NGE CCG: OMG WTF ASL

Giant Monsters and Emotional Abuse, Now in Card Game Form!

There was a full-on, playable collectible card game based on Neon Genesis Evangelion. I'll let those of you familiar with that series pick up the shattered remnants of your exploded heads, before we catch up the unenlightened.

NGE is an anime show that often gets fulsome praise these days for inverting the expectations of the viewing audience. It started as a fairly straightforward teenage-boy-pilots-giant-robot show with a lot of (literally) arbitrary Judeo-Christian-Freudian mythology as set dressing, and then took a headlong dive into psychological fuckery, high weirdness, and ultimately the creator more or less directly telling anime fandom as a whole to put on a non-dragon shirt and leave the basement for God's sake. Of course, as certain observers have pointed out, this message was somewhat diluted by the creators' willingness to pimp out the series for a wide variety of collectibles. tie-ins and relaunches, many of which involved heavily sexualized incarnations of the two pubescent female pilots, colour-coded for your convenience as red (dominant) and blue/white (submissive). The demands of crass commercialism and creepy anime fandom aside, NGE managed to squeeze out a pretty decent boy-becomes-man story viewed through the funhouse mirror of animoo.

The NGE CCG, one of the tie-ins relatively light on both crass and creep, is actually startlingly faithful to its source material. Relationships between characters are key to gameplay, and six of the main characters from the series are arranged in a pentagon plus the three Evas (aforementioned giant robots) below, creating something like a Tarot layout¹.  Every card title is a line from the show, spoken by a character in the relationship matrix - Ordinarily, each character can only speak one line per turn, though as in all CCGs, rules are flexible things. Cards can be played both for their normal effect, or flipped over for another line that can be used to either attract or harm a character. In the former case, the targeted character is "grouped" with the character who spoke the card - in the latter, they're either broken out of whatever group they're in, or if alone, are "downed" (injured, sunk into a deep pit of despair) until someone says something nice to them and gives them the strength to carry on and keep fighting (this is anime, after all)². Characters who are downed can't speak cards, and pilots who are downed can't pilot Evas and fight Angels (the giant monsters drenched in aforementioned Judeo-Christian mythology).

Another interesting rule is the "Draw points" in the upper right corner. Rather than drawing one card per turn automatically as in Magic, you draw a number of cards at the end of the turn equal to the total draw points of the cards you played. Most cards are worth +1, including all cards played as attract/harm lines³. Particularly powerful cards are worth 0, and devastating ones are worth negative draw points, requiring a player to discard cards. Since having no cards in hand at the end of a turn eliminates a player, this serves as a rather severe limiting factor⁴. It's an oddly roundabout way of doing things, and keeping track of total draw points looks like a pain in the ass, but the suspense of instant elimination unless cards are shepherded very carefully could save the system.

The CCG is also faithful to its roots in that the victory conditions vary - Each player chooses a particular consummation card to start, and although consummations are tied to particular characters, a given character has several consummations (reflecting various goals they had over the course of the series). Victory is achieved by first reaching a particular gamestate (two characters are grouped together, a certain character is downed, you defeat an Angel) and then flipping the victory card over and achieving a different condition. The sheer variety of win conditions means that, particularly for the first "level" of victory, it's not a zero-sum game - One action can easily fulfill multiple win conditions. Although Angels have to be defeated (an undefeated Angel forces the active player to discard cards, hastening their end as mentioned), their defeat is often only incidental to the ultimate goal of the game, which again works well for a show where the giant monsters often took a backseat to the main character's torturous and mindfucky relationship with his father, his fellow pilots, and pretty much everyone he met.

Is it any good as a game? No idea - despite an entire cardset and rulebook being translated and made available online, I haven't yet gone mad enough to try printing the whole damn thing out and negotiating the fan-translation on the cards (See the card above - it's powerfully evocative of the feel of the show, but what the hell does it mean? Does Shinji's group break up? Are cards attached to him discarded? The rulebook offers no assistance). It remains a mysterious enigma of odd rules and Mysterious Japanese Game Design, waiting for the day I lose my sense entirely and attempt to print and play. For the time being, I'm quite content just to know that it exists.

