MRD Campaign PENULTIMATE Play Reports

After >1yr, we've decided to wrap up our MRD campaign. I was developing the MRD core book simultaneously, so this campaign informed a lot of the tone, setting, and content that went into the final book. While we very early on deviated from the core structure of Poltergeist Investigation -> Court Crawl, I'm happy that we got to do some of that, while also demonstrating how this system and setting can support much more than just that. There's a lot of stuff I've written on my blog that isn't in the core book, but it's become a rich and interesting setting, and I'm very grateful for it.

One of my players will be starting a new campaign with this group using his own modified version of MRD, so we're not done! And additionally, I'm hoping to start an in-person game soon for MRD2 as I continue to develop that.

Here is the previous PR, including links to all previous PRs before that. There's a lot here and even as I'm writing this penultimate PR, I'm realizing how many things were not accounted for or under-accounted for. I am doubtful anyone could read these PRs and coherently understand the campaign, but if at least they find the ideas interesting and evocative, then I will consider these PRs moderately successful.

Also, rereading the previous PR, in retrospect I can see how I was already starting to think about ideas of Jewish Identity and Philosophy which are making their way into MRD2.

There is I think one or two more sessions currently that are not included in this PR, and there will likely only be one or at most two more sessions for the campaign, but I decided to just post this now because it's already running long...

Session 17: The Court of the Rose-Tinted Looking Glass

The beginning of a new arc bringing The Team to a Court which has partially manifested in the material world, and has effectively become a new borough of New York City. Loosely inspired by Folding Beijing, the borough has a Day Cycle and Night Cycle, one for the Poltergeists to serve their industrialized sentences, and the other for the new class of human gentrifiers who have moved to the neighborhood. 

Day Cycle

Hipsters and Yuppies in a gentrified neighborhood. Displaced rogue Poltergeists begging, haunting, being aggressively hounded by Devils. Conflict may ensue. Although nestled tightly in the East River under Roosevelt State Park, because it is only partially in the material world, its area is larger than its perimeter.

Night Cycle

An endless labyrinth of factories belching toxic fumes, ironically producing the cough syrup Serenight. The Poltergeists must do grueling labor as part of their sentencing. Since the incursion, environmentalists have lambasted The Court, as have the gentrifiers who find the leftover fumes irritating and dangerous for their health.

The Team are incentivized to explore the new borough as the malware Karmic Attachments they acquired from the Karmabot in the previous session led them here. They also learned that QlippothNet, the dark web they manage as part of Anti-Sphinx, has been critically compromised, and the only known safe backup of the compromised portion of code is with a contract worker in the neighborhood.

Having recently come into the spotlight inadvertently as superheroes given the events of the previous sessions, they do an impromptu interview with the superhero Moon Marine (who is secretly part of the internet hate group The Deseret Avengers) and Momma Tastemaker the foodie tiktok phenomenon, which goes awry when their Poltergeist companion The Bear is triggered.

Towards the end of the session the investigate the apartment of Stacy Reagan from Dori's malware Karmic Attachment, who is also the contract worker with the clean QlippothNet code, only to be ambushed...

Session 18: Mobius Hustler Trapped in Squaretime

This session is one of my favorites, but it got VERY dark and intense, in a way that probably won't come through in this play report. Much of the art I share for this session comes from c_o_n_a_r_t on reddit.

The ambusher is Jerome Candle, the Recurser Mobius Hustler. Jerome has been led to believe by The Team's enemies that The Team are responsible for the death of his kitten and they've hired him, as a professional assassin, to take them out and also acquire or destroy the clean QlippothNet code.

What starts out as a seemingly generic Conflict ends up being much more, as first it becomes apparent that he can create micro-timeloops, but also they use found objects around the apartment to cut through Lineartime and enter a higher dimension of time, Squaretime.

Lineartime is like a wave in an ocean that smells of blood, the lymphatic fluid of a cockroach, and sweet wine on a starry moonlit night. Peeking beneath the water refracts starlight through time into six perceivable temporal bands of space averaged over one second each. The bands are distorted in the murky water, obscured by strange and repulsive things, and the perceived causality between bands changes from different perspectives.

