Buddhist, Taoist, and Chinese Mythology References for Maximum Recursion Depth

One concern I've had with writing Maximum Recursion Depth is that while it utilizes elements from Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese mythology, I am not an expert on these subjects, nor do they reflect my personal lived experience per se; rather, what I've tried to communicate, is that within the game, these ideas have been filtered through my actual personal, lived experience. I've gone out of my way, such as in my interview at The Hardboiled GMShoe's Office, to make this point, and to highlight elements of the setting that are separate from these influences (such as the NY Factions and Weirder Factions blog posts).

That being said, I think it would be disingenuous to ignore these connections altogether. So I want to talk about some of the ideas from Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese mythology that influence the setting, why I chose to use certain terms but not others, how I'm interpreting those ideas, etc. Again, I want to reiterate, I am not a scholar on these topics, they are not my lived experience, this is not intended as a thorough, scholarly reference; these are just my personal interpretations. This is also a non-exhaustive list. I may add to it or edit it. I will almost certainly forget stuff. There are things I reference here that I have little more to say about at the moment besides "I read this, it probably influenced me, but I don't remember the particulars". Also, the items in this list are in no particular order. There are also plenty of other books of science and philosophy that have influenced me, but here I'm focusing specifically on Buddhism and Taoism.

First I'll do a bibliography, then I'll do an index of concepts.

"Bibliography"

Journey to the West

It's hard for me to describe exactly why, but I've always been fascinated by this story. I guess in part because of how ubiquitous it is, without many Americans necessarily realizing it. It heavily influenced the early Dragonball stories, and by extension many anime and videogame characters. It's been an influence throughout Chinese fiction. There's something very archetypal about it. It's got the kind of gonzo, borderline science-fantasy stuff that I love about Chinese mythology, although it's technically fiction and not mythology. You've got gods and devils with crazy transformations and superpowers, magic weapons, martial techniques, magic sutras, interesting and morally ambiguous characters; it's good stuff. It also deals with Buddhist themes and is a satire for its era. 

If I'm being honest, I only ever read the first volume of the four-volume translation, and that must have been 15 years ago at this point. The first volume is mostly a self-contained story, basically Sun Wukong's origin story, and near the end, it becomes the prologue for the true journey. I regret not reading the full thing, but if I'm being honest, it's... tough. The problem is that the book really leans in HARD on satire of specific things that I just have no frame of reference for; either linguistically, culturally, or temporally. I can respect in particular how it critiques the interplay between Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism in China. I think that's the thing that I found most interesting, aside from the gonzo fantasy of it all. While it's unlikely that I'll ever read the full thing, I could see myself one day reading The Monkey and the Monk, an abridged version of the story by the same translator. Generally, I hate to lose that context, but frankly, the context was mostly lost on me anyway, so if it's between never reading it, or reading the abridged version, I think that's what I'll have to do.

Dhammapada

One thing that made getting into Buddhism a little trickier for me than, say, Taoism, is that there are many different branches, and even within any given branch, there is not necessarily one single book to turn to, like Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. While I'd read various sutras and scholarly articles and such on Buddhism, I only just recently read The Dhammapada. What's nice is that this version I linked in particular provides a lot of context for the book, why certain translation choices were made or not made, differences between versions of The Dhammapada, differences between different versions of Buddhism, etc. It felt like a good introduction, although I can't speak to that authoritatively. My understanding is that The Dhammapada is a collection of sayings from Siddhartha Gautama, the original Buddha, and so I guess this is the closest thing to a Source of Truth.

I was worried going into this book, that I would come to realize that a lot of my conceptions of Buddhism were wrong, or that I had fundamentally misrepresented some facets. Fortunately for me, I don't think that is the case. Like many theological or philosophical texts, there's a lot of room for interpretation. I don't necessarily strictly agree with everything. There's definitely a bit of self-confirmation; I'm reading into it a particular interpretation based on what I want to believe. I'll go more into the particular ideas in the concepts index, although a lot of it is just taking stuff from the index in this book.

In brief, one thing that I like about Buddhism is that it's actually kind of nihilist, more in an abstract sense than in the very loaded, specific sense in western philosophy which is its own can of worms. I think a lot of Americans have this very New Age-y, whitewashed idea of it, and it certainly can be interpreted that way to some extent, but actually, a big premise of Buddhism is that the material world is this entropic, dysfunctional system, and true happiness comes only from breaking free of this broken system.

