My Games

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Weird & Wonderful Wavelengths (Variety Show s1e5)



Reruns


It's Halloween season!
...but I've got nothing seasonal on the mind. I have been watching movies though. Check out the Soska Sisters. They are criminally underrated. We're in the Golden Age of Tubi. Murdoch owns them but they're free so get in while the getting's good, let's bleed that old fucking vampire dry before he figures out how to monetize it.

I am a Cronenberg fan but the Soskas' Rabid is better.


Oh ya I had this one-liner, don't think I've shared this in a post before:
King in Giallo: A Giallo-inspired setting except with Hastur.


The Nuclear Man
Through means unknown, a nuclear missile explodes backwards through time. Probability crackles as atoms and the bounds of spacetime smash against each other, procreative energy seeding life in all it's magic, and madness.
A retrofuturistic examination of the effects of nuclear power on culture through a modern lens. The promise of what nuclear energy can be, against the dangers it poses.
A being born as a side effect of the orgodynamic nuclear time explosion referenced above.
An extremely powerful but unstable being, one with near unlimited potential, equally for better or worse.
One with a chip on its shoulders, with a streak of both exceptionalism and rebellion.

When too many ideas collide
A world in which some weird entities like bugs or autonomous machines or whatever are constantly building, and so most of the world is tight, labyrinthine corridors, and cities and wealth and property is symbolized by the ability to create and maintain large open spaces.

The universe actually is a simulation, where the first universe fucks things up so badly that they create a simulation as a way to preserve themselves through recreation, but each time it keeps getting fucked up and they keep trying to salvage it.

Each level of the simulation, the underlying algorithm is slightly different either for creative reasons or due to the constraints of the universe in which it was constructed, so each one is a little different.

And even though each universe is constructed as a consequence of the actions in the preceding universe, the algorithms are (mostly) deterministic, so "time travel" is just a calculation.

So there are people or factions that can propagate to "lower" or even "higher" levels of simulation, so it's like a Doctor Who-ian level of timey-whimeyness except in a universe more like that of cyclical mythologies with their ages and cycles, and the interactions between the simulations can become like a teleology.

And so that world where bugs or automatons are constantly building such that indoors are like outdoors and outdoors are like indoors would be one level of simulation in this setting.

Festival of the Living Dead. Soska Sisters. On Tubi. The last good zombie movie (probably).


A few more ideas while you wait for your train because they're trying to force us back into offices despite the comprehensive natural experiment known as covid demonstrating statistically that it is not necessary, it is solely a means for them to control us and our time and our bodies...
  • A bard with a magic box. They wave their fingers over the box and it makes magical vibrations and music.

  • A cyborg with a tachyonic hand. Solves mysteries of time by transmitting information between the cyborg's past, present, and future. The hand can only exist in one time and must find the cyborg whenever it transmits to a different time.

  • A cohort of cetaceans reached superhuman intelligence. Selling out the seas to humans for profit and power, they have systematically kept the rest of the cetacean population in an intellectually impoverished state. With their intelligence and extraordinary wealth, this small cohort, <1% of the cetacean population, live lavish lives in a secret underwater "city" far more advanced than anything humans have accomplished.

  • A mathematically advanced species whose language and cognition operates like music.

  • "Natural Farces", a magical/science phenomena like the opposite of Natural Forces.




How many episodes, over how many years, before I can start calling this season 2?

Monday, September 9, 2024

Heaven is here (and it has a waitlist) [Micro-Setting][Campaign Setup]

The PCs are breaking into Heaven because they couldn't make the waitlist, or are otherwise morally compromised, and now they want revenge for the eternity of bliss they didn't earn or never stood a chance of earning. Along the way they fight Biblically accurate Angels, Indulgent Elites, and worst of all the Anointed at the end of Space and Time.


High Concepts
  • Techno-Boschian Heaven
  • Statement on the culmination of Late-Stage Capitalism, Christian Nationalism, and Techno-Narcissism (the Triple Threat)
  • The unwillingness of Americans to sit with discomfort
  • The Ennui and dysfunction of Suburbia

Concerns
Balance between representing the ugliness and banality of The Triple Threat, but also making it fun and interesting to play in.


System & Setting


Resources
Everything in Heaven is mediated by two resources.

Plasma: The raw energy of consumption, for the Human Spirits and their Machines (including PC's Vehicles). Sourced from e.g. Monsters, The Aether. The rate at which Plasma is being industrially farmed is depleting the ecosystem of Monsters and literally shrinking The Aether of Heaven.

Points: Gained by sacrificing Plasma to The Infineract. Can be traded or spent on Miracles from The Infineract, but their greatest value comes from being accrued. Also, they earn interest. Systems of Point Value are largely defined by The Infineract, through the collective Human Spirit.


Geography
Strictly-zoned Suburbs, Strip Malls, and Office Parks, connected by serpentine Highways. Getting anyway requires a Vehicle.


Vehicles
The PCs have at least one Vehicle, probably a car that they all ride in together. It's ok for the Vehicles to be cool and fun and for Players / PCs to feel personally connected with them.

Use Concept Crafting or your preferred Mecha / Vehicle system.

Getting anywhere in the Vehicle costs Plasma.
  • Vehicles with Controlled Deformation will crumple more easily, but shock absorb Damage for the PCs.
  • Larger Vehicles may be stronger, but cost more Plasma to use.
  • Rare or expensive Vehicles project greater Social Dominance, but also may attract bad actors such as thieves or cops, or other kinds of unwanted attention.

Vehicles are inherently unsafe and destroy the environment, but have fun ;)!


The Infineract
A "Black Box", an infinite-dimensional object reminiscent of the Monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Infineract is a Singleton object that can be accessed by anything with a GetInfineract access method (such as Human Spirits). However, most simply use The Infineract instance in the center of their living rooms.


Human Spirits
Those VIPs who made it into Heaven. As such they cannot die, or experience anything like true Pain. However, they have a very low tolerance for Discomfort, and this pathological fear drives all of Heavenly society. Human Spirits Need Not, but Want All.

PCs, being infiltrators and not truly Human Spirits, can die and feel Pain. It would be in their best interest to keep that information from getting out.


