Maximum Recursion Depth Release!!!!!

Maximum Recursion Depth, or Sometimes the Only Way to Win is to Stop Playing, is officially released on drivethrurpg and itch.io!

Between the original conception and Ashcan Edition, through the Kickstarter which took longer than I had intended, I have been working on this game for well over a year. This was my passion project during the insanity that has been Covid, and the culmination of years longer of inspiration and personal experiences.

When I left academia, I told myself that if I could successfully transition into a career in software engineering, that I had to use the opportunities made available to me to publish a book, and now I have. It is by no means perfect, I can already see flaws in it, and I hope in the future that I will grow in my writing and game design abilities even more and the flaws become even more salient. But even so, or even if I never publish another book, I will always have this.

I can say reasonably confidently that MRD is unlike anything else I've seen or read, even if it certainly has inspirations. It won't be for everyone, whether due to my own failings as a creator or simply because it is not something that conforms to genre conventions, but I hope that enough people appreciate it for what it is to justify continuing with this endeavor.

Given the support on Kickstarter, my ongoing year-long campaign, and feedback I've received on the NSR discord server and from other creators who I respect, MRD has already been a success as far as I'm concerned. I don't expect to break drivethrurpg in sales numbers, I'm just grateful to have made a thing that I think is of reasonably high quality, for it to be real and effectively eternal barring the plausible collapse of civilization as we know it but hopefully at least through my life if not a little while longer than that.

I will probably take a pause before launching into anything else immediately, especially since I'm about to start a new job, but if you are happy with this first issue of MRD, know that I have several plans for potential future issues!

PS: I had originally said in a few places that there was going to be a big announcement coinciding with the release, but after discussing with some people, I've decided to hold up on that for a while, but it will come back eventually!

Super Robot Wars-style Mecha

Super Robot Wars is a videogame series of tactical RPGs where a bunch of Mecha anime cross-over, and it's delightful. Many of the recent games have been translated into English for the Singapore and/or Hong Kong regions and PS4 is not region-locked (they're also available on Switch and I believe are also not region-locked), so I finally get to play Ray Amuro / Nu Gundam, Shinji Ikari / Evangelion Unit-01, and Space Battleship Yamato, all together, in one of my favorite game genres. Childhood dreams do come true.

I'm not familiar with all of the series represented in the games I'm playing (so far I've beaten Super Robot Wars V, am working through Super Robot Wars T, and I've already got Super Robot Wars X and OG ready to go!), but even for the series I am not familiar with, by virtue of being a cross-over of All-Stars, even some of the off-hand Mechas I've never heard end up becoming my favorites, and I've since gone on to start watching several of the series I was introduced to through these games.

There's something interesting and understated about it- good design is rare, and it seems like good Mecha design is especially rare, let alone to make a new property where every Mecha feels distinctive, classic, and stands out. But by being a cross-over, where like half the characters are all main characters from their own series, and many of those series are standouts and classics, it makes for an entire game of standout characters and Mecha.

I'm still searching for my ideal Mecha TTRPG (perhaps it will be Get into the Machine, Shinji!), but in the meantime, here's a Weird & Wonderful Table of Mechas. The schtick here is, there is a meta wherein all of these Mecha are assumed to be the star of their own series in some fictional reality, but now crossing over in a series where in-universe they co-exist and in most cases always have co-existed.

One tricky thing with Mecha is that it's hard to describe them, and much of the appeal is visual, which I think is part of why Mecha written fiction is not as prominent as Mecha visual fiction e.g. comics, anime, or videogames, and also part of why it's less common in TTRPG where there are fewer pieces of public domain art for Mecha (in addition to the difficulty of designing rules for Mecha games that allow for in and out of Mecha gameplay, as described in the previous link for GItMS!). I hope I have done a reasonable job here, please let me know what you think!

In addition to these, you can find more entries by other creators (or share your own!) in my Let's Build: Mecha posts on The Cauldron (must be a member of the NSR Discord server to join) and The OSR Pit.

Weird & Wonderful Mecha

Arsenic: Black. Tripod legs on a humanoid core with clawed hands. Its head is a long metallic tentacle with a Tesla Coil at the end of it.

Razzle-Dazzle: Surprisingly mobile "walking weapons platform" with a core that looks more like a tank than a humanoid Mecha. Black and white clashing stripes or other holographically overlayed camouflage make it difficult to track in cluttered environments.

Chimera: Quadrupedal but ape-like, somewhere between a lemur and a wolf, with a long snout. Its high-frequency maw glows with ultraviolet. White with purple trim. Long thin tail tipped with a snake-like "head" consisting of rear sensors and laser beam weapon.

Dogu: Alien craft like if Jack Kirby made a psychedelic Celestial inspired by the eponymous Jomon-era figurines.

