Campaign Setup: The Elemental Trinity

For generations the Fire Kingdom has oppressed the Leaf Folk. That is until the Azure Horde arrived from the seas. At a disadvantage, the only way the Fire Kingdom can survive is by leveraging the unique abilities of the Leaf Folk, if they can make peace in time.

A World in Two Times

Each player is two characters, an Ancestor and a Successor. 

This is a world of circular time, or at least for the PCs. Actions in one time affect the other. If it's easier, think of it like a surrealist dream. A whole other life, a world with its own rules, and maybe no less significant. Quite literally, this is how luck is made. 

Like Karma, attaching to the present at the expense of the future (or past, as it were) accrues debt. Even though you represent both interests, sometimes it feels like you just don't have a choice.

The Ancestor and Successor are each other's spirit familiar.

Lucid to each other's dreams.

Both images by the Surrealist Max Ernst

Possibilities

• Luck, synchronicities, spiritual phenomena all operate within the circularity of time.
• Ancestor and Successor are arbitrary terms. Ones' history is the others' prophecy.
• Causality as we think of it is merely a heuristic; a reasonably predictive and explanatory model for something much more complex.

The Apologists

The Apologists believe that in the space between life and death, one is not held on trial. Instead, one receives an intervention with their no longer living friends, enemies, loved ones, and ancestors. One is made to feel sorry for every wrong they've ever committed, to apologize to themselves, the dead, and the living (this is where magic and miracles come from), to have a very cathartic cry, and then a deep and pleasant rest, well deserved.

Some have criticized this belief as a means by criminals and profiteers to stomach the abuses they commit in life. "We'll all experience the same things in the end, so what's the consequence, one way or the other?"

Others find comfort knowing that they will always find forgiveness, and feel empowered to be more forgiving in life. As well, their impact on the world has been vast, and in many cases quite positive.

The Apologists are overrepresented relative to the general population in the field of mental health. They also led the movement to dismantle the prison industrial complex that persisted into the early 21st century.

At the same time, every Carnival King, May Queen, and Fool has been an Apologist, and were empowered by popular support from the Apologist majority.

While many today still debate the merits of this new movement, none deny the influence it has had across the world in such a short time.

No idea what this is, just found it googling around.

I imagine this as a mid-Apocalyptic, Epic Dark Fantasy setting that happens to be set in a technological and culturally Modern world. Something between Game of Thrones and Final Fantasy XV.

You could throw out the explicit reference to the 21st century and embed it in a more traditional fantasy setting and use the Apologist belief system as the source of "magic and miracles" within the setting.

The Magical Man Machine

Thank you, I designed them myself! Yes they really work! See that vein there? Yes, I just attach it to the wheel overnight and it's reinvigored by the morning. Oh, those are self-producing bioplastics, I'm especially proud of those. You think I'm beautiful? Gee golly, thanks. I think I'm beautiful too. I mean, I think you're beautiful too. I know it seems impractical, and like a lot of work to have done this, and it is and was, but art isn't meant to be practical. Yes, this is my art. Some people are repelled by it, but I think that says more about them than me. You see what the engineers don't understand, they really just don't get it, is that the system is just one side of the equation, but you can't explain the experience as a system. So I knew, I knew, to really know what it means to be a machine, I had to become one. But it's not enough to be a cyborg, no, that's got it all wrong. Cybernetics is about systems of control, and you can't understand what anything really means through systems and control, isn't that obvious? A cyborg is just a series of interfaces, translation points between electrical signals and those of the body, and then the spirit. No, to embody the machine, I had to reshape myself, the body itself, into something like a machine, a Man Machine. The qualia of it, the pure aesthesia, well, it can't be described, that's the whole point isn't it? To roll on wheels, to see like a camera, to store memories as hash mapped blocks of information! And see, that's where the artists get it all wrong, because they think the machine can never produce art. But it's a moving target, art to them is whatever the human can do that the machine cannot, and when the machine can do it, then it's not art anymore, it's something else. But let me tell you, they've got it all wrong. The machine has an art all of its own, invisible to the perceptual quirks of the human eye, out of phase with the holographic human soul, illogical to the material brain. Let me tell you from personal experience that there is magic in the machine! Am I so repulsive? Don't you want to be a Magical Man Machine as well? Sometimes I miss the oxytocin tingle of a gentle finger stroking along the hairs of my forearm, or the spicy floral fragrance of navratna oil and its cooling sensation on my scalp. I have the memory in block storage, but even in its "lossless" format, I know the je ne sai quai is all wrong, it's a different flavor of experience. And it is lonely sometimes, being the only Magical Man Machine. It's no better nor worse an experience. I mean, in some ways its worse, if only because the world doesn't know what to do with me. But that's where the magic comes from isn't it? The divergence from consensus reality. A vast and sparse noosphere, the joy of ships passing in the night, sailing the ocean of anonymous nobodies and nothings, each themselves doing likewise, whether they even know it or not. Oh my gosh, oh I'm so sorry, I really ran away with myself there. I'm sorry, I haven't even asked yet, how was your day?

The time I got into an argument with Grant Morrison

A little over a year ago, Tuesday September 6th 2022 at 7pm at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in New York City, I met Grant Morrison. I even brought *them a copy of Maximum Recursion Depth, or Sometimes the Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing: The Karmapunk RPG, along with a shitty hand written note on an index card because I spent years writing and publishing a book but didn't think to write a personalized message to go along with it until an hour or so before the talk, so it's on an index card, it's surely cringe beyond belief, over-written and self-conscious, in my shitty handwriting because I don't hand write, with scratch marks where I decided I wasn't bold enough to say this, or had just enough shame to recognize I would regret saying that, and for whatever reason didn't bother to just rewrite it entirely.