Non-Exhaustive Bibliography in no particular order
  • The Geography of Nowhere
  • Techgnosis
  • Hieronymus Bosch
  • Roadside Picnic / Stalker
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Games: Agency as Art
  • VALIS Trilogy
  • Harmony (Project Itoh novel)


Like many of my recent posts, I know there is more there there, but I was in a very particular state of mind when I wrote this, and I often struggle to get back into those states afterwards, so rather than waiting several months, barely adding anything, and then still sharing it in an incomplete state, I figured I'd just do it now. Hopefully I'll follow up on it more in the future.


Monday, August 12, 2024

Superheroes pt.2: The Fly

The Fly

Biotech scientist and social activist vigilante with a fly mask and a classic noir costume over superhero spandex. A small wiry man with a pet fly that sometimes talks to him and grants him extraordinary abilities.

The Fly can see in three dimensions of time, allowing them to respond to things before they happen. They also have superhuman agility and low-level superstrength.

Occasionally the pet fly grants them greater and more mysterious abilities, although usually they operate subtly, like luck or force of will.

Fly Vision in three dimensions of time is a compound kaleidoscope of scenes that appear spatially low resolution and muddy like old film.


Navy Bullfrog

Archnemesis of The Fly. A navy veteran turned entrepreneur who now runs most of corporate agriculture on the west coast, and a major financial supporter of the GOP.

An attractive brawny man in a navy suit. They produce a low frequency croaking vocalization that manipulates people subliminally. They wear a slimy blue helmet that amplifies their abilities to the point that they seem to influence consensus reality directly.

While Navy Bullfrog served in the armed forces, they were involved in a mission to wipe out an invasive species outbreak accidentally spread by the military overseas. This mission and all pertinent details have been covered up or classified.


Publication History

Unlike most superheroes, The Fly was introduced in medias res with no superhero origin story. In the years since, several creators have filled in some of the gaps, although these origins often contained major continuity errors, which later creative teams attempted to explain away as the effects of Navy Bullfrog's consensus reality-altering abilities or The Fly's Fly Vision.

From the beginning The Fly tackled social issues in the sciences, including critiquing the medical model of disability, tackling misinformation and disinformation around topics such as vaccines and genetically modified organisms, and WEIRD biases in research (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). However, very early in the first volume, The Fly also subtly explored the intersections of scientific and spiritual thought, which later became a core theme of the character.

The villain Navy Bullfrog originally appeared as a one-off antagonist in Panic Attack! Vol. 1, sans his iconic helmet or any reference to his superpowers or strange past. The character was largely reinvented for The Fly, although later volumes of Panic Attack! would retcon the scope of Navy Bullfrog's influence in those early adventures.

The original creative team had intended for the pet fly to be an incarnation of a demonic entity and have The Fly interact with the Church of Satan, although this plotline was abandoned early in the run for unknown reasons [citation needed]. In Vol. 2 it was implied that the pet fly might be a Saturim agent working on behalf of Bright Mujo, although this was never confirmed.

During the XXX regime of 20XX, Vol. 3 of The Fly was censured mid-run. This led to a Streisand Effect in which the character became a symbol of resistance, and many underground "American Doujinshi" stories of The Fly would influence the official series when it was brought back into publication. This was controversial and led to backlash against the publisher for appropriating these stories while simultaneously attempting to reassert their IP control. Although they ultimately failed, the competition among publishers for this now public domain character led to an overall improved quality in storytelling compared to Volume 3, which had been losing buzz anyway prior to being censured.


I did not sleep well last night, and unfortunately nowadays that seems to be the best way to get my creative juices flowing. I should probably polish this off more but I dunno it feels right and I don't want to add too many details and muddle it, so I'm putting a pin in it and maybe I'll expand on it later.

Friday, August 2, 2024

Weird Pets

Their origins may have been functional (hunting, protection, pest control), but that's mostly not why people have pets anymore. We have pets because they are adorable and floofy and loving, or pretty to look at, or give our lives a sense of purpose through giving. These pets may have some other utility, but that's not what this is about. These pets are about serving other kinds of emotional needs.

#5, #6, and #7 Courtesy of Mike from Sheep and Sorcery.

  1. Charred-black tentacular nudibranchs that come in various neon patterns. They evoke a feeling like horror movie catharsis, but are not otherwise capable of causing much harm.

  2. These slow and dimwitted creatures look like a cross between a lizard and a sloth but are most closely related to lemurs. They evoke a sense of social repugnance and schadenfreude. Quietly, they have become a trendy pet.

  3. Their bowling pin shape and blubbery blowup doll bodies make these Killer Klown-looking creatures immune to blunt damage and indifferent to being used as punching bags. In fact, they seem to like it (or at least that's what scientists think the giggling is about). Even most vegans approve of using these weirdos to let out a little steam.

  4. Colloquially referred to as "Ant Bonobos", this unclassified thing that might be a slime mold extrudes itself into units that look like bonobos with ant parts. The colony behaves like a variation of the Game of Life algorithm, appearing remarkably like a simulation of human civilization. Despite whatever violence appears to ensue, it's all one colony and there's no reason to suspect it has self awareness or general intelligence as we think of it. Many find watching the colony slowly develop, sometimes destroy itself, and then start over, to be meditative or provide a feeling of existential contentment.

  5. Pet Men: Prisoners memetically and mentally altered with futuristic technology. All other humans naturally treat them more like dogs than human beings, including being willing to euthanize them rather than giving life-saving medical care. They are fully sentient internally, but unable to act in any way outside of the norms for an obedient hound.

  6. Rock Pet: While observed, this creature is nothing more than an inanimate rock. No amount of observation or scans reveal them as anything more than just rocks. However, the moment they are unobserved, they can move at astonishing speeds. They are totally harmless, eat normal food, and can even have little Rock Pet babies that just kind of magically appear next to them to make sure humans don't mistake them for ordinary pebbles. Basically a weeping angel pet rock but utterly harmless.

  7. Jeff: Jeff is a professional pet. It's not a sex thing. Really it's not. He drives no erotic pleasure from it at all. The guy just doesn't mind being treated like a household pet and enjoys the benefits of free housing and food. He is very low maintenance seeing as he will use your toilet and can feed himself just fine if left to it. Actually his scallop risotto is delightful.

Friday, July 19, 2024

"Weird Genders"

I can't resist a provocative title. These aren't really "genders", but alternative dimensions upon which a species might be organized biologically, socially, or sexually. Galmoxians courtesy of Semiurge.

