MRD2 Campaign PR 2: This Time With Golem

Second session, first in the Golem! I was a bit worried about this one because we're still getting in the groove and I didn't have much time to prep, but once again I felt really good about it.

MRD2 Campaign Setup

First Session PR

Also for whatever reason Blogger HTML is all screwed up in this post and despite my best efforts the formatting is a mess. Or maybe it's just on my device? I dunno, such is life.

RECAP

The Team are Nazarites, individuals contracted by The Corporation to serve various needs across Earth, the Space Settlements, and the metaphysical depths of Tehom. They are empowered by a Wyrm Shamir symbiont provided by The Corporation granting them metaphysical abilities, as well as a Golem, a mecha, or a magnification of something more abstract.

In this Campaign, they chose the following for the respective roles:

The Corporation

RegeXperience: “Live for the RegeXperience”. Childishly edgy experimental entertainment and defense company that doesn’t want the world to know what’s really behind their algorithm. EXPERIENCE, ALGORITHM, ENTERTAINMENT

The Manager

Baz Beetz: Infectiously enthusiastic “artiste” and true believer in the company mission who is as profound as nonsensical.

The Cyblessed Liaison

“Tastes like eating out the ass-end of human progress.”: Like a cheap flaccid little candle dripping wax down an otherwise glorious cake wearing a tacky suit reminiscent of a 1980’s faux-wood-paneled station wagon.

And of the two Issues available to them on their job board, they chose:

The Issue

The Quarterly earnings report is coming up soon, and The Corporation is anomalously underperforming.

• Several brand launches this Quarter were undercut by a previously unknown startup in San Francisco. The Corporation wants The Team to investigate The Startup on the pretense of a buyout.
• The Startup somehow acquired the licensing rights to the old Jingo Jangles cartoon, undercutting The Corporation’s upcoming Tempeh Toons licensed products line, just as the Jingo Jangles Museum is reopening.
• Several other corporations, including The Rival Corporation, have been hit by a similarly bad Quarter. The Cyblessed Liaisons intend to arrange a meeting in neutral territory, Venus City of Tehom.

In the meantime, events unfold in the Issue they did not choose, so expect to see an intersection of events at some point!

The Team

Ben as Larry

Nazarite Contract: Fast Lane Fintechnomancer

Golem: Lycaon Strain

Larry's past life was one of public mission in conscious contrarianism to his peers partying with the money of their employers. The brief accolades received from new acquaintances never quite made up for the lack of money and freedom. When he'd ask what others were doing to make the world a better place, they'd stare as if they had never considered the question before. What's the point of caring if no one else does?

Lukas as Icarus

Nazarite Contract: Infrared Ranger

Golem: Chemysterious Cascader

Was an heir to a crime family but betrayed them when his conscience caught up to him. In need of structure and a sense of justice, but without any good frame of reference and few other options, he shortly thereafter accepted the Nazarite Contract with The Corporation.

Huffa as Ernst

Nazarite Contract: Psychonautical Sub-Mariner

Golem: Forgetting Pile - An oozey amorphous Golem collective made of empowered trash and detritus.

An old man who trawls through the unconscious sea gathering the things people forget from their dreams. Sometimes its material that The Corporation deems useful.

Altchester (still unavailable :( )

Where we left off...

After playing Monty the Python's game, they successfully opened the door to the private office in the Jingo Jangles Museum, only to find themselves in a strange place bathed in red light...

Vessel of Tehom: Virtual Zoetrope Superhighway

• Three glistening ruby red rings, each the size of a five-lane kaiju-scaled superhighway, each lane separated by grooves, spinning around a spherical city-sized core like a record.
  
• A force like intense gravity would crush any normal human, and even Golem can barely jump in place. The atmosphere is also unsafe for humans.
  
• The core is an inky black, wet and slimy sac in a near-frozen state of mid-rupture.
  
• From a slit in space, an expressive eye watches, weeping with furious ambiguity.

Immediately The Team must summon their Golem or else be crushed! They were each asked to describe the process:

Larry: Pulls out a pocket knife and pricks his finger. The stream of blood flows, blood vessels expand to massive proportions, forming the Lycaon Strain.

Icarus: Ices himself, pouring out the last drops, and in an alcoholic psychedelic haze forms the Chemysterious Cascader.

Ernst: Whistles to the high winds, calling forth the trash from all across the Earth and space and the metaphysical depths of Tehom, merging into the magnificently malodorous Forgetting Pile.

They drop onto the Outer Ring where weird pixelated kaiju and transdimensional toons zoom along, and must describe how they navigate the traffic.

Larry (Lycaon Strain): The circulatory blood vessel mesh separates into congealed sub-masses and coalesces as it glides right through the traffic.

Icarus (Chemysterious Cascader): Uses his Disorientation Mirror (MIRAGE + ETHANOL) to induce drunkenness in those in his path, creating havoc and destruction in his wake.

Ernst (Forgetting Pile): Like with the Lycaon Strain, his trash piles separate and reconnect to pass right through traffic, leaving detritus and slick trash grease behind.

Design Notes

The purpose of having them suddenly dropped into this place, summoning their Golem, and describing how they navigate through this traffic, was intended to get them oriented with their Golem. Thinking about how they summon it and what that says about them and the Golem, how it moves, how it interacts with environments and objects, etc.

Outer Ring

• Doughboy and The Dreadnaughty
• Office Cube
• Drag-On Dragon
• Leaping Lorenzinos

I gave them a brief description of the events above, described in further detail below. Doughboy was in their immediate vicinity, the others got loose descriptions but they'd have to go closer (or wait for them to get closer) to get the full details.

Design Notes

This whole space is quite weird, and I was worried if they would be able to understand how to navigate the space. We discuss how the core has a gravity, but there's a competing centripetal force from the rings, so the Golem can move along the grooves or jump slightly, but can't fly between rings which have as much space between them as the size of each of the rings themselves.

I actually realized as we talked it out that I was thinking of the rings as laying horizontally, but that description didn't make sense given the competing forces.

That said, it required barely more than 30s conversing to get on the same page and collaboratively define the space. Yes it's weird, and ya it's likely we're all seeing it in our heads slightly differently. But if the Players define for themselves how they interact with the space and I confirm or disconfirm their assumptions and we continue to stick to our own rules reliably, it all goes smoothly enough.

Doughboy and The Dreadnaughty

The Transdimensional Toon Doughboy (from previous session) is piloting a precarious tower of WW1-era Dreadnoughts held together by a scaffold of oversized sexy mannequin legs in pantyhose and garterbelt.

Don’t worry, I’m here to help! (Save or take Td6 from a jumble of dreadnought guns set off prematurely). I swear that doesn’t usually happen!

Karmic Attachment Opportunity: Rather than leave Doughboy to fend for himself, accept his “help”, and be “grateful”, even as he bumbles his way into making more problems for you.

The Team chose to ignore Doughboy at the onset. However, because they're driving on a spinning ring, they were able to circle back to him, and Ernst ends up accepting the Karmic Attachment Opportunity with Doughboy before they leave the Outer Ring.

Design Notes

I like the mechanics of Karmic Attachments and how it affects encounter design and player agency. I have mixed feelings about continuing to use the Buddhist concept of Karma in MRD2, not for any philosophical reason but because it might be confusing since that's more the focus of MRD1 than MRD2, but for now I'm just going with that and I might later change it to something more rooted in Jewish philosophy but still mechanically the same or similar.

Office Cube

An office cube glides across the grooves of the ring, inside which are tacky low-res VR holograms. The cubes are human-scale on the inside, but The Team would need some kind of protection to safely exit their Golem to enter the cubes.

• The office workers are from The Startup, and seem as surprised by The Team’s presence as The Team are likely to be by theirs.
• The Founder is not in the office at the moment, and The Cofounder is on a business trip to Venus City.
• As far as the employees knew (or are willing to admit), this was just an AR/VR-space, not a Vessel of Tehom.

