-“All artists search. I search for stories, in this post-self age. What happens when you can no longer call yourself an individual, when you have split your sense of self among several instances? How do you react? Do you withdraw into yourself, become a hermit? Do you expand until you lose all sense of identity? Do you fragment? Do you go about it deliberately, or do you let nature and chance take their course?”
(some plot stuff
-(the books)
+The Post-Self universe is an open setting for exploring the ramifications of being able to create copies of oneself, of what it means to undergo individuation, of what it means to let memories build up and up and up within oneself. This game comes as an extra funded by the Mitzvot Kickstarter backers.
(Based on Simple World, a tiny-ified hack of PbtA)
-(why)
+The idea for the Post-Self setting began all the way back in 2016. “Plz upload me,” I wrote. “Zero pressure. Seriously, how cool would that be! Multithreaded! Distributed! Infinitely useful!”
+A wider discussion ensued with others contributing, raising questions such as:
+Over time, the system of the universe tightened and simplified to what it is today. One can only fork from the present instance. Merging became a matter of memories and experiences, and one could choose just how much to merge.Quitting is solely up to the instance; no sending cues to quit. Uploading to this System was a destructive, one-way process.
+The influences of revision control — notably Git — were obvious from the beginning, an artifact from the tech leaning nature of those who took part in the conversation. Another heavy influence was that of postfurry, that unique intersection of postmodernism, transhumanism, and the furry subculture; though I’ll rush to note that this isn’t specifically a furry setting.
+After a few weeks, this led to a few stories written by myself and a few others. Then an ARG, a convoluted story named “Qoheleth”. Then a Twine game, “Gallery Exhibition: A Love Story”.
+In the end, another story I had been working on (“Getting Lost”) was merged with a greatly expanded “Qoheleth” to form a longer work, also titled Qoheleth. A year down the line, and a few weeks off from work resulted in a sequel, Toledot, where I accidentally wrote myself into a third book, Nevi’im, and a dream I had while dealing with so many Odists led to a fourth and final book in that series, Mitzvot.
+This last was funded by a (wildly successful) Kickstarter campaign. One of the stretch goals led right back to the roots of the universe: a system that could be adopted to roleplaying.
+Powered by the Apocalypse is a tabletop role playing framework developed by Meguey and Vincent Baker, originally for the game Apocalypse World but later publicly released for anyone to use. This provides ample opportunities for anyone seeking to make their universes collaborative to do so with low overhead. It seemed like a perfect for a setting so focused on stories, given its low emphasis on mechanics and focus on the storytelling. Post-Self in particular uses the minimal hack Simple World which aims to reduce complexity even further.
+A perfect combination.
Hand each player a character sheet. It should have the stat names listed, including the relationship stat. It should have a description of how the relationship stat goes up and down over the course of the game.
+Place the character concepts in the middle of the table. Talk about what they might mean and why they might be cool. Have everyone pick one and fasten it to their character sheet (in the concept box) using a paper clip.
+Tell them to assign the following numbers to their 5 basic stats: +2, +1, +1, 0, -1. If you only have 4 stats, instead assign: +2, +1, 0, -1.
+The maximum that a stat can ever reach in the game is +3, and the minimum is -1. This includes relationship stats. Player moves cannot advance a stat beyond +3 (though player moves can temporarily or circumstantially increase it beyond +3).
+Each PC has a relationship stat with each other PC. Tell the players to do this: whichever PC they know the best, write +2 next to that character’s name. Whichever PC they know the least, write -1 next to that character’s name. For each other PC, write +1. Tell them to write “NPCs” and assign that relationship a 0.
+Every character has a harm clock, with six sections. When characters take harm in the game, they mark a number of sections equal to whatever amount of harm the MC tells them they take. Point out the harm clock, and explain that when it’s filled all the way up, the characters are taken out of the action (in a genre-appropriate way).
+The next stage of creating characters is to pick 3 moves. When a player picks a move, they pick an option from the list below, give the move a title, and fill in the blanks. Each move gets recorded on their character sheet.
The MC moves are the specific things you say in any moment. There are two different cases where you use the MC Moves, and you use them differently in each of those cases. When the players look at you expectantly, you make a regular MC Move. When a player fails a die roll (getting 6 or lower), you make a hard MC Move. John Harper best described how to handle those two cases, so I’ll quote him:
+When you make a regular MC move, all three:
+Say what happens but stop before the effect, then ask “What do you do?”
+When you make a hard MC move, both:
+Say what happens, including the effect, then ask “What do you do?”
+A list of MC Moves is already written for you, waiting to be customized. Cross off up to three moves, and add up to three of your own to the list:
+Post-Self, as an open universe, invites the creation of your own story and explorations of the subtler implications of the mechanics. The world is what it is by virtue of what we, as participants in its creation, make of it.
+As such, I freely invite you to share! If your story takes off, feel free to post about it, share actual plays, write up your plots into stories and modules! Hell, even if you don’t want to share it far and wide, I would love to hear what you come up with; feel free to drop me a line. If you’re particularly proud of what you’ve done and are open to others experiencing it, I’m plenty happy to post your contributions as part of the ‘canon’, such as it is. Modules and RPG plots will be posted on rpg.post-self.ink and stories on the Extra Stories section of post-self.ink.