I, Observer, have
been Considered by the Mind to record in hardcopy a report of the recent Mass
Confusion, to do so from a 'neutral' position (if such a thing is even
possible), and to include within this record, an explanation of exactly what
'I' am, what the Mass Confusion was and what, in general, is going on.
I, Observer assume this has been requested in case of
total memory loss, mind alteration, loss of identity due to an overload in the
Delusion Field or simple forgetfulness.
So, if You are reading this, be aware I am You.
You are the Eldritch Founder and You
have either lost your full memories, been separated from the Gestalt that is
I/Us or are suffering Identity Issues.
You are a Hive Mind and everybody in this record,
including I, Observer, is also you. You have simply become temporarily unaware
of this.
We are all thoughts in one larger mind.
A Confusion is a literalised Parliament of Thoughts, or
extended inner argument which takes place within I/Us when consensus has yet to
be reached on a particular issue. In this case the Confusion took place over
the issue of Mass in the bodysheathes of the Sparkborn Souls.
This is a record of your own thoughts, told to you, by
you, the you that is currently I, Observer.
That should be clear enough.
Transcript follows;
---------------------------------------------
EXECUTIVE - This
looks enough like a Quorum to go for it. Everyone missing is either mad, has
forgotten who they are for a while, is lost in time or temporarily dead. I
declare this Confusion begun!
WORLDLING SPEAKER
- As a coherent aspect of the MAJORITY..
(Boos, hissing,
flashes and stress-tentacle positions from all other factions)
WORLDLING SPEAKER
- (louder) AS A SPEAKER FOR THE MAJORITY!.. thank you,.. as a Speaker for the
majority I declare our opinion that of the Worldlings, for only we are truly
and deeply concerned with the strife and substance of Uud, unlike the nerds
on the opposite bench who We Here declare as..
GRACILES SPEAKER
- (interrupting) We accept that name and declare ourselves the Graciles..
(Flashing and
writhing from opposing bench)
EXECUTIVE -
Accepted on both counts and please calm yourselves. Speaker for the Worldlings,
please go on.
WORLDLING SPEAKER
- Thank you. I will make my argument brief for its rightness is so obvious that
little rhetoric is required in its support. The matter is a simple one,
and that is, to be a hero, you need to be able to punch someone in the face.
(mass hissing and
great writhing from the Graciles)
GRACILES SPEAKER
- Brutes! Simpletons!
WORLDLING SPEAKER
- AND IF NOT THAT. If not that, you need to at least be able to be
punched in the face, and to still get up. Now, our opponents with dress this
up with a lot of fine words about psychology etc etc, but the simple
fact of the matter is we need our souls to survive and we them need to win
fights!
(Cries Of
"intelligence!" "intelligence")
WORLDLING SPEAKER
- Yes there are many other aspects which might be useful. A soul
is a complex thing, as we all know. But what use are any of them after the soul
in question has had their head caved in during their first risky action? We can
talk this over all day but the simple fact of the matter is that we need
survivability Look at our survival numbers! We need more winners and the truth
is that SIZE ALONE will do this! And at a much lower cost in resources and
time! They need to be BIG, they need to be STRONG. We of the Worldlings demand
thicker and more muscular souls!
(Great merging of
lights and snapping tentacles from the rest of the house)
EXECUTIVE - Thank
you thank you. And thank you for making that brief. Speaker for the
Graciles, you are recognised.
GRACILES SPEAKER
- Thank you Executive. Now.. Heroism, what does it truly mean?
(Hissing,
flashing, cries of "too long", and "get to the point" )
EXECUTIVE -
Graciles we cannot and will not sit through YET ANOTHER deep dive into the
philosophical meaning of Heroism! You need not explicate every point down to
its primal axioms. Now the Worldlings have been good enough to summarize and
save us all time. I do ask you to give us the salient points.
GRACILES SPEAKER
- I protest! This assault on Discourse itself naturally favours the other side!
EXECUTIVE - It
favours us all getting back to work. Spit it out like a Sophont!
(Laughter)
GRACILES SPEAKER
- Very well. Under protest, I will summarise.
GRACILES SPEAKER
- Heroism, or even villainy, cannot be reduced to mere punching ability! The
precise mixture of physical and mental challenge, handicap and talent acts
differently in each soul, AS THE OTHER SIDE KNOWS WELL. Is it not true that
many of our most successful and memorable Souls have in fact, a very various
range of physical capacities? Yes many of them do die
(interruptions
and flashing, boos)
EXECUTIVE -
Settle down please. SETTLE DOWN. Continue Graciles.
GRACILES SPEAKER
- Yes we lose a lot in the early stages, but those who survive are of a much
HIGHER QUALITY than the MEATBAGS being proposed by our opponent! Not only that
but the concept rapidly becomes ridiculous when applied in large numbers across
Races and Humanoid types! Will they have us produce a generation of buff
Aeth? Bodybuilding Homon? To churn out a dull succession of
barbarous oafs like a factory, well this, I would claim is Wyrm Talk!
(massive blinding
flashes from all, several members ball into primary fear stance, huge boos)
EXECUTIVE -
Graciles! Really! This is ill language for a Confusion. Very ill. That was a
dire and uncalled for insult. I find you in contempt. We cannot have any more
of this.
(Interruptions
from the benches)
EXECUTIVE - Yes?
Well, it seems we have a minority faction. You may speak.
DISTORTIONIST
SPEAKER - Thank you Executive. We claim for our group in this Confusion, the
name of Distortionists.
(Shock from all
sides, claims of "radicals!" "radicals!")
EXECUTIVE -
Silence please.
