no new age. no enlightenment.

a game about waiting. is it cottonmouth? it might be.

Harald Sohlberg u delight me

Penelope, poised like a mannequin
If Person X left Person Y,
but Person Y could make X cry,
who broke whom?
My love, my love, my epic love,
you have never been so untouchable. — Anya Leonhard. I miss you.

it's land you can see for miles, all of them rolling down and away from you. Then they rise, up to the endless cratered clouds of the dead-end sky in huge, gentle hills of cold green, and grey, and purple. it's the kind of land where you stand still, because you want to swallow it all, or to shout, to fill it up, or to chase it, to run and run and run into all of it in great, leaping steps, but there's so much space you could never be enough to contain it, and you could never fill it, and if you ran, by the time you'd stop, panting and flushed and itching with dried grass and goldenrod in your socks, you'd be no closer to anything in any way that mattered.

so you stand still because you want to swallow and shout and run, and you stand still because the land traced these paths and streams for you, and the mountains turned in their sleep for you, and the roads curled into clearings where, right now, smoke rises, so thin and tiny and far-away, for you.

lemme in there mark laver

where you stand

in all immediate directions, empty hills with empty fields. beyond that, a few days walk to the highway, and then dense and knitted forests, where fir and juniper and maple and birch have grown through and around old apple orchards. impossibly far away, the coughing sound of a machine ricochets off of tree trucks. somewhere, out of sight, further into impossibility, a window is open to a high ceiling'd room on the second floor, and curtains dance in the wind, which is unseasonably soft.

Per Adolfsen's got a lovely line quality

nearby
Monumental, a single boulder. cool to the touch, it presses back against your palm. Glacial, it never stopped moving.

The rusted hull of a Toyota defies the dead softness in the air, rough and human-touched. weeds loop through its windows. inside, broken bottles, executed by some teenagers: the snap and flash of the bullets and the brittle green sunburst of the glass pricked at our exposed skin.

A little tree, scarlet and delicate as coral or capillaries. It's easy to fall in love with a tree like this, bright bright red, who loves the sun.

A gully dips unexpectedly, full of coarse, prickly plants. burdock and nettle and stiff grass.

On and in the ground (thick, clay-cold), endless broken objects. arrowheads, potsherds, cans and capacitors and engagement rings. I've got my own list, and you can use it, but you should make your own, too. Everything on the list should come from something else. That's important, but it's also important that everything should be nearly anonymous, damaged and incomplete. My list mangles Semiurge's D100 Answers to the Question: What’s In This Dude’s Car/Couch/Carrying Case?, Grand Commodore's Fruits of the Shard Pit   and Maximalist Weird Fiction Industrial Era Treasure Tables and Scrap Princess and Pat Stu's Veins of the Earth. If you use a magical item, any magic it has should only be a flight of fancy, a vivid imagining that does not linger.

1. three teabags, strings tied together, caked in dried blood
2. a snapped 6 inch press on nail of solid gold
3. a potsherd; a man swims downward with gritted teeth. a black worm winds its way out of him
4. a longbow made of charcoal, string snapped. a cloud passes overhead; for a moment, the other sees the wielder as an impossibly tall skeleton of grey bone.
5.  a crumpled budweiser can with a torn scrap of paper sticking out of it: "matter is evil. our bodies are evil..." the rest is too weather damaged to read. 
6. A branch from a tree that isn't here any more. rubbed smooth, bits of antler-velvet cling to it. suddenly, the fields ripple with the passage of deer who aren't there. the smell of compost clings to your hands for a long time afterward. 
7. A white silk burial shroud. 
8. A tile of white chalk. Scraped into it: "Our people were drowned by the miasma of the moon, and mist of dust like powdered marble swirling on the darkest mornings"
9.  A punctured, rusted can of spray paint. 
10. a little stone Buddha, only the top of its head showing above the earth. excavate it and your body surges with heat, the air rippling. You imagine flames of sapphire surging upward to the sky, filling and becoming it.  

a bunnahy by anthony cudahy

the two of you
One of you has come up here with:

• a big seax knife
• a camping shovel
• a red pack of Camels.

The other has:

• a matchbook with 10 matches
• a roll of twine
• a six pack of Busch with 4 cans left. 

