History TabletopGame / TheStrange

* PettingZooPeople: Doctor Ceratops has the body of a humanoid ceratopsid which doesn't change much when he translates.

** The State of Panopticon a schizophrenic mind made up of seven founding citizens whose brains are frozen in liquid nitrogen and linked via a computer-assisted network to the systems that keep the city a functioning artificial environment.

** Ccitizens of Panopticon live under direct and constant scrutiny by the State. They must comply with strict schedules, curfews, strip searches on command, and other indignities. Only approved entertainments are allowed, which means that most media are outlawed.

* WeakenedByTheLight: A vampire is burned by sunlight and any source of strong UV light.

* AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: A free-roaming instance of the Singularitan AI is mounting an expedition into Microcosmica. This creature, a data sentinel, seeks the brain and believes that if it's successful, it will achieve an ascendant state as great as or greater than Singularitan itself. An ascendant state risks conferring planetovore status on the data sentinel.

* {{Cthulhumanoid}}: The very TropeNamer Cthulhu appears in the recursion R'lyeh and has writhing lengths of tentacle on his horrific face.

* EnemyMine: In Camelot Le Morte, Sir Lancelot and a handful of former knights of Arthur work with the former traitor Mordred, who leads the organised resistance against Queen Gwenhwyfar and her propagation of the ''maladie de la machine''. Old slights and betrayals have not been forgotten: former associates of Arthur consider Mordred cruel and sadistic, leading through fear and intimidation, and he only shows symapthy to outsiders whose original loyalties didn't lie with Camelot.

* ThePhoenix: Each phoenix of Ardeyn is the literal weight of sin once carried by a human or qephilim. As creatures of living sinfire, phoenixes seek the recently dead to feed upon and, in the process, release more phoenixes into Ardeyn. If a phoenix is destroyed, the sin it was born from is erased, or so the legend goes.

* PublicDomainCharacter: Recursions of some popular worlds in the public domain exist in the Strange thanks to especially active fictional leakage. If someone were to find any of these recursions, it's not improbable they could meet the well-known characters. Tthe core rulebook presents [[Literature/JohnCarterOfMars Old Mars]], [[Literature/LandOfOz Oz]], [[Literature/SherlockHolmes 221B Baker Street]], [[Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth Innsmouth]] and [[Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland Wonderland]]; the ''Worlds Numberless and Strange'' supplement adds [[Literature/TheTimeMachine AD 802,701]], [[Myth/KingArthur Avalon, Camelot Le Morte]], [[Literature/TheJungleBook Kiplingverse]], [[Literature/{{Dracula}} Gothic Playground]], [[Literature/PeterPan Neverland-4]], [[Myth/EgyptianMythology New Kingdom]], [[Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu R'lyeh]], [[Theatre/TheTempest Sycorax Island]] and [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds War of the Worlds]]; other supplements mention [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Legendary Greece]], [[ArabianNightsDays Legendary Arabia]], [[Myth/RussianMythologyAndTales Legendary Novgorod]], [[Myth/HebrewMythology Legendary Canaan]], [[Myth/HinduMythology Legendary India]], [[Myth/NorseMythology Asgard and the Nine Worlds]].

* ArtificialZombie: Singularitar zomvies are living shells for the distributed intelligence calling itself Singularitar. The original minds have been burned out, and a copy of Singularitar has been installed in the meat as wetware.

* PublicDomainCharacter: Recursions of some popular worlds in the public domain exist in the Strange thanks to especially active fictional leakage. If someone were to find any of these recursions, it's not improbable they could meet the well-known characters. Tthe core rulebook presents [[Literature/JohnCarterOfMars Old Mars]], [[Literature/LandOfOz Oz]], [[Literature/SherlockHolmes 221B Baker Street]], [[Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth Innsmouth]] and [[Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland Wonderland]]; the ''Worlds Numberless and Strange'' supplement adds [[Literature/TheTimeMachine AD 802,701]], [[Myth/KingArthur Avalon, Camelot Le Morte]], [[Literature/TheJungleBook Kiplingverse]], [[Literature/{{Dracula}} Gothic Playground]], [[Literature/PeterPan Neverland-4]], [[Myth/EgyptianMythology New Kingdom]], [[Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu R'lyeh]], [[Theatre/TheTempest Sycorax Island]] and [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds War of the Worlds]]; other supplements mention [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Legendary Greece]], [[ArabianNightsDays Legendary Arabia]], [[Myth/RussianMythologyAndTales Legendary Novgorod]], [[Myth/HebrewMythology Legendary Canaan]] and [[Myth/NorseMythology Asgard and the Nine Worlds]].