DISTORTIONIST
SPEAKER - Thank you. We could not agree more fully with the Graciles. A uniform
and singular approach would indeed be disastrous, and we would claim the House
has already gone too far down this path..
(Interruptions,
cries of "fetishists!")
EXECUTIVE - Now
now. I will allow this Speaker for the Distortionists, I want to see where you
are going with this, but I caution you, this better not devolve into another
minority protest, I will not have the House logjammed by intrusive thoughts
again.
DISTORTIONIST
SPEAKER - Thank you executive. We desire only a greater diversity..
(Cries of
"Liar" and "They want freaks!")
DISTORTIONIST
SPEAKER - And what is wrong with that!? YES we want freaks! YES we want
mutants! AND WHY NOT? For too long this Houses mediocre..
(MASS HISSING)
DISTORTIONIST
SPEAKER - mediocre and narrow view of what a Hero can or should be has been
allowed to limit and constrain our own INFINITE IMAGININATION. So yes! We do
request, nay DEMAND that the bounds upon mass and muscle be not only relaxed,
but ABANDONED COMPLETELY!!
(Objects thrown,
blinding lights emitted.)
EXECUTIVE -
Silence! Settle down I say!
(Distortionits
begin group chanting; "We Want Freaks! We Want Freaks! We Want
Freaks!" e.t.c.)
EXECUTIVE -
Please! This is chaos! See this individual! Now please Distortionists, please.
Here is a Lone Thought from your own side. Will you not please let them speak?
Please?
DISTORTIONIST
SPEAKER - We do not recognise this thought.
EXECUTIVE - Well
they are here and they have a right to an opinion just as you. You there, speak
up, yes you. What are you.
LONE THOUGHT -
I.. thank you Executive. I.. I am here..
EXECUTIVE - It's
alright. Take your time. Take your time. Silence the rest of you. Now please,
what are you?
LONE THOUGHT - I
WANT A RANDOM GENERATOR!!
(House descends
into chaos)
---------------------------------------------
So ends the transcript, the Confusion becoming too
violent for any final result to be recorded. As a compromise the Executive
ultimately allowed full control over several aspects of mass to be altered at
the point of creation by whatever aspect of the Founder was present at the
time. Though I fear this has only knocked the problem further down the line without
resolving anything.
Two Youtube videos I saw recently lead me to consider the paradox of invisible skill;
This one by ComicTropes
about Bernard Krigstein and his much-analysed story 'The Master Race'
And this one
by Leela Norms about two different film versions of the Jane Austin story 'Emma', one from the 90's and one from just before CORONADOOM.
CITIZEN KANE AND MODERNISM
The ComicTropes video says this Master Race comic has been called 'The Citizen Kane' of comics.
And I thought that was true in more ways than one.
I remember that old screenwriter guy, Robert McKee absolutely hated Citizen Kane. Said its symbology and expressionist elements were crushingly obvious, as in blatant and overwrought. The film makes it agonisingly clear that here there is something SYMBOLIC happening and exactly what that SYMBOL means. He thought that was absolutely not what a story on film should be like or about and that the film had been massively over-praised because of this.
Curious thing; formalism, modernism and a slight dislocation, all shift the perceived media a little more into being 'text'. Not just that they use complex methodology; shifts in perspective, unusual forms and processes, to tell their stories, but that the fact that there are multiple kinds of these forms layered into each other, and happening in sequence, means that the story is calling attention to itself *as a constructed thing*. It is making it obvious and clear that it is being clever, and almost showing you how it is being clever.
This seems to work across THE MASTER RACE, Watchmen, Sin City and Citizen Kane.
(The new 'Emma' doesn't quite match that as it doesn't use the same modernist techniques in the same very obvious way - but it does share the fact that it is a bit more emotionally distant and chilly and more obviously constructed than the 90's Emma.)
These works are almost pre-cognated.
(To re-cognate, or 'recognise' is literally to run something through your mind again, but in a different way, or subject to a different process - first you sense, then you recognise).
But the fact that the modernism of these works makes them easy to analysis, easy to discuss, easy to *see how they work* - perhaps gives them more weight in the world of criticism relative to other things than perhaps they deserve.
(I like all of these things btw)
Other stuff that makes them almost guided missiles aimed at the heads and hearts of the critical classes; all 'dark' with heavy sombre emotions, all very 'male'. The Master Race is a Jewish creator writing about the Holocaust and being analysed by another Jewish Creator (Art Spiegleman) who also did a book about the Holocaust.
If its about the Holocaust it has to be art, its certainly not allowed to be anything else.
WARMTH AS A HARD TO ANALYSE
Warmth, by contrast, is not easy to analyse. Or discuss.
Think about something that made you feel really warm and then think about what you would say about it.
The only things that come to mind for me are connections of real-world memories - things in my life that feeling or moment reminds me of or connects me to. Emotion, as it so often does, acting as a global phenomena inside the mind, connecting many small things across many levels, often in a slightly oblique way.
But these networks of vague memory are, well, vague - soft, delicate, almost formless. Difficult to interrogate. How would you discuss them? and how would you analyse them with others? It would be like discussing a dream you had - you would feel foolish.
One thing I like about Mark Kermode as a film critic is that he will often say if and when he cried during a film he liked - and even say that while he felt the emotion he can't give a precise description of exactly why that part of the story affected him that much - he knows the general reasons, but not the specific engineering of the emotion. And he will do this for relatively 'gauche' or emotional films.
Perhaps because feeling links you with your body and your sense memories, it robs you of analysis, robs you of the human ability to voyage in time within your own mind and to regard yourself. Instead making you intensely *present*.
while modernism and coldness, give you more of those abilities, and provokes them, while robbing you of your body and of the present moment.
