TEXT:  
  PRRSFNAL  
  APICALYPvTICA 
   A  G A M E  O F  S T A R S   
  	
  B R 	 E A K I N G  
  By Maria Mison  
  of Sword Prince Games 
  VV
  V
  
   
  DEDICATED TO: THE BLIND SWORD 
  Jeffrey White, Kazumi Chin, Jammi Nedjani, & all the 
  damn awesome patrons who believe in games. 
  ALWAYS. 
  This is an LGBTQA+ friendly space. Gender is a human 
  construct and anyone can have an apocalypse. Anyone.
  You may use something like the X-card, Lines & Veils, Script 
  Change, etc.  for safety in emotionally diﬃcult topics. Have 
  a sign, or a chat word/emoji that symbols to do out of 
  character check-ins. 
  Vulnerability and Bleed is powerful and must be respected. 
  Honor the people you are with on the table. 
  Hb
  j
  We are multiple, multilayered,  
  	
  many-mythed and many lived.
  
   
  PRRSFNAL 
  APICALYPvTICA 
  C H A R A C T E R  G E N E R A T I O N  
  How do they call you? 
  What do you call yourself when no one is looking? 
  How does the one who love you, address you?  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  Have an completely blank sheet of paper as your character proﬁle. 
  Draw a triangle with no equal sides, anywhere on the paper. Write 
  one name on each corner like shown in the illustration. 
  How do they call you will be your -MEMORY- 
  What do you call yourself alone is your -CONTENTMENT- 
  How does the one who loves you address you is your -INTIMACY- 
  Pick three Roots or Sources from the list on the next two pages. 
  Alternatively, go to cafeastrology.com/natal and produce a natal chart 
  from your birth details. 
  Read the whole report and pick three planetary placements (eg “68 
  Conjunction between the Sun and Mercury” ) that you were most 
  personally called out by. Intuitively decide which of the three fall under 
  your names, MEMORY, CONTENTMENT and INTIMACY. 
   
  If you can’t decide, Libras and Geminis, select a moon aspect for 
  MEMORY - one that talks about upbringing, a sun aspect or north 
  node that talks about your needs for CONTENTMENT and a Venus 
  aspect that talks about what you are attracted to for INTIMACY.
  X
  O
  Y
  
   
  Sun in VI: The Sun is in the sixth house 
  The work that you do, and the services that you offer, are very 
  important to your sense of identity making you sensitive to its 
  criticism. In order to feel good about yourself, you need to be busy 
  with daily activities and to produce work you can be proud of. Focus 
  on ﬁnding a suitable and rewarding avenue for expressing this part of 
  you, being extra careful to choose an occupation in which you can 
  express yourself. 
  68 Conjunction between the Sun and Mercury 
  As far as studying or learning goes, you are better off reading the 
  material than listening to a teacher. These traits come from a strong 
  need to take an active role in communications. It is very hard for you 
  to passively listen and absorb information. 
  Moon in VIII: The Moon is in the eighth house 
  She has a predilection for deep and profound dreams. Romantic 
  fantasies ﬁgure strongly. Possibly quite interested in the occult. While 
  you have a strong need for emotional security, you are also a person 
  who is drawn to pushing your own limits, and many lifestyle changes 
  can be the result of this need to challenge, or reinvent, yourself 
  emotionally. You are always fascinated with how people work, taboos, 
  secrets, and all that is forbidden or hidden.  
  -56 Square between the Moon and Saturn 
  Needs to learn to trust others more. Fear keeps them from fully 
  enjoying personal relationships, and fear is behind the occasional 
  rigidity that they express. When they let themselves receive nurture or 
  care from others, an inner voice cautions them that it might not be 
  sincere, long-lasting, or enough! Many people with this aspect had a 
  lot of conditions placed on the love they received in early childhood. 
  They tend to expect the same later in life. must work hard at positive 
  thinking. Sarcas is essentially a defense mechanism designed to 
  protect themselves from harshness in the world.
  Sun in VI: The Sun is in the sixth house 
  They place a lot of value in freedom and individuality--theirs and 
  yours. They need space to be themselves and plenty of room to 
  breathe. Generally not the touchy-feely types, these natives often 
  laugh at sentimentality and tradition. In personal relationships, their 
  approach to intimacy is deﬁnitely on the detached side, which can be 
  bafﬂing and frustrating to more personal and affectionate 
  personalities. The Aquarian ideal of equality works big time with this 
  position, and the desire to push their agenda on others (usually in 
  creative, rather than aggressive, ways) runs high. 
  Venus in Capricorn 
  Venus in Capricorn people will try to win your heart by displaying self-
  control, presence of mind, and responsible behavior. These lovers 
  want you to know they are goal-oriented, witty, savvy, and controlled. 
  Nobody can get the best of them. They want you to see just how 
  competent they are. They like some measure of predictability in their 
  relationships as they are cautious in love. 
  Saturn is in Scorpio 
  Observant, self-controlled, unforgiving, tough, methodical, a 
  researcher, an investigator. Lots of courage, self-assurance, and 
  inclines to keep their cool. Possible issues: Making no concessions or 
  compromises for fear of loss of control or respect. They might 
  become a fanatic of a creed, a party, work, or a religion in rare cases. 
  Moon in Cancer  
  They are never detached--they cling to things, their home, and people 
  they care for. They seek out security and familiarity in all they do. They 
  look for peace and quiet. Their attachment to all that is safe means 
  they are a little leery of change. These peace-loving souls dislike 
  superﬁciality in all of its forms. They are devoted and accommodating. 
  The insecure ones accumulate things in an attempt to feel secure. 
  FFDVJNFSKVNWOEJVSLKCMVSKVNS
  FFDVJNFSKVNWOEJVSLKCM
  EXAMPLES
  The ﬀ text is © cafeastrology
  