Rebis: Neon yellow bio-"Mecha", a genetic hodgepodge of non-human animal, fungus, and bacteria in a humanoid form. Keratin plates that look like sleek near-future body armor. Shimmers with a bio-engineered tardigrade film for environmental protection. A fungal/bacterial microbiome can excrete through the skin weaponry such as sphaerobolus (aka artillery fungus). Retractable silken wings that work as solar sails for space travel. The pilot operates The Rebis via an umbilical cable that connects to their spine like in the Cronenberg movie Existenz.

Matrioshka: A supermassive starship, wherein the command deck is an ejectable battle cruiser, piloted by a Mecha whose cockpit is designed to fit a Power Armored pilot, all of which is entraining on the brain waves of the unborn child of the pregnant pilot.

Psycho Baku: Minimalist trunk-nosed Mecha using sensory-scrambling technology, psychophysical illusions, and even psychoactive gases, to create large-scale illusions, mirages, and hallucinations.

Panic Slug: Wrist-mounted shotgun sprays “slugs”, autonomous AI missile drones that seek to infiltrate enemy Mecha and hack them or physically disable them from the inside. As the slugs infest Mecha, they exhibit behaviors like myoclonic jerks.

Murder Crow: Head like a plague doctor mask. A “field medic” Mecha with two autonomous crow-like drones for surveilling disabled/damaged Mecha or for defense, while primarily equipped for Mecha field repairs or ad-hoc constructs.

Mazu: The rainbow dragon Mecha of Pirate Queen Prismasha, Empress of Space. The cockpit of the Mecha is Platina, a dolphin/sea serpent-esque space fighter craft. Mazu and Platina are demigod/AI from an ancient spacefaring civilization. They each dueled Prismasha in “hand-to-hand” combat for her love and hand in marriage, and in their respective failures, vowed to serve as her guardians.

Mecha-Buster Squad: Wear light power armor and utilize mobility tools such as rocket packs, magnetic grappling wires, and solar sails, weaponry such as RPGs, high-impact "one-shot" sniper rifles, and vibro-lances, and various kinds of immobilizing or debilitating traps, to take down significantly larger and more powerful Mecha.

Gacha: The corporation that makes this series of Mecha sells them exclusively in capsules where the specific model inside is not revealed until after purchase. While an expensive and potentially risky way to build a fleet, one lucky Gacha capsule can justify the purchase of dozens of other overpriced and lower-quality Gacha Mecha. Some are desired solely for their rarity, as a status symbol, or for their value in the speculation market, as opposed to actual combat utility.

MRD: Reincarnation Ritual Recursion Attachments Generator

With the VERY SOON RELEASE of Maximum Recursion Depth, one thing I knew I wasn't satisfied with in the Ashcan release was the Reincarnation Rituals. I want them to be more than just "get out of jail free cards", they should actually add something to the game.

What I decided was that every time a PC relies on their Reincarnation Ritual (other than for leveling), they have to take a Reincarnation Attachment. These are Karmic Attachments, either randomly generated or they can be custom-made circumstantially by the GM, which do not cause the PC to accrue Karma and do not divest Karma when resolved, but which should add an interesting character-related "plot" element / game-hook, and which must be resolved in order to level.

So this way, if a PC uses their Reincarnation Ritual to escape death, they're going to carry some extra baggage with them, but hopefully, that baggage should at least be gameable and interesting.

This generator is by no means definitive, as is I don't think it has quite enough variability, and some of the wording is awkward. Also, it's better to make Reincarnation Rituals that tie specifically into the PC's backstory or the events of the campaign. This is more just for inspiration / as a point of reference.

MRD Campaign Retrospective up to Present

Although I've written plenty of Play Reports for my Maximum Recursion Depth campaign and they've actually been accruing more views than I expected, I've generally not been satisfied with my PRs. I like the approach I've landed on of doing these very brief summaries, and only expanding in cases where I'm basically sharing my GM Notes as like a Module template, but all the same, they feel more like very sloppy book report summaries than something engaging.

So to be clear, my MRD campaign is still ongoing and to the best of my knowledge, nobody has any intentions of ending at any specific time! But I thought it might be fun to do a retrospective, almost like my "not-review" series of posts. If I'm not prepared to rewrite the events of my campaign as engaging prose, I can instead do so as (hopefully) engaging analysis. This is less so a blow-by-blow of events than even my already summarized PRs, and more me just describing how things evolved over time, what I had intended vs. how things played out, what I think has worked or hasn't, etc.

Last side note, we are very very very close to being done with the MRD Book, and once it releases, I have some exciting news to hopefully coincide with it! But anyway...

Before I get into it, here's another index of the MRD PR posts:

MRD Play Report Index

PR 1: Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party

PR 2-5: They Did a Mario Kart

PR 6-11: The Hostile Takeover of Anti-Sphinx

Anyone Can Wear the Mask with Jeff Stormer (MRD-adjacent)

PR 12-16: No clever name on this one...

