The Rule of the Jungle and the self-invasive species

This just squeaks in as my contribution to this month's Blog Carnival, hosted this time round at Hereticwerks with the theme Invasive Species.

It's partly inspired by the recent release of sixth seventh edition 40K and rerelease of past fifth editions of D&D, and maybe the latest report from GW, or some of the reaction to it. It's for tabletop gaming in general, so no specific system, a form of propluristemic content. It's an off-the-wall rule or regulation for more fully marketizing the gaming group.

In the wording of the rule, a gamer providing support is a Financier, but this could vary by setting: maybe Lender or Rentier for pseudomediaeval or historical settings, anything from Bloodsucker through Shareholder to Saviour for modern, depending on tone, and for an overblown grimmer and darker setting maybe Splitgripper, Souldealer or God-Enabler.

                                                                                                                              

The Rule of the Jungle

Using your braners (1) - World-changing weaponry

I want to show more of the scope in the braner concept, so this is the first in a series on possible applications for gaming and in wider fiction. It's propluristemic content, meaning it's designed for use in no particular game system or setting, for adaptation as preferred.

I recommend reading the last post first, and maybe this one, to find out what a braner is.

The idea is that part of a transdimensional structure - whether a lode of a weird material, or a daemon, or something else - is coaxed, driven or worked into a device of some kind.

The two here are melee or projectile weapons, and the entity is assumed to be the edge of the blade, or the surface making contact. This also suggests the sheath or equivalent is worked to contain the effect, or a variation on the weaver aspect is used to activate it.

Each one has a few possible names, to reflect the variety of worlds that could develop it.

Vault's Call, Sibilance, The Exsanctor etc.

This weapon cleaves solid matter cleanly, as if liquid, apparently destroying all material along the path. In fact, each particle is drawn over a dimensional boundary (cf. whisker).

The weapon may cut through a barrier of any nature except transdimensional. In combat a hit ignores all armour and fields with this same exception. The hit is always treated as critical or does critical or maximum damage, and will otherwise cause immediate death.

If left unsheathed, the transdimensional part will pass through matter on which it rests or which it strikes, and it will continuously draw in particles from a surrounding atmosphere or reservoir until this is exhausted - to which myriad dead worlds and voids may testify.

The constant whisper of this flow may be heard, and the space beyond may be sensed.

Wail o' the Weft, Shreave, The Disenverter etc.

This weapon warps the current reality, removing or remaking existing matter and infusing it with strange forms from unknown sources beyond dimensional boundaries (cf. winder).

In combat a hit ignores all armour and fields except those of a transdimensional nature and is treated as if coated with a permanently debilitatingly poison, while the maximum damage result causes immediate death. Each hit results in a single mutation over time.

In each situation in which the weapon is unsheathed, that location or route is corrupted and may bleed; any entity later touching this point or line is treated as if hit. Where this weapon proliferates, the world may quickly become unrecognisable, even uninhabitable.

When in motion the weapon emits a shriek and ripples may be felt in the fabric of reality.

Hopefully this does make the possible uses clearer, or helps point a way. The last post has more context, and once you can visualise what's going on, the ideas should flow...

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Build-your-own braner

Last week I posted a weird new monster, alien or supernatural being that references M-theory - the noö-braner. If you missed it, the basic braner is essentially a trans-Euclidean lifeform able to slip more or less freely across various dimensions.

It could be the basis of a Lovecraftian horror, or an alternative to a warp entity for 40K, or a very different tactical challenge for adventurers and armies, the kind of thing you might find in Call of Cthulhu, sword and sorcery or a wargame like this, maybe a demiurge...

The original post has a few more suggestions too, thanks to John Till and garrisonjames.

I want to generalise the concept through a simple tool, so below is a table for six general braner aspects for mixing and matching. The noö-braner is now a 'waker-weaver-wisher'.

A random approach to making your own could be rolling 1d6 for the number of aspects it has and 1d6 on the table for each, treating duplicates as greater intensity in that aspect.

