to you? I don't fockin' care, you gonna sell me your Ka-ma or not?"

Huffa asked whether this means Karmic Attachments are diegetic- literal things that exist within the setting. I told her "yes and no", that yes Karma is literal in the world as per MRD1, but that sometimes it's an abstraction and sometimes it's literal, and she seemed to understand what I meant and was satisfied with the answer. There are reasons why I think of it this way that extend beyond the scope of this PR. Fitzgerald defines intelligence colloquially as "the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function", but anyway if this idea of Karmic Attachments as being both literal and not literal is too confusing or dissatisfying for you or someone in your group, then fuck it, sure, they're always literal.

Also, I vaguely suggest that "Nazarite and Recurser powers don't play well". This was a hedge against if they tried to enter The Court themselves, because I did not have that nearly sufficiently prepped and basically just wanted to tease it while still discouraging them from trying to enter for themselves when there was already so much else going on anyway. Fortunately they didn't try to enter themselves, but eventually I will circle back around to this because MRD1 and MRD2 absolutely should be cross-compatible.

Asherah Garden

On the way to the Asherah Garden, they bump into Prismasha (scifi anime space princess except Natasha Lyonne). While still upset with Larry, she agrees to vote their way if they absolve her of all responsibility whatsoever.

"Hey, look at me <two finger eye to eye gesture>, I don't want to see you again for at least 100 years, eh? <puffs cigarette> OK? Ok."

She also tells them to protect her friend Captain Cobra of the Pirates of Perversity, and to destroy the Ziegler Family (leading to The Team's stance to Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements). She claims the Zieglers are fascists, and that the situation has gotten dire in the Space Settlements and people are starving. She is non-committal about whether Captain Cobra is a good guy or not, but claims his heart is in the right place, and implies he's a Larry-type (relating to their Karmic Attachment).

When they arrive at the Asherah Garden...

The desiccated remains of an eldritch giant, its punctured chest housing a garden of hyper-tropic (“stop motion”) flowers, frolicking mandrakes giggling in theremin singsong, and five dimensional fruit that ripen in moments and drop like a bead of honey exposing enzymes unzipping Tehom for momentary peaks into spacetimes.

They find Freddy Mercury (if Ben Stein were reskinned as Freddy Mercury) contemplatively staring into an unzipped spacetime. He wants to interpret the prophecies, but after deep analysis and an agile meeting, their analyses failed to find any meaningful results.

"No, I'm not the famous musician, I'm a Manager. I have a 10 step plan for the next three quarters, and after that, it does get complicated, but don't worry, I can explain."

Ernst makes a Karmic Attachment with Freddy Mercury to eat the psychedelic five dimensional fruit and interpret a prophecy, to sway his vote to Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements.

He rolls the words METAMORPHOSIS+PARASITE, and interprets this as relating to the Ophan bio-engineered slime molds in Tomino's Array, and keeps the Mods as well.

The Vision Words

1. METAMORPHOSIS
2. PARASITE
3. REBELLION
4. ASH
5. REVENGE
6. FAMINE
7. WEALTH
8. TECHNOLOGY
9. SYNERGY
10. ELDER
11. MUTANT
12. ALIEN

They potentially could also have done a WIS Save or used a Nazarite Feature to get Mods from the visions or make prophecies, in addition to the Karmic Attachment. These other prophecies would also have affected the events that will unfold later in the campaign, but they chose to just stick with the one.

The Fifth Temple

On the way to The Fifth Temple, an Asherah senses the Leaping Lorenzino app and wants to confiscate the phone or force Larry to delete it, seeing it as a “False Idol” from another Vessel of Tehom and a mockery of this holy place. The Leaping Lorenzino feels shame and embarrassment. Leaping Lorenzino is inherently campy so it can kind of be played for laughs up to a point, but not so much that it undermines the sentiment of what it means to be ridiculed and dismissed for being who you are- it's ok to be kind of campy and ridiculous! 

"'Boo hoo' Why do they hate me? I am just a Leaping Lorenzino! I dance, I prance, I do the 'hee hees' and 'hoo hoos' and 'ha has'. I am just what I am, why is that wrong?" Ambiguously European goofy accent

Unsure what to do, Larry runs away, only to bump into another Asherah, handing out a free gift of a Venus Figurine "Golem". They can use two Words to create a Core for the Golem, turning it into basically another NPC companion. They choose to use OVATION+METAMORPHOSIS to transplant the Leaping Lorenzino's consciousness into the Venus Figurine, making it Kosher for Venus City. This Resolves Larry's Karmic Attachment to the Leaping Lorenzino, and he chooses not to make a new one right away.

