Announcements

Thank you all for attending our first event! We are overwhelmed by the outpouring of positivity and appreciation. However, we know that there are still some things we need to iron out, and now's the time for you to help us pinpoint those things by filling out our first Eval here! You will receive 2CP for a constructive eval; that doesn't mean you need to fill out every section if you have nothing to add on certain subjects, but it does mean telling us the what and the why about things you did and did not enjoy.

You can also submit a Journal from your character's perspective for an additional 2CP. You are welcome to share your journal in the discord if you'd like, or keep it private by sending it to us at sinsemergent@gmail.com. Journals help us hone in on your character's state of mind, as well as understand their trajectory and interplay with the game.

Finally, you may now submit your first round of Timeblocks. Although you only enter the world of The Emergent four to five times per year, your character exists in that world full-time, and Timeblocks allow you to play out your character's life in between events and pursue your personal goals. You can view the following guide on how timeblocks work, and fill out your timeblocks for Event 1 here.

A few announcements today to prepare you for arrival on site and other pre-game detains:

1. Please arrive no earlier than 3PM. When you arrive at Camp Haiastan, you will see a couple of buildings and a small parking area. This is the administrative area. Please continue down the road until you see the much larger parking lot on your left; this is where all cars should be parked during the event. You may drive your car all the way down the road for the purposes of unloading your belongings, but please do not drive or park on the painted basketball courts. All player lodging is located in the circle of cabins in the center of the main camp area.
2. The camp has requested that the cabins remain free of food. If you must store food in your cabins, make sure that it is in a sealed container, and avoid eating in your cabin. The mess hall is in close proximity to the cabins, and you are always welcome to eat outside, weather-permitting. We do not have access to the kitchen, however the mess hall intself has some limited mini-refrigerator space that may be used to store perishable player food.
3. The site has many outdoor water fountains, so we highly recommend bringing a refillable water bottle. Weather for this weekend is expected to be quite warm, so please remain hydrated!
4. We do expect some light rain on Sunday. Keep in mind that as a modern+ game, rain gear like ponchos and umbrellas are completely acceptable.
5. Please avoid bringing glass props to site, and absolutely do not bring glass props into combat.
6. Always remember to wear bug spray and sunblock. If you do not have either, staff center should have a surplus available if needed.
7. Check-in is expected to occur in the mess hall starting in the evening. Please arrive at check-in in full costume, as your picture will be taken for staff reference, and bring any weapons or foam blasters for safety check.
8. There will be wifi on site. We recommend keeping your devices on you and checking them periodically, as it is possible that you may be contacted via Discord in-game during the event.

We hope you are all excited and look forward to seeing you soon!

Today we have for you the First Edition Influence Appendix, which you can view under our game documents section! This system will be tutorialized in full at event 1, so don't worry if you haven't absorbed it all by then.

We're also putting out our basic supply Donation List. If you would like to contribute any of these items, please enter your name and the quantity that you expect to supply, so that we know what we still need to procure ourselves. Donations are converted into CP at a rate of $20 or one hour of work per 1 CP, and any CP over cap will be stored for future use.

Tonight is the last night to pre-register and pre-pay for event 1! After tonight, you will not recieve CP for doing so, and the price will increase by $20. Be sure to let us know you're coming!

Today's Daily Download concerns Agro Dynamic:

Following the Crisis of 2457, an enterprising individual by the name of Charles Argos started making moves in the province of Talara. With the collapse of Anagos’ banking system many of the farming communities and small corporations in the region found themselves in dire straits.

While many of the corporations had some financial reserves to draw upon in the short term, both they and smaller farms relied on government subsidized payments intended to stabilize the cost of agricultural goods to ensure that the nation's internal food supply stayed afloat. This, combined with many farmers relying on loans to buy supplies and seed, meant that as the banks collapsed and debts were transferred to larger financial institutions that were weathering the storm the interest rate on these loans increased and the banks holding them steadily became more predatory.

Mr. Argos saw this dynamic and saw the potential for financial success. Relying on a large inheritance, he bought out many small farms, paying off debts in exchange for purchasing the lands for much lower prices than would have been possible before 2047. As his consolidation continued into the years following the Crisis, he was able to out compete the other corporations, artificially lowering the price of agricultural goods by selling low. As more and more of these corporations were driven to bankruptcy, Agro Dynamic, Mr. Argos’ new corporation, was able to acquire their lands as well. Soon Agro Dynamic was in control of nearly 80% of the arable land in the province.