Ernst uses the Forgetting Pile to create a trash corridor connecting to the cube to enter inside. After some confusion, he is mistaken for an AI janitor created by The Cofounder. He gets some information as above, and learns that there are more Office Cubes on the other Rings, including Office Cubes for The Founder's and Cofounder's offices on the Inner Ring.

Meanwhile, Icarus and Larry encounter The Drag-On Dragon on a collision course right towards them!

Drag-On Dragon

Draconic DeLorean-esque drag racing Transdimensional Toon Kaiju. Claws press into the grooves of the rings, shearing spacetime in sparks and flames of entropy revealing a sterile white business conference room with a full audience, once per rotation (i.e. round). 

• An ambiguous shadow of a person gives an autobiographical one-person show account of their first failed business while a laugh track mocks them. They had developed an algorithm for interpolating frames of animation that also incorporated style transfer (DWAI [Don't Worry About It] except that they work in animation), but a corporation lowballed them for a buyout and when they refused the corporation reverse engineered it for themselves.
• On a loop, the Drag-On Dragon drags and clings, fails, spins out in a roll, eventually to re-right itself and do it all again.
• 20 HP; Sd6 (transdimensional friction entropy), Phid6 (claws/body)
• If The Team engages the Drag-On Dragon, have some debris or something else escape across the dimensions, demonstrating how they can affect the show.
• Each round the one-person show loops. The facts can’t be changed, but the interpretation of them can. The Drag-On Dragon will dissipate if the outcome of the show is successfully altered.
• KAO: Help the shadow see the story from a new perspective, but know that there will be ramifications in the material world.

After about one round of physical Conflict with the Drag-On Dragon, The Team decide to engage with the one-person show instead. They hypothesize from Ernst's information that the shadow is likely The Cofounder.

Icarus chooses to accept the Karmic Attachment Opportunity, leading to the dissolution of the Drag-On Dragon. He alters the perception of the shadow using one of his mind-bending Gear of the Chemysterious Cascader (I don't remember which offhand anymore...) so that the shadow sees these events as more of a learning experience, and to be more careful with their intellectual property in the future.

Design Notes

I had been starting to have doubts about whether it made sense to give Golem their own Ability Scores as I had originally intended, and we discussed this in our debrief at the end of the session. As is, this would mean six Ability Scores to keep track of (three for the Nazarites and Golem each), with each acting as their own damage pools. The Gear already make the Golem interesting enough, and we also discussed maybe a stripped down version of a "tapping" system similar to Batteries Not Included to force PCs to engage more tactically with how they use their Gear. 

That said, at least in this session, there will be references to the Golem Ability Scores Physical (PHYS/Phi), Technical (TECH/T), and SPECIAL (SPEC/S).

Leaping Lorenzinos

Kaiju-sized pixelated chromatic creatures with petit dancers’ lower body, bodybuilders’ upper body, and UFO for heads, leap-dance from ring to ring, giggling “ho-ho!” with joy, perfectly coordinated and without regard for The Team.

• KAO: One Leaping Lorenzino has a broken(-off) leg, and is getting trampled, crying “oh-noh!”. Fix his leg, but also, help him bring joy through anachronistic art.
• “How can I bring joy to the audience when I’m ruining the choreography!?”
• A disembodied audience like a pre-recorded track can be heard booing.
• If his leg is fixed, he’ll carry The Team between rings whenever he revolves to their position.

The Team actually ignored the Leaping Lorenzinos on the Outer Ring, instead using Forgetting Pile's trash and Lycaon Strain's blood mesh to create a bridge. Doughboy in The Dreadnaughty runs up begging to come along, which is when Ernst makes the Karmic Attachment, which then leads to Dreadnaughty accidentally blowing up the bridge as Icarus in Chemysterious Cascader is crossing, leading to a desperate and daring leap, barely sealing the landing, and losing one of his Mods, but otherwise crossing unscathed.

That said, on the Middle Ring they end up doing something that incidentally breaks a Leaping Lorenzino's leg, giving me the opportunity to reintroduce the KAO, at which point Larry ends up accepting the Karmic Attachment.

Design Notes

While The PCs did use their Gear quite a bit, they did not use their Mods much. They only have I think one Mod each right now anyway, and there was one encounter in the Middle Ring where they may have gotten more but they mostly bypassed that encounter. I will try to be better in future sessions about giving them more Mods and creating circumstances which encourage their use.

My hope is that, like with Karmic Attachments, once a GM gets in the habit of supplying them, and Players get in the habit of engaging with the game in that way, that it'll be more seamless.

Middle Ring

• Office Cube
• Leaping Lorenzinos
• Transcending Descender

The Team are immediately confronted by The Transcending Descender.

Transcending Descender

Words scrolling left to right, down, left to right, down, like if a vector monitor were a typewriter. The words narrate themselves, this very statement. They also say, or rather, I say, that I know why you’re here. Perhaps, I know better than you do. Do you know why you are here? How did you end up in this place? What decisions led to this moment? Will it have been worth it, in the end, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, following the user generated content catered to your wants and interests, to sell you things. Did you enjoy the things they convinced you to want? Are you happy? How much has your “happiness” cost others? Was it worth it? My words descend and descend, and they have every intent to crush you, and if they fail, they will loop back to the beginning, and do it all over again, endlessly. There is no escape, only confrontation. You must confront this. You must confront me.

• KAO: Choose not to confront. Know that the Transcending Descender will follow. It’s not about denying the thing, as much as recognizing that confrontation per se solves nothing.
• HP: NA, Sd8. Each attack deletes a sentence. Sentences that have other sentences below them can’t be attacked. 
• When a sentence is destroyed, a Word representing its meaning falls (e.g. “You must confront this”: Confrontation; “Was it worth it?”: Retrospect).
• These Words can be used as Mods, or used to attempt to communicate with the Transcending Descender.
• The Transcending Descender can’t be defeated through Conflict alone; either it must be fled, ignored, or successfully communicated with.

I gave The Team basically one "free round" before the sentences would be in range, giving them essentially two turns each to confront it or escape to the Inner Ring. While they did not choose to confront it, they also didn't really engage with it at all in a way that would apply for the KAO.

On the one hand I was a little disappointed that they bypassed this encounter because I think it would have been fun, but ultimately the session didn't feel worse off for it so oh well. It is unfortunately ironic that this got disregarded, so I might try to do something devious with this in the future...

They also skipped the Office Cubes in this Ring (consisting of a cafeteria and lobby area, not The Founder and Cofounder Offices that they were interested in), so they basically just talked with the Leaping Lorenzinos as previously described, before arriving on the Inner Ring.

Inner Ring

• Office Cubes
• Leaping Lorenzinos
• ???

The Inner Ring is comparatively barren, with just the Office Cubes and Leaping Lorenzinos. Dreadnaughty accidentally destroys one of the cubes, and I offer The Team to make a Karma roll to decide which Cube is destroyed. They wanted to investigate The Cofounder's Office more, but failed the Karma roll, so they get The Founder's instead.

Inside the virtual space is a simulacrum of The Founder's actual office, and a bunch of free-floating encrypted files.

Icarus uses Infrared Immolation Nazarite Feature to apply a "brute force algorithm" approach to decrypting some of the files. They also investigate some objects in the office. They learn that The Founder, despite previously being described in the other Office Cube as being "dreamy", is also a big dork with Gundam action figures, Star Wars posters, Jingo Jangles memorabilia, etc. He also has a case for a high-tech helmet that he wears, seemingly for medical reasons. 

The files allude to some time off after “the illness”, and subsequently the big technical breakthrough leading to the Jingo Jangles deal. Additional references to the “transfer of power” on Tomino’s Array and what role The Startup will play in it.

Tomino's Array is one of the Space Settlements and was at the heart of the other Issue that they did not choose. They learned that Tomino's Array was dealing with a piracy problem, an outbreak of genetically engineered creatures gone rogue, and an encroaching fleet of Amalekites, a human civilization long-lost in Tehom which has come back to try to take Earth which they see as rightfully theirs.

