RPGaDay 2023, Day 11

When The Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro - Hunter S Thompson

Hunter S Thompson’s line has always been one of my watchwords. When things seem to be overwhelming, and everyone around is suffering some form of cognitive dissonance or fugue state, it’s time for someone like me to step unto the limelight and take on the situation.

It’s happened more than once in my life. I’ve got this.

Which is why, when I say that “there are no weird games,” I’m speaking from experience. Any roleplaying game where the characters have access to arcane or futuristic gadgetry, alien tech, psionics or magic is going to look weird. Any adventure where they may encounter aliens, strange beings whose evolution differs from ours, beings out of myth or living deities is definitely going to feel weird, by definition.

So, anyway, today’s prompt is ambiguous. Is it asking for a game whose premise is weird, such as Atlas Games’ Unknown Armies or Over The Edge? Or is it asking for you to recount a session where the storyline took a turn for the weird?

Example weird settings - The island of al-Amarja (Over The Edge); the pulp setting of Worlds United (if Edgar Rice Burroughs had written The War of The Worlds) or the urban fantasy of After The Vampire Wars (The World of Darkness without the heavy edgelord pretention) (The Design Mechanism / Mythras); or superhero action (Destined, The Design Mechanism).

I’m going to focus on some enjoyably weird published settings here, rather than pick one.

Luther Arkwright: Roleplaying Across The Parallels (The Design Mechanism)

You may not have heard of this one. Luther Arkwright in 1978 was a British graphic novel. The first of its kind to come from the UK, beating 2000 AD’s first forays into the GN format with its early Titan Books Judge Dredd collections.

The multiverse contains all of the parallels that ever were and ever will be. The eponymous Luther Arkwright is a new evolution of humanity, a handsome and dashing Homo novus with the brain capacity of an Odd John without the distinctive physical features and mannerisms of Olaf Stapledon’s titular character.

Luther is unique. Unlike Moorcock’s Eternal Champion Jerry Cornelius, who exists in multiple incarnations across the dimensions, there is only one Luther, an agent of the benevolent technocracy of Zero-Zero.

Luther Arkwright is a story of war, of Forteana (UFOs in the sky, statues of the Virgin Mary weeping blood), of sex, of drugs, and of violence. There is telepathy, telekinesis, alternate histories, a psychic journey filled with vivid hallucinations, and so on. ANd in this roleplaying game, the characters - Agents of a Zero-Zero faction called VALHALLA - must investigate these weird phenomena and stop threats to the Multiverse.

Over The Edge (Atlas Games)

What can I say about this game? It is one of the most gonzo settings you could ever encounter. The game is set on one small island, originally set in the Mediterranean but (in the French translation) also set in the Atlantic near the equator.

Welcome to al-Amarja, a place which, by international treaty, has been left off every map since the Mappa Mundi.

Everybody here is not what they appear. Everybody has secrets. The world is changing, and this place is where it changes, with manila envelopes being exchanged in back alleys, followed by diplomatic sex to seal the deal; where the lights in the sky might not be 100% caused by what you put in your own drink; and where, if you hear a soft and seductive whisper just past your hotel room door, asking to let them in, you do not ask “Who is this?” because you might not like the answer.

This is the place where asking for pronouns was a requirement even before it became mainstream in the mindless world press.

I’m planning on wearing something like this to work next Halloween.

Spectres of Mars (Lightspress Media)

This DoubleZero game setting is set in about 2068 maybe. Humans have discovered that we are not alone, and the aliens are pissed off mightily at us for disturbing their sleep or something.

The Aeolians, also called The Strangers, are an insubstantial species, which operate by possessing human bodies. Nobody has seen this transformation and lived. They are either killed quickly by the new Stranger, or they are themselves possessed and join the aliens in their war of attrition and nerves.

This is permanent; the aliens cannot just jump from host to host; and anybody could be a Stranger.

Part Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons, part UFO, and part Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1982), this is a homage to Gerry Anderson’s two magnificent shows from the Sixties, and the rebooted New Captain Scarlet from 2005. It’s also kind of a homage to the early series of Stargate SG-1, where the greatest threat to Earth was the Goa’Uld symbiotes.

Revelations In Cold Iron / MOLOCH (Lightspress Media)

Chances are, you won’t find any copies of this old game anywhere. Lightspress Media has undergone numerous changes since its origins in the last decade. This is a game of its time, born of the world transformed by social media. It’s also a parody of the world transformed by social media.

Here’s the thing. Officially, Magic does not exist. Magic is not real. And your characters use it all the time.

This is the world as seen through your Facebook accounts, your Xitter tweets, your tumblr reblogs, your Substack articles. and the nightly news - all sources of nothing but lies, even the truths.

There is a war going on. It’s a war for control and domination of reality. There is a war on somewhere in the world, and there is no way anyone can really know what is happening because the news outlets are full of utter bullshit, social media feeds have been coopted by bot farms on both sides, and no video or picture can be trusted in a world of Photoshop and Midjourney.

There is objective reality, that everybody wants to claim they have access to (but literally nobody does, because nobody can), and there are those people who want to foist their specific version of subjective reality onto the public conscious, suborning their own perceptions and turning their minds into reinforcers of this subjective reality, to become the consensus.

And, let me say this, it’s a pretty rotten consensus.

Enter Cold Iron, a ragtag group of rebels against this suppurating mass of corruption that is the Cult of MOLOCH (formerly just worshippers of some Babylonian God, and now just worshippers of an ASI reminiscent of Samaritan from Person of Interest).

MOLOCH is every corporate and private interest corrupting the planet, reshaping reality to suit their twisted agenda to turn the world into a paradise for them, a Hell for everybody else. Cold Iron want to break through the insanity and bring a little cool reason back, to posit a reality where diplomacy works; where people who work in communities succeed and thrive; and where people can find a purpose in their own lives, rather than accept the grinding, punitive slavery that MOLOCH would foist upon them.

To break this shell, Cold Iron uses the same tools of “magic” against MOLOCH. “Magic” is deliberately using logical fallacies, and if the players are creative enough, the Guide makes it happen.

Example: a Russian Cold Iron scientist, who just became an enemy of the Russian President, tries to fly out of a fourth storey window, deliberately aiming at the ground and somehow missing - the Douglas Adams logical fallacy. Her exploits are captured on some kids’ smartphones and posted to Instagram, and a million likes and 250 comments of “Cool story, bro, great skill with Photoshop” and “Wow, AI really has got advanced, I can’t tell by the pixels any more” reinforce her magic (the Guide lets it happen without the expected outcome of the poor scientist ending her life on the ground, victim of Newton’s gravity and Russian politics).

I’d like to imagine that Cold Iron should remain lost … but come on, since 2001-09-11 it’s never been more relevant or more timely.

It could be reproduced as a DoubleZero Dark Academia title, I guess, or a Foragers Fantasy Dystopian Fantasy. Or you could try and run it with the Mythras core rules and borrow elements from Luther Arkwright.

Or use Traveller rules. Have fun with that.

Weird Games I’ve Played

I must make a confession here. Every game I’ve ever run has been weird. I use my imagination to run weird scenarios and pit the players against them to see how they react. If they get freaked out, I write it up. If they bring out weapons and behave like murderhobos, I write it up - and kill off the murderhobos horribly.

I think I’ll close off this post with one final aphorism.

You get the reality your thoughts create.