By 2465, From the corporation had reached Mega Corp status, producing the bulk of the produce and agricultural goods in the nation. As the government underwent its drastic reform Argos was able to secure a seat on the State Council rather easily, being responsible for the bulk of food production in an increasingly isolated nation.

Now, Agro Dynamic foods have been a staple of the Anagosi diet for decades. Relying heavily on genetically modified crops and livestock to meet demands and ensure year round production, Agro Dynamic and its subsidiaries have invested heavily in genetic studies. Crops have been designed to withstand harsh weathers, have greater nutritional density, and accelerated growth cycles. Livestock has been engineered for faster growth, greater meat production, and resistance to illnesses.

This boon in productivity has come with drastic ecological costs. Massive fields, even tended to by smart watering systems, have put never before seen strain on water supplies. After the exhaustion of local water tables the corporation turned to the nation's lakes and invested heavily in desalination plants to ensure more stable water sources. The crops not meant for human consumption are processed into animal feed that support Agro Dynamic's Industrial Abattoir Towers. These massive factory farms tower into the sky where genetically modified animals are kept in cramped conditions and force fed to ensure rapid growth before being mass processed to provide meat for the nation.

Company settlements provide the human workforce required to tend to the fields as, until recently, automated drones had proved to be an unfeasible alternative due to costs. These settlements work long hours under all weather conditions to tend and harvest the crops with the industrial machines to aid their efforts. Currently some of these farm settlements are now incorporating a new generation of Agro Dynamic worker drones to toil alongside employees to compare efficiency and assess their viability.

Agro Dynamic has also expanded into other industries including fisheries and aquaculture, commercial desalination, and, as a result of searching for underground water reserves, the drilling and refinement of oil. This diversification has also helped to ensure the Mega Corporation’s stability and allows for profits from other industries to help fund research and development.

The foodstuffs produced by Agro Dynamic and its subsidiaries such as Agrain, Ocean Fresh, and Verti-Chow, have a vast range of qualities from high end foodstuffs to mass produced quick meals. The most affordable are typically highly processed, being packed full of additives and preservatives to stretch materials further and ensure extended shelf life. On the other end the corporation has specialized farms and facilities that produce food that is pristine, organic, and non-GMO to cater to the desires of wealthy clientele who can afford such luxuries.

Today, we have our updated World primer to share with you, which includes some tweaks to the overall timeline based on analysis of real-world isolationist states in history. We also have an official map, which can be viewed on the website under "Explore our World" or as part of the updated World Primer.

The registration page now reflects your current status. If you're already registered, the button will appear red and say "Unregister."

If you've recently registered but the button still shows "Register," go ahead and register again — but do not prepay again if you've already completed payment.

Payments are processing correctly, so there's no issue on that end.

Thank you for your patience while we get everything running smoothly.

At this time, registration is officially open!

As mentioned earlier today, you now have the option to prepay during registration, and you’ll receive an email confirmation once it’s complete.

If you registered using the previous form, we kindly ask that you register again using the updated version.

The character creator is still undergoing final tweaks, but most of the major bugs have been resolved.

Thank you all for your patience and excitement as we continue rolling things out!

Today, we bring you the updated 1st Edition Core and Character Creation Rules, as well as the all-new Appendixes for Crafting and Hacking! If you've already read the beta editions, make sure to look over our changelog below, and view the new versions in our Documents section.

We have one more appendix coming later this week for the new and improved Influence system.

Now that the rules are mostly finalized, we're officially opening registration and prepayment for Event 1. You'll be able to pre-pay right here on our website starting tonight. Note that if you've already registered for the event, you will be prompted to re-register as the registration parameters have been updated. The cutoff for preregistration and prepayment will be Friday, April 25th--one week before the event.

We will be running a "Pay What You Can" System; that means that if you want to, you can pay a little extra into a fund we'll be holding to extend to other players who need a little help managing the cost. If you are experiencing financial hardships but would really like to play, shoot us an email at sinsemergent@gmail.com and we'll assess whether the funds are available to give you a discounted rate or even a free event, and your participation in this program is always 100% confidential.