They attempt to leave with the remaining encrypted files, and Larry uses his Nazarite Feature Transcranial Tachyonic Stimulator to cause the security wall to trigger prior to the action of attempting to cross the wall with the files, allowing them to escape with the rest of the files to decrypt later.

Design Notes

I think the Transcranial Tachyonic Stimulator is a really cool Feature, but one that is conceptually kind of difficult. I was prepared to play fast and loose with it, but I was genuinely concerned if it would be viable or not, so I'm glad to see it get used effectively already in session 2!

In general, the Players felt like they got to use a lot of their Features and Gear pretty freely and felt good about how they were able to interact with the game, so that's all very encouraging.

Entropy Elancer

The core ruptures, and the auto-erotic necro-rgasmic moan of an entire civilization whines at a jarring frequency like poking at a blister, before turning tinny, and abruptly and prematurely ceasing. Amid the destruction, a merely normal-sized Golem not unlike The Team’s elances onto the Inner Ring as if it were a stage. Strobing lights flutter like bugs in the sky and the Entropy Elancer dances in myoclonic jerks masquerading frames between moments of light like a kinesthetic zombie artform. Dead bodies and viscera in detailed Transdimensional Toon form slough off its sleek body apathetically.

Wrap-Up

The "Big Boss" of this Vessel of Tehom. We chose to leave this off as a cliffhanger for next session, so that should be a fun way to start things off!

I've been writing Design Notes throughout this post so I don't have too much wrap-up stuff to say, except that I'm really satisfied with how this is going.

Also, in addition to the aforementioned Design Notes, I tried to be more detail-oriented in this PR in terms of not just posting my GM Notes but also explaining how things actually played out (I drafted this only a couple days after the session this time which probably helped).

I also tried to make this post more fun to read, so I hope I was successful in that regard. If you think I was successful in making this PR more fun to read, please let me know.

Maximum Recursion Depth 2, or Sometimes Less is More and Sometimes More is More: Campaign First Play Report (+ Design Notes)!

New Game New Campaign! I will still be playing in a new MRD1 Campaign with the previous group online, being GMed by one of the Players of that campaign, but I'm also running an MRD2 Campaign IRL with a mix of IRL friends and people I've met through the RPG community online (who are now also IRL friends).

I'm not 100% committed to this name, but I'm tentatively thinking it will be:

Maximum Recursion Depth 2, or Sometimes Less is More and Sometimes More is More

Very open to discussion on that.

Anyway, first session was off to a really good start; with what is a partially new system/setting, and a new group, and one of the players having never RPed before, you never know how it will go, but I think we're gelling pretty much immediately. We spent most of the time finishing character creation and going over the system and setting briefly one more time, so we did a bit of RP but I had prepped more for breadth than depth.

So these first few sessions are like a test-run of the scaffolding for what I hope will become the MRD2 Module. I'm definitely making up a lot of the details as I go, and it will surely change for the book, so it shouldn't be too spoiler-y.

Last comment before getting into it; I'm getting my ass kicked at the moment by some work and life stuff so I may be slowing down posting for a while, but I intend to continue this blog, my work on Iconoclastic Flow, and MRD2, just need to take care of some things and also reprioritize a bit.

With that said, some context about MRD2 before diving into the Play Report:

Campaign Introduction

The PCs (I will generally refer to them as The Team) are Nazarites, employed by The Corporation to pursue various Issues on their behalf. They have powers provided by the Nazarite Contract they signed with The Corporation, and they can summon Golem, often mecha but sometimes metaphysical constructs, and solve problems on Earth, the Space Settlements outside Earth orbit, or the metaphysical cosmic ocean Tehom, by opening up Wyrmholes with their Wyrm Shamir symbionts provided by The Corporation.

I realize there's a lot said in that, I'm frontloading so you have some reference, but if you can just go with it for now, if you are willing to put in the moderate effort required to learn about a New World, if you have the capacity and desire to do so, if like me, you enjoy going down internet rabbit holes on fascinating new topics for which you have no frame of reference, clicking hyperlink after hyperlink and enjoy the process of discovery therein, of history or comics or mythology or cuisine or RPGs or whatever else moves you, then come along with me on this ride, it will likely be worth it.

That all said, I'm still considering other ways to better convey the information...

At the start of the Campaign the Players roll on Role Tables (or choose entries if they prefer). As with MRD1, the entries of the Roles don't radically change the Module per se, but they may change how The Team interact with them in unique ways.

The Roles use my Character Formula Design Pattern, and the purpose of the Roles is to fulfill Social Intrigue.

Currently the Roles are The Corporation, The Manager, and The Cyblessed Liaison. The other entries that aren't chosen for each Role can be used for e.g. The Rival Corporation, or other NPCs, etc.

The Corporation

The Corporation Role does have one mechanical effect; each Corporation comes with three words and each PC can take any one word at a time as a bonus Mod for their Golem Gear. The Team can attempt to leave the Corporation over the course of the campaign, but it should be difficult and weighty to do so; among my intentions for the game is for Players (not just The Team) to confront the complexity (moral and otherwise) of the modern world, and how to do good in the world in a way that isn't just wish fulfillment of some radical lifestyle that most of us will realistically never lead.

The Players chose:

RegeXperience: “Live for the RegeXperience”. Childishly edgy experimental entertainment and defense company that doesn’t want the world to know what’s really behind their algorithm. EXPERIENCE, ALGORITHM, ENTERTAINMENT

The Manager

The Manager Role is meant to be a Handler. A Handler is an NPC that can provide PCs some context, give them leads, give them a reliable point of interaction; basically a way to kickstart things, keep the ball rolling, or smooth over rough edges. In my MRD1 Campaign the Players quickly abandoned their Handler, and other NPCs ended up serving that Role to varying degrees over the course of the campaign, but I still like having one. Especially in a Weird setting, a Handler can be a really useful way to give information to the Players that isn't just big exposition dumps. The GM can have The Manager come along with The Team, but I think it's better if they're a resource that can be called in as needed or that checks in periodically, rather than a GMPC.

The Players chose:

Baz Beetz: Infectiously enthusiastic “artiste” and true believer in the company mission who is as profound as nonsensical.

I additionally described him as being like Werner Herzog or Andy Warhol or Bob Dylan.

The Cyblessed Liaison

I've previously used the Cold War as an analogy for the Campaign Setup; not because I have anything really to say about the Cold War per se, but it is a useful framing device for the themes of the setting. The Corporations are to The Cyblessed as the Banana Republics were to the US and US Corporations. The Cyblessed are Weird cybernetic "aliens" from Tehom with beams of light, holographic encoded messages, for heads. If The Corporation is The Team's overlord, then The Cyblessed Liaison is The Corporation's overlord. The Cyblessed Liaison is like The Manager, another kind of Specialist. The Team will encounter The Cyblessed Liaison when shit hits the fan.

Each entry in The Cyblessed Liaison Role Table has a word, sentence, phrase, or symbol for a name, representing the holographic encoded message in their beam of light for a head.

The Players chose:

“Tastes like eating out the ass-end of human progress.”: Like a cheap flaccid little candle dripping wax down an otherwise glorious cake wearing a tacky suit reminiscent of a 1980’s faux-wood-paneled station wagon.

Issues, Escalations, and Hotspots

The intended gameplay loop of the Module, and the onset of this Campaign, is that The Team has a job board from which they can pursue various Issues (basically quests or adventures or whatever). Each Issue includes some leads, including Hotspots (relevant locations on Earth, in Space, or Tehom), NPCs, etc.

They can theoretically work on several Issues simultaneously, but the longer an Issue remains unresolved, the higher its Escalation; in other words, it's a living world and if The Team aren't getting shit done, things move forward regardless, in ways where they'll still have to deal with it in some way or another, eventually.

