by Fred Wolke | Feb 14, 2015 | Recursions
Bonus Focus: Shapes Living Things Why come to Thunia? A mysterious wizard, fleeing equally mysterious pursuers, comes to Earth and contacts the PC’s looking for protection. Before she can meet up with them, however, she disappears. But she leaves behind a portal key leading to the realm that has kidnapped her. Geography Thunia is an octahedron of fundament that was settled and engineered in ages long past. Its faces are largely flat, covered mostly with farmland and small towns, with a centrally located city. Each face has its own gravity, oriented perpendicular to the surface. The edges have sharp peaks of fundament stretching miles above the surface, creating barren mountain ranges that are very difficult to cross. Gravity can shift over short stretches and storms are commonplace. The city-states expend considerable effort pin keeping trade routes open under these barriers, resorting to tunnels rather than attempting to traverse the dangerous surface. At the six points where these edges meet, huge spires of fundament project miles above the mountains. Gravity near a spire is oriented toward the spire’s shaft, allowing structures to be built along its length. Traversing further out on the spire, gravity becomes weaker and weaker, until one can simply drift off into the Strange. Thunia spins on its axis once every thirty-two hours. It receives warmth and light from a construct that hangs in the sky a few thousand miles away, an icosahedron of glowing fundament that is believed to have been created at some point in the distant past. Time Each region has a thirty-two hour day. “Night” is when the Thunian “sun” is not visible...
by Lee Sims | Feb 14, 2015 | Recursions
Formed by fictional leakage from the various accounts and legends of the life of Alexander the Great of Macedon, Alexandria is a mature Recursion locked in the late Iron Age time that inspired it. On our Earth, Alexander conquered the largest empire the world had yet seen over a span of 15 years, only to die young at the age of 33. During his life, he lost no battles and was worshiped as a god, and it was said of him that when his empire reached its full extent, he wept that there were no more worlds to conquer. On Alexandria, Alexander is a god, immortal and invincible, and his army has been on the march now for 300 years. Alexandria is unique in that it does not have a fixed geography; instead, it consists only of the 100 miles or so surrounding the Macedonian army. As the army conquers, it moves on and the conquered regions cease to exist, replaced by new foes for Alexander to subdue; truly, there are now infinite worlds for him to conquer. The peoples of Alexandria are thus divided into two categories: the Macedonian army and their unconquered foes. The Macedonian army is led by Alexander the God and a dozen subordinate leaders who are also immortal demigods. The junior officers, common soldiers, and camp followers are all normal mortal humans, comprising around 20% of Alexandria’s population at any time; around 25% of these people have the Spark. Soldiers who are too wounded or too old to continue on campaign are settled in new cities, which are almost invariably named “Alexandria.” ...
by Marcus Ilgner | Feb 13, 2015 | Recursions
With a growing number of kids and adults dreaming of becoming famous, through fictional leakage, Fame was created. Here, you are adored by the masses and can perform on a scale that only a handful on Earth can. In its center you find Paradise City, an amalgation of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Filled with concert halls, theaters, movie studios as well as record and music stores, there is always something to see. They also have their own version of the Walk Of Fame where one may find the names of visiting recursors along others known from Earth. In the suburbs and outskirts of the city, you can find the estates of the well to-do artists. The few roads leading out of town are mostly empty: who would want to leave the city where everything that matters is made? While Entertains is the most common focus for recursors on Fame, there are also famous fighters (like wrestlers) who Look for Trouble and others who work behind the scenes: directors who Lead and occasionally even famous detectives or reporters who Solve Mysteries or Work Undercover. A special role are talent scouts, agents and promotors who Work The System. They are responsible for someone not only making it to the top but also staying there. Because one thing is obvious in Fame: fading into obscurity is just as bad as death. Those who don’t manage to keep their adoring audiences captured with their work lose their powers. In rule terms, this means that every full week without actively working towards your craft will reduce your intelligence pool by 1. Successfully performing...