* It is entirely possible I mis-gender them at some point in this post because they were a he/him for most of the time I've known them, feel free to correct me if I do, or feel free to not correct me if you don't want the responsibility, but I'll fix any mistakes if I catch them, no-problem.

So, they talked a bit about the book that I own that they signed and that I also own digitally but still have not read yet (the time will come). Honestly I don't remember much about what they had to say about it.

I remember them talking about their philosophies, mostly the same stuff I've heard them talk about before. It was cool to hear it live, in real-time, to absorb the idiosyncrasies. They went on a long rant at one point about how they don't believe in Karma and reincarnation because of hypertime and superorganisms, that was one lovely new talking point I'd never heard from them. I don't even remember how that came up; I was too nervous and despondent to even try to ask a question in my one chance to do so, let alone to argue with them about why they're wrong about the stuff they've been writing about for decades, that made me so obsessed with them in the first place, that was one of the largest inspirations for most of my ideas that are also probably wrong.

So I dunno, they seemed like they were in the mood of somebody who was doing work travel, doing something that probably used to be exciting for them decades ago but now was fairly mundane, trying to shill their art for the sake of capitalism in a corporate bookstore, close enough in time to a global pandemic to still have that hanging over everything, not really ideal circumstances for anyone.

But it was a life goal of mine to meet Grant Morrison, and there I was, so Grant was going to affirm everything I've done, look into my eyes and realize despite our wildly different life experiences, personal identities, age gap, regional gap, whatever, that they would know in that moment that actually their life was incomplete until meeting me, that they would be forever changed and we're going to be best friends going forward.

Obviously that didn't happen, and was never going to happen, and of course we both knew that that wasn't going to happen, but we're going to play this out anyway. It's funny how, in accomplishing this life goal of mine, to meet Grant Morrison, and giving them a copy of my published book, another life goal of mine, I mostly just made myself inordinately depressed and also reminded myself of how I made myself inordinately depressed for publishing the book, for largely the same category of reason, so it was a recursive episode of life goal accomplishment depression, which in retrospect I can appreciate the irony of a little bit more than I could in that moment.

Anyway, they were heading out, escorted by their "people" and one or more employees of Barnes & Noble. I was passing by the stairway as they were heading down, and I stared into their eyes, and they in turn into mine.

I could see the confusion and exasperation in their eyes, and surely they could see the depression and existential frustration and unrequited longing in mine, and yet we both recognized the inevitability of the confrontation.

And so we got to have a proper conversation, without the audience. It went like this.

They said something to me, to the effect of— and please excuse my poor paraphrasing — "What the fuck do you even want from me? I'm old, jetlagged, busy, tired, hungry, and I've been holding a wet fart for the better part of the last three hours. You think you're the only one who wants to talk to me? I skimmed through your book and I thought it was shite*, you pretentious fuck. I don't owe you anything, fuck you and your Karma."

* "Shite" being my one and only attempt to mimic their glorious Scottish accent in my hoaky paraphrasing of events.

And I wish I could say I responded with something really witty and funny, make them second guess themselves, blow their mind with all of my cognitive neuroscience and machine learning and philosophy and idiosyncrasies and dramatic traumas (and undramatic traumas, and most of all, embarrassing traumas) that make me the ornery, maladjusted, but mostly innocuous bastard that I am, but I've never been that great under pressure, so I mostly just sighed and stammered and sounded like a whiny fuck. And then they were gone, and that was that.

I think in my chicken scratch index card note I gave them along with my book, which in retrospect it would have been clever if I had signed but I don't think I did, I said something about how I don't believe in their magic but still managed to make something of it, like I was making some grand statement. 

And ironically I believe in their magic a lot more now than I did a year ago. I've been embracing the synchronicities, and astral conversations, and the Weird stuff outside constructed reality, which I always was doing in my own way but not in the way that conforms to their magic, but now I've internalized that stuff too, at least a bit. Enough that it's allowed one of my closest personal friendships to evolve to a new level, and contributed to my improved mental health, and made me open to all sorts of other new experiences and perspectives*.

* There's a challenge in this statement, one which I am reasonably confident a non-trivial number of people will fail, or at least they've failed it before. It's clever to me anyway even if I suspect most people don't get it. Also, you (exactly one of you): I acknowledge that you are a good person, but kindly go fuck yourself in circles. I went back and forth on whether to say that, or how to say it, or how much to say. It's petty, maybe more petty for how vague I am about it, but I already acknowledged being an ornery maladjusted but mostly innocuous bastard, so I'm just gonna throw that in their for fun. The rest of you, whether you pass it or fail it or it doesn't apply to you or you figure I can go fuck myself on principle because who am I to be throwing you a challenge— it's all good; as far as I'm concerned, we're good.

So I dunno, even though the conversation didn't exactly go the way I would have wanted, even if we didn't totally see eye to eye, I'm starting to at least appreciate it for what it was, and look back on it fondly. Or at least it's a good story. Even if I mostly came off as a buffoon, how many people can say they've gotten into an argument with Grant Morrison?

And maybe we'll laugh about it together some day.

BONUS: Playdate Not-Review

I pre-ordered a Playdate a while back and it finally arrived a few days ago. It's an awesome little device, toyetic and whimsical in the way that videogame consoles used to be, yet still feeling premium. It's yellow, it has a beautiful lo-fi monochrome 1-bit un-backlit screen, clicky little A and B buttons and a responsive D-Pad, and a Crank. It uses wifi to download games and has an online store, a web account integration, and the ability to Sideload games which you can buy off itch.io or wherever else, or make your own, but it never lets those features get in the way of the simplicity of the device.

It's also very developer friendly and seems like an accessible way to learn some game development and programming, and I hope to tinker around with it eventually.

