Let's use this space to discuss important IG topics, starting with the role of Anomalies in the fiction.
We're gearing up to have the Anomalies as a full blown Landscape threat, but I'm more interested in them playing a support role... In the sense that we see them, and they affect the PC's lives, but for the most part we're interested in the fallout they cause than what they do. Something of flavor, rather than substance. I know we're seeing a lot of them thus far, but that's so I can hash out what they're for.
Where do you guys stand?
Comments
How do anoms and the psychic maelstrom relate to each other?
I do like the idea of weird localized gravity-gone-wrong.
And ripples.
Some anomalies, like the ones appearing in Roadside Picnic, are just incomprehensible refuse. A fuzzy growth on antennae that is contagious to other metals. Here's an excerpt, too- a good example of paranoia over what may be nothing:
I didn't like the looks of that cover. Its shadow wasn't right. The sun was at our backs, yet its shadow was stretching toward us. Well, all right, it was far enough away from us. It seemed OK, we could get on with our work. But what was the silvery thing shining back there? Was it just my imagination? It would be nice to have a smoke now and sit for a spell and mull it all over--why there was that shine over the canisters, why it didn't shine next to them, why the cover was casting that shadow. Buzzard Burbridge told me something about the shadows, that they were weird but harmless. Something happens here with the shadows. But what was that silvery shine? It looked just like cobwebs on the trees in a forest. What kind of spider could have spun it? I had never seen any bugs in the Zone.
Is it benign. Maybe, but there's just something that seems wrong. Maybe what's so great about Robinson's detector is that you can point it at something to test: is this actually a threat or am I just paranoid?
I feel like our anomalies should be less "hand of god/aliens" and more tied in with the brokenness of the apocalypse. (What is that brokenness? I'm wrestling with that.)
But the big ones are gone. Mostly. We know them by what's left behind, strange and confusing areas of oddness.
b.) The title of my debut sadcore post-rock album.