Aberrant RPG - Juicy data....

[Fortune's Son]

For one and all, the following was posted over at the WW forums and I'm copying here just for fun. As you read it, you'll see that it deals primarily with an event called the Venzuelan phenomena and ask yourselves why I'm posting it to the AB forums.

Well....

'Cuz AB is my first love and the post deals with both the Hammersmith Incident (see ADVENTURE) and the explosion of the Galatea (see ABERRANT). The author for those that don't recognize him is the closest thing AB has for a developer at the moment, is the co-developer for ADVENTURE and TRINITY.

And the other reason is that I'm a romantic at heart and believe the truth of the future is to be found in the past.

Enjoy.

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From: Bruce Baugh <bruce-baugh@spiretech.com>

Date: Sun May 12, 2002 08:14:53 PM US/Pacific

To: TrinityRPG@yahoogroups.com

Subject: [Trinity] The Venezuelan Phenomenon (Spoiler Warning)

Reply-To: TrinityRPG@yahoogroups.com

I posted this to the Trinity list, and since I have no Trinity news to offer y'all, I'm going to go ahead and post this here as well. CAUTION! SPOILERS AHEAD!

=-=-=-=-=-=

THE VENEZUELAN PHENOMENON

At the end of the period covered by this book, it's half a year after the calamitous failure of a Norcan experiment in Venezuela. The magnitude of the ensuing noetic disruptions has become clear to all psions, but details as to what precisely is happening and why are hard to come by.

As noted at the start of this chapter, you are not under any obligation to use everything that appears in a Trinity supplement just because we printed it. If you would prefer to keep the interesting cool bits of the Venezuelan Phenomenon and disregard the complications, you can. If you want to change the complications, you can. If you have a different idea for Process 418 already in mind and don't think this fits with that, stick with your idea. If you want to remove the mechanical consequences but preserve the feel of events described here for narrative purposes, do so.

The Venezuelan Phenomenon is a self-feeding turbulence in the noetic medium. It's not the first of its kind.

Doctor Sir Calvin Hammersmith created such a disturbance in 1922, and its echoes swept the world for several years. (See Adventure for a far more detailed treatment of that episode's consequences.) Noetic — and quantum — power infused not just people, but plants and animals, and even portions of the landscape. The world changed dramatically in some areas, in ways that were difficult to explain at the time. Was the Earth always actually hollow? Did the forces unleashed by Dr. Hammersmith open connections to alternate universes? Was it something else? By the time anyone had even the rudiments of a comprehensive theory, much of the excess power was draining away, leaving behind less than sufficient evidence to study.

Dr. Michael Donighal, who'd begun calling himself Divis Mal sometime in the latter half of the twentieth century, deliberately created a more powerful quantum disturbance in 1998. The so-called Galatea Incident was not an accident at all, but the result of careful planning and years of preparation on the part of Donighal and his allies. Unlike the Hammersmith incident, the 1998 disturbance was concentrated almost exclusively in the quantum medium. Dr. Donighal had apparently learned enough about Hammersmith's work through various channels, including studies of Donighal's own growing power, to concentrate on producing a more limited range of effects. Thus there was no boom in the population of psions to correspond to the sudden increase in the ranks of novas.

(Unlike Dr. Hammersmith, Dr. Donighal didn't rely on machinery to create his disturbance. He built up the power to do it in himself, with assistance from others in the still-secret Teragen movement. Instruments helped Donighal look for auspicious moments in the quantum medium, but the work itself was an act of sheer nova-class will.)

Where the Hammersmith event took a few years to wind down, Donighal's effect lasted for decades. Some scholars of the Trinity era speculate that he and/or others renewed it from time to time; at this point it's impossible to say for sure, since nobody in a position to discuss workings of Teragen inner councils remains both alive and available for examination in the 2120s.

Until August 3rd, 2122, this was all largely a matter of historical interest.

WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW

The noetic medium is, somewhat metaphorically, expanding and contracting unpredictably. Normally there's a straightforward connection between noetic "distances" and physical ones. Even when, as with attunement and various techniques, there are links based on emotional closeness, prior contact, and other factors apart from physical distance, these relationships normally remain constant. They change according to fairly well-known rules, when they change at all.

At least they used to.

Now things "move around" in their noetic relationships. An object that's "close" one moment may be very "far" the next. This problem is worst for the practitioners of long-range aptitudes like Clairsentience and Teleportation. For a brief period in August, 2122, any effect reaching more than a few hundred kilometers or a few days in time simply wouldn't work at all. Only as the year wore on did a new pattern to things begin to emerge, allowing techniques to function over longer spans.

It's unclear how long the disruption unleashed in Venezuela will last. It might clear up in months, or years, or decades — so far clairsentient vision of the future remains hazy. Indeed, in the latter part of 2122, most clairsentients feel very uncomfortable indeed. They're losing their connections to the past, with contact with any period before August becoming harder and harder. As the world moves into a new noetic space, the "moat" created by the August accident deepens and widens. Sometime early in 2123, based on the evidence so far, it'll become essentially impossible to reach back before the accident.