It's not going to replace my Steam Deck or PS5 or Switch, and it's nowhere near as expensive as any of those but for what it is it isn't cheap either, but I'm glad that I have it. It's kind of nostalgic, but it also has a kind of alternate universe, speculative, retro-futurist, anachronistic appeal to it, like the clam-shell phone from It Follows. What would a world look like where we had network technology but still only lo-fi displays? What would a world look like where the original Gameboy had a crank?

The first "season" of games unlock week over week. So far I only have the first two starting games, and two free games from the Catalog (their game store), and I'll probably buy one or two more games and Sideload sooner or later.

Whitewater Wipeout is an awesome game. It's tricky to get the hang of at first, it relies mostly on the Crank, and it doesn't do a whole lot to teach you how to play, so you have to be patient, but even though I still suck at it, it's super addicting and fun and a perfect demonstration of exactly what this console is about, Crank and all. I can see why they made it among the first games you receive.

Casual Birder is a cute, fun, funny, open-world bird photography adventure game. It's a little meatier than Whitewater Wipeout, but nothing too Epic. It's the kind of game I might not necessarily have played if it were on Steam or PSN, and I don't know if I'll actually finish it, but I'm enjoying my time with it.

The two free Catalog games I have not been as impressed with, but I still appreciate having a couple more options in my first week until more games unlock, without having to make additional purchases.

Recommendation Dog is basically a matching game. You work at a temp agency and have to match agents given descriptions by the employers. There's nothing wrong with it, I gave it a playthrough, but I dunno it didn't do much for me.

Reel Steal was an interesting and surprising premise, I wanted to like this game, but I just wasn't feeling it. You're modern-day Robin Hoods infiltrating buildings owned by billionaires and robbing them, Cranking your way up and down the facility. It's a cool idea, but ya in practice I just found it tedious.

Maximum Recursion Depth Vol. 3, or Everybody Wins if We're Having Fun: The Animapunk RPG

The new and hopefully improved MRD Vol. 2 (Gameplay Loop, Dev Log) is still in the works, but I think it makes sense to just call the Animism Setting MRD Vol. 3, which I'll be working on simultaneously.

In wanting to have my cake and eat it too, it's running away a bit from the original idea of being like a Weird & Wonderful take on Pariah, but it should be clear how those ideas and others I've blogged about previously are all getting rolled into this; it's still true to the original spirit of the thing.

Previous posts of varying degrees of relevancy:

Anima Concept Crafting (the actual Anima stuff is in this post)

Termina: Animist Necromancy

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix (the psychedelic "cyberspace" stuff is in this post)

Appendix N for Animist Setting

We are Building a Religion

The Game is Alive

Worlds out of Phase: There is Only Forward Here

****************************************************************************

Tl;dr

Psychedelic Time Lords across a bunch of mini-Krakoas in frozen moments collecting Pokemon and going on adventures across spacetime, stalked by horror monsters, facing punk rock moon witches, Infernal insectoids, Orwellian pigs, The Imperium of Man, an alien dark web, and the oppressiveness of a world unexamined.

The Surrealists believe that the place of dreams is as real as the material world, and in some ways they are correct. The Dreaming observe the moment. Really, observe it, the full canvas of it, phase rotating it so that what is normally fuzzy and obscured in peripheral vision is brought to the center of focus. It's like rotating around a Penrose Triangle Sculpture, except it's all of reality around a single moment.

Penrose Triangle Sculpture for reference. It only appears like a paradoxical triangle from a particular angle.

It's amazing how different things can appear when observed from different angles.

The Dreaming are a living community. When The Dreaming coalesce around a moment, the ecosystem uniquely transforms around them, pooling into a geologically transient Dream Lake. 

But most of the time, they wander in small bands from moment to moment like ships passing in the night, like blood cells or worker bees, independent yet coordinated on a scale beyond what any individual can perceive.

The Dreaming explore moments out of want, not need.

The only universal meanings of life are those that can be mutually agreed upon, an absurd and seemingly irresolvable problem. In lieu of a solution, The Dreaming embrace the Sisyphean struggle, making meaning for themselves. Nonetheless each of The Dreaming, in their own way, are working towards the betterment of The Dreaming as a whole.

‘Weirdness for weirdness’ sake’ is a criticism that has often aimed at my own work over many years. It’s a phrase I find lazy and borderline meaningless.

I’ve yet to read ‘it’s weirdness for story’s sake’ or ‘for effect’s sake’ or ‘for fuck’s sake’…

Grant Morrison

The Dreaming face opposition.

The problems The Dreaming invite upon themselves are faced with joy, but otherwise conflict is generally avoided. Even so, some uninvited problems must be faced eventually.

The Personal Horror

Everyone has a Time Self (current incarnation), and an Eternity Self (superorganism across time).

The Eternity Self stalks the Time Self patiently, sometimes hiding and sometimes allowing itself to be seen, to strike fear. The Time Self knows there will be a moment when it must defend itself in mortal conflict against the Eternity Self, and that moment will likely not be of their choosing. Until that moment, the Eternity Self is their Personal Horror, an uncanny reflection of everything about themselves they must overcome.

Defeating one's Personal Horror is a rite of passage for The Dreaming, and a gift of choice, whether or not to continue the struggle or allow it to transform them.

To be defeated by one's Personal Horror is to be consumed by the Eternity Self and reincarnated as a new Time Self.

Termina

Termina is to Anima as Undead is to the Living. It is "Unnatural", animation without meaning or only a hollow pretense, and incapable of growth or change. Like undead, no single Termina is as threatening as the idea it represents and its ability to spread like a disease.

Supernature

The myth of humanity's supremacy becomes undeniable when one rotates a moment and sees for themselves the vastness that surrounds them.

Humanity, Anima, the Natural World, Physical Laws, and all the other things compose Supernature.