The Awakening of Faith: The Classic Exposition of Mahayana Buddhism

As I said before, it's tough picking out the best primary sources for Buddhism. I was led to believe this book is a good primary source for Mahayana Buddhism, one of the main branches of Buddhism, which was the version that initially spread in East Asia. Given my prior affinity for Taoism, and my appreciation of the satire and interplay of these ideas in Journey to the West, I was more so inspired by Buddhism within the context of China specifically, so I wanted to educate myself at least somewhat on that level in addition to primary teachings from Siddhartha Gautama. 

I'm still reading this book, but so far I'm enjoying it. As with the translation of The Dhammapada above, this one includes much-appreciated context. I already get the sense that Mahayana Buddhism leans just a bit more into the nihilist or almost absurdist, kind of funny aspects of Buddhism that I like. I think I actually laughed a few times while reading this (to be clear, in a good way). If I'm being honest, I could not off-hand articulate the specific differences between original Buddhism and Mahayana or other branches, that's just a level of minutia that I struggle to care about frankly. I'm just concerned with the ideas, I don't care what lines other people draw so much, except to the extent that I genuinely don't want to overstep or offend, which I realize sounds like a contradiction, but so it goes...

Tao Te Ching

Up until maybe the last few years, I would have considered myself more so a Taoist than a Buddhist (I don't know if I'd really consider myself either, but at least on some level). I had read the Tao Te Ching when I was younger, at a really pivotal time when I was going through some things. I've reread it several times since, but even that has been a while, so it's hard for me to articulate many particulars, although I'll try to do so in the concepts index. I've read several translations, and there are some really bad ones. Unfortunately, I don't remember off hand which translation I've read that I most prefer, but I think I've read this one before and thought it was good.

Chuang Tzu

This is another Taoist book. I read this several years after the Tao Te Ching, while I was going through another rough time. I only read it the one time, and while it certainly influenced me on some level, I really can't speak to the particulars at all anymore, the influence is sadly no longer a conscious one. I'll have to reread it someday. Penguin Classics is generally trustworthy in my opinion, as far as translations go.

Vinegar Tasters

This allegory holds a special place in my heart for some reason that I can't totally articulate. I think it just does a really good job of encapsulating the relationship between Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. You have Siddhartha Gautama (Buddhism), Lao Tzu (Taoism), and Confucius (Confucianism) each sipping from a pot of vinegar. Buddha says it's sour, it's bad, we need to start over or move on. Confucius says it's bitter, but can be refined, or sweetened, or fixed in some way. Lao Tzu says: guys it's vinegar, it is what it is. Back when I was more so a Taoist I preferred Lao Tzu's take, and to some extent I still do, but I do genuinely think all three are interesting perspectives. There are too many things about Confucianism, even from my minimal understanding, that I don't like, which is why I haven't read as much into it, but in a very abstract sense, the idea of being systematic, one could extend that to just saying, be scientific. I also like how the bureaucratic aspects of Confucianism influence Chinese Buddhism and Chinese mythology.

Several books on the "to read" list

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: First Complete Translation I was not originally interested in this, but I had read incidentally that apparently "Book of the Dead" is actually a pretty gross mistranslation, one that's been kept mainly just because it's taken on its own cultural significance, but actually it's more so a book about Buddhism metaphysics in a more philosophical sense, which interests me much more so.

The Way of the Bodhisattva Another book on Tibetan Buddhism. Several of these books were put on my radar from a list of suggested readings to get started on Buddhism, I no longer remember offhand where I found that list.

In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon (The Teachings of the Buddha) Another book of teachings by Siddhartha Gautama. I know The Dhammapada translator provided context on that vs. Pali Canon vs. other things, but again, the particulars just slip through my mind, but my understanding is that these are different.

Concepts

Unlike the "bibliography", I'm not providing specific links here, just wiki it. For several of these, I focus as much on how it relates to MRD as the concept per se. In many cases, I use more generic terminology in MRD, in part because I wanted to avoid terminology overload, and in part because I wanted to avoid preconceived notions or aesthetics. While someone certainly could use MRD to tell a story more specifically rooted in Buddhist and Chinese mythology, I don't want the terminology itself to impress too deeply on GMs and players at the expense of a broader world.

Karma

Karma is a super-loaded term at this point because so many people have this overly simplistic, New Age-y understanding of what it means, and also because it is genuinely a complicated and multifaceted idea that gets interpreted in different ways within the broader scope of Buddhism. Roughly, it is the consequences of one's actions, but whereas most people equate that to "good actions -> good consequences / bad actions -> bad consequences", my take on it, and the take I use within the game, is that Karma is like Mass. It's the quantity of Material "stuff" you've integrated within you. Perhaps Weight would be a better analogy, since it's also the thing pulling you down, deeper into the Material World's "Gravity". And if the Material World is this entropic, corrupted place, then attachment to it is also this corrupting force. Despite how loaded this term is, and I know this will inevitably confuse some people and become a barrier to entry, I do think it is important to use this one word. It's central to all the other ideas in my opinion, and it's at least somewhat familiar, even if I'm using it in a way that's different than many people may be familiar with.

