Searching for a Cause

[Vondy]

I just had this zany idea for a setting:

 

Its our own, seemingly mundane world, but some people have begun to manifest their latent-self image or strong fantasies they have. This is especially the case with people suffering from various borderline personality disorders, including psychotics (not specifically violent psychotics), multiple personality disorders, lycanthropy, delusions of granduer, messiah complexes, gamers , true eccentrics, etc. Also, people who are clinically and seriously depressed might shrink while people who are manic-compulsive might grow - and God help you if you're bipolar - or a LARP enthusiast.

 

A significant minority of the population (5% ?) is affected. In some people's cases its permanent, and in some people's cases its connected to their mental state and how they are handling their "disability," or whether they're taking their meds. Psychoanalysis and therapy, especially geared towards helping people reconcile their self image with what most people consider "normal" or "reality" is all the rage, but some people are making their own reality, baby.

 

The only real limitation is that what we percieve as normal reality and the laws of nature are "elastic" - the jungian collective consciousness (or whatever baby, its groovy enough to need psychobabbly on the scale of star trek technobabble) - creates a "rational baseline" and snaps things back to normal: a person's latency affects them, but their impact on their immediate surroundings is temporary.

 

----

 

The question is: what might be the cause?

[Vondy]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

What about an MKULTRA (see http://www.parascope.com/ds/mkultra0.htm) style operation conducted by The Government ? It could be the result of an illegal mind altering drug that was created by accident; and then accidentally got into the public as well. It might not affect everyone (just people with a certain profile), but might stay in the spinal fluid or something weird like that, so that someone whose profile changes over time might "manifest" years later.

[CourtFool]

Searching for the gauze

 

Aliens are always good.

An exploration ship from Sarneth passes by Earth. Facinated by the 'apparently' dominant species on the planet they decide to run a fun little experiment. "How would these being behave if their pereception were reality?" Did I mention that Sarnethian technology is capable of altering the space/time continum and bending reality?

 

E-mail of Cthulu

The end of days are near as the ancient gods begin to awaken. Small shards of their conciousness possess the chaotic minds of 'unstable' individuals.

 

Synchronicity

All of humanity possess latent psychokinesis. While very small, the sheer number of combined minds has given this power a very real effect. Collectively the human race is manifesting this long dormant ability and altering reality.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

Could be that reality is indeed flexible, and at one time was utter chaos. Chaos was bad, or at least very dangerous, so a spell was cast, or a device was built, that maintains the balance and stablized reality. Reality is what is is because of some long forgotten thing, and now that thing is starting to break.

 

Why is it breaking? Who is breaking it? Can it be fixed? What happens if it shatters?

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

Could insert it into the "Amber" multiverse.

 

Somehow this Shadow Earth has been affected by a portion of the Pattern, which orders all reality, and allows those who walk it to alter reality and move among worlds. The inhabitants of this Shadow now have a very limited Pattern imprint. Unfortunately, it seems easiest to use by those whose grasp on just what "reality" is is weakest. The mentally disturbed, children, and those with strong creative imaginations seem to have the most control, though even with them it is often done subconciously. The subconscious collective "reality" power of a large number of "normals" can overpower these alterations.

 

This is part of the reason the stranger happenings are in more rural areas - the "werewolf" can be maintained in a small community, but would not last in a major city where more "disbelief" could be focused on it at a shorter range.

[devlin1]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

God help you if you're... a LARP enthusiast.

God help those people anyway. Lightning bolt!

[Vondy]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

Could insert it into the "Amber" multiverse.

 

This is part of the reason the stranger happenings are in more rural areas - the "werewolf" can be maintained in a small community, but would not last in a major city where more "disbelief" could be focused on it at a shorter range.

 

This is interesting. I like it!

[CourtFool]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

I just watched What the (Bleep) Do We Know? If I understood correctly, which it is very likely I did not, they say that Quantum Physics suggests that we do affect reality.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

Uncertainty causes it.

 

Turning to your baseline collective consciousness, we now live in a world with so many conflicting beliefs and so many people who don't believe in anything very strongly that the basal state of reality, which has always been controlled by mass belief simply isn't as well defined as it used to be, hence those who have very strong beliefs (the crazy people, the obsessives) can manifest localised changes in that basal reality. Long ago, when there were fewer people around, groups could effect reality locally which is why every region has tales of Gods and Spirits, but as society spread, so those local beliefs were subsumed into the mento-mass of the planet and a new consensus reality was arrived at...now it is beginning to wear thin...

