Roll 2 Dodge: Prismpunk

A planet is born, interstellar dusts mating and fusing, chemicals and energies binding and melding in a beautiful cosmic dance. Gravity gives birth to a slow, viscous mass- not quite liquid, not quite gas- slowly condensing into a solid form.

There are no beasts on this planet yet- obviously. No organism would ever think of landing on such a mass, and no creature would possibly arise from such a fragile, searing environment. Thus, there are no eyes, no senses- nothing to see the brilliant streaking chroma in the stars above.

And nothing hears the impact- a piercing, keening bullet shot through the heart of the planet, piercing its slowly fusing iron core, injecting itself into the circulatory system of the newborn spheroid, as if with a will to replace the veins and arteries of magma with its own bloodstream.

The glow slowly fades, as the hole seals itself in osmotic fashion, the plasma of the new world burying the newcomer from the skies deeply inside itself. And as the impact fades away, the growth of the planet continues unimpeded. After all, what is one more meteor or asteroid to such a monumental astral form?

But the heat of fusion does not scar this stone. The pressures of grinding tectonic plates move the intruder not, and as eons pass, the buried foreign bullet is ignored, forgotten, and thoroughly integrated into the planet's geologic workings.


A wandering ape, seeking food, falls from a branch as it reaches for a fruit dangling just out of reach.

It lands on the ground, painfully, and chitters as it pulls itself off the earth.

Ahead of it, the ape sees a glow. An approach and cursory examination shows the source to be a clear, beautiful amaranthine crystal perched precariously on a rocky ledge just out of reach for a quadruped.

The ape reaches and grabs the stone, and barely notices that in order to reach it he was forced to stand up.


The world doesn’t run on oil. The world doesn’t run on steam. The world doesn’t run on electricity.

The world runs on light.

In other worlds where mankind, from the beginning of its history, learned to harness fire, or electricity, or steam, or magic- in this world, people have learned to harness first and foremost the power of light, of bending it, of condensing it into lasers, of creating incredible supercomputers with it.

Light has always been the word of the soul, after all- bringing with it visions of illumination and transcendence, of a holiness unreachable by sheer virtue of its own nature. And the light and shadow have always fought each other, and it is no surprise that Humanity should choose the light, and shy away from the darkness. Thus, the minds of the world harness the light, as tools and weapons, to drive back the scorching night.

And so, Prism is everywhere and everything. Prism grows from caves, from stones, from special trees and bushes. Everything is Prismic, and everything is based off ever-developing prismic technology. Prism is as commonplace as lumber and mineral and metal, and just as necessary for existence.

Welcome to Prismpunk.

The game will be a somewhat freeform RPG; the Players will have freedom to pursue various tasks with prompting from the gamemaster. Roleplaying is expected, and Players are expected to stay in character and not communicate knowledge which their characters cannot know, a phenomenon known commonly as Metagaming. Generally, gameplay includes two major subtypes of scenarios: Combat and Discussion, which both are quite self-explanatory. The dice rolled in this game is a d20; however, luck does not affect gameplay so much as player action. There is no chart of effects and bonuses defined in stone; scenarios are changeable, and the dice are not the primary deciding factor in this game.

Inventory will be handled in an abstract sense. Players are capable of carrying up to twelve items; some items will take up more slots, so to speak, while other items will create sub-carriage areas, such as pouches and bags.

The Weapon Design system will be introduced in more detail once the Players reach an appropriate point in the game. Weapon Design introduces puzzle elements and budgeting elements, as Players purchase components to construct viable weapons with varying stats based on the components included.

Abilities will include practical skills, which only have one or two skill-levels. More complex skillsets will reach into the supernatural and thus have entire skill-trees, which will mostly be undefined until the Player determines the skills by using ingenuity to come up with new applications of basic concepts. Some skills will be simple attacks, some will be utilities, some will be passive bonuses to certain actions, and some will be combinations of the above effects as well as other possible effects. In the end, the skills are completely fluid and subject to the Player’s imagination. In general, skills will be described by a single term, with intersections between two skilltrees evolving into its own skilltree. Unlike in the previous, casual R2D games, one cannot learn new powers quite as easily. One must put effort into the learning or find paths to power creatively.