ISRAn analysts put the pieces together in the last few months of 2122, realizing that the reason they couldn't see the Earth's future from before the accident is this continuing noetic flux. The Earth itself will not, apparently, actually be destroyed or removed. It's just in a very different psionic context. Speculation about the "person" who may be part of what ISRA records refer to as Process 418 continues, with a great many competing theories. Pai Del Fuego is a popular candidate, with Dr. Hammersmith a close second. The pool of other candidates spreads out from there to include just about everyone of conceivable relevance along with probably mythical figures like the Antichrist.

PSI AFTER VENEZUELA

First the good news: the chaos is manageable. By the end of the year, psions have figured out the particular mental quirks needed to analyze the noetic situation of the moment and respond accordingly. It takes some practice to get the hang of this — in game mechanics, a total of 10 successes for each technique, accumulated in one or more attempts at using it. A botch destroys the successes accumulated so far, and forces starting over. Once the psion has practicing using a technique in light of the extra awareness required, the new mental discipline becomes semi-conscious, then subconscious. In addition, anyone learning new techniques after about October, 2122, automatically gets instruction in this, so that they start off ready for use.

Until then, there's a bunch of fumbling around. During the transitional period, roll an extra die with each attempt at psi use. A 1 on this disturbance die cancels out two successes, and a 2 or 3 cancels out one success. On the other end, a 9 adds one success, and a 10 adds two successes. Unexpectedly potent success is almost as common in the months right after the accident as unexpectedly nasty failure. Psions can spend additional Psi to buffer against this effect: 1 point for 1-2 dot techniques, 2 points for 3-4 dot techniques, or 3 points for 5-dot techniques, and the disturbance die doesn't affect the roll. It also prevents successes from the ensuing roll from adding to the total for learning purposes described above, since it's using brute force to overcome the problem rather than gaining insight about how to work with the new situation.

OPTIONAL RULE: WILD PSI

Some psions are working to develop "wild" versions of existing techniques, monitoring the noetic medium for exploitable surges. This is an optional rule intended specifically for use with the freeform system presented in the Trinity Player's Guide.

Learning the wild version of a mode requires the same dots, bonus points, or experience point cost as acquiring an auxiliary mode. The psion may, upon completing this training and practice, use any technique within that mode in a somewhat more powerful but uncontrolled form, in addition to regular usages.

For +1 difficulty, the psion may designate two categories of result which each get +1 bonus success. The Storyteller randomly chooses or picks a third category which suffers a -1 success penalty…after the player allocates successes among the various result categories.

For +2 difficulty, the psion may enhance three categories of result with an additional success each. The Storyteller randomly chooses or picks two categories to suffer a -1 success penalty, again doing so after the player allocates successes.

The Storyteller shouldn't apply the penalty to categories the player's chosen to enhance.

A NEW AGE NOW BEGINS

The astute reader will notice that some of the "aberrants" in Terra Verde and this book don't seem much like the twisted freaks normally presented in Trinity supplements. That's because they are not in fact aberrants in the sense that any psion would mean by the term. They are other products of the noetic disturbance — paramorphs as well as psions and novas, in Aeon Society terminology, or stalwarts, daredevils and mesmerists in the categories identified by Dr. Donighal in the 1920s.

If players and Storytellers would like to use Adventure as a resource for post-Venezuelan Phenomenon games in the Trinity era, they can. The rules for knacks mesh smoothly with the rules for psi powers, and Inspiration is a weird thing for noetic scholars to try to figure out. It's also possible to simulate the general idea without actually using the other game's rules. See the rules for Nihonjin Superiors, on p. XX, as guidelines. In essence, these are artificially created daredevils, with higher-than-usual attributes. Drop the starting attributes down to the normal Trinity levels and keep the rest of the process, and you've got a good approximation of the Adventure

,,

Subject: [All] Venezuelan Phenom.

Montano - 05/13/2002 01:38:59 - bruce-baugh@spiretech.com

(Continued)

A NEW AGE NOW BEGINS

The astute reader will notice that some of the "aberrants" in Terra Verde and this book don't seem much like the twisted freaks normally presented in Trinity supplements. That's because they are not in fact aberrants in the sense that any psion would mean by the term. They are other products of the noetic disturbance — paramorphs as well as psions and novas, in Aeon Society terminology, or stalwarts, daredevils and mesmerists in the categories identified by Dr. Donighal in the 1920s.

If players and Storytellers would like to use Adventure as a resource for post-Venezuelan Phenomenon games in the Trinity era, they can. The rules for knacks mesh smoothly with the rules for psi powers, and Inspiration is a weird thing for noetic scholars to try to figure out. It's also possible to simulate the general idea without actually using the other game's rules. See the rules for Nihonjin Superiors, on p. XX, as guidelines. In essence, these are artificially created daredevils, with higher-than-usual attributes. Drop the starting attributes down to the normal Trinity levels and keep the rest of the process, and you've got a good approximation of the Adventure category.

Groups who've been waiting for a good opportunity to use Aberrant as a Trinity resource need wait no longer. Build the new breed of nova with 15 nova points and a starting Taint of 1, and an initial limit of 2 dots in Mega-Attributes. (They can develop normally in the course of play.)

The shockwave unleashed in Venezuela is continuing to propagate through nearby space, at many times the speed of light. In due season the world will find out what consequences it has for forces outside the solar system, but that's a story for another time.

[Corbin]

Nice information there man, I love anything that links these 3 great gaming worlds together.

The fact that you can use this stuff for Aberrant (My personal favorite)just makes it all the better.