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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Ah! Due to a Tumblr post I arrived here and then I realised I bought the same bundle in question haha! I had one question, is this meant to be played as a solo rpg? Or with other people?
Very excited to try it!
The default assumption is that you have exactly three players (as the Knight, Thief, and Seer) and a Tower acting as a traditional GM, but it then goes on to play with that assumption a bit. The first Act has some guidance on messing with the Tower, including playing without one, and later parts will do the same with the player count. You could feasibly play Disparateum solo, it'd just require juggling a lot of hats!
Noticed that the title card on Page 31 calls it the "Layer of Bloodshed", whereas the headers call it the "Layer of Reflection". Is this intentional?
Never mind, I'm a dummy!
You're all good! That chapter in particular is a bit tricky lmao
I'm surprised there aren't more people chomping at the bit for this.
No art - no advertisement potential.
This world feels so endlessly fascinating, and the idea of exploring different worlds and dimensions through overlapping literal pieces of paper is an incredible mechanic.
I am a little confused about some of the finer details, character creation, the extent of what traits are capable of and how the points connect to the traits themselves. You get seven points to designate different ranks between each of your traits, but some traits begin at higher ranks than others. Do these higher ranks cost more to start with, and does establishing potential rank ups also cost more? Can you begin a game with every rank maxed out at four to begin with? You interact with the world through tokens you gain from your traits, but if starting at a higher rank is the same price as starting a trait at rank one, could you not just start every trait at rank four to get the most potential tokens?
Also, within the seven plays, some of the characters have traits and items that are dependent on the roll of 2D6. Are dice rolls a dedicated mechanic or are these something that was made specifically for these PCs?
Thank you so much for any potential clarification. This world is electric to me and I would love to be able to understand how to play it fully.
Disparateum definitely needs a second pass for the mechanics sections to clarify things like this, so don't feel bad for feeling confused!
The idea behind the seven points is that you have seven total ranks across your traits, and no trait has to start at a particular rank. However, as it becomes clear, gaining ranks isn't actually that difficult, and as such it's not too big of a deal if you decide to be flexible with character creation and add a few extra ranks as appropriate. The PCs in Apoptosis, for example, all begin with ten ranks instead of seven, purely just to give the sense that they've been doing stuff before you, the player, showed up.
As for the characters in Small Business, the confusion there comes from a bit of a subtle joke. The record store is a crossroads between worlds, and Pwk, Victoria, and Oliver are meant to be characters from other games crossing over into ours. The "From Another World" trait that they all share lets them borrow a mechanic from their home game to use here; Pwk, as a Warlock from an OSR/D&D-style game, gets an inventory of useful items; Victoria Ashrider, as a character from a Powered By The Apocalypse game, gets a signature 2d6+mod Move she can use when intimidating people; and Oliver, as a Belonging Outside Belonging character, gets a picklist of personality traits. One thing I need to add are a lot more NPC examples, so these three oddballs aren't quite so front and center.
Holy hell this was made for me. I mean my name is even a translation of Alexander!
Also I found The Potential from just the two lines. Like, if you hid the text fully, I would have never even thought to look there, but you left a hint. A hint at the potential of your worlds. And I love that.
Wow, I am extremely excited to try this out, thos sounds so cool!!!
whether I ever manage to play it or not I’m just real excited to read something that sounds like you dreamt it if you forget the name.
also here because of tumblr.
found this through below comment's tumblr post, and holy fuck am i hooked. the world(s) are crafted so fucking perfectly for someone like me, and i just knew im gonna have to run this
thank you so so much i think this is gonna be my next fixation bc holy shit its so well made and i NEED more
downloaded this THREE YEARS AGO, read it, decided it was the coolest game i had ever seen, started telling all my friends about it... and then completely forgot what it was called. i now have found it again by sorting all my PDFs by size, but it's been so long that all my friends are 100% convinced that this is not a real game and it's something I saw in a dream. which feels lore compliant. anyway this is the coolest game ever, criminally underhyped, doing things that no other game is doing, weird as hell (positive) and generally what Invisible Sun wishes it was. i'm so normal about this game you have no idea
This really means so much to hear! Disparateum's my weird arthouse baby, and it's wonderful to know it's touched your heart like this. I promise I'm still working on it!! Been slowly chipping away at Act 2 between other projects, and it's gonna be even weirder. I also wanna do a quick pass over the mechanics again, cuz I've had some thoughts since.
this is so funny, I'm here because I saw this intriguing post of yours on tumblr!
can't wait to check out this game
so it's your post. Found it in a facebook post and it intrigued me enough. Btw, if you like dreams, take a look at Cultist Simulator, maybe you'll be interested too!
thanks for bringing so many people here, myself included <3
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.