 Mechanical Dream cover | |
| Designed by | Francis Larose & Benjamin Paquette |
|---|---|
| Published by | SteamLogic |
| Publication date | 2002 |
| Genres | Fantasy |
| Systems | Custom (Absolute Judge) |
Mechanical Dream is a role-playing game designed by Francis Larose & Benjamin Paquette. It was originally published in 2002 by SteamLogic until the company's bankruptcy in 2004, [1] after which Larose and Paquette started a new company under the name SteamLogic Editions in 2004.
Characters reside in the world of the dual world of Kaïnas and Naakinis, a 30,000 mile disk lit by a sun-like orb called the Pendulum. This disk is surrounded by the Sofe, a 40-mile-tall wall of black ether that few, if any, have ever returned from. Kaïnas (the rational world) and Naakinis (the mythic world) exist with overlapping topography and ecosystems. Flora and fauna of Kainas are scaled normally by real-world standards, while Naakinis exists on a much larger scale (such as the "Kioux" trees that reach many miles in height). In general, the word "Kaïnas" denotes the disk illuminated by the Pendulum, but "Naakinis" extends further and includes whatever lies in and beyond the Sofe.
The Pendulum spends roughly ten of each day's thirty hours beyond the Sofe, creating night-like darkness. During this time, a phenomenon called "The Dream" manifests, becoming stronger as less and less light permeates Kaïnas. The Dream is a fabulous and dangerous world that overlaps with reality. It is initially hazy and hallucinatory, becoming as solid as reality during the darkest parts of the night. Areas where the Pendulum does not shine are affected by permanent manifestations of the Dream.
The Aran world is a separate existence, accessible only in places the Pendulums' light cannot reach (underground or deep underwater). It is fiercely primordial, rejecting inorganic matter and operating by rules entirely different from reality. The creatures inhabiting Aran are unpredictable and poorly understood.
The vast majority of the setting's population depends on the weekly consumption of the orpee fruit to survive. Without orpee, a rapid and excruciating death is guaranteed. Orpee naturally concentrates a life-force called "eflow" that fuels life. The politics and economics of Kaïnas are primarily driven by the collection and distribution of orpee, as it is an absolute requirement for life.
Ten races can be found in Kaïnas.
The heroes of Kaïnas are called Echoes. Able to harness eflow to produce miraculous effect using their "Gifts," they are also able to gain information and insight through a "Whisper," the so-called voice of eflow that speaks to each Echo. There exist many different "vocations" for Echoes, castes that delineate their personalities and abilities:
Gameplay is overseen by an "Absolute Judge" (the gamemaster).
Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with physical or mental reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontological property of being.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher considered one of the most important figures in German idealism. He is one of the fundamental figures of Western philosophy, with his influence extending to the entire range of contemporary philosophical issues, from aesthetics to ontology to politics, both in the analytic and continental tradition.
In philosophy, idealism is a diverse group of metaphysical views which all assert that "reality" is in some way indistinguishable or inseparable from human perception and/or understanding, that it is in some sense mentally constructed, or that it is otherwise closely connected to ideas. In contemporary scholarship, traditional idealist views are generally divided into two groups. Subjective idealism takes as its starting point that objects only exist to the extent that they are perceived by someone. Objective idealism posits the existence of an objective consciousness which exists before and, in some sense, independently of human consciousness, thereby bringing about the existence of objects independently of human minds.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter. The word "metaphysics" comes from two Greek words that, together, literally mean "after or behind or among [the study of] the natural". It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle’s works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics.
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic to seek truth and draw conclusions from new or existing information. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality.
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that facts in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them. Moral relativism encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures. Epistemic relativism holds that there are no absolute facts regarding norms of belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones. Alethic relativism is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture. Some forms of relativism also bear a resemblance to philosophical skepticism. Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the morality or truthfulness of views within a given framework.
Philosophical skepticism is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories: Those who deny all possibility of knowledge, and those who advocate for the suspension of judgment due to the inadequacy of evidence. This distinction is modeled after the differences between the Academic skeptics and the Pyrrhonian skeptics in ancient Greek philosophy.