The PCs are asked to identify six key moments from the preceding conflict, and these correspond to the refracted temporal bands as time shards.

The stars in Squaretime are like shards of linear spacetime projected onto a two-dimensional plane. In one of the shards, Alco senses an incarnation of Ghost in the Mirror (The Homicidal Maniac*). It has Keene Eyes and a broken zipper for a mouth, trilling uncannily. 

*Shows up later 

The full moon is twisted, two crescents connected at the center like an apple core. A beam of light shines on Jack, decoded inside him like nails on a chalkboard and the intermittent pounding of an MRI, ghostly things leaking out of him.

The wave of Lineartime rises and crashes underneath Dori, pushing and pulling like a tsunami trampoline.

Jerome Candle takes on a new form

In addition to facing against The Mobius Hustler, they encounter other strangeness within Squaretime (chopping a lot of the game-y stuff out):

Time Worms: Skimming the liminal space between temporal dimensions are the Time Worms, like Rorschach inkblots; fractal-shaped creatures of living light- or rather, radiation- existing in non-integer time. Oscillating at frequencies only conceivable in > 1.0-dimensional time, they hijack the immune system and circadian rhythm, inducing dysphoria, dissociation, waking nightmares, and a complete detachment from space and time.

King Kevorkian: A god like a biblical angel by way of the radiation symbol will chase after those infested to exterminate the Time Worms. It has limited ability to convey that it is trying to help or to convey the above information, and what it does hurts. King Kevorkian is the third god that The Monkey King could not defeat.

Psyr Psymon Pstilton: Humanoid Platypus abomination that sounds like Lemongrab. In extreme pain/frustration, not entirely coherent. Psyr Psymon Pstilton is also Moon Marine's Familiar.

A booming psychic voice hijacks Psyr Psymon Pstilton (a slightly modified version of the Danger Message):

This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location… it increases towards a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

Also, Eleanor and her Pet.

In order to defeat Mobius Hustler, they have to cut through temporal dimensions again, creating an interlocking chain wherein the Mobius Hustler's mobius loop is inextricably linked with the Squaretime dimension (as can be seen here, where the first step was cutting the Mobius Hustler's timeloop in Lineartime to enter Squaretime). They do this by making modifications to any of the six time shards they chose at the beginning of entering Squaretime.

After they do this, they see a psychic vision of the true form of the Homicidal Maniac, massacring everyone at the Umami Milk Club in The Court of the Rose-Tinted Looking Glass.

They learn the truth, that the kitten died due to some kind of health-related issue that the vets could not identify, and that he blames himself and suspects it is somehow his own fault, and was merely allowing himself to believe The Team was responsible because he was not ready to handle his grief. He is left, trapped in a timeloop in Squaretime, with The Team vowing to rescue him some day. But first, they need to stop The Homicidal Maniac.

Session 19: Massacre at Umami Milk Club

There's a lot of setup in this session since at the time we had not yet decided we wanted to start wrapping up, so I'll cut to the relevant part where they're at Umami Milk Club and dealing with the Homicidal Maniac.

However, I will first include the roll table for when PCs drink the eponymous Umami Milk (regular milk spiked with Dharmafinil aka "Cheddar"):

A cartoon version of Psymon follows you from the corner of your vision, and so your eyes constantly dart side to side. Only you can see or interact with him. Psymon is helpful but will encourage you to join the Dada-DA social network (basically the Deseret Avengers equivalent of 4Chan / QAnon) and plant intrusive thoughts of alt-right extremist ideology into your head. KAO: Fighting these thoughts only entrenches them further- they aren’t rational, he’s just overstimulating your prefrontal cortex’s inhibition network. Instead, find a way to come to terms with them (without succumbing to them!).

Mr. Smiley appears before you, and you must constantly crane your neck in different directions to see around him. Mr. Smiley allows you to use your Reincarnation Ritual once without consequence; in fact, it insists… KAO: Orchestrate a scenario necessitating the use of your reincarnation ritual.

You hallucinate something relating to one of your Karmic Attachments. It will present complications for you but move you closer towards resolving the Karmic Attachment (or evolving its nature).

