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Author Topic: [The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications  (Read 2283 times)

Kaiu Keiichi

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #15 on: January 07, 2016, 05:17:03 PM »
Quote from: Nexus;871554
Given the fiction can create actual worlds in The Strange, SJWs and others types trying to control and censor fiction actually have some of the leg to stand on. Fictional suffering and "-isms" can result in actual event or at least very close to it. Allot of Recursions are essentially stage sets with endlessly repeating plays but some are essentially real worlds. It depends on how you view beings without the Spark but the fiction seems to present them as like Sleeper in the Matrix, feeling and thinking creatures but their awareness is limited, restricted by the context of their Recursion in more advanced developed ones.

I've got to use this in my game (even it turns out not to be totally accurate) and have a faction that is crusading to control Bad Fictional Leakage and correct "wrong" Recursions (or destroy them).


"Control" and "Censor"? Who is at your gaming table, censoring your content? SJWs like myself don't try to control anything, and we don't care what you consume.

Wow, you're really hung up on misinformed ancap politics.
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Kaiu Keiichi

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #16 on: January 07, 2016, 05:17:50 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;872426
So, like U.S. colleges right now?


Nah, more like US media companies that are beholden to shareholders.

Ideas must always bend to money.
Rules and design matter
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Kaiu Keiichi

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #17 on: January 07, 2016, 05:19:07 PM »
I have a question - is The Strange a setting with subjective, belief based reality as per Mage: The Ascension, Unknown Armies and some other settings? I don't own it and I only have a passing familiarity.
Rules and design matter
The players are in charge
Simulation is narrative
Storygames are RPGs

Nexus

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #18 on: January 07, 2016, 05:33:30 PM »
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;872429
"Control" and "Censor"? Who is at your gaming table, censoring your content? SJWs like myself don't try to control anything, and we don't care what you consume.

Like you? Maybe. I don't know you. But as far as others, well, tell that to the Thunder Plains. Badgering publishers that produce "problematic" material is one of the hall marks of the SJW tactics as far as rpgs go. I mean seriously, considering the game this thread is about and the Outrage Storms over its content the claim the there is no push to control and censor material is an odd and misinformed one.
« Last Edit: January 07, 2016, 05:43:19 PM by Nexus »
Remember when Illinois Nazis where a joke in the Blue Brothers movie?

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kosmos1214

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #19 on: January 07, 2016, 09:49:21 PM »
Quote from: Nexus;871751
The Thunder Plains is a recursion based on the stereotypes and misunderstood mythology of certain Native Americans in The Strange. Its existence caused a stink in certain circles because it was racist and inaccurate...which was kind of the point. Recursions are generated in part from the influence of human imagination and fiction. The Plains reflected a caricature of those myths as seen through other culture and was never intended to be culturally or historically accurate anymore than the Recursion "Good Land" was an accurate depiction of the 1950 instead of the era as seen on Leaver it Beaver and through the eyes of nostalgia.

Pressure motivated Monte Cook to release an apology and a replacement Recursion that was more mythologically accurate and promise the Thunder Plains would be removed from future printings of the core book.

So a scenario where this particular group either tries to or succeeds in destroying the Thunder Plains would be a case of art imitating life, very fitting for The Strange. :D

ah i thought it was that they dident like 1000 words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpbUtERYOkk
sjw social just-us warriors

now for a few quotes from my fathers generation
"kill a commie for mommy"

"hey thee i walk through the valley of the shadow of death but i fear no evil because im the meanest son of a bitch in the valley"

Brand55

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #20 on: January 07, 2016, 10:27:57 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;872426
So, like U.S. colleges right now?
Basically, although since we haven't developed any form of mind-reading yet one can usually be safe on a college campus by being quiet and not openly opposing the popular agenda.

RPGPundit

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #21 on: January 11, 2016, 12:44:21 AM »
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;872430
Nah, more like US media companies that are beholden to shareholders.

Ideas must always bend to money.