MRD Module / GM Notes

The Court of Those Who Succumb Prematurely to Crippling Expectations (A significantly rewritten and expanded version of this will be the module in the book)

Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party (GM Notes)

Off to the (Karmamare) Racetracks (GM Notes)

Not-Review Sessions 1-2 / Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party

Even though the posts themselves are organized differently, the first two sessions correspond to the same "module", so I'll describe them this way.

Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party was basically a murder mystery inspired loosely by the party scene at the beginning of the Russian Doll series on Netflix and Rocky Horror Picture Show, along with other stuff.

I was really happy with the overall scenario design and I think it had some of the modular Social Intrigue stuff which informed the Module in the book, but I definitely did not yet have this Design Pattern fully realized when I wrote this "module" and it shows. I included some sidebars in the Doctor Loves-Me-Not's Halloween Party GM Notes linked at the top, and I stand by those comments and would encourage you to give them a look if you're interested.

The second session ended in the equivalent of a TPK, but The Team was able to use their Reincarnation Rituals, so it worked out basically as intended. As is often the case with a new game, several of the players came and went between the first couple of sessions, but it was as of Session 3 that The Team as it has existed for nearly a year now has been pretty stable.

Unfortunately, because session 3 was effectively a new group, there were leads that developed in these first two sessions that are only just now getting re-integrated. In fact, there were I think 1-3 sessions (would have to double-check) even before these play reports with an entirely different group, which also set up leads that didn't come back until later (that group was in person and fell apart for covid and related logistical reasons).

Tl;Dr While flawed in some ways, these first two sessions / first "module" is a very good demonstration of what MRD is about, and I could easily imagine myself cleaning it up and turning it into something more like the Module in the book and being really happy with it!

Not-Review Sessions 3-6 / "They Did a Mario Kart"

Technically a fair bit happened in these sessions, but it wouldn't quite be accurate to call them a cohesive "module" in the way I referred to the Halloween Party in the last two sessions. However, it does encompass one "story arc" so I'll wrap them together.

While I posted the PRs as 3-5, in retrospect session 6 was when this "arc" wrapped up, but I guess that wasn't obvious until after the fact.

Session 3 was a fresh start with a new Poltergeist Investigation and in effect a new Team. In retrospect the way I designed it was terrible, but I think to the Players' credit we had a good time.

I basically gave them two or so options for Investigations, but they were both nearly identical- being only just different enough to require that my GM Notes accounted for each of them differently. From a software engineering perspective, we call this an Anti-Pattern, and it is something I have since tried to be better about not doing, and I'd like to believe mostly successfully.

It was a fun little adventure, and it set up some future NPCs and future plotlines. The players really liked Shining Ostrich which made me happy.

Session 4 was the "Mario Kart" part, where they went to The Court of Those Who Bet on the Wrong Horse. I was much happier with how I designed the scenario, although the "Mario Kart" part of it, while fun, probably could have been better fleshed out. It's not about going crunch-crazy, but I played it pretty fast and loose even by my standards and while it worked for me, as the writer, if I were to ever try to publish it, I would need to heavily rework it for those who cannot read my mind.

You can see the GM Notes for Off to the (Karmamare) Racetracks linked at the top, which actually includes the GM Notes for session 3 as well. If you do read it, you'll see the anti-pattern I was referring to, but for the actual Karmamare part, you can see how there was still some structure to it, but probably needed a little more structure.

Session 5 Was a bit of a sidetrack, admittedly of my own making. It definitely did set stuff up for the future such as by introducing or further developing certain NPCs, but in itself was more of a "filler episode" lol, not too much more to say about that.

Session 6 was the culmination of events from the prior sessions. To my mind, it was the most successful of the first six sessions in terms of the number of fun things I gave the players to interact with in the scenario and the degree to which they were developed. The actual scenario around sessions 1-2 may be more so to my tastes, but from a game perspective, I think this is where things started to gel.

There was also a really poignant moment at the end of session 6, within an otherwise rather absurdist scene, and at the very least I appreciated it, but I hope my players did as well.

I apparently never posted the GM Notes for the scenario in session 6, which is a shame because I think it was pretty good. Not sure why I didn't do it, maybe I need to do so retroactively, or maybe there was a reason why I did not...

Not-Review Sessions 7-11 / The Hostile Takeover of Anti-Sphinx

These sessions were a turning point for the campaign, and also where a lot of my thoughts about the setting and my approach to design started to coalesce. This was probably also facilitated by the fact that I was designing the book around this time.

Again, even though I posted them as 6-11, in retrospect, 6 should have been in the previous post and this post should have started with 7.

Prior to these sessions, the game had been set up in a more episodic approach to Poltergeist Investigation -> Court Crawl, and this batch starts that way but ends things in a way that completely changes the paradigm which I found very exciting, although I was admittedly uncomfortable with it at first (see the Session 10-11 not-review below).