When they arrive at The Fifth Temple...

<I wanted to embed this image but blogger is awful and for whatever reason won't let me add any more images into this post>

Majestic, crystal-smooth algae-green hot spring with a vivid orange sulfur ring floating like a stadium-sized teardrop at the height of a skyscraper. Asherah Golem stand or float in prayer all around it, seeming to fill or be filled by its contents yet maintaining equilibrium, whistling like a glass harmonica.

Within the orange sulfur rings, Cherubim piloted by Amalekites pay reverence. In the haze, it appears there is a Corporate Golem among them.

The Team receives a text from Baz Beetz that he and The Cyblessed Liaison are "having a schvitz" in the hot spring and they should join. Don't forget the Wernor Herzong accent.

Ikarus Ices to summon the Chemysterious Cascader to investigate the Cherubim while an Asherah Venus Figurine Golem (a mecha-sized one, not like the Leaping Lorenzino's new body) escorts Larry and Ernst up to the hot spring.

An Asherah initially blocks Ikarus from passing, but he makes a PRO Save to convince the Asherah he is with the Corporate Golem. He finds that it is Finny Bates (Patrick Bateman type), clearly committing treason and selling secrets to the Amalekites.

He blackmails Finny into voting The Team's way, and also learns that Ash McLaren and IQ Warburton the III aka The Founder and The Cofounder of The Startup respectively (they don't really have special voices...), were originally Nazarites on his Team at QuinceSoft. Finny stole their IP and fired them, and now wants to use their old IP as leverage. 

"Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here, let's find each others bandwidth again, we can really synergize here, and after I talk to my uncle, we'll reach a new level of scrum mastery. Trust me, I'm always right <wink>." Fuck this guy

Finny threatens to "have a conversation with his uncle", and Ikarus pulls a power move telling Finny to tell The Uncle to reach out to him directly, which was Rped really well so he received the Mod POWER.

At the hotspring, The Cyblessed Liaison, who is a Eugene Levy type, their bosses boss, and in the loose Cold War analogy for MRD2 is like the CIA to the Corporations' Banana Republics, chastises The Team for having allowed the Quarter to go so poorly. 

"Well, see, uh, I think we need to talk about this Quarter. It seems like you all really fricked it up. It's ok, these things happen, this is part of a team growing to maturity, we can discuss this like adults. But, well, we need to make sure this doesn't happen again."

They question The Cyblessed Liaison about Virtual Boy, the entity they had learned about in some of the documents they had decrypted which seems like it may be behind all of this, and when The Cyblessed Liaison responds that they shouldn't know about Virtual Boy, they question why he's asking about the quarter if he already knows about Virtual Boy. Caught in the bind, The Cyblessed Liaison stands up in the schvitz, revealing his glorious full frontal nudity, greasy waxy dad bod, with all the cybernetic holographic pareidolic psychedelic enhancements, and gives them an "early bonus" Word: POSTMODERNISM.

AND NEXT SESSION, THE MEETING!

GItMS! Mecha Gear

This is an old draft, way before I decided to start using Concept Crafting for Mecha Gear. I think in all likelihood it's too fiddly, and I wasn't satisfied with it even at the time, but it's interesting seeing how it got me to where it is now.

This is for my Into the Odd Mecha Hack: Get Into the Machine, Shinji! The mechanics have changed to varying degrees since I've been running my MRD2 Campaign, but this post more so corresponds to the original GitMS! than to MRD2. Most notably, it is no longer the case in MRD2 that Golem (the Mecha) have their own Ability Scores anymore, instead just sharing the pilot Ability Scores, but having their own Damage dice and of course the Gear.

Here's my Weird & Wonderful Table of Super Robot Wars-inspired Mecha and a "Gacha" Mecha Dispenser generator as well, and if you want some weirder MRD2 stuff I have several posts of Weird Golem for MRD2.

I don’t want the game to be too crunchy, and I don’t want to go too wild with the core resolution mechanics because that rarely goes well for me and also doesn’t appeal to me anyway, but Mecha RPGs is maybe the one RPG genre where I still want there to be something mechanically distinct about it; can’t explain why, I just do.

While I have not playtested it yet, I am reasonably confident in and excited about the way that GItMS! distinguishes between Pilots and Mecha and how their abilities interact.

