#like those are well known. ive been there.

[t-wanderer]

Jegus, it's been so long since I've gotten to talk about Ultimate Chaos. Okay, so before pokemon and mtg conquered the ccg market, there used to be hundreds of ccgs. For a brief time in the 90s you could get a ccg of the x-files, or highlander, or of boris valejo art with little cardboard cones you had to fold out of cards to play. There were some great games too, battletech and legend of the five rings and doomtrooper and vampire the masquerade and on the edge and netrunner and call of cthulhu. Okay, so there were magazines that just covered shit in the CCG scene, and one April Fools edition of, I don't remember, Scry or Wizard or something, published the rules for Ultimate Chaos. (It was InQuest) Ultimate Chaos is a CCG game you can play with cards from any CCG, mixed together. And not just deck v deck, you could shuffle a bunch of starwars cards into your pokemon deck and spash some marvel cards in there for good measure, and it would do...something...against your friends green/black/illuminati: new world order deck. I LOVED Ultimate Chaos, and I collected the weirdest CCGS I could find to make weirder theme decks for it. Eventually I made a TTRPG inspired by it, and that eventually turned into a webseries I'm working on right fucking now. And I found a digital copy of the rules online, so long ago it was on a dial-up modem. And I still have them, because...well autism I guess? Because I'm serious about data storage? Full rules under the cut. Too large to be put under a cut? I don't know man.

Ultimate Chaos

Return To Gaming (Literally a link to the previous page)

Ultimate Chaos

Return To DavidASpitzley.org (Must be where I found it?)

Back in the early days of Collectible Card Games, InQuest magazine came up with something called "Ultimate Chaos", where each player played a different card game. They played every game on the market against each other, and it sounded like a lot of fun. Inspired by those articles, my playing group tried it several times, and based on those experiences, I came up with the following rules (or perhaps "guidelines" would be a better word) to make the game work more smoothly. They are based around the pretense that the game is a conflict between entities of Chaos who are more interested in amusement than actual victory. The heart of the rules are 1) a set of guidelines for figuring out how to apply cards from one game to another, 2) a victory point mechanic that gives points for doing interesting things as well as successful things, and 3) a mechanism for getting cards from each game into the hands of other players to improve the odds of amusing interactions. I guess you can judge for yourself whether this worked or not. You'll note that the examples focus on On the Edge, Feng Shui, Illuminati, and Star Wars. Not surprisingly, those were the games we played most often.

Rules of Engagement for Lords of Chaos, by Priority

I. Ignorance: Ignorance of another player’s rules is the ultimate defense, at least once or twice. Any move which would have been stupid if the appropriate rules were known may be retracted, at least until the other players get annoyed.

II. Variation: No player will be restricted in a current game to a rules arrangement decided upon in a previous game. Alternate arguments may always be advanced.

III. Roles: Players are players, cards are cards. Any effect which targets cards in its native game does so under any other rules, and any effect which targets players in its native game does so in any other rules.

IV. Specificity: Any effect which uses a specific Rules Term (defined as a concept defined within the rulebooks for the game) applies against any matching specific Rules Term under other rules. Matching requires that the Term be used as the same part of speech; i.e. Turn as a unit of time does not match Turn as something which is done to cards.

V. Attack Flexibility: The active player may make attacks under his choice of any rules sets directly involved in the attack.

VI. Homology: Effects by game A on game B should be resolved using the closest possible game mechanic in game B VII. Reality Bubbles: Cards and players are affected by combat and global effects under their own rules, applying Specificity and Homology independently of other cards and players.

VIII. Filling Holes: When there is no appropriate matching point between two games, attempt to use the mechanic from the acting game as directly as possible in the subject game.

IX. Suspension of Disbelief: A combination of events should still be allowed even if it seems silly (such as a foot soldier attacking a space ship) if there is no rule which can be raised against it.

Examples Alter-Edge (On the Edge) reads “all non-Astrals suffer -2 Power”. Reality Bubbles says that the effect on each card must be considered separately. By Specificity, a Star Destroyer (Star Wars) suffers a -2 Power, but does not suffer a reduction in Armor, even though by Homology Armor would be considered as DP by the On the Edge player. Shadowfist, on the other hand, has a Specific term “Power”, but since that is a player characteristic, and Alter-Edge affects cards, we drop back to Homology, and Shadowfist characters suffer -2 Fighting, since Fighting is the closest match to Power. Again using Homology, however, any Shadowfist Magic character would count as Astral, and would not suffer the penalty.

