Disparateum
A downloadable worldscape
Our world is but one among many. We exist in a single paper-sharp slice of reality, pressed between the past and future, adjacent to the imaginary and unimaginable, above death and beneath eternity. Each layer of reality exists in relation to all the rest, and the paths we chart between them are often tangled to the point of absurdity. These worlds, the relationships between them, and the paths that wind between, are collectively known as the Disparateum.
As we speak, someone in the Disparateum is wandering the halls of a fractal museum-dungeon. Someone is planning a heist to steal a story from a mechanical dragon. Someone is running through a mirrored world while their reflection silently hunts them. Someone is flying through the streets of a collective dream to catch a bauble that'll grant them their heart's desire. Someone is opening a locked and dusty door in their soul to find something they tried to forget.
It could be you. The Disparateum waits for you to take the stage.
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This game is in development! It currently contains Act I of Disparateum, as well as small business, the first of an eventual seven adventure modules included in the zine Seven Plays from the Disparateum. The current plan is for two more Acts, six more adventures, and a number of other supplementary materials, all contributed to by fantastic writers, game designers, and authors in the indie space. All the money this game makes will be going directly towards the goal of putting together that team of contributors and making really cool things with them, and while I've got a pretty good sense of what the other two Acts of the main book are gonna contain, the adventures and supplemental materials are gonna be free range and really, really weird. Can't wait for you to join us on this journey!
Purchase
In order to download this worldscape you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $20 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this worldscape at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copies
The City is wide enough for all of us, and the paths through the Disparateum are barred to none. If you'd like to check out the game but can't (or shouldn't) pay the listed price, grab a community copy or get in touch with me.
Download demo
Comments
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this game has some ideas i've been thinking of in terms of my own solo rpg/writing game mixed with various divination techniques. (ive been doing lots of research in terms of popular solo rpg games and some of the scaffolding seems to have been created by ironsworn starforged and mythic gm emulator).
specifically the 3-dimensional cut-ups method of using paper/index cards to create a map/board of a dream-like/multidimensional matrix combined with a jungian-esque improv game of narrative play.
i also quite enjoy ideas in which i can 'play' or follow multiple characters who may never meet but the place or world they are in is affected by their journeys. (think invisible cities meets arabian nights meets vandermeer)
i'd be down to jam/talk about gameplay mechanics and ideas if that's a thing u might enjoy. ppl can find me @ dariussohei0 at gmail dot com
Thanks for the community copy - Will still be back to buy it when I'm less broke than I am right now though (I want more of it, so it needs supporting financially)
Thank you, that's much appreciated! I've got more cooking, slowly but surely, and can't wait til you can see it!
"Overnight, the circus comes to town. But something’s wrong … very wrong.
The circus music, which should be cheerful, seems menacing. The attractions (especially the freak display) seem off, the cotton candy is a sickly shade of green, the knife thrower doesn’t miss and the clowns …well, the less said about the clowns the better." — https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Circus_of_Fear
I've been working on a mashup of ...