* WeirdCurrency: Halloween currency is counted in individual pieces of wrapped hard candy.

* LastOfHisKind: Uentaru and Darum Tal Alumust are the last survivors of their homeworlds after they fell prey to a planetovore, having escaped into the Strange but unable to save anyone else. Normally planetovores are inescapable, so it’s saying a lot that someone got away.

* ManEatingPlant: Thick, hallucination-inducing vegetation seeded by an alien seed now overgrows a good part of the planned parklike environment of the World Below of Starship Heinlein, called the Forest of Perfidy. Portions of the vegetation, called sinroots, sometimes animate and hunt heretics and demons living there, or the visiting angels and recursors.

* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Werewolves in Gloaming have the ability to temporarily transform into wolves at night, can regenerate in wolf form and are vulnerable to silver weapons.

* SnakePeople: A serpent person stands as tall as a human but has a slender, sinuous body covered in mottled scales. Its head and tapering tail are distinctively serpentlike, and a forked tongue flickers from its mouth.

* StarfishLanguage: The language of the octopus sapiens consists of skin chromatophores. A recursor who translates in as an octopus can speak the same way, but one who arrives as a human will find it difficult to communicate.

* TrainingFromHell: New recruits to the Bleak Mafia are trained in a brutal lost-world recursion that eats normal wise kro for breakfast. Survivors are slapped with the label 'kro goon' and become part of whichever family sponsored them.

** Fission has the ability to split into several nearly identical versions of herself, including basic clothes and weapons. They have most of the original's memories and motivations, and they usually act in concert with Fision, though she doesn't mentally control them directly.

* FuturePrimitive: Descended from a far more advanced culture, the serpent people in most recursions where they inhabit (for example Mesozoica) have become degenerates, losing knowledge, culture, and, for many, language.

* GhostShip: The ship ''Endeavor'' is completely dead. A colony of inklings lurk along the upper decks, but the inklings restrict themselves to the exterior. The interior of the ship contains nothing to suggest what might have happened to the crew, not even a stray blood spatter. The hold is empty of supplies, and instead it is filled with several hundred ghost-white oblong spheres made of something harder than fundament.
* GiantSpider: A monument spider's legs can stretch almost 152 m from tip to tip.

* {{Masquerade}}: Wuxia City is a San Francisco with secret societies, sorcerous colleges and martial arts dojos where mystical power is real and the most respected and feared teachers are beings who first came into their strength centuries ago in ancient China. Regular citizens don't know or believe in any of it.

* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Vampires (blood-sucking creatures of the night that are weakened by UV light) are real in Gloaming.

* PrisonDimension:
** The government maintains a recursion for prisoners, whose properties make it virtually impossible to enter or leave via the usual means. Translating either in or out is a difficulty 10 Intellect-based task, which means the only reliable way in or out is through a translation gate that OSR keeps on a secret armoured rail car, always moving around the country, picking up and processing new residents for Homebound.
** Desktop Terrene, where recursors are translated into inanimate objects on a desk and the only available focus confers an increasing acceptance of the placid existence in the recursion, was almost certainly constructed as a trap for recursors unaware of its danger.

** The city of R'lyeh is usually drowned at the bottom of the ocean,

* WeakenedByTheLight: A vampire in Gloaming is burned by sunlight and any source of strong UV light.

* FantasticCasteSystem: Citizens of Panopticon exist within well-defined castes that determine benefits. The lowest- caste citizens have virtually no rights, but even those of the highest caste live in constant anxiety because the State isn't stable.

