MRD2 PR 4: Political Intrigue in Non-Violent Dimensions

I was worried how this session would go, because there was very little in the way of "encounters" in the traditional sense or anything that would require them to use their character sheets, and a FUCKTON of NPCs and logistics. But it went better than I could have hoped. This was some good Social Intrigue, which I am all about. I don't know how well this will translate to a PR, despite my efforts to make these PRs more interesting.

I was inspired by the Scales of Conviction system for the videogame Triangle Strategy, where key plot events are decided on a vote, and the player has to talk to the various NPCs and gather information to try to sway the votes of the rest of the party. I figured that would work even better in a TTRPG, and it did. At some point either here or on Iconoclastic Flow I'll make a post about that in the abstract.

For the NPCs, I used a lot of real actors voices as "touchstones". I am infamously anti-touchstone, but in this case it did make sense for me. With the number of NPCs being juggled, I really needed each NPC to be distinct, and while I'm very satisfied with how my voice acting and improv went for someone with no professional training, I was afraid to rely on my abilities, so at least providing the touchstones as a failsafe I do think helped in this case. Also, for most of them, I tried to subvert the touchstone, like one NPC who is like if Mr. Rogers had serial killer vibes, or one who looks like Freddy Mercury but sounds like Ben Stein, or one who is like an anime space heroine but sounds and acts like Natasha Lyonne / Nadia in Russian Doll.

A lot happened this session, hopefully I don't end up forgetting anything in this PR...

This is the most recent MRD2 post, containing a hyperlink to the previous PR, etc.

Color Codes:

• NPCs, the actors I try to embody with my so-called "voice acting"
• Design Notes
• Hyperlinks

THE CAMPAIGN

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.

The Issue

• The Corporations were hit by an anomalously bad Quarter. The Cyblessed Liaisons are arranging a meeting in neutral territory, The Vessel of Tehom: Venus City.

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.

Where we left off...

• The Team got into a Golem fight with the Golem Entropy Elancer in a strange Vessel of Tehom bathed in red light, only to be whisked away back to reality, in San Francisco, in the office of The Startup, mid-conversation with The Founder Ash McLaren.
• Larry and Ikarus engage in PRO Conflict with Ash, eventually convincing him to accept a buyout.
• Meanwhile, Ernst breaks into The Cofounder IQ Warburton III's office, learning that The Startup may have some entanglement with the Space Settlements, and a mysterious entity known as Hibernating Hyberia.
• After Ikarus makes a Karmic Attachment with Ash to seal the deal, some spacetime anomaly occurs, revealing underneath Ash's helmet a draconic, chitinous, moth-like monster which has eaten his brain and hijacked his body, but after being told "you weren't supposed to see that yet", reality reverts, Ash seems oblivious, and Eternal Flamethrower scans suggest there is no such anomaly.
• The situation with The Startup mostly resolved, The Team heads to their meeting at the Vessel of Tehom: Venus City.

How to get to Venus City

The Manager explains the three options (Baz Beetz in his Wernor Herzogian affect):

• You must find one of the mysterious rabbinical orders of the lost tribes, prove your worth in a mortal combat of legal wits, take their secret blend of psychedelics, and wander the Sinai Desert until near death of dehydration, while contemplating your deepest loss. Or…
• Expose yourself to the superhot toxic gasses of the planet Venus while reaching sss-exual climax to the thought of your parents fornicating your birth. But…
• Unfortunately we cannot afford the time for these de-lic-iously ab-horrent experiences, so this one time we may expense the Quarkerizer Machine. We will be torn apart by our very subatomic particles and reconstructed from the same quarks in another plane of existence, in but a blink of an eye. If only one could remain conscious for the agony of Quarkerization, but alas this is not so.

Vessel of Tehom: Venus City

The opulent Venus City, home of the superorganism Asherah*, is like a science fantasy Ancient Israel. In Venus City violence is physically impossible, and so it has become a neutral ground for diplomacy and trade across Tehom.

* Later some of the Asherah may be differentiated, but for now they all sound like Daria.

THE PRE-MEETING

Just the Cyblessed Liaisons, Nazarites, and other Corporate interests. Handful of issues need to be voted on at The Meeting, so The Team will need to suss out who believes what and convince them to vote whichever way they think suits their interests.

• Pro- or Anti- Corporate Alliance.
• Crush Upstartups or bring them into the Fold.
• Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements, or Appease the dominant families.

The Team's stances:

• Pro-Alliance: Seems generally advantageous; typical cartel stuff.
• Fold Upstartups: They already bought out The Startup and Ikarus has Karmic Attachments with The Founder and The Cofounder.
• Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements: The Team are initially ambivalent, but as they learn more about the situation in space and get entangled in the intrigue, this is what they decide.

VOTERS

The other Corporations have their own Nazarite Teams, but there are already waaaay too many NPCs here as-is, so for now they are decidedly nameless and featureless, although they can be assumed to be wandering around and/or with their Managers or Cyblessed Liaisons not unlike The Team themselves. For simplicity, it could be said that the QuinceSoft Team is undergoing a restructuring and unavailable, and one or both of the other Corporations’ Teams could also have had other priorities.

The other Voters may try to sway each other, so even an NPC with an already favorable voting pattern should still be sought out to be sure. This can be on an as-needed basis or randomly rolled or whatever.

The Team / Baz Beetz (Regexperience)

Ezra Black -> Delilah Samson

Supportive professional who is a perfect manager but for the fact that he MUST be a serial killer.

Mr. Rogers type but murder-y.

• Pro-Alliance
• Crush Upstartups
• Consolidate power in the Space Settlements

“Beauty is all around us”. Transgressive cosmetics brand and pharma company allegedly complicit in the underground transmigratory drug boom.

Freddy Mercury -> Eden-Cheney Processing

Unfortunately named dullard with a terrible voice who is the spitting image of his more famous namesake and begrudgingly uses it to his advantage.

Like if Ben Stein were reskinned as Freddy Mercury.

• Pro-Alliance
• Fold Upstartups
• Appease Space Settlements

“Honest measures for honest folk”. Old energy company providing affordable fuel and meat both derived fresh from the beasts of Tehom.

Finny Bates -> QuinceSoft

Unqualified beneficiary of nepotism and conniver with a speakeasy smile who knows how to play the game.

Patrick Bateman type.

• Anti-Alliance
• Crush Upstartups
• Consolidate power in the Space Settlements

“A little chaos is good”. Formerly fun software and social media company desperately pursuing dangerous biotech augmented reality.