Pluralism is a term used in philosophy, meaning "doctrine of multiplicity," often used in opposition to monism and dualism. The term has different meanings in metaphysics, ontology, epistemology and logic.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is the first of Immanuel Kant's mature works on moral philosophy and remains one of the most influential in the field. Kant conceives his investigation as a work of foundational ethics—one that clears the ground for future research by explaining the core concepts and principles of moral theory, and showing that they are normative for rational agents.
Critique of Pure Reason is a book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in which the author seeks to determine the limits and scope of metaphysics. Also referred to as Kant's "First Critique", it was followed by his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgment (1790). In the preface to the first edition, Kant explains that by a "critique of pure reason" he means a critique "of the faculty of reason in general, in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive independently of all experience" and that he aims to reach a decision about "the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics."
Madhyamaka also known as śūnyavāda and niḥsvabhāvavāda refers to a tradition of Buddhist philosophy and practice founded by the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna. The foundational text of the mādhyamaka tradition is Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. More broadly, madhyamaka also refers to the ultimate nature of phenomena as well as the non-conceptual realization of ultimate reality that is experienced in meditation.
Theoretical psychology is concerned with theoretical and philosophical aspects of psychology. It is an interdisciplinary field with a wide scope of study. It focuses on combining and incorporating existing and developing theories of psychology non-experimentally. Theoretical psychology originated from the philosophy of science, with logic and rationality at the base of each new idea. It existed before empirical or experimental psychology. Theoretical psychology is an interdisciplinary field involving psychologists specializing in a wide variety of psychological branches. There have been a few prominent pioneers of theoretical psychology such as Wilhelm Wundt, William James, Sigmund Freud, and John B. Watson. There has also been a number of notable contributors which include Jerome Kagan, Alan E. Kazdin, Robert Sternberg, Kenneth J. Gergen, and Ulric Neisser. These contributors may publish in a variety of journals, including journals for general psychology, like American Psychologist. There are several journals dedicated specifically to theoretical psychology, like Theory & Psychology and Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Many other organizations are beginning to recognize theoretical psychology as a formal subdivision of psychology.
Lewis Ricardo Gordon is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. He has written particularly extensively on Africana and black existentialism, postcolonial phenomenology, race and racism, and on the works and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. His most recent book is titled: What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction To His Life And Thought.
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at least affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to exist in a third realm distinct from both the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness, and is the opposite of nominalism. This can apply to properties, types, propositions, meanings, numbers, sets, truth values, and so on. Philosophers who affirm the existence of abstract objects are sometimes called platonists; those who deny their existence are sometimes called nominalists. The terms "platonism" and "nominalism" also have established senses in the history of philosophy. They denote positions that have little to do with the modern notion of an abstract object.
Broadly speaking, fallibilism is the philosophical claim that no belief can have justification which guarantees the truth of the belief, or that no beliefs are certain. Not all fallibilists believe that fallibilism extends to all domains of knowledge; common candidates for infallible beliefs include those that can be known a priori and self-knowledge.
Dream worlds are a commonly used plot device in fictional works, most notably in science fiction and fantasy fiction. The use of a dream world creates a situation whereby a character is placed in a marvellous and unpredictable environment and must overcome several personal problems to leave it. The dream world also commonly serves to teach some moral or religious lessons to the character experiencing it – a lesson that the other characters will be unaware of, but one that will influence decisions made regarding them. When the character is reintroduced into the real world, the question arises as to what exactly constitutes reality due to the vivid recollection and experiences of the dream world.
Patrick Harpur is an English writer. He lives in Dorset, United Kingdom. He is best known for the work Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld which deals with the paranormal in a similar way that Jacques Vallee, Allen Hynek and John Keel have done in the past.
Asatkalpa, this Sanskrit term is derived from the word, asat, meaning 'unreal' combined with the word, kalpa, here in the context of Advaita Vedanta philosophy meaning 'a little less than complete', and is another word for mithya meaning 'the almost unreal world' or 'unreal conceptuality'. In the context of Yogacara school of Buddhism it is one of the three transformed modes of the mind which three are – parikalpa, 'the act of imagination', abh utaparikalpa, 'the act of imagining the unreal forms', and asatkalpa, 'the act of imagining the non-existent'.
Hegelianism is the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories. His goal was to reduce reality to a more synthetic unity within the system of absolute idealism.
Charles Arthur Campbell was a Scottish metaphysical philosopher.