Play Report

The Team

Ben:

Larry

Nazarite Contract: Fast Lane Fintechnomancer

Golem: Lycaon Strain

Larry's past life was one of public mission in conscious contrarianism to his peers partying with the money of their employers. The brief accolades received from new acquaintances never quite made up for the lack of money and freedom. When he'd ask what others were doing to make the world a better place, they'd stare as if they had never considered the question before. What's the point of caring if no one else does?

Lukas: 

Icarus Tromp

Nazarite Contract: Infrared Ranger

Golem: Chemysterious Cascader

Was an heir to a crime family but betrayed them when his conscience caught up to him. In need of structure and a sense of justice, but without any good frame of reference and few other options, he shortly thereafter accepted the Nazarite Contract with The Corporation.

Huffa

Ernst

Nazarite Contract: Psychonautical Sub-Mariner

Golem: Forgetting Pile - An oozey amorphous Golem collective made of empowered trash and detritus.

An old man who trawls through the unconscious sea gathering the things people forget from their dreams. Sometimes its material that The Corporation deems useful.

Altchester (not present :( )

The Issue

The Team were given two starting Issues (in the Module the intention is to have between 3-6), and they chose to tackle this Issue first:

The Quarterly earnings report is coming up soon, and The Corporation is anomalously underperforming.

• Several brand launches this Quarter were undercut by a previously unknown startup in San Francisco. The Corporation wants The Team to investigate The Startup on the pretense of a buyout.
• The Startup somehow acquired the licensing rights to the old Jingo Jangles cartoon, undercutting The Corporation’s upcoming Tempeh Toons licensed products line, just as the Jingo Jangles Museum is reopening.
• Several other corporations, including The Rival Corporation, have been hit by a similarly bad Quarter. The Cyblessed Liaisons intend to arrange a meeting in neutral territory, Venus City of Tehom.

They decided to investigate in the San Francisco Hotspot first, holding off on the meeting in Venus City, so they were given information on the following Locations relating to this Issue:

The Startup’s Office

Small but stereotypically indulgent startup office in The Mission District. Unassuming from the outside, while impressively dynamic from within, even by the standards of The Corporation. Utilizes an advanced augmented reality system bathing the office in a hazy red light and interspersing pixelated hard holograms.

Jingo Jangles Museum

Once glorious museum in the Design District that had fallen into a sorry state over the decades, newly renovated and receiving a LOT of buzz. Most notably, the mascot workers are purported to be real-to-life cartoons!

Roleplay

The Team were suspicious of The Startup and decided they wanted to investigate the Jingo Jangles Museum first. How did The Startup get the license? What are the real-to-life cartoon mascots?

Larry used his Zip Ribbon Regressor Nazarite Feature as a Fast Lane Fintechnomancer to learn some additional details. For instance, they were able to learn all the basic history about Jingo Jangles on an internet search, but who actually owns Jingo Jangles now? The internet points to a reasonable-sounding corporation, but really that corporation is just a shell of a shell of a shell. While many important details are still unknown, they did learn that the owner is someone or something called Virtual Boy, from Tehom, and that while The Startup might not necessarily know this, they're certainly tied up in it.

There was a long line to get in obviously. I expected them to just try to pull Corporate strings or whatever, maybe call The Manager, but instead, Ernst used his WetOps Nazarite Feature as a Psychonautical Sub-Mariner to get them into the museum.

DESIGN NOTE INTERLUDE

Both Jingo Jangles and Tempeh Toons are entirely made up, sort of analogous to Walt Disney, Merry Melodies / Loony Tunes, or Max Fleischer. They asked some questions about the context, the relationship between Jingo Jangles and The Startup, etc., and I did have some pre-written notes and preconceived ideas, but I mostly just vamped.

Who came up with Jingo Jangles?

Jasper Jangles of course. DWAI (don't worry about it). Connor Goldsmith's favorite phrase for all the nonsense in X-Men continuity that doesn't matter. Off topic, but FYI Cerebro is a great literary analysis podcast of the X-men.

When?
Early 20th century. Around whenever Disney started probably. DWAI.

What happened?

The cartoons fell out of relevance by ~1980s, had a brief revival in the 1990s, finally went bankrupt after that bubble burst, and then recently the property was revived under new corporate ownership. DWAI.

I may want to add some of these details as stuff for the GM, but also I'm going to try to write it in a way where most of it doesn't matter, and only what matters will be provided, and if PCs ask questions, the GM can just vamp or say DWAI.

What's the relationship between The Startup and Jingo Jangles?

It's like how videogame companies license properties- The Startup doesn't own Jingo Jangles and isn't involved with the museum per se, but clearly it's part of a larger coordinated effort.

This question is obviously more important for the game. It was easy to clarify this point, but I was a little surprised that that was not clear in the first place, so I may try to explain that more clearly in the Issue description in the Module.

How big is the museum?

I don't really know SF that well to know what's appropriate, but I described it as being similar in size to the museums in NY, or at most like the Javitz Center which is a conference center. Basically DWAI, you can make it larger or smaller as long as you're consistent.

Why are the real-to-life cartoons a big deal in a setting where much of the Weird stuff is public knowledge?

Think of it like a new iPhone launch. It's still a cool thing and a big deal, but not the same as if real-to-life cartoon mascots actually happened IRL. Then again, people seemed pretty nonchalant about the Tupac hologram or whatever (that was real, right?), so...

This latter question probably should go in the Module as well. This is a really good example of how to think about how to scale Weird things in a Weird setting, keeping in mind that the real-to-life cartoons are just the tip of the iceberg of Weirdness here anyway.

In the Jingo Jangles Museum

The Team realized that the Museum was way over capacity and at risk of a crowd crush or otherwise dangerous situation.

The real-to-life cartoons behaved in-character and followed a similar kind of logic as the cartoons of Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Cool World. There's a kind of syntax or internal logic to their behaviors, and while they were conscious of the crowd, as things got more crowded, there was greater likelihood of an accident.

Among the various real-to-life cartoons present were Harry the Honeybadger and Barrys the Bees (like a Roadrunner / Wiley Coyote situation), Doughboy the WW1 Sailor whose schtick is trying to help people but causing more problems than he fixes, and Monty the Python who had a mock-gameshow from the 90's revival.

The Team decided to mess with Harry the Honeybadger and create havoc, basically to disperse the crowd before things get too dangerous, but also to undermine the Jingo Jangles brand by creating bad press, and so undermining The Startup. Ernst also pocketed some of Barrys the Bees' cartoon honey which Harry the Honeybadger was throwing at them, curious as to its properties, in that it sloughs off easily enough and disappears when no longer relevant, in a classic cartoon logic sort of way.

They succeeded, but coincidentally at the same moment, the whole museum shook, people ran out in a panic, and it became apparent that some grand catastrophe was happening way uptown.

The Team had to decide whether to investigate whatever was happening uptown, or use this opportunity to investigate the Museum while nobody was there, and they chose to stay and investigate the Museum.

The Museum was phasing in and out with a dream-like cartoon-scape, and they could barely see the outlines of an emergency exit, a conspicuous office, and the restrooms. I was definitely vamping a bit, I had prepped breadth and not depth, but it worked out fairly well, but I'll probably redesign this for the Module. Anyway, I know they dealt with Harry the Honeybadger, Barrys the Bees, and Doughboy somehow, but I didn't write notes right afterwards like I should have so I've forgotten some of the particulars. They do a Monty Hall Problem with Monty the Python in order to gain a reward or else have to fight a cartoon goat monster, but anyway they succeeded at that too. I think I gave them a word for this as well (for Golem Mods), or if not I might do that retroactively. They opened the conspicuous office, and it led into a hazy red hologram space, and that's where we called it a wrap on the First Session...

Wrapping Up

So that's a whole lot of stuff, but it was fun! I hope this was an engaging first Play Report and introduction to MRD2, that the setting and structure of the campaign generally make sense and aren't too difficult to follow and seem intriguing.

