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