The Mechanisms Behind The Universe

THE GRIT BETWEEN UNIVERSAL GEARS

The Mechanisms Behind the Universe is a solo/journaling TTRPG where you seek to learn, understand, and maybe, master the fundamental structure of your universe. Along the way, you learn TRUTHS that draw you ever further away from the mundane - and your humanity. And each supernatural encounter, illness, or enemy made leaves a MARK, adding a vulnerability. Both TRUTHS and MARKS have their benefits and disadvantages, and you must keep them in balance with each other.

The game uses dice and tarot and/or playing cards. Roll dice or choose your starting conditions, and how many Event Cards you'll pull. The Minor Arcana are your Event Cards, which serves as your prompt. Major Arcana are drawn as Clarifying cards, representing Trials, Allies & Enemies, and Changes to the World. They inform the nature of your answer. Every Event Card will affect your MARKS and TRUTHS in some way, either adding +1 MARK or +1 TRUTH.

Build up your world through the TRUTHS you learn and the MARKS you gain for play in other games. This is intended to be as rules-lite, system-neutral as you want to make it. Make it crunchier and more unforgiving for story and character development, or freeform and more about the world building.

This may be printed on one page front and back, however the margins are set to top/bottom 0.5 in and left/right to 0.75 in to fit on this size without using smaller font sizes. A more accessible font size and margin format will be available if you don't mind using more paper. Zine version forthcoming, the PDF was just faster to finish.

Finally, this was made for the One-Page RPG Jam 2022 - the theme was Exploration.

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This game is Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.  I recommend Natrix's Character Creation Speedrun for creating characters.

Lastly, this game owes a lot of inspiration to the following games, podcasts, books, and media in no particular order:

The Magus, by momatoes

Anamnesis, by Blinking Birch Games

The Wicked Congregation, by Daniel Kwan

Ex Novo, by Sharkbomb Studios

Cultist Simulator, by Weather Factory

The Magnus Archives, by Rusty Quill

Piranesi, by Susana Clarke

Homestuck, by Hussie (I know, I'm embarrassed for me too)

and honestly a whole lot more that I'm forgetting.

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Planned updates: 

• Front and back zine version.  ~ A E S T H E T I C S ~
• 52 Minor Arcana Event Card  premade prompts, defining both subject and affect (adding MARKS or TRUTHS, redistributing MARKS or TRUTHS, and more)
• A supplemental for premade MARKS and TRUTHS
• More world and character starting conditions

Thank you!