You may have noticed that they never even used their Golem in this first session, despite the fact that this is nominally described as a "mecha" game. My intention is for a roughly 25:75 split in- vs. out- of Golem, but we'll see how things develop. It's worth exploring further the range of narrative or game possibilities that can exist inside a Golem, I want it to be more than just about fighting, but I also think that the use of the Golem should feel climactic and important, so we'll see. Also, maybe if they had gone uptown and investigated that situation then things would have been different, but that's ok! Both options were viable options, and even if that way may have led to situation requiring their Golem, it's not like there won't be plenty of other opportunities for that later.

Undead Dreams

The idea is loosely inspired by Vampire Hunter D, specifically Volume 5. What is an undead dream? This post was originally drafted in like 2019 and I was never sure what to do with it. I've had some similar ideas lately, I intend to explore some version of this further in the near future.

They say that when you die, your brain floods with DMT, the chemical of dreams. Your perception of time slows and you relive your life as synapses die and memories pop into being one last time. Memories are fuzzy and imperfect things, and in your psychedelic dreamscape your life plays out a little bit differently. Then, your dreamscape self dies, and it floods with DMT, and so recursively, at the moment of your death, you dream and live your entire multiverse of selves.

These recursive multiversal selves exist in a metaphysical space, a space of souls, where the soul-self opens the gate of the pineal gland and enters the collective unconscious.

And what are undead, if not liminal beings, a physical, synaptic consciousness at the gate, lacking a soul, the apparatus to join the collective unconscious? Zombies don't hunger for brains, they hunger for souls. But no matter how hard they try, no matter how many brains they consume, they'll never be able to digest, to integrate, the soul. Weep for the pitiful hungry zombie. Vampires, lich lords, and other intelligent undead sleep, but without a soul, what do they dream?

They do not relive their lives, but the lives of those whose brains they've eaten, blood they've drank, bodies they've necromantically revived; damaged and mutated, the undigested souls linger within, propagating through a dark multiverse of astral un-life, the reciprocation of undeath, a limbo dimension of null that exists, cruelly, to balance the physical inequality of energy that undeath introduces into the universe. The undead dream the purgatory of the living.

Also, I made my first post on the collaborative blog Iconoclastic Flow!

Iconoclastic Rant: I am sick of being asked "but how would that work?"

BONUS: Iconoclastic Flow Collaboration!

I am involved in a collaborative blog! See the description from Screwhead's tweet below:

Iconoclastic Flow is a collaborative blog, with content from Max of Weird and Wonderful Worlds, Semiurge of Archons March On, Spwack of Slight Adjustments, Sibylla of  Devil Devil Devil, and Sofinho of Alone in the Labyrinth, as well as 4 lovely creatives from my real life!

Screwhead being of the Was it Likely blog, who was doing brilliant FKR-ish stuff before FKR was even a thing.

I've interviewed all of these bloggers before (see interview tag) and Devil Devil Devil is genuinely one of the most interest RPGs I've read in a while. The other friends of Screwhead I've also been getting to know a bit and they all seem cool as well.

I've got one bog post there already drafted, but since Screwhead was the lead organizer, we felt he should be the one to kick things off, with:

Lords of Old; a GMless Competitive Social Deduction TTRPG of Gods in the Ruins of the Old World

Given how much I've bounced around on this blog between worldbuilding, game discussion, prose, game mechanics, coding stuff, interviews, weird experimental stuff like Weird & Wonderful Wavelengths, etc., I don't necessarily have a coherent idea of what will differentiate my posts there vs. here, and there may in fact not be any meaningful differentiation, it'll just be another place to read my stuff, so if you're already enjoying this blog, or any of the other creators involved in this collaboration, check it out.

The Art of Chrono War: A Hexcrawl Across Time, Space, and the Multiverse

I get really excited about timey-wimey stuff, but then inevitably get frustrated when either I overcomplicate it or fail to explain it coherently or whatever, so I will try not to do that this time. This is not a redo of my previous multidimensional hexcrawl post which I'm still going to hyperlink but that is definitely a case where I overcomplicated an idea that actually isn't that complicated, and this is actually a completely different thing from that anyway, so don't bother reading that unless you like weird complicated shit. I liked the post even if basically nobody else did :(…

This post is partially inspired by Skerples' post OSR: Time Travel Tips for GMs and the idea that I had suggested in the comments that frankly I felt like he was a little too dismissive of so now I'm coming back at this partially out of spite (come at me bro >.<!), but also because it's rooted in ideas I've had basically for as long as I've been doing TTRPGs so it's about time I actually try to do it in a more coherent and fleshed out way.

Was not a great RTS, but had a really cool time schtick

The High Concept

With this mechanic, time is multidimensional and causality is non-linear, and I think that is rad as fuck but if that means nothing to you then don't worry about it, hopefully it'll still make sense as a game.

I'm going to say the setting is a generic war across multiversal spacetime between two factions just to keep it simple, but if I were to use it I'd likely make the setting more interesting (maybe my Cold War Under a Rising Sun setting)

We begin with a Hex Map

Let's start with 7 hexes, so a middle hex and six hexes surrounding it. It can get bigger, it'll just be easier to start small.

Traversing this hex map is not a traversal of space, as in going from one town to another, but of multiversal spacetime in its entirety, flattened out onto a hex grid where each hex is a key event in some place and time and universe in the multiverse. Also you could just get rid of the multiverse aspect if you want and make it just space and time, but I figured why stop there?

If the setting is about a war, the center of our hex map may be some pivotal battle. The GM should probably prepare at least a couple other key events, or the group can do it collaboratively, or they can mostly come up in play over time.

Chrono Points

While on a hex, as the group accomplishes some set of tasks, like the usual kinds of things PCs in a big intrigue/war game would get into, they acquire Chrono Points (CP). These CP can be physical coins or poker chips you can place on the grid, or you can mark them in some other way. Since this is a war, the enemy side may have CP of their own (should probably be a different type of coin or different color chip).

Before leaving that hex, the group can choose what to do with their points. They can use them, leave them on the current hex, or take them with them to the next hex.

…And How to Use Them

Because causality is non-linear, it is not necessarily the case that actions in the past affect the future any more than events in the future affect the past, and even events in an adjacent universe can affect other events in other universes across the multiverse, regardless of where in spacetime. So while the group's actions within a given hex may affect the circumstances in that given hex, that has only limited baring on the grand scheme of things; instead, the way in which those circumstances affect other events in the multiversal spacetime is determined by the use of CP.

The group may want to say that if, while on this hex where a major battle is occurring, they win the battle, then that will affect an adjacent hex in some favorable way. Maybe the event on an adjacent hex involves a political assassination of an ally in the near future of an adjacent universe, and so the group wants to cause a blizzard to occur on that hex, making the political assassination more difficult or less likely. You can call it butterfly effect if you want- the underlying "cause" in linear terms doesn't matter- linear causality is not how the multiverse actually works, that's just how we myopically perceive it.

The default cost might be 3, but depending on what actions occurred while they were on the hex (e.g. how favorably the battle went) and how they want that to affect another hex (e.g. change the weather vs. cause the assassin to have a heart attack), that might affect the cost at the GM's discretion.

If the enemy has CP on that hex, they might choose to contest the result. In such a case, both sides (the group and the enemy) would write down their bid, and whoever bids higher wins (but the CP are spent regardless).

Even after the group has left a hex, the enemy can return to the hex to change things in their own way, or by spending CP on that hex before leaving an adjacent hex in the same way the group uses CP, so there are reasons to return to hexes (although each time it will have changed in some ways), and also reasons to leave CP on hexes rather than always carrying your CP with you on each hex.

What Else Can be done with CP?

If there are any undefined hexes adjacent to the current hex, the group may instead want to create a new key event on that hex. They'll have to then go to that hex to ensure the outcome is favorable, but there is advantage and fun to be had in defining those events. Whether the event is viable, and the cost to create the event, will also be determined by the GM, with perhaps a starting cost of 3, and greater or lesser cost if the initial status is more or less favorable to the group's interests.