We're also putting out a light update to the World Primer in the coming days, which will slightly tweak the historical timeline. If you've already submitted a backstory, make sure you keep an eye out for those changes so that we can sort out if any details in your backstory need to change as a result.

Lastly, it has come to our attention that some prospective players have been eyeing the Nerf Perses Rival Blaster. We want to make sure everyone has reviewed our foam blaster requirements, because the Perses sadly has a rate of fire of 8 rounds per second; well over the maximum of 3. It also has a slightly hot FPS of ~114. The Perses may only be used if you can reliably tune down that rate of fire and FPS to fit within our regulations, and at the moment we don't have a verified method of doing so, however as we understand it members of the community are working on a solution for that. We'll be sure to signal boost any breakthroughs we are made aware of. For now, we are allowing the Nerf Nemesis Rival Blaster as an alternative; while it has a slightly high rate of fire at full charge, in practice it performs more or less in line with our 3 rounds per second rule.

Core Rules Changelog:

1. Added Other Visual Conventions section
2. Updated wording in the Rage and Cloak effects
3. Updated Character Advancement section
4. Removed extraneous stances
5. Added clarifying language regarding weapon header proficiencies
6. Clarified duration of Inflicted Traits
7. Clarified universal proficiencies

Character Creation Changelog:

1. Changed all LoV to Vocal Target
2. Clarified language; choose 1 power to be active at a time, including between subheader powers
3. Added Improvised Weapon Open skill
4. Removed duplicate Stand Steady ability from Augment Universal
5. Updated Fancy Feet Augment ability to include Enduring
6. Updated Wide Swing ability to affect Blitzer abilities only
7. Updated Projection and Prolong Psionic Universals to affect all Psionic abilities
8. Added bonus use to Anticipate if you have Acrobatics
9. Reworded Hold It Together Psionic ability
10. Added clarifying language to Teleport
11. Fixed coding of Puppeteer Psionic ability
12. Removed Bonus uses from some Energy abilities
13. Updated wording on Stoke Flame Energy ability
14. Renamed Burn ability to Blaze
15. Removed bonus use from Cauterize
16. Added clarifying language to Unstoppable Energy ability
17. Added additional effect to Fastball Special
18. Reworded Burn Lung and improved Smokescreen
19. Updated wording of Icy Gauntlet
20. Updated effect of Icy Armor
21. Changed Gate effect name to Transport
22. Added effect to Lightning Bolt
23. Added Complete Circuit Storms ability
24. Updated Cyclone and Lightning Strike to affect all Storms abilities
25. Updated wording of Conductivity Storms ability
26. Added duration to Persistent Gale
27. Expanded wording of Plating Minerals ability
28. Clarified trigger of Pile Up and Residual Tempering Minerals ability
29. Removed A Hard Place Minerals ability
30. Updated wording of Fight and Flight Nature ability
31. Added additional wording to Stalk Prey Nature ability
32. Revised wording on Fatal Strike Nature ability
33. Revised call of Gravity Well Quantum ability
34. Revised wording of Emanate Quantum ability
35. Revised wording of Redo Quantum ability
36. Revised wording of Over Here Quantum ability
37. Revised language of Take Cover Soldier ability
38. Replaced effect of Armor Breaker Soldier ability
39. Revised wording of Savager Soldier ability
40. Moved weapon proficiency of Skirmisher for clarity
41. Removed Self-Sacrifice Skirmisher ability
42. Revised wording of Frenzy Skirmisher ability
43. Revised wording of Eagle Eye Sharpshooter ability
44. Revised wording of Arterial Shot Sharpshooter ability
45. Revised wording of Explosive Sharpshooter ability
46. Revised wording of Rogue weapon proficiencies
47. Revised wording of Shadowwalker Rogue ability
48. Revised wording of Crowd Control Rogue ability
49. Revised wording of Observation Rogue ability
50. Added weapon proficiency to Lancer
51. Revised wording of A Friend to All Lancer ability
52. Renamed and revised effect of Heavy Blow Lancer ability
53. Revised wording of Redirect Lancer ability
54. Moved weapon proficiency of Duelist for clarity
55. Revised wording of Once More with Feeling Duelist ability
56. Revised wording of Escape Plan Duelist ability
57. Revised wording of Deep Breathing and Belt it Out Authority abilities
58. Revised wording of Guardian weapon proficiencies
59. Revised effect of Shield Bash Guardian ability

Started by media mogul Elias Pembroke, Valorous Media Syndicate, formerly Valorous Entertainment, has slowly come to dominate the media environment. Initially a news network with close ties with the government that specialized in covering government-approved stories and opinions and breaking stories before other sources knew the events had happened.