There are no instant-poof abilities like in most other RPGs. If you want to learn something, it will actually be similar to teaching in reality, with simplifications; I will give you basic concepts and ask you to extrapolate skills and applications from them, in and out of combat.


As an example from another game I've observed, if you wanted to learn, say, about biomancy, You would have to have (in character) already learned about the concept of stem cells as biological embodiments of elemental Chaos, with their flexibility and ability to shift through different cellular types, and the workings of neural systems and how that connects to your mind and soul. From there, it is your responsibility to tie the concepts in to reality, the results of which I will judge on viability as well as assist you to make real. Obviously, you can learn these concepts from dedicated teachers in game, observing other NPCs fight, reading tomes of lore, or the like.

For example, you could deduce that by integrating stem cells into your neural system and thus your mind, you could integrate Elemental Chaos into your thoughts, allowing you to get certain bonuses on will-checks and also allow you to control your stem cells, opening the first door into manipulating cancer as a weapon and mutating your body, with stemcell reservoirs as the fuel. In other words, you must figure out how best to integrate concepts to create the Root Skill which you will base an entire skilltree off of in the future.

Obviously, the Biomancy example isn't possible in our setting- but the general system should be evident. Thinking and practicing and learning takes time, though there are such things as Battletrances, in which the heat of combat renders you more capable of making large leaps in your training... But those are rare and difficult to trigger, and the exact combination of symptoms is quite unknown.

Basically, try to sum up your ideas into a concept, not the execution of a concept. For such Root Skills as this, something in the following format might be nice:

>How the data and learnings you already knew led you to come to visualize this new skill
>How the skill works in a backstory-sense
>What the skill does for you in terms of raw game mechanics
>How this skill possibly pans out into a whole class of skills in the future

But no, there are no EXP-point equivalents in the game. If you want a skill, you have to come up with a plausible one with ingame psuedophysics.

Concept Magic: Overview

There's actually multiple types of magic, and multiple ways to trigger it. Magic can be derived from outside sources, the most common one being the Absolute Zone, or internal sources (which thus far are rather mysterious to those not inside the magical fold), and Magic can be triggered in various ways, and using equipment as a conduit to magic can be used as a filter or lens to some degree, changing the effect of the magic in specific conditions. Magic that creates water, for instance, can be converted to lubrication when channeled through bladed weapons.

One will note that the two are completely different in application. One creates pure water for drinking- the other covers the blade in water for lubrication. This is possible by the engagement of the magical axiom of Concepts.

Concepts are literally concepts as we humans interpret them, ranging the whole spectrum of emotions and experiences. Common combat concepts include Severance, Crushing, Dominance, and Pain. For example, the water spell, when passed through a weapon specifically tempered with a Concept in its construction, may result in different things- and water itself contains concepts such as Flow, Peace, and Cold. By combining a whole gamut of concepts together, various strange magics unfold.

This is the basis of Concept Magic- and it is the easiest type to wield. More difficult types are restricted by the highest mages of orders in the lands, and information on them is difficult if not impossible to find.

But what happens if you try to link two opposite concepts- Heat and Cold, Severance and Melding? The result, as we have just seen, is... Well, pretty bad. It's a rather greedy loop of consistent energy drain from the Absolute Zone, where Concept Magic derives its power- and it's built into some weapons as a simple failsafe trigger, or a potent final attack- a practice scorned by the high mages, who see such a thing as inelegant and inefficient, like smashing into an orange, splattering extraneous material and energy everywhere, to consume the contents instead of efficiently peeling it. However, advanced magic is rare, and most novice weaponmakers prefer the shortcut, even with its dangers- as, again, we have seen.

In summary, one can combine Concepts to form magical effects on weaponry and other equipment. Concept Magic can only be wielded with equipment; it cannot be internalized for permanent effects on a person. The imbuing of a Concept and drawing on a Concept are two skills that must be learned (which means learned ingame).