Warmth too, is constructed. House on the Prairie is as constructed as 'Watchman' - its just that one is reminding you of it all the time, and providing the means to analyse it within its own substance, while the other _doesn't want you to analyse it_. Warmth doesn't even want you to think about the fact that a story is being told, in fact it aims to seduce you away from exactly such thinking.
It is an invisible skill, as compared to a visible skill.
UNNAMED THIRD SECTION
I actually don't have a strong sense memory of the 90's 'Emma',
what I'm using to fill in that sense are recent re-watchings of the 90's 'Maverick' and 'Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves'.
Both gauche films in many ways - easy to laugh at, Prince of Thieves especially has lots of lumpy bits that do not sing of art in the modernist or fine art sense.
and yet
both very warm films
Both family films - about families, friendships, social bonds, warmth, humour. Families are challenged and reconstructed in both films and at the end brought together.
And its strange how when you say 'Family Film' you maybe downgrade it in your personal hierarchy of importance and status - there may be no fundamentally logical reason for it.
This isn't a Tumblr post - I'm not about to lead you in revolution against your own personal status and quality hierarchies because they come from a CORRUPT culture. Humans need hierarchies to think in any kind of systematic way, and we adore them in social functioning, preferably lots and lots of mutually interacting and clashing hierarchies please.
If you destroyed all your cultural programming you would probably be a useless mental case, incapable of crating or understanding anything.
However, though we need them, it is better if we also understand that all those hierarchies are provisional - tools rather than absolute laws. If we understand that we need them then we need them less.
I thought at the time that Prince of Thieves was a film with strong bones, and if you were making a film, or anything, and if you HAD to choose; gauche and low-status, but with "strong bones" and the audience came out crying, OR brilliant and cutting edge, acclaimed, but cold and the audience maybe nodded slightly at one point.
What would you choose?
I think in the future, saying "This was gauche but it moved me" is something I will try to do less. Instead say "This was gauche AND it moved me".
The Bardic tradition, strong in the Mountains of Reality
and still found almost everywhere in Blackwater, carries its own strange
legends. Bards tell stories, but there are stories only Bards are told.
For those Bards of a mischievous spirit, an ill temper
and a cunning mind, for those who, through bitterness or malice, delight in
shaping words of harm, not for any gain but for the pleasure of the thing itself,
there is a music only they can hear.
An unusually-specific point; the stories all agree on where
it is heard; around Nightspyre*, the most Westerly of the Queendoms of the
Mountains of Reality. (Since Nightspyre looks over the Rust Red Road between the
Mountains and the Grey Cities, almost all Bards will pass through there at
least once in their lives, and likely many times.)
Each Bard who hears this dark, low tone, has a choice;
they can see now, fully, the path that they are on, turn back, change their
lives and their art and hopefully return to good, or they may follow the sad
music.
Sometimes the music leads them to a cave, sometimes into
a cellar in the New Town, or even a dungeon of the blue-black palace of the
Sapphire Queen. On this the stories differ.
Then they come upon a white harp with black cords, played
by a woman veiled down to her smile. Her mouth opens in a half-gasp of silent
pleasure, and delicately, multiple black tongues reach out to lick her lips.
Around her, listening in rapture, is the secret society of the Blatant Bards.
The mythic origin of the Harp is well known. A Quileth or
Daemon of Old Esh, named 'The Blatant Beast' existed purely to degrade reality
with rumour, calumny and lies.
Agnes Miller Parker
See! And you all said reading the whole of the Faerie Queene would do me no good!
(Nobody actually said that)
A dark angel of discord and suspicion, it grew
larger with every soul lost to the suicides, murders or penury brought by the
lies it told. The annihilation of the spirit through deceit was its purview.
The Quileth had many forms but it always had a hundred or more writhing
tongues, and its voice could speak a thousand lies at once.
This creature was destroyed by unknown heroes, but its
servants came upon its remains and cut the tongues from its mouth and the
bones from its jaw. The tongues, cured and now black, became the strings of the
Black-Tongued Harp, and the jawbones made its ivory frame.
Whomever hears and chimes inwardly with the music of the
Black-Tongued Harp is imbued with a shadow of its power, which grows greater
the more deeply it is used. Their charm is amplified, their lies are believed
more often the more often they are told, they gain insight into mortal hearts
and can see and sense what lies will harm the most.
They become vampires of reputation, for every name
destroyed they grow more gilded, more shimmering, beautifully, charismatic and
believable. The more lives they destroy they more innocent they seem. For every
life lost to suicide caused by their lies, they gain life and youth and
strength.
If they go on long enough, their tongues split. Perhaps
ultimately it is they who will play the Black-Tongued Harp in some hidden vault
beneath Nightspyre.
Many Bards believe this story metaphor; a lesson about
the dangers of malice and power, and the fate of those who feed on lies. An
insult amongst their kind; "Damn Sir you are a Blatant Bard!".
Of course, the only ones who really know are those
who hear the lilting, moaning music of the Harp as they pass beneath the black
mountain of the Sapphire Throne. Of those who turn back, how many can there be?
And of those who go on, and listen to the music of the woman in the veil… well,
how could anyone suspect them? The most charming Bards of all?
It’s
blu-tac. Make anything you can sculpt and attach it to your car.
2. Carbon-Lattice Flexi-Bands.
Flexible but unbreakable attachment technology.
Rubber
bands
3. Monkey Caravan.
Does what
is says on the tin. Potentially very dangerous camper van full of
uncontrollable level one unarmed fighters.
4. Cyclone Breaks.
Super-adaptive vortex engine not only stops your
car but all cars on your tail.
