Wonderland - Jags

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Deeper Mysteries - Overview 36 Welcome to Wonderland “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” --The Mad Hatter, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Because there’s a ‘b’ in both and and an ‘n’ in neither. --Alodus Huxley Welcome to Section 2. We’re getting deeper now. This section discusses what Wonderland is and some decisions the players will want to make about the game they’re playing. By that we mean stuff like whether the focus is on the horror of going crazy or on the exploration of a new reality. Stuff like how empowered the characters are and just how dark the game will get. Important stuff like that. So, let’s go! Unsanity JAGS Wonderland is a surreal game of personal horror: it’s a game where in the basic format your character is Infected by Wonderland and goes insane—well, Unsane, because it’s really real and it can really kill you. This section explains the secrets of the universe, how Unsanity works, and how to do magic.
If you’re gonna play Wonderland, you have an option not to read this section and discover it during play. ‘Course, you can choose to peek behind the curtain and see what you’re in for: that’s fine too. There’s still another section of deeper secrets you can choose to hold out on. Either way, this is how you lose your mind. Making Unsanity Fun The challenge of roleplaying horror is how to generate the kind of thrilling fear that one gets when reading a scary story or watching a cool, frightening movie while still empowering players to have their decisions matter in a game. In a movie, you can revel in the rising tension as the girl creeps closer to the shut closet door that we know has a monster behind it—because we can’t do anything about it. It’s a movie. In an RPG, she might be dousing the door with gasoline and tossing a match at it from across the room. That’s cool too. So we wanted to give you (that’s GMs and Players both) a toolkit to work with that generates the JAGS Wonderland experience. In order to do this, we have defined several mechanics (Triggers, Episodes/Descent, Notice, Twists and Insights, and Mastery) that can be tweaked in order to produce the kind of game you want. We’ve also given you several pages of our thoughts about how a variety of “standard” (canonical) and “more unusual” games might go. You can check ‘em out. But before we started in with this—or indeed, any explanation we wanted to talk about the basic Unsanity Experience—right here, up front—so you know what you’re reading about. Unsanity and The Schizophrenic Episode When you are Infected with Wonderland (‘Unsane’) you are slowly losing your grip on reality. Unlike insanity (although a lot of people go insane too) this doesn’t mean you are losing your sense of logic and proportion: it means logic and proportion are losing their sense of you. You are sliding down through the cracks of reality and, as your Unsanity gets worse, you fall deeper and stay down longer. These ‘slips’ are called “having an Episode” in the language of the Underground (the loose network of people who are Infected and have some sense of what is going on). When you “have an Episode” you drop down through the chessboards of reality. But you don’t vanish from the real world. No: you sort of leave behind a shell, called a Reflection, that kinda acts like you (it mimics what you’re really doing as much as it can) and most people think it’s you, and that you’re losing your mind. The ‘personal horror’ aspect of the game comes from having characters battling with this bizarre condition (and, possibly, losing their family and No live organism can continue for long to exist under conditions of absolute reality. - Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House 37 Deeper Mysteries - Overview
Page 1 and 2: LOOKING-GLASS MAKER 1 Introduction
Page 3 and 4: Cycle 55 Trigger 55 Depth 55 Notice
Page 5 and 6: 110 The Linear Maze 110 Topology 11
Page 7 and 8: Effects Of Unbelieving 213 Manageme
Page 9 and 10: A WORLDBOOK OF ABSURD HORROR FOR TH
Page 11 and 12: ine them imagining that you can ima
Page 13 and 14: gauge-energy experiment had somethi
Page 15 and 16: Outer Circle that the team was now
Page 17 and 18: eport itself failed to alert the Co
Page 19 and 20: Characters range from normal people
Page 21 and 22: People who are Infected as a group
Page 23 and 24: the first person to change their mi
Page 25 and 26: “Pills don’t work. They can dul
Page 27 and 28: “That’s what we call it, anyway
Page 29 and 30: and configuration standing like sil
Page 31 and 32: have a hard time infecting anyone i
Page 33 and 34: MOONEY: “He’s in the program. N
Page 35: get them open or they’re locking
Page 39 and 40: going crazy or on drugs. The damage
Page 41 and 42: Reality Is Composed of Eight Chessb
Page 43 and 44: an Episode? You see all your friend
Page 45 and 46: Chessboard Two Some of it looks lik
Page 47 and 48: The Stages of CPD CPD is said to ha
Page 49 and 50: themselves Shadows are caricatures
Page 51 and 52: I stood in the room as Christina lo
Page 53 and 54: the building you could step through
Page 55 and 56: Avg. Length This is a very rough ti
Page 57 and 58: Descent to Chessboard One Level of
Page 59 and 60: taking chances for Controlled Desce
Page 61 and 62: Usually the GM will call for WIL ro
Page 63 and 64: Notice: Something’s Looking for Y
Page 65 and 66: TwistedTwisted One can’t look int
Page 67 and 68: it’s a bizarre maze you are trapp
Page 69 and 70: 69 Deeper Mysteries - Overview
Page 71 and 72: On Chessboard Three It’s even mor
Page 73 and 74: Chessboard Four At this point Disas
Page 75 and 76: There are several gradients of the
Page 77 and 78: Minor Disassociation: At this level
Page 79 and 80: Reflection Disassociation vs. Actio
Page 81 and 82: Disassociate but the break would be
Page 83 and 84: People’s Shadows say and do deepl
Page 85 and 86: But what if you’re Disassociated?