** The tiny sun at the core of the HollowWorld Pellucidar has a moon which provides the one area of perpetual night in the recursion, known as the Land of Awful Shadow.

* PrisonDimension: The government maintains a recursion for prisoners, whose properties make it virtually impossible to enter or leave via the usual means. Translating either in or out is a difficulty 10 Intellect-based task, which means the only reliable way in or out is through a translation gate that OSR keeps on a secret armoured rail car, always moving around the country, picking up and processing new residents for Homebound.

** Many organisations aware of the dark energy network keep a list of banned recursions that are never to be visited, lest visitors give the spark (or worse) to a squamous, rugose thing like Cthulhu in R'lyeh.

* TalkingAnimal: The natives of Pantamal are talking, clothes-wearing animals of nearly every variety. In Kiplingverse, animals can also converse in a common language.

* VigilanteMan: New Centropolis has developed a legal framework to deal with the issue of superheroes being charged as vigilantes. If a superhuman is involved in some sort of incident, the Department of Superhuman Affairs looks into it afterwards. If the efforts of the superhuman in that event are found to be in the interest of the public good, all is well. However, if the acts of the superhuman are found to be questionable or outright illegal, the DSA may issue a warrant for their arrest.

* FantasticRacism: Many greys in New York Grey openly feel that humans are an inferior race, and they wouldn’t raise much of a fuss if legislation were enacted to make the greys the legal guardians of people everywhere.

* PoweredArmor: The Eleventh Reich's War Walker is a weaponised, motorised exoskeleton covering the wearer's body.

* UnderwaterCity: The city of Juvanom, submerged under the central basin sea of Ardeyn.

* AfterTheEnd: The recursion of Cataclyst, the aftermath of a nuclear world war, is a place of mutated forests, radioactive cityscapes, gelatinous seas, magic and mutants.

* AncientEgypt: An ancient recursion was seeded by belief in the ancient Egyptian afterlife and included the likenesses of many pharaohs waking into their promised heavenly kingdoms. It has since collapsed, and some of these dark energy pharaohs have fled to the Strange and still survive there.

* BrainInAJar: In the Eleventh Reich, the Führer has grown old. After a failed attempt at ascension, the Führer is only a head frozen in a vat of supercooled fluid. Various wires, computers and a few magic spells keep him conscious.

* {{Cyberspace}}: Cyberscape is one of several limited worlds seeded into the Strange by stories about a virtual world created by computer connections: a grid of green lines a stark plain, on the horizon blazes a city whose architecture features lines of light of unthinkable complexity, and constellations of data wheel overhead, each pinpoint a database.

* FlatWorld: Flatland and Krayol are not only flat but only exists in two dimensions.

* TheNightThatNeverEnds: The full moon is fixed in Halloween’s midnight sky, bright and clear except when streaming clouds veil it.

* PoliceState: The Schutzstaffel apparently have a method to identify intruders to the Eleventh Reach, as well as a way to zero in on a recursor's current location relatively quickly.

* FlatWorld: Flatland is not only flat but only exists in two dimensions.

* TheMaze: The Veritex is a labyrinthine system of tunnels that runs below the surface of Ruk.

* TalkingAnimal: The natives of Pantamal are talking, clothes-wearing animals of nearly every variety.

* FamtasyPantheon: A host of gods is revered and worshipped in the Sword Realms, culled from the many fictions that seeded the linked recursions. This means that if a recursor travelled far enough through the connected realms, they might find their way into the presence of Zeus, Odin, or one of the many gods made familiar by various games, novels or religions.

* TestedOnHumans: Tests conducted by the Eleventh Reich's Wissenschaftsbüro are frequently done on live human subjects.

* ZombieApocalypse: Zed America is one of several recursions that hosted a zombie apocalypse. Most of America now belongs to the shambling hordes of the undead, except for the rare high-security fortress enclaves and lonely keeps where the American way of life continues.