(Asherah in dry, sarcastic, monotone Daria voice) "Thank you so much for introducing yourself Finny, we are all well aware of who your Uncle is, and how great you are as a Manager. We are sooo grateful you were able to come today."

Pirate Queen Prismasha ("Empress of Space") -> Independent

Sardonic and slightly unstable smoker in a suave sportcoat who is surprisingly successful.

Natasha Lyonne type.

• Anti-Alliance
• Crush Upstartups
• Consolidate power in the Space Settlements

Why is she here? Why does she get a vote? The Cyblessed aren’t telling…

KAO: If one PC wants to say they have a pre-existing relationship with Prismasha…

Larry accepts the Karmic Attachment Opportunity, establishing that he and Prismasha are old frenemies.

The Scenario

They have some free time before The Meeting. They are told of three locations, but they don't know who will be where, so they can just go to wherever sounds interesting. There are also some "random encounters" along the way.

The Court of Those Who Live and Die on Technicalities

A Court of Hell nested within Venus City, where Legal Precedent and Fine Print define reality.

The Team decides to head here first. On the way, their NPC campaign, the Jingo Jangles Transdimensional Toon Doughboy, experiences an episode of shell shock and must be calmed down. Not played for laughs. Something in the environment triggered him, it can be anything because Doughboy isn’t real, he’s a “False Idol” manifestation from a Vessel of Tehom, the embodiment of the idea of Post Traumatic Stress and the dehumanization and trauma of war and conflict.

"Someone doesn't make a place where violence is physically impossible, unless they've experienced a lot of violence..."

Ernst uses his Nazarite features to pull an object from Doughboy's subconscious, a flipbook comic that is like the Maus of Doughboy cartoons, helping him to confront his trauma, his own victimhood in the face of war, his genuine attempts at heroism. This Resolves the Karmic Attachment, but Ernst chooses to make a new Karmic Attachment with Doughboy to continue developing this relationship.

When they arrive at the Court...

They find the entrance is a massive projection of an encrypted pseudo-code on microfiche, and underneath it a podium with an empty wine glass.

A line of Amalekites and stranger beings are escorted by Asherah, explaining how pricking one’s finger and pressing into the wineglass, the glass will fatally extract all the blood to overflow. Holographic lighting reflects off the blood as it overflows, and if the spectral analysis of the blood matches the code based on one’s Karma, it is determined whether they will receive a favorable reincarnation, or be sentenced within The Court.

The Team catches IQ Warburton III aka The Cofounder exiting a conversation with The Lawyer and The Emissary.

The Emissary: From Tomino’s Array. Wears the symbol of the Ziegler Bead, a majestic and romanticized ophan (bio-engineered slime mold). They're supposed to have like Czarist Russian Aristocracy vibes but I ended up RPing him more like a Dandy.

Ernst approaches the Emissary. The Team has not yet dealt with the Issue from the first session involving the Space Settlements, and are clueless as to how things have Escalated.

They learn that Ziegler Bead is gaining power across the space settlements, and their Solar Tech and Ophan would be useful for the Corporations, but they want a seat at the table. According to The Emissary, Space is the future.

"There are rumors going around, titter titter, tatter tatter, <finger beak gestures> I'm surprised you haven't heard yet."

"Give us a seat at the table, or, you can keep your shitty little dirt rock, while we take the future."

Ernst non-commitally agrees to consider the offer.

Ikarus approaches IQ Warburton III. Given their Karmic Attachment which becomes confirmed, they bond over an implied shared background; in Ikarus' case having left behind his crime family, with IQ it is unknown. He expresses regret having given up that power, only to later be exploited by The Corporations, and seems amenable to the buyout if it gives him power. Ikarus and IQ work out a deal that if they can Fold the Upstartups, IQ and Ash will be put in charge of the other Upstartups and maintain control of their IP. Ikarus was offered to Resolve the Karmic Attachment, but if the deal fell through, the consequences would be greater, so he chose not to Resolve it yet. When confronted, IQ claims he was talking to The Lawyer because he was interested in getting in The Court but it turns out things are more complicated when Nazarites try to Recurse, and was talking with The Emissary because the Ziegler Bead had also been bidding for a buyout of The Startup.

Ezra Black (murdery-y Mr. Rogers) is poking around, clearly interested. When confronted by Larry, he offers to change his vote in favor of Folding the Upstartups, if Larry can make a Karmic Attachment with The Lawyer on his behalf, and after a discussion with The Lawyer, Larry accepts the Karmic Attachment, left open-ended for the time being.

"Why do I want to go to The Court? Well, folk generally think of me as a good neighbor I try to be nice. To give the youth a positive role model. But sometimes... I'm not very nice."

THE LAWYER: An Amalekite Recurser with the Poltergeist Form Pyramid Shining Brightly. He is a lawyer who offers his services in exchange for Karmic Attachments, facilitating getting in and out of The Court safely (probably), for those desperate enough to take a bum deal.

• Shorter up close than they appear from a distance.
• The environment around them is magnified, saturated, emboldened, like a gaudy aura.
• Face like a leprechaun, corpse blueish hue and wispy navy blue goatee, gold reptile skin zoot suit over a blueish skirted blouse, fedora with a whole feathered serpent taxidermy ornament on top.
• Carries a cane with a pyramid shape on top.
• Bill Burr type.

"Who is he to me? Fock you! Who is he to you? I don't fockin' care, you gonna sell me your Ka-ma or not?"

Huffa asked whether this means Karmic Attachments are diegetic- literal things that exist within the setting. I told her "yes and no", that yes Karma is literal in the world as per MRD1, but that sometimes it's an abstraction and sometimes it's literal, and she seemed to understand what I meant and was satisfied with the answer. There are reasons why I think of it this way that extend beyond the scope of this PR. Fitzgerald defines intelligence colloquially as "the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function", but anyway if this idea of Karmic Attachments as being both literal and not literal is too confusing or dissatisfying for you or someone in your group, then fuck it, sure, they're always literal.

Also, I vaguely suggest that "Nazarite and Recurser powers don't play well". This was a hedge against if they tried to enter The Court themselves, because I did not have that nearly sufficiently prepped and basically just wanted to tease it while still discouraging them from trying to enter for themselves when there was already so much else going on anyway. Fortunately they didn't try to enter themselves, but eventually I will circle back around to this because MRD1 and MRD2 absolutely should be cross-compatible.

Asherah Garden

On the way to the Asherah Garden, they bump into Prismasha (scifi anime space princess except Natasha Lyonne). While still upset with Larry, she agrees to vote their way if they absolve her of all responsibility whatsoever.