Concept Magic: Consequences

To engage in Concept Magic is to give up what you know about what you want to do- or more accurately, to make a loan to the stores of the infinite possibilities of the Absolute Zone, to be repaid slowly and regained slowly. This is because the Absolute Zone, in its true form, is the ████████████████████.

If you wish to light a torch with Concept Magic, you must loan out a little of your memory and knowledge of lighting a fire. If you want to light a huge fire, you have to temporarily sacrifice a lot of experiences about fire; and if you go too far, and stretch yourself without enough experiences, you will permanently damage part of your soul's ability to recognize and grow in that direction. Battlemages go mad this way, inflicting the concept of Offense and Pain on an enemy until they themselves become inable to recognize or even feel pain, turning into pitiable, soul-damaged psychotic things.

And the things you lose aren't just memories or data. They're experiences- shapes of your soul, molds of your personality. The knowledge of how to set wildfires to spread most effectively is just as potent as a childhood memory of being trapped in a collapsing, burning house- and overuse of Concept Magic will, thus, result in permanent damage. This is why Concept Magic is, despite its ease of learning, not commonly used- because using it will draw on your own experiences, eventually draining you dry of yourself, taking bits and pieces of your personality in ways so that you don't even recognize their disappearance. Most people, educated or not, don't really wish to risk even the tiny chances of permanent damage like that.

Understanding this- admitting to the endless void the risk you are taking, and agreeing to your covenant anyways- allows you to transform your experiences into conduits for actions. Your soul is the fuel for Concept Magic.

To understand Material Magic, one must understand that it arose out of the sciences of the world being combined with the desire to achieve supernatural things- and so, logical equations of the universe were intentionally subverted by magic, doing things impossible in conventional physics, to create the branch known as Material Magic.

Some call Material Magic a simple branch of Concept Magic, but scholars in modern times do not see it as such, whether out of political or scientific reasons. However, it is undeniable that Material Magic could never have been created without the help of Concept Magic, and the Great Runic Sphere could never have been brought into being otherwise.

Material Magic relies on one's understanding of the world around them, and the understanding of natural cycles of energy and material; by tying one's will to the action, and pulling on the various factors of the world's physics, one can bring different things into being. One can direct rivers of flame, divide oceans, create mountains of stone and metal, construct impossibly elaborate things, and so much more.

A crucial difference between Material Magic and Concept Magic is that Concept Magic deals with the Adjectives of a magical equation- Concept Magic, in other words, is concerned primarily with the change you wish to express, while Material Magic is focused on Nouns, since it derives its capabilities from actually using the environment around you. A Concept Mage would simply use the concept of Heat to warm oneself in the winter, while a Material Mage might construct a warm shelter around him instead. The Concept Mage focuses on what he wants and the method of getting it is a byproduct, while the Material Mage focuses on how to get what he wants and thus produces his desired result.

But to be a Material Mage, you have to be a great scientist, first. You must understand how the natural world operates- and the further you can get into this understanding, the more control you can exert over the world. Unlike Concept Magic, Material Magic does not derive power from an ethereal realm. Material Magic does not tap into the Absolute Zone, and thus all the power and resources for your magic must be appropriated from the nearby surroundings.

But where do components fall into this? Material Magic is channeled with runic circles, and there is no way to apply the properties of Material Spells upon weapons without entering into the world of Runecrafting.