Session 7-8 Got real weird and experimental, in a way that I loved but my players were a bit more mixed on at the time, although I believe have since come to appreciate. This was part of what I refer to in my post on Tabletop RPGs as Performance Art and must have been around the time those ideas were growing fully formed in my mind.

I did not at the time have as strong of an idea of where I was going as I should have, and I also in retrospect did not do a good enough job giving the players a good idea of what they could or should do. I can't help but look back on it fondly, but it was certainly flawed.

Partway through session 8 The Team developed a more concrete plan and executed it, and it gave the players an opportunity to flex a bit which worked out well. It was basically a heist, and I don't give this session enough mindshare but in retrospect, it was actually a really fun and well-executed heist that was mostly player-driven, couldn't ask for more from it. The session ends with them coming back to where they were in session 7, culminating in a cliffhanger of a big Conflict that was about to come.

Session 9 is the aforementioned Conflict. The Conflict was swift and brutal as any Into the Odd-adjacent game should be, with Fiona using her Reincarnation Ritual in order to help the other PCs escape what were otherwise seemingly insurmountable odds. The rest of the session was also pretty rapid-fire with some big reveals. I did some stuff that is either clever or deceitful depending on your perspective that paid off nearer to the end of this "arc", which I was happy with but which I know one of the players struggled with at first, and which amounted to something ultimately not within my original plans but ended up being significantly better anyway, as I discuss below.

Session 10-11 also were pretty rapid-fire, with The Team running a coup against The Underground Casino which had been plaguing them in the background for some time, only to learn that the Underground Casino was not quite what they thought it was.

I won't lie, I struggled a lot with these sessions. On the one hand, I had repeatedly signaled to the players that they needed to do more investigation, that there were important details they had not uncovered and that they were getting themselves in over their head, and they had been burned on things like that in the past, but they chose to commit to their course of action regardless.

I think, especially from an "OSR perspective", it would have been well within my "right" to be punitive about it and basically punish them in exactly the way one would expect if they knew those things that they had been encouraged to investigate. However, I really didn't feel good about doing that, and I wanted to find a better solution.

Ultimately, I gave them what they wanted, a successful coup of this organization, but I framed it within the context of a Parable, or just as well a Fable- it was ok that they did something implausible, because the Parable becomes something of greater metaphysical weight, greater than the material act of what they'd done. You could almost think of it like "The Law of Surprises", the metaphysical phenomenon that may or may not have real power within the setting of The Witcher and which ends up driving the narrative (as opposed to the short stories it started in).

On The Cauldron, we were discussing Jewish Fables, and I was raised Jewish, and I actually was in a very roundabout way inspired by Jewish fables with this session myself. I remembered this article that I had read around ten years ago, and recently rediscovered and reread and am glad to say it holds up to my memory. The writer discusses the scene in Coming to America, the Eddie Murphy movie of all things, where Eddie Murphy plays an old Jewish guy. You can read my explanation, or watch the clip on youtube.

Or embedded here (but embedded videos on blogger have not always been reliable for me...):

The old Jewish guy tells a story about going to a restaurant and ordering a soup, and the waiter brings the soup, and he asks the waiter to taste the soup, and the waiter refuses. He asks repeatedly, the waiter uncomfortably repeatedly denies, but when the old man does not relent, finally he does. Looking down at the soup and at the table, he then says "there's no spoon", to which the old Jewish guy says, "achaa!". I really like that anecdote.

So that was also part of what inspired this turn of events. Even though this game is nominally about Buddhism and the interplay between Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese Mythology (really as just a metaphor or lens for modern issues), I try where possible to use my own lived experience as a person of Jewish descent or as an American or whatever to inform the game and setting, because my experience is not that of a Buddhist or Taoist in China circa the 16th Century when Journey to the West was written.

Anyway, so as a result, the game stops being about a ragtag group of Poltergeist Investigators, and instead is about a ragtag group of Poltergeist Investigators who overthrew a multi-national crime syndicate/information network/anti-fascist group that is now in a critically compromised state, in part due to their own actions, but also these factors were partially responsible for their success in the first place; capitalizing on Anti-Sphinx's moment of weakness without even realizing it.

Not-Review Sessions 12-16

Despite failing to come up with a name for this "arc", this was the first PR post that actually does reflect the arc as I see it- progress is being made lol. In all seriousness though, I do think this "arc" is where I really hit my stride, I would say I even "leveled up" as a designer. This is as much due to me designing the book at the same time and having to really think critically about how I do things, but all the same, this was awesome. Also by this point, the players have developed a good grasp of their characters and the setting and me as a GM, so they've been empowered to do more, and they've made some really clever and interesting decisions that have informed these sessions greatly.

Session 12 Is where The Team learns exactly how bad the situation with Anti-Sphinx is, but also meets the various agents within the organization and comes up with plans for how to fix things. I was worried at first again about possibly being too punitive, but it helped me to think of it within the context of the Parable, to treat this not as a punishment, not the end of the previous arc, but instead as the beginning of a new one, and that helped greatly.

