# install.packages("magrittr")
# library(DiagrammeR)
# library(DiagrammeRsvg)
# library(magrittr)
# library(rsvg)
# knitr::include_graphics(path, dpi = NULL)
# gv <-
# grViz("
# digraph SEM {
# graph [layout = neato,
# overlap = true,
# outputorder = edgesfirst]
#
# node [shape = oval, fontname = 'LM Roman 10']
#
# deus [pos = '-4,0!', label = 'The Era of Deus ex', shape = ellipse]
# taurus [pos = '-2,2!', label = 'Taurus', shape = ellipse]
# taurus_hloss [pos = '-3,-2!', label = 'Humans Loose', shape = diamond]
# taurus_hwin [pos = '-3,2!', label = 'Humans Win', shape = diamond]
# cambria [pos = '0,-2!', label = 'Cambria', shape = ellipse]
# apes [pos = '0,2!', label = 'Invasion of the Apes', shape = ellipse]
# apes_hwin [pos = '1,2!', label = 'Humane Win', shape = ellipse]
# kaiju [pos = '2,2!', label = 'Humanity Rising', shape = ellipse]
#
# deus -> taurus [penwidth = 5, label = 'N Path']
# deus -> seraph [penwidth = 2, label = 'K Path']
# taurus -> taurus_hloss [penwidth = 3]
# taurus -> taurus_hwin [penwidth = 3]
# taurus_hloss -> cambria [penwidth = 3, label = 'N Path']
# taurus_hwin -> apes [penwidth = 3, label = 'N Path']
# apes -> apes_hwin [penwidth = 3]
# apes_hwin -> kaiju [penwidth = 3, label = 'K? Path']
#
# }")
# gv
# svg <- export_svg(gv)
# library(htmltools)
# html_print(HTML(svg))3 World Rules
Sorta the values for proton’s mass and stuff like that. The ground rules for any play related to this set of characters. In addition to a few things affected (and noted) here and there, you roll for a random weird thing. Like the Humans being lethally sensitive to Buzzkill dander.
If the world is a group of friends who’ll keep playing together for many years and cycles of characters (when Faftious and Temple el Squash supersede Quagmire and Nemesis, the two dwarfs.). That group can also make the worlds change. Like keeping it that Humans are deathly allergic to Buzzkill (there never are taken away unless the group agrees on a full bleach). But things like that added, once per world. Or something fundamentally changed, like that Buzzkill-Good ship that blasts into our universe doesn’t land in ours so far away. Stuff like that.
Many World-level rules are bargained between the gaming team, viz., the players and GM. (Audience members may or may not have votes. My vote is they do: Anyone willing to watch this banality deserves a vote.)
- These team-level bargaining are usually run with everyone getting equal vote. One person–whatever their in-game role–one vote. With two players, then the GM usually is the tie-breaker, but not necessarily so with more (or imprisoned audience members).
Why worry about World rules? First, so I don’t necessarily ever have to decide which of tow ideas really is better.
Second, because part of the DNA of this universe is how things—Humans most of all but not exclusively—would change and adapt to this new expanded realm. Or not be able to and die out. A game of generations as well as intimate portraits of many kinds of lives. I’m trying to lay a fun, solid, and flexible foundation and fill its pistons with my thoughts on this world. But I want to leave room—both in the creation of the game and the content to enrich it—open to others. Including anyone who plays. I’m trying to lay a broad and solid foundation, but make it fun and easy to riff out on it.
Worlds are two things, really:
- Sets of rules for playing the game, a mix of decisions I’ve not made and times I’ve decide to leave that open.
- Evolutionary epochs. When that world ends, when the final scenario there is played and the final die cast, the next world will have evolved races. Humans are now different. Buzzkills different. Succubi different. A different Really Big Space Monster. But the Good and M
3.1 The Really Big Space Monster
Ends Worlds. If it comes, it eats the World. Everything in it is dead or like playing Dwarf Fortress in Adventure mode. Whacking off a dick because it’s flaccid. The World is done. Go home. Max your mad somewhere else.