Page 87 and 88:
The Crest of the Fin: Monsters Down
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Imagine you’re out at night and t
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GM’s Notes on Mastery The gaining
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For a high-empowerment game we sugg
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Advanced [4] Description: The chara
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Avoiding Disassociation: The Standa
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Situation Depth Character is in fea
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Mastery Level Modifier Novice -2 Pr
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Technique Modifiers -1 to the roll
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little work or an excuse (“I had
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Notice Roll This roll is made when
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there are some pieces of advice for
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Topology ‘At any rate I’ll neve
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currency the character has. There a
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The Major Organizations Project Pag
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1. What is going on below the surfa
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that those workmen are taking a lot
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Mostly. Because there are some exce
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123 Deeper Mysteries - Chessboards
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125 Deeper Mysteries - Chessboards
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Name: The Orange Peel Men WHIRL PHY
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Name: InNetwork Physicians WHIRL PH
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The GM should determine if there ar
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Chessboard Two: The Empty Places Th
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1 st Metro Bank Offices Sane-Abando
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AbandonedOne of the trends that hap
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andomness without any help from the
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safeguards though. Believers There
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Construction On Chessboard Two thin
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go, it’ll return to its origin an
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A strange, thriving greenery has be
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The standard of living is reliably
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In a Wonderland home on Chessboard
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Wild Things It is said that Chessbo
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Wonder Clouds The brilliant mother-
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In the Garden of Uden there are ros
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Name: Lucky Quarter Description: A
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e doing and if they choose not to d
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Ecology Chessboard Four has the Wil
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and one might find that a series of
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Twisted Twistedness is the sometime
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The GM Determines When These Happen
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But he doesn’t. Gary is experienc
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Weight and Grapple: These are the s
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Slightly Affected [-1] The player w
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that attack. If a character has a P
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Black Wings Cost [Size] Trait: The
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Effect: You have massive stained-gl
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Effect: You are shrunken and your m
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Effect: The character’s forearms
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Illustrated Cost 2 Trait: You’ve
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Luminous Cost 1 Trait: There is som
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Pachyderm Cost 10 Trait: The charac
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Ragged Cost 4 Trait: You’ve been
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Ridges Cost 5 Trait: You’ve got a
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Effect: Your skin is slick and limb
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Effect: You appear grotesquely thin
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Damage The Underground knows that s
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Rituals Cost -2 Defect: The charact
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Society, The Mental Health System,
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The Underground The Underground (as
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Their approach to Infection is to t
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Instead, the leaders of the Undergr
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the subject who often leaves after
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(of course they may be doing hereti
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Therapist or Counselor This is a ge
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eport you, and the officer on the s
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might employ in a asylum-based horr
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223 Deeper Mysteries - Mental Healt
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Do the Characters Start Infected? A
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haunted house, when the monsters ju
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That’s very bleak—and intention
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How To Control Empowerment How char
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Dr. Faustus You are an explorer in
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Inquisitive Innocence [2] Descripti
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Linear Maze, The The Linear Maze is
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