Car can
handbreak turn at any speed. To activate, blow strongly over top of car against
direction of travel, any other cars behind that move under your breath are
automatically stopped and moved back.
5. Wizard Clutch.
Rumoured to be made from real wizards.
Once per
game the car can move from any seed to any other speed without accelerating or
breaking. Every other car on the field will shift to the same speed.
6. Expulsion Lamps.
Beams of alien light blast cars and terrain out of
the way, sometime lights explode.
You can
reach down, and flick, with one finger, anything directly in front of the car.
Explodes on a 5-6 with each use.
7. Tree Gears.
Ultra-high tech eco-freak creation engine, now
re-purposed as car parts.
Gearbox
plants instafast tree at axis of move whenever handbreak turns are used. Tree
remains in-situ.
8. Block Sabre.
Extendable electron-bladed pseudosamurai
plasma-sword, cuts inanimate blocks like cartoon cheese.
On a
drive-past, the wielder can slice open any piece of stationary terrain that the
player can rip apart with their bare hands.
9. Rice Machine.
Expanding antiriot granules-of-peace, weaponised
to get drivers killed.
User may
dump a handful of rice anywhere adjacent to their car. Anyone crashing into
rice suffers no damage but can no longer take violent action during race, has
to clean car.
10. Xenon Cop Lights.
Flashing lights from ruined ship, rumoured to be
trans-dimensional cop craft.
When lights
active, megaphone orders of user must be followed, however they are garbled
beyond comprehension by the alien rays. If you have enough people, use game of
Chinese whispers to garble orders. If less people, write each word of order on
separate scrap of paper, had them to target player. They may re-arrange however
they wish, but must obey result.
11. Flags of Resentment.
Overdesigned banners detailing petty hates of
crew.
Each flag
counts as a blow against one particular enemy of that crew. Detail the
particular resentment for that banner. Finishing a race or challenge in which
that crew participated with the banners still intact, moves you up one position
against them. If they manage to take the banner during the race, they move up
an extra position against you.
12. Lightning Cage.
Crazy looking cage of brass wires and arcing white
zigzags, vomits lightning in all directions on activation.
Sniper-equivalent
damage to anything metallic for three inches around car. Use shuts down engine
for a turn. Freezes controls.
13. Storm Gun.
Frightening howitzer fires active storms on
ballistic trajectory.
Once per
game, user may throw medium-sized (bigger than a sock, smaller than a jacket)
piece of clothing in direction of cars travel. Storm remains in situ for rest
of game. Dangerous to drive over/through.
14 Orchid Render.
Collapsed-dimension pocket-space secured to top of
car. Annihilating waves of beautiful energy spin round chassis.
Put the
head of a large flower on top of your car. Any enemy car that touches the
flower is destroyed. Effect lasts till flower falls off.
15. Psycophone.
Beatboxing twisted rhythms through this non-Euclidian
megaphone forces hears to cough up their guts.
Any car
hearing the beatbox sounds is paralysed for a number of turns equal to its crew
as everyone inside simultaneously shouts out their deepest secrets and argues
about them.
16. Spasm Waggon.
Eyeburning chunk of twisted hyperlogic recovered
from disaster core must be towed behind car like a caravan.
When
attached, the spasm waggon can swap places with any car in view of the user.
Put the target car right behind yours where the waggon was and the waggon in
that cars previous position.
17. Rain Turbines.
These car-mountable jet engines suck in dry air
and spew out rain, and visa-versa.
In dry
conditions this engine creates a patch of wet, slippery ground and low
visibility directly behind the car. In wet conditions, it adds one to the cars
speed but creates a patch of dry ground and no rain directly behind the car.
18. Dream Drive.
Lynchian madness engine powered by the
subconscious of user.
Dream Drive
must be powered the night before race by being plugged into the drivers skull.
Empties his head of dreams. Adds one to speed during race. Driver will
go insane after a randomly determined number of rounds. Results of madness
decided by other players.
19. Brain Valves.
Repurposed scrap-tech injection valves,
preternaturally aware of drivers needs. Damaged veterans of the Psychic Wars.
Unstable.
Brain
valves add one to manoeuvrability. If fired upon, will enter combat-flashback
on a 5-6. All drivers on track start screaming and move directly towards
nearest terrain for one turn.
20. Thunder Button.
Mjolnir-fragment flintlocked to a semi-aware
weather AI, causes thunder on activation.
Player may
jump up and down on ground near cars in hopes of causing useful re-orientation.
Any damage to track is their responsibility.
21. Annihilation Pedal.
Questionable pedal briefly destroys all space and
time. Reality reappears moments later. Somewhat altered.
User may
move and re-orientate as many pieces of scenery as they want however they want.
For each piece roll a d6. A roll of 5-6 means that an unexpected effect has
occurred. Something else on the board must be moved by the next player. Roll
another d6, on a 5-6 it happens again for the next player along. Keep rolling
till a 1-4 is rolled
22. Skeleton Trunk.
Where to the skeletons come from? Hah. No-one ever
asks this. You meet the guy in a darkened bar. You hand him the money and go
for a walk. When you get back, the trunk is full. You don’t check it. You know
they’re in there.
The trunk
of your car is full of angry skeletons. At any point during the race you may
pop the trunk and spew skeletons over all nearby rear-facing area’s. d6
skeletons hit each car and count as level one berserkers.
23. Surface-to-Earth-Worms.
Meat-Seeking wormpedoes can be bought in the
travelling markets of the bus-rank archipelago, up around transmission point.
There use is controlled. Mainly by the fact they sometimes eat the person
firing them.