1. This species has three genders. Titans serve as their habitats like mobile forests. Foresters care for Titans, relieving them of pests and parasites and cultivating a healthy ecosystem. A healthy Titan releases pheromones that allow Foresters to reproduce parthenogenically. Rakes are physically indistinguishable from Foresters, but are predisposed to hyperactivity, curiosity, individualism, and adventurousness. They traverse Titans to romance fresh Foresters. In a successful courtship, they release a pheromone that temporarily transitions a Forester into a Berserker-state, nearly doubling in size and muscle mass and developing reproductive organs to impregnate the Rake, bringing genetic diversity to the Titan's ecosystem.

2. This species has two genders, one like Hominids, and the other like a variety of Trees. Most relationships are either polyanarchic or serially monogamous, and nearly always full of tenderness. Trees navigate the world through spatial reorientation, where the self is a continual growth process operating at a frequency below the Hominids' temporo-perceptual threshold. Their radical differences in how they perceive and operate in the world, and their limited ability to communicate and understand each other, makes their love both tragic and beautiful. Hominids pollinate the Trees and spread the seeds of their fruit, germinated by the enzymes in their saliva.

3. This species are always hatched in pairs. In nature, parents are only able to provide for one sibling, and so they brutally compete for survival. When one sibling inevitably, through luck or circumstance, outcompetes the other to such an advantage that they gain total dominance, the parents will neglect, disown, or even murder the Forgotten sibling in favor of the Chosen sibling. For much of civilization, this practice has been outlawed or frowned upon, and yet the systemic inequality between Forgotten and Chosen is interwoven through the history and persists into modernity.

4. This species has two genders, Lover and Spirit. While one is alive they are Lover, and in death they become Spirit. The vitality of a Lover provides inspiration for Spirit, imparting a portion of their essence inside the Lover so they may reproduce. The unlifespan of a Spirit may be as much as three times that of a Lover, but after each time they impart their essence they undergo significant aging, and each time more so, and it is rare for Spirits to be capable of reproducing more than three times before expiring.

5. This species has the genders of Chess Pieces. They operate like a hierarchical hivemind. Kings are the mind and soul of the hive, and without a King the hive will flounder for lack of thought or inspiration. They are physically limited and must be protected. Queens are powerful like demigods, and often just as petty and needy and prone to in-fighting. Rooks are workers and artisans, Knights are soldiers and first responders, and Bishops are artists and counsel, and all three are asexual. Pawns are weak yet plentiful, and can develop into the other genders as needed, although most Pawns never make it that far in life, or choose not to develop.

6. Galmoxians - Those sultry seducers of the spaceways - do not technically have genders. Or sex. Like all the unusually-intelligent life on their homeworld, they shape new individuals of their species from the primordial and protean slime which pools in its cracks and crevices, through both physical sculpting and bio-electric-chemical interface facilitated through layers of symbiotic micro-organisms.

However there are somewhat analogous societal roles related to a galmoxian's relationship to this sculpting process. Though by no means universal, the most common are typically translated as "fullshapers", who individually create a new galmoxian through the whole process, "raw-workers" who gather the slime, move it to a work-space, and handle the bulkier details, "detailers" who specialize in shaping certain parts of the galmoxian body, and depending on their skill can garner significant fees for this, "students" who oversee and study the creation process without directly participating, and "wreckers" who harass work-spaces, critiquing the creation process and destroying new galmoxians underway in they can breach the perimeter. Stereotypes, expectations, and so on for each role can differ greatly between cultures and classes within those cultures, even while the roles themselves are fairly 

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Game Design Pattern: Concept Crafting

As part of WORDS!: The July 2024 Blog Carnival hosted by Beneath Foreign Planets, I thought I'd revisit one of my favorite game mechanics of all time: 


Credit to Saker Tarsos, his Crafting with Concepts post from 2020 was the last TTRPG mechanic that truly inspired me. I'm sure there's other really innovative things I haven't given sufficient consideration or am not aware of, let me know in the comments, but this one was a game changer.

I have been under-inspired lately so I'm not going to re-hash too much. 

The core mechanic is as follows:

WORD1 + WORD2 = WORD3

e.g.:

FIRE + BALL = FIREBALL

Go read his original post or any of the following.


In my original Mecha Gear post I describe a system for building Mecha with Concept Crafting, but this could easily also apply to Power Armor or Battleships or other mechanical things.

I created three spark table posts for creating various kinds of weird mecha:
I also wrote Pre-Gens for a Super Robot Wars (videogame series)-style crossover Post Apocalyptic Mecha setting including the Ichinana from Mazinger Z, Jet Alone from Evangelion, and Hyakku Shiki from Mobile Suit Gundam.

The final play report of my Maximum Recursion Depth Volume 2 Campaign has a writeup of an awesome Concept Crafting-based Mecha boss fight, with an index to all the other PRs. The penultimate play report also had a really cool sandbox survival module that leveraged Concept Crafting for a variety of things like salvaging resources and constructing a base.


I also proposed a "monster" collecting mechanic using Concept Crafting (e.g. Pokemon, Dragon Quest Monsters, Shaman King) in the form of Anima Crafting for Maximum Recursion Depth Volume 3.


I've talked to people who were not aware of Saker Tarsos' post but had independently come up with a similar idea for things like a magic system (Maze Rats' magic system may have worked similarly, I don't remember anymore), or for something like Zelda Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom.


I hope this blog carnival brings more awareness to Concept Crafting and that more people begin to design around this mechanic. I imagine there's a whole lot more that could be done with it if people put their minds to it.

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Heaven's Gate Academy: An Interodelic Adventure

Followup to Into Interodelia: A Probiotic Drug Cocktail Adventure [Campaign Setup]. If you see something with a *, it's a reference to the first post.

Thanks to Dan of Lacrimis Draconis for proofreading and moral support.


Heaven's Gate Academy
Everyone knows that life is suffering and the world is broken. It's just that you're a little more broken than the rest of the world. Or, that's what the world is telling you. The mission statement is that they're going to fix you, but nobody really maintains the pretense on the inside.

Bad things happen inside the Academy, seriously. Violence, dehumanization, indoctrination, forced biochemical and body mutilation. It's some real dark shit. You've been warned.

Even so, some people are actually happy here, or better off at the very least. I don't know what to tell you, you'll just have to roll with the messiness of it all. At least it's campy too. Just wait until you see Mr. Doctor Priest's Enochian Cyber-Cock.


