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The Hollow Earth, an Accidental Discovery...
After some recent violence the interim supervisor has summoned your team to rework an Info Gathering Operation involving magic using reality deviants!
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$25.00
/ Session
Details
1 player following this game
Weekly / Saturday - 12:00 AM UTC
Session Duration / 2.5–3.5 hours
3 / 5 Seats Filled
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Meet your party members
3/5
About the adventure
Complete loyalty is the norm. Reality deviants are the enemy. Your Construct is a family. This is the propaganda you've been fed all your life... you were quite literally made for this. You are Operatives in the Technocratic Union, which is currently in control of our world's consensus, or belief system. Recent violence involving the death of your former Supervisor has led to a reorganization of your local offices by the Chicago Symposium. You have been assigned a new, interim, Supervisor who has seen fit to transfer you to a new team. You've been assigned to an information gathering operation, possibly involving some magic using reality deviants. We need your help to maintain the consensus!
Game style
Roleplay Heavy
Puzzle / Mystery Focused
Theater of the Mind
Combat Heavy
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(36)
3 years on StartPlaying
263 games hosted
Highly rated for: Beginner Friendly, Knows the Rules, Creativity
About me
Welcome, if there is a better time which you have available to get something started, please let me know, I am widely for now! Working to become a full-time storyteller this year has been a wonderfully rewarding challenge so far. I feel privileged to be able to grow and learn with my players through each story we weave together! I hope to have the opportunity to create some stories with you as well. Ready to play some games? Let's make some characters, roll some dice and have some fun! As somewhat of a philosopher, I believe that on a deeper level part of our characters and other things we create may be as reflections of ourselves in many ways. The fantasies that we create can embrace a lot about who we are in real life. They can represent some of the many things we desire to accomplish, learn or experience. The fights we want to win and the values we wish to cherish or reject. A roleplaying game gives us the opportunity to do so safely in a comfortable, relaxed space which can enable such fantasies! My intention is to enable a sacred, safe place for our imaginations to roam freely, where each of us can play off and with each other in harmony. Where we can grow and make friends. Make and receive our offers. I first fell in love with tabletop roleplaying games one Christmas back when I was almost eight years old. My neighbors had received the Basic Box Set for D&D and asked my older brother and I to play with them. I was instantly obsessed and we played for the rest of our vacation together! I had already begun designing worlds and maps and swiftly fell into the role of rotating game masters. We gathered as many interested friends as we could find and pull all-nighters just playing. We explored a lot of different systems before I ever worked my way through college. I had a bit of hiatus during the twenty-teens and came back, now online, around New Years Eve in '22.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
We will have a session 0 and work together to build your character to fit with this group well, starting with concept and working our way towards beliefs and practices. We will establish themes and expectations as well as safety. We will have a Prelude during that session as well, to help orient your character through this scenario!
Currently we are under Antarctica, trapped in a Hollow Earth! Encountering things like dinosaurs while discovering secrets and trying to make our way back above ground! The average Technocrat does not view himself as a fascist monstrosity but as a savior working for the common good. The undeniable benefits of technological uplift – running water, antibiotics, reliable supplies of food and other necessities, increased equality, and many other things – prove the rightness of the Technocratic cause. The Technocracy exists not to oppress humanity but to elevate it. Beyond the need to protect humanity from the many horrors of its world, the Technocracy has a grander purpose: to uplift us to a greater state, purging the animal flaws that chain us to a world of hate, fear, and ignorance. That, truly, is the foundation of the Technocratic ideal, and it’s a vision that the group’s rivals refuse to see. We will try to follow the Six Precepts of Damian (loosely of course!): 1)Bring stasis and order to the universe. Predictability brings safety. Once all is discovered and all is known, Unity will be won. 2)Convince the Masses of the benevolence of science, commerce and politics, and of the power of rationality. Conflict and suffering will be eliminated in our Utopia. 3)Preserve the Gauntlet and the Horizon (the Umbra). Chaotic individuals who open gateways with impunity threaten the stability of our world. Uncontrolled portals also allow outside forces, such as Nephandi, access to our world. This must never happen. 4)Define the nature of the universe. Knowledge must be absolute, or chaos will envelop all. The elemental forces of the universe must not be left to the caprices of the unknown. 5)Destroy Reality Deviants. Their recklessness threatens our security and our progress toward Unity. 6)Shepherd the Masses; protect them from themselves and others.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
We will use Discord for voice chat. You'll also need a free Roll20 account for our character sheets and dice rolling.
What Craigles brings to the table
We are looking for friendly, reliable players who'd like to have some friends in the online gaming community to roleplay, laugh and have fun with while playing some games and forgetting about stuff. You will be expected to treat everybody in the group with respect while trying your best to be kind. We will expect you to join us, on time and prepared, unless you've given us some prior notification. I'll be there to chat if you need anything. If your expectations are not being met, please let me know!
Homebrew rules
Not Coincidental and Vulgar: ● Subtle magick fits into the established “reality” of our media-heavy age. It can be an odd act of coincidence (Pulling the right card out of a shuffled deck, walking across a squeaky floor without making a sound, opening an “unlocked” door that was locked a moment ago); a quiet, minor act of “occult” magic (suddenly changing your eye or hair color, stirring your coffee with a spoon you’re not touching, making an uncomfortably accurate reading with some Tarot cards); or an improbable feat we’ve come to expect from decades of mass media conditioning (outrunning an explosion, scaring off a street gang with a single glare, punching someone so hard you shatter his jaw, and so forth). Such acts seem unusual but not unnatural. For guidelines, see the sidebars “Hollywood Reality” (The Book of Secrets, p. 103), “Cinematic Damage” (Mage 20, p. 412), “Axis of Coincidence” (Mage 20, P. 533), and “Cinematic License” (Mage 20, p. 616). ● Uncanny magick seems unnervingly paranormal – possible, if you believe in such things, but not “normal.” To most people, it looks like magic… or like technology that does things which apparently defy the laws of science. Uncanny magick throws into question our entire idea of what is and is not “possible.” It’s the ritual that summons ghosts, or the unnervingly lifelike robot, or the girl so tough she walks through fire without getting burned, or the guy who levitates with the power of his mind. In reality zones that favor magical beliefs, more impressive acts of uncanny magick become possible: the witch can fly on a broom; the shapeshifter can become a wolf. In zones that favor modern technology, strange feats of hypertech – James Bond cars and Tony Stark power suits – are generally uncanny unless they clearly surpass existing physical laws and technologies, at which point they become extreme. ● Extreme magick just says “Fuck it” and throws its weight around. It doesn’t matter whether such acts are mystical or technological – they tear gaping holes in the fabric of Reality in order to let a mage enforce her will upon the world. Dimensional gateways? Summoned demons? Stopping time? Levitating trucks? That’s extreme magic! The Domino Effect After a certain point, the idea of Subtle wears thin. If mages are throwing around unlikely events in quick succession, optional rule then this might come into play. For every two wild coincidences within a single scene, the Storyteller may add +1 to the difficulty of subsequent coincidences. This penalty adds up, too: +2 difficulty after five Subtles, +3 after seven, and so on. To be fair, however, the penalty should come in only when those Subtleties affect the scene in noticeable ways: exploding gas mains, unlikely ricochets, unexpected appearances of the police… that sort of thing. Personal Effects that no one knows about except the mage who cast them (sensory enhancements, minor Trait boosts, etc.) should remain immune to this domino effect.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Craigles creates a safe table
Lines and Veils will be posted in Discord chat. During session 0 we will discuss expectations and other safety tools.
Content warnings
Safety tools used