Story - Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Society collapsed. People had said that megacorperations like Wal-Mart would dominate the world. People, for better or worse, were right.

Its hard to find any individual to blame.
Could you blame former president Bush? Most definitely.
How ‘bout 400 years of industrialized pollution? Go for it.
Marketing Bureaucrats? Sunday Paper? China? You Betcha.

A guy I knew before hand had said something about it back when I was working in an office. He was the real Geek; a movie buff I think. He had said something was going to go down. He was talking about an overpopulation of energies in the cosmos or something.

As it were, one Sunday morning, a few Americans woke up, while most of them didn’t. We still don’t know why it happened – exactly when it started or exactly what caused it, but then again our lead scientist wears a colander on his head. His big suspicion is alien influence.

It was a strange world to wake up to, no media telling us what to care about; the hive mind - silenced. I expected chaos storming the streets, riots people with big trucks and bigger guns. There was nothing. Lights stayed on, water was running. Surviving was easy. Life was easy. There were about ten of us in the community, out of a suburb of around 5000.

A few weeks later, I had my first sighting. It was one of the strays that I had seen on the way to work now and again. It was chewing on what looked like a leathery boot, mulling around the old Spaulding fiber factory. Driving by there was something strange about it; it had looked out of place. I took off in a hurry when it got up to chase me. It was about the size of my Saturn. I lost it when I hit the open road. Soon after, I had switched on the radio. I don’t remember much after that.

An Aside; Why am I writing this?

Why am I writing this?

I've thought about this long and hard, and while i couldn't find the answer for myself, Chris from group pointed out exactly what I was trying to find. The purpose of the game in its entirity.

First and formost, my reason for gaming is to have fun. From there I've found that I'm out to prove i'm not just another gamer, that my ideas have merit. Finally, and probably most importantly, I want to have my time in the sun.

This is the thing I want to base my game around. Everyone should be having fun, every person should be able to prove that their ideas are solid, and have their time where they are the most important person on the screen. It doesn't have to be long either. These are the rewards that need to be imparted.

From there, the story can go either way. Many of the complications will be dropped. The deal with teen angst, gone. The deal with only being music, gone.

I want players to take something that they are passionate about and turn it into something that says something about themselves. If I can accomplish that, then there is very little that will stop me.

Awakening and Corruption

AWAKENING

When your gauge reaches certain points, you Awaken for a short amount of time.

When your character awakens, it taps into the collective unconscious. Normally it becomes animalistic or elemental in nature. Unrestrained, an awakened person acts as corrupted. They attack everything and everyone around them. When Awakened, a player takes on characteristics of their style and channels energy from the collective unconscious through the music.

After a short amount of time, the power subsides and your character passes out. After each awakening, it becomes easier to become corrupted.

CORRUPTION

Any time a character awakens; it has a chance of becoming corrupted. When this happens, the player loses control of their character. The character awakens as normal, but the awakening is channeled through another style. Usually, the Awakened character will rampage and try to kill everything around it. When the awakening ends, scars on the skin to mark the event.

Dice Mechanics

DICE MECHANIC

You roll the dice (2 d6) to perform an action that involves risk or immediate danger.

Option 1) Conflict Resolution - The more rare the roll (2 or 12 being a ‘legendary’ action.), the more control you gain over the situation. The thing being risked is the intention of the specific task.

Example 1) Player is gathering supplies in an old office building. He spots a supply closet across the room. There is a gaping hole in the floor covered by a plank. He takes his roll.

Result 1) Player rolls a 6. He states that he walks across a beam that leads to the other side of the pit and grabs the supplies. DM interjects; No, while Player is walking back, he loses his balance, he slips. His hands are full so he doesn’t catch himself, so he falls into the office space below.

Result 2)Player Rolls a 10. He states that he walks across a beam that leads to the other side of the pit and grabs the supplies. Player then finds an album in a milk crate. Player can use it after he puts it on his Playlist or finds a turntable.

Result 3) Player rolls a 2. He states that he walks across a beam that leads to the other side of the pit and grabs the supplies. DM interjects; Yes and the Player then finds a song and adds it to his Playlist. He also sees a red light on top of a tower in the distance.