The Academics of Movement
You are always being monitored inside the Academy, except when you're not. During the day you will have two supervisors, and at night just one, and you can only go where they let you go. You'll spend most of the time in The Dorms.

Fortunately, space and time are relative, and therefore so is movement. You can always escape inside yourself in the Positive Plane*, or dissociate into your own holographic rainbow shadow, the Negative Plane*.

Where there is uncertainty or contradiction, you may find respite. But you have to be willing to sit with the discomfort of the unknown, like balancing on a bench of arrowheads.


The Teleology of Interodelia
Remember, this is all magic. Which is to say, a drug trip of misremembered memories. And only some of those memories are your own.

The goal is to escape, and this is agreed upon, including by Heaven's Gate Academy, although they won't just let you do it, what would be the point in that?

But anyway, when the trip ends and the magic's gone, you will escape. You were always going to escape. It's really more in how you do it.


The Dorms
In addition to yourselves, other dormmates include Carolina*, Del*, and Rabid Dog. Jakky* will come and go as he pleases. There are other dorms as well, but this one is yours.

The Dorm is a small nondescript living room, a couch and tv, a narrow hallway, and a few rooms of bunk beds, each with their own bathroom. They're not so bad, but there's only so much to say about them. Which is unfortunate, because you'll be spending a lot of time here.

The PCs' and NPCs' room assignments should all be mixed. I know that might seem inconvenient, but sometimes that's just how it goes.


If you room with Del, keep in mind, he's generally a decent guy, but sometimes he can be mean, or want to roughhouse, sometimes a little too rough. Del isn't violent by nature, no more so than anyone else, that's just what the trauma did to him. And once Del gets riled up, then Jakky follows shortly afterwards, and then it's a real problem because Jakky's a fucking ghost tiger who thinks he's people.


If you room with Carolina, she really is kind and sharing. You can see how the world would chew her up. It's not that she can't defend herself, she's actually tougher than you'd think physically, you'll find out for yourself if she ever gets her hands on any drugs, it's more a personality thing. She's also smarter than people think. People treat her like she's stupid but she's not, she just doesn't show it the way other people do.

There is one and only one true fail state in this game, and that is if you help Carolina escape. Incidental* will remind you of this fact in case you forget, or get any ideas. Worse, even just helping her, or showing her true kindness, could cause a Calamity*. You were a bad friend, and even in this magically misremembered memory, this failure must be relived.


Not long after you arrive comes Rabid Dog. Never before have you seen such eyes. They’re too-human eyes, full of cold intelligent violence, modern and primal. And should you ever find yourselves unsupervised in the Dorms, and should it seem that a physical altercation might ensue between yourselves and another, then Rabid Dog will intervene to break up the fight, and you will see those hyper-human eyes differently, because then you will see a love purer than you could have imagined, and you will feel joyous enlightenment, and also something like the shame of post-nut clarity, and you won't want to fight anymore, you won't even understand why you wanted to fight in the first place, you might even want to cry. Please, if you would resent a game telling you what your character should feel, just listen to your character, that's all I ask.


If Rabid Dog is ever in The Stables and the only supervisor is Zombie, he will grab a wooden 2x4 and he will bludgeon Zombie until his skull fractures and his spinal cord snaps and then Rabid Dog will run, and he will be captured, and taken somewhere else, somewhere worse, and you will never see him again. But you'll remember his hyper-human eyes.


One of the daytime supervisors is Jesus. He's more rotund than the usual White Jesus, and he's a ginger. Frankly, he's as broken as any of the students are purported to be, and has problematic views towards women, I mean really he's a misogynist, and he's deep into conspiracy theories. I know this all makes him sound unlikeable, but he leaves an impression, he's intelligent and convincing in his own way. He'd start a death cult of his own if he could but he doesn't quite have the charisma for it. But every once in a while he hooks a student into his madness, and even though he has the best of intentions, it doesn't usually end well for them.


The other daytime supervisor is Markov. He's small, wiry, a little past middle aged, bald and goateed, with rough skin, and he always wears sunglasses. He doesn't look that tough, but the students know that if you fuck with him, he will fuck with you back, and you just know you're not gonna win that fight, even if you think you can take him. But usually that's not a problem, because the students love him, he's the Cool Dad who lets you break some of the rules if it means you won't break the important ones. If Corporate ever had a clue they'd have fired him a long time ago, and that would be a shame, but that doesn't happen until after the drug trip ends, so you don't have to worry about it. He'll take a smoke break and mock you when you're jonesing, but it's all in good fun and when he comes back he'll let you sniff the nicotine off his fingers.


The nighttime supervisor is Mountain Dew. He's chill, nondescript. No ambitions, but not too bothered by it. He got his name because he drinks a lot of Mountain Dew and plays videogames all night, or reads comics, or watches hentai. Obviously none of this is allowed, but he does it anyway, and sometimes lets the students join him. If the drug trip would be coming to an end during the night shift, he'll give you drugs and a real fucked up indie comic book, and then you get to have one more wild adventure, recursing through both trips and eventually back up into what we erroneously call the real world.


The Stables
Do you ever wonder if they're called Stables because they provide stability? I don't want to look it up, it's better to wonder.


The Stables hold Majestic Beasts, and you get to take care of them, and learn to ride them. The Majestic Beasts are all large, at least as large as horses, and strong, because if they were small, or weak, someone would abuse them, they'd find a way, so you don't get to have something like a dog, even though that would be nice. I wonder if the Academy learned this the hard way.

The primary supervisor of The Stables is Zombie. He was supposed to go to Heaven, but due to bureaucratic error he's stuck in this broken world a little longer, and they didn't know what to do with him, so he's here. He is intellectually divergent and is legally not culpable for his actions, he has a legal guardian, but anyway they let him supervise The Stables, and he can do that just fine. He comes from a red state and has some regressive beliefs, but if he finds out that one of the students is "a queer" and he otherwise likes them, he'll find a way to rationalize it to himself.

Fat Tony is a student from another dorm, and he has the most experience of the students in running The Stables, and is often allowed to assist Zombie. He's a bully, a huge asshole, and remarkably ugly in an understated way, like he's actually uncomfortable to look at, but it's not from a disfiguring scar or deformity or anything, I mean he does have a disfiguring scar, but that's not what this is about, that's just a coincidence. He just exudes ugliness. Or maybe it's more like extrudes, because it's greasy. If you're the forgiving type you might indulge the question of how such a person came to work The Stables.