Dharma

This broadly corresponds to both the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (it's a translation thing, but this is where The Dhammapada gets its name), but also to the phenomenology of Buddhism (although Dharma also exists in Hinduism and Jainism). It seems so broad in its scope, that at least to me, I don't know how useful of a term it is unless you already have sufficient knowledge of Buddhism which I myself lack, so I didn't see the point in including it in the game, but I thought it must at least be acknowledged here.

Samsara

The cycle of death and rebirth, of reincarnation. This is basically the gameplay loop of Karmic Attachment and Reincarnation within the context of MRD. It's a super important concept in Buddhism, and one of the most fascinating in my opinion, and along with Karma I think is one of the most all-encapsulating. However, I decided that within MRD it would probably be easier to just call it the Karmic Cycle since that's effectively what it is, or at least what it is within MRD, and then it's one less term to have to remember while gaming.

Preta

Also translated as Hungry Ghosts, particularly in Chinese mythology. These are the basis for the concept of Poltergeists in MRD. I take a very loose definition of the term, but basically, they're "souls" (in quotes for reasons) that haven't been reincarnated and that have unresolved Karma. The idea that they're "hungry", to me connects to the idea of Attachment, and that's definitely not an accident. By my interpretation, although by no means canon, it's less about punishment for "bad Karma", or at least not entirely. It's a natural consequence of the system of the Karmic cycle / Samsara, independent of right or wrong. I chose the term Poltergeist over Ghost because... in part because I associated Poltergeist more so with the idea of unresolved issues than Ghost, which I see as maybe too generic, but also, it just had a good ring to it. Preta does as well, but then, that's another term gamers would have to remember.

Sankhara

Sometimes translated as Formations, or Conditioned Things. In some ways, this is like the mechanism of what I call Karmic Attachments in MRD. Again, I didn't want to get bogged down in the terminology, especially since I really don't know enough about it and it probably comes with a lot of baggage that people who know more about this stuff than me would inadvertently bring with them. The cognitive neuroscientist in me and the data engineer in me both find this fascinating for thinking about subjectivity, perceptions, and mental models, but I can't really speak to this too authoritatively.

The Three Marks of Existence

Impermanence (anicca), No-self (anatta), Suffering (duhka).

Impermanence I think gets back to that idea I've said about Buddhism being entropic, that everything we construct, literally, mentally, metaphorically, eventually breaks down into chaos.

No-Self I struggle with a bit. On the one hand, and again speaking somewhat as someone who used to study cognitive neuroscience, I agree with the idea that the Self is an illusion; just a useful construct, or an epiphenomenon of our biology. Anecdotally, I've struggled with how to reconcile No-Self with Samsara / the cycle of reincarnation (that's why I put "soul" in quotes in the Preta section), and I get the impression other people struggle with this as well. I think within Buddhism, it doesn't mean that there is no afterlife or reincarnation, but rather that even that metaphysical... "soul", for lack of a better term, is not a true Self, but is also malleable and impermanent. I know that at various points I've had a stronger grasp of this concept, but this is still the one I struggle with the most in terms of its greater implications in Buddhism, even if, as I said, there are other ways in which this makes very intuitive sense to me outside of Buddhism per se.

Finally, Suffering. As I understand it, this Suffering, or perhaps it's argued the root of all suffering, is the discrepancy between how we innately Condition Things (Sankhara) in a world that is by its nature entropic (Impermanence/anicca). This is again where my idea of Karma comes into play in MRD- whatever you're trying to accomplish, whatever game you're playing, it's a losing game; The Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing.

Diyu

Hell in Chinese Buddhism, combining elements of Taoism, Confucianism, and traditional Chinese mythology, with the original Buddhist concept of hell called Naraka. Most accounts of Diyu I've read do put a finite number on it, but that number varies, and I liked the idea of making them Numberless. I like how in Chinese Buddhism, perhaps because of Confucianism, there is this very bureaucratic, ordered sense of the metaphysical world. It also lends itself well to satirization, as is done in Journey to the West. Importantly, the idea of the metaphysical worlds; Diyu and Tian (Heaven), as being bureaucracies, is not meant in the more colloquial/pejorative sense that one might be inclined to assume, although again, the satire leans into this, rightfully so. To me, it's more a matter of thinking about things systemically. So The Numberless Courts of Hell are an example of rigid, dysfunctional bureaucracy; bureaucracy for its own sake. The Celestial Bureaucracy, at least prior to the ascension of Sun Wukong (The Monkey King), is the idea of a functional, adaptable system- the ideal form of a system. 