For the most part, Mecha Gear and abilities are very FKR-ish- little to no explicit mechanics, and where a roll is necessary, some kind of basic Save approach, but I’m thinking over just a few more mechanics that hopefully keep it interesting without getting in the way, but I want to hear what people think.

Idea 1: Mecha and Pilot rolls for Advantage/Disadvantage

Normally if a Mecha would need to make a Save, they use their own Ability Scores or relevant rolls; Pilots can spend their Ability Points to use their Pilot Abilities but otherwise don’t directly affect Mecha rolls. However, I’m thinking that where Advantage/Disadvantage would come into play, instead of rolling the Mecha Save twice, instead they roll one for the Mecha’s Ability Score and one for the Pilot’s.

I’m hesitant to put too much weight on Ability Scores, but I actually think this works in the favor of that goal; a Pilot with a similar Ability Score distribution as their Mecha will be more likely to succeed on Advantage/Disadvantage for their good Abilities and less likely for their bad Abilities, whereas a Pilot with a different Ability Score distribution is still affected by Advantage/Disadvantage but in less Ability-preferential ways. Neither is better or worse than the other, just different.

Idea 2: Gear

I like how ItO and EB are very items-heavy, and I’ve similarly enjoyed Cyphers from Cypher System. I want a Gear mechanic that allows for Mecha customization and churn of various unique special items, but not to the extent that the Mecha loses its identity.

Idea 2a: Gear Level

Gear has levels, tentatively 1-4. They affect the various 2abc’s following. The idea is not to be too mechanical with it though, it’s mostly just an indicator of relative power. I don’t necessarily want to have Mecha Levels, but there would still be regular Pilot Levels, and possibly Pilot Level might determine the highest level of Gear they can use, or use reliably (using higher-level Gear might force a Save for Gear Damage, as explained below).

Idea 2b: Gear Damage

Rather than rolling a Damage die to deal direct Damage, Mecha can target exposed Gear, where Players roll Saves either to dodge/defend or to attack depending on which side of the equation they’re on, and they go from `Damaged -> Disabled -> Destroyed`. Gear Level may affect how many times a Gear would need to be successfully hit to move from one stage to another, where from Disabled onward it can no longer be used until repaired and Destroyed means it normally cannot be repaired at all. On the flip side, Gear Level also would determine the cost to repair.

I worry somewhat about coupling Level, Damage, and Cost too tightly; probably there would be many exceptions but this would just be the default case.

I also like the idea of having to expose Gear, because then you can create interesting encounters that force Players to come up with clever ways to expose protected critical Gear, so it makes Conflicts potentially less about just slinging dice and more about clever problem-solving.

Idea 2c: Iconic / Permanent Gear

I want to come up with a better name for this, but tentatively we’ll say Iconic or Permanent. This could include the starting Gear for a Mecha, the stuff that makes it unique, and maybe Pilot Level number of additional pieces of Gear can also be marked Permanent. These Gear can be repaired even from a Destroyed State. They can also be stored for free. Their Level might scale with Pilot Level or something like that.

Idea 2d: Gear Storage

Pilots may want to build a small arsenal for themselves, more than they can carry at any given time, in which case they can be stored wherever their Mecha is stored or at some other facility, at some cost relative to Gear Level. There could maybe be a maximum storage number by Pilot Level as well, but that seems extraneous. Iconic / Permanent Gear can be stored for free (assumes Pilot always saves a little extra cash for their important Gear).

Idea 2e: Gear Points

I keep referring to cost. Gear have a value, generally relative to their Level. So if you destroy an enemy Mecha, you get 1 point for the scrap (or maybe more in special cases), but if you Damage or Disable enemy Mecha Gear or the Mecha themselves without destroying them, you can potentially recover their Gear to keep and/or sell. These Gear Points are used to repair, store, or less frequently, purchase or upgrade Gear.

My hope is that this whole Gear system allows for a nice balance between having an Iconic Mecha but also the fun of load-outs and loot, and it can allow the setting to explore some capitalist themes, without over-relying on a complex economy or being too crunchy. And additionally, it creates a unique and fun, but still rules-light play experience, and differentiates Mecha from regular play in an interesting way.

REMINDER: This is no longer the Gear System in MRD2, but it's still interesting in its own right imo and maybe with some playtesting could work for regular GitMS!

MRD2 Nazarite Contracts and MRD2 Updates

I'm a few sessions into my MRD2 Campaign. Scheduling an IRL game is a nightmare or else I'd have liked to be a bit further into the campaign by now, but it's nice to be playing IRL again regardless. I'm realizing now that I've referenced Nazarite Contracts in the PRs and some of the other posts, but have not formally shared anything on them here.