One eye sees only color, the other sees only black/white contrast. Seeing only out of the color eye allows one to see that which cannot otherwise be perceived, but makes it harder to find any specific thing. Seeing only out of contrast eye allows one to find specific things more easily, but fail to find that which is not already expected. One or both of these possibilities will lead to a KAO.


Mr. Smiley

Also, The Team were beginning to befriend Stacy Reagan, partially under false pretenses, and there's a sort of rom-com or friend-com relationship burgeoning between Stacy and Alco, which also ends up getting somewhat truncated due to wrapping up the campaign in only a handful more sessions.

When the Homicidal Maniac arrives, it murders several NPCs; The Bear, Psyr Psymon Pstilton, and Olivia Loeb, for which I wrote some... they mostly don't follow any particular poetic structure, but I'm still calling them poems.

PSYR PSYMON PSTILTON WHEN THE END PRECEDES THE BEGINNING

Adrenaline-glazed Homicidal Maniac gnaws on the skull of an absurd creature, beady dead eyes stare in non-Euclidean directions and Null, brain fluid and matter hit the ground in grotesque and comical thud. A dead mouth quivers empty words of hate and ignorance, limp body curls in on itself in paradoxical rigor mortis hoping one last time for warmth and shelter where none will be found.

RUSTING GLITTER FRACTAL IN TERMINAL IMAGINATION

From cracked chrysalis spills a ball of limbs and eyes and wings the color of a migraine phosphene flashing with each spasm of scraping rusted metal and synesthetic stink of iron. The Imago stumbles forward pathetically in fits. A giant hand bathed in fluorescent light pierces perception, slowly and deliberately crushes and smears the Imago with a kinesthetic expression somewhere between apathy and glee. Jazz hand exit stage left.

THE BEAR IS SUFFERING

Foaming mouth fractal dimension diseased lungs yell

Unclear consequences too big to failing organs many orphaned

Careless recreation roiling mutation rotten Eden unwell

Kill me please give me release malnourished dreams dwarfened !

After defeating The Homicidal Maniac, they come to learn that it was actually the Rogue Poltergeist of Jerome Candle's kitten. They have a somber moment, where Moon Marine shows great empathy towards them (having suffered a loss of her own), complicating their preconceived notions about her as part of the Deseret Avengers.

Session 20: The Council of the Lamp

The beginning of the end. An intentional pastiche of The Fellowship of the Rings, wherein all of the Factions up to this point meet up to discuss an imminent threat to the Karmic Cycle.

Emil McGinley, the Recurser also known as Glass Maiden Pixie, who also set Dori up to take the fall for their crimes in Denver, has acquired a Magic Lamp and is formulating a Wish to break the world.

The members of the various Factions are grouped up into different teams, with the PCs and three NPCs from across the Factions forming the Assault Team to stop Emil from completing the Wish, chosen for this job given their personal relationship and previous encounter with Emil. The Players were given a list of NPCs to choose from across different Faction brackets, and chose Doctor Loves-Me-Not, Moon Marine, and Soft Mother.

In order to find The Court of the Unasked Question, the intel team informs them they must conceive a means of reincarnating an abstract concept, and then act on it. The abstract concepts include The Economy, Technology, Culture, or Psychosocial Identity. Instead, they decide they want to intercept the Wish entirely and still break the Karmic Cycle, but without breaking the world entirely.

DANGER DOX

Dori had previously made a deal with Oxtail Ouroboros, a Digital Spirit, who said as payment for services rendered it would one day dox Dori. Oxtail Ouroboros leaks Dori’s failure to protect Olivia to the Celestial Bureaucracy, shedding a light on it that cannot be denied. A powerful devil, Charging Bull, is now coming after her ceaselessly, and the Team cannot stay in one place for long. However, a mysterious Corporate Spirit known as Fearless Girl gives her Cold Iron Zixie Cell in order to defend herself.

Cold Iron Zixie Cell: Replace any electronic’s battery with the Cold Iron Zixie Cell to supercharge its physical or metaphysical abilities (WIS-based). Or, if placed under the tongue, provides wisdom, centeredness, and energy to oneself.