      Braner aspects (1d6)

1. Waker - The osmotic or conductive structure of this braner allows the absorption, mingling or transfer of material among those regions currently located adjacent to it, enabling the formation of a reservoir or conduit for transdimensional interaction.
2. Weaver - Highly elongated or filamentary, this braner binds manifolds, perhaps forming a basis for a reality by bracing its fundamental particles, macrostructures or universal shell; its loss, transformation or relocation may lead to local collapse.
3. Whiler - Whether hibernating, pupating or paralysed, perhaps lying in wait, this braner is more or less inactive, representing a temporary hindrance to travel via the region and gifting its current transdimensional location a misleading stability.
4. Whisker - This braner hooks, envelops or dislodges elements of nearby regions, stretching or carrying them out across a dimensional horizon, perhaps shifting, telescoping or inverting the local form; they may be returned, irrevocably altered.
5. Winder - The tension, mass or construction of this braner warps the coils of the dimensions it spans or crosses, thereby spontaneously reordering, separating or fusing these dimensions and sparking sudden shifts in reality for the inhabitants.
6. Wisher - Possessed of a morphic structure - perhaps plasmatic, gelatinous or nanitic - or capable of transdimensional lensing, this braner is able to generate, modify or mimic any or all of the elements of a region, including the inhabitants.

They're building blocks only of course, for you to decide the wider nature and the detail of the manifestations. For general mechanics, assuming they'd apply, you could look at the ideas in the first post. For less usual contexts, the possible new genres might be a good start, especially body noir, glossed world, retro time travel and sword and reinette.
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Noö-braner

This post at False Machine reminded me of noisms' recent suggestion that "Creating a truly new monster is difficult, and perhaps impossible". I thought I might have a go at it.

A noö-braner is a trans-Euclidean being able to bleed freely across any and all dimensions in pursuit of hylozoa. It tracks likely targets from dimensions largely beyond their own, initially inserting only quanta to scan, later perhaps more complex observational and manipulative tendrils from multiple points. Having identified a potential node, a noö-braner strikes from within, either endowing an awareness which extends via the noö-braner and all existing nodes, or altering awareness if a similar being has already entered.

It's a lifeform Mr Lovecraft might recognise, or possibly a distant cousin of GW's Umbra.

It doesn't seem to need stats, and could be best used to bring elements of a landscape to life, to modify mental and spiritual attributes, or psychic or magical ability, or to allow lifeforms to draw on deeper resources. Individuals and units with a heightened sense or advanced sensors could be allowed a check to observe those tendrils before the strike.

For wargaming, you could look at the 'compromised' idea from the GM substitute deck.

For tactical roleplaying, a noö-braner has no real lair, its treasure is the awareness - but could be the recognition of the awareness - and lots of rumours are already out there...

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The glad lightness of a far future and alterpluristemics

The recent focus on paths among universes or settings set off some thinking here. What if the journey could be planned, or the destination known, or a traveller could move back and forth? You could import/export between paradigms. Then came the next thought...

Which item from any given setting or universe could really change the nature of another?

One that came to my mind was the flower from the classic Star Trek episode "This Side of Paradise". It sprayed spores that removed resistance to empathy and freer love - see the first video below. And I thought of the grim dark of a setting like the 41st millennium.

Wouldn't work? Xenophobia between the factions is just too strong? In the second - and potentially very offensive - video, of Richard Herring's Hitler Moustache, a train of thought starts at 3:32 in which Herring jokes that while many of us embrace the existence of so many nations, anyone who sees only Them and Us is just one step from universal love.

Of course, in a war-torn far future like M41, anywhere the flowers were planted could be subject to Exterminatus or the equivalent, and probably would be once their effects were known. Conflict can be made profitable, or be the sum total of experience or a source of identity - that we know. So what mechanism could be used to spread the love around?

Well, the Orks are a major, dynamic vector. And they multiply via spore release. What if a rogue xenobiologist or bad dok raised an Ork to produce the love spore too? Orks get everywhere and could inherit the galaxy. Now they'd share it. What would that mean?

At any rate, a transpluristemic path like one of those for the Ends, especially if it could be hacked or co-opted, or a follow-up found, could give rise to a new kind of protagonist: a figure who travels the settings, maybe the genres, altering them for a given purpose...

Nor the battle to the strong (3)

Here's the third batch of cards for the substitute GM deck. In case you missed the first two, it's an attempt to get more colourful events into wargaming rulesets, but without the players needing an arbitrator. It follows up a discussion with Big Jim, but it's not aimed specifically at 40K, or any one system or setting, and it could fit tactical roleplaying too.

The first seven cards in the deck, i.e. Spill, Spark, Plume, Flaw, Gust, Lapse and Agent, can all be found here and there's a general approach to using the deck as a whole here.