You can also spend CP to swap two adjacent hexes on the board (again, perhaps default cost of 3). This doesn't affect the outcomes, or how many CP are left on that piece, but since you can only move to or affect with CP the current or adjacent hexes, there may be advantages to moving hexes around on the board (like if you very desperately need to get to a hex that's otherwise too far away).

But it's Not Over Yet!

Sure you've won the battle, but time is multidimensional and nonlinear. The enemy may return to that hex to undo or alter what you've done, or spend their own CP on adjacent hexes to likewise change the outcomes, and you may need to return, but it should be notably different now. Alternatively, if you left some CP on that hex, you can spend it to start a bidding war to counteract their actions (but remember, they can do likewise to the group).

Why should we use this?

Well for starters, the idea of a world with multidimensional time and non-linear causality is rad as fuck, if you don't agree then we just don't see eye to eye.

But also, maybe there's a higher barrier to entry in wrapping your head around the idea, but once you do, it's actually way less complicated than most one-dimensional and linear-causal versions of time travel; there is no concern about time paradoxes, no convoluted logical chains of antecedents and consequences since causality itself has been modularized; if you just think of it as a flat board like any strategy game, that's all it is conceptually, and the mechanics themselves are about as rules-light as can be and can be bolted onto any TTRPG.

And it's just a novel way to think about space and time and the multiverse and causality and how to conceive of a world within a TTRPG and how you might interact with it as players.

And "Time Loops".

Since you will likely return to previous hexes- it's not quite like a time loop story because the circumstances in the hexes are changing based on how the group and the enemy interact with them or use their CP, but you can still to some extent explore some of the themes and ideas of a time loop story in a gameable way.

Alternatives?

This is still just a proof of concept and I've discussed with several others and we have a handful of alternative takes on this idea.

One idea would be to make the outcomes of using CP probabilistic. So you can try to alter adjacent hexes with or without CP, perhaps doing like a d20 roll under, but CP would lower the difficulty.

Another idea, closer to my original idea, would be to make the board more like a sudoku board, except instead of being 9x9 it would be 4x4. In this version, each of the events would be keyed to a number, and the rules of sudoku would be the underlying causality. By changing a number on a given square, given the rules of sudoku, it may be necessary to change the whole board.

In regular sudoku this would be way too complicated and also there are fail states if you're messing with the board like that, but in 4x4 it might be more manageable. The idea to reduce to a 4x4 was suggested to me by Deldon on the NSR discord server.

I'd also open to additional ideas.

MRD Campaign FINAL Play Report

The final play reports for my >1yr long Maximum Recursion Depth campaign. I can't fully express just how happy I am with how this all resolved, and how grateful I am for my players. I've played in or run a handful of >1yr long campaigns so far, and this is only the second to come to a proper conclusion, and the first to do so satisfactorily. This campaign truly lived up to the ideals of what I had intended MRD to be, and did so in a way that I had not anticipated, driven by the actions of the Players and the decisions they made given the conceits I presented to them. We'll be following up with a new campaign where one of the Players will take over as GM with their own modified take on MRD, and I'll be running an MRD2 campaign with a new group IRL, but this feels like a milestone in the journey of creation that has been MRD.

I realize at this point that these play reports are all over the place and probably impossible to follow. Maybe at some point I'll try to do a "campaign summary" basically explaining the whole thing in brief. In typical Weird & Wonderful Worlds fashion, I'd say don't worry about the particulars, just come along for the ride, there's some cool wild stuff in here.

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...

PR 17-24: Penultimate Play Reports

MRD Module / GM Notes

The Court of Those Who Succumb Prematurely to Crippling Expectations (A significantly rewritten, improved, and expanded version is included in the Module of the book)

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

Off to the (Karmamare) Racetracks (GM Notes)

I gave up on doing GM Notes posts after a while, but some of the GM Notes are included in the PRs, especially for sessions that were more Conflict-heavy or Adventure-y

Session 25: Kristalvers Amsterdam

An oppressive stillness, trapped in a grayness between twilight and sunrise. A city like a retrofuturist cyberpunk 1970’s/80’s New York/Hong Kong/Tokyo full of metal and neon injected with sleek modern glass skyscrapers. Mirrors and invisible glass walls create mazes and optical illusions and it is often easier to traverse space across the illusions. The entire space appears to be encased in glass, recognizable due to a fracture in the sky streaking like a comet from its round epicenter.

After defeating Charging Bull in the previous session, Naked Fox-Hare opens up a portal to Kristalvers Amsterdam. This session served mostly as a send-off, giving the Team one last chance to interact with many of the NPCs they encountered on their journey and tie up any loose ends. They also get a final encounter boss fight with The Multi-Armed Bandit, the Rogue Poltergeist who has been mastermind the hate group The Deseret Avengers, who they had a tenuous alliance with but which collapses.

Tim’s at 25th: A 25-hour diner that finds the lost and listless. A temporary refuge from the pervasive yet ill-defined threats of the outside world; whether ennui or dysphoria or the panopticon of a fascist dictatorship.

They work a deal with Randy, the Recess Rascal who they encountered in one of the earliest sessions, who has since aged up and is working with Chester, they're former Handler as Poltergeist Investigators who they had long ago moved on from.

They have a quick quince-tini with Barsabbas and Yana at a Wrongside Racetrax franchise location.

There was a Niguma Temple scenario they didn't engage with.

Then they finally have a big boss battle confrontation with The Multi-Armed Bandit.

The Arena

• Glass and Mirrors
• Tall but still enclosed with a fracture in the sky
• Multi-tiered- street, skyscrapers, medium-sized buildings, plenty of above-ground walkways
• Fast-passing vehicles
• Inception-style illusory geometry

Multi-Armed Bandit

Alexei Strauss has been evading reincarnation while running the Deseret Avengers as a Rogue Poltergeist. While working with the other factions to defeat Glass Maiden Pixie, he realizes that he will no longer be able to evade the Numberless Courts of Hell and has a change of heart. He would sooner let the world be destroyed than accept the reincarnation sentenced to him.

• Red Bandits (x5): 3HP, Nd8 (collectively), 60% Word
• Blue Bandits (x5): 3HP, Pd8 (collectively), 40% Word
• Green Bandits (x5): 3HP, Wd8 (collectively), 80% Word
• There is an X% chance of getting a Word when defeating bandits.
• The battle is itself a multi-armed bandit problem.
• Words are used for Concept Crafting.
• A counter shows X/10, increasing by each defeated Bandit, after which no more Words are provided and a bigger threat approaches.
• There's a 50 Word Bank for this but this post is already cluttered so I'm just gonna leave it out...
  

After defeating the bandits, the Multi-Armed Bandit becomes an Ashura.

Ashura Multi-Armed Bandit

Wild West Sheriff with an explosion of arms like a tumbleweed, flashing with disoriented lights, neon, and loud noises, each arm a different kind of gun composed of Words.

• 30HP
• Xd6-Xd12 depending on Gun, conditional abilities from Words
• New gun generated on each turn, composed of three Words (if buffed by Moon Marine), two words if >50% HP, one word if <50% HP

Moon Marine

Wrapped up in Alexei’s claims that this will be the end of the DA, she initially turns on The Team, but may be convinced to rejoin.

• Uses her magic to provide Alexei an additional word per Gun every other turn.
• 15 HP
• Scorned Lover's Halation: Wd12, Bifurcated Cupid Arrow tipped with bright light.
• Spiraling Heart's Abandon: Nd12, Pink spiral beam emits from chest.
• Lost in Moonlight's Escalation: Pd12, Summons a magic moon that emanates below.
• KAO: Soft Mother suggests to Alco to sacrifice her Plumbers License to the Ghost in the Mirror, so that she can return to Squaretime and free Jerome Candle, who can empathize with (and be entangled in Conflict with) Moon Marine, convincing her to reconsider her worldview.
• It doesn’t mean anything anyway, she says.
• KAO: Doctor Loves-Me-Not sacrifices themself, as a living idea, to incept Love into Moon Marine.