I literally created a whole set of spreadsheets that are basically pivot tables, in order to map out the Social Intrigue / Domain-play scenario of it all; probably should have just made an actual SQL / relational database for it, but it's been working fine.

Session 13-14 was a bit of a diversion and got very goofy. It also involved me leveraging materials produced for The Module from the book but running it in a totally different context, which was fun to do. It also set up Emil McGinnley / Glass Maiden Pixie, which did move the "plot" forward for this "arc", and actually the "Excuse-Me-Sir!" Karmic malware also sets up the subsequent "arc" which is still ongoing and which I have not posted about yet.

Session 15-16 was a ton of fun. I didn't make a separate GM Notes post but I included the pertinent details in this PR. In terms of an "Action Conflict" this was hands down my favorite yet. It felt very video-gamey but in the best way. I would love to expand on this and turn it into something publishable. It wouldn't be worthwhile to reiterate it here but I would strongly encourage you to go back and read it if you have not already done so and are otherwise finding the rest of this interesting.

Final Comments

So wrapping it all up, I'm extremely happy with how this setting has developed, and this campaign, and this group. I've gotten to know my players well and feel lucky to have such a great group. It's encouraging to feel like the campaign is only getting better and that both my actual skills as a designer and my conscious understanding of design have both notably been improving, and it's also fascinating the ways that growth has been driven at least in part by having written the book. It goes to show the non-linear gains one can make by trying to do things in a more comprehensive, systematic way. Even though we're only a couple sessions into the current arc, the most recent session as of this posting was one of my favorites yet, a very emotional scene, my players probably know what I'm talking about if they're reading this. I genuinely believe that there are things that have occurred in this campaign that I will carry with me for a significant amount of time if not the rest of my life.

Saruri-Man: Midsummer Nights Adventures Not-Review

I was walking down one of those obscure alleys of the internet and saw something that grabbed my attention- a few episodes of some really obscure Mecha anime- I think it was a more recent show but it kind of went out of its way to look older. I can't even find much about it on the internet; maybe the name I found was a fan translation or maybe it's some obscure Japanese web show. But anyway, like many obscure things of its kind, I found it super fascinating and I wanted to give it a little not-review.

So it appears to be basically the world as we know it, with some anachronisms leaning into an 80's cyberpunk / Japanese City Soul aesthetic with other quirks here and there as well, so it feels kind of timeless. However, a core distinction is that a literal monkey ruling class somehow controls this world. Like, they aren't super-monkeys or alien-monkeys or genius-monkeys, just regular ol' monkeys. They're treated kind of like politicians or business executives or gang leaders, which is to say, there's a kind of religious reverence towards them, but the surrounding pomp and circumstance are toned down. It's not clear how or why this is the case, but that's part of the charm.

Oh ya and also, like monkeys banging on a typewriter until they create Shakespeare, these monkeys have inadvertently opened a portal to the Faerie Realm, and so all sorts of monsters and kaiju leak through, like the Pakku (I assume a translation of Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream). One of the Pakku is a kaiju-sized cross-section of a goat's eye in extremely graphic detail, like out of a medical textbook, and it's gruesome and amazing. Another one is a ball of diseased goat flesh and parasites and fur.

Kaiju are usually portrayed as either Bestial monsters, like Godzilla, or Uncanny monsters, like the Angels in Evangelion. Some of the monsters and kaiju fell more into the Bestial type, but the Pakku are more so in the Uncanny type. One thing that I found interesting about them though, is that they seemed curious, and somewhat playful, like toddlers or Dionysian drunks. They were causing damage, but they weren't necessarily trying to cause damage, and it made them pitiable, and it made the conflicts bittersweet.

I couldn't find any screenshots from the show, so enjoy this sheep's eye!

The art design in general is shockingly good. Even the monkeys themselves- it might have been tempting to make them kind of cutesy and lovable, but I think the show makes the right call in making them really uncanny. Again, they aren't monstrous, but they are scary and uncomfortable- both obscured in shadow, kind of like in Princess Mononoke, but where not obscured, uncomfortably detailed and graphic in their depiction.

The Mecha are also really wild. One of them looks like an emaciated humanoid body or skeleton with a tank for a head and is apparently the sexual bonding of a decapitated alien being of an unclear but non-carbon-based nature and an American military-industrial complex super-AI experimental tank that gained self-awareness and went on a journey through space.

Another is still Mecha-sized but looks kind of like Iron Man and is able to spontaneously summon weapons and mods out of energy, but then it turns out actually the whole thing is just a UFO-like craft and a series of drones with holographic projections and various weaponry to make it look like it's a cohesive thing but it's not.