Don’t Rest Your Head/Don’t Lose Your Mind, Nobilis, Glitch, Little Fears, City of Mist, Clockwork Domain, Crimes Against Men and Gods, Crossroads Carnival, Domains, Dreaming Cities, Dresden Files, Into The Odd / Electric Bastionland, Enter The Forest/Enter The Palace, Extracausal, Fairy Meat, Folkloric, Grimm, GURPS Steampunk/Screampunk/Time Travel/Warehouse 23/Faerie/Metro of Madness, Headspace, In Dark Alleys, In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas, Katabasis, Kidworld, KULT, La Compagnie des Glaces, Monsters and Other Childish Things, Nephilim, Over The Edge, Part-Time Gods, Puppetland, Reaching In The Dark, Relics, Savage Worlds Codex Infernus/Contagion/Crystal Heart/Enascentia/Fae Nightmares/Imago Mortis/Mutant Chronicles/Savage Tales of Horror/Streets of Bedlam, Schauermaerchen, Shattered Dreams, Shelter, SLURPS, Solipsist, Summerland, Terribly Beautiful, The Echoes of Heaven, The Nightmares Underneath, The Strange, The Swing (except Time is a stretched out Slinky instead), The Thing That Lives In Your House (Knows All of Your Secrets), The Zantabulous Zorcerer of Zo, Threadbare, Through The Breach/Meat Market, Troika!, Twisted Rails, We Are Champion and World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness Orpheus/Umbra/Wraith/Geist/Fae/Gypsies/Midnight Circus/Possessed/Time of Judgement/Changeling/Deamon/Deviant/Promethean/Hunter/Dark Eras/Hurt Locker/Asylum/Immortals/Inferno/Innocents/Midnight Roads/Mysterious Places/Proverbial Monsters/Second Sight/Skinchangers/The Godmachine Chronicles (NO f*cking elves/dwarfs/hobbits/orcs/dragons/werewolves/vampires/any of that sh*t though!), Broken Rooms, Born From Hate and … if I can wrap my head around it (and it doesn’t turn out to be a joke) … possibly … Jenna Moran’s game WTF
... taking whatever elements of each lend themselves to a Barker/Gaiman-esque tale that would, I think, in the right hands, deliver to fans of gaming the kind of punch in the gut that killed Houdini — I’ll give people dark fantasy alright (they’ll be traumatised for Life! ¹)
And Disparateum is central to it: it's the only place the Awake can get any sleep without falling prey to the Nightmares of Mad City. That is right, isn't it ... the Dreaming is safe, right? It's not a place where the Nightmares catch you unawares, whilst you slumber on, blissfully deluded that you aren't in grave danger here, right? ... Right? ... You didn't make the long, arduous and dangerous journey from the Warrens, via the Underground at Electric Bastionland, by way of London Below, then brave the Cityback, emerging into Katabasis, risking your very soul in search of a way in to the Named City, for nothing, surely? The Dreaming can't be Closetland in disguise, surely to God! And you can't be an eight-year-old tapped in the body of a fully grown adult, with no idea how you got here or what to do with it, because your secret Mythos is hidden from you ... you don't even realise you are a Rift (you aren't that awake you're just one of the Awake, asleep in the Named City ... and the Mist is coming to claim you)!) and you, therefore, have no idea of your power (the only thing that can save you now).
Disparateum is key to what I'm building as a .... 'campaign' isn't the word; it's more of a long (at least a year IRL), (hopefully devastatingly traumatic) experience — so, keep up the good work (I'll be back with the financial support ASAP.
___
¹ Can you guess why it has a working title of No Happy Endings ? 😉
I would LOVE to play this!!! Hell I would just love to watch/read/whatever this!!! Damn. I wish you all the nightmares and dreamscapes you can image.
Thanks.
It's had to go on the backburner for now, unfortunately - Life's what happens to you when you're making other plans and all that.
But, it's given me some time to investigate other things - notably: A-State, Between Dreams, Daddy Issues, Deliria, Dreampunk, Dungeons & Dayjobs, Everywhen, Ex Machina, Insylum, Invisible Sun, Itras By, JAGS Wonderland, Juggalo RPG, King of Nothing, Lacuna, Liminal, Lords of Gossamer and Shadow, Midnight, Mirror Mirror, Narcosa, Never Tell Me The Odds, New Gods of Mankind, Nightbane, Postcards From Avalidad, Ptolus, Reaching In The Dark, Scion, Sins, The Machine King, The Yellow King, Toypocalypse, Underworld, Unknown Armies, Urban Faerie+Chav, Urban Jungle and Vaesen.
Not everything will make the grade, but there's enough amongst them to have given me some ideas for the underlying rationale and plot development as well as some new mechanics - when I have time to focus on things again, there's a highly significant twist to the tale that has managed to consolidate the most significant thread to it all (think Clive Barker if he weren't such a cheerful soul ; ) [1]
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[1] The idea is that it should be to Barker what the original UK series Misfits is to the superhero genre - twisted. So, it will be not just dark but very ... very ... wrong - Cf. the difference between Gibson's vision of the world of Neuromancer and the brutality of Jack Womack's Ambient/Dryco series (only in an urban fantasy setting).
Disparateum is a weird and wonderful RPG. As far as I can understand, you are telling stories through the characters, while you are folding pieces of paper to make a book, of which the pages are different layers of reality.