Introduction

Setting up and Running a Game
Running an Ongoing Campaign
The Deck of Fire for Incursion 1

The Release Party page for the Blood Red Dreaming Incursion book: INTO THE RING now has the sections up for Setting up and Running a Game, Running an Ongoing Campaign, and a full list of the Deck of Fire for this first Incursion Book. Here at https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/


Setting Up and Running a Game
What do you need?
To play any game of Blood Red Dreaming you will need the following: the rules, a deck of void, a deck of fire, an incursion (possibly from an incursion book, possibly your own). You will also need some paper and writing implements, and some friends. That’s it.

How do you get it?
Here ( https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/ ), and it’s all free! Just download and print what you want! If you’d like a physical copy of the Deck of Void, we have a few available here ( https://professorharbinger.com/gift-shop/ ).

What about People?
Yes, you need people- preferably friends. We can’t tell you how to go about making friends, but we can tell you that Blood Red Dreaming is best played with between four and six people. It can be played with both more and less people, but you may find it a little more awkward.

So how do you Run the Game?
One person plays the Storyteller (ideally this person should be different each time the game is played), and the others take the role of Psychonauts: explorers of the mind delving deep into the world of stories.

The Storyteller then reads the Incursion session they will be running to learn the flow of the story and the game. They will act as a sort of film director to the psychonauts. The Storyteller will set the stage for each scene in the story and guide the Psychonauts as they attempt to hero their way through the story. The rules will be explained as we go. So have patience, all will come clear soon.

Running an Ongoing Campaign
Blood Red Dreaming is designed for adults with busy schedules. Players can drop in and drop out as their schedules demand. New players can join at any stage in the ongoing story with minimal need for integration. We, the authors, do recommend that you use a shared document of some sort to log the ongoing story, since the storyteller ought to be changing regularly. Beyond that, the transition guides coming out later this month will keep the storytellers going. 

Incursion 1.2 - Transitioning to Incursion 1.3

Hand off to the New Storyteller! Here's a Handy Transition Guide to Session 3 of INTO THE RING. Here at https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/

Incursion 1.2 - The Deck of Fire used in 1.2 Act by Act

A Breakdown of the how the Deck of Fire is used in the second Incursion session for INTO THE RING is now available. Here at https://professorharbinger.com/start-here/

Into the Ring Release Schedule

Aardvark, Aardwolf, and Ape is proud to announce the release of our first Game Book. The Book is an Blood Red Dreaming Incursion Book: Into the Ring. The Book will be released into the Public Domain as with all of our releases. The release will start on May 1st, and will be released in a modular fashion across the whole of the Month of May.

Release Schedule

The Release Schedule for the Blood Red Dreaming Incursion Book: INTO THE RING, and you can find it HERE!

• https://archive.org/details/ReleaseScheduleIntoTheRing (and here)

Work in Progress

Hi All.

This your Glorious Leader Speaking. I missed yesterday's post. And that deserves an explanation. I was struck by a cyclist several weeks back and fractured the cartilage in my ribs. As such, I've been relying on post I had logged as back up till this point.

I am still stuck reclining, as sitting in front of a computer causes my back to seize up. So I am limited to what work I can do from my phone. As you see here.

I am trying to work on the first official book release for the Blood Red Dreaming Project. But due to the injury and my ongoing issues with anxiety and depression, I am having to pick my battles.

As such, these blog posts will likely be limited to progress reports while I heal.

Thank you everyone for you understanding.

Thursday Theory: Frankl and Depression

So in our week long discussion of depression, named the oil mask in the Shadowlands, we are now going to talk about the ideas of Viktor Frankl.

Viktor Frankl wrote the book: "Man's Search for Meaning" as an introduction to his theory of logotherapy, developed as a result of the author's experiences in Aushwitz during World War 2. The basic idea behind logotherapy is that one should find/choose/create a purpose for one's life, and immersively imagine and work towards that outcome. The purpose must be one about which the person feels positively.

And isn't this the underlying mechanism of religion? And also political ideologies. And also people whose vocation began as a beloved pasttime: such a concert musician or a professional actor. This may be why the poor are more religious than the middle class, as the meaning providing by religion could serve as inoculation against depression.

This is, of course, the reason for GLORIOUS LEADER'S GRAND MASTER PLAN!

We need purpose. And if the available purpose giving systems are not sufficient to give you meaningful purpose, as it isn't for your Glorious Leader, then do not despair; because GLORIOUS LEADER'S GRAND MASTER PLAN provides both a complete system to give purpose and also a series of templates by which a individual can devise their own system of meaning and purpose.

I am, of course, not finished.

But I will not stop. I will do this until they nail my coffin shut. Because, this IS my purpose.

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.

Talk Tuesday on a Wednesday

This week we're talking depression, and the startling connection between depression and civilization. Yesterday (note that I intended to post this on Tuesday) we talked about why our jobs make us depressed. Today I want to talk about current events.

How could current events be contributing  to a person's depression or anxiety? The doomsday clock is once again at its closest ever position to the zero at 2 minutes to midnight.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_Clock

Nuclear Armageddon is once again being seriously discussed the media. The damage caused by climate change is climbing even as the deniers keep trying to stone wall all hopes at change.

There have been five major wars in past year with more than ten thousand deaths in thepast year each. There have been fourteen conflicts with at least a thousand casualties in the past year. And a further twenty three conflicts with at least one hundred casualties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts

Now most of us probably can't name those conflicts, at least not all of them. But I bet those numbers didn't surprise most of you. We are aware of the state of world, and I suspect that this weighs upon our psyche.

Environmental damage and degradation is becoming horrifying common place and even unremarkable on the evening news. And yet estimates place the total number of environmental refugees at between ten million and twenty five million. As deforestation and changing rainfall patterns cause droughts and famines, old settlement locations cease to be habitable. And then people are pressed into action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_migrant

Now obviously, these things will cause stress to those directly impacted. But even if you affected directly, you can't escape the impact entirely. We live in an age of constant information overload, an outrage economy fueled by the twenty four hour news cycle and the might of the internet. And so the strife and struggle of a thousand miles away is still sitting in our living rooms and back of mind.

Open tasks are stressors on the mind, like open tabs on a browser window. And things which feel like threats, but which we cannot address, will sit like psychic tumors in our brains. Open tabs with malicious software sitting in the back of our browser window.

And so, where once our awareness extended to our village and perhaps to a larger tribe and clan affiliation, now it extends to the ends of the earth and encompasses celebrities, world leaders, and workers halfway round the world. We carry the psychic weight of the world upon our shoulders. When I was born there were four and a half billion people and that number is seven and a half billion. The human mind evolved to hold the connections to roughly one hundred people. That does seem a bit of a mismatch.

No wonder we're depressed.

Life is short.
Work is crap.
Join my cult.