The Nazarite Contracts of MRD2 are equivalent to the Poltergeist Forms of MRD1, the character classes. They are meant to reflect various kinds of careers or skillsets related to careers, but also speak to the psychologies around those careers, what that says about the individual or their relationship with the world.

Mechanically they are mostly the same as Poltergeist Forms, with some changes based on my experiences with my >1 year-long MRD1 Campaign and playtesting over the course of development of that game, and some smaller changes that are more about the context and flavor.

The biggest change is that rather than having a mix of Nazarite Features with Damage Dice or just utilities, now the Nazarite Contracts themselves come with a distribution of Damage Dice which can be applied to any Feature or action contextually, and all Nazarite Features are utility-based, affecting what information you have or how you interface with the world, and not just numbers to add or subtract or roll.

I'll share the Nazarite Contracts further below (although keep in mind these are all incomplete and being playtested and only up-to-date as of posting), but as an example, the Psychonautical Sub-Mariner's Damage Dice distribution looks like this:

Damage Dice: Wd6 (Aware of Social Failings), Nd6 (Physical Willpower), -P (Looked down on by society)

Meaning they can deal d6 WISdom Damage in contexts relating to awareness of the problems in society, especially those that are systemic (not necessarily their ability to overcome them, that would be more so PROpriety, just to be aware of them and perhaps work around them), d6 NATure Damage for physical willpower (I guess like "Fortitude" or "Endurance" challenges, more so than fighting or lifting heavy things or whatever), and -P means that they can only ever deal d4 PROpriety Damage in most social contexts, even if they might otherwise have a means of dealing Enhanced Damage or otherwise more than d4.

There is not yet an equivalent to Quirks of MRD1. They were mostly just flavor anyway; I would like to include something like it, just not sure how to present it.

Nazarite Vows replace Starting Karmic Attachments in name only, but that's basically what they are. The only major difference being they are necessarily tied to their relationship to The Corporation or to their career or working life.

Sacrifice to the Shamir replaces Reincarnation Ritual, and work a little differently but serve the same purpose. From my experience with MRD1, the Reincarnation Rituals that were more or less ensured, but involved some kind of tradeoff, were generally much more interesting and satisfying than the ones that required specific circumstances or else would fail, so I've made that more core to the Sacrifices. Tbh I'm still working out some of the particulars, it hasn't come up in play yet, but it will involve something like a Shamir Attachment, similar to the Recursion Attachments of MRD1, which neither accrue nor divest Karma, but must be resolved before Advancing. There's also a different subtext to the Shamir Symbiont vs. Recursion if you care about such things.

All art made with Hugging Face Dall-e-Mini
Maximum Recursion Depth

Final note before I get into the Contracts themselves. I'm having a blast with this campaign, writing up these Weird Golem, and developing this setting. While I love the concept of MRD1 and the Courts of Hell and Recursers, I really do think MRD2 as a game will be an improvement over MRD1. That all said, it's seeming increasingly unlikely that I'll actually make it a proper, published product in the way I did for MRD1 and had intended to do for MRD2. I'm not closing the door on it entirely, and maybe I'll feel differently in a couple of  months, but right now, I just don't have the energy or enthusiasm for it. I love the creation process, I love commissioning the art, and having this thing that I can put out in the world for people to experience, and I will forever have that with MRD1. And while in some ways working on MRD2 has been much easier because of what I've learned from MRD1 and because I'm bootstrapping off of it, the hard parts, like coordinating between all the collaborators, taking on the financial risk even if I can afford the loss in a worst case scenario, the logistics of presentation and accessibility, and also finding my market and marketing and all of that most of all, I'm just so fucking tired of that especially. I wrote most of MRD1 during peak-Covid, but now there's more I can do out in the world, and while I'm grateful that MRD1 has been successful enough for me to even have considered an MRD2, I just don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze the second time over. It's so much work, and so much of yourself to put into a thing, and then you have to scream into the void to get anyone to pay attention, and I'm serving a niche of a niche of a niche, and even the people who do it full time and are enormously talented end up having to make creative compromises and are still struggling to pay their bills, so how can I hope to get any level of traction I'd be satisfied with when this is and will always be just my side hustle? So I have no intention of stopping blogging or creating things, I just don't know if MRD2 will be a real book in the way I'd have wanted. If MRD1 ever reaches some relatively self-sustaining cult status where I don't have to be constantly answering the question "what is MRD?" to people, that is the most likely scenario under which I change my mind, but we'll see.