The Corrections Facility
At Heaven's Gate Academy sex is forbidden, because sex is life, which means sex is also suffering, and violence.

Every student at Heaven's Gate Academy is forced to take medications that halt their sex drive. And there's a three strike rule; if you get caught engaging in even the most innocent and playful of flirtations, that's a strike, and after three strikes, they use chemicals and instruments to tame you, and then there's no coming back from that.

But you know what? As monstrous as that sounds, some of the students really like it. No longer to be made an object of, no longer to fear that kind of violence, or the implication of it. And likewise, to be free from those urges, to no longer feel enslaved by them, or want to enslave others by them.


The Corrections Facility is managed by Mr. Doctor Priest, who prefers to go by Dr. Priest. He has an Enochian Cyber-Cock that he's really proud of, and always finds "subtle" ways to bring it up or wave it around. What Mr. Doctor Priest doesn't know about his Enochian Cyber-Cock, is that it's very easy to hack with a SQL Injection, because he doesn't actually know how to code Enochian, or really how to code in general, he just kind of muddles his way through it, like many do with life. Even though he's not a licensed therapist, they let him run the mandatory therapy sessions. Many students who would have benefited from real therapy will never get it, because he gave them the wrong idea of what it's about and so they'll wash their hands of it forever, and that's a real shame.


The Dining Hall
The food comes in plastic containers or bins of things made from powder and water, everything wet and greasy and white. There is a notable lack of scent, flavor, and nutrition. It’s filling and makes you tired and accomplishes very little else, but The Lunchlady really does care, and somehow that makes it worse, because you’ll hurt her feelings if you complain about it.

Occasionally The CEO will eat at The Dining Hall (and on those days the food is notably improved), and he’ll talk with the students. It's always a one on one conversation, and he's a very good listener, curious, and thoughtful. He has a clean and unthreatening handsomeness, like a diet Mitt Romney.


The Glassed Desert
Heaven's Gate Academy is located in the middle of a Glassed Desert, Shevet* knows where. The Nuclear God Shevet detonated here long ago, and it's never really been the same since. There's a tragic beauty in this desert in the middle of nowhere, mountains off in the distance. Serene and empty. You misremember it once being quite naturally beautiful, without all the weird baggage and feelings. Now it's all glass and charred vantablack trees, cauterized branch-collars like eyes that see into 無, the contradictory negative space contained within the cycle of being and becoming of existence, and maybe if the circumstances were different, there'd be a beauty in that too. You realize you too can stare into 無 if you follow the line of their sight.

There are also monsters in this Glassed Desert, but it's the people you really need to watch out for. They used to be a family, but after the war, after everything they did and everything they didn't do, there's not much left of them except their failed humanity laid bare, and even still they cling to it, they've learned nothing, and will continue to learn nothing, and that nothingness radiates and destroys everything it touches.


The Threats We Face
Whether on the run or sleepwalking through the day, we face obstacles in our path, inevitable conflicts, and lurking threats.

The Victims: No, they are not survivors, although maybe one day they will be. These are the victims of circumstance. Those circumstances can be anything; sometimes it's a demon in the head. It's not that they don't deserve sympathy or help, it's often the lack of either that got them here, but all the same, they've lost their fucking minds and so you don't know at any time whether or not they will hurt you, or hurt anything weaker than themselves, because that's all they have left to do.

The Inmates Who Run the Asylum: The supervisors are not so different from the students they manage, but they have the power and the students don't, and so even the weakest and stupidest of them is a threat.

Monsters: Because of course there are monsters.

The Outside: The system is designed to keep you inside. Whether on a supervised excursion into town, or escaping into The Glassed Desert, everything is out to get you. The failed humanity of The Glassed Desert despise you the way they despise everything that is not themselves (and also themselves in a different way), the people in town fear you, or they fear what would happen to their town if The Academy fails, or they think nothing of you, just that you aren't supposed to be here and that's enough.

Time: Time is not on your side. The longer you stay in The Academy, the more likely it is that they break you further, or fix you, which may be even worse. The part of you that is a student of The Academy becomes a greater part of your identity, it defines you until you are nothing but a student in this place. Time distorts your personal reality from the inside out like a microwave, like sickness and neurochemical imbalances in the Positive Plane, and rumination spirals and distorted perceptions in the Negative Plane.

Yourself: You are, perhaps, your own greatest threat, whether you can admit it or not.


Wrote the original draft as early as March 2024 (maybe earlier?), made a lot of progress on it for a month or so, then fell off. I had originally intended to gamify it up a bit more, maybe I'll finally do that in some hypothetical future third post.

I was very worried if this post was a little "much", again thank you Dan for advice and encouragement!

Thursday, May 23, 2024

A Carnival World of no Prisons

This was drafted as far back as February, but I recently watched the original Wicker Man and it was really good and reminded me of this post. Also spiritually connected to The Apologists. It's another thought experiment / worldbuilding thing, just exploring ideas.


A world where the prison system has largely been replaced by a practice of public shaming and light corporal punishment.

Except where shame would not be effective, removal of bodily autonomy is kept to a minimum after the completion of the mandatory Carnival.

While some question the cruelty of the shaming and humiliation, or the stigma offenders carry well past the end of their sentencing, it is efficacious and minimally disruptive to both society and the individuals.

Periods of sociopolitical polarity or apathy threaten the efficacy of this system.

Carnivals usually involve some kind of poetic punishment, up to a certain physical and psychological threshold. Systemic bias and corruption are sometimes reflected in the nature and degrees of the events. For the most powerful, the events may even take on an heir of celebration, an effective soft power attack against the state, making a joke of the whole affair.

Some of the Roles in this new system (Jobs has become a loaded term) include:
  • Master of Ceremonies
  • Carnival King
  • May Queen
  • Fool (aka Punch)
The Carnival King in Yellow of the city-state of Gorgonesia is a notable example of how this system can catastrophically fail.

Not actually no prisons but it makes for a better title.

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Grotesque Gains

Treasure table of grotesque items
#7 and #8 were written by Beneath Foreign Planets
  1. An Unkindly Face: The face of an orc warrior tanned into a mask. The face is pensive and still; it is silent only because it is on the hunt. One's eyes turn red, and red is what one sees. The Unkindly Face provokes fear and evokes an inner power, a will to violence.