There was one other one that I only got to see a little bit of in the episodes I saw, but it was like a typical humanoid Mecha, except four-dimensional, so when it moves, its three-dimensional representation tesselates, sometimes really elegantly like a Hindu god, other times grotesquely like a Lovecraftian extra-dimensional creature. As it moves, because it exists in four dimensions, sometimes parts of it appear inside-out, and the geometry of it bends in paradoxical ways like a Bethesda videogame.

The action choreography was interesting. While there are classics like Ninja Scroll that have excellent 2D, hand-drawn action, I get the impression that action in 2D animation is just really difficult and laborious to do compared to CG animation. I have generally not been a fan of many of the very low-quality Netflix CG anime, but the ones that had a sufficient budget really demonstrate the value of CG, in how fluid and un-"cut" it can be, compared to much 2D animated action which often necessarily relies on cuts, almost like a motion comic. While I'm reasonably confident that this show was 2D animated (again I actually have no idea when this was made...), I think it's using rotoscoping or something, there's something a little funky about it, but it has that fluidity that you otherwise rarely see in 2D animation. I'm surprised there haven't been other anime that used rotoscoping for their action, or maybe there have been and I am just not aware.

I don't know how exactly to describe what I saw i.e. a hyper-real dissected eye monster torrenting puss and macroscopic parasites onto a four-dimensional Mecha suplexing it through a pseudo-Mecha hologram landing onto and subsequently pierced and punctured by the tank cannon of an alien-AI-cyborg-demigod Mecha... But ya, it was very cool. I believe this show does have cool themes and subtext and whatnot, but if you just want bizarre and over-the-top action, it clearly has that as well, at least in the episodes that I saw.

Anyway, the pilots of the Mecha are all 20-30 something "salarymen"; male and female, but it's a Japanese term, and also the title of the show is a play on words which is a pretty typical anime thing (Saru is monkey in Japanese and the Japanese way to write Salaryman is Sarari-Man). They're all overworked, underpaid, some still have optimism for their future but most are pretty burnt out. There seems to be a bimodal distribution where half of them are just completely incompetent, and the other half are highly skilled and multifaceted and way overqualified for what they're doing, and the whole thing feels like commentary but that's definitely coming from an American perspective.

It's hard to talk about the characters too much further without going into spoilers, but I'll say they kind of reminded me of the anime Aggretsuko, or I guess similarly The Office, but whereas those shows I think fell too in love with their characters to their own detriment, there's more of an edge here, where they're not afraid to commit to these characters being more real and flawed. Granted I only saw a few episodes so who knows where it goes, but I got the impression that they know when to be goofy and quirky, and when to be serious, and I can respect that.

Anyway, ya I would really like to see the rest of this show, so if anyone knows anything about it, please let me know!!!!

Dharmatics: A Karmapunk "Deconstruction" of Cybernetics

In a multi-day long manic creative fugue state, I came up with this idea I'm calling Dharmatics, which is like a cyberpunk cyborg/body modification concept for Maximum Recursion Depth. Despite originally conceiving this idea >6 months ago, I have not quite completed it, but I'm still fairly hyped up on the idea so I want to share at least a prototype version of it, and explain my thoughts. I allude to it with the Deva and Buddhabrot City in an earlier blog post and in the Module of the book. I like sharing these sometimes not fully baked ideas and then comparing how they evolve over time to the original conceptions.

Also, I put "deconstruction" in the blog post title in quotes because I'm using the term very colloquially but Patrick Stuart did not seem to like it :p.

Jack Kirby's art is somewhat in the vein of what Dharmatics looks like in my head.

So first of all, why would I want a cybernetics-like system in this game? MRD is a roughly "modern" setting but has elements from Weird fiction, magical realism, superhero settings, etc., so I don't think it's totally out of place, as long as it's not too ubiquitous or too core to the setting. Cybernetics is common in Cyberpunk settings, which tend to be more so near-future, and tend to be used as a vehicle for both social commentary and epistemological commentary, both of which are relevant to MRD and the concept of "Karmapunk".

I was also thinking about how cybernetics was explored in the tabletop RPG Tenra Bansho Zero, a game that does something similar for Buddhism in Japan, Shintoism, and Japanese Mythology, as what I'm doing with MRD, and was one of my inspirations for the Karma system in MRD in the first place. In TBZ, and actually to some extent in some other Japanese cyberpunk settings like Ghost in the Shell, cybernetics tends to be a form of body horror and often is also explored as being a more existential threat to one's concept of self and soul. 

While I think that kind of exploration of cybernetics, philosophy, and psychology makes sense and is done well in those source materials and some others, I don't necessarily think at this point there's anything more I could meaningfully contribute to that commentary, and to attempt to do so without some really evocative idea in mind would be kind of trite. Instead, I wanted to think about how I could invert these ideas.