Rather than these KAOs, Jack used the Sword of Manjushri to enlighten Moon Marine and bring her around to their side.

Alco had to use her reincarnation ritual, but was brought to Squaretime by The Ghost in the Mirror. She made the same KAO deal with Soft Mother above to give up her Plumbing License in order to rescue Jerome Candle and return to the fight immediately.

After defeating the Multi-Armed Bandit, he gives them the location of the Glass House for the final confrontation with Glass Maiden Pixie.

Session 26: The Glass House aka The Court of the Unasked Question

The final confrontation with Emil McGinley aka Glass Maiden Pixie, the Poltergeist Investigator who used to work with Dori before setting her up for a fall in order to escape with a Magic Lamp. With the Lamp, he encoded a Wish to Break the World, in order to be freed and free all from this disgusting, distorted, dysfunctional existence. The Team don't want the world to end, but they have their own plans in mind for how to break the Karmic Cycle and radically alter reality.

The Glass House

Massive Crystal Palace, where the entire outer surface is like a one-way mirror (the inside is The Court of the Unasked Question).

As The Wish Unravels, the Karmic Cycle is so disturbed that Reincarnation Rituals are not possible; if one acquires too much Karma they either die or become an Asura.

• Lobby/South Chamber (moon roof access for N.E.M.Os)
• East Chamber (Ghost in the Mirror / Homicidal Maniac)
• West Chamber (The Wish Unravels)
• North Chamber (Asura Glass Maiden Pixie)

N.E.M.O. (Non-Entity Multiplex Obliteration) Mk0 and Mk1 drop from a kaleidoscopic Twilight Beam in the sky in front of the Glass House. They will not attack on-sight, only if engaged or The Team tries to enter.

• Pungent odor of nearly overaged meat that sizzles in the Twilight Beams. Subtle notes in the odor change in sequence with the Twilight Beams.
• The odor and Twilight Beams of light are two components of Twilight, the encryption algorithm and language passing instructions to and from the NEMO.
• If The Team decrypt Twilight they can deal Enhanced TECH Damage to the NEMO once per turn.
• When they move the Twilight Beams of light follow them.
• If somehow the lights are blocked or the NEMOs pushed outside the bounds of the light, they take Sd6 Damage and are disabled for one turn. Each consecutive turn out of bounds the die size of Damage increases as they spoil.
• Much too large to enter The Glass House.
• KAO: Moon Marine and/or Doctor Loves-Me-Not could hold off the N.E.M.Os… but they will be tied up in it for the duration of the encounter and possibly die.

Indigo Cyclops bio-Mecha with a burning bright Karmic eye.

PHYS: 12, TECH: 11, SPEC: 11, HP: 6

• Nd6*10 Tendril of Null (eldritch prehensile tongue).
• Pd6*10 Churning Mass (one hundred arms extending from its stomach, the vengeance of exploitation of workers and the desperation of the starving).
• Wd8*10 Trauma Beam (indigo laser beam from Karmic eye, induces the experience of being eaten alive and having one’s Karma extracted like the separating of meat fibers from fat).
• Pulsing energy shield of indigo light (2 SPEC Armor).

 

I forget exactly how it played out, should have written better notes, but I believe they hacked the NEMO by stealing the Twilight Controller (see below) or something to that effect. It was very clever at the time, but the way things play out in the end was so profound to me that some of the boss battle / dungeon crawl-y particulars kind of don't matter to me as much anymore.

South Chamber

The lobby of The Glass House. The exit which they came from, and the entrances to any of the other chambers, are blocked by glass panes (only perceivable after they approach them).

• Moon roof and massive crystalline Glass Maiden Flying Guillotine chandelier floating in place.
• x6 Niguma Gangsters and x2 Niguma Mystics hovering on glass panes. They allow The Team to act freely unless provoked, merely standing ominously in rows on each side.
• Niguma Gangster: 3HP, Nd6 Axes, Enhanced if breaking a glass plane onto a PC
• Niguma Mystic: 3HP, Wd6, create physical glass pane barriers that can push PCs around (WIS Save). The planes can also be used to block exits, or push The Team up on the moon roof to the NEMOs or into the Glass Maiden Chandelier.
• Whoopi is the leader, also a Niguma Mystic, and the Twilight Controller of the NEMO. She wears sparkling gold and white robes and a cow horn hood, standing under the moon roof and Glass Maiden Flying Guillotine chandelier.
• 15HP, Niguma Mystic Abilities
• Controls the NEMOs (Twilight Controller)
• Twilight Beam Scramble:
• Full Success: Pd4
• Partial Success: Pd6
• Partial Failure: Pd6 and can't speak or understand language for duration of conflict
• Full Failure: Pd12, can't speak or understand language for duration of conflict, can't use WORDs
• Having doubts about Emil’s goals. Reining in the Gangsters from premature action, and may be convinced (likely through PRO Conflict) to back down.
• Fearless Girl will recognize Whoopi's disposition if The Team don’t.
• Fearless Girl will suggest using the Naked Fox-Hare Credit to preincarnate her into The Bear, having a sense that Whoopi will listen to The Bear.
• Offers to give The Team a tour of the Library.

Rewards

• It is possible for The Team to take the Glass Maiden flying guillotine with them.
• Get the words TWILIGHT and FERMENT if the Conflict ends peacefully.
  
  

They did manage to successfully convert Whoopi to their side without conflict, although I think it was all a bit dicey. Again, I've kind of forgotten the particulars, but it was fun. They definitely preincarnated The Bear, that I'm sure about.

East Chamber

A digital library on a massive holographic display. The walls are all reflective screens, and hidden projectors reflect the contents both onto the surfaces, and refracted around glass particles in the air itself.

• A cat-like Holo-Selkie playfully interacts with The Team, nudging them to interact with the holo-books.
• Each holo-book is keyed by two Words. Using whatever Words they have (or taking a turn to get two new Words), they can scan for books.
• The Team can explore for a bit, but they hear weird banging noises from inside the walls, before Ghost in the Mirror eventually crashes through…
• If on a tour, Whoopi and the Niguma Gangsters will ally with The Team, but only affects conflict if PCs use their turns to make an action with them.

Rewards

• The Perfect Cat (see below) will resolve Dori’s Attachment for Jack and also any Jerome Candle Attachments and also can have powers from two Words applied to it.
• Each PC can make a permanent Holo-Book granting powers related to the content of the book (as pertaining to one or more Attachments).

This encounter allowed us to wrap up several loose end Karmic Attachments explicitly, but also by tying the Holo-Books to other Karmic Attachments, and based on Hairball Devils worked (see below), it also allowed us to indirectly settle some of the really ancillary Karmic Attachments.

Ghost in the Mirror / Homicidal Maniac

• Cat-like homicidal maniac cyborg, covered in a circuit of metal pipes and hydraulics.
• 20HP, Enhanced WIS Damage.
• The knowledge from the holo-books can be used to block Ghost in the Mirror’s otherwise devastating Enhanced WIS Damage, but the book must characterize the PC’s Attachments in some substantive way.
• Eats non-Starting Karmic Attachments. Consumed Attachments do not divest Karma and do not count towards Advancement.
• A consumed Karmic Attachment gets barfed back up as a Hairball Devil.
• Hairball Devil: 3HP, Xd6, characterizes the Karmic Attachment in some way. If the PC fights it, that's that. If they use the holo-books similar to defending against Ghost in the Mirror, the Attachment is resolved.
• Will be satisfied after eating three Attachments.
• When defeated / appeased, the Holo-Selkie turns into The Perfect Cat (and a twin for Jerome Candle). Will receive the words VIBRATION and SOFT, and can apply any two Words to the cat.
• Jerome and the cat afterwards willingly go to be processed as Poltergeists.