  2. Spell Golem: Spells are alive, and to cast a spell is to summon the spell for a mere moment. By carving a sigil into a fresh corpse, the spell may come alive for a longer duration, fueled by the body. The spell consumes the soul, metabolizing it to mutate the body into a shape, still vaguely human, suiting its purposes.

  3. Fairy Cell: An innocuous rectangular handheld device of cold iron, glowing and beeping. Inside are fairies, bound in place, the cold iron tortuously funneling their magical energies through miniscule apparati of logic gates.

  4. Vampire Bloodwine: The ancients learned to alchemically transmute vampire blood and holy water into a potent concoction, but the means of its creation are now long lost. Humans who drink the bloodwine temporarily gain the powers of the source vampire magnified, and without any of the weaknesses. The Bloodwine only works if the vampire is still (un)alive, and for the duration of the effect, the vampire will be able to sense the location of the imbiber.

  5. Acupuncture of the Dark Meridians: Acupuncture needles carved from undead bones, their power proportional to that of the undead creature, and its freshness. Piercing these needles through one's flesh, and especially into the bones, into the marrow, unblocks energy through the Dark Meridians, unleashing great power at a terrible Karmic cost.

  6. Trough of the Were-Hog: A filthy thing covered in excrement and rotten corpses. A unique living stench that blasts its way into the limbic system, into memory, a singularity of self and were-hog. Leave the trough out for some time unattended, and consume whatever finds its way inside without remediation. The duration and strength of the were-hog transformation is proportional to the time left unattended, the quantity of edible materials, and the degree of repulsion.

  7. The Cloak of Control: A voluminous mass of yellow and fleshy segmented strings that sprout from the shoulders and drags across the floor. This 'cloak' is made of overgrown and swollen nerve endings. To wear the cloak is extremely painful but it allows the wearer to interface and control the corpses of giant beasts and meat-mechs of their own design.

  8. The Third-Eye Syringe: Made of blackened hihi'irokane, this wicked and wide tipped syringe is designed for the theft and reinsertion of human pineal glands. Those that use the syringe overstuff their hideously swollen cranium with dozens of ill-gotten and semi-calcified pineal glands in a weird bid to boost their psychic powers.

Friday, April 19, 2024

The Law of Unintended Consequences: A Two Party Competitive Game

The Law of Unintended Consequences is a competitive game played between two parties, managed by a single GM.

One team are The Heroes, and the other team are The Outlaws.

The Heroes overthrew the previous corrupt regime, and seek to create a better world. They'll have to contend with the corruption, incompetence, and sheer magnitude and complexity of the problems within, and also,

The Outlaws are a more heterogeneous bunch. Some are idealists who simply have no faith in the system as-is. Others' lived experience suggests to them that they must look out for themselves and theirs, and live day to day.


For each of their game sessions, The Heroes speak with their advisors, speak with the people, mitigate conflicts, legislate, and supervise. As they attempt to solve problems, it will be increasingly obvious all the ways they are being undermined every step of the way, both by corrupt factions and criminal NPCs, and also,

The Outlaws play more like a standard TTRPG, as opposed to the Domain-play of The Heroes; whether that be picaresque adventure, or something grander. All the same, they will frequently find themselves at odds with the policies and agents of The Heroes.


This game would benefit from tables and such; suggestions for "Unintended Consequences", various issues Heroes or Outlaws may confront. Maybe I'll write those later if people are actually interested in the idea.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Forgotten Gods

There are so many gods, it's inevitable that some get forgotten. We can forget gods, but let's not forget the people who made them. Contributors will be listed in parentheses.

  1. Wailing God of Signal-From-Noise: Like the ability of babies to learn the statistical properties of language through mere exposure that persists to this day, there was once a god in the linguistic dark ages when language first evolved with no fossil record to show for it. This god granted humans the ability to cry and laugh and scream, and to create distinct sounds for different kinds of predators. This god was borrowed from nature, it was not originally a god for humans, and when eventually they found (or created) their own gods, they had no more need for Wailing God of Signal-From-Noise, which is why today humans struggle to understand probabilities and large numbers.
  2. Shore-Striver (Wasitlikely): God of those nameless organisms that dedicated their lives to crawling incrementally further onto solid ground, especially those who made it so far they died on the returning stretch.
  3. Nameless Mother (Sheepandsorcery): In a cavern, on a mountain, where the dawn just pokes a single rosy finger into the stony crevice, there is a crack along a back wall, smoothed by a long dead creek into a yonic shape, in front of which have been rolled two smooth round stones, one on top of another, small on top, larger on the bottom. The top stone is vaguely rough for in the first age of man hands carved a face into this stone. This is the first god, the first goddess ever invented by mankind and the mother of all the gods, yet she has been forgotten. Time has worn away her identity and this is not even the first time. The one who carved these stones was not making an idol, only something by which he might remember his mother. Now she is forgotten. Now she is remembered forever.
  4. Folded-Wrinkles-Blossoming (Archonsmarchon): Back when stars could lie and crows could laugh, people knew how to wrap themselves in their own sagging skins to be remade in the prime of their youth. The god who guided this process was called Folded-Wrinkles-Blossoming, at least to some.
    In this time humanity was abundant, filling every corner of the Earth, yet this abundance was not to our strength - it made us the favoured prey of horrors: the hunting marrowflame, morph-again locusts, and Gib the Goreful being the few that remain to today.
    Humanity rejected their living rebirth, and cried out for Death. Death answered, and was so flattered by our self-offering it evangelized unto our enemies as well, inflicting mortal weaknesses or slaying them outright. It has been favoured ever since.
  5. World-Eater (Stygianseas): Bones aren't alive. The cells threaded through them are, and they heal due to being re-engineered, but bones are a mineral. World-Eater is the ancient protist-god of... something, of which biomineralization is a subcomponent. Its a god of structure but not determination. Its form is bulbous shells and tests, frustules and skeletons (both exo and endo) blooming off of each other asymmetrically and irregularly.
    World-Eater has been valued on earth since the first cells began to build biomineralized shells. Those few who remembered it in the first days of the Hominids understood that each flint tool or carved den was also sacred to it.
    All worlds with biomineralization or tool use are in its (un)awareness, but it is at the end of the day a very ancient sort of being.
  6. The Antecedent of Falsehoods (Glassziggurat): Who leapt into the mind of the first being that ever slept. It had so much fun there that it lost track of time and vanished when the creature woke.
  7. The God of Truth: Many Gods claim to be the God of Truth, but Truth was forgotten long ago. Or really it's more like we turned our backs on it, because it's ugly, and inconvenient. It looks diseased but it's not, that's just the germs inside all of us, even the good ones. Those maggots in its eyes, you have those too, they're eating the skin around your eyelashes right now. It has a dusty, flaky aura, like marine snow, but it's just illuminating that which our consciousness attenuates, all the meaningless murk, the detritus life leaves in its wake. Perhaps it's for the best, good riddance, c'est la vie.