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1. And heap another layer of symbolism on there, whynot.
2. Rei Ayanami is the only character who automatically recovers from being downed every turn. It's a big old spoiler to explain why this rule exists, but it amused me to no end.
3. Again, except for Rei, whose attract/harm lines are worth 0. And again, hee hee hee.
4. Although logical, since a player with no cards has no means of getting new ones.

Agents of FATE: Sideline

So we're back to Agents of FATE, which now stands for something other than Fancy Acronym; Totally Empty. The Agents will be working for the Fictive Attachment for Tactical Espionage, with credit going to IRL friend Greg and the mysterious internetty Chris¹ in 3-to-1 measure.

Shuter and Laskey

I'm also wild about Chris' idea to have FATE be presumed fictional within the context of the setting². A series of books seems too low-key, though, and besides, nobody reads any more. I'm running with the notion of a syndication-length TV series, made with obviously low production values and sold on the cheap to cable channels with a lot of dead air to fill. This series, "Agents of F.A.T.E." ³, follows the adventures of F.A.T.E. superoperatives Clarinda "Blackbird" Shuter and Hank "Depthcharge" Laskey, and mixes vaguely accurate, fragmentary descriptions of the real FATE agency and its modus operandi with plentiful disinformation, ridiculousness, terrible acting, yawning plot holes, and baffling breaks with the tone, setting and style of the series in general⁴. FATE ensures that the show is aired in slots which maximize peripheral awareness; most people have had an episode of "Agents of F.A.T.E." playing in the background at some point in their lives, but couldn't tell you the plot to save their lives. Of course, there are also the fans, collecting minutiae and merchandise and maintaining wikis, fansites and the annual AoFCon in Atlantic City. As far as the mundane world is concerned, claiming to work for F.A.T.E. is the equivalent of saying you're with the X-Files - or, considering the chintziness of the show, the Office of Scientific Investigation and Research. That F.A.T.E. uses the same fictionalizing tactics within the show's continuity just makes evidence about the real FATE all the more unbelievable⁵.

There's some fun to be had here. While real FATE missions are deadly serious, carry the potential for betrayal at any moment, and often involve weighty decisions that can change the course of world events, the show is a goofy bit of CG-heavy pap in which the chemistry-free will-they-or-won't-they between Shuter and Laskey is given precedence over any possible consequences of a mission⁶. PCs who try to invoke the agency's name will be presumed cosplayers or worse. After a particularly harrowing or betrayal-ridden mission, I could switch it up and run a game in the morally duochrome metafiction of F.A.T.E. - Perhaps as the heavily fictionalized but sole remaining record of an early FATE operation with relevance to the FATE group's next assignment.

... Then again, this kind of over-the-top doesn't really mesh with the life-or-death, trust-no-one mood I originally set out for with FATE (Well, to the extent that I set out anything - Greg Stolze, eat your heart out⁷). It's a neat idea, but it'll take a lot to make it work right. I think I'll try and clever up some actual mechanics first, and maybe take another stab at it afterwards.

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1. I've known a lot of Chrises in my time, so you'll forgive me if you know me IRL but I can't identify you from ten sentences. If you're a total stranger, well, thanks for reading my blog and contributing to this thing of ours. You're a rad dude.
2. I have a total boner for secret agencies maintaining their secrecy by loudly declaring themselves fake, as obliquely hinted by the MALARKEY¹ designation in the Changeling Cold War setting I posted back in the hoary mists of around this time last year.
1. Which is, natch, more or less a lock stock and barrel steal from Charles Stross' A Colder War, in which ultimate top secret materials are marked BOOJUM. Oh Charles Stross, you were pretty okay before you started running your mouth about the singularity.
3. Note the ellipses - their presence distinguishes between the fictional F.A.T.E. and the real FATE. 
4. The latter two are exemplified by "Operation Daggerblade"¹, the episode where Laskey "retrogresses" into a literal goblin and vanishes into the New Jersey Pine Barrens as Shuter weepily bemoans his "incurable" condition. He is back to normal in the next episode and no explanation is ever provided.
1. And yes, all the series episodes have titles like this.
5. Annnnnd I do believe my secrecy-through-fictionalization boner just went fractal.
6. The continuity is intentionally and irrevocably mangled: For example, other events of "Operation Daggerblade" are often referenced in later episodes, but never the 'goblinization', leaving its status in canon a source of constant flamewar. FATE did this intentionally, as the canon arguments keep the fanbase occupied and off the trail of the real organization.
7. Stolze bemoaned how other writers for Unknown Armies had written material that contradicted certain rules he thought the setting required, while acknowledging that he never actually made those rules explicit. Here, I've managed to do the same thing to myself.