by John Clayton | Feb 12, 2015 | Recursions
Welcome, traveller, to the city of delights, the city of a thousand and one pleasures, the city of Baghdad. And yes, noble visitor, all the stories you have heard are true. This is not the war-torn Baghdad of the present day but the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights, the Baghdad of stories. Under the reign of the wise and munificent Sultan Haroun al Rashief, the city is a haven of art, culture, science and learning. Genies, magic carpets, lamps, rings, 40 thieves, sailors… The tales immortalised in the Thousand Nights and One Night are almost as old as civilisation itself. And they are all here in the City in a Bottle. Over *there*, the docks where Sindbad is preparing to set sail for another voyage. *There*, the tailor who was present at Aladdin’s wedding in far-off China. *There*, a barber who will tell you the most wonderful tale while trimming your beard – it’s not a problem that’s he’s completely blind, is it? This is a land formed by stories, shaped by the tales told. The tale truly has grown in the telling… Play along with the story and things *will* work out – go against the tale and you may just attract the Evil Eye. [In game mechanics terms, any action that flows *against* the narrative logic of the story being told suffers a -1 penalty, with any roll ending up a 1 due to this counting as a natural 1 for the purposes of triggering a GM Intrusion]. In Baghdad, the stories will find you. When you translate in you may choose to take the form of...
by Jesse Lehto | Feb 12, 2015 | Recursions
“Behold! Giant nuclear powered robots, the last hope of the humanity! Protecting humanity from evil giant killer robots, alien invaders and giant monsters! On Neo-Manhattan, the last bastion of humanity, people work hard to survive! Contact to outside world has been last, oceans have turned blood red and warring factions of evil robots, aliens and giant oceanic monsters emergence to attack the city! What will you do? Well, fight them with nuclear powered robots, of course!” -Text on the gates that take the form of “Neo-Manhattan” posters. Neo-Manhattan recursion was created from fictional leakage from various giant robot battle show tropes. In the recursion, parts of New York surrounding Manhattan borough have fallen into the ocean. Some areas haven’t been completely swallowed by the red sea, ruined skyscrapers can be seen in the distance. Curiously, the center of Neo-Manhattan were rich and powerful live is partially identical to modern Tokyo. People of the city believe they might be last surviving members of the humanity. The outside world is believed to be a battleground between mysterious invading aliens, giant monsters who arrive from the deeps of the now blood red sea and giant warmachines controlled by the artificial intelligent calling itself Deus. Once a week, a giant monster from one of these three factions arrives and threatens the city with destruction. Recursors translate as members of city’s defense forces who pilot giant robots, or mechas. Mechas are controlled directly by human mind and each pilot is “plugged” into them. As such, personal combat ability of the recursor will be robot’s fighting style as well, e.g. wields two weapon foci means...
by John Clayton | Feb 12, 2015 | Foci
I am but your humble servant and it pains me to say that I do not know the answer to your question. But I know someone who does…You know the right words of power to call one of the Djinn to your service and bind them to be truthful and obey your commands. Your power may be tied to a physical object containing a single Djinn – a ring, a lamp, perhaps – or the item may just be a focus for your will. Tier AbilitiesTier 1 – CompanionThe summoner has a Gen, an elemental friend. Pick an element (earth, air, fire, water) and you get some level 1 abilities for how to deal with that element and things the Gen can do. As you increase in Tier in this Focus, so your Gen increases as well. Enabler.<sidebar>Gens1, don’t let your Gen be injured or killed. At least not until you’re much older and more experienced in negotiating with the courts of the Djinn.2, they’re genies, not miracle-workers. While they can fetch Cyphers for you, retrieve lore thought long-forgotten, persuade the Djinni of their court to work wonders on your behalf, it all takes time and patience.3, look after your Gen and it will look after you – nothing better to have at your side when you’ve been thrown overboard than a Maridan, a Efreetling to guide you safely over that lava field…</sidebar>Go-between.Your Gen acts as an intermediary between you and the Genie courts. If you send the gen to an opposed element, it suffers a 1-step increase in all difficulties in negotiations.Enabler<sidebar>What can you achieve with a negotiation?...
by Mikkel Berget | Feb 11, 2015 | Recursions
The Trenches is basically a long narrow muddy battlefield stretching on for miles. The battlefield consists of a no man’s land with a labyrinth of trenches dug in the mud.on either side. Two seemingly identical armies looks to have fought each other over this land for years but have now dissappeared. The trenches are dotted with machine gun nests, mortar positions, radio positions, shelters and small dugouts reserved mainly for the senior officers. All weapons are functional and everything looks like it was abandoned just the day before. No man’s land is riddled with barbed wire, grenade holes and mine fields making traversing the mud very slow and dangerous. At the middle and in very back of each trench lies each armys head quarters. Each is a large building filled with maps, simple radio rooms, sick bays, crude surgical theaters and quarters for generals and similar higher ups. Large fields of beautiful pristine red poppies line the far outskirts of the recursion and provide the only vivid color in the recursion.. Singular poppies may appear in the middle of no man’s land and it is said that if these can be found and harvested they have almost miraculous abilities. Weather is constantly poor and cold keeping the mud wet and clammy. You can never clearly see the Sun as it is always obscured by rain or thick cold wet fog. Sometimes the fog brings with it green toxic gas rolling in slowly, injuring or killing anyone caught without gas masks. Some of the trenches are haunted by the ghosts of the dead, roaming around with some unknown...