 

As such manifestations continue more people will come to believe that 'powers' exist and so the basal reality will shift, allowing more powers to exist. You'll have a paradigm shift allowing the existence of powers.

 

Potentially a decent orator or high charisma leader could be utterly devastating...

 

Babbly enough?

[lemming]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

I just watched What the (Bleep) Do We Know? If I understood correctly' date=' which it is very likely I did not, they say that Quantum Physics suggests that we do affect reality.[/quote']

Something like that.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

Hmm. WoD-type philosophies, it seems. Mage especially, with the reality-affecting powers of some battling against the stasis of consentual reality (and maybe a force trying to quash dangerous, "reality deviants").

[Vondy]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

Hmm. WoD-type philosophies' date=' it seems. Mage especially, with the reality-affecting powers of some battling against the stasis of consentual reality (and maybe a force trying to quash dangerous, "reality deviants"). [/quote']

 

I made no value judgements, which makes me about as un-white-wolfish as can be. I just thought it would be a cool genre free for all kind of setting.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

I made no value judgements' date=' which makes me about as un-white-wolfish as can be. I just thought it would be a cool genre free for all kind of setting. [/quote']

I just thought it had interesting similarities, especially with the direction some other peoples' comments went. Not a bad thing.

 

Besides, I'm not sure about that value judgement thing. While White Wolf writes each bit of source from a very subjective position, as a whole they seem to cover all kinds of different perspectives (read Mage and/or Traditions source material, then read some Technocracy source material!). I think what they do is a very purposeful approach at their particular setting, without any particularly noticable agenda. Maybe I'm biased, though.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

The concept of - reality is fixed and immutable, but I as special in some way and my perception of, belief in or desire for reality makes it what I want of it - seems to have been in in fiction only a few times. Most notably in WW's Mage and Zelezny's Amber. Both of those have radically different approaches, but what those approaches do have in common is a set of rules that define what reality actually is.

 

For Mage, reality is the manifistation of intelligent desire, specifically human desire. At one point, all humans could influence reality and litterally make of it what the wanted it to be. This eventually led to groups of people gathering who shared the same or similar desire for reality, and eventually parts of reality stabalized. As this happened, people were born into what appeared to be a static reality, and many of these people never realized their own effect on it, and just took what they observed about reality for granted. Eventually, wars were fought over what reality would be, one side won, and the game's basis is the continuing struggle for some of the people who realize that reality is mutable and want to change it against the people who realize that reality is mutable but want to keep it static.

 

For Amber, reality is the result of polar opposites; an artifact that fills the void of reality with ever changing chaos and an artifact that anchors reality into a stable pattern. The result is an infanite realm of shadow-reality, where all possibilities between the one true stable universe and the just as true everchanging chaotic universe become real. What lies in the shadow-realities is mutable by those who's blood is linked to either of the two artifacts.

 

The question for Von D-Man is... why is reality mutable and what are the rules concerning who can change it and how they change it? I figure if you define two of these questios, you'll ultimately get the last part by deductive reasoning.

 

Who can change reality? Nut cases, psychotics, the mentally unstable, the delusional, and maybe a few sane people with radical theological or philisophical view points they fully believe in (the same way a loony would believe he's a dog and should bite people, or a nut-case would believe his Jesus or Nepoleon, so it might be argued that such "sane" people really aren't that sane).

 

Why is reality mutable? It's elastic. It seems stable because of a "rational baseline" brought about by the "collective conscious" of mankind.

 

If we take for granted that the collective conscious creates a rational baseline without worrying about why or how, we can assume that the loonys who can alter reality aren't part of that collective conscious. Perhaps by being disconnected they are no longer bound by the rational baseline's rules for reality and can alter it by force of will.

 

Such instances of altering reality should then almost always be extremely localized and temporary. Reality will attempt to snap back because of the baseline. Whether or not this baseline is stronger in the presence of observing "normals" would be up to the GM. I would suggest that it doesn't get sronger though. That would imply that the nutballs are still connected to the collective as the collevtive would have a direct affect on them. If they are disconnected, then the collective can only have an indirect affect on them through the rational baseline (which would apply equally and without prejudice in all areas and situations).

 

Of course, this brings new meaning to the phrase "out of touch with reality."

[prestidigitator]

Re: Searching for a Cause

 

The concept of....

Darn you, and your constant need for rep...!