Between Pembroke’s personal wealth and heavy government assistance, Valorous worked to buy competitors, replace the upper staff with hand-picked representatives, and allow the new subsidiary to function largely unchanged other than where the flow of profits ended up and the new closer oversight. This allows for an appearance of choice in media content, complete with lively competition between subsidiaries, with both employees and the public none the wiser. By pushing both mainstream and fringe ideas, all regime-approved of course, the population has a range of controlled ideas to consider.

Following an initial start in television media VMS began to branch out into the film and music scenes with their same strategy. Now, nearly every media source, at least those approved by the government, is a part of Valorous. Companies that refused merger deals often found their owners or board members suffering unfortunate accidents, being involved in scandals, or having ties to anti-government groups and organizations.

Due to the competition between various subsidiaries poaching of talent is a common, and encouraged, practice. Competing shows, blatant sabotage, and running stories on scandals for your competitors are also very common occurrences. While the heads of these shell corporations know that their competitors are also owned and operated by Valorous Media Syndicate, the aggressive profit goals, and sizable bonuses for meeting them, encourage ruthless and cutthroat business practices. It is also a strict policy for the Chairmen and CEOs to keep knowledge of VMS’ control from the rest of the employees and on more than one occasion entire subsidiaries have been liquidated or had full staff changes.

Talented individuals, or those with good enough looks to be a personality worth faking their talent, are often locked into long and restrictive contracts that trap them into their acts, parts, and often producing the same style of work for years. Talent poaching/extractions are common practice between subsidiaries. A popular figure making pop music one week might be working for a different company making the hottest Glitchwave the next in a “new venture”. An actor with a promising role in a new show might suddenly quit to start a new career in film. While often these are involuntary, sometimes the talent pays for their own extraction when they actually want to change what they're working on.

Founded in 2420, Black Dog Technologies got its start as a small-scale weapons distributor. The original team was based in Centralia and consisted of just the three Blackborn brothers, of which Niratias Blackborn was arguably the spearhead in the development process. Despite being the middle child and often overshadowed by outspoken elder brother Morgan Blackborn, Niratias was the boots on the ground in the beginning, meeting with manufacturers and building relationships that would, in just 10 years’ time, bring about massive change for the corporation.

Today, decades into the development of their corporation, you are not likely to see many personal weapons shipped inside the country without finding a Black Dog Technologies logo on the box. The death of their youngest brother to bombings led to the changes we see today that BDT has been pushing, chief amongst them the use of biological and mechanical implants to enhance and save our soldiers on the battlefield. There are suspicions that the recently purchased piece of land in Latroia is actually meant to be a home for their new manufacturing line of AI-assisted soldier implants, but BDT has refused to comment on the rumors, likely due to the notoriously volatile nature of the topic.

With industrialization inevitably came an increase in involvement of large-scale production corporations with the military, whether it be on the front end providing weapons and the latest equipment, or behind the scenes during training and development of operational processes during war times. Black Dog Technologies has always been happy to provide support to the government at all levels, and holds contracts with multiple different levels of infrastructure, including the army, navy, and emergency management agencies on local and federal levels. Most small-scale training modules are run by BDT team members in cities, providing citizens with knowledge on how to respond to disasters and real-world training on defending their homes in the event of an invasion.