Star Wars wants to play Presence of the Force, which adds one force icon to each side of a location, against Illuminati, which has Japan, the Boy Sprouts, and the central Illuminati card in play (UFOs, for the sake of argument). Based on Homology, Star Wars can only play the card on Japan, since a Place is the closest match to a “location”. However, Illuminati doesn’t have a Homologue for Activating Force so by Filling Holes Illuminati activates Force as identified in the Star Wars rules, and may use it as appropriate, including picking up the card at the end of each turn, Using it to activate captured Star Wars cards, etc. Shadowfist, on the other hand, has the concept of generating Power, and Homology would suggest using those rules for activating Force.

On the Edge declares an attack against a Star Wars Star Destroyer. While under Star Wars rules the attacking character should have to be at the same location, On the Edge invokes Attack Flexibility and uses his own targeting rules. This means that the Star Destroyer, which is guarding Tatooine, is a first rank card, and may be attacked (any passengers would probably be second rank). Shadowfist indicates a desire to send along aid; since On the Edge doesn’t have rules for this, Filling Holes declares it legal under Shadowfist rules. Each attacker sends one character (though Shadowfist could send more).

Under Reality Bubbles: Star Wars is faced by two attackers. Under its rules, she (by Homology) adds the Shadowfist character’s Fighting to the On the Edge character’s Attack Power and compares the total to the Star Destroyer’s Power. If the attacking total is greater, the difference is suffered as Battle Damage normally (i.e. Forfeit or Force loss).

By Homology, On the Edge is involved in a Gang Up attack. This doesn’t mean much, but does place the assistance in context. Under the On the Edge rules, he (by Homology) compares his character’s Attack Power with the Star Destroyer’s Armor. If the Armor is greater or equal, the attacking character is killed. The Shadowfist character takes damage equal to (by Homology) the Power of the Star Destroyer.

Were the Star Wars player able to draw Destiny, the attacking side would be faced with the problem of Attrition. This would fall under a combination of Filling Holes and Homology: since On the Edge has no rules for Attrition-type damage (only On the Edge matters by the first consideration), apply the Star Wars rules as closely as possible; since the subject of Attrition determines what gets whacked, On the Edge argues that by Homology, the number in the lower left of the card is the Attrition value, and applies the Attrition to the Shadowfist character. Shadowfist points out that the character isn’t worth enough Attrition to cover the loss, so On the Edge, the original attacker, is forced to discard (Homologous to Lose) enough cards to cover the remaining Attrition loss.

Shadowfist uses his White Disciple to do 2 points of damage to the same Star Destroyer listed above. Since Star Wars has no Homologue for ongoing damage, Filling Holes argues that the Star Destroyer gains two damage counters, handled as indicated in the Shadowfist rules. However, since damage in Shadowfist reduces Fighting, not Power, the Star Destroyer will be unaffected, except when fighting a Shadowfist card, in which case (by Reality Bubbles) the Shadowfist card will treat the Star Destroyer’s Power as Fighting, and thus the damage counters will apply in that circumstance. At no point could the Star Destroyer be destroyed by these damage counters, however.

Scoring for Ultimate Chaos There are several ways to score points in a game of Ultimate Chaos.

1. Nomination: Any player may receive a point if another player nominates them and it is seconded by a third player. Nomination is encouraged for suitably twisted applications of game logic, witty card play, and general elegance in the midst of anarchy.

2. Eliminating the Competition: A player receives 2 points for knocking another player out of the game. In addition, a player receives 1 point for being the last player in the game.