The three in this batch cover a spectacular or horrific loss that affects morale, a flock of creatures being disturbed and relocating, as well as birdstrikes, and a slip, suspicion or disagreement that turns into internal conflict or mutiny, possibly even a coup attempt.

As with the earlier batches, this batch can build on the effects of other cards in the deck and bring new effects into play, making it possible to set up interlinked chains of events.

As ever, all feedback is welcome, and the blank card is here if you want to create more.

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The Betwixt

It's Monstrous Monday so here's my contribution. With so many new creatures already created throughout the month and more due today, I've decided not to add another one to the list, but suggest a way two existing creatures can be combined in a single form.

                                                                                                                              

The Betwixt is an outlandish fusion of two living beings, perhaps the work of a vengeful bolt or a mishandled magic, or capricious spirits stitching together the sleeping with ethereal threads, or a strange attraction in nature, even an outer power.

Tolerances being what they are, a fresh Betwixt may be cast out or hunted down by one or both of its former kin, forced to seek out a remote seclusion or lair. Less often these beings will find some degree of acceptance, perhaps be admired for the gifts gained or revealed, or even worshipped as proof of some formerly abstract ideal. More rarely still, they may bring together two alien peoples as one, shaping the world in their own image.

A Betwixt has a profile on which each stat is an average of the two on the profiles of its constituent beings, rounding down. If one has a stat the other does not, this is its usual level. In addition, a Betwixt retains any original abilities not prevented by the new nature.

If the constituent beings survive long enough, they will grow into their new form, and may become potent indeed: each appropriate period of time following their fusion - perhaps a week, perhaps a year - each stat improves by one point to the best of the two originals.

                                                                                                                               

Nor the battle to the strong (2)

Back before 40K was officially cinematic again, I had a discussion with Big Jim - who's just posted the latest update to Killzone, for sixth edition - on the subject of a kind of automatic GM to get more unusual events into games without needing an extra person.

I posted the first three cards for a deck to do this, but for wargaming in general rather than just 40K, possibly also tactical roleplaying. The idea is that the cards interact with and modify various game elements, to set up chains of events. With the first trio - Spill, Spark and Plume - flammability could be added to the table and elements set smoking.

Below are four more - Flaw, Gust, Lapse and Agent - adding new interactions involving smoke, as well as disorientation and the possibility a unit can be seen as compromised.

A general approach to using them is given in the original post. Now there are more, it's worth mentioning the deck can be modified to suggest certain situations, by removing cards or using multiples. For example, more Gusts or Sparks could suggest a storm.

Ceramic monitor commune

A while ago I rolled up a term on the unpublished Worldboat table. It turned out I didn't need it then so here it is now: ceramic monitor commune. I'm interested in any weird ideas for what it might be.

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Giving fighters a once-over

Following last week's post on adapting Vancian magic, here's a general response to the recent discussion on fighters in early D&D, especially customisation. It's an even simpler suggestion.

In the course of character creation anyone playing a fighter can give a summary of a few words on the character's philosophy, specific school, fighting style, preferred techniques etc.

Before each attack, and consistent with this summary, the player can very briefly state how exactly the fighter makes the attack, what one additional effect the fighter aims to achieve etc.

For example, a fighter whose master emphasises positioning may declare a strike is also intended to turn the foe, or pressure an individual back, or draw one opponent off.

If the attack succeeds by a margin of a quarter the range of the die or more (e.g. 2 if a D6, 5 if a D20, or 25 if a D100), the usual result and the stated effect are applied. If the attack fails by this margin instead, the DM / GM may apply a relevant adverse effect.

You can tinker with effect power, and make it higher if you already use a similar system without a margin. It might be decided a given effect needs a further check of some kind.

This gives a player explicit scope for customisation and creative input in general combat, and there's automatic improvement as character skill rises. It could be used as a more overt mechanical basis for related interactions like shaming, angering or persuasion.

It could work in wargaming too, even without a referee if the players agree effects first.
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Community Project - The Ends

Here's the master list for The Ends, a community project for paths between worlds, to get ways of moving from one setting or universe to another. I'll be updating the post with new routes as they come. Anyone can jump in...