So somehow things have to trigger it. Maybe through the Mycon? Pissing off the Mycon conjures Space Monsters (most of which are really big; all of which suck), and eventually the Really Big one. So, sher, Cthulhu critters. Sorry, convergent evolution of ideas, I assure you. I planned on Chaosium mechanics inspirations, but not something as well-worn now as evil alien gods. Sorry, world, I played Call of Cthulhu when it first came out. And yeah, it blew a gamer’s mind. Changed the gaming Zeitgeist in a way it now nearly takes for granted. But, I didn’t plan on them coming in.
But it makes sense. They’re the 10°. In battles across magnitudes, they are at least a magnitude larger than anything else on the battlefield.
3.2 The Wheel of Doom
Although not by that name, I’m sure I wrote about this elsewhere.
Anyway, among the things players & the GM can negotiate during the world-building phase is if players have to spin the Wheel of Doom. Well, roll its die-shaped scion and table of pretty bad things that a race acquires in game. Yeah, like Humans being deathly allergic to Buzzkills. Exactly like that.
A possible–but by no means definitive–example table is:
| N | Effect |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bland |
| 2 | |
| 3 | Easily tamed |
| 4 | Unfettered |
| 5 | |
| 6 | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Deathly Allergic |
3.2.1 Bland
This race has little imagination and an uncreative perspective on everything. Ev-er-y-thing. They suppress on all successful attacks. They can bleach 10 OPs per campaign, turning them vanilla. Other players and GM can say ad nauseum that both you and this rule are lame. Neither you nor I can deny it1.
3.2.2 Easily Tamed
Yes, a totally in-game thing. And the Buzzkills were not easily tamed. Mechanics of this are somewhere between TBD and MIA.
3.2.3 Unfettered
“You cannot torture me to death slowly enough to be worse than a life enslaved to you.”
This is race that seems to find a lot of things to die about. Sure, they’re the opposite of easily tamed, but they’re also just kind hard to get along with. Poor social systems lent this race to be at a relatively low technology level. They can get to space, but mostly with solo flights.
Mzy thrive, however, in groups built around interstellar rackets—if they can even get that far, though.
3.2.4 Deathly Allergic
The target race is deathly allergic to 1 other race. Often this is in fact through prions shed into the atmosphere or onto surfaces, but the GM can determine other methods that the target race is affected by the other’s presence (or relatively recent presence).
Rolls randomly for which; include all in-world local races (or cap their number with this roll; Locals are numbered by when they are contacted by any race; the local that they’re deathly allergic to is the one chosen by that roll, e.g., a 4 means it’ll be the fourth local encountered)
3.3 Spinning the Wheel
Players can use as a bargaining chip in negotiations that someone has to “spin the wheel.” E.g., the players & GM could decide that the Succubus player (or that all Succubi) gets +50 vanilla OPs (or maybe with some flavoring) but must roll on the wheel for an effect on themselves.
3.4 Campaign Strings
Probably the biggest “thing” in any World. This is a series of campaigns all set in that world. They essentially fill that world.
Not only to make that manageable in any way, but to add a little something to that, the path between campaigns is at most divided into four options:
- A race looses and chooses the N choice.
- A race loose and chooses the K choice.
- A race wins and chooses the N choice.
- A race wins and chooses the K choice.
Loosing a campaign puts that race closer to extinction. Too many of those (decided in World) and you, well, you know.
Winning, of course, puts that race closer to domination. In part by having an advantageous position over the loosing race, decided by the outcomes of that campaign.
N choices position that race to evolve towards low-quality investments in many offspring. Life is cheap in space. Show yours mattered in a growing wave of ambient light showing the universe the stand you made in your races name. Thanks for trying2.
- (sec_example_worlds?) presents paths between some example Worlds (Sure, the “Greater Taurean” paths).
So yeah, the idea is that roiling a 1 is the only non-bad result here–that it’s actually good through a back-handed compliment. And yes, maybe I should have tipped my hat to M.U.L.E by making this that the race is too smart for their own good. Actually, I kinda like that.↩︎
So, yes, N strategies are me clinging to that model of evolution. Sorry, it’s not my field. Feel free to improve this!↩︎