3. Achieving Native Victory Conditions: There are several categories of Victory Conditions: Isolated victory conditions are those which can be achieved without interacting with other players, such as accumulating Influence (On the Edge), controlling 13 Groups (Illuminati), or swaying 10 Population markers (Kult). A player fulfilling an isolated victory condition receive 3 points. These points may only be received once for each victory condition. Conquest/survival victory conditions are those which require the player be the last one standing, either by conquering all of the others or being the last one not destroyed by some other means. A player with conquest/survival victory conditions receives 1 point every time a player is eliminated by any means. Theft/Bodycount victory conditions are those which require a player to achieve smaller victories against opponents without necessarily removing them from play, such as killing 25 points worth of opponents’ warriors (Doomtrooper) or stealing 7 Agenda points from your opponent (Runner victory conditions from Netrunner). Each time a player meets a Theft/Bodycount victory condition, they receive 2 points. These points may be received multiple times. In the event a game used in Ultimate Chaos does not have victory conditions which fall into one of these categories, the player must submit to the other players an alternate system for scoring points.

4. Achieving Adopted Victory Conditions: Under some circumstances (generally involving Filling Holes), a player may be able to meet the victory conditions of another game. This is worth 1 bonus point plus the listed value in section 3, and may often be grounds for Nomination.

5. The Power of Chaos

5A. In all the Confusion...: Whenever a player takes an action which significantly but amusingly confuses things, they may nominate themselves for 1 point.

5B. The Jumpin’ Jesus Phenomenon: Whenever three or more players become involved in a single sequence of actions, every player involved receives 1 point. (If 6 or more Lords should be insane enough to play at once, this should be changed to "more than three players") If all players agree before the game, a player may “borrow” some portion of another player’s rules at any time, but must pay one point to the “lending” player

The Eye of Chaos

An optional amusement which may be introduced into Ultimate Chaos is the Eye of Chaos. The Eye increases the volume of card exchanges within the game, improving the odds of unusual card combinations, and generally raising the confusion level.

Forming the Eye of Chaos: After all Lords and Ladies of Chaos have performed the setup for their respective games, each draws two cards at random from their decks. These cards, plus a standard playing card Joker, are then shuffled together to form the Eye. Players with games that use two or more decks may choose cards for the Eye from whichever deck or decks they desire. Basic Use of the Eye: On each player’s turn, he must place one card from his hand at the bottom of the Eye and replace it with the top card of the Eye. This may be done at any time during the turn. The Joker : When a player draws the Joker, he may exchange it at any time for a single card from his own deck or discard pile, or from the discard pile of any other player. When used, or at the end of the turn if it is not used, the Joker must be shuffled back into the Eye.

Other Options: Any time a player discards a card he may choose to place it at the bottom of the Eye. Cards which are “removed from the game” may not be placed in the Eye. If multiple cards are sent to the Eye at the same time, shuffle them before placing them under the Eye. At any time during his turn, a player may choose to shuffle his hand into the Eye, and draw a full starting hand of cards from his own deck. This may only be done once each turn. Any action a player may take which would affect another player’s deck or discard pile may be applied to the Eye. Players may not examine the cards in the Eye without an excuse. Any time a player is able to exchange cards in play or cards from his hand for cards from his own deck or discard pile, he may choose to draw the replacement cards from the Eye. Ex: a Lord playing Magic: the Gathering casting Transmute Artifact may substitute an artifact he has in play for an “artifact” from the Eye, rather than one from his deck.

Note that drawing cards directly from the Eye (rather than trading them in) is discouraged under these rules in order to prevent games such as Battletech and Star Wars from using the Eye to increase the supply of Force they have available. However, when a player does something which is supposed to have that effect (such as recovering Lost Force), use of the Eye should be allowed.

<eof>

i don’t play any trading card games, but…

wouldn’t it be possible for a MtG and a Pokemon deck to duke it out? I mean, they both use numerical values to determine damage and health, right? The Pokemon player could do Pokemon shit on their turn, and the MtG player could do MtG shit on their turn, then plug in the resulting values into the opposing card, right?