Under the guise of contracts to create specialized weapons, Black Dog Technologies created a subsidiary company called Barghest Intelligence, or BI, through which funds were funneled quietly starting just a few years prior to the Emergent Event. The idea of fully-fledged artificial intelligence that can be used outside of a computer-sized processor still seems far from our reach, despite the rapidly evolving world of cybernetics and the growing thoughts behind the scientific fields of transhumanism. Replacing one’s body parts with fully-realized mechanical arms and legs was already remarkable, but once we began to increase performance in them to provide inhuman strength or agility or speed we crossed a threshold into otherworldly technology that has allowed for a rapid expansion of imagination. Given all of this, it is not shocking that a large weapons manufacturer may begin to dip its fingers into the world of cybernetics. Furthermore, provided with the right tools and processors, BI began to ask the question: Could the cybernetics be more than just an arm, a leg; could they be our assistants as well? A higher intelligence providing real-time analysis of a battlefield; a program that actively receives input from an enemy combatant and spits out the best strategy for defeat?

Funding from the government came just a year before the Emergent Event, when BI quietly met with the President and gave a presentation regarding their ideas, bringing with them researchers and computer scientists that provided live action proof that AI can be applied to cybernetics, and thus began the development of intelligent cybernetics.

Outside of manufacturing and selling weapons (and eventually, cybernetics), Black Dog Technologies, not so quietly, founded Black Dog Security. The Black Dogs are, for lack of better terms, a mercenary organization that provides private paramilitary services locally and internationally. Notorious for providing high levels of security with drastically smaller groups of soldiers than other organizations, the Black Dogs are called in when the expectation of danger is fairly high. They have an open contract with the government to provide protection for higher-up corporate representatives during large-scale meetings, and Black Dogs have been spotted in the background of press conferences during emergencies and important announcements.

Black Dog Security is also the company that technically provides the training under contract from the government military and local emergency management organizations. Training instructors are often older members of Black Dog that have served for a long time, and are now less likely to be sent on active missions. The identities of the membership of BDS are held tightly and kept entirely anonymous; their faces are very rarely seen, though their entirely black suits and masks make them instantly recognizable. Most recent rumors suggest that a person called Garm is their de facto leader, but given it is just a nickname, and the name of a boogeyman no less, these rumors are considered unfounded.

Today we're announcing our Event 1.5, a one-day event running July 12th out of Academy MetroWest in Sudbury, MA. The event will be an in-game activity day with a unique premise; more information will be revealed after Event 1.

But before that, we'll also be coming out to support the good folks at Be Epic with their upcoming standalone mod day, Cyberpunk Milk Run 25XX, which is running March 29th at OddFellows' Lodge in Belmont, MA. This is a charity event in which teams will attempt a high-stakes heist, and if you feel up to the challenge, we encourage our community to form teams of their own and take a crack at it. More info can be found here. We hope to see you there!

Founded in 2480, Polarity is a relatively new face in the world of Anagos megacorporations, which makes it all the more impressive when one realizes how many aspects of daily life they have spread their holdings to. The original plan had been ambitious but, on the surface, simple: provide more access to upgraded, state-of-the-art computers and general technology to less fortunate areas in the nation. Lucia Forgrave was a generational genius, graduating top of her class with a Bachelor’s in Biomechanics and later continuing her education with a PhD in Information Technology. By this time, Dr. Forgrave’s name was on some notable pieces of published research in the field as an assistant and, more rarely, a co-author; Dr. Forgrave’s name can even be found deep in the notes of Dr. Hollow’s famous paper, Hollow et al. (2467), which was published during her time as an intern with Dr. Hollow’s laboratories.

Given her extensive background and education, Dr. Forgrave had no issues pursuing a career in the technological realm and subsequently opening Polarity in her later years. The first of the subsidiary companies to be opened under the corporation was ByteCorp, a company dedicated to providing affordable and accessible home-technology advancements, computer systems, and home appliance systems run by intelligent computer learning algorithms. While nothing that was produced by ByteCorp particularly broke ground, it did open the market to lower-income households and lower working class citizens, and found great success in doing so.

Polarity’s comfortably average success continued until 2490, when Dr. Forgrave announced a sudden retirement with plans to pass the reins to her daughter, Camille Forgrave. The new director of Polarity was a lesser-known figure, having been shielded from the public eye for much of her childhood, but Camille held several degrees of her own and proved to be no less formidable and savvy in the business world than her mother. It was under Camille’s watch that Polarity spread its wings a bit, opening several small manufacturing plants throughout the nation with plans to begin making its own computer components within the first ten years of Camille’s tenure. Polarity’s plants were more than welcome in the neighborhoods where they popped up as they provided steady employment for reasonable pay. By the turn of the century, Polarity was producing computer chips under ByteCorp. Currently, ByteCorp produces several other pieces of technology with Polarity proprietary parts, including computer chips, Smart appliances, motherboards, and small electrical cables.