The Pigs are useful allies who capably handle the dirty work The Dreaming generally don't like to deal with. Things like fighting, politicking, and worst of all "leading" (when one must engage with hierarchy). Even so, The Dreaming have faced no threat greater than when a Pig Warlord consolidates power. The Pig Gangs raid, pillage, and enslave, but also disseminate misinformation, engage in political sabotage, and foment populist revolution.

The Dark Forest is like a shadow of the Mycelium Matrix, a distributed psychedelic superorganism hostile to The Dreaming, seemingly by design.

The United Spacetimes of America is a multiversal empire that  believes it is their manifest destiny to colonize all of existence, including The Dreaming. Their size, rigid hierarchy, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and single-mindedness make them easy enough to outmaneuver, but if caught in their grasp, their mad weapons and unstoppable bureaucratic inertia make them a dangerous force of supernature.

The Radioactive Hive are both empowered and consumed by a grudge they've long ago forgotten. Their sheer biomass, explosive nuclear power, and algorithmic genius would destroy all of existence, if not counterbalanced by the aimlessness of their endless rage; rebels without a cause; the dog that chases a car without thought towards what ends. Incapable of being reasoned with, their only means of communication is their chemically infectious anger which spreads exponentially like wildfire or explosions.

The Infrasonic Moon Witch is a living presence, like the qualia of a song or skin to skin touch. It oscillates in beams of light, the gravity folds of spacetime, and the Humanist interrelationship between all Anima. The tides and moonlight are its greatest familiars, but most beings with a cyclical nature pay some homage to it. A nurturing force that must be relied upon even when one knows, inevitably, it will betray them.

Weird & Wonderful Worlds

Have I defined Weird and Wonderful before? I talk a lot about Weird, but why Wonderful?

Weird is what is juxtaposed against the known and normal. It is a feeling, unsettling, or like the appeal of poking a stinging blister. It is something for which you lack frame of reference, or is beyond frame of reference. It can also be an anachronism, an uncanny valley. It's a kind of spiritual openness. Weird has been explained elsewhere better, but this is where I'm coming from.

Wonder is when the known and normal are exceeded and redefined. It is eureka and understanding and doing. It is the scientific method and systems and information theory, coding, math, linguistics. It's like the Dunning Kreuger Effect; the more you know, the more you realize there is to be known.

"Weird & Wonderful" is a common enough phrase, but actually, they are often placed at odds. Spiritualism vs. Materialism, Ancient vs. Modern; these limiting false binaries.

Statistics and probabilities, germs, genetics, atoms, control systems, are all really Weird. They are not necessarily intuitive, and for all the Wonder that comes from understanding them, it reveals more Weird unknowns that never quite reconcile with our sensory-perception of the world.

The majesty of nature, the interconnectedness of collaborative spiritualism, the introspection that can come from ritual, are all Wonderful; they reveal hidden aspects of the self and the world, without diminishing what else can be.

Wonder in the absence of Weird is like an addiction, an unsustainable compulsion to squeeze more out of the finite. It's wanting answers in the absence of questions, wanting not for Wonder but just to get back to baseline.

Weird in the absence of Wonder is meandering and circular. A kiddie pool can be mistaken for the infinite expanse of ocean if you refuse to measure its bounds.

Wonder creates the space for a far more vast and rich Weird, and Weird asks the questions and demands the slow contemplation to keep Wonder from spiraling out unsustainably.

Termina: Animist Necromancy, Gestört, Radiation of the Nihilist Supra-Organism, a Waste Product of Capitalism, The Sleeping, and other things

In Animist beliefs, life and death are non-binary; Ancestor Spirits carry a presence as nodes in the Superorganism network, the spirit in all things. Communing with the dead is a natural and spiritual practice.

Termina is not that.

Termina is to Anima as Undead is to the Living.

It is the Null-Spirit, the Gestört, the Nihilist Supra-Organism. A collection of things without parsimony, collectively less than the sum of its parts.

A radiation, a waste product of rampant expansion towards meaningless ends. An inefficiency, the churn of capitalistic profiteering.

A linear extrapolation of a spirit at its end. Ambulating without change or purpose, an Undead Cancer.

An Anti-Mutation, a hungry abomination monopolizing future potentialities.

The miracle of Anima, the self-organization of a universe in a low-entropy state, is its improbability. Termina are the creeping tendrils of entropy— eldritch enzymes unraveling proteins, molecules, and ideas, leaving behind a high-probability, undifferentiated state where everything equals nothing.

Broad Categories of Termina

1. The imagined idea of another person, and parasocial relationships.
2. Inert bureaucracies.
3. "Content" generated solely to be consumed.
4. "Solutions" in search of a problem.
5. Advertisement per se.
6. Generative AI as weaponized by capitalists or consumed by those who neither understand nor care to learn ML.
7. Christianity as weaponized by colonizers to genocide peoples and ideas, or the shibboleths of religion.
8. Unconscientious artifice.
9. Measures in violation of Goodhart's law.
10. Weapons of warfare and state violence.

Termina is also not this, but it'll look good in the thumbnail.

The Sleeping

Necromancers of Termina, in contrast to The Dreaming.

Their power comes from striving for power; auto-catalytic; the shrewdness of a single-minded predator; weaponized ignorance self-replicating.

The Relationships between The Sleeping and Termina are of a transactional nature, thoughtless, coercive, and isolating.

Example Termina

1. Forged painting.
2. Smartphone with designed obsolescence.
3. Snake oil.
4. Homeopathic water.
5. Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.
6. NFT Bored Ape.
7. E-Meter.
8. Reproduction of the original Colt Revolver.
9. Property deed of stolen lands.
10. Private Equity LLC.

One day I'll actually properly write up this setting, but for now it'll just keep coming out piecemeal...