I’d like to see someone try, at least

[captainclervals]

its so interesting to see the variety of ways in which people can interpret the same characters in the same story based on their own variety of life experiences and values and influences!! ive seen quite a few posts going around lately about transfem frankenstein which gave me a moment of pause to realize "huh I literally never thought about that before" and how fascinating it is to see the same things interpreted in opposite ways

ive always been in the "victor is a trans man whose struggles come in part from being incompatible with the female roles that are constantly imposed on him" school and viewed the story and character under that lens and i dont think I've ever actually listed what stands out to me to influence that reading. meandering list under cut:

from childhood, he accepts unquestioningly his mother's declaration that Elizabeth is a present for him, an object that can be transferred to his possession. iirc she's the only character besides the creature that Victor affords any significant physical description at all. he compares her in his descriptions to animals (a summer insect, a bird), and states that he "loved to tend on her, as [he] should on a favourite animal." in the 1831 edition, he refers to her as something otherwordly, a "distinct species," "saintly," "a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features." (ironically, Victor himself later is on the receiving end of this objectification by Walton, described as being like a "celestial spirit, that has a halo around him," "divine wanderer," "godlike," etc.) despite how close Victor and Elizabeth seem based on Victor's tenderness toward and admiration of her, he definitely "others" her as a female peer and keeps her clearly separated in ways that he doesn't quite do with his male peers. to me this comes across as his having negative feelings of connections to women and relies on his parents' assurance that women are something altogether different; and how could he have a feminine role if he accepted that Elizabeth was the one put in his possession to defer to him?

he was put in the role of nurturer/caretaker as a child, a "constant nurse" alongside Elizabeth to Ernest

his nightmare on the night of the creation involved only women: the affection he demonstrated to Elizabeth made her rot into the worm-eaten corpse of his mother, both a punishment of displaying passion towards a woman as well as tying his relationship to Elizabeth back to the presence and wishes of his mother

the most obvious one is the metaphor of childbirth/giving life, which Victor devotes himself to circumventing. it's not the fact that Victor is desperate to find a way to create life that's significant to the transmasc interpretation, but the fact that he dedicates himself to finding a way to create life that's completely separate from one's own body. he still suffers in his extreme labors over the project, but he does succeed in physically externalizing the process. (there's also his preoccupation with masculine ideals in building his creation)

though he divorced himself from the traditional way of giving life, he still in a way tried to compromise between his own strong feelings and the expectations of gender pushed on him. relenting to a "female" role of giving life, no matter how intelligently and miraculously he compromised to meet the expectation in his own way, locked him into an unfortunate reality in which his maleness would not be taken seriously by those around him:

though he had never been previously inclined to anxiety or paranoia and thus couldn't really have known how his friends or family would react if he told the truth of his creation, he was completely confident that if he were to tell anyone he would be dismissed as insane and delirious. he was already aware that his overwhelming emotion and nervous fevers would disqualify him from being taken seriously, even by his family (another obvious one, very strong parallels to the historical view of "female hysteria" that placed the blame of all a woman's troubles on the fact of, simply, being a woman)

over the course of Victor's struggles with guilt and anxiety, he loses virtually all his independence. in his illness he is rendered unable to do anything on his own and is forced to rely fully on men for survival (Clerval and Walton). he also is resigned to the reliance on men to speak for him: Clerval to intervene with the professors, to steer conversations away from the topic of science to less offensive academia; Walton to command his crew of curious sailors to stop harassing Victor with persistent questions.

the creature could have killed Elizabeth at any time, but instead, he promised it would be the specific date of Victor's wedding-night. this was also, significantly, the last straw for Victor: a punishment for publicly taking on a new distinctly male role of husband

even in his last days, deathly ill and devastated by all the tragedies in his life, he was objectified by a man. to Walton, he was something beautiful and captivating and mysterious, whose secrets must be dug out and conquered, much like Walton thought of the North Pole. despite the fact that Victor himself was in such dire need of help, Walton focused less on how he could meet Victor's needs, and more on how Victor could fulfill Walton's own desires and fill a vacancy in his life, thus relating Victor back to himself. (similar to what Victor had expected of Elizabeth: that she would be his comfort and provide happiness and repose from everything he had gone through, focusing more on how she could "fix" everything when she became his wife and relating her existence to propping up his own)

his deathbed—essentially his coffin—was a ship; at his last, he was walled up by an object historically referred to as female and symbolic of a mother figure

the story of Victor's life itself is relayed to readers not directly, but through the record of Walton. everything he had to say was filtered for the rest of the world through a man. his entire life and legacy was more or less passed into the hands of a man to control how or if it would be shared