Both you have brought a need that can’t possibly be fulfilled in the scenario. You've both come here because you are running away, and because you need to make up your mind, but you don't want to, so you're waiting for the person you're running from to come and do it for you. You don't want to talk about it, but you need to talk about something. So you talk about the view and privately guess what the other person is trying to say.

francois bard. sure yea you can be named that whatever

what you're thinking about

who were they?

1. sibling
2. parent
3. spouse
4. lover
5. best friend
6.  roll twice and combine; a sibling's parent, a spouse's lover, etc.
   

who have they become to you?

1. someone you've been buying drugs from
2. someone you've been selling drugs to
3. someone you owe a lot of money
4. someone who owes you a lot of money
5. someone who taught you
6. someone you've been teaching
7. someone you beat, badly
8. someone who beat you badly
9. someone you left with your child
10. someone who left you with your child
11. someone you used to love, who still loves you
12. someone you still love, who used to love you

what themes are catching on these thoughts?

1. the collapse of forms and structures
2. slow building intensity
3. a new, useless, angle on the past
4.  an open astonishment and wonder
5. longing for the inner sources
6. the restrictions of reality
7. love as an expression of totality
8. ones place and role as a feature of the material world
9. retreating from life
10. the reunification of that which has been dissolved
11. the sorting and separating of qualities
12. dedication to the illusion
    

 how have time and chance inserted themselves?

1. disease
2. fire
3. a wedding
4. a funeral
   
5. winning the lottery
6. a childbirth
   
   

   

   this link might be dead i can't tell sorry Miklós Baráth

the conversation
you can't ever talk directly about what you're thinking about.
you can't talk about anything else for more than a few sentences, or when necessity demands it.
by saying "look, there's..." and describing something in the distant landscape, you can signal that whatever you're pointing out somehow relates to or describes what you're thinking about
by saying "did you notice..." and describing something in the distant landscape, you can ask the other player if what they're thinking about relates to the thing you've described
by saying "yes, and look, there's..." and adding something to that description, you can confirm that the thing the other player described relates to what you're thinking, and the new thing described elaborates on it.
by saying "I see it" you can let the other player know you think you're on the same page
by saying "I don't see it" you can let the other player know you're totally lost.
by saying "why are you showing me this" you can invite the other player to answer, though they still cannot answer directly. once the other player answers, this particular conversation is over, the wind blows, and a watch passes.

at 3+ Exposure, use "there used to be a..." instead of "did you notice"
Use "right, and now it's..." instead of "yes, and look, there's..."
Use "and now it's gone" instead of "I don't see it"

elizabeth wiltzen you paint a lovely alberta sky

the wind
The wind brings you weather, sounds from the world you're looking out at, and light to color what you see. Every day once its Past Midnight, and whenever a conversation ends, roll to see what the wind brings you. The next thing someone points out in the landscape should reflect what the wind has brought, and you can always refer back to it when you need something to talk about.

1. Upsetting heat. Sheets fluttering limply in damp wind. Cash passed from one sweating palm to another. Low, thick whispers. Conspiracy born in idleness, burning with intent. Everything is insane. Flip a coin to see which character gets +1 Exposure. Countermeasures: managing heat.
   
2. Bitter, unrelenting cold. Coins rattling in plastic cups. The wind whining through gaps in shingled roofs. The whistles of those without teeth, and the chattering of those with. the hopelessness of poverty. Flip a coin to see which character gets +1 Exposure. Countermeasures: staying warm.
3. Still, unwholesome air, like the world holding its breath. Cattle lowing, fat and afraid. The groan and scream of an air raid siren. Running through it, the high pitched wailing of a child. The actual filth of evil. Both characters get +1 Exposure. Countermeasures: doing something wholesome or playful.
4. Hard rain. Crack and groan of thawing ice. Scrape of stone sliding out of a wall. Grumble of crumbling brick. Sodden sloughing of plaster buckling. Some things end and never come back. Both characters get +2 Exposure. Countermeasures: staying dry
5. Thick mist. The bite of an axe into a frosted pine. A hammer driving a nail through blue mountains and violet valleys. The ring of a prospector's pick against a heavy piece of ore. Nature set against industry.
   
6. Brisk wind. A brick shattering stained glass. A gunshot, a wrench turned against the machine its wielder built. The screech of gears without oil. New technologies set against old ones.
   