Anyway, that disappointing statement out of the way, here is the current state of the Nazarite Contracts. I hope to have 6-8 in total, but currently have 5.

Brief Descriptions 

1. Fast Lane Fintechnomancer: Fast-life corporate culture, intersection of finance and big data / big tech. People who kind of know they're making the world a worse place and may or may not be ok with it but work hard to not have to think about it and just be comfortable.
2. Psychonautical Sub-Mariner: Dirty but necessary work, work that deals with the consequences of others, marginalized peoples who are as a result more aware of social failings.
3. Streetlight Dadaist: Artists, neurodivergent people, others who don't fit neatly into society- who have "sold out" to a corporation.
4. Infrared Ranger: First responders and other kinds of emergency work, medical work, soldiers. People who are labeled "heroes" so that we can undervalue their lives. A play on the concept from Tokusatsu fiction of the leader in red e.g. Red Ranger of Power Rangers.
5. Smooth Operator of the Cyblessed: Service industry or people who have given a substantial portion of their time or identity to their career, which can include executives and entrepreneurs and middle managers. Cyborgs of a sort, giving up their bodies and minds to a higher class (the "Cyblessed") so they can appear more like them / conform to their world. People who are (or believe themselves to be) smarter than their bosses.

Cyberpunk CEO

Fast Lane Fintechnomancer

Flavor Text

The world is full of freaky frequencies but only some scry the spiking signals. You ride the heartbeat of society on a crash course for cardiac arrest, but the spectators and speculators will rave as you race right until the end.

Nazarite Vows

1. Once you had dreams, but now you know that dreams are just a pyramid scheme, and you will reach the top.
2. Accidents are inevitable when you move this quickly, but after so many Hit & Runs you can't stop now.
3. You're a true believer. It's easier that way. Never lose faith in the company, or yourself.
4. Moving this fast you risk outpacing your own predictions. Don't get too far ahead of yourself.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Give the Shamir a spiritual experience in contradiction to your understanding of the world.
2. Although your livelihood depends on it, reject the illusion of past and present, allow the Shamir to experience the moment.
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Nd6 (Intelligence), Pd6 (Corporate Savvy), -W (Uncritical of society)

Nazarite Features

1. Transcranial Tachyonic Stimulator: Wearable thiotimolinic time crystal technology like a futuristic EEG cap. When taking a risky action, you may evoke the consequence before the antecedent (but necessarily committing to it).
2. Zip Ribbon Regressor: You've spent so long collapsing the past to predict the future, motion lines course your movements. When investigating a new situation, you gain one profitable insight that would otherwise be impossible to have known.
3. Fast Lane Flow: When allowed to engage in a task without interruption, you enter a flow state, experiencing time as if everything besides yourself were in slow motion. Not quite superspeed, but the next best thing.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

Submarine Janitor

Psychonautical Sub-Mariner

Flavor Text

In the dark depths of the subconscious you scavenge misremembered treasures. The egotists profit while calling you dirty as they drift helplessly on surface thoughts. Rise slowly, the bubbles in your blood carry more than nitrogen.

Nazarite Vows

1. You reek of putrid deep subconscious. Even as the world recoils in your presence, do not let them tarnish your pride.
2. Buried so deep in the burdens of others, you risk forgetting yourself. Never lose sight of which way is up.
3. Among the ruins you have found a treasure, and you must cherish and protect it from a world that will never love it as much as you do.
4. They demand you work to exhaustion so as to never question why it is your burden to bear. You must remain awake and aware despite them.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Pass on your suffering to the Shamir, not out of malice, but because it must know what the world will do to it.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Wd6 (Aware of Social Failings), Nd6 (Physical Willpower), -P (Looked down on by society)

Nazarite Features

1. Ichor, Sweat, and Tears: The three humours of the subconscious made manifest. When you hurt yourself doing dirty work, noxious humours burst from the wound in sprays, splatters, and beams.
2. Sub-Atomic Treasure: Wrest the irradiated waste of secrets from the subconscious of another's mind in the form of a physical item- a treasure to wield and weaponize for the duration of the item's half-life (~1 hour).
3. WetOps: When engaging in dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unrewarding but necessary tasks, others are subconsciously compelled to ignore you, almost as though you're invisible (may require a WIS Save).
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

DADA Standup Comedian

Streetlight Dadaist

Flavor Text

Dereliction in duty is a matter of course for those so far off it. You shine on the margins of a dimly lit street, but in the moments between flickering lights you speak truth to power in a hoarse voice.