Against the Grey Play Report 3: Butt-Busty Baboon Rube Goldberg Machines, or Inception but with a Mutant Squirrel Eyeball Monster

Between the previous session and this one the group did a Reach of the Roach God side adventure set in the same campaign universe, but I was not present for that game and at least so far it has not directly impacted this campaign afaik, but with Huffa's permission I might share that PR down the line as well if it becomes relevant.

Reminder that I don't write these, it's (almost*) all Huffa :), which explains why they're better than my usual PRs lol.

* I believe this PR was not written until a little after the fact so it was lighter on details, so I've tried to fill in a bit more myself. As a result Jabronsky's actions are overrepresented here.

The game continues to get better and better with each session, for real.

I will return to writing my own posts sooner or later, I've just had a very busy summer...

Previous PRs:

1. Against the Grey Play Report 1: We Did an Akira and now the Eye Panopticon is Onto Us
2. Against the Grey Play Report 2: BOB!BAAAAAAHB!BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHB! (Translation: Please Kill Me!)

Characters

Jabronski (Me)

A rock.

Vacillates between slightly agitated and at peace with the universe.

Gastrolithic neurotoxic "frog" companion.

Can sporecast from within the companion.

Hark (Gibran)

Human fighter/barbarian-type who is a gung-ho stoner. Gets up to shenanigans, but also often comes up with clever plans.

Maude the Badger (Onya)

(She/her) Gun lovin, bomb throwin, grumpy old lady. 

Onya: "Loosely based on my grandma, and an old weird anarchist I met as a kid. Both were kinda scary and problematic."

Play Report

We began last session with you all drifting down in the balloon into the portion of the river where the Grey were extracting their spirit distillate - which appears extremely and dangerously polluted.

Somehow you managed to divert the balloon away from the river, but were spotted by Greys at their camp (which had been largely destroyed the session before).

The balloon crashed into a big tree in the forest north of the camp. There you encountered a squirrely that had been dosed with the distillate, and gave it psychedelic therapy*

* Max Note: This is actually really underselling it lol, it was a classic Max psychonautical thing involving the Mycelium Matrix and incepting the squirrel eyeball monster (which incidentally Huffa described really well at the time, it was much creepy) to overcome its childhood traumas.

Some of the Greys that had been sent after you landed on top of the tree and Jabronsky used invoked one of his Freaky Fractals* to keep them at bay.

* Max Note: Butt-busty baboons! It involved a Rube Goldbergian chain of events of agitated butt-busty baboons cascading cacophony of chaos and violence.

You got down the tree and began heading northward toward the Sacred Cave where you know mercenaries hired by the Greys were planning a raid on the hoard the Watchers had collected there to sacrifice to the spirits of the Forest.

You all made your way to the cave. The mercs had already attempted an infiltration when you arrived and you intervened. Here my memory gets very murky. As I recall you saw some of them sneaking in and one/some of you snuck in to warn the guards inside, while others of you approached the mercs still at the camp outside?

Huffa: addendum!

just remembered this bit

You left Chord to setup shop and make bombs and repair the balloon in the tree.

Against the Grey Play Report 2: BOB!BAAAAAAHB!BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHB! (Translation: Please Kill Me!)

Previous Play Report:

Against the Grey Play Report 1: We Did an Akira and now the Eye Panopticon is Onto Us

The first session was fun, but this one is where we begin to hit our stride. Two of the players from the first group left and one new player joined. It's not until one or two more sessions where we land on what I hope is our permanent group.

This session included some improvised Concept Crafting* towards the end (during the defense of Chord's home), more Mycelium Matrix shenanigans, and The BOBs!

*My most recent Concept Crafting-related blog post, Anima Crafting, with links to previous posts.

Characters

Jabronski (Me)

A rock.

Vacillates between slightly agitated and at peace with the universe.

Gastrolithic neurotoxic "frog" companion.

Can sporecast from within the companion.

Maude the Badger (Onya)

(She/her) Gun lovin, bomb throwin, grumpy old lady. 

Onya: "Loosely based on my grandma, and an old weird anarchist I met as a kid. Both were kinda scary and problematic."

Hark (Gibran)

Human fighter/barbarian-type who is a gung-ho stoner. Gets up to shenanigans, but also often comes up with clever plans.

Play Report

The group started off at the Haunted Watermill a few days after the events at the end of last session.

While hanging out with the Rebels there, they heard about the various things that were going on in The Forest. They heard the following:

- The Greenwood-Grey Compound is currently occupied by an emergency dispatch of troops, and more equipment, weapons and people are en route from Greenwood (city)

- Some kind of apparition had been appearing in the Haunted Watermill and stealing strange items

- The maiden who was supposed to set alight the boat in the Burning Boat festival held in the Forest Village has gone missing

- Chord who supplies bombs to the Rebels has found his hut in the path of the New Road being built by the Greenwood-Grey Company

- The Watchers at the Sacred Cave have reported that Mercenaries in the Forest appear to be planning a raid on the hoard of treasure they had gathered from the Greenwood-Grey Company to sacrifice to the spirits of The Forest

- The Eye Panopticon has grown 50%

Kitsch disappeared without explanation shortly after the events at the Greenwood-Grey Compound

- Grench did not meet up with the rest of the crew after and may have been captured by the Greys 

- something glinting and golden was seen passing high above in the sky yesterday afternoon, the elders have debated what kind of omen this might on the eve of the Burning Boat festival

The group decided to travel up to Chord's Home to attempt to save him and his equipment from the Greenwood-Grey Company and their Bob - driven bulldozers. And then make their way on to the Sacred Cave to deal with the Mercenaries there.

En route they encountered some other Mercenaries attempting to make a delivery to the Greenwood-Grey Compound. Their caravan had become stuck in the mud.The caravan is pulled by two Bobs. (Bobs are turtles with human faces created by the Greys and used as a pack animals. They piteously croon 'Boooob' as they labor. No one outside the Greys knows how they are made.)