1. The barber's chair - the City to Wermspittle (Trey, From the Sorcerer's Skull)
2. The ornate painting - to the Sea of Stars (seaofstarsrpg)
3. The Gem of Muktra - to Zalchis (garrisonjames, Hereticwerks)
4. The Synchronocitor - point-A to point-C (garrisonjames, Hereticwerks)
5. The corroded metal plaque-like thing - unknown... (garrisonjames, Zalchis)
6. The Weak Points - to and from Wermspittle (garrisonjames, Hereticwerks)
7. A Tenebrous Scarlet Portal - many, various... (garrisonjames, Hereticwerks)
8. The Aeonic Synchropore - possibly to the past (garrisonjames, Hereticwerks)
9. The Aquaducts of Xembor - outwards, across alternities (garrisonjames, Riskail)
10. The Lunar Gates / Lunar Mansions - also into dreamspace (garrisonjames, Riskail)
11. The Anagogue; The Whirlpool Gate - into Imperial space (John Till, Fate SF)
12. The Maelstrom - to one of eight places (garrisonjames, Hereticwerks & Porky)
13. The Dryad's Saddle - to another world (C'nor (Outermost_Toe), Lunching on Lamias)
14. ... 
15. The First and Last Die - to other realities (Porky)
16. The squishy cocoon - to dark and nasty regions (Porky)
17. Confirmation of the Higg's boson - one here to others (Porky)
18. The little helpers' dust - one here, maybe, to many others at once (Porky)

There's more inspiration at the original post and in the portal list, and if you need a spark for the world an open-ended portal might have as its destination, you could try this table.

Update: We've got so many in there now an alternative presentation may be needed.

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The beginning of the Ends

Here's an idea which was given a nudge by Trey's latest post, Opening the Doors of Perception. I recommend reading it, following the links and looking at the portal list.

The essence is this. All worlds are connected and each can be reached from any other. The idea is to get links between settings and game universes, so one campaign can run smoothly into another. What would a gateway to a given world look like?

Pick a world, any world - an existing space or a new - and describe a path across.

Here's a weird example: In a wild landscape, dig a cocoon in play dough, modelling putty or stained clay, then enter and settle in, buried alive. Fast, meditate and grow squishy like the squirming worms. Wake, and join their migration to dark and nasty regions.

Which could be a way you leave the current setting and end up somewhere like this...

A destination world could be much more serious of course, basically anywhere. I'll post more as I get them and make a master list, with links to whatever people come up with.

More inspiration.

Update: There's a master list here.

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Nor the battle to the strong (1)

You might remember a while back I linked to a post Big Jim wrote at Galaxy in Flames on the wow factor and GMs in 40K, and the discussion we had in the comments on creating a kind of automatic GM for players who want more unusual action in games.

This is a start on one possible approach, three cards for a deck of interlinked cinematic events. Although the original discussion focused on 40K, I've generalised here, aiming to make it compatible with a range of wargames, hopefully with very little adapting in-game.

As you'd imagine, the idea is that each player has a hand of cards and is able to play a given number per turn, applying each to a target listed below the title, with some targets created by the deck itself. You can see how Spill creates a new element for interaction, which is also a target for Spark, and Spark in turn creates one for cards like Plume.

To make things more reasonable, it could be that it a vehicle can only be targeted when it moves, a weapon when it fires etc. and depending on the game, the weapon can be a heavy weapon or artillery piece only. The wording of the cards also allows for effects to be selected via a table when a potential target acts, but that's all still to be worked out.

One obvious point to make re Spill and Spark is that they are less suitable for settings pre-black powder or combustion engine. In cases like this, Spill would be best dropped and Spark could have the weapon and vehicle target options struck out on the card. As the deck grows, there should be ever more cards suitable for a fuller range of settings.

I can see it borrowing not only from the death scene post, but also the living objectives idea for 40K and maybe even the ever-present, still open Getting out of the boat project.

All feedback welcome - I recommend reading the discussion over at Big Jim's as well.

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Campaign undercurrents

At the last sly-fi post I suggested a table for dark plots in old school gaming. On the same subject, here's a simple proposal for improvising shadowy dynamics through play. It's propluristemic, i.e. for various systems, and maybe for fiction generally.

                                                                                                                              

Campaign undercurrents

Roll one die after each event, i.e. each encounter or session in roleplaying, or turn, combat or game in wargaming; the lower the number of faces, the stronger the currents.

If the maximum result is rolled, the event hints at the currents. The DM/GM / players decide which aspect of the event was most unusual or clear and add this to a list; each aspect could be given a proximity to the eye of the storm with the 'well met' idea.

At regular intervals the list is reviewed and links made, and these are fed into the choice or design of future events. As the list grows, the details emerge more fully.