U.S. Colleges are in the mess they're in because they're beholden to the economic bubble of "everyone must go to college" that they created.  Their funding, their tuition, all of it depends on them sacrificing the classical principles for the sake of keeping the customers happy.
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Nexus

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #22 on: January 11, 2016, 01:36:39 AM »
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;872431
I have a question - is The Strange a setting with subjective, belief based reality as per Mage: The Ascension, Unknown Armies and some other settings? I don't own it and I only have a passing familiarity.


In The Strange there are is a dark matter region, a sort of universe, called The Strange or the Chaosphere. Human thought, creativity, emotion and desires form areas called “Recursions” in that region. Recursions are often shaped by fiction either directly and are essentially fictional worlds come to life or more indirectly, imitating the tropes and conventions of broad genres, tropes and general stories, myths and legends. Recursions can also be formed by emotions, desires, dreams and the unconscious drives of mankind (and other intelligent species) and don't have to follow the physical laws of our reality. So Recursions can be extremely odd. For example there is one created from a child's imagination that looks like a crayon drawing come to life and Flatland exists as an actual place along with thousands of others ranging in size from a single room sized area to continent sized (and may seem larger).
Remember when Illinois Nazis where a joke in the Blue Brothers movie?

Democracy, meh? (538)

 "The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it."

yosemitemike

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #23 on: January 11, 2016, 01:49:21 AM »
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;872431
I have a question - is The Strange a setting with subjective, belief based reality as per Mage: The Ascension, Unknown Armies and some other settings? I don't own it and I only have a passing familiarity.


Sort of but not like Mage.  There are three kinds of reality in the Strange.

First, there is the material universe.  Prime worlds like Earth exist here.  The physics in this universe are just like ours.  

Second, there is the dark energy network or chaosphere.  This underlies normal reality.  It was created long ago as a means of intergalactic travel.  The original creators made it so that they could mentally enter into it, travel long distances inside it and they print themselves new bodies at some distant point in space.  Long ago, the system went haywire and started expanding out of control.  It has been expanding ever since then carrying the normal space it underlays with it.  This is what is causing the dark energy phenomenon observed in the normal universe.  The dark energy network is a realm where the laws of nature do not apply and one that responds directly to thought.  It is such an alien place that even looking at it causes adverse effects on the minds of beings from the normal universe.  It is a chaotic, mysterious, ever shifting fractal realm full of some seriously weird shit.

Lastly, there are recursions.  These are created by the interaction between the dark energy network and the thoughts, dreams and stories of being living in prime worlds.  Most are created by what is called fiction leakage.  The rules of reality there conform to the rules of the story or myth they are drawn from.  Once the recursion is created, the laws are set though.  They do not vary according to what people believe.  It is also possible to create custom recursions with whatever rules you want but this is a difficult process and there is no guarantee it will go as planned.
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Nexus

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[The Strange] Odd thought about some setting implications
« Reply #24 on: January 13, 2016, 08:53:57 AM »
Another potentially fun oddity in The Strange is the chance to play up the weird effect of Recursions operating according to the genre(s) that spawned them, the tropes, cliches and stereotypes as hard coded reality. I think back to the movie Last Action Hero when it called out the cliches ("Where are all the ugly people? That girl is way to hot to work in a video store!") But the more recent The Last Girls is a good example too as is the movie Pleasantville. Both have some good example of how characters with the Spark and without might behave when confronted with out of context information.

This sort of thing could be mostly treated as fun fluff and local color (Do Recursions spawned from PG movies have L shaped sheets? Would a Brady Bunch inspired Recursion lack toilets or the need for them?) or played up for effect as the PCs try to use their genre savvy to figure out the appropriate next move. The Strange doesn't innately have any rules that penalize "out of genre" behavior or directly enforce it (like Torg's world laws) but the system is so light it wouldn't be hard to implement them if desired. PCs being PCs it may be more important to determine what happens when you break those rules. The Goodland Recursion provides one possibility though that seems more like a part of the Recursion itself, a reflection of the flipside of idyllic nostalgia that created it.
« Last Edit: January 13, 2016, 09:02:12 AM by Nexus »
Remember when Illinois Nazis where a joke in the Blue Brothers movie?

Democracy, meh? (538)

 "The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it."