The Forge Archives

Setting: A curious mix of an outside view of America with a certain vacant, hokey pleasantness, and an inside view of supernatural intrigue with a flavor of traditional horror stories, superimposed on painfully torid history.

Sorcerors: People with knowledges or expiereince with psychic-phenomena, and is therefore able to call up Psychic Residue.

Rituals: Rituals are a very internal, often unconcious process of converting an extreme emotion or desire into psychic energy. However, they may be performed as snap-shots without penalty.

Demons: Psychic Residue, the ripples of psychic energy from the mind. They are created with immense psychological desire, and are strongly defined by their Needs and Desires. they often appear as geometric shapes or shadowy, misshapen representive forms, their susbtance ranges from an invisble enrgy, to glowing streaks, to a kind of thick and fine smoke.

Humanity is being responsible with your emotions, which in turn means, your psychic energy. It is not only a psychological status but also a meter of how much psychic energy the characters retain.

Humanity loss comes from expressing your feelings freely which results in harming others.

Humanity gain comes from treating extremely provactive situations with grace and cool.

The result of a character at Humanity 0, the characters get the option of either
A)Letting that last psychic energy go, and resign your life to a semi-lobotomied state, "Things are going to start going a lot slower around here."

or

B) Going with it, and becoming an uneasy mix of Psychic Residue and actual person.

Two paticular sorcerous technicalities are in focus, Abondoned Psychic Residue and Psychic Vampires.

Abondoned psychic residue is bound but somehow out of contact with it's master, and therefore require to be in a good posistion for their need to be fuffilled automaticlly. Very similar to ghosts in horror stories.

Psychic Vampires are people who desire Humanity, typically because they are unable to be responsible with their use of psychic energy or emotional outbursts. They arrive at this through absorbing the psychic residue(Banishing) of others, and their posits moral quandries of if what they do is ultimately good, or if they just drive others to spend more of their psychic energy, lowering their Humanity.

(An intereasting note is, the supernatural stuff is culled from a bunch of conversation with people into psychic-phenomenom-stuff, which I'd call total bullshit, but the premise is one of the most relevant issues in my life.)

Twin Peaks, IOW? Or very close to it?

Mike

I've never seen Twin Peaks(Have the DVDs, too busy with other stuff.) So I wouldn't know. Tell me about the connection?

Never seen...

You have the DVDs, but haven't watched them? I can only suggest doing so now. Twin Peaks is, to me, the pinacle of achievement in the TV medium.

You're not talking about the movie(s?), are you? Watch the TV series. All of it.

Twin Peaks is a curious mix of an outside view of America with a certain vacant, hokey pleasantness, and an inside view of supernatural intrigue with a flavor of traditional horror stories, superimposed on painfully torid history.

OK, actually it's not precisely that, but it's so close that anything else is a quibble. Without spoiling anything, it's one titanic mystery about a murder in a small town. It goes to extraordinary lengths to point out the "weirdness" that lies just beneath the veneer or normalness in such a place. And that includes all sorts of questionably psychic/magic stuff much of which deals with echos of the past. And these echos haunt people, propel them to do things. That is, you're never sure if any of it is real, or just psychological, but it all very much matches your "psychic residue" idea. Much of it is quite, quite surreal. Red curtained rooms with dwarfs who speak backwards.

As far as hokey pleasantness - all I can say is donuts, man, donuts. And pie.

It is the source material for this game you're planning. Note that others have explicitly done one-sheet's before, IIRC, for Twin Peaks Sorcerer. Be careful for spoilers, however. You really don't want this one ruined for you. Did I mention that it's creator is David Lynch?

Mike

I'm with Mike, staring in awe. You wrote this one-sheet without Twin Peaks as a direct influence? Sirogit, you are awesome.

Use the "crime" concept from The Sorcerer's Soul, in terms of setting up a relationship map and its specific role for Humanity, and you'll be golden.

Best,
Ron

Yeah, before looking at that one-sheet, I wouldn't have known what to do humanity as. But his definition is perfect. It's all of the out-of control people who are problematic in Twin Peaks, and Agent Cooper, through is complete and total calmness that represents the peak of humanity. Oh, he's a Sorcerer, too. But he's not succumbing to his demons.