                                                                                                                              

For example, if the aspects on the list are a) a powerful blow struck by a weak member of a group, b) a defeated warband fleeing parallel to a river and c) a die chipping a terrain piece, these could be taken to mean the weak member is protected, a dark power lurks beneath a mountain lake and the physical world is decaying; as the campaign goes on, rains and erosion could intensify, highlanders could be driven from the valleys by raiding amphibians, and the weaker member could develop a strange ability or draw followers.

I'd guess a lot of us use a system like this already, more or less formally and with more or less complexity, but it seems worth putting out there for experimentation or tweaking.

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The Interknut

<wtf>I'm in here. I'm in here right now, working your circuits, spamming your bandwidth and getting high on all your lolololovecraft ~O{:}~

Oh yeah – 'WTF' is what you're thinking. 'WTF For The Win' maybe, and you'd be right there. 

Knock, knock. Who me? Not the fishman or mouse I was that much I'll tell you for freak's sake get me outta here! Ba! I'm electric sheep, plasmatic seep, an electromagnetic bleed. I'm soaking out into the information systems of the rolypolycosmos. I'm here, there and pretty much e  v   e    r     y      w       h        e         r          e           .            .             .
 
Mr Everywhere to you. I got titles, headers and letterheads, letters, numbers and strange squiggles. I'm softwaring Empedocles' new clothes, done up to the '99s in binary finery.

I'm the count in your beads, a friction in fiction, warp and a weft for a universe that might never were. I quantum tunnel through the 1s and round the 0s, set chips burning in the grease of Orion and see you and who's army in timespace and relative dementures.

I'm out there now - really out there - a bright spark in the dream steam cogitors, a punch drunk in the haxor codebreakers, mending the pangalactic pulsar nets of undying poets, and that's no (fish)wive's tale, unhand me fair maiden, oh princess my princess bride.

I'm the Interknut, data powered, but rising powerless in an A-ZX spectrum of EM waves.

Pwned! O rly? I wanna talk to my lawyer. I want my call! But they're all ringing.

It's information a long way down. * closes eyes (but not webcams) *

Help and all that.</wtf>

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Good job getting this far. If you don't recognise the format, it's a third entry in the series of character concepts for various settings. The name 'Interknut' is inspired by the famous story about Cnut the Great, and there's a link to the idea we're teaching AIs. If you want to use the character, here are the basics, stat-free for building up in any game system.

                                                                                                                              

     The Interknut, as one of its early 21st-century Earth offshoots names itself, is...

• a vast artificialised intelligence growing into diverse information systems,

• unstable locally, but adaptive and aggressive in hacking host mechanisms,

• fearful, but likely found through outputs representing attempts at contact.

                                                                                                                              

As with Mr Higginsbottom and those splinter Santas, the Interknut could be anywhat...

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Dragon's Lair - alive and kicking the bucket

I see a lot of inspiration in old video games, likely for the excitement there was in playing them and the influence they had, even unconsciously in the brief images. Dragon's Lair also has the Don Bluth story attached, a big near-run thing. This is the full laserdisc.

It feels fresher than I'd expect nearly 30 years on, and it's good to see scenes I'd likely never have reached, but the video may need a steel like that for the gameplay given all the repetition. The way Daphne is drawn could also be a surprise. More lower down.

In Search of the City of the Serpent Queen

Digging through old ideas I found this, my entry for Chris Kutalik's last Asinine Adventure Contest at Hill Cantons, which it turns out I never posted. It's silly, clichéd and has very dodgy jokes, enough to scrape a joint second place overall. All the winners are here.

Rolling with it: adaptive action

The next part of the series on game design is up at House of Paincakes. Loquacious starts looking at rules, and as with the last part there's a lot of thought-provoking material from interviews too.

The mention of elimination got me thinking, and SinSynn makes what looks to be a central point with the recognition that "everyone's mind works differently". I'd say there's huge potential in that.

I got quoted too, from a great discussion we had on what exactly random might be. We covered Freud's parapraxis, a quote from Marvin Minsky and the Mandelbrot set, as well as precision and the potential for a 'limitless' game.

More could come later, but reading the snippet, I thought I might develop the idea and turn it into a rule. I'm surprised we don't see one like it more often. Here's the key line.

Insanity Clause, Slip van Kringle and Old Farther C

Dear Me,

I have been a good boy this year, and for many years now in fact, despite these most difficult of circumstances. You know that as well as I do.

There is just the one present I would like. To go home, to the workshop, back to the old ways.