7. Black clouds on the horizon. The clamor of children released from school.  The rattle of tools being put away. You are a fixed point in a turning world.
   
8. A small, white sun. A buzzing fly throwing itself against glass. The keen of a cicada without a mate. A cricket in a box. Prayer. The unending futility of the very small.
   
   

   

   denis sarazhin shadow work

doing things
Whenever you spend any time engaging directly with your immediate surroundings, (finding something on or in the ground always counts for this), roll 1d6. On a 1 or 2, something unexpected  and unpleasant happens. Cross it off the list and this Watch passes before you can do anything else.

1. little hole hidden in the grass; you twist your ankle
2. bee sting. the bee is slow and dying of cold and damp.
3. step in deer shit
4. pants catch on a thorny patch and tear
5. gnat flies up your nose
6.  sharp, stiff grass slices your ankle like a papercut

Being able to do something just relies on taking enough Watches to get it done or preparing to do it for enough Watches. A Watch can be replaced by chance; a coin toss or similar.

alright seattle did pretty good when they made christopher martin hoff

taking time
a day has 6 Watches. Each time the wind blows, you find something on or in the ground, or engage with your surroundings in some other meaningful way, a Watch has passed. Gain +1 Exposure if you do not sleep during Midnight and Past Midnight. You cannot sleep if you have not shown us how you are making yourself comfortable.

1. dawn
2. morning
3. afternoon
   
4. dusk
5. midnight
6. past midnight

Each time a day passes, mark it. 

Art Hansen hell yeah he did!!!!

exposure
whenever you would gain Exposure, if you can show the countermeasures you've taken, you can ignore 1 point of Exposure.

whenever you gain a point of Exposure, show the other player your misery.
at 3+ Exposure, show them your bad health instead.
at 6+ Exposure, show them your death instead.

phil hale make u say what the hale

the rider
at Dawn of the 6th day, you spot the Rider. they'll be there at Dusk.
the Rider is...

1. in a vermilion and cream 2-seater biplane
2. in a 1972 chevy ck10, dust white and azure
3. in a lightning white 1970 dodge challenger
4. on an ivory white 1975 harley chopper
5. on a gigantic albatross, blown far inland, white as bedsheets.
6. on a horse, white as bone. what else? 

the Rider has

• a flask of vodka
• a wool blanket
• an uzi carbine with two 20-round magazines
  
  

  

  D S my antarctic love

guessing
On the 6th day, anytime before Dusk, by saying "I guess it's time," you can guess what your companion has been thinking about. Make your guess out of character, and then show the other player what action your character takes to wordlessly communicate this guess to their character.
The other player should take action to show you the result of your guess.
If they are completely correct, show them how exhausted you are.
If they are more correct than not, show them how much you trust them.
If they are more incorrect than correct, show them how distant the two of you are.

Then, in secret, each of you guesses the nature of the Rider, and if they have come to kill you, or take you with them.

• if both of you guess that they are there to kill you, they will try to.
  
• if both of you guess that they are here to take you with them, they are here to kill you. 
• if one of you guesses that they are here to kill you and the other guesses they are here to take you with them, they try to will kill the one who guessed they were here to take you with them, and will take the other with them, if they want to go.
  
  

  

  José Carlos Naranjo please don't set ur owls upon me

violence
unless the rider is ambushed, they go first. 

on your turn you can do as many things as you can do simultaneously

to hit someone with a ranged attack, roll 16+ on a d20

if someone is hit, they roll a d20

1-8: they're down
9-13: they're Injured 

14+: if they're behind cover, no effect. otherwise, they're Injured

to hit someone with a melee attack both of you roll 1d12
If the difference between the rolls is
1 or less, both are Injured and go Down.
 2-3, the victor is Injured. The defeated is Injured and goes Down.
4+, the defeated is Injured and goes Down

Whenever someone is injured, consult these tables.

After the violence is concluded, roll a d20 for each person Down. +2 for each
Injury. +X where X is your level of Exposure. On a 16+, they are critically injured and will die before the end of the day. Otherwise they are dead.

For all combat rolls
each injury you have gives you -2
-X where X is your levels of Exposure.

You're gonna trip and glide
All on the trembling plane
Your diamond hands
Will be stacked with roses
And wind and cars
And people of the past — Marc Bolan. In a way I miss you too.