Surface-To-Earth-Worm
are kept rolled up in giant nautaloid tubes on the side of the car. When fired,
the car must be facing towards its target. The worms will travel any distance
underground until they sense meat, then rise up. They arrive at the beginning
of the next turn of the firing player. They roll 4d6 for damage but only ever
eat crew, the don’t damage the car. If the target moves somehow and is no-longer
the closest to them, they will attack whomever is closer.
24. Heliovoric Charge.
This fractal-impacted mystery rocket can only be
used once, it fires directly up into the sky and turns off the sun for the rest
of the day.
Activating
player can create night conditions for rest of race, plus they can turn off the
lights in the room and close the curtains if they want to.
25. Quantum Crank.
This Escher-space engine crank moves through
impossible positions when activated.
When used,
the crank changes the momentum and engine direction of the car without any
inertial effect. This turn, the car may move sideways in either direction
exactly as if it was moving forwards. There is a 1 in 6 change of reality
twisting and the car changing positions with a randomly selected other car.
26. Paralytic Converter.
This psychotropic chemical vortex converts engine
fumes into ennui.
When active
it leaves a gas trail the size and shape of a spare sock behind the car. Anyone
entering this zone must take their foot off the pedal and stare blankly until
things make sense again. (One round.) If the car takes damage though, the
converter may misfire and fill the car with depression.
27. Leaf Blades.
Giga-leaves retrieved from the heaven-scarring
paradise tree at the cost of many lives make excellent ramming-prows in the
ring. They do shatter though.
Jam a
pointy leaf on the front of your car. This ultra-sharp diamond-hard blade will
inflict 6d6 damage on a ram, then shatter, doing another 1d6 damage to all
nearby cars, including yours.
28. Skull Bumpers.
Chromed terminator skulls from a failed robot
uprising add sweet bling to any ride.
They still
track movement and human targets, communicating information with old-school
internet moans. Add plus one to either an evasion or targeting roll each turn.
29. Fractal Treads.
Oddly patterned tyres whose surface is technically
infinite.
You can now
drive up/on vertical surfaces for up to three turns at a time.
30. Cash-Bomb.
Fires cash money onto racing area, ensures pitch
invasion by Fanimals.
Hurl change
from your pockets onto the pitch. Fanimals and mindless opponents will try to
retrieve the money.
This is a brief selection of the kinds of prize
you can win in Rumble City races. You can roll here, or make up your own.
1. Pink Slip
The ultimate prize, and the classic, is the
opponents car. This can only be agreed to on handshake before the race. Of
course, a driver that knows they are losing may total the car during the last
lap out of spite.
2. Hostage
This tends to guarantee ‘careful’ driving. To
begin with at least. Both crews surrender a single member. They are tied to the
hood of the enemy car. (With a rubber band.) Whoever wins gets their hostage
back. Of course you can try to steal or abduct your guy back during the race.
It’s pretty hard to do this without crashing the car they are tied to though.
3. The Turbine Cup.
This race has weird technology as the prize.
Before the race (or after if the prize is a mystery), roll on the ‘Items and
Enhancements’ list. This strange piece of impossi-tech goes to the winner,
installed free of charge.
4. Tattoo of Terror.
Shame is the ultimate threat. The winner of this
game may mark the losers with shame-inspiring symbols of their own design. They
can draw whatever they like on the back of one hand. (Biro only, no permanent
marker.)
5. The Golden Tomb.
This is the ultimate honour for a fallen comrade.
The golden tombs of dead racers stretch off into the neon-lit wilderness. The
winner assures a place in rumble city history for the honoured dead. The loser
passes like dust in the wind. It is traditional to race for the golden tomb
with the body/coffin of your dead comrade strapped across the hood of your car,
or in their usual racing position. Exceptional racers simple break hard at the
last moment and fling the corpse through the tomb doors.
6. Shoe Garage.
Every team needs a good garage. The names of the
big ones are famous. Cryo-Genetic, Cerulean Tyres, Abaddons, Pyro-Handbreak. In
this game each team bets their own garage, winner takes all. What they do with
the extra garages no-one knows. Take off your least-favoured shoe, slam it on
the table, this is your teams garage. Lose the race, lose your shoe.
7. The Monster Cup.
Monsters
are always a high-status symbol in Rumble City. The best racers all have a pet
monster. You can try taming them and putting them in the car, you can add them
to your Fanimals, or just tie them up outside your Shoe. The loser of this race
owes the winner a monster, a good one.
8. The Prize of Praise.
There can be no greater attainment than the
slavish adoration of your foes. The losers of a praise race must speak for a
full minute in Rumble City Plaza in praise of the winner. Any use of sarcasm
will be punished by instant death and having your cars stamped to death.
9. The Grand Remote.
The power to command the Atomic Screens! POWER!
The winner of this race has full control of the remote until another race is
run, or until the end of the day.
10. The Meal Wheel.
No-one in Rumble City can ever decide what to eat,
or where. Decision paralysis leads to choked throngs of gas-guzzling muscle
cars churning endlessly around giant roundabouts for weeks while crews argue
over restaurant choices. The only solution is to race.
You can roll one, choose one, or better yet, just
make up your own with what you have.
1. Army-Man-Slam.
They wander out of the dessert in rambling clouds.
Army-Men. Mindless military homunculi with welded-on guns. These aren’t
zombies. They are not quite machines. They look a bit like army people used to
look, but can’t put down their guns. Or, in fact, shoot them at all. Their features
are all wrong. No-one knows where they came from or why. It’s Rumble City,
no-one cares. Some think there’s a crashed alien forge out there in the boiling
sand. Maybe it’s trying to conquer us. Maybe it’s begging for help. Whatever it
is must be automatic or dumb because it keep crapping out these rambling crowds
of ineffectual animated army-drone-clones. We keep smashing them up. Then they
come back.
