Meta/DreamSequence

Proposed Concept: Causality Be Damned

When I first tracked down the traces of Puzzlebox to see what it was all about, I read as much as I could find. I gathered that the world envisioned for the muck was a world in which literally anything was possible. One could do anything and have some reason for it built right into the concept of the world.

However, being on the muck for this long, I've noticed there are still rules to everything. People play by them or they don't...but it's usually easier to follow the guidelines to further the plot. Continuity, for example--one action follows another, and the previous action always affects the current action. What's done to a character goes into the character's history, most often. Transformation occurs, the character remains in the changed state until another transformation. The technology that is posited as working in this world works as described. We're often too tied to our character's desires and continuing history to so suddenly try something completely bizarre.

I'm not saying there's nobody who breaks the rules. A good deal of characters take a concept that's been accepted as being one way, and go an entirely different direction with it. That's usually the idea of Puzzlebox itself, trying to distort or reform the rules and canon of everything that already exists. But it's hard! Getting your mind wrapped around a concept, like Strangevirus, for example, is difficult even without trying to reinvent it.

So here's a proposition, in the interests of exploring a concept in some direction without any lasting consequences, or to have a fun time without worrying about 'Big Overarching Plot Significance'. Call it a Subjectivity Storm. Or a Dream Sequence. Or an anti-Causality Error. Or a Memory Failure. Or a Buffer Overrun. Or a Magic Flood. Whatever the case, be it a planned event or something randomly ocurring in time or spatial location, have a night/day where anyone can do anything, without fear of continuity. Nothing that happens will have happened, nothing that is done will have been done. Say the Puzzlebox suffers an glitch--temporal or possibily datasphere/backup related--which reaches into the future 24 hours. Everyone and everything is dumped into a temporary 'buffer' while the 'real' area or problem is repaired. For the duration of the glitch, all naturalistic physical and RP laws are suspended and everything is mutable. At the end of the period, the buffer is dumped and all are refreshed from the backup taken from the start. Think of it as a jam session, for the characters but as much for the players as well. Leakage of what happens may occur minimally, like the memory of a dream, knowledge of an event without change.

It would be more effective to confine this effect to something locally. Puzzle Park, or a similar location, perhaps even randomized locations, like a weather effect. That way it would at least be opt-out, any character not wanting to have a chunk of time effectively erased could vacate the premises. For anyone staying, it could be like a drug trip or an extremely lucid dream. Magic, essentially, would be possible. Even stranger things that are hinted at in, say, [otherMuck logs] could and should happen. This is not to say that it shouldn't already be happening, but the main point is, making it a regular event gives a very justified excuse for being weird.

It could be a regular event, or it could be a minor crisis Muckwide plot (Puzzlebox is losing control!), or some flurry of temporary localized problems. Or a particular room or area designed to suppress rules of normality. Or...here's another thought, it could be a user-selected function, like the OOC function. Whatever the case, there are times when I just want to go all out without having to worry about creating a character that's always going all out. It could give old hats a change to stagnation, or newbies a chance to really dig into creativity and jam with the rest. Continuity be damned.

--Coalesce

Go evangelist! I think your words here can help others out, give them a framework of sorts to work with, for those who are unsure. Rise high In Media Res en Pace!--Zoe

Hee! Thanks! --C

I hope lots of people take to it. I just love the idea of a major hangout area being based around a big crackling Generator of Weird Shit. And of course, it's also an excuse for the plot-rationalists to get wild. --Amanita

That's a highly amusing name for it. :-} --Coalesce

My name is Mighty Function OR, and I approve this product, service, or axiom. Actually, XOR and I have discussed this possibility in the context of a whole calendar of occasional (non-enforced) theme days for the Mess. My only request is that I'd prefer no malfunction of Puzzlebox's causality-maintenance mechanisms be made canonical. XOR and I have discussed that at length, and we'd be more comfortable with that can of worms not being opened without at least a lot of collaboration with the funcitioncore. OTOH, wouldn't it be just like the poor rulebound denizens of the Mess to mistake a sincere gift from Puzzlebox for a breakdown of the system? -- OR Well, the funny thing is that non-causality is the base line for the Puzzle; something happened/is happening; who's artbomb is it to encourage casuality? to discourage casuality? And poor poor AoTF, fooling around with their reality. I'm riffing as per usual, don't mind me -:) --Zoe

That's kinda what I figured, which is why I was creating an IC excuse for it. Instead of being a function of the Mess that goes wrong, it's just some crazy invention. Other thoughts were that the zone of weirdness could move at random, if only for the amusing sake of the Mess having something like weather. But it makes some more sense to keep it in one place and have people come to it. Now...just where to put it? Oooh, another note. OR approves, woo! But it would be even more amusing during the proceedings for YET to show up... :-}

-Coalesce

I am sure that can be arranged. That was quite fun --Zoe

I love the idea of weirdness zones like weather -- even possibly weirdnesses of different kinds: discontinuity storms; areas of high archetype pressure, where everyone begins to slip into various mythic/symbolic roles; caricaturometric pressure, where people become more and more like exaggerated satires of themselves as it rises. If only because I think an Up department attemptint to track it, complete with a weatherman (whetherman?), would be brilliant... -- Cascade

"The [Weatherman] commands you to remove your pants and shake them."

That has some VERY interesting implications for me. See, before we started Puzzlebox, I was working on a tabletop RPG called [Fluorocrash]. It was set in another postmodern furry universe, contaminated with a metasubstance called "Melt" which made reality dreamlike and slippy. The Fluorocrash universe was divided up into "weirdness zones," similar to what you describe: the naturalistic "Dark," the fantastical "Umbra," the psychedelic "Penumbra," and the completely abstract "Bright." And since I lifted quite a few Puzzlebox concepts wholesale from Fluorocrash, I always thought it would be neat if one of the worlds was the other's distant mythic history... -- OR

I was originally going to propose that Halloween be the day of the "Pocketbox." But maybe it'd be more appropriate to make it Election Day (U.S.). :> -- OR

That's not a whole lot of difference. I could certainly work things out for Halloween. Will be bringing this up at the next meeting anyway. Which by then will be pretty close to the day, actually. --Coalesce