Admittedly, this is where I take a very different interpretation from Journey to the West, where in that case, if anything The Celestial Bureaucracy was already being represented as fallible (although not necessarily entirely dysfunctional), and Sun Wukong, though still ultimately more flawed, was in some ways provoked by the system itself. I'm still undecided, if I'm being honest, on what stance I want to take on Sun Wukong and The Celestial Bureaucracy exactly. I am pro-systems thinking, but that is very different than being pro-bureaucracies as they exist in practice. It's like the difference between being a critical thinker or scientist, vs. believing in "law and order".

Tao

Pronounced more like Dao, translates roughly as The Way. While it's obviously more so relevant to Taoism, as I've said before, I was actually originally more interested in Taoism than Buddhism, and anyway it's the historical interplay of those two along with Confucianism, that has inspired MRD more so than Buddhism or Taoism per se. It's been too long since I've read the Tao Te Ching (pronounced more like Dao De Jing, as I understand it) to fully articulate all the particulars of it, but I love the concept of Tao. I get the impression that a lot of western thinkers struggle with it, more so than Buddhism which can at least kind of be interpreted in a way more consistent with western thinking. I mean, I kind of think the East/West dichotomy gets overstated anyway, but here I do think it matters.

So as I said with Vinegar Tasters, there's a version of Tao that's more about "the balance of nature / the way of things" that maybe works in a new age-y way, and I do enjoy that side of it. But there's also this side of the Tao that's about reconciling seemingly contradictory concepts, of non-binary logic, of deconstructing conscious thought, of Wei Wu Wei (action through inaction). Within MRD, I think this is maybe the answer to the inevitable question: If the only way to win is to stop playing, why play at all? While ultimately you need to divest your Karma and detach from the Karmic Cycle, because all exertion is Impermanent and attachment is Suffering and true Awakening comes from the acknowledgment of No-Self, there are also real problems in the world that affect people, and even though philosophically we can acknowledge the bigger picture, there's a more literal kind of suffering that it would be nice if we could get rid of in the meantime. From a software engineer perspective, it's sort of to me like how you have to reconcile on the one hand that there are times you need to refactor your codebase, but that takes a lot of time and effort, and in the meantime, you need to maintain and extend the current codebase, and maintaining this balance requires a degree of compartmentalization, and an ability to enter a Flow State. It's a bit more nuanced I think, than a lot of western thought, and requires one to acknowledge different scopes of a problem and how they interrelate and to not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Maximum Recursion Depth: Weirder Factions

Weirder Factions

This is the second post on Factions in Maximum Recursion Depth, the first focusing on Factions in New York.

There are still more factions I haven't written about than in this or the prior post, either because I haven't fully developed them yet, or because they blur the lines between Weird and "Realistic". There are also some NPCs I haven't included in either of these posts, either because they don't fit neatly into these factions (such as Doctor Lovesmenot), or because they are cool in a gameable sense, but aren't necessarily "notable" NPCs for the faction- more like videogame minibosses (for instance, Redlight and Greenlight). I'll try to write another post at some point for the stuff that didn't make it into these first two.

On top of that, none of these really formalize in any way The Celestial Bureaucracy, nor The Numberless Courts of Hell, which I realize may confuse or annoy some. I'm intentionally avoiding formalizing those factions, honestly, for several reasons, but when I do decide to take that plunge, if I decide to do so, I may do a post on that as well.

The Polterzeitgeist

Human consciousness is not built to sustain extended periods of immateriality, and especially not the inevitable friction of being an immaterial being in the material world. As such, rogue poltergeists, those who for whatever reason linger in the material world rather than serving time in one of the Numberless Courts of Hell to be reincarnated, are in a vulnerable position. Rogue poltergeists are, in the first place, more likely to have accrued a lot of Karma in their lives, and this Karma is paradoxically both what sustains them, and, in a downward spiraling feedback loop, what destroys them. In the end, most rogue poltergeists, if not returned to a Court of Hell or reincarnated, go insane, and become something more like a Nature Spirit. However, a rare few do manage to find a balance, becoming something no longer quite human, but also not quite a Nature Spirit. These are the Polterzeitgeist.

The Polterzeitgeist is led informally by “The Council of Jacks”, although it is more like a living culture, or a people defined by their oppression, than it is a movement per se. Their only uniting goal is their desire to be allowed to continue to exist in the material world, without being reincarnated. Beyond that, the Jacks each have their own activities and their own personal agendas. They see their relationship more as siblings than as political peers.