Runecrafting was founded as a solution to the greatest problem of becoming a Material Mage- the sheer difficulty of knowing the math behind how to wield the magic. To cast a simple digging spell, you have to calculate practical equations of thermodynamics, accounting for friction, gravity, air resistance- and where to move the earth, where your origin point and reference points are, how large the area will be, where you will derive that energy from- a task of calculation impossible to do on the run, or in combat. Thus, Material Magic, relatively new compared to Concept Magic, was rather crippled at its conception, until Concept Mages stepped in to assist. Wielding their powers, the Concept Mages welded the concept of Accessibility to the entirety of Material Magic-

And the First Great Runic Sphere was created, centered around a towering monolith of apparently infinite height, taller on the inside than on the outside, its inside walls covered in various alchemic circles, growing increasingly complicated as one climbs higher and higher. By drawing these rune circles on a surface, one can channel Material Magic with the circular language, designed to emulate natural cycles of energy and material- a simple way to port spells around for use, like the creation of a language for this system. Even now, nonmagicians can purchase low-powered spell scrolls from the Circle Tower for utility, as the Tower utilizes their runing skills for sustenance and income.

To summarize, Material Magic is less and more restricted than Concept Magic at the same time. While Material Magic must be written beforehand, and must be prepared as spells on papers or surfaces before usage (in a similar way to the Vancian Spell System of Dungeons and Dragons), Material Magic has no magic drain limit, as all of the power is derived from your surroundings, whereas Concept Magic actually has a cost to learn and cast, that cost being, as explained above, the experiences and constitution of your Soul. However, the process of learning the scholarly ways of physics and chemistry is difficult- and many are not quite intelligent enough to parse the definitions on their way to learning Material Magic; this, plus a desire for power, leads many to invest foolishly in both fields without preparation, often leading to tragedy.

Material Magic, unlike Concept Magic, has the unique distinction of separating itself neatly into categories of magic, with the suffix "-Mancy". There exist branches of magic such as Pyromancy, Magnetomancy, Phonomancy, Geomancy, etc.

In order to play, a Player must create a character’s name. That is all at this point, since for now Players will have no abilities upon starting the game. Once the game develops further, new Players will receive powers scaled to the party’s level pending diplomacy with the Game Master.

There is no waitlist for the game. With six players, no new players are being accepted at this point.

Bigkahuna (Jonathan Kmetz)
9/10 HP
18/18 SP

Inventory:
134 Clips
Rations-Pack
Forged Cryspistol
Returning Dagger
2x Gelpack
1x Herbal Potion
2x Teleportal Stone
Frowning Stoneface Shield
Master-node Prism Disk
Bowler Hat
Tuxedo Jacket

Skills:
Basic Concept Magic
Concept Comprehension: Movement
Telesymbol Network: With a complex working of further-developed skill in Movement, you have created a network of interminate size and unlimited nodes, giving you much versatility in your teleportation. With such development the skill has expanded enough to become a combat style in and of itself, becoming more of a skill than simple technique.

Techniques:
Accel Control: Concept Magic. Moderate control over acceleration and deceleration, costs 6 SP to maintain and while maintained the player cannot move naturally.
Telesymbol Portal: Concept Magic. Using teleportation symbols based on smileyfaces, you may teleport in ranges up to 20 feet. Each teleport requires a minimum of 10 SP as instant cost.
Bob-and-Weave Shooting: Keep one of the tele-symbols in my hand, and throw the other one in a random direction in a 10-foot radius from my target. Use the technique Teleportalization. Immediately shoot my target with my Cryspistol, pick up the tele-symbol, and repeat. Same requirements as Telesymbol Portal. This technique can also be utilized with the Returning Knife.

Feats:
None

Jackbarber (James Rosenburg)
6/10 HP
17/17 SP
Regenerating at 2 HP/turn

Inventory:
118 Clips
1x Rations-Pack
Daggered Cryspistol
Extensible Prism Sword
3x Gelpack
1x Herbal Potion
2x Antidote
1x Vial of Gunpowder
Reflective Mantis Shell Scalemail

Skills:
Basic Concept Magic
Concept Comprehension: Fortification
Basic Material Magic
Special Comprehension: Rune Artistry: You have a much easier time copying runes than coming up with new ones; thus, you are able to copy runes that are not protected by Disjunction.

Techniques:
Mineral Skin: Material Magic. The player gains 5 AP when active. The spell requires SP to maintain, equal to the AP remaining, and requires a turn of cooldown after the skin is removed before this spell can be recast.