"Hey, look at me <two finger eye to eye gesture>, I don't want to see you again for at least 100 years, eh? <puffs cigarette> OK? Ok."

She also tells them to protect her friend Captain Cobra of the Pirates of Perversity, and to destroy the Ziegler Family (leading to The Team's stance to Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements). She claims the Zieglers are fascists, and that the situation has gotten dire in the Space Settlements and people are starving. She is non-committal about whether Captain Cobra is a good guy or not, but claims his heart is in the right place, and implies he's a Larry-type (relating to their Karmic Attachment).

When they arrive at the Asherah Garden...

The desiccated remains of an eldritch giant, its punctured chest housing a garden of hyper-tropic (“stop motion”) flowers, frolicking mandrakes giggling in theremin singsong, and five dimensional fruit that ripen in moments and drop like a bead of honey exposing enzymes unzipping Tehom for momentary peaks into spacetimes.

They find Freddy Mercury (if Ben Stein were reskinned as Freddy Mercury) contemplatively staring into an unzipped spacetime. He wants to interpret the prophecies, but after deep analysis and an agile meeting, their analyses failed to find any meaningful results.

"No, I'm not the famous musician, I'm a Manager. I have a 10 step plan for the next three quarters, and after that, it does get complicated, but don't worry, I can explain."

Ernst makes a Karmic Attachment with Freddy Mercury to eat the psychedelic five dimensional fruit and interpret a prophecy, to sway his vote to Consolidate Power in the Space Settlements.

He rolls the words METAMORPHOSIS+PARASITE, and interprets this as relating to the Ophan bio-engineered slime molds in Tomino's Array, and keeps the Mods as well.

The Vision Words

1. METAMORPHOSIS
2. PARASITE
3. REBELLION
4. ASH
5. REVENGE
6. FAMINE
7. WEALTH
8. TECHNOLOGY
9. SYNERGY
10. ELDER
11. MUTANT
12. ALIEN

They potentially could also have done a WIS Save or used a Nazarite Feature to get Mods from the visions or make prophecies, in addition to the Karmic Attachment. These other prophecies would also have affected the events that will unfold later in the campaign, but they chose to just stick with the one.

The Fifth Temple

On the way to The Fifth Temple, an Asherah senses the Leaping Lorenzino app and wants to confiscate the phone or force Larry to delete it, seeing it as a “False Idol” from another Vessel of Tehom and a mockery of this holy place. The Leaping Lorenzino feels shame and embarrassment. Leaping Lorenzino is inherently campy so it can kind of be played for laughs up to a point, but not so much that it undermines the sentiment of what it means to be ridiculed and dismissed for being who you are- it's ok to be kind of campy and ridiculous! 

"'Boo hoo' Why do they hate me? I am just a Leaping Lorenzino! I dance, I prance, I do the 'hee hees' and 'hoo hoos' and 'ha has'. I am just what I am, why is that wrong?" Ambiguously European goofy accent

Unsure what to do, Larry runs away, only to bump into another Asherah, handing out a free gift of a Venus Figurine "Golem". They can use two Words to create a Core for the Golem, turning it into basically another NPC companion. They choose to use OVATION+METAMORPHOSIS to transplant the Leaping Lorenzino's consciousness into the Venus Figurine, making it Kosher for Venus City. This Resolves Larry's Karmic Attachment to the Leaping Lorenzino, and he chooses not to make a new one right away.

When they arrive at The Fifth Temple...

<I wanted to embed this image but blogger is awful and for whatever reason won't let me add any more images into this post>

Majestic, crystal-smooth algae-green hot spring with a vivid orange sulfur ring floating like a stadium-sized teardrop at the height of a skyscraper. Asherah Golem stand or float in prayer all around it, seeming to fill or be filled by its contents yet maintaining equilibrium, whistling like a glass harmonica.

Within the orange sulfur rings, Cherubim piloted by Amalekites pay reverence. In the haze, it appears there is a Corporate Golem among them.

The Team receives a text from Baz Beetz that he and The Cyblessed Liaison are "having a schvitz" in the hot spring and they should join. Don't forget the Wernor Herzong accent.

Ikarus Ices to summon the Chemysterious Cascader to investigate the Cherubim while an Asherah Venus Figurine Golem (a mecha-sized one, not like the Leaping Lorenzino's new body) escorts Larry and Ernst up to the hot spring.

An Asherah initially blocks Ikarus from passing, but he makes a PRO Save to convince the Asherah he is with the Corporate Golem. He finds that it is Finny Bates (Patrick Bateman type), clearly committing treason and selling secrets to the Amalekites.

He blackmails Finny into voting The Team's way, and also learns that Ash McLaren and IQ Warburton the III aka The Founder and The Cofounder of The Startup respectively (they don't really have special voices...), were originally Nazarites on his Team at QuinceSoft. Finny stole their IP and fired them, and now wants to use their old IP as leverage. 

"Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here, let's find each others bandwidth again, we can really synergize here, and after I talk to my uncle, we'll reach a new level of scrum mastery. Trust me, I'm always right <wink>." Fuck this guy

Finny threatens to "have a conversation with his uncle", and Ikarus pulls a power move telling Finny to tell The Uncle to reach out to him directly, which was Rped really well so he received the Mod POWER.

At the hotspring, The Cyblessed Liaison, who is a Eugene Levy type, their bosses boss, and in the loose Cold War analogy for MRD2 is like the CIA to the Corporations' Banana Republics, chastises The Team for having allowed the Quarter to go so poorly. 

"Well, see, uh, I think we need to talk about this Quarter. It seems like you all really fricked it up. It's ok, these things happen, this is part of a team growing to maturity, we can discuss this like adults. But, well, we need to make sure this doesn't happen again."

They question The Cyblessed Liaison about Virtual Boy, the entity they had learned about in some of the documents they had decrypted which seems like it may be behind all of this, and when The Cyblessed Liaison responds that they shouldn't know about Virtual Boy, they question why he's asking about the quarter if he already knows about Virtual Boy. Caught in the bind, The Cyblessed Liaison stands up in the schvitz, revealing his glorious full frontal nudity, greasy waxy dad bod, with all the cybernetic holographic pareidolic psychedelic enhancements, and gives them an "early bonus" Word: POSTMODERNISM.

AND NEXT SESSION, THE MEETING!

GItMS! Mecha Gear

This is an old draft, way before I decided to start using Concept Crafting for Mecha Gear. I think in all likelihood it's too fiddly, and I wasn't satisfied with it even at the time, but it's interesting seeing how it got me to where it is now.