Notable NPCs:

Rat Jack: Humanoid rat in appearance and in character. He'll turn on anyone if it suits his interests, but at least he is reliable in his self-interest. He closely associates with Chester, a Nature Spirit and drug dealer, often managing certain logistics of the drug trade. Nonetheless, he is generally not a malicious person, and can actually be quite sentimental, even if it doesn't permeate through his actions.

Goblin Jack: Short, awkward, rugged, mangy looking creature. The type who looks pathetic at a distance, until you realize he's not as scrawny as he looks- it's just lean muscle as tight as steel, with a square jaw, and those teeth do look sharp... An idealist at heart, but also angry, and sadistic, and on the verge of being consumed by his Karma and becoming an Ashura. In his most recent past life, he was raised as part of an organization known as The Doppler Potential alongside Doctor Lovesmenot, who he sees as like a sibling.

Jungle Jack  (In development)

Honeybee Jack (In development; may replace with an ant-themed Jack)

Dragon Jack (In development)

Potentially others...

The Doppler Potential

A distributed intelligence, a living system birthed as an emergent property of the United States government. Its modern name is derived from a combination of the Doppler Effect and an Action Potential in the brain, and as a reference to the sound of a speeding police siren passing one by. The collective actions of humanity can be thought of as a connectionist neural network and by extension, a wave function, where individual humans are to civilizations as neurons are to the brain. This model had been converging nonlinearly towards the manifestation of a superorganism for some time; the crests of the wave function interfacing with the nodes of the network at an increasing rate. With the formation of the United States Government, the frequency of the feedback between the superorganism and humanity reached a critical mass, like post-synaptic potentials in the brain summating into an action potential, setting off a cascade response wherein the superorganism became self-aware, in some sense, if not necessarily as humans think of self-awareness.

The Doppler Potential exists as a living idea, manifesting in jingoism, religious-like reverence towards historical American figures and artifacts, cultural mores, institutions, and the systems behind them. It operates as a meta-governmental, multi-body organization interfacing with all aspects of the United States government.

Through various aristocratic families, housing projects, government orphanages, and similar means, The Doppler Potential has engineered, mostly behaviorally but more recently also technologically and genetically, human agents, corporations, and artificial intelligences, which serve either directly for The Doppler Potential, or completely unknowingly serve its will across the country and even the world.

The Doppler Potential has reached god-like status, although it is formally recognized by the Celestial Bureaucracy and the Numberless Courts of Hell as an incorporated human. It is karmic, although as a superorganism, and a young one at that, it does not necessarily interact with the karmic cycle in quite the same way as normal humans.

While the results of the Doppler Potential’s will may be interpreted as negative, or outright evil, by many humans, it does not see its actions as evil any more than a human would think themselves evil for killing brain cells on a night out drinking. Nonetheless, it’s utilitarian (if we’re being generous), if not outright Machiavellian treatment of humanity, is perhaps net-negative from the perspective of individuals. Even so, it is neither the total cause of nor total solution to all of humanity's problems, and in fact, could potentially be leveraged towards its salvation, if only humanity could understand it and come to terms with it.

The Doppler Potential makes no effort to hide its existence, but in most cases, it is simply too complex, and for many humans too existentially and epistemologically challenging, to even acknowledge, and therefore it is able to operate in plain sight, despite not being recognized in the general public consciousness.

As the United States has descended towards militarism and fascism, so too has the Doppler Potential become increasingly violent and hostile towards its perceived opposition, although its motives are often inscrutable.

It is not necessarily the only of its kind.

Notable NPCs:

Soft Mother: A cartoon humanoid in the form of a voluptuous woman, like a cross between Jessica Rabbit and Betty Boop. She serves as the mouth of The Doppler Potential; her words comforting but without substance.

Wire Mother: A putrid, zombie-like humanoid, naked, seeping noxious milky fluids, held together by a barbwire exoskeleton. She serves as the gut of The Doppler Potential; impossibly disgusting, yet plays a crucial role in its ability to gain sustenance (not so crucial that she cannot be replaced, of course).

Detective Dick ("Fuck Ya") Smashburn: A short, bald, mustachioed, middle-aged, no-nonsense cop who plays by his own rules (or so he thinks), and dreams of “the old days”. He is not aware that he is part of the Doppler Potential, but his actions serve its greater and often arcane purposes.

Maximum Recursion Depth: New York Factions

Minwha of Tiger and Magpie. Relevant to one of the factions, inspired by my discussion with Gearoong

Unlike most of my Weird & Wonderful Table-style posts, I want to break down in greater detail my thought process for these factions, and my approach to factions in MRD more generally (don't worry, I'm only writing a few anyway!). This is because MRD is meant to take place in a world that is mostly like the world as we knew it circa 2019, and while these factions are all fictional, they tie into real-world elements (to varying degrees), and so I want to make sure people understand my intentions.