Hark decided to approach them and ‘play it cool’. Their leader Rum, a mean tit bird, sees them all and immediately tries to recruit them to help. Several schemes develop. Maud suggests using her firewater to blow up the caravan and doing it in such a way the it looks like an accident. While preparing to do this they encounter Trish a very young raccoon who has stowed away in the caravan. They also discover that the caravan is carrying extremely high quality muskets made exclusively by and for the Greys. 

At this point a revised scheme is hatched, with Jabronski suggesting that he speak to the mud via the Mycelium Matrix and ask that it take the caravan and keep it safe for them until they return to get it. Meanwhile, Trish starts crying and Rum comes over to investigate. His lackeys Mal and Mak, both join. A couple of things then happen:

- The mud does indeed take the caravan, seemingly keeping it safe

- Rum becomes so frustrated by the situation that he storms off

- Mal and Mak decide to take responsibility for Trish and take her back to Greenwood (city) . They leave under the impression that Trish is some kind of spy for the Rebels. Trish reveals that her family is fairly wealthy in Greenwood (city) . Mal and Mak leave on their ‘secret mission’.

- Huffa doesn't remember how the Bobs were dealt with here. Maybe they were just let go?

The group then travels on to Chord's Home. As they reach the clearing in front of the house, on the opposite side of the house from the Greys and their Bob bulldozers . They hear shouting between the Greys in the Forest on the other side of the house and Chord, asking him to come out. A loud explosion indicates his response was a bomb. Chord then pops up from a hatch in the top of the house and invites the crew inside. There they discuss what to do next.

Artist rendition of an experimental model of BOB, or possibly a BOB in its theorized larval stage.

They eventually arrive at a plan. This involves detaching the small second floor of Chord's Home, rigging a balloon from the bomb making (and bomb resistant) fabrics Chord has and using a series of explosions to power the flight of the balloon, with the second floor of Chord's Home serving as the basket of the balloon.

It will take about 24 hours to achieve this. They set to work, but in the midst of their work the Greys attempt to break into Chord's Home via the secret passageway underneath the first floor. The passageway is filled with mushrooms that make the Greys sneeze, making their approach obvious. Jabronski uses the Mycelium Matrix to talk to the mushrooms to make them increase their spore output, further debilitating the Greys and forcing them out of the tunnel. However, the spores also seep through the floorboards and begin afflicting the crew. Hark breaks open one of the wooden-shuttered windows of Chord's Home to let air in. The Greys now out of the tunnel and recovering in open air, start shooting, but their aim is not good while irritated by the spores. Hark decides to charge them and try to take their leader hostage. This does not go entirely well. And ends up with Hark captured by the Greys . Maud then finds/craft and throws a tear gas bomb at the whole group outside, debilitating everyone. And Hark is rescued and they are back inside.

With a few more hours time, while the Greys are recovering and moving the Bob bulldozers in place. The crew complete preparations for their plan. They launch the balloon with the Greys firing at them from below. And Maud drops a bomb on Chord's Home to blow it up along with the nearby Greys and Bobs. Chord's Home explodes. The Bobs bray joyfully for this sweet release as they are blown to pieces. The shockwave from the explosion pushes the balloon off course and they find themselves over the Radiant Pool quickly running out of explosives and sinking directly toward it.

Against the Grey Play Report 1: We Did an Akira and now the Eye Panopticon is Onto Us

I've been playing in an IRL game of Against the Grey GMed by Huffa, who is herself one of the designers of the game. I don't normally do PRs for games where I'm a player, but Huffa has written excellent recaps and does not have a blog of her own and she's given me permission to share them here :).

Against the Grey description from the itch.io page:

A system agnostic adventure about anthropomorphic animals taking up arms to defend their forest against the greed of the Grey.

We're using an extremely rules light WIP system by Huffa called Being and Time which you can learn more about by following Huffa.

Images all taken from our discord server...

Setting

We are a heterarchical cell of rebels fighting against a Dutch East India Company-like organization called the Greenwood-Grey Company colonizing an Early Modern-ish Forest society.

The entire world of Against the Grey is itself just one hex of a larger "hex crawl" including material generated with Between the Skies and various elements created by us as a group. For instance, in our campaign, The Mycelium Matrix is integrated into the setting. It is part of a larger connected universe of campaigns and one-shots.

Characters

As is typical, we had some turnover in the first couple sessions, but I believe/hope we've settled into a regular group. For the first session, the following characters were present:

Jabronski (Me)

A rock.

Vacillates between slightly agitated and at peace with the universe.

Gastrolithic neurotoxic "frog" companion.

Can sporecast from within the companion.

Grench (Russ)

Kitch (Adasah)

(they/them). A two-tailed fox. Somewhere around thirty years old – seventy short of the hundred two tails is _supposed_ to take. Never left the forest. Thinks technology is dark magic.

Can transform into people (with fox-like faces)

Flying squirrel companion, Walnut (scout)

Poorly-kept sword

Acorns of healing

Maude the Badger (Onya)

(She/her) Gun lovin, bomb throwin, grumpy old lady. 

Onya: "Loosely based on my grandma, and an old weird anarchist I met as a kid. Both were kinda scary and problematic."

In typical Session 1 fashion we were still figuring things out, and we very much derailed things by the end of the session, but it was fun. Later sessions we hit our stride, but hopefully this is still entertaining. The Eye Panopticon was one of my inclusions to the setting ;).

Play Report

The PCs' cell is just outside of the Grey compound on a mission to steal a sample of the Spirit distillate. The Spirit distillate is in a locked shed at the opposite end of the camp, and can not be touched during transport lest one become Eye-Monster'd. 