Spread as
many army-men or other figures in as many positions and places as possible. Try
to make them look like a real army. Begin your cars at opposite sides. At the
end of your turn you can move ten army men anywhere one inch. Whoever blasts or
smashes the most army men wins.
2. Suicide Louise.
Can’t take it any more? FINE. Go out into the
Terminal Hate Zones where every rock and tree loathes life. Even getting there is hard. Set a course
through the crackling infra-tech. Make Bad-Credit-Cliff your finish line. But
you better beat those other bipolar racers to the edge. Only the first
successful crash from Bad Credit cliff earns entry to the afterlife. Everyone
else mysteriously lives. And is banned from racing for life!
Make a long
winding track with a cliff at the end. Make every piece of scenery dangerous.
Name a particular crew-member whose race this is. Think of a really good reason
they ‘JUST CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE’. (Having to live in Rumble City is a ‘good
reason’) They have to go over the edge. Other crew can try jumping off before
the fall, of just not going to the race. If someone gets killed on the track,
either by murder or accident, that doesn’t count. Only the first car counts.
The jumper is world-famous and every baby born in rumble city that day will be
named after them. Everyone else mysteriously survives whatever happened to them
and is mocked in Rumble City for the rest of their lives. All Fanimals are
lost.
3. Sky-Scraper-Slalom
Really tall buildings are dull. You can’t jump off
them and there’s no ramp access to the upper floors. The racers of Rumble City
have solved all that. They have built vast ramps that bridge the
business-district scrapers twenty floors up. Elevators have been re-engineered
to take up cars. Every accessible window on the non-racing floors above is full
of cheering crowds. Just make sure you make the turn.
Make a
series of large squares. These are the floors of the skyscrapers. Draw a ring
track inside each square. Each car must circuit this once before it leaves.
Link the building floors together in a ring with marked-out narrow bridges.
Remember in Rumble City these bridges are twenty stories above the ground. Cars
must enter each building, circuit the in-building track, then take the bridge
to the next, building. First to finish wins. Don’t come off the track.
4. Oil-Tanker Escape Jump
Rumble City bay is full of huge decaying ships. When
the world was going wrong everybody on earth bought all the gas they could
right here. Now the big tankers drift slowly in the oily muck. Each one sized
like multiple football fields, they form a shifting floor of steel above the
oozing sea. Perfect for racing on! The only problem is, no bridges, so the
racers have to jump from ship to ship. Decks have been flattened and ramps
installed to make the jumps survivable. Probably.
Get as many
big boxes (or equivalent) as will fit in the racing area. Give each box a
tanker name. (i.e. the SS Salami)Draw
the names on the sides of the box. Leave one to three inches between each
tanker. Put tracks on each one and a ramp on the deck aimed at the closest
ship. Make sure they link up (or don’t). A racer must circle each ship at least
once to build up the momentum for the jump to the next ship. First racer to the
last ship wins. (And is helicoptered home.) Other racers must find their own
way off the tanker.
For extra
strangeness, put ramps everywhere and have the tankers move randomly, one inch
per turn.
5. Valley of the Dolls
It’s out there, beyond the atom-screens and the
alien receivers in the sand. The cage of the murderous cyber-things called
‘dolls’. They are low on power now, it’s said, the light of slaughter glows
dimly in their eyes. But everyone remembers the terror they caused in that last
insane war before the end. Everyone holds the image of those beautiful, still
features stained with blood. Only the bravest racers dare the valley where the
dolls stand dully ranked like standing stones. Winning the race is notable but
even living through it earns you cred.
Mariel Clayton
Mark out a
narrow, twisting valley with the finish line at the end. Fill it with as many ‘dolls’ as you can find.
Rank them up like silent statues. Racers must slalom between the dolls to make
it through. If any car touches a doll for any reason, it activated. They are
looming cybernetic death machines that can tear cars apart with their bare
hands and always seek to eat the crew one-by-one. They will chase any nearby
car but will not leave the valley.
6. Midnight in Death Valley
As if Death Valley wasn’t dangerous enough! You
want to race there at night?
Mark out a
long, narrow valley course. Use no terrain. Inform players the track is dark so
anything could be there. Obstacles may look up out of the blackness without
warning. After their turn, each player must stand on the edge of the playing
area and throw a piece of terrain onto the track. If the terrain hits a car
that player that threw it loses a turn. If it damages a car, the thrower is
disqualified.
7. The Atom Screens
Everyone in Rumble City can see the deranged
flickering of the Atom Screens on the edge of town. They say the screens are
why the city still exists. That, somehow, they protected Rumble City when
things fell. Only the crazed, religious, or indifferent dare to race beneath
the screens. They fear the faces of the alien gods that loom through from
shattered realities. These tears in space and time exhibit impossible things and
issue cryptic inarguable commands. It’s claimed the commands of the Atom
Screens can speak the future of the racer they address. But if there is a
system to it, no-one knows it now.
Mark out a
simple track in front of, or beneath, a television at maximum volume. Turn off
every other light in the room. On each players turn, change the channel
randomly. The first coherent sentence from the screen must be treated by the
racer as a direct order. If the player finishes their turn without a coherent
sentence being heard, lucky them.
8. Slime Tank Slalom
Sometimes children go the glistening tanks of
intelligent slime in rows. They gaze into the rippling ooze and watch ghost
faces form inside. This fearsome liquidised entity must have been trapped in
ranked crystal prisons for a good reason. No-one remembers what it was. Now the
tanks are good mainly for extra-dangerous racing. Sometimes the tanks are
cracked and slime escapes. Who cares? Call it parole.