I love New York City. I've wanted to live here for many years, and despite Covid, I am glad to have been here for nearly two years so far (holy crap!). A lot of life goals have been accomplished here, it's been fulfilling in ways that go beyond the scope of this post. Normally, I prefer to play in entirely Weird, unconstrained settings. But in mid-pandemic world, I am finding it cathartic and inspiring to play my campaign in New York City, a version that simultaneously reflects the real place that I love, but tints it with the magical Weirdness that reflects something more authentic to how I actually feel when I walk the streets of New York than the objective reality. There are so many cultures and subcultures either unique to New York or born here; not hiding per se, but drowned out from the sheer mainstream noise. There is a reason why so many stories of Magical Realism are set in New York and other cities- because that magic truly does exist, in a fashion. A MRD campaign does not have to be set in New York City, but my current campaign is set here, and given how much this setting is an expression of my personal beliefs, sensibilities, and feelings, it seems fitting to focus on New York for this setting, at least for now.

New York is diverse, and Weird, in all the best ways. There are cultures from around the world, and those cultures intermix and transform and become something unique unto themselves. It's not a melting pot- a watered-down, dumbed-down, flavorless homogeny of cultures, nor, and I can't stress this enough, is it a "wonderland", a fetishism of the "exotic" and "other", that exists for the amusement of a white American like myself. The factions in MRD are meant to reflect the diversity of New York, in all senses of the word, to play into some of the themes and tropes of New York's history and media representations such as crime dramas, pulp adventures, noir, superhero stories, and so on, to reflect various aspects of the real world as it exists today, and to express the almost magical realism I describe above, but also to express that these cultures don't exist in a vacuum. There is no one Italian Mafia or Yakuza in this setting- it isn't the Black gang in one neighborhood and the Mexican gang in another. There's the faction of Black Twitter - Seneca Village activists - Mindan Korean Japanese Americans, and another faction of TikTok Gamergate White Nationalists - outcast Deseret Extremists - Uruguayan American Conservatives. It's a mix of things that do exist (or a version of them), and things that don't exist but one could imagine existing- that seem strange but have an internal logic to them which is as much due to chance as anything else. They are decidedly fictional but demonstrate how Weird reality and culture can actually be. 

But, again, I'm a white American, so I want to be very careful about appropriation, about misrepresenting real cultures, or being insensitive in any way. So I hope the above sufficiently explains my thought process, I hope it succeeds at expressing the magical realism I am describing, and I hope it does so in a way that is generally reasonable and decent from a liberal perspective.

Also WARNING there are some heavy topics explored in these factions, especially in the links, so trigger warning on that. I personally want MRD to be more of an escapist experience, but also, it is core to the idea of MRD that we have to face the bad things- both in ourselves and in the world. So these factions do reflect that, to some extent, but that doesn't mean that these issues have to be at the core of a MRD campaign.

In regards to the Kickstarter: I plan to do a short series of Faction posts for MRD, this being the first. I don't know how much of this will actually wind up in the book, but much of this comes from developments within my MRD campaigns / playtests. I hope to weave some of these NPCs and concepts into the module for the first issue in some implied fashion, but I don't think these explicit writeups will make it into the first issue. If people appreciate these Faction writeups, cleaning them up and commissioning art for them would be something I would potentially like to do for a subsequent issue of the MRD "Zine".

Seneca Village Collective

This faction began as a Black Twitter movement that formed after an act of police brutality against an African American in Central Park went viral, followed by the mainstream awareness of the historical Seneca Village. A Bronx-based band known as the K-Pop Orchestra, known for their jazz covers of K-Pop music, contributed to the popularity of this movement. The K-Pop Orchestra also shed light on the racism of Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and the ways in which the Korean Japanese experience relates to that of the African American experience, which then led to the cross-cultural Seneca Village Collective as it exists today. While the Collective is both intranational and international, The Bronx and K-Town in New York are generally seen as the focal places of the Collective.

While the Collective mostly focuses on awareness campaigns and charity drives, the vigilante Recurser Seneca Tiger, most well known for fighting against police brutality and supporting Black and other minority communities in the city, has spearheaded a more active group within the Collective. While Seneca Tiger generally promotes social activism and volunteer work over reactionary efforts and violence, she states in no uncertain terms that America requires radical change and that radical change may require radical action. Seneca Tiger's true identity is unknown. It has been speculated that the Tiger part of her vigilante identity is a subversion of the Tiger in Korean folklore as a symbol of the historical Korean ruling class, leading some to believe she is of Korean or Korean Japanese descent. Another theory is that she is actually an African American drag queen who performs at the Dromedary Urban Tiki Bar.