This is for my Into the Odd Mecha Hack: Get Into the Machine, Shinji! The mechanics have changed to varying degrees since I've been running my MRD2 Campaign, but this post more so corresponds to the original GitMS! than to MRD2. Most notably, it is no longer the case in MRD2 that Golem (the Mecha) have their own Ability Scores anymore, instead just sharing the pilot Ability Scores, but having their own Damage dice and of course the Gear.

Here's my Weird & Wonderful Table of Super Robot Wars-inspired Mecha and a "Gacha" Mecha Dispenser generator as well, and if you want some weirder MRD2 stuff I have several posts of Weird Golem for MRD2.

I don’t want the game to be too crunchy, and I don’t want to go too wild with the core resolution mechanics because that rarely goes well for me and also doesn’t appeal to me anyway, but Mecha RPGs is maybe the one RPG genre where I still want there to be something mechanically distinct about it; can’t explain why, I just do.

While I have not playtested it yet, I am reasonably confident in and excited about the way that GItMS! distinguishes between Pilots and Mecha and how their abilities interact.

For the most part, Mecha Gear and abilities are very FKR-ish- little to no explicit mechanics, and where a roll is necessary, some kind of basic Save approach, but I’m thinking over just a few more mechanics that hopefully keep it interesting without getting in the way, but I want to hear what people think.

Idea 1: Mecha and Pilot rolls for Advantage/Disadvantage

Normally if a Mecha would need to make a Save, they use their own Ability Scores or relevant rolls; Pilots can spend their Ability Points to use their Pilot Abilities but otherwise don’t directly affect Mecha rolls. However, I’m thinking that where Advantage/Disadvantage would come into play, instead of rolling the Mecha Save twice, instead they roll one for the Mecha’s Ability Score and one for the Pilot’s.

I’m hesitant to put too much weight on Ability Scores, but I actually think this works in the favor of that goal; a Pilot with a similar Ability Score distribution as their Mecha will be more likely to succeed on Advantage/Disadvantage for their good Abilities and less likely for their bad Abilities, whereas a Pilot with a different Ability Score distribution is still affected by Advantage/Disadvantage but in less Ability-preferential ways. Neither is better or worse than the other, just different.

Idea 2: Gear

I like how ItO and EB are very items-heavy, and I’ve similarly enjoyed Cyphers from Cypher System. I want a Gear mechanic that allows for Mecha customization and churn of various unique special items, but not to the extent that the Mecha loses its identity.

Idea 2a: Gear Level

Gear has levels, tentatively 1-4. They affect the various 2abc’s following. The idea is not to be too mechanical with it though, it’s mostly just an indicator of relative power. I don’t necessarily want to have Mecha Levels, but there would still be regular Pilot Levels, and possibly Pilot Level might determine the highest level of Gear they can use, or use reliably (using higher-level Gear might force a Save for Gear Damage, as explained below).

Idea 2b: Gear Damage

Rather than rolling a Damage die to deal direct Damage, Mecha can target exposed Gear, where Players roll Saves either to dodge/defend or to attack depending on which side of the equation they’re on, and they go from `Damaged -> Disabled -> Destroyed`. Gear Level may affect how many times a Gear would need to be successfully hit to move from one stage to another, where from Disabled onward it can no longer be used until repaired and Destroyed means it normally cannot be repaired at all. On the flip side, Gear Level also would determine the cost to repair.

I worry somewhat about coupling Level, Damage, and Cost too tightly; probably there would be many exceptions but this would just be the default case.

I also like the idea of having to expose Gear, because then you can create interesting encounters that force Players to come up with clever ways to expose protected critical Gear, so it makes Conflicts potentially less about just slinging dice and more about clever problem-solving.

Idea 2c: Iconic / Permanent Gear

I want to come up with a better name for this, but tentatively we’ll say Iconic or Permanent. This could include the starting Gear for a Mecha, the stuff that makes it unique, and maybe Pilot Level number of additional pieces of Gear can also be marked Permanent. These Gear can be repaired even from a Destroyed State. They can also be stored for free. Their Level might scale with Pilot Level or something like that.

Idea 2d: Gear Storage

Pilots may want to build a small arsenal for themselves, more than they can carry at any given time, in which case they can be stored wherever their Mecha is stored or at some other facility, at some cost relative to Gear Level. There could maybe be a maximum storage number by Pilot Level as well, but that seems extraneous. Iconic / Permanent Gear can be stored for free (assumes Pilot always saves a little extra cash for their important Gear).

Idea 2e: Gear Points

I keep referring to cost. Gear have a value, generally relative to their Level. So if you destroy an enemy Mecha, you get 1 point for the scrap (or maybe more in special cases), but if you Damage or Disable enemy Mecha Gear or the Mecha themselves without destroying them, you can potentially recover their Gear to keep and/or sell. These Gear Points are used to repair, store, or less frequently, purchase or upgrade Gear.

My hope is that this whole Gear system allows for a nice balance between having an Iconic Mecha but also the fun of load-outs and loot, and it can allow the setting to explore some capitalist themes, without over-relying on a complex economy or being too crunchy. And additionally, it creates a unique and fun, but still rules-light play experience, and differentiates Mecha from regular play in an interesting way.

REMINDER: This is no longer the Gear System in MRD2, but it's still interesting in its own right imo and maybe with some playtesting could work for regular GitMS!

MRD2 Nazarite Contracts and MRD2 Updates

I'm a few sessions into my MRD2 Campaign. Scheduling an IRL game is a nightmare or else I'd have liked to be a bit further into the campaign by now, but it's nice to be playing IRL again regardless. I'm realizing now that I've referenced Nazarite Contracts in the PRs and some of the other posts, but have not formally shared anything on them here.

The Nazarite Contracts of MRD2 are equivalent to the Poltergeist Forms of MRD1, the character classes. They are meant to reflect various kinds of careers or skillsets related to careers, but also speak to the psychologies around those careers, what that says about the individual or their relationship with the world.

Mechanically they are mostly the same as Poltergeist Forms, with some changes based on my experiences with my >1 year-long MRD1 Campaign and playtesting over the course of development of that game, and some smaller changes that are more about the context and flavor.

The biggest change is that rather than having a mix of Nazarite Features with Damage Dice or just utilities, now the Nazarite Contracts themselves come with a distribution of Damage Dice which can be applied to any Feature or action contextually, and all Nazarite Features are utility-based, affecting what information you have or how you interface with the world, and not just numbers to add or subtract or roll.