Option 2) Task Resolution – Rolling common represents failure. Rolling rare represents success. The thing being risked is the specific task.

Example 1) Player is in combat. He stabs a Gremlin with a shard of broken glass. He rolls to attack.

Result 1) Player rolls 3, he stabs the Gremlin and deals an indeterminate amount of damage.

Result 2) Player rolls 8 and hits nothing but air.

Option 3) The undecided combination of the two. Conflict resolution deciding all non-combat procedure as well as about half of the combat procedure, and task resolution covering Awakening.

Fleshing it out mechanics.

STORY

Collective unconscious, sometimes misgiven as collective subconscious, is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, humanity and all life forms, that is the product of ancestral experience and contains such concepts as science, religion, and morality.

At the turn of the century, weird stuff started to happen. In some places, people started turning into stone, other places, they turned into zombies. Giant monsters burrowed up from the ground, animals and wildlife dominated areas and transformed into terrible angry beasts.

The collective unconscious runs deeper than Carl Jung ever imagined. There is an energy that ties everyone together. When people started dropping off, other creatures tapped into it and were corrupted. The only ones who remained were the young and outcast, people so severely detached from the collective unconscious that it couldn't effect them. These were teenagers specifically, Metalheads, Alt-Rockers, Goths, HipHoppers and Ravers.

Communities of these people are forming in places across America. Discoveries have been made about the nature of music, and that through the use of music, a survivor can safely tap into the collective unconscious in order to defend themselves. The process is exhausting, physically demanding and psychologically corrosive, but in a crunch, It could save your life.

CHARACTER SHEET

Character sheets consist of a name, a style, a short description or backstory, lists of characteristics, Items, Spells and Play-List, and a gauge.

DICE MECHANIC

You roll the dice (2 d6) whenever you perform an action while in immediate danger. The low DC is 6, medium DC is 4 or 8, High DC is 3 or 11. If you roll extremely high (12) or low (2) your action is considered awesome. Your gauge goes up.

AWAKENING

When your gauge reaches certain points, you can Awaken for a short amount of time and you get a song. One person should be able to awaken at least once per encounter.

Awakening puts you into a narrative position. Your character taps into the collective unconscious, their eyes glow like a god's, their form becomes elemental or animalistic in nature and when channeled through music, they take on characteristics of their style. You overcome the obstacle and decide how it happens. Your influence only lasts until the end of the song. During an awakening, you are defining your powers. If you collect enough inspiration, you can spend these to grab a power that you had used while you had awakened.

When your awakening is over, your character passes out and is considered helpless.

SONGS

When you get a song, you take something from the title,lyrics or subject. You can spend points from your gauge to keep something from that song. It may be an item, a characteristic or a spell.

Not all lyrics can be used as spells, you may not be able to use every song. In that case, the song becomes recycled into inspiration. These are points that can be used to enhance current spells or characteristics.

If you draw the same song a second time, the characteristic or spell you chose becomes more powerful.

CORRUPTION

Any time a player gains a characteristic or spell, they have a chance of becoming corrupted. When this happens, they lose control of their character for a certain amount of time.

DM NOTES

• Durring each encounter, at least 1 person should awaken. An awakening should mark the climax of the encounter.
  Characters should be given enough risks to take in and out of combat in order for
• Players to go home with 3 or 4 songs in their play-list.
  Default gauge levels set at prime numbers after 2. So 3,5,7,11 and so on.
  Characters will be spending a certain amount of time in survival mode. This consists of gathering supplies, finding music and completing tasks. Encounters only creep up once in a while. There should be enough danger without incorporating enemies.
• Encounters say something about the area. If its an office, it might be corperate zombies. If its suburbia it might be wildlife reclaiming its domain. If its arazona, it might be giant sand worms. The monsters you throw in there should be derivative of things that already exist.
  
• Players who are reading this even though you shouldn't be - Animals, beasts, other people, kitchen appliances, what have you, are just as corruptible as you are, but you have music as a tool to help you handle it.
  

Side note: Character sheets are to be stylized to look like notebook paper that's been doodled on. This can be easily rectified by simply creating characters on notebook paper and doodling on it.