There are two guards moving in rotation around the perimeter of the camp. Tax, a badger known to Maud, is overseeing some workers at the center of the camp. Recon by Kitsch's squirrel Walnut determines Tax has keys, probably to the shed.

The group split up, with Maud and Grench staying where they are and Kitsch and Jabronski heading around the perimeter to the opposite end near the shed. 

...

During this time a light from the Eye Panopticon shines on a small building near the shed and a window in the building appears to glow red in response. 

...

Grench decides to capture(??) one of the guards by...eating his head. The resulting screams alert the rest of the camp. Maud at this point throws some self-igniting fire oil to hold them off, which, unfortunately, also sets Grench's pants on fire. Grench ripped off the guard's head and doused the fire in blood. Tax and two workers run to the scene. Maud, still hidden, sees her old friend Tax was distracted by this madness, and shoots him in the head. 

...

Jabronski scouts the shed. They notice Spirit distillate is leaking out, convenient perhaps, but also dangerous. The shed's door, where the leak is occurring also faces the glowing red window. After his return, Kitsch throws Jabronski through the glowing red window. The light disappears and is replaced by two owl eyes. A matte black owl emerges, holding Jabronski, ready to fly away with him. The owl is not paying attention to Kitsch. Kitsch bashes the owl, which grabs them, throws Jabronski away, back towards Maud and Grench's side of the camp, and starts flying away.

...

Maud takes Tax's musket, murders a worker and scares the other off. More Greys are running over. Maud and Jabronski head around the perimeter of the camp, taking advantage of the confusion to get to Kitsch. Grench decides to stay behind and try to change into one of the guard's uniforms to blend in. 

...

Kitsch transforms from human form into fox form and slips out of the owl's grip and scurries under the shed. The owl begins tearing the shed apart in an attempt to get to them. 

...

En route to the shed, Jabronski goes into his frog companion's mouth and enters the mycelium matrix to discover that the owl, the Eye Monster panopticon, and a third mysterious point far to the northeast are connected via glowing threds of mycelium info transfer.

...

The owl is making slow progress getting to Kitsch and becoming increasingly covered in Spirit distillate. Jabronski and Maud arrive. Jabronski can see the Spirit distillate infecting the owl in the matrix. This is clearly _bad news_. Maud throws fire oil on the owl. The owl becomes more enraged and tears the vats of Spirit distillate open. Kitsch barely escapes. The owl is drenched and goes full Akira/Eye-monster abomination. 

...

The compound is in an uproar. 

... 

Grench is putting on pants.

BONUS: An Invitation

I recently did a light purge of my blogroll. There are enough blogs on there still that you may not have even noticed. I do them occasionally, but this time was the most expansive.

Going forward, as a rule, I will not follow any blogs that have a blogroll but don't include Weird & Wonderful Worlds on it.

I don't love how as a side effect of this it disincentivizes people from having a blogroll at all, because I love discovering new blogs through blogrolls and I love the blogospheric interconnectedness that it fosters.

But all the same, that kind of asymmetry has always bothered me. If somebody isn't interested enough in my blog to add it to their blogroll, I understand that it is not necessarily personal and that it is their prerogative to not do so, but likewise, it is my prerogative to not include them either.

One might argue that if blogrolls are just a quid pro quo that it cheapens their value. I disagree. If you add me to your blogroll, I will add you to mine, and I will read your work, and I may comment on it too, and the more actively you engage with my work, the more likely I am to actively engage with yours in kind. Maybe I would have read it anyway, maybe not, but now you know you have one more reader, and potentially more if any of my readers find you, and maybe conversations will form that wouldn't have otherwise, and what started transactionally evolves into something greater.

I'm not as active on the broader RPG/OSR/NSR internet world anymore and that will probably continue to be true; I'm trying to cut back on online stuff in general. That said, if I am on your blogroll and you are not currently on mine, please let me know and that will change.

EDIT: Following up on Semiurge's comment, if the only thing stopping you is technical complexity but the intended sentiment is there, feel free to reach out to me and we can work it out or come to an understanding or whatever makes sense.

We are Building a Religion

You have experienced something Phenomenal, so awesome and steeped in meaning and virtue, that The World must be made to understand. And so 

We are Building a Religion.

What is The Religion?

1. Nope
2. There is no roll table
3. You're just going to have to build The Religion for yourself
4. You can try ChatGPT
5. Or
6. Consult the I Ching

You may each perform a kind of Miracle, but it is never something that can be observed directly or proven (it must be taken on faith). Prophetic visions full of vague symbolism, an indomitable will, improbable successes, a presence or charm, and things of this nature.

As The Religion spreads, it amasses The Power necessary to defend itself against The World.

At first The World will respond with apathy, and The Religion will use this in its favor.

The Religion will attract the disenfranchised.

Then The World will respond with mockery, and The Religion will use this too.

The Religion will attract the scorned.

Then The World will use brute force. But by this point, The Religion can defend itself.

The Religion will attract the violent.

Finally, The World will attempt to assimilate the Religion. But by this point, The Religion will have already begun to consume The World in kind.

The Religion will attract the mindless.

This is a game about building The Religion, which you define for yourselves.

The Miracles granted by The Religion provide little benefit in themselves.

The Phenomenon alienates you from The World, at least at first.

You are opposed by The World.

And, potentially, each other.

The odds are not in your favor.

The Power comes from the acquisition of human biomass, social networks, money, hegemony, and ???????? »Â£ »Â£╔, in that order, or the reverse. 

The Power is not sourced from individuals, but from systems. The Miracles are like spears and shields torn off a nuclear-armed jet. The Power is drawn from the collective faith of its adherents.

It is your only hope of survival against The World.

As you attain The Power, The World will conform to The Religion. But, The Power is itself of The World. The more of The Power that The Religion obtains, the more like The World it becomes.