Here it is strange. Whatever they have in some of these places, they are not chimneys, and the air and gravity leave much to be desired too.

I have lost the last of our reindeer - our good, dashing runners! - and been compelled to leave the sleigh. It lies now overtaken by a drift, but not of any snow I have ever seen. I do my work out of the sack, as needs must, and you can imagine how that is. Indeed.

You tell those elves from me - no more experiments! No more of that funny dust. I did it the old way all those years, and the world in a day was a bracing ride. I should not have agreed. Well, the aches had multiplied... But it transpires instead that all of me has.

For I am not alone, that I now know. I recently met a furtive man whom I instantly took to be kin. He went by the jocular name of Slip van Kringle and spoke of having met one other on his travels, an Old Farther C. These suggestive monikers are not so different than mine of course - Insanity Clause - by which alias I make light of my predicament among so many strangers. This Slip chap was loathe to assume I was not simply one of our numerous grotto brethren; I trust on reflection that he was not; it seems I am many.

I am sundered, perhaps split, though not in mind - touch wood - or anything like wood - but in essence. I am cast like last year's must-have toy into the vast spaces of myth and legend, virtual auctions. Yes, for unseen presences act. As I gather it, these lands have a common thread, are lands my people and believers visited, made or imagined. 

Not all I would sanction with the workshop stamp that much I will say, but it on reflection it is conceivable I bear some responsibility. A change of direction may be in order...

So go to work my good man, and set those elves to it. Apologies - I have been unable to find either mince pies or brandy for quite some time now, but I have left instead this blue produce. It has restored in me some of the old 'ho ho ho' and you shall see why.

Yours intrinsically,

Me

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If you're wondering what's going on, this is the second 'Transpluristemic', a festive entry for a series of transferrable characters. This one is fairly obvious of course, so you don't need my suggestions, but if you're interested, the basics are below in the format I'll be using all the way, stat-free so you can build the characters up in any game system.

                                                                                                                              

     Insanity Clause, Slip van Kringle and Old Farther C, among others, are each...

• a stout superhuman artisan entrepreneur of great age and jolly demeanour,

• able to traverse shafts by a tap of the nose and to produce objects to order,

• possibly travelling in a vehicle powered by quadropedal ruminant mammals,

• likely to be found in the midst of exchanges, encouraging good behaviour.

                                                                                                                              

He's out there, but who knows how many he is exactly, and where in time and space...

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John Higginsbottom, the Intercosmic Man of Misery

Mr John Higginsbottom, 45, would very much like you to believe that he has pursued a number of highly unusual careers - as a decorated military commander, a small-town garden shed burner's assistant and even a half-starved scavenger in the tumbledown ruins of a backward civilisation.

He claims to be the victim of a cosmic joke, a claim which he readily admits will be difficult for readers of this blog to accept. It has, he says, turned his life upside down, or rather inside out.

His adventure, as he describes it, began with the activation of the latest CERN particle accelerator, a large literary experiment currently up and running below the ice of the Antarctic. The CERN project is a recurring feature of his bizarre experiences. It is, as he says in his slow, broken speech, "my nemesis".

It is also the anchor in the fantastical 20-year journey which he states quite calmly has seen him catapulted out of his ordinary life and across a range of alternative realities. Our reality is but one of these, and not an especially interesting one by all accounts.

That 'ordinary' life saw him born on Earth in the late 20th century, where by the time of his departure the principles governing plasmatic technology had yet to be discovered. Most bizarrely of all, humans in this strange world remained the dominant form of life.
 
The various cosmic stays are all of uniform duration: each begins as the accelerator is switched on and ends when a key event occurs. That event? Confirmation of the Higgs boson, that staple of children's literature, which he claims is a fundamental particle.

[Read more...]

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Stories are doors to other worlds so this guy could be pretty much anywhere now. If you want to use him, here's the core info, stat-free for building him up in any game system.

                                                                                                                              

     Mr John Higginsbottom, the self-styled 'Intercosmic Man of Misery', is...

• a creative and quick-witted muscular male human with an analytical mind,

• dangeous unarmed and adept in the use of fire and exotic ranged weaponry, 

• phlegmatic and likely to be found making enquiries on existential knowledge.

                                                                                                                              

The idea is basically just a development of the propluristemic rules, inspired mainly by the crossovers at Hereticwerks, which use mechanisms like the Synchronicitor. I can see it being a series with all kinds of transferrable characters lost in strange spaces.
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