Friday, March 1, 2024

Weird Eggs

  1. Platypus species that evolved "electrostatic missile eggs".
  2. Spiral shark eggs drill into the abyss. It is not known where they go, or towards what ends.
  3. Wonton chaos egg that unbirths and rebirths itself orthogonally to time.
  4. Synthegg: All encompassing virtual reality environment; an existential escape pod.

  5. Gatcha eggs: Like hard plastic-y single use pokeballs with monster and reality altering phenomenon pre-loaded. The probability tables are publicly available but it's basically random.
  6. Fractal Egg: The fractalness is in the roughness of the shell. An infinitely deep surface, cosmic patterns etched to the infinitesimal limit, worlds and lives stepped along the sharp edges. Beyond maximum recursion depth, what might grow within?
  7. Dragon eggshells litter the ionosphere hosting aetheric ecosystems like ants crawling along a translucent magnetic desert.


Friday, February 9, 2024

Into Interodelia: A Probiotic Drug Cocktail Adventure [Campaign Setup]

There are no contraindications to Into Interodelia: A Probiotic Drug Cocktail Adventure (it’s system and setting agnostic), but it pairs well with:

“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly



In this adventure, your body has been reduced to a state between life and death, and your mind downloaded into the consciousness of a drug-induced microbiotic gut bloom. Your vagus nerve has been torn from spacetime as you know it, uncomfortably bundled to fit within the confines of the curled dimensions, and yours and all the other's stitched together like string puppets pulled by the GM's trigeminal nerve somewhere past the fourth wall. The entire world as you perceive it is disseminated through the pain of the GM as immunopathological signals.

Too much information squeezed through coiled wires like electrons, the only release existing outside the body, outside the mind, the magnetic field in this too tightly stretched analogy.

A low resolution low-fi virtual reality, a sub-conscious cloud of pain-protecting signals. When consciousness is compressed into computational clouds, real and virtual become an arbitrary distinction.

“I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am.”
― J. S. Mbiti on Ubuntuism

Fools as you are, you cling to a semblance of self, even as inevitably you bleed into one another and all of existence, which as far as you can tell has reduced to your interior body outside of spacetime and a handful of very vividly misremembered memories that are probably some of yours.

Nothing but yourselves and each other, and the bare nakedness inside you, all the bile and mucus and piss and shit and blood; and metabolic warmth and white noise whooshing bodily fluids. Simple comforts cramped inside your body and the paradoxical ease of an embodied reality.

It was drugs that got you here, and you consented to it, and the rest is Incidental. All the same, you've got a few hours to make some magic.


Who am I?
You are the most reduced, prototypical version of yourself, whatever that means to you.


Where did we go?
Within the computational space of the gut bloom, signals of consciousness are reduced into a binary perspective. The Positive Plane, material reality as we understand it; and the Negative Plane, like multi-dimensional shadows, holographic reconstructions full of impossible colors, the metaphysical things. You navigate your own insides, spindles and fibers and gristle of the positive plane, and holographic rainbow shadows of your memories in the negative plane. But, they all kind of bleed into each other, it's all dream-like.

Each player should supply a list of misremembered memories for the GM, and you can roll them up as needed.

And mixed up all in it are also Pain, Sickness, and Ennui.


What can I bring with me?
  • You may bring the experience of a single album of your choosing, but the songs must be played in order, and each song may only be played once.
  • You may bring the symbolic representation of one piece of technology or equivalent, and consider how it extends your body, offloads your consciousness, or expands your senses.

That's it?
As you go through this Interodelic Adventure, you'll find that it's really much more useful to think about what you don't have than what you do.


“To know that we are only angels weighed down by filth, free of guilt? The bacteria in our bellies are responsible for the farts which shame us, tiny monsters shitting in their billions all over our pure skin create the acid reek of "our" sweat. And Slade: when the "inner voices" tell us we're unworthy or instruct us to "love" and "hate," despite our best instincts... are these incessant distracting thoughts our own? Or do we only hear the voice of the eternal germ screaming in our heads?”
― Grant Morrison, The Filth



Into Interodelia
Each player starts in the negative plane, in one of their own misremembered memories (you share the memory with the party).

If the memory was of a physical act like a sports achievement, you might connect with the party in the positive plane via a muscle. If it was a concert you attended, it might be the banging of the tympanic drum, or sweating skin, or strobe-addled eyes. And so on.

You didn't come here to defeat evil, collect treasure, or gain XP. Here we are our most reduced selves, before space and time and causality. Those are just means to justify the ends, but magic is in the journey itself.

It's only a few hours, all you have to do is explore, and survive.

...the rest is Incidental.
Or so it feels in Interodelia, but then we still have to go to work tomorrow, don't we?

Unless you're like Del, the shared delusion destined to die, a sacrifice to The Nuclear God Shevet. Crazy, snarky, cynical Del, who was secretly a bit of a dork as well. Lost in Interodilia for Shevet-knows how long.

And besides, you'll need to clean Jakhodo's litter box. Jakky can be a real homicidal maniac if he doesn't get his way. Jakky doesn't believe he's a tiger, he was conned into thinking he's a human. Jakky is also dead, but he doesn't believe he's mortal either. He's made a home for himself in the memory buffer of grief, and like any cat, he will not be told where he can and cannot go.

And then there's Carolina. Oh, Carolina, did you forget about her? Everyone else has, but really you of all people... Sweet Carolina only wanted to please, but all she ever received in turn was scorn, or nothing, nothing at all. Wouldn't it be easier if you forgot about her again? Because, we all know, whatever happened can't have been good. She really looked up to you too.

But that's all Incidental. Or so we keep saying. But Incidental has a way of making incidents out of accidents and Shevet help you if Incident insights a cohort of colluding co-incidents and then you have a Calamity on your hands. All I'm saying is keep an eye out for Incidental, no matter how innocuous it seems.