North Chamber

A palatial yet filthy bedroom. The sheets of the overly large floating bed are undone and covered in sweat and grease stains. Distracting glaring light filters in from random places through random spaces, reflecting the filth and microscopic Time Worms and Mu and glass dust in the humid air that feels gelatinous like swamp water. The glass walls of the room reflect recursively, giving it the appearance of being infinitely large like a glass ocean.

• The Bed: Swims in the thick air like a fish, nudging unsuspecting occupants of the room to rest on it. 
• On the bed one feels Time Worms crawling over them, dragging them into the bed as if in a deep pit.
• Deal Xd4 per turn to the PCs highest Ability Score (Max not current) and must make a Save of that Ability or else can’t leave the bed (but can still do other things).
  
  
• Pixie Cage: Half-eaten corpses of cute little pixies lay at the bottom of the cage; Mu like inside-out ravens screech with dial-up tone, electric pixie blood and glass shards caught in their beaks.
• Floats and bobs like a jellyfish.
• Deal Xd6 to anyone who gets too close (random Ability each time).
• If the Pixie Cage is opened, Mu will war with the Time Worms on The Bed, doubling Damage received on The Bed but removing the other effects.
  
  
• Infinity Glass: The recursive reflection can be traversed, but the further from reality one goes, the dimmer and stiller things become, and the harder it is to find one’s way back. Pushing past the point of seemingly no return leads to Squaretime. From Squaretime, one can hear King Kevorkian coming.
• It is apparent that Asura Glass Maiden Pixie will not follow them into the Infinity Glass but will eerily and patiently wait with an inscrutable grin.
• If Ghost in the Mirror has not already been defeated, it will prowl the PCs who enter Infinity Glass, but will deal only Wd6 and only if the PCs keep moving forward- corralling them back into the North Chamber.
• Time Worms will become more and more of a problem.
• If a PC reaches Squaretime via Infinity Glass, they will find Time Worm Fumigation Gear.
• King Kevorkian: Like a biblical angel by way of Jack Kirby and the Radiation Symbol. According to Psyr Psimon Stilton, it is the third god which the Monkey King could not defeat. It waits in Squaretime, fumigating Time Worms, serving either as the beacon of the <danger message>, or the executioner of its will, or both.
• Time Worm Fumigation Gear: Holographic fumigation suit with an emerald Klein bottle fumigator. Immune to Time Worms. In Lineartime the fumigator is self-intersecting and can only be used by breaking. Immediately destroys all Time Worms in the vicinity, creates two Mobius Time strips which the fumigator can use to create interconnected portal-like time loops.

Ashura Glass Maiden Pixie

• Has all Quirks and all Poltergeist Features of Glass Maiden Pixie Poltergeist Form and a metamorphosed appearance like a kaleidoscopic cosmic butterfly of shining stars and nebulae straining against a partially cracked glass maiden cocoon armor.
• Always gets a turn after the first PC and again after all PCs.
• All Ability Scores are at Max 20. Karma starts at 8 and can be further accrued but not divested. Uses a d8 for Karma rolls.
• Reduce all ability scores to 0 to defeat.
• After each one is defeated it is debilitated in some way / losing certain features.

This played out mostly as a typical boss fight, although at some point Doctor Loves-Me-Not was merged with Alco's Karmamare Bronco Rogers in order to save The Team from Obliteration, but I don't remember anymore how exactly that played out...

West Chamber

The Lamp is more like a furnace, taking up the entire Chamber. It cannot be stopped by physical means, and as it churns, existence itself begins to unravel like a black hole. If The Team did not examine the Infinity Glass in the North Chamber, it will become apparent that King Kevorkian is coming.

• West Chamber is LOCKED until Ashura Glass Maiden Pixie and Ghost in the Mirror have been defeated, or some other extraordinary means, after which the remaining enemies will immediately swarm The Team.
• The Team received Credits from the Guardian Elemental Beasts over the last several previous sessions, and must use the profound abilities of these Credits along with their own ingenuity to unravel the Wish to Break the World or supersede it for their own purposes.

Moon Marine is the <Danger Message>, this will become apparent to her if she is still with The Team. She will allow herself to be sacrificed if it means stopping King Kevorkian, but The Team must determine how.

Doctor Loves-Me-Not, the living meme and the unintended side effect of the Doppler Potential superorganism, in combination with one or more of the Credits, may be able to reroute or disable The Wish, but The Team must determine how.

Just as The Team were beginning to deliberate... BETRAYAL!

 

Soft Mother whistles and in a flash Wire Mother, Redlight/Greenlight, and a squad of x3 Calamansi Goblins (Orange Goblin shocktroopers with literally shocking power armor) arrive on the scene.

• Knowing that The Team plan to break the Karmic Cycle anyway (Soft Mother of course breaking their trust), and lacking the means to alter The Wish for themselves, The Doppler Potential will play chicken with existence, demanding that they include The Doppler Potential’s ascension into godhood as part of the alteration of The Wish, or else let the universe be destroyed entirely.
• If Doctor Loves-Me-Not is still available, they suggest that despite the backhandedness of The Doppler Potential, that this is ultimately worthwhile and that The Doppler Potential’s ascension will ultimately be for the best anyway.
• If Moon Marine is still available, she will reject this on principle, but clearly from a place of Karmic Attachment and reactionary anger.
• Fearless Girl will be uncertain. If she was preincarnated into The Bear, she’ll be defensive of The Team.
• There is no “objectively” right or wrong answer, it’s the end of the campaign…
• Wire Mother: 30 HP, Wd10 for existential trauma conflict. Nd8 for physical conflict. Drips nutritious milk that can be lapped up if in close range. Recover Nd6, at risk of getting cut on a wire barb causing Wd4 of existential loneliness and learned helplessness. Being in close range of Wire Mother risks accidentally lapping up the milk and/or getting barbed.
• Redlight/Greenlight: 8 HP each, Xd6 each, various kinds of attacks, whatever makes sense in context. By high-fiving and yelling "redlight", "greenlight", or "blacklight", can induce red-phase, green-phase, or black-phase. Red-phase cancels out all NAT Conflict or NAT special abilities, green-phase cancels out PRO, black-phase cancels out WIS.
• Calamansi Goblin: 5 HP each, Nd6 electric claws, 2Nd6 suicide bomb. Trained to weaponize reason and morality against opposition (Wd8 psycho-ethical assault, -2 related WIS Saves against them, immune to WIS Damage), but vulnerable to those who exhibit alpha behavior (+2 related PRO or NAT Saves against them). Nd4 and Pd4 when in touching range of them from electric power armor and shock tactics.

This ended up being a long and intense deliberation, and it was awesome. While they at first took the "fuck this" stance of Moon Marine to the point of summoning The Metro Thing to eat Soft Mother whole, they eventually open up to the possibility of compromise given the overwhelming opposition. They learn why The Doppler Potential actually wants to ascend to godhood in the first place, to represent humanity in the Celestial Bureaucracy (no taxation without representation). 

They had already intended to destroy the Karmic Cycle regardless, rendering The Doppler Potential's request moot regardless. By destroying the Karmic Cycle and creating something new, this achieves the Doppler Potential's intention of humanity leaving an indelible mark on all of existence.

After much philosophical deliberation as much out as in character, they replace the Karmic Cycle with a Metaphysical Sewage System and elect Alco to become the god of these Pipes, effectively becoming the God of Plumbing, despite having sacrificed her Plumbing License earlier to rescue Jerome Candle and herself from Squaretime.

When confronted with the breaking of the universe and asked to protect the status quo, even though that status quo was a dysfunctional bureaucracy doomed to fail, the Players of their own ingenuity determined to break the Karmic Cycle and create a new system. They acknowledged both in and out of character that they could not know if this new system would be better, but they knew the previous system would inevitably fail, and made a conscious decision to disrupt the status quo in the hope of creating something better. I could not be happier with this conclusion to the campaign.