Build a
slalom race in which the poles are glasses or Perspex cups. Wine glasses are
dangerous and fun. Half-fill the glasses with water or (with prep) jelly. Run
the race as usual. If any car impacts or touches a glass, tip the glass over.
Any pools remaining on the racing surface will cause a car to skid of touched.
No cleaning up till someone wins.
9. Alien Transmissions.
Somewhere in the silent zones, tiled monoliths
glow with a source-less inter-dimensional light. Each strange and luminous
shard stands vertically facing another of its kind. The transmitters can be
activated, but not used. No-one in Rumble City knows the code they speak.
Though its effects are chilling, the means of its action unseen.
For this
game, everyone will need a mobile phone. Arrange the phones around the edge of
the playing area, facing inwards, as far from each other as possible. Place
each players car before their phone. When a car impacts directly with an
opposing players phone, the owner of the car must pick up the phone, bring up a
random number and hand it to its owner. The owner of the phone must call that
number and explain, truthfully, exactly why they have called. Any player too
embarrassed to make the call is knocked out. Last player in the game wins.
10. The Towers of Change
Money in Rumble City is mainly symbolic (See
prizes). There are no mints, but piles of giant sculpted disks erupt from the
heart of playing fields and volcanic zones. The disks will soon sink back into
the ground and disappear. The only way to catch them is to smash them down. At
speed.
In racing cars. If this is not achieved the
economy of Rumble City will collapse. So this is the race of a responsible
citizen. It’s like a nine-to-five.
Get as much
loose change as you can. Stack it in as many piles as possible. Make the piles
high. Put them all over the playing area. When a car smashes into a change
pile, the change is theirs. The spot where the pile was, is now a magmatic
bog. There is a countdown to this game. 3d10 minutes. Then the piles collapse
back into the volcanic zones. Whoever has the most money at the end wins.
11. Canyons of Crime.
No-one knows what a criminal is but from the films
it looks like fun. The most important thing seems to be a chase. Every crime in
Rumble City is built around the getaway. There are special places arranged for
crimes to happen. The canyons are deep, dark and seemingly without end. If
necessary, side-routes are walled off to prevent early escape. To be a cop in
rumble city you need 1. A flashing light. 2. The ability to shout “police,
stop!” 3. Possibly a badge.
The Canyons
of Crime are inaccessible, you can play this one behind the couch. Or tip the
bed over. The race starts at a building designated ‘bank’. One racer is
designated criminal, they have the loot. They get a head start. The other half
are cops. When the criminal is caught, they are knocked out. Whoever did it has
the loot and is the new criminal. This continues until a time limit is reached
or no cops are left.
12. Coat Mountain.
The crags of Coat Mountain can always be seen from
the cracked windows of Rumble City. An ever-shifting ripple of waving stone. Looming
from the desert plain, shifting its position, but always the same distance
away. Still whenever seen but never the same shape from day to day. As if it
were an animal stalking the town, waiting for it to blink Hiding in its folds,
the only beings crazed enough to live there and survive. The Pocket People. Warped
and transformed by long exposure to its woven tombs. Emerging one by one,
babbling impossible tongues. Firing scratch-built jezzails at any who come
close.
Drop your
coat in a heap in the middle of the racing area. This is Coat Mountain. Your
track will be one circuit of the edge. If longer tracks are needed, more coats
may be used. Any car that touches Coat Mountain must roll damage. On every turn
of combat, one of the following must take place. A Pocket Person may emerge.
(They may only come out of the coat pockets where they live.) All Pocket Person
may move. All Pocket People may fire at whatever they see. (Pocket People count
as level one snipers.) At the end of their turn, a player decides which of the
events will take place. The next player enacts that event before they being
their turn.
13. Escape The Vault.
The hugeness of the Vault is beyond the
comprehension of man. Some say it has its own weather systems. Some say the
evils of lost ages are preserved there, far from the light of the sun. Some
claim giants walk there underground, or strange beasts track across its level
plains. A cyclopean cavern, city-sized, yet hidden like a sinkhole beneath the
city streets. Its half-mile high arched ceiling holds up Rumble City. Just. One
day everything will collapse into its dark embrace. Maybe tomorrow.
There’s only one thing to do. Built giant
oil-drills, install racing cars in shielded nodules at their tips, burrow them
into the Vault, release the cars and time them as they race back towards the
surface.
In this
race the Vault is the darkest, most cluttered, deepest and most disused room or
cellar you have. Place the cars at the point furthest from the door. Add to the
room whatever else you have that is strange. Race to the doorway or stairs.
14. Pages and Rages.
Out on the plains of Time, the jumbled words
stretch on out of your sight. Mixed-up blockmarks of nonsensical phrases
written in the strata of the desert stone. It looks as if they’ve always been
there, embossed in the rock. But they change too quickly when no-one’s
watching. And sometimes, the word-traps shut. Mounds of ancient earth peel over
like a vice, crushing what’s within. These marks collapsed from a higher
reality during the events at the end of the world. Ideo-shrapnel embedding
itself in the skin of the world. Only constantly chanting the blockmarks of
that zone will let you pass. The Book-Bedouin roam there, minds blitzed from
the endless verbal static they must chant. But it’s a fun place for a race.
To race
across the plains of Time, make a racetrack of open books, lying face-up on the
ground. No-one can leave the surface of a book. Any car doing so will be
considered destroyed. At the beginning of their turn, the player must look at
the lines their car is upon. They must chant, without pause, all the lines
connected to their car. If they do this, they are safe. If anyone fails to
chant, the book will close, crushing the car. (Avoidance may be rolled.) Books
will re-open in d4 turns and may be raced across freely in the meantime.
