With "Creating Absurdity" narrowly prevailing in our municipal ballot measure Behind the Scenes poll last week, today we have our first design deep dive on how Absurdia helps both players and GMs set the tone of weirdness and whimsy at the table.

Absurdia is designed to be, inherently, pretty absurd.

Powered by the Apocalypse games are at their strongest when the mechanics are rooted in a clearly defined genre, and Absurdia is no exception. Absurdia's ratings, basic moves, factions, and other core gameplay mechanics are all intentionally designed to emulate the hallmarks of classic and contemporary absurdist media.

The basic move Embrace Chaos is a good example of this (yes I'm sneaking a little bit of rules and mechanics into the creating absurdity post). You roll to Embrace Chaos when you contend with a source of entropic power - any overtly absurd or surreal element in town. While there are a handful of straightforward, mechanical outcomes available to the player on a hit (heal or inflict harm, recover essence), most options focus on influencing the "effect" of the otherworldly entity or phenomenon you're engaging with - encouraging the player to amplify or reimagine the absurdity of the town in new and strange ways.

As an example, let's say that you've just managed to leap atop the Quantum Bus: a temporally untethered bit of public transit that, because it is simultaneously late, early, and on time until it reaches an actual bus stop, is constantly skipping back and forth through time along its manifold routes. On a successful roll to Embrace Chaos, you might choose to "quell the effect" in order to temporarily fix its position in spacetime, "fan its flames" to send it careening way forward or backward on the route, or "subvert the power's effect" to skitch on the back and catapult yourself out of (or into) danger.

These structural design elements are further reinforced by the game's selection of playbooks (more on these in next week's update). The archetypes are drawn from touchstones across classic and contemporary works of absurdism. The introductory questions, agendas, and "Around Town" worldbuilding gently take your hand and invite you to step through the looking glass. Playbook moves empower players to do ridiculous, improbable, and unnatural things like call your shot across the timestream (Paradox), conjure an imaginary friend to defend you (Rascal), or retroactively be best friends with anyone in town (Vox).

All of these narrative and mechanical design choices are intended to reinforce a central theme for the players: it's okay to go off the rails. All those zany ideas and goofy bits that play culture in most TTRPGs tries to gently shepherd you away from? Absurdia invites you to embrace them - because that's where the absurdity is.

Every TTRPG player I've ever known - from the most narrative-focused story gamer to the most combat-focused power gamer - has SO MUCH absurd, chaotic, creative energy bottled up in their brains. The most important thing Absurdia does, from the player's perspective, is give you a license to set it free.

I led with the player's perspective here because collaborative storytelling is an integral aspect of Absurdia, but I know why you're here. 

You want to run a weird game.

As with many Powered by the Apocalypse games, the GM section of Absurdia is organized around a set of agendas, principles and moves. While these cover a range of tools and tips for running the game, there are a suite that focus exclusively on the topic of creating absurdity at the table.

I won't be covering every detail here (gotta leave something for the book), but here are a few of the most important tools in the GM's toolbox:

Make the Surreal Ordinary and the Ordinary Horrifying
The key to absurdity is subverting expectations of normalcy. When you paint the world, treat the inexplicable, otherworldly, and unsettling elements as banal and pedestrian. No one bats an eye when the sidewalk swallows someone whole or the moon berates people on their evening walks; it’s commonplace, scarcely worth commenting on. 

The mundane aspects of our daily lives, meanwhile, are the town’s true terrors. Vehicles are vicious predators that stalk the streets at night. Trash collection is a harrowing tide that sweeps up anyone in its path. The HOA is a megalomaniacal hive mind. CrossFit is a literal cult. By turning these run-of-the-mill experiences into the horrors of the game, you flip the concept of “ordinary” on its head.

Embrace (and Mock) the Absurdity of Everyday Life
If you're struggling to come up with an absurd threat, disturbance, or setting element as the GM, you really don't need to look far. The world is chalk full of absurdities.

Go for a walk or drive around your nearest suburb, read a small town blog or newspaper, or (if you can stomach it) check out the neighborhood Facebook or NextDoor page. From strange traditions to urban legends to small town politics, these locales are rife with stories as head-scratching as they are laughable. Use these real world absurdities as the building blocks for your surreal threats and disturbances.

As mentioned in the player section, Absurdia is designed to be a highly collaborative game. As a GM, the greatest reservoir of absurdism you have available to you are the people sitting around the table; your very own Whispers of Chaos.

Did someone crack a silly joke that has the whole table in stitches? Write that one down asap - you may have just stumbled into a threat for your next disturbance. Struggling to come up with a complication or consequence when someone beefs it on a roll? Open it up to the table. I promise you that someone has a ridiculous, hilarious, off the wall idea percolating that they'd be thrilled to share.

Absurdia is uniquely suited to collaborative improvisation and emergent storytelling. In a town where everything is upside down, there's no reason to limit yourself to just your own imagination.

This post turned out to be a lot longer than I expected! Thank you for coming to my TED talk apparently. Tune in next week for our next Behind the Scenes post diving into Absurdia's playbooks!

- Quinn