* WickedWitch: Hazel Jenkins, the owner of the House on the Hill in Halloween, turns caught trick-or-treaters into slaves, food or test subjects, and fashions monstrous creatures. Some covens in the Forest Hills are also looking for fresh meat for their stew pot.

* GhostCity: [=R639=] is a Seattle where everyone has vanished: ''something'' caught the residents, leaving behind thousands of sets of clothes and pet collars filled with desiccated dust and ash. Streets are empty. Cars are parked as if their owners expected to return. Nothing moves in the parks but for the sway of empty swings.

* ElaborateUndergroundBase: The secret headquarters of the Green Hills Society is an abandoned and decommissioned subway station under New York Grey with state-of-the-art facilities.

* ImAHumanitarian: Most victims caught by Hazel Jenkins or some witch covens in the Forest Hills of Halloween become ingredients in their stew pots.

* OurDemonsAreDifferent:
** In Ardeyn, demons of Lotan are the spirits that slip through the nets of umber judges and spirit magistrates and find their way to Lotan. Every good memory is cauterised and every slight, misfortune, snub, and pain is amplified. The resulting mind knows only hate and the desire to tempt others into the same state as itself.
** Hell Frozen Over is home to a variety of terrifying natives who resemble visually and behaviourally a few popular conceptions of demons and devils.
** The demons of Starship Heinlein are people who survive contact with the alien seeds known as sinroots and get turned into homicidal maniacs.
** The Abysm, part of the Sword Realms, is inhabited by all manner of demons, including sword demons and chain demons.

* OurGhoulsAreCreepier: Ghouls in Halloween are goblins who have developed a taste for the flesh of their fellows. Hungry for flesh (even rotting flesh), they dig up about one in ten fresh graves in the Graveyard.

* SealedEvilInACan: Lotan, an evil god imprisoned within his own world-sized body by the Maker, who set the Incarnations to monitor the petrified shape, which came to be called Ardeyn. Should Lotan ever wake and shake off Ardeyn's soil and vegetation, the recursion would be utterly destroyed.

* TheEmpire: Rebel Galaxy is ruled by the Grand Imperium led by Empress Tahali V, who is as ruthless and terrible as all those who came before her.

* {{Hell}}: The recursion of Hell Frozen Over is a frozen hellscape whose natives are terrifying creatures called demons.

* TheLostWoods: The Forest of Perfidy which grew in the World Below of Starship Heinlein is inhabited by sinroots, sentient, mobile, aggressive tree-like creatures that use barbed roots to feed on blood.

* LivingClothes: Chaosphere hierarchs have been known to wear thoniks as cloaks that self-animate and attack aggressors without any need for direction from the wearer.

* BaseOnWheels: Jir maintains its position on the very edge of Ruk, which is constantly growing and expanding, thanks to the massive biomechanical treads the entire city is constructed upon.

* CreepyCemetery: The Graveyard of Halloween isn't safe for anyone but trick-or-treaters or those who've made a previous arrangement. The Graveyard is definitely not safe for strangers, natives not under the protection of the Accords, or those without a written right-of-passage, and sometimes even those safeguards are no guarantee.

* AnachronismStew: Dinosaurs from mismatched terrestrial eras, mammalian megafauna including mastodons, mammoths, sabre-toothed cats,... and savage hominids all cohabit various 'lost world' recursions like Mesozoica and the Lost Lands.

* BigFancyCastle: In the centre of Atlantis lies a palace of gold and crystal, the home of Darum Tal Alumust and by far the largest structure in the city.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: A recursive duplicate of Heinrich Himmler still leads the Schutzstaffel in the Eleventh Reich.

* TheBerserker: A fever in Microcosmica causes the resident white blood cells to act crazy, lashing out against benign tissue and researchers with a vengeance.

* ImMelting: Researchers and recursors in Microcosm have to take daily shots of a drug called [=ImmuneSuppres=]. Not taking daily injections will cause discoloration and swelling in one's skin. If this is untreated, victims die and degrade into rotting goo.