I'll share the Nazarite Contracts further below (although keep in mind these are all incomplete and being playtested and only up-to-date as of posting), but as an example, the Psychonautical Sub-Mariner's Damage Dice distribution looks like this:

Damage Dice: Wd6 (Aware of Social Failings), Nd6 (Physical Willpower), -P (Looked down on by society)

Meaning they can deal d6 WISdom Damage in contexts relating to awareness of the problems in society, especially those that are systemic (not necessarily their ability to overcome them, that would be more so PROpriety, just to be aware of them and perhaps work around them), d6 NATure Damage for physical willpower (I guess like "Fortitude" or "Endurance" challenges, more so than fighting or lifting heavy things or whatever), and -P means that they can only ever deal d4 PROpriety Damage in most social contexts, even if they might otherwise have a means of dealing Enhanced Damage or otherwise more than d4.

There is not yet an equivalent to Quirks of MRD1. They were mostly just flavor anyway; I would like to include something like it, just not sure how to present it.

Nazarite Vows replace Starting Karmic Attachments in name only, but that's basically what they are. The only major difference being they are necessarily tied to their relationship to The Corporation or to their career or working life.

Sacrifice to the Shamir replaces Reincarnation Ritual, and work a little differently but serve the same purpose. From my experience with MRD1, the Reincarnation Rituals that were more or less ensured, but involved some kind of tradeoff, were generally much more interesting and satisfying than the ones that required specific circumstances or else would fail, so I've made that more core to the Sacrifices. Tbh I'm still working out some of the particulars, it hasn't come up in play yet, but it will involve something like a Shamir Attachment, similar to the Recursion Attachments of MRD1, which neither accrue nor divest Karma, but must be resolved before Advancing. There's also a different subtext to the Shamir Symbiont vs. Recursion if you care about such things.

All art made with Hugging Face Dall-e-Mini
Maximum Recursion Depth

Final note before I get into the Contracts themselves. I'm having a blast with this campaign, writing up these Weird Golem, and developing this setting. While I love the concept of MRD1 and the Courts of Hell and Recursers, I really do think MRD2 as a game will be an improvement over MRD1. That all said, it's seeming increasingly unlikely that I'll actually make it a proper, published product in the way I did for MRD1 and had intended to do for MRD2. I'm not closing the door on it entirely, and maybe I'll feel differently in a couple of  months, but right now, I just don't have the energy or enthusiasm for it. I love the creation process, I love commissioning the art, and having this thing that I can put out in the world for people to experience, and I will forever have that with MRD1. And while in some ways working on MRD2 has been much easier because of what I've learned from MRD1 and because I'm bootstrapping off of it, the hard parts, like coordinating between all the collaborators, taking on the financial risk even if I can afford the loss in a worst case scenario, the logistics of presentation and accessibility, and also finding my market and marketing and all of that most of all, I'm just so fucking tired of that especially. I wrote most of MRD1 during peak-Covid, but now there's more I can do out in the world, and while I'm grateful that MRD1 has been successful enough for me to even have considered an MRD2, I just don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze the second time over. It's so much work, and so much of yourself to put into a thing, and then you have to scream into the void to get anyone to pay attention, and I'm serving a niche of a niche of a niche, and even the people who do it full time and are enormously talented end up having to make creative compromises and are still struggling to pay their bills, so how can I hope to get any level of traction I'd be satisfied with when this is and will always be just my side hustle? So I have no intention of stopping blogging or creating things, I just don't know if MRD2 will be a real book in the way I'd have wanted. If MRD1 ever reaches some relatively self-sustaining cult status where I don't have to be constantly answering the question "what is MRD?" to people, that is the most likely scenario under which I change my mind, but we'll see.

Anyway, that disappointing statement out of the way, here is the current state of the Nazarite Contracts. I hope to have 6-8 in total, but currently have 5.

Brief Descriptions 

1. Fast Lane Fintechnomancer: Fast-life corporate culture, intersection of finance and big data / big tech. People who kind of know they're making the world a worse place and may or may not be ok with it but work hard to not have to think about it and just be comfortable.
2. Psychonautical Sub-Mariner: Dirty but necessary work, work that deals with the consequences of others, marginalized peoples who are as a result more aware of social failings.
3. Streetlight Dadaist: Artists, neurodivergent people, others who don't fit neatly into society- who have "sold out" to a corporation.
4. Infrared Ranger: First responders and other kinds of emergency work, medical work, soldiers. People who are labeled "heroes" so that we can undervalue their lives. A play on the concept from Tokusatsu fiction of the leader in red e.g. Red Ranger of Power Rangers.
5. Smooth Operator of the Cyblessed: Service industry or people who have given a substantial portion of their time or identity to their career, which can include executives and entrepreneurs and middle managers. Cyborgs of a sort, giving up their bodies and minds to a higher class (the "Cyblessed") so they can appear more like them / conform to their world. People who are (or believe themselves to be) smarter than their bosses.

Cyberpunk CEO

Fast Lane Fintechnomancer

Flavor Text

The world is full of freaky frequencies but only some scry the spiking signals. You ride the heartbeat of society on a crash course for cardiac arrest, but the spectators and speculators will rave as you race right until the end.

Nazarite Vows

1. Once you had dreams, but now you know that dreams are just a pyramid scheme, and you will reach the top.
2. Accidents are inevitable when you move this quickly, but after so many Hit & Runs you can't stop now.
3. You're a true believer. It's easier that way. Never lose faith in the company, or yourself.
4. Moving this fast you risk outpacing your own predictions. Don't get too far ahead of yourself.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Give the Shamir a spiritual experience in contradiction to your understanding of the world.
2. Although your livelihood depends on it, reject the illusion of past and present, allow the Shamir to experience the moment.
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Nd6 (Intelligence), Pd6 (Corporate Savvy), -W (Uncritical of society)

Nazarite Features

1. Transcranial Tachyonic Stimulator: Wearable thiotimolinic time crystal technology like a futuristic EEG cap. When taking a risky action, you may evoke the consequence before the antecedent (but necessarily committing to it).
2. Zip Ribbon Regressor: You've spent so long collapsing the past to predict the future, motion lines course your movements. When investigating a new situation, you gain one profitable insight that would otherwise be impossible to have known.
3. Fast Lane Flow: When allowed to engage in a task without interruption, you enter a flow state, experiencing time as if everything besides yourself were in slow motion. Not quite superspeed, but the next best thing.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

Submarine Janitor

Psychonautical Sub-Mariner

Flavor Text

In the dark depths of the subconscious you scavenge misremembered treasures. The egotists profit while calling you dirty as they drift helplessly on surface thoughts. Rise slowly, the bubbles in your blood carry more than nitrogen.