Come clean, you're having us on (as the Brits would say). There's no way this is random, or even some Zeitgiest effect.

Mike

Ron:

Thanks! That's a great compliement coming from you.

Mike:

I swear I have never seen Twin Peaks. I also need no convincing to see it as I've seen every one of David Lynch's other films. It's just that I'm in the middle of two books, midterms, writing both Sex & Robots and a slew of short stories, job-hunting, parties, two games, etc etc. I plan to start watching it in two weeks or so.

Towards the inspiration for the sheet, I'd have to site four srouces.

1)Thinking about several "Multiple supernatural thing" rpgs such as WoD, Witchcraft, Etc, and thinking "Hey, its a neat idea, but it usually seems a touch lame, it'd be better if they had a unified theme."

2)Talking with (hippie) friends about their beliefs in psychic phenomena towards ghosts, which always shuts off a serious part of my brain and makes me start messing around conceptially, and it occured to me that this would be neat in an RPG, espicially with how many ideas could fall under it.

3) The "Pleasant hokeyness" is an attempt to get away from the whole "Dark City" motif which I felt would make this too similar to alot of previous settings. Its a very common Lynchian element but I was thinking of other sources morever.

4)The Humanity definition is 100% from my own day to day stuff, which I have been noodling about as a Humanity-scheme for awhile, and just thought that it fit very well with the psychic residue theme.

Righty then! Influences aside, what kinds of things can we discuss here to help you prep for this? Is this, in fact, planned for actual play?

Best,
Ron

Very much for actual play, I've got two people sized up right now, looking around for a third, shooting for a few weeks from now to play.

First thing I'd like help would be: Descriptors! I'd want to take most of them from the default list, but add a few like Unnatural Birth, Witness for Lore, and Psycho, Cool for Will.

I'm abit confused on how to go about the Soul "Crime" idea - To my understanding, Its advice on how to extract the novel's Humanity definition, in which case might be different than the Humanity definition I've chosen - Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong. In any case, could you suggest a good specific book for a relationship map?

Decsriptors:

Stamina:
Clean Living
Scrapper
Hardened
Hopped-Up
Rough Job

Will:
Ragefull and Vengefull
Social Competence
User/Manipulative
Do-Gooder
Brush with the Unknown
Intimadting

Lore:
Apprentice
Solitary Adept
Coven
Mad
Naif

Too few/narrow maybe?

Good on Stamina and Will. But for Lore, I'd say that you'd want to tailor to the psychic residue idea. That is, Sorcery here doesn't seem to be about reading from musty tomes, etc. Not that this is what's neccessarily meant by "Adept," but I'm thinking more like Jared's Cronenburg ideas for Schism would be appropriate.

How about stuff like:
Anguished
Frenzied
Surreality Surfer

Basically heightened states of emotion that the sorcerer uses to tap into the psychic residue.

Mike

It's not about reading dusty old tomes though. Its about interaction with other sorcerers(or lack there of), and I think its a way too juicey scheme to pass up.

So, the lore descriptors that you have are supposed to deal with the character's social station amongst these sorcerers? Is that what you're saying?

If so, then how about:
Student
Loner
Association
Mad (this one stays the same)
Outsider

These match up on a one for one basis with those that you had.

I'd also add Stranger. Here's what they'd mean:

Student - learns how to do what he does from another sorcerer
Loner - known by the local sorcerers, but keeps to himself
Association - the PTA, or whatever club that serves as the cover for the trading of info on how to use psychic residue
Mad - too crazy to deal with, get their "knowledge" from being insane
Outsider - doesn't know where the power comes from and doesn't realize that others have it
Stranger - knows that associations exist, but they don't know he does probably because he's from somewhere else

About right? Agent Cooper is, of course, an Outsider with a lore of 1. Clean Living for Stamina, and Do-Gooder for Will. :-)

Mike

Just announcing that all signs are go for this game going on next Saturday.

I've suddenly sweetened up on your Lore descriptors Mike, so I think I'm going for:

Apprentice
Loner
Group
Mad
Outsider

I'm taking the Relationship Map from The Moving Target, and a small, rural, schizophrenicly-middle-califournia town.