Obliviax and Wonder Overload

Less is more. Consider our creaky old friend¹ Dungeons & Dragons. High fantasy is a genre where anything can happen, and then everything does and it turns out it's all pretty dull. I've been saying for years that Yahtzee Croshaw nailed it when he bitched about the very concept of a generic fantasy setting, and D&D is the purest essence of that trope - A whole galaxy of interchangeable settings with the same kitchen-sink cast of races, magics, items, and Eternal Ren Faire politics and technology². Hell, some of them even share gods. There are some exceptions, and these are often considered the best of the breed, but even the most wackity-ass worlds still carry over a lot of the generic baggage of fantasy. There are so many of the old marvels to be accounted for before we can even get to the new stuff.

Of course, my smugness on this matter isn't completely justified - I love Over the Edge, and it has this exact kind of kitchen-sink "everything is true" arrangement, but even more so because it includes the modern world and all its postmodern mythologies; ditto Conspiracy X, which covers X-Files knockoff ground from Greys to wizards to Atlanteans to werewolves to psi, albeit with a pretty good rationale tying it all together (which I'll spoil in a later W.I.L. post). But for all that I enjoy those games, I admit that their overstuffed worlds miss out on the subtleties of simpler premises: If everything's possible, nothing is interesting, and other such cliches. As an example of what I'm on about, I'll to steal a random³ monster from D&D and extrapolate the changes its could ring on an otherwise mundane world.

Very upset about something.

Obliviax is an "evil⁴ black moss" that absorbs memories, and, if eaten, can potentially give those memories to the eater (or just make them sick as dogs). In D&D, it's a minor annoyance, yet another wad of hit points with a boogah-boogah face and an unusual power which amounts to stealing spells from wizards and confusing everyone else for a few hours. If attacked, it sprouts a little "mossling" man to cast stolen spells. Just another day in the dungeon. Meanwhile, in a world less demon-haunted, where miracles and magics aren't a dime a dozen, this shit is crazy.

Let's say we dump the bit about forming the spellcasting mossling, which is legitimately stupid and really just D&D fulfilling its obligation to provide a Big Dumb Fight Scene at any opportunity. What we have here is a single organism which changes the world in a number of major ways:

• Psionic powers are real. This is big, but done. The capacity to alter the world with nothing but your will and rubber face is the cornerstone of a lot of existent settings. A thought here is that perhaps prolonged exposure to obliviax's telepathy can trigger psi abilities in humans: Cue hideous government experiments, or eager beavers forgetting weeks at a time trying to unlock their inner potential. Certainly memory moss is going to be at front and centre of psi research.
• ...and plants can have them. And suddenly we've taken a hard left into Batshit County. To quote Hermes Conrad, "That just raises further questions!". Our normal understanding of telepathy is kind of dependent on the critter in question having an actual brain and intelligence, usually quite a lot (human level or better⁵). A psychic plant leads to a questioning of our whole concept of will and intelligence, to say the least. And where there's one psychic plant, there are most likely more. Can they communicate with one another? Do they form a hive mind⁶? Greenpeace is going to go apeshit.
• Memories can be stolen. And then there's this. Why would a plant evolve the capacity to steal memories at all (robbed as we are of the "crazed wizard" all-purpose explanation)? That's a hell of a long way to go for self-defense that could be had just as easily by becoming poisonous. Maybe the brainwave patterns of animals are a part of the moss's diet or reproduction cycle - It's a fundamental assumption of any world with psi that psionic energies are just that, energies, so it's probable that obliviax draws nourishment from them, perhaps even emitting a low-level psychic lure to draw in prey.
• Ahem. Memories can be stolen. "Basic" obliviax as described above just drains your memories of the last 24 hours, which is not going to be a major concern for your typical D&D party, aside from throwing off the goblins-slaughtered count. Surely, there are plenty of other strains of obliviax - ones which take weeks, or hours, or maybe even years before being satisfied. Perhaps there are strains that feed on your most important memories, or your least important, or your name - If there aren't, our scientists are doubtless working day and night to create the most flexible arsenal of memory-erasing mosses possible, for their dire and inscrutable purposes. Or maybe to help treat victims of horrible trauma. Mad science doesn't have to equal evil science, you know.
• Memories can be stolen. And of course, like any means of memory-editing, this just reeks of potential Prisoner-style mindfuckery: Stealing memories and force-feeding new ones, the whole brainhacking thing. People could even sell their memories, like a biopunk Strange Days. It'd be fun if the PCs investigate their couldn't-think-of-a-back-story missing time and, instead of finding Greys or government conspiracy, just find a gigantic naturally-occurring obliviax patch out in the woods. And then get zapped, forget it, and wander off confused.