Pain
Some would have you believe that happiness cannot exist without suffering, and to that I say, go fuck yourself. Have you ever experienced Pain? It fucking hurts! If you really think Pain is necessary for Pleasure, then come on over because I've got a five-finger treat for you. Oh, you're a masochist you say? Well fuck me, that's another matter entirely… Anyway, Pain and Pleasure may or may not necessarily go together, but they certainly both exist in Interodelia. 

In this reduced reality, the spectrum of Pain and Pleasure is the one and only signal of embodied experience. The spirits, anima, ki, djinn, daemons, however you want to think of it.


Sickness
I want to say something about Fire, and Being and Non-Being and Becoming, and Prometheus and Dveikut, and Oxidation and Inflammation, and Pathogens, and Anxiety and Depression, and Hangovers. I want to say these things, but I'm just so tired. There is no space for thoughts inside me, my head is full of explosions. My skin burns. I can’t keep a single thought straight, it dissipates from me like light and heat.

There is a fire inside me, a controlled burn that firewalls me from the rest of existence. This raging flame allows me to be strong, but I don’t feel very strong right now. I recede inside myself, my cells, a cell. The divine light and warmth of my existence, all of existence, illuminates and enlightens the universe like stars. But all I feel of it is like a candle dripping away to nothing. A pool of sticky spent wax, and crusty white ash.

The Sickness mutates my DNA and sets my body and mind on fire with inflammation. As I flicker away impotently providing neither light nor warmth, as my most notable quality becomes my conspicuous absence, I remind myself, we are Phoenix.

In Interodelia, Sickness is paradoxically the source of both strength and weakness. It is an ongoing process, like the relationship between fire and fuel.


Ennui
Because “boredom” is a boring concept. A lazy, unexamined, flattening of a maddening sensation. The cyclical pattern of learned helplessness and cortisol angst towards that which is beyond your control. The illiminal spacetime of a late train that cannot be compelled to arrive. The psychopathic rage of being surrounded by a bunch of ignorant fucks without a clue, and you without the faintest idea of what to do about it all. Knowing it’s all wrong, and it’s all outside your control, and therefore it’s all pointless. A lazy, unexamined, flattening of a maddening sensation.

Ennui manifests in the physical plane as a kind of anemic, unaroused, seething frustration. But in the negative plane, it is imagination and creation.


The man who said I was a joke and my life was a joke—he may not have been there in my final moments, witnessing my final breath, but what I realized was: he foretold my death. He could only have foretold it by seeing me to my core—by having been my soul’s witness. When he said those awful words, he witnessed me into the future, a future he knew I would meet. During our fight, I tried to convince him that he was wrong. “I’m not a joke!” I cried. “You’re the joke! You’re the joke!”
― Sheila Heti, My Life is a Joke


And then we find ourselves at Heaven’s Gate Academy…
Which is neither in Heaven nor an academy.
(And if you feel you've been railroaded, truly you are more lost than was intended.)


I came up with the majority of this adventure / micro-setting in Fall 2023 and never quite finished it but even in its current form I thought it worth posting. It's supposed to be a whole adventure. If I follow up, I'll elaborate more on how the songs work and maybe more concretely how Pain, Sickness, and Ennui work mechanically, and also maybe write the Heaven's Gate Academy adventure.

Friday, January 26, 2024

The Empty Place

On this next adventure, you'll be heading to The Empty Place. Accompanying you will be The Diplomat. You will be provided with basic equipment and credit for expenses. The climate is temperate, there are few monsters or other anomalies, and no population to speak of. Arrangements will need to be made to dismantle the existing infrastructure so that we can establish supply lines, and security will need to be maintained around key points (for which your credit may be leveraged and expensed). You should expect some resistance at first, but should be able to resolve any conflicts with minimal bloodshed. Should you find yourselves compromised, it is imperative that The Diplomat escapes. They will know how to devise the post-mortem report. Know that long-term success of operations will depend on the initial terms.

I promise there is a real module idea hidden in here. You may ask why I am not explaining, but it simply cannot be discussed.

Friday, January 19, 2024

Micro-Setting: Alpha Genome

An advanced amphibious alien species that birth hundreds of young at a time. For the sake of their ecosystem and as a biological imperative, they must allow their young to be preyed upon. 

The young are laid in eggs on land and must travel to the ocean after hatching. They are slow, clumsy, and vulnerable on land, and hunted in droves by predators from the sky, on the land, and at the shore.

Despite their technology, wisdom, and spirituality, they must allow this violence, and many even embrace it. But also, some sacrifice more than others.

They have a pheromone system strong enough to sense genes, and have a strong sense of genetic memory.

The Alpha Genome are allowed to breed by the hundreds each. At any time up to 40% of the total population may be related to AG, with varying degrees of access to that genetic memory. The AG and lesser Genomes are a Family, a nation, a technology, a resource, and a religion. They are a species that places great emphasis on genetic "purity".

Much of popular culture is just rehashed genetic memories that induce something like a species- or culturally-specific emotion roughly equivalent to nostalgia.

Memories are altered by Hebbian Learning. When a memory is recalled it is changed due to coactivations of neurons at time of recall.

The genetic memories work similarly.

The Genomes themselves are like gods and demiurges and demons. But there are individuals or clusters who represent them, or claim to represent them, or who acquire disproportionate power through other niches.

The pheromones and genetic memories also make them more social even than humans, and they can empathize and socially intuit at a higher resolution. They experience and propagate both love and hate in dimensions beyond our ability to perceive.

Although they suffered terribly when the technologically superior Americans first colonized their world, the Alpha Genome were eventually elected minority rule over Earth geopolitics, and the nations that allied with them during the period of American colonization prosper under this new regime.

Over time their social technologies, the genetic memories and superior intuition, proved more powerful than guns and missiles.

Despite their similar intelligence and reasoning skills, because humans aren't part of the Genomes and can't experience the genetic memories, they do not feel the same degree of empathy or emotional volatility towards humans as they evoke from each other.

Humans are not socially equitable, but it is different than persecution humans impose upon themselves. Both species continue to inflict far more suffering on themselves than against each other.

The mechanism of the geopolitical takeover of earth involved a targeted effort to rebrand political power and leadership roles as a kind of service industry. 

Through this campaign, a critical mass including even some of the staunchest American individualists were eventually convinced to largely acquiesce organization and administration.

Although in minority control, they are acutely aware of their vulnerability should humanity choose to organize against them.