15. Playing Card Tar Sands
The sands of La Concorde ooze tar. Thick, black,
vicious and a handy source of unrefined oil. The tar forms a crackling
semi-permeable crust that sucks down anything heavy or slow. It’s
nearly-impossible to race on. Nearly. But someone found a way. Huge rectangular
plates of aluminium have been dumped in the tar sands. They can support the
momentary weight of a car, if it travels at high speed. Over the years they
have been graphitised by local youths.
Take a pack
of playing cards and spread them over or around the track in the way that seems
most interesting to you. But not too far apart. During the game, any car that
finishes or ends its turn on a playing card is safe. If a car did not either
finish or end its turn on a card, it starts to sink. The crew may still
successfully abandon ship, if they are lucky.
16. Cryo-Slumber Hijack
The libraries of Rumble City are full of
popsicle-frozen people. The ancients put a lot of useful people on ice. Probably
hoping to thaw them out later. Or hoping they would wake up in a world more
sane. No-one knows how the popsicle machines work anymore. Occasionally one
looks like it’s about to defrost on its own. If the person inside looks like
they might be fun to hang out with, racers gather in the huge library hall,
revving their cars. A few minutes from de-thawing the race begins. Whoever ends
up with the sleeper gets a new best friend.
Take a
jelly baby, lego man or creature of equal dimensions. Put them in an ice tray,
fill it up and freeze them in a cube. When fully frozen, place them in the
centre of the game space. Arrange terrain and obstacles to suit. All cars start
en equal distance from the sleeper. Crews can grab the sleeper on contact with
the cube, simply place the cube on top of, or inside the car.
Enemy crews
can grab the sleeper with a successful close attack. Whoever has the sleeper
when the cube is fully melted wins, and gets a new, free crew member.
17. Fruit Convoy.
Rumble City is fed through the fortuitous use of
mutant fruit. The surviving fruit farms of old California grow one gigantic
monster fruit each. Guarding it over long summer months from the attacks of the
hyper-crows. Fruit-Mercs with specialised weaponry stride the bananas watch
after watch and snipers lock the approaches to every pear. Then, when the
season rolls around, the convoys come from rumble city. The fruit are linked
and loaded onto trolleys and anti-gravity skiffs. Then the vast arrays set off
across the nightmare plains, heading for home. It’s murder. Every fruitpirate,
bandito, mutant scav, biker gang or windriding sunjunkie flocks on the gigantic
convoys as they rumble towards the city gates. The silhouettes of house-sized
avocado’s flash blackly in the rattling muzzle flare against the lowering
midnight sky. The wrecks of fortified pineapples hang in the dawn air like
pencil-sketch gallows when the suns rise, bodies strewn and despoiled. Time to
race.
Get all the
monsters and enemy cars you can find. One player takes the role of the
attacking hordes. Each other player runs one car. Get a bunch of fruit and a
model truck. String up the convoy. One player may take on the role of convoy
driver. Players may place crew members aboard the fruit at armoured positions
if they wish. The fruit convoy goes at the speed of the slowest vehicle minus
one. It can turn one segment per round. If it turns in the same direction for
three consecutive rounds, roll for unstable fruit, they may become loose and
escape. Game ends when the convoy crosses the city gates, whichever side has
the most fruit wins.
18. Kaiju Rumble
Kaiju are a constant menace to Rumble City. It’s
not really sure if they are monsters or normal things insanely sized. Perhaps
they are simply lost wanderers in the desert of time who came back to find
Rumble City shrunk to tiny size before them. Anyway, they are Kaiju now. You
can only be so big in Rumble City! They are easily dealt with. Trip them up
with monofilament wire tied round their legs, then drive up their bodies to
shoot rockets into their eyes.
This race
should be played with a friendly and patient human. Failing that, a pair of
shoes and some chalk should do it. In the first part of the game the Kaiju (or
person) walk very slowly across the playing space. They are trying to reach the
outskirts of Rumble City. The players compete to be the first car to run a
figure eight around the Kaiju’s feet. Once done, the Kaiju collapses in a
random direction. (Cars beneath its fall may take evasive action.) The friendly
human should lie down. Failing this, a chalk outline of a person should be
made. Crosses should be added for the eyes. Cars must race up the monsters
body, starting at the feet and fire once into each of its eyes. The first
car to do this is the victor.
19 Tectonic Gold.
California still hasn’t fallen into the ocean. Maybe
the Pacific doesn’t want it. The plates are cracking though, like a badly baked
soufflé. It won’t be long now… Catastrophic tectonic activity can be a boon to
any race. Rumble City bravoes often ride the San-Andreas plunge-mosaic-flats
for fame and extra respect. A favoured tactic is to flock closely as the plates
are crossed so as not to be disadvantaged by the shakes, then sprint for the
end when it comes.
Arrange the
course as normal, but draw it over as many tables as possible. Two is good, but
four tables linked at the centre would be better. At any point during their
turn, a player may shake one of the tables as hard as they like for up to three
seconds. If any car is thrown off a table, the player doing the shaking is
disqualified.
20 Crash-o-Tron.
The Crash-o-Tron is the most revered and respected
of Rumble City races. Somewhat old-fashioned, its true, and staid, but you know
where you are with the crash-o-tron. JUST CRASH INTO EVERYTHING.
The finish
line of the crash-o-tron can only be passed by a car that has deliberately
crashed into every other car in the race. That means the crash took part on
that cars turn. It’s common for no cars at all to finish the crash-o-tron.