by dean | Feb 10, 2015 | Recursions
Slasher By Dean B Lynch Slasher is a small recursion based on fictional leakage from exploitation and “slasher” movies from the 1970s to modern times. Dominating the recursion is the town of Springdale. The main road through Springdale runs the length of the recursion. Heading north out of town, the road passes through the dark woods that surround Springdale and skirts past Crystal Lake. After a dozen miles out of town, the road abruptly ends at a destroyed bridge swept away by the swift current of an overflowing brook running down from the lake. A sign across the road reads, “Bridge out.” Heading South out of town is similar. The Landscape on either side of the Southern route begins to rise and rocks start appearing in the road forcing drivers to swerve around them. The road ends at a massive pile of rock with a sign that reads, “Road closed do to landslide.” The recursion ends where the roads stop and any thing seen beyond is simply an illusion of a bigger world. The flooded brook is impassable, but anyone attempting to swim it will be swept away and deposited directly into the Strange. The deeper into the woods one travels, the thicker the vegetation and thorny plants get until a traveler is forced to turn back. One of the most unique features of the recursion is that it only has four months making up a year and those months are named after the four seasons. The four seasons are dominated by four holidays, Easter, July 4th, Halloween, and Christmas. The inhabitants of Slasher age a year every...
by Aaron Brown | Feb 9, 2015 | Recursions
Since its inception, the Estate has faced the problem of what to do with gifted, quickened, and special children that they identified in the course of their investigations. Parents and guardians could be bribed with promises of a better education or even “junior” Morrison Fellowship Prizes, but what to do with the children? They were too young and untested to work at the Estate. They knew too much to allow them completely unsupervised childhoods (that’s how they got on the Estate’s radar in the first place). The recursion known as the Schoolhouse was the answer to their predicament. The Schoolhouse was created by fictional leakage, built on stories told about places of learning over the centuries, from a sacred fire where youths were taught the rites of hunting and gathering to modern dreams of science laboratories unconstrained by public education budget cuts; the Schoolhouse has seen it all. The Administrator of the Schoolhouse has to power to rearrange the architecture itself, to pick and choose from the hundreds of variations the best learning environment for each subject crafted from millennium of the dreams and hopes of eager students. The Administrator, with the help of the Estate, has chosen cutting edge science labs that would not look out of place in Anime high school, soaring Baroque conservatories for the music department, a scale model of the Globe Threatre for the drama department, and a Greek gymnasium for the PE teachers and students. The Schoolhouse goes out of its way to be a perfect place for parents and administrators. The Estate has named the current incarnation of the Schoolhouse the...
by Jesse Lehto | Feb 8, 2015 | Recursions
The Mon World was created by fictional leakage from popular genre of monster collecting and battling cartoons and video games. Recursion has appearance similar to modern Earth, but it doesn’t share the geography and locations. Everyone is born with personal “Companion”, a creature with telepathic link and bond to their master and unique strange powers. These creatures are used to help with many daily tasks, but most popular purpose for them is sport called monster battling. Monster Battling is as simple as the name implies: People fight each other with their Companions until other Companions are forced to return to their masters. This sport is only sport people of the recursion practice and every sparkless inhabitant is downright obsessed with it. When the annual tournament is held in Central City, all inhabitants of recursion gather to spectate or participate. Besides humans and companions, areas outside cities and towns are populated by wild “monsters”, monster being term for all other beings regardless of their appearance. The monsters have variety of different appearances and they are often categorized by elements or what type of creature they are. Monsters never go near populated areas, but they tend to attack people in wilderness. Some monster battlers’ companions specialize on recruiting and controlling monsters. Defeated monsters don’t die, they fade away only to reappear later longtime afterwards. Disturbingly, some of monsters look like cuter version of creatures from other recursions. As majority of fictional material that leaked into this recursion was from children’s media, this recursion has some bizarre illogical consistencies. For example: Lot of technologies that work under laws of standard physics don’t...