Charging Bull: Preceded by a shocking ball lightning followed by a pulse of energy with the force to knock over a midsize car. Grotesque cyborg minotaur. Doors cannot be used in its presence and streets and alleys become labyrinthine.

INCOGITATION

Ghost in the Mirror uses a time shard Alco kept from Squaretime to trap Alco’s Karma; it can only be accessed when she enters the mirror, only through the distorted world of her perceptions through time. Can access Squaretime and use Subjective Objective to make alterations to a limited extent in the past or future. Alco can also temporarily trade places with The Ghost in the Mirror, but to do so is to acknowledge the worst in oneself.

VIMALA METATRON

While not fully healed from The Monkey King’s neglect and trauma, Jack can channel the Metro Thing’s urban elementalism through the Sword of Manjushri, or more destructively, summon the Metro Thing.

Session 21: Traverse the Multiverse pt.1

With a metaphysical goal in mind, they follow leads across the city, leading them to Time Worm portals across a multiverse of dimensions. In each dimension there is an Elemental Beast, whose favor they may curry in the form of receiving a Credit, which they can use towards their abstract Karmic task.

For each of the dimensions I include the basic sandbox notes, although in most cases the PCs only saw a small slice of it as we blew through most of them pretty quickly.

The first dimension:

Seneca City

Nature and architecture intermingle across dewdrop arcologies, high-pressure aerial rivers, and cosmic energy harvesting obelisks. The people have a contentedness about them that the curious find overbearing, and although civil and ecologically sustainable, there is an epidemic of suicide and other mental health issues.

Steppes of Plenty / Praxis Magpie

Farmer-scientist leader of Seneca City, most often found in the multi-level, multicolored rice paddy Steppes of Plenty.

Rain Forest

The city is surrounded by a wall that is invisible from a distance, but up close, is a massive curtain of rain. A crowd has gathered as a teenage boy threatens to cross the barrier. It would appear that one does not simply cross the Rain Forest. Aside from any dangers within, the wisdom of the elders is that in crossing the Rain Forest, one loses the ability to identify with their people, they become in spirit, a part of something else.

Indigo Cyclops

Elephantine body with a monstrous humanoid face, one giant karmic "third" eye, elephant tusks, a long prehensile tongue, one hundred humanoid arms thrashing outwards from its stomach.

Elemental Beast of Outside, Foreign things and Meat.

Harvesting resources from the levelled remains of the former New York City. Pays no mind to Seneca City, except the occasional longing glance.

Credit: Merge two superorganisms permanently.

The second dimension:

Post-Humanity Ruins

Unstable crumbling buildings giving way to new trees and foliage. Exotic fantastical animals reclaiming the space.

Feral packs of psionic creatures like Psyr Psymon Stilton (Noonoids) appear to be the apex predators. Within their swarms, Poltergeist dreams manifest in ephemeral yet corporeal form. One of the PCs’ dreams or memories is manifested.

From within a large building is reflected an indiscernible but compelling shimmer. If the Team investigates, the building will begin to collapse while they’re still inside.

Karma Specs: Glasses that allow the wearer to see a quantification of anyone’s Karma. Usage Die : Nd8

Orange Mycelium

Mossy, foggy fungal colony the size of a dragon, a flying ecosystem of symbiotically-linked coral, plant, fungal, and arthropod life like a drifting sunset.

Elemental Beast of Internality, Mind, and Fermentation.

Credit: Create a true self in one person. They are incapable of reaching Buddhahood and exist outside the Karmic Cycle. They can be killed, but their immaterial form is still their persistent consciousness.

The third dimension:

Meta York
Fantastical but by no means perfect future New York City built on top of the remains of the contemporary city. A retrofuturist place inspired by the classic New York World’s Fair. The Warrior-Philosophers of the Unisphere and the Isoborgs reluctantly tolerate each other but it is clear that they cannot co-exist forever.

Unisphere: Centered on top of what was once Flushing Meadows Park in Queens is a Plato’s Republic-esque Warrior-Philosopher scholastic community.

Isoborgs: Throughout the city are people who at first appear to be blocky, retrofuturist robots, but are actually unconscious humans in isolation suits, existing halfway between consciousness and dreaming.