The game is as Weird, Psychedelic, Horrific, and Magical as The Religion has the ambition to be and as The World allows.

This game is not a power fantasy about individuals obtaining magical swords and accomplishing superhuman feats. It is (a power fantasy) about ideas, awe, communication, community; about building systems and defending them from predators, disease, mundanity.

This game is not for those who seek only linear things, who take pride in their ignorance, who desire the mundane or populous at the exclusion of all else, who do not consider what they want nor why, who neither understand nor have any interest in understanding. This game is ill-defined by design.

Game Design Pattern: Time Action!!!

In my continued attempts to do weird spacetime stuff with TTRPGs (The Art of Chrono War, Multi-Dimensional Hex Crawl), here's a system neutral Game Design Pattern for running conflicts with time mechanics.

These are currently untested. Might be better for fast or rules-light games, encounters with specific goals, or where there is some imposed limit on the number of Rounds (could just be a baked-in hard limit and not context specific); since individual Actions and entire Timelines may be overwritten, the pace of the conflict might be slower, all else being equal.

The idea was partially inspired by Source Control Management (Git specifically), if you know you know, but you don't need to know.

Again, totally untested, so if you catch any obvious issues with the design pattern, please let me know. I haven't run a game in a while but I'll try to incorporate this next time I run something and see how it goes.

Terminology

Basic overview of the game design pattern.

Turn: A single character's continuous Actions.

Round: Cycle of every characters' Turn, or reset after a new Timeline is created by a Time Action.

Action: General term for anything a character can do on their Turn.

Time Action: An Action of any kind that is taken backwards in time to alter a previous Turn within the Round, and that may create a new Timeline (and therefore resetting the Round).

Timeline: Linear sequence of Actions or Turns encompassing a Round. Whenever a new Timeline is created, the Round resets starting from the next Turn.

Stash Action: A special kind of Time Action, forfeiting a Turn to react to or interrupt other Actions.

Merge Action: Use a Stashed Action to react out of Turn order immediately after another Action.

Rebase Action: Use a Stashed Action to interrupt a Time Action, resolving prior to the Time Action.

Time Action Game Design Pattern

Explanation of the mechanics laid out in detail.

Time Actions

• Time Actions resolve using whatever mechanic would normally be involved for that Action. 
  
  
• They can only go back as far as the current Round.
  
  
• -X penalty on the Action for each Turn backwards.
• e.g. -1 to reset the Timeline from the previous character's Turn, -2 for two Turns back, etc.
• -X penalty is a relative term for whatever makes sense for the chosen system.
• Or, cost +X Time Action points, if you want to use a meta currency to limit Time Actions.
  
  

• If the Time Action is successful, the character may choose to accept the new Timeline and reset the Round, or revert to the original Timeline.
• If reverting to original Timeline, they are in effect forfeiting their turn, but gain +1 to their next Action or receiving a Time Action point if taking that approach.
• If accepting the new Timeline, they gain a +X bonus on their next non-Time Action where X is the number of Turns erased by the new Timeline.
  
  

• If the Time Action failed against an opposing character, the opposing character may choose to accept the new Timeline.

Stash/Merge/Rebase Actions

• Stash Action: Choose a kind of Action (e.g. running, fighting, hiding, etc.). 
• Forfeit your Turn.
• Stashed Actions may be used to Merge or Rebase.
  
  
• Merge Actions use Stashed Actions to react to another Action out of Turn with +1.
• Can react to other Merge Actions, resolving in the order they were made, each subsequent Merge Action receiving an additional +1.
• Can react to Time Actions, but not resolving until the beginning of the new Timeline, and are lost if the original Timeline is preserved.
• Can react to Rebase Actions, but only after all active Rebase Actions are resolved (otherwise it would get way too messy...).
  
  
• Rebase Actions use Stashed Actions to interrupt Actions with +1.
• Can interrupt other Rebase Actions, receiving an additional +1 for each number of Actions being interrupted.
• If a Rebase Action is successfully interrupted by another Rebase Action, it is lost.
• Can interrupt Time Actions, preserving the original Timeline or creating a different new Timeline based on how the Rebase Action alters the original Timeline.
• Can interrupt Merge Actions.

Flow of Time Action!!!

The Game Design Pattern explanation above is a better reference, but given that this is all about time, I thought it might be easier to understand at first if presented linearly.

Each sequence of continuous Actions or Turns over the course of a Round comprises a Timeline. While new Timelines reset the Round (prohibiting Time Actions further back), the character Turn order proceeds as normal.

Time Actions allow characters to create a new Timeline branching off of any Action within the Round, taking a -X Penalty (whatever that means within the system) for each Turn backwards they're attempting to erase in the Timeline.

This could alternatively use a points system to buy Time Actions rather than inducing a penalty. Or Time Actions could be tied to a specific stat or unique resolution mechanic, but I prefer the idea to just tie it to the Action itself, or a points system.

If the Time Action is successful, the character may choose to accept the new Timeline, reset the Round, and gain +X to their next (non-Time) Action, where X is the number of Turns erased by the new Timeline.

Attempting a Time Action from further back in the Timeline, where more Turns would be negated, involves a greater penalty or cost. However, if successful, it can not only turn the tides after a particularly bad Round, but can also provide a proportionately large benefit on the next (non-Time) Action.

So there's a risk/reward system involved that also reflects the natural advantage one might imagine having by successfully rewriting the Timeline in their favor.

Or, they revert to the original Timeline (in effect forfeiting their turn, but gaining +1 to their next Action or receiving a Time Action point if taking that approach).

If the Time Action failed against an opposing character, they also may choose to accept the new Timeline.

For systems with degrees of success especially, or where unexpected complications might arise, the option to reject a new Timeline, or to accept a new Timeline as the opposition even if it erases your previous Action, may be a beneficial decision.