Cybernetics is etymologically based on the Greek Kubernetes, to govern, or to steer. It's an interdisciplinary field involved in the application and design of control systems, feedback loops, and interfaces. It requires the ability to model input and output signals, modulate based on those signals (feedback), and this requires encapsulation in terms of interfaces, in multiple regards, including brain-computer interfacing, program interfaces, and interfacing with the real world itself (the input signals). Specifically, it's in the application of these control systems and interfaces towards the re-implementation or enhancement of sensorimotor functions.

So within the context of Buddhism or at least the very specific and idiosyncratic interpretation of Buddhism I've conceived for MRD, what would it mean to invert this? To me, this means, a detachment from the Material World, divestment of the need for sensorimotor interfacing, and instead co-opting these psychophysical systems for the development of control systems, feedback mechanisms, and interfaces towards a higher metaphysical plane, towards Awakening. While I've avoided too much explicit reference to Dharma in MRD, many of the concepts in MRD that I wrap up under the umbrella of Karma are actually Dharma, Samsara, The Three Marks of Existence, etc., as I discuss in that link above. So I could just call this Karmatics <-> the Karma equivalent to Cybernetics <-> (Kubernetes <-> Control Systems), but I do think in this case Dharma is a better term. It's the phenomenology of Buddhism (the term also gets used in Hinduism and Jainism), and broadly encompasses the idea of pure reality, one beyond the subjectivity of Conditioned Things, almost like Plato's Platonic Ideal of Forms, or Greek Logos. So, Dharmatics.

From a strictly narrative/aesthetic perspective, I really want to avoid having Dharmatics just be Cybernetics by another name. I can live with the game mechanics just being cybernetics by another name, maybe, but it at least needs to be conceptually different, or else I'm just needlessly complicating things for the sake of false profundity. The most obvious thing I can think of is to give Dharmatics a unique and evocative aesthetic. Dharmatics are decidedly not metal, plastic, silicon, and electronic. They're psychedelia, pareidolia, holography, psychophysical illusion, and applied art and color theory, somewhat along the lines of things I've discussed before such as with my Concept of the Positive and Negative Planes.

We had a discussion about the possibility of integrating things like Traditional Chinese Medicine or Chakras into Dharmatics, and I may do so to some extent, but I'm reticent to go too deep into that direction. There are several reasons for this, but in part, it's because as I've said before, MRD is not about being a Buddhist and Chinese mythology setting in the strictest sense, but rather, taking those concepts in a very abstract and idiosyncratic sense, and applying them towards something more within the domain of my own direct inspirations and lived experiences. So in this case, Dharmatics is almost more like saying, what if Buddhism were invented today? What language would we use to describe it? How would we interpret it within the greater context of modern science, philosophy, and technology? How would we apply it? It's Buddhism re-engineered from the ground up (due as much to my own ignorance of the particulars as to any deeper intentions, to be sure).

Get Into the Machine, Shinji!

Proof of Concept for a Mark of the Odd-based Mecha* game. My design goal for this is to be a game that is rules-light, that is seamless between Pilots and Mecha, but where the mechanics are just different enough to feel like more than just re-flavoring between the scales. It also takes some inspiration from Cypher, and a tiny bit from my "Mechs & Monstrosities" Hack for Tunnels & Trolls.

*Why didn't I call it "Get Into the Mecha, Shinji!"? I dunno, this just sounded better to me...

Ability Scores

Three ability scores, which we're tentatively going to call the standard STR, DEX, and INT, and regular HP. We can call them something else later, but it's roughly these three categories, and they're the same for Pilots as for Mechas.

Special Abilities

Do you want some cyberpunk in your mecha game? Ok, you've got hacking, robotics, AI-assisted mini-missiles for bullets, high-frequency laser swords, etc. Oh is this an Escaflowne-style magitech setting? Ok, you've got magic now too. Whatever you would normally do with Mark of the Odd, you do. They can also just be skills, talents, careers, etc. Let's say you get 3 of them to start.

Mecha

Pilots and Mecha are separate "characters" / character sheets but character creation is mostly the same between the two. Roll HP and the Ability Scores, and multiply by 10. Damage dice? Multiply by 10. If it's just Mecha-to-Mecha, you don't even have to bother, the 10x is mostly just for scaling Pilot x Mecha stuff. Because there's gotta be some maniac taking potshots with a Mecha-Buster sniper rifle out there...

But peeps are littler...

You are correct, hypothetical person, peeps are littler than Mecha. As a peep dodging a Mecha attack; Dex Save, on Success you take 10x fewer points of Damage (the amount from the roll before multiplying). Mecha are big, peeps are little, so they're harder to target, but susceptible to collateral. Probably not going to satisfy everyone but it's modular anyway, if you've got a better idea go for it.

If you're using a system that allows for partial Saves (like MRD...), you could even do something like Full Damage, Damage/10, No Damage. Basically, if a Mecha really wants to fuck up a peep they can do so, but if a peep stays hidden and/or keeps a fair distance, it should be an option to engage, albeit risky.

