Wonderland - Jags

(of course they may be doing heretical things like exploring the lower
realities, and if you don’t go along that doesn’t help you).
Most people believe that other groups with slightly different philosophies
are trying to spot these survivor-types and lure them in. Thus, new
members (or senior members who have been “turned”) may be accused
of being ‘spotters’ or “fishers” for new, incoming people who might meet
the survivor-profile (no one knows what this is—they don’t understand
Survival Traits—but the fear that someone else may have figured it out
drives the paranoia).
Thus, sometimes, new members are carefully scrutinized by the senior
membership to see if they may have “unwholesome” allegiances to
other groups.
The Underground, Game Designers Notes
Why’d we put it in the game? Why all the detail if they’ve (essentially)
got it wrong? There are a few reasons why we’ve included The
Underground and wanted to share them so that you’d see how we
formulated it.
1. It makes sense.
Certainly something like it would form. There’s enough poppsychology
out there that people who were having (at least in the
beginning) mild experiences would assume they were going crazy
rather than that those experiences were real. We think the various
Underground groups represent a variety of approaches to the problem
that would naturally “spring up.”
2. The Underground is a tool for organizing PCs
Anyone can show up at an Underground meeting and, because they
put new members together, it’s a tool for forming a “support group
of PC’s” who can have experiences together. This is a fairly obvious
use of the group. That said, we advise that the Wonderland Game
may be more powerful when more personally organized around a
certain theme (i.e. there are things happening in Wonderland that
are relevant to the PC’s more strongly than ‘you all meet at a group
meeting and start having adventures together.’) Still, it shouldn’t be
discounted.
3. It’s a ‘gateway drug.’
While the Underground doesn’t offer PCs solutions at its lower
levels, it does have “hooks” into the bigger conspiracies. Someone at
a Support Group might know someone at a Walden who has actual
information the characters could use. The Upper Echelon members
are certainly manipulating the Underground for their own purposes
(and this is explained more in the next section) and the Underground
is sort of the “public” front for these people.
4. It’s a source of conflict!
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Deeper Mysteries - Mental Health