The game takes place in one of the large, ruined cities of the world.
- The city is ruined in "patches": some were burned down, some taken over by the weird, some destroyed in riots maybe? Nature reclaimed some, some is maybe weirdly missing.
- Coastal city
- One or two major rivers, mostly frozen solid
- Sliced up into different turfs held by different people
- There are underground tunnels in the city (who lives there?)
- Most elevators and shit are broken, so 100 stories up to the top of a building is fortress-hard.
- You can farm maybe 2-3 months a year (so wheat and potatoes, but no corn).
There are a plethora of pine trees and flora.
(There may be some arcologies, some pseudo-crashed space colonies, out offscreen?)
- It's easy to move within the city, harder to move to another city altogether.
- The upshot is that it's hard to move an army around.
- As we said before, it's cold.
- The moon's strange, the tides are strange, the eclipses are.... fucking wacknuts.
- Travel can be risky.
Remember that these aren't impossible to acquire. They're just rarer than most things.
- Mike: Send of self (the psychic maelstrom bleeds in)
- Maelstrom is full of convincing voices (sorta like schizophrenia)
- Vengeful or deposed spirits may vie for your body if you aren't careful
- You can hold onto stronger personalities, like hardholders, for stability
- Sleeping can leave your subconscious all mixed up from the maelstrom's voices; when you wake out, you have to piece out your wants and needs from the ones the maelstrom's voices brought you
- There may be a potential preference for manual labor because it helps better-define a sense of self.
- Stories. People record diaries, history, etc., to help remember themselves.
- Maybe sometimes people reset, lose memories entirely? It may happen to a person a few times (no more than 3) in their life.
- Chris: Good Sleep (see above).
- Rackets for sleeping pills have a potential place in this world.
- Spenser: Manufactured goods
- Newly-made goods are mostly pre-industrial revolution in make.
- Things like cloths are hard, and new tires are mostly impossible unless you can find a working foundry and enough people to run it.
- Cameron: Warmth.
- The Sun grew colder, turned purple-hued
- Mexico gets snow, Canada is screwed.
- Weird solar storms and random eclipses occur with some frequency
- There's some sort of... second moon? It's hard to look at, and it's unpredictable.
- The moon's also made the tides unpredictable.
We've talked about tending toward surreal, not fantastic. Baseline characters don't have full-on control of the weirdness (in most cases), but it is seldom Silent Hill Alternate Hospital craziness.
How in-the-know are your characters? How well do the handle the Weird? (See playbooks; this is about baseline in-the-know, not specialized.)
The conclusion was "tolerable comfort", with the example as "good outdoorsman in a storm". You may know, generally, what sort of things you can do to ensure your survival, but predicting a storm can be hard, and preparing for it perfectly is a challenging task.
- There's this small hiss of weirdness in the background from the voiced maelstrom.
- There are areas of more intense weirdness that move like weather patterns.
We touched a bit on this with the ice thing, but shelved the full discussion until playbooks were decided. A Chopper, for example, might exploit snowmobiles.
What isn't scarce? What could I expect to walk into any hardhold and find if I have the jingle? (Everyone, again, should name something.)
- Spenser: Hardware. Things like Lumber, Nails, ... Pine trees are plentiful, too
- Chris: Space. The population has fallen apart, but large chunks of the city still stands, so you can find a place all to yourself if you want it.
- Mike: Time. Since travel is slowed due to weather and weirdness patterns,
you may wait a month or two for a shipment. Similarly, since a farmer
may have a tractor, they'll finish the work in an hour or two and work
very little.
- There was a discussion at this point about a potential preference for manual labor because it helps better-define a sense of self.
- Cam: Fire wood. The pines grow, after all. Warmth is there if you have the jingle.
- Extra: Stories. People record diaries, history, etc., to help remember themselves.
Not a lick.
Generally reliable, but it could be fun to play with it.
Generally, but it could be fun to play with it.
- Probably strangely aggressive animals
- Maybe insets form weird shapes (like a strange butterfly formation) and crazy stuff
- Animals act weird, but generally look normal
- No laser pistols
- It was an "early apocalypse", maybe 1980s/1990s tech
- Computers are probably all CRTs, stacked everywhere, and supercomputers are Pi-like
- Computers, technologically, are maybe more advanced than other tech (Pentium II)
- A Cassette player with four tapes is a valued luxury item, as are VHS tapes
- Only when weirdness demands it. If it's a weird supercomputer, make it weird.
- In the Weird, maybe it's hard to tell the abstract concept of a toaster is attached to the object.
- Plenty of buildings, generators, windmills, are around
- Batteries are pretty rare
- Wild Moose should show up
- Harm pulls you back to yourself