Mecha Abilities

Mecha Abilities are inventory-based. You can get as crunchy or as loose as you want with it, but tentatively we'll say there is Head, Core, Lower, Upper x2, Special x2. Generally, they aren't going to add strictly quantitative buffs but you can default to that if you want.

Upper: Held weapons, special arms, or shoulder-mounts, probably at least one of the two providing Damage dice (e.g. Beam Sword, Rifle, Claw Hand, Shoulder-Mounted Missile Launcher), but also things like Repair Kit (restore HP), Extra Arm (for holding extra items, not necessarily full articulation/impact), Special Scanner.

Lower: Types of mobility (e.g. Humanoid Legs, Quadrupedal Legs, Treads, Hoverjet).

Head: Types of sensors (e.g. Radar, Sonar, Infrared, Ultraviolet), Head-Mounted Minigun.

Core and Special: Can get a little fancy, like a unique energy source, a "signature move", atypical things like AT Field from Evangelion or Funnels from Gundam.

You can make these Mecha Abilities require Saves, or just work as-is, the same kinds of decisions you would make designing any other MotO items or abilities. Some of these are a little vague or have overlap but that's a feature, not a bug!

Alternatively, I could imagine stripping all of that out entirely, and just giving each Mecha X number of Special Abilities, and not get hung up on inventory slots or any of that, but Mecha are maybe the one genre where I actually kind of prefer that slightly more simulation-y crunch to it (but only just a little bit).

Pilot Abilities

This is the "secret sauce" of this hack; these are Special Abilities that Pilots have that they can only use while piloting a Mecha. Depending on what you're going for, you could have them be specific to a given Pilot / Mecha pairing, or more flexible.

As before, in some cases, these abilities may require Saves, but more often, they should cost Pilot HP or Pilot Ability Points. So for instance, one kind of boring and straightforward ability might be Ace Dodger: Pilot spends 1 Dex for every 10 Damage to dodge an attack. Must be all or none. So if the Pilot has 5 DEX remaining and that they are willing to spend, and their Mecha is about to take 50 or fewer points of Damage (the opponent rolled 5 or lower on a d6 Damage die), they can do so.

Some more interesting examples might be, if the Pilot is a hacker, they might have a Pilot Ability that lets them remote-hack another Mecha at some cost per turn; if they have magic and some spell that might normally affect a peep, you can spend INT to apply it to a Mecha instead.

And let's assume starting with 3 as well (in addition to 3 regular Special Abilities).

My rule of thumb would be, if it seems like something another Pilot could theoretically do, but they don't have the specific Pilot Ability, they can still do it but it might require a Save on top of a cost, or require a greater cost than normal; this isn't about locking Players into specific builds and being a crunchy tactical game. The Pilot Abilities are mainly just there for a point of reference. Or you can be stricter about it if you prefer, you do you.

You can have regular Special Abilities cost Ability Points as well on a case by case basis, but I think this mechanic should mostly only apply to Pilot Abilities, for reasons I explain below.

Analysis

There is arguably still an incongruity here like if you wanted a big fighty-type Pilot in a nimble dodgy Mecha, you're working somewhat against type, but since the effect of Pilot stats towards Mecha is only related to Pilot Abilities, and these Pilot Abilities are generally more so about unique things you can do than quantitative stuff, I think that is more so mitigated than in many other RPGs that try to consolidate Mecha and Pilot Abilities in some way.

It's a similar kind of abstraction as with Cypher System, in that you spend points to use Abilities, and you could even imagine something like Edge and Effort from Cypher being applied here as well which I would likely do if I expanded this proof of concept.

Also, while many people seem to dislike the Pool Point system in Cypher, I think that should be less of an issue here, because again, it allows the Pilots' stats to affect Mecha-level play, without overwhelming it, but it also allows for mixed-scale play. While a Pilot may have taken Ability Score Damage by using their Pilot Abilities, since generally, only Pilot Abilities cost points, they could still exit their Mecha and immediately get into a gunfight or fistfight if they wanted to with minimal impact. Unlike Cypher, it is less so the case that Ability points are also HP. This might be more of an issue with MRD but not to an extent that I'm concerned with, especially since MRD spreading HP across the three Ability scores + Karma already makes characters sturdier than in regular MotO.

If you're concerned about things like Ability Damage penalties, I would be inclined to just say it's threshold-based like you take a -X penalty to Saves if an Ability is below a certain threshold, like say -1/3rd of the total, etc.; that way you can still have Ability Damage penalties, but it doesn't penalize players for using Pilot Abilities quite as severely. I'd be more inclined to just remove Ability Damage penalties altogether or implement it in some other circumstantial way.

So I'm pretty happy with this proof of concept. I'm so focused on MRD that I don't know if I'll have time to develop this further, but also, given that MRD is already basically a MotO hack, I actually think this could be bolted on top of MRD fairly easily, so maybe I can have my cake and eat it too...