And all this from one filler entry in Monster Manual II, with a name like a hastily-conceived fake drug⁷. I might still be on a continuity kick from yesterday, but this was fun. I think I'll start another series of posts along these lines, settings based on single, obscure D&D monsters as the sole source of Weird in the world. Even if it means having to eventually write up Flumphworld.

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1. "Friend" here in the sense of a guy you knew back in elementary school who has since turned into a total knob.
2. A big part of this is that it means characters from one world or campaign can be easily ported to another, which is a double-edged sword in a hobby where everyone has at least read stories of campaigns completely destroyed by such transfer PCs. Despite this, with the ascendancy of the "running encounters at the game store" model of 4E (and WotC's new, staggeringly evil plan of actually selling  fucking booster packs of power cards to play in said encounters) the need to balance out everyone will make sure that this interchangeability isn't going anywhere.
3. Heyyyy Stewart!
4. Yeah, evil moss. Neutral evil, to be precise. Because a moss with an understanding of order and chaos would just be silly 
5. This is as good a chance as any to mention the Dogpocalypse setting I conceived in the old /tg/ days, in which testing on animal psi led to a Collie name Sandra getting scared and telekinetically nuking Salt Lake City. 
6. Like an even-more-bizarre version of Kult's Pazuzu, which is the collective consciousness of all insect life on Earth: A truly alien, ahuman consciousness which is constantly consuming itself. Pazuzu is one of those ideas (of which there are many in Kult) that you could build an entire campaign world around (with a tip of the hat to Philip K. Dick's "Expendable"), but in that game's incredibly overcrowded cosmology, it's strictly a third-string threat at best.
7. Actually, some gomer apparently decided to name his band that as well. Since it's an 80s fantasy metal band, I doubt that the D&D connection is a coincidence. 

Three ideas

1. Two megacorporations, each with hundreds of subsidiaries, duke it out for economic supremacy across the planet. One is headed by a demon of greed in human form, the former CEO's voice of avarice given power until eventually it was able to dispose of him entirely; the other's just your everyday mundane international conglomerate. The demon CEO would dearly like to put a mystical whammy on his rivals, but the other company is so much a paen to human greed that it and its lynchpin members are completely immune to the demon's magical abilities.
2. Spirit entities consume essence, which can be drawn from humans as a seperate ectoplasm or even absorbed while still empyrean orgone, but it is much easier to condense essence into human blood with the proper ritual; thus, even relatively benign entities can have a vampiric quality to them. Especially powerful entities don't even need the ritual and can draw essence into blood simply by looking at or even being near a human being - this is not a pleasant experience for the human, but having your personal soul be coexistent with your material body does slightly boost human abilities. Thus some people (agents, PCs) might even have the ritual made permanent, although it does, among other things, rule out any hope of living on after death.
   
3. One of the first doses of LSD on American soil is brought into the country by Edward Rohrer, one of Albert Hoffman's research assistants, visiting his family in New Mexico in the summer of 1947. Rohrer and his brother drive into the desert to try this drug Hoffman won't shut up about, and are never seen again. Certain events occur in the New Mexico desert around this time which may be related to Rohrer's experimentation.