Notable NPCs

Seneca Tiger: Rogue vigilante who advocates against, and directly subverts, police brutality, particularly towards minority communities. The Seneca Collective does not acknowledge her as part of the organization for legal reasons, but it is generally understood that she leads the extra-legal operations of the Collective. Her vigilante costume is a form-fitting, full-body leather suit, in the general appearance of a tiger. The costume is colorful and flamboyant and has large, asymmetrical eyes and a stretched smile, like a tiger minwha. It is unknown what, if any powers she has, but she is nonetheless formidable.

Pro-Fane: Popular African American drag queen, primarily located in Bushwick. Her style is like if a Japanese horror girl became a ganguro TikTok influencer. While not technically part of Seneca Collective leadership, she serves as one of several public faces of the group and is deeply involved, to the point that some even believe she is secretly Seneca Tiger. Moon Marine is in a feud with Pro-Fane and attempting to dox her as Seneca Tiger, in retaliation for believing Pro-Fane responsible for "The Platypussy Leak".

Rick Barrett: The founder of the K-Pop Orchestra and also the Seneca Collective. An intelligent, articulate, thoughtful person, passionate, and excellent performer. Very much a renaissance man for the 21st century. Some have accused him of using the Seneca Collective as a means to promote his formerly obscure K-Pop Orchestra, but those who know him understand that this is not true, or at least not so simply.

Baek Yesu: K-Pop star of Korean Japanese descent, who repatriated to South Korea. His music is known for being especially political, dealing with issues of racism towards Korean Japanese, and more recently collaborating with the K-Pop Orchestra performing about racism towards African Americans. He is considered one of the co-leaders of the Seneca Collective, alongside Rick Barrett, and has been spending more time in New York.

Deseret Avengers

The name is somewhat of a misnomer. The movement started as an online White Nationalist hate group proclaiming to be the anti-Zion, a play on the racist and misogynist beliefs present in the redpill/blackpill movements and a reference to the film The Matrix and the Marvel superhero group The Avengers. However, ironically, a counterculture of punk/skinhead Mormons in the Slavic/Germanic European country Ruritania, and conservative Mormons of Uruguayan descent, identified with the movement, in some cases due to a misunderstanding of its roots. As a result, the Deseret Avengers are decentralized and lack any singular goal or leadership. While online they are primarily young male gamers, their New York presence has been more so driven by upwardly mobile Uruguayan immigrants, and separately the Ruritanian immigrant community.

The Uruguayan faction holds up Mateo Silva, an executive of a financial firm with ties to the White Party in Uruguay, as their champion. While he is not believed to be a member of the Deseret Avengers per se, some internet conspiracy theorists believe he has been sending them coded messages in various televised appearances.

The online (and to a lesser extent, Ruritanian) faction has rallied behind Moon Marine, a vigilante Recurser, TikTok and Instagram Influencer, and self-proclaimed anti-feminist gamer-girl. Besides promoting her brand and "recking the libs", it's unclear what, if any, broader agenda she has. She has done actual good as a vigilante, and many of her fans are entirely unaware of her political affiliation, which has been carefully manicured to attract vulnerable individuals who may be influenced by the online conspiracy/hate groups associated with the Deseret Avengers (or in some cases, genuine Mormon missionaries who are themselves unaware of the full breadth of the hate group, but who generally support Conservative values).

Notable NPCs

Moon Marine: Famous superhero who got her start as a viral TikTok star. Despite having marketed herself towards kids, preteens, and teens, some have criticized the not so subtle degree to which she's leveraged sexuality towards her success (made doubly complicated by the fact that her age is not known, as she keeps a secret identity). She has also been criticized on many occasions for casual racism and promoting traditional gender roles, and while her marketing team has largely kept it undercover, she is known to associate with the Deseret Avengers online. Nonetheless, she has saved NYC several times, and she has done advocacy work as a role model for young women. Her costume is like a blue US Marine dress uniform with a platypus theme, such as the bill on her hat.

Mateo Silva: Uruguayan immigrant, ardent Republican, dedicated member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints,  and classic American success story. Despite celebrating himself as American, he has made a point of also advocating for Uruguayan culture and making it known that Uruguay is a high-income and democratic nation, while also condemning (and inadvertently promoting) its social progressivism. Despite his political associations, he is sometimes considered a proponent of Latin American diversity and awareness. Nonetheless, he is also criticized for his religious extremism, as well as his exploitative business practices. He does not directly associate with the Deseret Avengers, but many Mormon Uruguayans identify him as such.