* LaResistance: A group of organized resistors persists in Welthauptstadt Germania, capital of the Eleventh Reich. Using the symbol of a white rose, the Resistance prints and secretly distributes anti-Nazi literature. The Resistance also conducts secret activities, such as attempts to shut down factories, free prisoners, and in at least one failed case, assassinate the Führer. The Resistance operates in cells that remain separate from other cells, so that if one group is compromised, the other groups remain safe.

** Sometimes, the Gifted Ones of Atlantis use technomagic to transform these slaves into guards, beasts of burden, or other things.

* BorderPatrol: Beyond the northern border of the limited recursion of Camelot Le Morte lies only misted moors that turn explorers back the way they came.

* AGodAmI: Dark energy pharaohs believe they are ascended gods, proud and vengeful.

* SuperPersistentPredator: Once it goes after something, killing it is usually the only way to stop an utricle.

* BarFullOfAliens: An exclusive nightclub called Club Gr3y is popular in New York Grey. Humans and greys looking for a good time might enjoy one of the many shows or dances hosted by the club.

* HorseOfADifferentColor: In the Age of Myth of Ardeyn, dlammas served as steeds of qephilim who fought Lotan's human dragon riders.

* CareerEndingInjury: Alicia Reardon was just another DSA agent running down cases in the streets of New Centropolis until she and her team managed to capture the terrorist Mister Nefarious. She was injured in the process and now walks with a limp that’ll likely never go away, rendering her unfit for field work.

* EldritchAbomination: Planetovores, who are mentioned in the Estate agent briefing at the beginning of the book. They have a variety of possible origins, but most seem interested in making a snack of the baryonic universe, one planet at a time.

* TheMole: Calvin Meyers works for a foreign state (within the context of the Microcosmica narrative) and keeps tabs on everything going on in Nereus One. He reports back to his handler via illicit radio calls once every few days.

** Cataclyst roaches are human-sized roaches with human faces.

* HumongousMecha: The Colossal Battle Robot, which originates from Kaijutopia, is a 78 m tall metallic battle robot armed with a variety of weapons.

* NameAmnesia: One of the co-leaders of the Karum faction is only called the Foreseer and claims no other name for herself.

* PlayingWithFire: Some mutants in Cataclyst can cause a flammable object within immediate range to spontaneously catch fire.

* SelfDuplication: The Incarnation of War could split himself into thousands, becoming the Army of Ardeyn. This power was greatly diminished after he slew the Maker and lost most of his power in the process.

* FusionDance: Legend says the very first hydra was formed when the severed heads of a coterie of human sorcerers who served Lotan were thrown into a cursed well. Some thread of evil magic remained in those heads, binding the souls together as a hydra.

* SensoryOverload: Unpracticed users of the All Song who first plug in are inundated by music, text, images, emotions, varying feelings of pressure, scents and other sensations that defy explanation. An Earth visitor once described it as drowning in a social media ocean that wasn't restricted to a two-dimensional screen, nor just to sight and sound, akin to taking psilocybin mushrooms or LSD.

* BigCreepyCrawlies: Cataclyst roaches are human-sized roaches with human faces.

* WeatherManipulation: Calandria claims to be the Priest of Storms, and for a price, she will either quell a storm raging somewhere else in Ardeyn, or start one.

* CreatingLife: Custom pets, temporary companions, bodyguards and even poisonous assassins can be ordered at the right price from genetic engineer Ealam-asi.

* CircleOfStandingStones: Calandria's Storm Circle, two concentric circles of menhirs located in a clearing in the forest southwest of Telenbar in Ardeyn. The outer slabs are blank and the inner thirteen slabs are each heavily carved with runes that glorify specific aspects of a storm.

* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: Most people believe that the original natives of Ruk didn't look like humans at all but they have reshaped themselves to better and more easily interact with the people of Earth.

* WasOnceAMan: Some planetovores were originally alien individuals who willingly sacrificed their mortality for power and potential in the Chaosphere.

* WetwareCPU: In Singularitan, both electronic and flesh avatars run a distributed intelligence that calls itself Singularitar. The wetware in a sentient creature's mind is just large enough to hold and run an instance.