Currently, Polarity is chiefly run by Camille’s daughter and acting Director and CFO Evelyn Forgrave-Reid, and CEO Brenton Trax. Under the skilled direction of Evelyn, Polarity has extended its holdings into different sectors of the technological world, expanding its portfolio of subsidiary companies in the process. NovaFusion develops software for Smart technology and smaller computer programs, Vanderholt Industrial is best known for their foray into Smart weapon manufacturing, and a few other companies have cropped up, each with their own contributions to the industry.

The development of Cortical Stacks provided, at first, only the most affluent citizens with the means to be essentially immortal; while the risk of permanent death did still linger, they were already less likely to be involved in the dangers of day-to-day life than the poor population, and now being rich also meant having access to a form of reincarnation as well. However, the inevitability of such a technology is that it is, at its core, a product to be sold for capital, and as such it was not too shocking when Cortical Stacks made for the working class entered the market.

With the decrease in fear of death, there came a notable increase in dangerous incidents throughout the country. People installed with the ability to respin their souls simply were not as concerned with caution. Motor vehicle crashes were more commonplace, along with reports of unsanctioned bridge jumping and mountain climbing. Bar fights and street scraps began easier and escalated quickly. Eventually, the number of people needing resets of their stacks each week became a nuisance to their companies, causing dissent and distaste among shareholders.

In stepped the life insurance companies, who had found their own shares dropping and had felt their relevance slipping quickly. A pivotal meeting between Reid Hollow of HMSI and Piovatti Lashwa of FreeHold Mutual Insurance Co. reportedly happened sometime in April 2445; by June 2445, shares of FreeHold Mutual had begun to rise again; by October, FreeHold quietly changed its name to CortiCall. Consumers noticed an uptick over this timeframe in the costs for respinning their stacks, and by October it had become prohibitively expensive for the average worker to use their Cortical Stack in a meaningful way. Conveniently, CortiCall began running ads offering low-cost insurance for your stack; discounts on storage and respins for low monthly prices. The life insurance industry had found its place among those who had found immortality.

Today, CortiCall remains the largest company in the Cortical Stack insurance game, owning 90% of government contracts and working directly with paramilitary companies under Black Dog Technologies. There are smaller options that offer cheaper prices in exchange for sometimes slower services, but none pose true competition in the industry at this time.

Greetings, prospective Emergent!

We have a few exciting announcements today. The first, as you might have noticed, is that this announcement is being hosted on our new official website! This website will be the single source of truth for all things Emergent going forward. While we will still be cross-posting to Facebook, we know that many of you have recently and for very fair reasons elected to forgo Facebook, and we don’t want you to be excluded. The website currently hosts links to all of our beta documents, events, and our beta character creator, which you are welcome to play around with but please be aware that we are still smoothing out some of the kinks. Feel free to send us any bugs or complaints that you encounter via sinsemergent@gmail.com.

This brings us to our second announcement: we have (mostly) official dates for the 2025 season. The Emergent will run out of Camp Haiastan in Franklin, MA, on the following weekends:

May 2-4

September 5-7

October 24-26

In future years we expect to run four full events. For now, we will be pursuing a July 1-day event to help fill the gap–stay tuned for more information on that.

A note on transparency and cost:

We are currently expecting to charge a base entry fee of $125, with a potential “pay if you can” tier to help cover players who may struggle to meet that cost. As many of you know, the landscape of running a LARP in New England has significantly shifted in the post-Covid world, and the vast majority of campsites have significantly increased their prices. The days of 30-player or less games are largely a thing of the past, and so we do need to aim for a healthy 40-player target in order to meet the game’s financial demand. That’s a fairly lofty goal. While we’re cautiously optimistic about hitting it, we want to be candid about the possibility that we might not; in that scenario, we will endeavor to finish out year one by supplementing the game’s income with our own, and conclude at the end of event 3. We take players’ financial and emotional commitment to our game very seriously, and it would take a catastrophic turn of events for us not to afford you a satisfying conclusion to that investment.