Nazarite Vows

1. You reek of putrid deep subconscious. Even as the world recoils in your presence, do not let them tarnish your pride.
2. Buried so deep in the burdens of others, you risk forgetting yourself. Never lose sight of which way is up.
3. Among the ruins you have found a treasure, and you must cherish and protect it from a world that will never love it as much as you do.
4. They demand you work to exhaustion so as to never question why it is your burden to bear. You must remain awake and aware despite them.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Pass on your suffering to the Shamir, not out of malice, but because it must know what the world will do to it.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Wd6 (Aware of Social Failings), Nd6 (Physical Willpower), -P (Looked down on by society)

Nazarite Features

1. Ichor, Sweat, and Tears: The three humours of the subconscious made manifest. When you hurt yourself doing dirty work, noxious humours burst from the wound in sprays, splatters, and beams.
2. Sub-Atomic Treasure: Wrest the irradiated waste of secrets from the subconscious of another's mind in the form of a physical item- a treasure to wield and weaponize for the duration of the item's half-life (~1 hour).
3. WetOps: When engaging in dangerous, difficult, or otherwise unrewarding but necessary tasks, others are subconsciously compelled to ignore you, almost as though you're invisible (may require a WIS Save).
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

DADA Standup Comedian

Streetlight Dadaist

Flavor Text

Dereliction in duty is a matter of course for those so far off it. You shine on the margins of a dimly lit street, but in the moments between flickering lights you speak truth to power in a hoarse voice.

Nazarite Vows

1. It's surprising how quickly one can grow accustomed to a gilded cage. Always test the bars.
2. Despite your best efforts, you've failed to find the sublime in the subliminal, but don't stop trying.
3. You sacrificed another to get here, and now you're alone with the sharks. Don't let them smell blood.
4. They have misconstrued or perverted your art and you let them do it. So long as you remember the true meaning, nothing else matters.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Create a piece of art in expression of the Shamir, and let it be denigrated commercially.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Wd8 (Abstract and Critical Thinking), -P (Find social mores aversive)

Nazarite Features

1. Entropic Anti-Meme: Create a work of art with subtle profundity masked in absurdity or grotesqueness. The work will attract those of a like kind like a beacon, while being ignored by others, or induce discomfort from them if forced to confront it.
2. Detritus Dada Demon: Create a work of art from found objects, imbuing them with life to serve simple purposes while bristling those who interact with them.
3. Graffiti Gateway: Create a one-way entrance or hidden path to an otherwise unreachable or inaccessible place, so long as you know its location. Only operational while in your vicinity. If a foe attempts to use it, make a WIS Save to determine whether or not they succeed.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

Flamethrower Red Ranger

Infrared Ranger

Flavor Text

Heroes are, by definition, few and proud, for heroism can only be defined in contrast to the weak and meek; the cowardly and shameful. The paradox of a true hero is to be unrecognized as such until they are spent.

Nazarite Vows

1. You love when they call you a hero, even if they don't know your name. Sacrifice and sacrifice until they etch your name on a wall.
2. They convinced you the honor was worth the suffering. Don't let it be for nothing.
3. In a faraway place or a time long ago, something happened that changed you forever. The pain persists, but you must keep moving forward.
4. On cold and inhospitable nights, you resent the way they use you. All the same, you must continue fighting for them— you cannot afford to hate.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Cry for help, as honestly and pitifully as you can muster, so the Shamir experiences catharsis.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Nd6 (Take Action)

Nazarite Features

1. Eternal Flamethrower: An inextinguishable all-purpose tool that only a True Hero may wield, proportional to their conviction. It brings light, combustion, warmth, sterilization, and controlling of the wilds, but also burning, blinding, suffocation, and pain.
2. Infrared Immolation: Find power in your inner fire, even as it consumes you. An infrared aura surrounds you, allowing you to perform superhuman physical feats or feats of will (NAT), at the cost of Nd6 Damage to yourself.
3. Crisis Captain: Once per Conflict, if any Ability Score dips below half, gain 3 Armor for that Ability and take a bonus action of any kind immediately afterwards. All teammates gain 1 Armor for that Ability and one teammate chosen by the Infrared Ranger may take one non-offensive bonus action.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

Psychedelic Cyborg (I really liked all of these in different ways and couldn't pick just one)

Smooth Operator of the Cyblessed

Flavor Text

For each piece of yourself sacrificed in service, you are empowered by the whole (and the whole is empowered by you). In honor of your service, you become more like those above, and soon you will be indistinguishable from them.

Nazarite Vows

1. Blinded by the bright lights and shining chrome, you must nonetheless chase the spotlight, or else be forgotten in their shadows.
2. You believe you've given you're all, but all you've got is not enough. Discover something new in yourself.
3. Whether in pursuit of greatness or just to make it to tomorrow, you must bow to those below you, and do so with a smile.
4. A compromise is a risky and painful investment, but you must keep working deals if you ever hope to come out on top.

Sacrifice to the Shamir

1. Reveal to the Shamir a part of yourself that disgusts you.
2. bar
3. baz
4. qux

Damage Dice: Pd8 (Play the Game), -N (Give up a part of oneself to do it)

Nazarite Features

1. The Magic Word: Your primary Cyblessed Enhancement is imbued with a Word, empowering you to do something superhuman in place of that bodypart, and also can be used as a Golem Gear Mod (not counting against total inventory, can't be permanently destroyed). Once the Word is chosen, it can't be changed under normal circumstances.
2. Contractual Binding: When arbitrating to avoid Conflict or at the onset of PRO Conflict, you may make a written contract. The more specific the contract, the more likely it is to end the Conflict favorably. If the contract cannot be kept as written, words may be removed to broaden its scope, but there will be consequences.
3. Smile on a Razor's Edge: Your uncanny Cyblessed smile pacifies the foolish and threatens the wise. 2 PRO Armor and you may nullify one aggressor for 1d4 turns, if their aggression towards you is emotional in nature. Any actions taken against a nullified aggressor re-aggravates them.
4. qux
5. quux
6. quuz
7. corge

MRD2 PR 3: You Weren't Supposed to See That Yet

Previous PRs and general MRD2 context

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.

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.

And last but not least...

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.

Where we left off...

The Team investigated the Jingo Jangles Museum to glean insights into how The Startup scooped The Corporation on their quarterly strategy. After encounters with Transdimensional Toons, they travelled through a portal into a Vessel of Tehom, a strange place with an inhospitable environment and competing forces that would crush a human body. Summoning their Golem, they traversed the spinning rings in this plane towards the core, making Karmic Attachments along the way with the likes of Doughboy and the Dreadnaughty, a broken-legged Leaping Lorenzino (given a Dreadnaught for a peg leg), and a mysterious figure in a sub-sub-dimensional shadow who The Team suspect is The Cofounder of The Startup. Finally, the core ruptured, revealing an enigmatic foe, The Entropy Elancer.