Shining Vantablack Sub-Mariner

Paradoxical creature like a dolphin, cephalopod, and spider.
Elemental Beast of Non-Being, Empty Space, Unknown, Paradox, and Sleep.
Can only be accessed via dreams, drugs, delirium, digital devices, and near-death experiences.
Worshipped as a god.
Credit: Nullify the existence of any one thing. The material world will fill the void, proportionally altering all things which have substantially interacted with the nullified thing.

Session 22-23: Traverse the Multiverse pt.2

The fourth dimension, and the one they spend the most time in:

Dystopian Cyberpunk Future New York

Near future corporate-controlled dystopia. The most dominant corporation is The Court of Gyro Hell fast food chain, having defeated The Doppler Potential in a joint Congressional/Boardroom coup. The remaining strength of The Doppler Potential keeps the United States Government alive in a mostly token role. The Deseret Avengers have become the de facto ruling Mafia on the decrepit Earth, while the wealthy have moved to the Moon Colony.

Silken Alleyway: After years or decades of underfunding, disrepair, and uncoordinated city developments, the city has transformed into a jigsaw distortion of winding alleys where the working people make do. Gangsters who self-proclaim to be the Deseret Avengers are the law of the Silken Alleyway, although the top gang leaders are funded and empowered by corporate overlords- the true Deseret Avengers.

The Li & Wong Firm of Legal Fuckery

“Fuck around and find out”

Bright neon lit sign along the Silken Alleyway.

Charlotte Li (Rock Dove) and Arnold Wong (Wild Turkey), in superhero costumes.

Looks shady as fuck but they are actually trying to protect the city. Reluctantly working with the Doppler Potential revolutionaries against the DA and Court of Gyro Hell, but not above working with the DA enforcers when necessary.

Lunar Lift: A massive super-skyscraper that towers over the rest of the city and serves as a space elevator to the moon. A well guarded fortress for the elite. Agents of The Doppler Potential have infiltrated the super-skyscraper, preparing a revolution.

Naked Fox-Hare

Black Sheep Shepherd and Fox-Hare as a post-singularity Elemental Beast of Time, Statistics, Prediction, and the Cosmos.

Was responsible for the early development of the Lunar Lift and moon colonization, but is now a carefree figurehead who just wishes to roam and play across the moon, even as his territory rapidly shrinks due to terraforming development.

Credit: Can make one thing preincarnate upon death.

In one of the earliest sessions, The Team had an encounter with Fox-Hare and his gang. While presenting aggressively, Fox-Hare was actually a computer nerd and prospective scholarship candidate, empowered by his Digital Spirit Black Sheep Shepherd, before the violent encounter which left his arm permanently broken. He was later scouted and hired by Johannes of Anti-Sphinx and became one of the lead QlippothNet software engineers, and also received a Dharmatic prosthetic arm.

The key theme of this recurring character, is that every step of the way, rather than being consumed by vengeance, he chooses to make good out of his circumstances. The culmination of his detachment from anger and vengeance, is that he eventually becomes something like a god.

There was also a whole thing here with a high-tech Lunar Lab that they bypassed entirely before reaching Naked Fox-Hare.

They are informed by Fox-Hare that they can't proceed to Kristalvers Amsterdam (aka The Court of the Unasked Question) until they resolve Charging Bull.

A Union of Seneca City Philosopher-Agriculturalists create an impenetrable Prosperity Circuit which Charging Bull can’t puncture, giving The Team the opportunity to defeat it. They identify collectively as Cyclops of the interlocking Hands. This was the result of earlier actions across the dimensions.

There had been a potential opportunity for The Team to preincarnate The Bear, but even in failing to do so, they still learn that Fearless Girl is the reincarnation of The Bear.

They engage in a very abstract kind of non-violent Conflict with Charging Bull, culminating with them absorbing it into their Positron Pack along with a Hungry Ghost Poltergeist, creating a feedback loop of infinite capitalist energy from Charging Bull and infinite consumption of Hungry Ghost, creating a viable homeostatic pocket universe- creating something beautiful and non-linear out of two dysfunctional concepts.