Nazarite Vows

1. It's surprising how quickly one can grow accustomed to a gilded cage. Always test the bars.
2. Despite your best efforts, you've failed to find the sublime in the subliminal, but don't stop trying.
3. You sacrificed another to get here, and now you're alone with the sharks. Don't let them smell blood.
4. They have misconstrued or perverted your art and you let them do it. So long as you remember the true meaning, nothing else matters.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Create a piece of art in expression of the Shamir, and let it be denigrated commercially.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Wd8 (Abstract and Critical Thinking), -P (Find social mores aversive)

Nazarite Features

1. Entropic Anti-Meme: Create a work of art with subtle profundity masked in absurdity or grotesqueness. The work will attract those of a like kind like a beacon, while being ignored by others, or induce discomfort from them if forced to confront it.
2. Detritus Dada Demon: Create a work of art from found objects, imbuing them with life to serve simple purposes while bristling those who interact with them.
3. Graffiti Gateway: Create a one-way entrance or hidden path to an otherwise unreachable or inaccessible place, so long as you know its location. Only operational while in your vicinity. If a foe attempts to use it, make a WIS Save to determine whether or not they succeed.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

Flamethrower Red Ranger

Infrared Ranger

Flavor Text

Heroes are, by definition, few and proud, for heroism can only be defined in contrast to the weak and meek; the cowardly and shameful. The paradox of a true hero is to be unrecognized as such until they are spent.

Nazarite Vows

1. You love when they call you a hero, even if they don't know your name. Sacrifice and sacrifice until they etch your name on a wall.
2. They convinced you the honor was worth the suffering. Don't let it be for nothing.
3. In a faraway place or a time long ago, something happened that changed you forever. The pain persists, but you must keep moving forward.
4. On cold and inhospitable nights, you resent the way they use you. All the same, you must continue fighting for them— you cannot afford to hate.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Cry for help, as honestly and pitifully as you can muster, so the Shamir experiences catharsis.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Nd6 (Take Action)

Nazarite Features

1. Eternal Flamethrower: An inextinguishable all-purpose tool that only a True Hero may wield, proportional to their conviction. It brings light, combustion, warmth, sterilization, and controlling of the wilds, but also burning, blinding, suffocation, and pain.
2. Infrared Immolation: Find power in your inner fire, even as it consumes you. An infrared aura surrounds you, allowing you to perform superhuman physical feats or feats of will (NAT), at the cost of Nd6 Damage to yourself.
3. Crisis Captain: Once per Conflict, if any Ability Score dips below half, gain 3 Armor for that Ability and take a bonus action of any kind immediately afterwards. All teammates gain 1 Armor for that Ability and one teammate chosen by the Infrared Ranger may take one non-offensive bonus action.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

Psychedelic Cyborg (I really liked all of these in different ways and couldn't pick just one)

Smooth Operator of the Cyblessed

Flavor Text

For each piece of yourself sacrificed in service, you are empowered by the whole (and the whole is empowered by you). In honor of your service, you become more like those above, and soon you will be indistinguishable from them.

Nazarite Vows

1. Blinded by the bright lights and shining chrome, you must nonetheless chase the spotlight, or else be forgotten in their shadows.
2. You believe you've given you're all, but all you've got is not enough. Discover something new in yourself.
3. Whether in pursuit of greatness or just to make it to tomorrow, you must bow to those below you, and do so with a smile.
4. A compromise is a risky and painful investment, but you must keep working deals if you ever hope to come out on top.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Reveal to the Shamir a part of yourself that disgusts you.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Pd8 (Play the Game), -N (Give up a part of oneself to do it)

Nazarite Features

1. The Magic Word: Your primary Cyblessed Enhancement is imbued with a Word, empowering you to do something superhuman in place of that bodypart, and also can be used as a Golem Gear Mod (not counting against total inventory, can't be permanently destroyed). Once the Word is chosen, it can't be changed under normal circumstances.
2. Contractual Binding: When arbitrating to avoid Conflict or at the onset of PRO Conflict, you may make a written contract. The more specific the contract, the more likely it is to end the Conflict favorably. If the contract cannot be kept as written, words may be removed to broaden its scope, but there will be consequences.
3. Smile on a Razor's Edge: Your uncanny Cyblessed smile pacifies the foolish and threatens the wise. 2 PRO Armor and you may nullify one aggressor for 1d4 turns, if their aggression towards you is emotional in nature. Any actions taken against a nullified aggressor re-aggravates them.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge