# Character Creation Challenge 2024: Day 31 - Solipsist :: The Wiz, Aspring Genius tags: #thoughts/CharacterCreationChallenge/2024 #game/rpg/solipsist > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2024]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] What a long, strange trip it's been. 31 characters in 31 days, with the additional self-imposed limitation that it needs to be 31 different systems. I've become the 31 Flavors of the *31 Day Character Creation Challenge*. Which, I suppose, is saying something. I'm not sure *what*, but something. How fitting that I should close the month out by creating a character for a game which is entirely about individuals who are utterly deluded about the nature of reality and, through that delusion, are capable of warping reality for others but risk being trapped within the isolating bounds of the world they create for themselves. I do love an ironic twist. ![[Solipsist (cover).jpg]] Today's is 2008's **[[Solipsist]]**, a game which out-Mages **[[Mage the Ascension|Mage]]** in its precarious descent into madness and philosophy. Which, I suppose, explains entirely why I have a copy of it and enjoy it. It starts with the assertion that all of our perceived reality is manufactured by tiny invisible creatures called animacules which respond to the conscious and unconscious beliefs of humanity, and through those beliefs about what *will be* seen create *what is* seen. Let's go to the text. > And yet to most of us the world seems solid, rational, and consistent. Why? Because we are blind, grounded, ensnared in the reality the animacules create for us. For most people it is not their own individual thoughts that shape the world, but the shared and accepted consensus of hundreds and thousands of people who each see the world the same way and think “This is the way it is”. Only when a single thought is thought by many do the animacules stir out of their sluggish ways and change. Even then, since belief comes before fact, we do not notice. One day we begin to believe that terrorists are everywhere, the next day they truly are everywhere, created from nothing to lurk behind the closed curtains of suburbia. Our belief whips the animacules into waves of action, spreading out from the first occurrence in ripples that move across reality till they reach too far from thinking minds and fade away. In their path they leave a new reality, one in which the terrorists have always been there. New minds are created from the void, the very facts of the world change… and no one notices. > > Well, almost no one. Needless to say, the protagonists – the Solipsists of the title – are the ones who can notice changes in reality. As the book describes them, "people who think so strongly and individually that the animacules flock to them and respond to their desires individually." But these are not rebel souls, noble in their mein… > A Solipsist is the most important thing in their own world. All their thoughts are directed to what the world owes them, to what they should be. Like the Red King from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass they believe, consciously or unconsciously, that they are the only truly real thing, and certainly the only thing that really matters. They are the ultimate selfish beings. They appear to be inhabitants of the Internet. Who knew? A Solipsist may be a great and despotic leader – but more likely they're catatonic, or ranting, or wandering empty eyed and unaware of the world around them, muttering or screaming about the world around them that they perceive, which the animacules have made real for them because their obsession was simply too incompatible with consensus reality. See, it is just like the Internet! Our PCs are Solipsists who have found a place balanced between their Vision, their personal view of reality, and the consensus world. Sometimes that's because they have immense self-discipline but usually it's because they can't get over their own internal flaws to "achieve transcendence." I did mention the precarious descent into madness and philosophy, right? This is it. The PCs are balanced Solipsists who are of the tiny sliver of a tiny sliver who seek out other Solipsists to help each other retain balance, trying to keep each other grounded enough in reality to literally *stay* in reality. There is, of course, and oppositional force – the Shadows.^[Maybe. One of the optional rules is that there are no Shadows at all, just the projects of the Solipsists' fears or maybe even not even that. It's a weird place.] They are the force of unmaking and no one knows quite what they are. If you're familiar with other games, the Excrutian Nobles of **[[Nobilis]]** are a close analog. It's simultaneously dark and – no, pretty much it's dark. You're constantly trying to walk the line between managing and leveraging your Obsession and Visions but also trying to use your Limitations to stay grounded in what is "real" to everyone else when the alternative is to descend entirely into your own perfect dream reality, and all the while the Shadows are trying to erode what passes for all realities. I really dig it. > The core concept of Solipsist is that characters influence the world and make things happen, not by mundane means (such as exerting force, or persuading people of their point of view), but by Changing Reality at an unconscious level so that things go the way they want them to go. Even such fundamental things as walking, talking and breathing are only a veil over the swarming animacules. On top of everything else, this game is diceless. No randomizers, just resource allocation. After all, if you are literally directing reality – you're God. Should you really play dice with the universe? No you should not! Nor shall we! ## Chargen The biggest threat when creating characters for **Solipsist** is that it's really, really easy to hit uncomfortably close to home. You start projecting, you start thinking about yourself, you get caught up in your own internal reality and… I'm not saying there's metaphors here, but there's *metaphors* here. I'm not even saying that it's bad. It's quite fantastic. But it's something to keep an eye on with yourself. You don't want any surprises. ### Vision All Solipsists have a Vision, that perfect world which they believe to be true – desperately want to be true – and can absolutely be true. It just requires completely changing reality. **Name:** The Wiz *My Vision is a world where I am the most talented, most skilled, most accomplished person in it! There are no things I cannot do nor knowledge I cannot learn.* ### Obsessions Now we need five things which, if actually achieved, would pull our character into the world of his Vision. The key thing is that by definition they are *not currently true*. In the course of play they may certainly *become* true, multiple times, thus drawing our character farther and farther away from consensus reality and into their Vision. Then we just have to give our Obsessions some scores. A one point Obsession is weak, three point is pretty good, and five point maybe just a little too good – to the point of being dangerous to use. We just need to throw around nine points, assigning them however we like. As long as everyone has one. | Obsession | Score | | ---- | ---: | | *I want to know every secret.* | 2 | | *I want to be recognized for my talents.* | 1 | | *I want no skill to be beyond my ability.* | 3 | | *I want to be recognized as the best in the world.* | 1 | | *I want to defeat everyone else.* | 2 | I think this probably sums up things nicely. No Obsession is pushed so high it will be a real threat to bring into play and there are some where there's room to grow without blowing our metaphysical brains out. I think there's enough delusion of grandeur going on there to make things come out all right. ### Limitations Now we pick five Limitations which hold us back from achieving our Obsessions – and incidentally being lost entirely within our Vision. They hold us back, they get in our way, they hobble us, but they also make sure we stay grounded and connected. Just like Obsessions, we get nine points to deal out. | Limitation | Score | | ---- | ---: | | *I am lazy.* | 1 | | *I love the process of learning as much as knowing.* | 3 | | *I am never good enough to be successful.* | 1 | | *I want to teach other how to learn.* | 1 | | *Knowledge and skill are no longer desirable things in the world.* | 3 | Again, a pretty good spread of scores, though with a couple solid spikes. All of these are things that get in the way of The Vision and our Obsessions. ### Infestation We get to start play with five points of Infestation, which is how much the animacules like to hang out with and within us. Very much like a battery of extra power to call on to change reality. ### Finishing Up It's probably worth describing some elements of our personality, quirks, appearance – but probably not our past life, our stuff, our job, our friends – because all of those things can change on a whim. Our very nature is to change reality, and except for those things which we have taken as traits – all else, ultimately, is illusory. There are things we choose to keep, and the rest is a dream. *The Wiz is a small man, not quite a midget, but shorter than his contemporaries with wildly out of control hair, a largish nose, and an odd preference for tweed jackets with patches on the elbows. He comes across like a college professor without a college and is usually trying to come up with a plan to prove he's better than others at whatever others are good at.* ## Character Sheet ![[The Wiz, Aspiring Genius (portraitt).jpg]] ![[The Wiz, Aspiring Genius (sheet).jpg]] ## Exunt There we go, a fully populated Solipsist. The mechanics for this game are elegant in their simplicity. The GM will determine what the difficulty for changing reality in a given way is based on influences around you and the universe at large, plus your Limitations, then you bring in your Obsessions, with the intention of bringing down the difficulty to 0. If you're not quite there, you can spend Infestation to bring it down or equal. If you're out of Infestation – you can Push, which immediately gives you a Tear (making you more likely to be consumed by your Vision) but drops the difficulty by 5. If you can't get the difficulty down to zero, you failed to change reality that way. You get ticks on your Limitations which could cause them to increase. If you bring it down to exactly 0, reality now matches exactly what you said it does. Exactly. You can change the entirety of the world with a single change of reality and often do. And so can every guy you hang out with. This is where it gets complicated for you: if you drop the difficulty below zero you succeed – but things go too far. Your Obsessions take over. The GM narrates the result rather than you. You do manage to get more Infestation but you also tick all of your Obsessions that were involved plus gain a Tear. That's the core of things. When I said that it is more **Mage** than **Mage**, I wasn't kidding. I'm pretty sure you could actually run **Mage** using **Solipsist** as your mechanical architecture without too much trouble. You might want some tinkering but you might not. I *know* you could run **Nobilis** using these mechanics, no question. That's a wrap, not just for this character but for *Character Creation Challenge 2024*. And it's been a Hell of a ride. I'm sorry, but I have to go challenge the Pope to a theological debate. I'm sure I'll be back by dinner. Out!