Clara Cocksure: NYPD Detective who is paradoxically a cussing, no-nonsense hardass, and also a wait-until-marriage conservative Christian. After a recent incident of police brutality, it was discovered that she publicly associates with the Deseret Avengers on social media.

Alexei Strauss: Ruritanian immigrant from Queens who committed a mass murder-suicide at his high school. An investigation uncovered that he was deeply embedded in the Deseret Avengers online community under the pseudonym XP, and had expressed extremely dark and hateful sentiments. His surviving classmates and teachers claim that he was socially awkward, bullied, and struggling in school. His Numberless Courts of Hell case record has gone missing and he is classified as a rogue poltergeist. As such, he has become the center of many extremist conspiracy theories within the Deseret Avengers.

Weird & Wonderful Survey (post-MRD Kickstarter!)

The Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter has been funded! As I neared the launch, I was utterly convinced that it would completely bomb, so to have actually succeeded is just immensely validating and exciting and I thank everyone who contributed, either directly by backing the project, or providing advice, or encouragement, or spreading the word. Thank you :)! Even when I started this blog in 2018, on some level I had wanted to eventually publish something relatively big, and it's crazy to see this all finally happening. I mean, I had produced Pixels & Platforms and the MRD Ashcan Edition, but this is on another level!

With that said, I'm wondering what to do now with the blog. I'm definitely not going to stop blogging, but I do think I'll need to slow down a bit, so I can focus more time on all of the logistics, development, and playtesting for MRD. Besides slowing down, I need to think about my intentions for the blog. Do I want to spend the better part of the development cycle writing about MRD? Writing things like play reports, or supplementary content that won't necessarily make it into the book but might go into future books, or be useful extra content? Or, would it be better to use the blog as a creative outlet for things other than MRD? It may be good for me to allow myself to create stuff that is not just MRD, so I don't get stuck. But, sometimes there are going to be tough things I'm just going to have to work through, and writing other stuff might just be a distraction. Obviously, the two don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I do need to be thinking about things.

Below is a google forms survey, but if it looks a little funky embedded in blogger, you can also follow this link.

Maximum Recursion Depth: One More Week for Kickstarter! (and unrelated info about COVID-19 and vaccines)

 The Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter is in its final week! The campaign has been wildly successful, or at least has far exceeded my expectations, which is very exciting and encouraging. It's currently >200% funded, and all stretch goals have been met! While I don't at this time intend to add more stretch goals unless it makes significantly more money in its final week, additional funds will still help me better understand the market for content like this, and will provide me greater flexibility and potentially more content for this book, if not as a stretch goal per se. As-is, it is looking like the book will still cost me some amount of money out of pocket, which is totally ok, I was prepared to spend potentially much more out of pocket and that would have been without even the stretch goals, but this is just to say, additional backing would certainly still be appreciated. It would be very cool to get >100 backers!

Once the funding period wraps up, I will outline both to my backers and on the blog what my plans are for maintaining both projects. I realize it's been a while since I've posted anything besides updates on the MRD Kickstarter, but I hope to change that soon. I imagine I'll have to slow down the frequency of non MRD-related posts or refocus the blog for a while in some other ways, but hopefully, I will be able to make both work.

On a totally unrelated note, a good friend of mine from grad school, who is nearly finished with his PhD in cognitive neuroimmunology and, if I'm remembering correctly, has two Masters degrees, one in behavioral neuroscience and the other in clinical psychology, has just started a youtube channel, Live Life in Flux. In his first video, COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Explained, he does exactly that. As someone who is generally skeptical of a lot of pop-sci / science communication work, I have to say, I think he really finds a good balance between presenting the real science, coherently, without dumbing it down or condescending, nor misrepresenting it. It is well-produced, interesting, and has a calming, ASMR or meditative quality to it, and I would encourage you all to give it a look, follow his channel, and follow him on twitter @fluxinflux. Below is a picture of him, because I think it says at least a little something about how awesome he is:

Maximum Recursion Depth: All Kickstarter Stretch Goals Reached!

The third and final stretch goal for the Maximum Recursion Depth Kickstarter has been reached! This means Scrap Princess will produce two pieces of art and FM Geist will produce a Poltergeist Form. At this time, I don't intend to add additional stretch goals. Instead, any additional value will go towards the cost of the game. That being said, if any unique opportunities present themselves, or if the Kickstarter manages to gain significantly more backing by the end of the funding period, I may consider additional stretch goals.

I realize I haven't made a real blog post in a while. Once the funding period for the Kickstarter has ended, I'll share some updates and thoughts about how I intend to continue with the blog while also working on completing Maximum Recursion Depth.