The "Boss Fight"

Design Notes

The majority of this session ended up being a "boss fight". I don't intend to rely too much on these, but I wanted to stress test some of the mechanics of the game. We've decided to forego Golem Ability Scores altogether, finding them redundant. Instead, Nazarite Ability Scores apply to their Golem. The Players can choose one Ability Score to get a d6 Damage Die for their Golem (the rest would be d4), and there are no ability score modifier bonuses or anything so it's really just for thematic purposes, if they want to further differentiate their Nazarites and Golems.

This is something that is not so much a mechanical rule as a design goal, but I made a point of saying, yes you can always just roll for damage, but in most regards, if you try to use your Gear in interesting ways and do something more than just attacking, it will generally be more beneficial to do so.

Gladly, they took that to heart and not a single basic attack roll was made! In fact, they dealt literally 0 Damage to the Entropy Elancer, instead focusing on systematically breaking its Gear. I still think a traditional attack and HP system makes sense as a fallback, but I actually really like the idea that this should be probably the primary approach to Golem Conflict, where enemy Golem have extremely high HP, and it's usually more worthwhile to target their Gear rather than attacking directly (and maybe breaking Gear can equivocate to some large amount of Damage so that they aren't disincentivized altogether from mixing approaches). While the core of this Gear system is built on Concept Crafting, I do think this idea of Gear Targeting was inspired by Batteries Not Included.

Entropy Elancer (Inner Ring)

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.

• HP: 30; Hits each PC each turn with one of three attacks randomly. Immune to physical damage so long as it remains in motion.
• Wd8 (Strobing Lights)
• x3 Strobing Lights: (1HP each) While the strobing lights are present, Entropy Elancer can bypass obstacles between flickers of light.
• Nd6 (Phosphene Slipper Kicks): NAT Save (or maybe a different Save if feasible) or else Gear is disabled. 
• Partial Success: Gear/Mod not disabled; Entropy Elancer gains one of that Gear’s Words as a Mod.
• Full Failure: Destroys Mod permanently (if there was a Mod); Entropy Elancer gains the destroyed Word as a Mod.
• Pd8 (Zoetropic Thunder- wowing the audience)
• A Discordant Curtain phosphene can be sensed at the edge of consciousness, and from beyond the fourth wall the shadows of an audience can be seen.
• They are enraptured by the performance, but will be moved to support Entropy Elancer or The Team depending on circumstances, providing morale boosts or even throwing things onto the stage. They’ll throw Words onto the stage which can be used as Mods or other things.
• Leaping Lorenzinos holding hands thrust-kick back and forth between the middle and outer rings like meteors (Nd8). 
• Occasionally they get stuck in place and become obstacles on the ring.
• They appear to be specifically targeting The Team, but may be used to trap the Entropy Elancer in place.

Audience Word List:

1. PERFORMANCE
2. DANCE
3. APPLAUSE
4. SPARKLE
5. LIGHT
6. STAGE
7. CURTAIN
8. AUDIENCE
9. TOMATO
10. CHAMPAIGNE
11. WALL
12. BACKSTAGE
13. ANIMATION
14. MOTION
15. ILLUSTRATION
16. OPERA
17. SONG
18. OVATION
19. HECKLER
20. EMPTINESS

Design Notes

As part of encouraging the Players to use the Words as Mods for their Gear and engage with the environment in interesting ways, if PCs do something which would grant them new Words, they can use one Word as a free action. kind of like how in FATE you get a free evoke on an Aspect when you create an Aspect (or it's been a while since I've played FATE but it's something like that).

Additionally, I decided that they can use the Words to do individual, specific effects, not as a Mod for their Gear, but in such a case it's a one-time use (and they can also use Words in this way as Nazarites outside of their Golem). It gives them more opportunities to use the Words in interesting and fun ways, while still incentivizing them to use them as Gear Mods more often than not.

This is a rough approximation of events, I remember some particulars and not others offhand...

The PCs figured out quickly that they needed to drum up support from the audience, so Lycaon Strain used one of their Gear that produces a fear-inducing howl, along with the ENTERTAINMENT Mod, to turn the scenario into something like a horror movie with The Team as the protagonists and Entropy Elancer the monster, and the audience threw several Words onto the ring for them: DANCE, APPLAUSE, OVATION. They used APPLAUSE to create a raucous soundwave to destroy one of the Strobing Lights, and as a result the Entropy Elancer's phasing ability was diminished.

My memory of the middle of the fight gets fuzzier, but I remember that Forgetting Pile used their previous Mod HONEY with one of their Gear to break the Tesselating Zoetrope Gear, disabling that attack, and later the Entropy Elancer uses the Phosphene Kick to break Forgetting Pile's UNCONSCIOUS+OOZE Gear into just OOZE, but then I think Chemysterious Cascader used a Gear to drum up more excitement from the audience to get more Words: OPERA, ILLUSTRATION, WALL, CURTAIN, and Forgetting Pile creates an OOZE CURTAIN to disable the Discordant Curtain Gear. At some point a Leaping Lorenzino is used to break a Strobing Light.

Around the end, Forgetting Pile and Chemysterious Cascader use their Gear collectively to summon a manifestation of Harry the Honeybadger and Barrys the Bees, the Jingo Jangles Transdimensional Toons they met at the museum, to break the Phosphene Slippers, and then bees consume the Entropy Elancer.

I'm definitely not telling it right, but it played out along these lines.

Design Notes

Obviously the Players themselves didn't have everything laid out in front of them, but you can see here how, because the Entropy Elancer has one attack associated with each Gear, along with some other miscellaneous stuff, they're incentivized to target the Gears vs. just dealing Damage directly.

I also tried to make each attack interesting. The Strobing Lights are what give Entropy Elancer it's phasing ability. The Phosphene Kick can break Gear or steal Mods. The Zoetropic Thunder can drum up the audience in its favor. The Leaping Lorenzinos can hem in the PCs, but also be leveraged by them.

Before being defeated, the Discordant Curtain falls. 

Star Wars-style text crawl overlays like a laser word projector (The Transcending Descender [a creature made of projected words, from previous session]):

Outnumbered and viciously attacked by the treacherous Villains of Regexperience, our Hero makes their valiant exit stage left as the Discordant Curtain falls like a guillotine a hair’s breadth before the evil Nazarites. Thwarted for now, the malicious lot return to the mundane reality of The Startup Office, finding themselves in the midst of The Founder. While they lie and scheme to undermine the rebel upstartup, where has our hero gone? Fret not, our hero will return, mightier than ever, for progress never fails in the end! Stay tooned my fresh friends. Fraxinus!