Feats:
None

Wesfreak (Steven Zrael)
9/10 HP
3/22 SP
Maintaining Healing Focus

Inventory:
154 Clips
Rations-Pack
Daggered Cryspistol
Extensible Prism Sword
3x Gelpack
1x Herbal Potion
Basic Tome of Utilitarian Concept Magic
Basic Tome of Ygeiamancy
2x Paper with Healing Surge runes
3x Paper with Adrenaline Rush runes
Prism Disk
Sharp Mantis Claw

Skills:
Basic Concept Magic
Concept Comprehension: Provenance
Basic Material Magic
Manteia Comprehension: Ygeiamancy

Techniques:
Dispel Hunger: Concept Magic. Creating Nutrition from nothing save the unbridled powers of the Absolute Zone, you channel Concept Magic to fill friends' bellies. Requires a minimum of 8 SP.
Rune of Healing Surge: Material Magic. Summoning ambient energy from life-forms around, you heal your allies of their wounds and pains. This rune only functions when nonsentient life-forms are within eyeshot. Maximum requirement is 30 SP; at this point, you must rely on nearby plants and animals to bring down the SP requirement to below 22 SP.
Rune of Healing Focus: Material Magic. As Healing Surge, but pinpointed on a single target for regeneration over time, with similar SP requirements.
Rune of Adrenaline Rush: Material Magic. You manipulate the body in subtle ways to put more emphasis on adrenaline production, allowing a short-term boost to martial endeavors. Requires 4 SP to maintain.

Feats:
Sneak Attack: Combat is dangerous and life threatening, but much less so if you attack before the enemy even notices you're there. Ending a fight pre-emptively can literally save one's life. Acting in such a way gives a +2 to attacks when the enemy doesn't see you, or doesn't expect you to attack them.
Weakpoint Targeting: Most creatures have weak-points where they are less protected. This technique gives you a +2 to hit when targeting an enemies weak-point, given that you know where it is.

johnratchet3 (Mark Roettor)
5/10 HP
18/18 SP

Inventory:
130 clips
Working Vest w/ 4 Pockets
Luxchemistry Toolset
Chisel
2x Bandages
Extending Electrolaser Hammer
1x Crysknife

Skills:
Basic Luxchemistry: Trained as a repairman, you are able to do repairs on the lux circuits of various forms of technology.
General Runic Appraisal: Luxchemistry and Runic augmentation go hand in hand, and experience has taught you to recognize some basic runes.

Techniques:
None

Feats:
Critical Crowd Control: A battle with many enemies requires a different approach to that of a normal battle. You will have a +2 bonus to all combat with 4 or more foes in the immediate vicinity.

ShadoWKilleR (Allene Anael)
7/10 HP
12/12 SP

Inventory:
130 clips
Augmented Rifleblade
4x Bullet Bolts
Backpack containing 2x Rations Pack
1x Herbal Potion

Skills:
None

Techniques:
Distortion Shot: By leaping into a spin, you put further torque on the rifle's barrel, granting your shot greater piercing power and speed at a small cost of accuracy. Has a chance to damage your gun's barrel at a roll of 2 or below.

Feats:
Subconscious Triangulation: Much training with ranged weaponry has granted you a consistent ability to recognize distances and trajectories. All rolls involving distance get +2.

8680 (Kal Vadrien)
8/10 HP
15/15 SP

Inventory:
130 clips
Unnamed Artifact Glaive
Cryspistol
Reflective Mantis Shell Shield

Skills:
Basic Material Magic
Special Comprehension: Rune Artistry: Your childhood in Pallatir, severed from Material Magic, has instead led to an interest in the subject. You are a basic Rune Artist, in contradiction with your upbringing's creed.

Techniques:
None

Feats:
Heightened Awareness: Training and travel have tuned you to the world, and you get a +2 when dealing with environmental factors or matters of careful scrutiny.
Reaper's Run: The player gains +2 on attacks made while in the process of moving, or attacks that involve large movements, due to previous experiences where a tiny difference could have made the cut.