imo. my perspective is that this smacks of the experience of a man who isn't respected or recognized as a man by the rest of the world. no matter how he tried to separate himself from connotations of femininity and sought to define himself, he is repeatedly forced back into female roles and viewed through a female lens. at the same time, he both isn't allowed by others and doesn't allow himself genuine connection with female figures in his life, with all the female presences slowly chipped away (losses of his mother, Justine, Elizabeth). in the end, the only woman who finally saw his mind and heart laid bare was Margaret—a woman who Victor never even met

the discomfort and horror aspects come not from the pervading presence of and emphasis on femininity, but from the depiction of how women have faced being pushed into such rigid roles, their emotions and wishes dismissed, or derided and how uncomfortable it is to directly face that reality in witnessing a man be treated that way and how he experiences it for the smothering, draining misery it is. more specifically: the smothering, draining misery of a man whose personal reality of being male seems to be invisible to those around him as he's constantly placed under constraints and expectations ascribed to women. femininity and feminine qualities themselves aren't horrors in the story, but the social response to them and the forcible assignment of them on someone who sees them from the outside as separate from himself are

and thats just my interpretation, which I ofc don't think is the "right" one or even a primary one or incompatible with any other readings

[moodr1ng]

im sure ive said it already but again and again and again i see verifiably real pictures of videos of like, a gorgeous place somewhere on earth or a very pretty animal or a lovely home interior, anything that is notably beautiful and clearly real, and every time theres multiple comments either asking if or asserting that its ai, and im getting worried that a lot of people just.. believe that the world cannot contain anything beautiful outside of what they personally know of or have been exposed to. like thats sad. its deeply sad that seeing a photograph of a beautiful place immediately makes you think "pff, obviously ai" with no indication of that and with clear indications that its real. please consider things exist outside of your immediate vicinity and knowledge, and some of those things may even be great..

[mastercrownmonday]

some traitor mags gijinka concept stuff (from the same creative effort as this post)

[al-luviec]

juvie buddies

[obnoxiousarcade]

I have a longing to be understood more than anything else i think

[philautia-agape]

She veemo on my woomy til I splatoon

.

[orcelito]

I do find it so funny that I will graduate college days away from my birthday. Like my birthday is literally in between the end of the semester ("graduation") and commencement

It really will be like a joint graduation & birthday party for me lmao

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

hang on are cougars like panthers

[iamfuckingsorry]

god this is when me avoiding all the fucking admin shit bites me in the ass.

trying to finally sort out all this fucking bullshit with my home country (where i havent lived since before i turned 18 and have no intentions of ever permanently returning to), and of course they're stuck in the 80s or something so everything needs to be signed, stamped, officially translated, approved by three different agencies etc etc etc. and of course i live in an extremely digitalized country now so everything has digital signatures (not accepted by my home country) and i can't even /get/ everything

[nomaishuttle]

ok kinda skeeved out abt something

[dorkicon]

bitching abt homophobia n shit at my job in the tags o7 happy pride

[itsalwaysdark]

having a midlife crisis atm i think i might start reading [redacted] this is rly scary for me keep me in your thoughts

[arolesbianism]

*experiences potential ~symptoms~* Hm. Let's not think abt that too hard (<- guy who is always obsessing over everything that's ever happened to them ever (<- no one tell them))

[hyah-lian]

:') nevermind my tags from b4 apparently the house smells disgusting

[nymphaerie]

GOD LOUISE REGAILIA MAKES ME SO FUCKING INSANE EVERY TIME I THINK ABOUT HER I FEEL LIKE IM GOING TO EXPLODE INTO A MILLION LITTLE PIECES. ITS JJUST LIKE. girls when they havce to kill their former selves in order to survive. girls when the self they take up in turn is constantly destroyed and remade in order to never be attached to one life. girls when the only way they know how to save themself is to lock themself away. girls when they’ve forsaken their home and in turn been forsaken by it. girls when theyre both the abandoner and the abandoned. girls when they think theyre the most sane completely normal one hundred percent hinged person in the world. girls when they already know they didn’t deserve what they went through but can’t imagine a world in which they can heal from it. girls when they won’t let themselves heal because they don’t know who they are without their hurt. because they killed that girl. and theyll keep killing her forever and ever and ever and pretend thats the same as healing her.