Back to Reality

At the startup, mid conversation with The Founder, Doughboy alongside them, and The Leaping Lorenzino in the guise of a phone app like an incredibly homoerotic 90’s 16-bit fighting videogame port.

I finally name and characterize THE FOUNDER and THE COFOUNDER:

THE FOUNDER

Ash McLaren: Prettyboy up-and-comer with dorky predilections and glassy eyes seeking long lost wonder.

THE COFOUNDER

IQ Warburton III: Sharply dressed and sharply cunning coder rich in name only with a salty chip on his shoulder.

The Team are informed that they can either attempt to close on the buyout / snoop around the office or head uptown to Fort Mason to investigate the fallout of the Kaiju attack that they missed from session 1, that was apparently in the form of Teagan Tenderloin the Tempeh Toon, The Corporation's licensed toon brand that got scooped by The Startup's Jingo Jangles licensed toons. The Venus City pre-meeting will be starting in a few hours, so they only have time to do one of those two options in San Francisco, or both if they are ok with skipping the big meeting.

They choose to stick around at the office.

Larry and Icarus get into PRO Conflict with Ash McLaren, where they can leverage the various information they've sleuthed to benefit their argument in favor of buyout.

Meanwhile Ernst engages in WetOps, stealing a keyfob to get onto the company Wifi to access the augmented reality space [from previous session]. Then, they retrieve The Cofounder's unique keyfob from the memory of an employee who once saw The Cofounder use the key, to unlock The Cofounder's Office, all to decrypt the rest of the data they stole.

After decrypting the data, they get the following intel:

Files discuss the meeting in Venus City, funds being diverted quasi-legally, and references to a large number of secret investors across Earth and Tomino’s Array* with no obvious connection except to someone or something referred to as “Hibernating Hyberia”.

* Tomino's Array is one of the Space Settlements and was a HOTSPOT for one of the other ISSUES. Given the nature of ESCALATION in the campaign, when they pursue some ISSUES over others, the others continue to ESCALATE without their involvement...

Ernst also gets the Mod BACKDOOR for the successful hacking and decryption.

After agreeing on The Buyout (in part by convincing The Founder he has no choice, that The Corporations will swallow them up eventually so better to take the deal now while the terms are good, and also they lie to him that The Cofounder already agreed to be bought out himself), they receive the Mod SALE. Also, Icarus makes a Karmic Attachment with The Founder (now being Karmically Attached to both Ash McLaren The Founder and IQ Warburton III The Cofounder).

The successful hacking into the augmented reality and the Karmic Attachment co-occur, at which point something strange happens. Ash McLaren (The Founder) wears a special helmet, which they learned about in the augmented reality in the previous session. They see underneath The Founder’s helmet a draconic, chitinous moth-like monster has eaten through the back of his skull and hijacked him like a parasite.

“Oh, you weren’t supposed to see that yet”. Reality itself goes fuzzy for a second, and then he appears normal, and acts as though nothing happened.

Icarus pulls a stunt of sorts with his Eternal Flamethrower to get some analytics on whatever is underneath the helmet, and it becomes apparent that whatever they saw is no longer in reality, that underneath the helmet is relatively normal brainwaves and organic tissue.

And this is where we leave off, but next time it's off to Venus City! Fraxinus!

New Kinds of Magic

No, this isn't about Vancian vs. such-and-such. I guess it's more like different schools of magic like Illusion, Evocation, etc., but it's not bound to those classifications either. It's just meant to get you to think about weird abstract things, and what magic can mean, and how different principles of science and philosophy and cognition and perception operate.

My character in Mike of Sheep & Sorcery's Weirdways Campaign (previously discussed in this post) also more recently gained powers relating to the first entry, so that's cool.

There aren't that many of these because I've been busy and tired lately and trying to prioritize shorter high quality posts over forcing out longer ones, but I'm happy with these.

Cool art to draw the eye, to break up the page, to give you a reason to click. Empty and unsatisfying, disconnected from my words because I don't know how to draw. A memetic parasite burrowing into your brain imposing itself onto your perception, in place of my words. Hollow eyes desperate for a connection they cannot see and will not understand. An anaglyphic simulation of three dimensions where only two exist. Boastful promises behind tinted lenses yielding nothing.

1. Necroneiromancy: These are no mere prophecies. Dead dreams aggressively forced onto the future, feeding off of time like an ouroboros.
2. Ennui: A magic imprisoned invisibly by the ignorant, closing in tightly, oppressing only those who perceive it. A deprivation, lack of stimulation, a self-generated counterforce compressed until it bursts. A violently unleashed imagination.
3. Graphomatica: Philosophers seek unknowable Truths fruitlessly, where real magic is in modeling reality via approximation. Graphomatic representations realize radical realities in higher dimensional spaces.
4. Alone: Reality is a shared delusion, where for each contributor, any given contribution is lessened. Alone, one's own magic magnifies, reality warping around preconceived notions and preferred prophecies. More efficient than the compromised magic we share, more effective too, until challenged.
5. Soberotica: The girl next door of magic, the paradoxical sexy in the unsexy, the attainable if unglamorous, utilitarian utility of serviceable services in the unflattering light of sober sensations.
6. Dissonant Dissociative Multitudes: The magic of an unabashed, unashamed detachment from reality. Embracing cognitive dissonance, dissociated self from space, inversion of subject and object, magnified madness made manifest, multitudinous; magical power pawned from pathology.

Mike also created several cool New Kinds of Magic which with his permission I have also included.

1. Egregoristry: Mages gather to create a higher being out of their collective consciousness: a being submissive to their will, but have they created this being truly or merely given body to something old and dangerous?
2. The Craft: Just as a genius sculptor has the power to do what most see as impossible so there is a level above the genius sculptor where they can truly give life to marble or even a higher level where they sculpt time and dimension. This is the magic of pure excellence in a particular craft until it exceeds the boundaries of possibility.
3. Mom Magic: Some moms genuinely have eyes in the back of their heads and they can definitely take you out of this world just like they brought you into it: with blood and screaming.
4. Quantum Catalog: Undo choices and force the universe down a different path through mastery of the Dewey Decimal system of the Akashic Library.
5. Dimensional Theurgy: like Rick and Morty with the microverse car battery. The wizard creates a pocket dimension in which they are God, feeding on the worship of the creatures there to fuel their magic.