   
  Venus in cancer 
  Pleasing Venus in Cancer involves lots of snuggling and 
  sentimentality. Recognize their attachments to their family and home. 
  Help them to feel conﬁdent with you -- when they are fearful of being 
  rejected, they can resort to some frustrating tactics to ﬁnd out just 
  how loved they are. Think about how a crab (the symbol of Cancer) 
  moves towards its goal, and you will get a fair idea of Venus in 
  Cancer's approach. Do your best to make them feel secure and 
  cared for, and you will be rewarded with a patient, dependable, and 
  loving mate. 
  -69 Opposition between the Sun and Jupiter 
  Although your intentions are generally good, you are given to 
  overdoing things. You can easily gloss over realistic details and get 
  yourself into debt, overindulge in pleasures such as food and drink, 
  and promise more than you can deliver. For the most part, you ﬁnd 
  help for your excesses. Somebody's there to bail you out, as plenty 
  of people believe that your heart is in the right place.  
  Moon in Pisces 
  Without plenty of space and time to daydream, Pisces Moons easily 
  get overloaded with life. Give them room to be alone with themselves, 
  and they're generally able to take on the worldm. Generally 
  considered soft-hearted and sweet, Lunar Pisceans care about 
  others and are easily touched by human suffering. This tendency 
  gains them the reputation as suckers for sob stories. Although this 
  may sometimes be true, many Lunar Pisceans learn, in their lifetimes, 
  how to discern between sincerity and manipulation. 
  Venus is in Libra 
  Venus in Libra people will impress you with their kindness, 
  evenhandedness, and willingness to make your relationship work. 
  They have a polished manner in love, which sometimes makes them 
  appear insincere or superﬁcial.
  -3 Square between Mars - Neptune 
  This is a challenging position, as you have difﬁculty trusting in your 
  ability to go after things that you want in a direct manner. It may also 
  be that you have difﬁculty pinpointing what it is that you want, or that 
  part of you doesn't feel you deserve it due to a basic lack of self-
  conﬁdence. You fear rejection as well as criticism, and often use 
  roundabout means to go after what you want. 
  Your imagination is so powerful that it can be hard to trust your 
  instincts.Adopting a more direct and assertive approach to life is 
  something that you should be working towards. You will need to get 
  over your feelings of guilt when you do adopt this approach. 
  True North Node in Pisces 
  Their path is to learn to worry less and believe more. Overthinking and 
  overanalyzing their life limits their growth. They are learning to let go of 
  perfectionism. They learn to pay more attention to mental health and 
  emotional healing and to relax the rules from time to time. 
  Moon in Leo  
  Not necessarily outgoing. When they feel comfortable, they do like 
  being the center of attention. That is, they like being in the "spotlight" 
  in the comfort of their own homes and with family and friends. They 
  enjoy entertaining others, and often take on the role of comic. Lunar 
  Leos often feel a need to organize, and even control, their families and 
  friends. They have an inner mission to set things right. 
  -45 Square between Venus - Neptune 
  They might lack self-conﬁdence and their ideals are not always easy 
  to achieve. In love, they are unstable and deceitful or, more likely, 
  meets people who are like this. They are easy-going and follows 
  others' wishes in love much of the time, and might let the partner take 
  the initiative more often than not. This aspect indicates a suggestible 
  romantic nature. Being "in love with love" is a strong possibility. 
  FFDVJNFSKVNWOEJVSLKCM
  VJNFSKVNWOEJVSLKCMVSKVNS
  EXAMPLES
  The ﬀ text is © cafeastrology
  
  INTERPERSONAL APOCALYPTICA 
  B U I L D I N G  H O M E  
  Draw a symbol that represents a hearth or a home in the middle of 
  your triangle.  
  Now take some time introducing yourself around the table with 
  your MEMORY name, introducing your name and how people 
  know you. Do this in a way that is informed by your two other 
  roots without directly revealing them. 
  For eg: if your CONTENTMENT is space to dream, you may relay 
  your public persona as a series of dream journals. If your 
  INTIMACY is reliability and practicality you may claim that you 
  don’t understand your brother’s perception of a sensual love. 
  Fleshing out the world and location of your play is a good way to 
  ground your shared world building. Note:  
  Your goal is to be understood  
  without revealing your OTHER NAMES.  
  E S T A B L I S H I N G  B O N D S  
  Depending on your whole characterization as a character - feel 
  free to declare love for another character. If the other character 
  accepts, they show you their INTIMACY name, and tell the table of 
  a story of the ROOT of how they came to understand how you 
  wanted to be loved.  
  The character that confesses builds on the story of ROOT and 
  reveals their INTIMACY name too, and also declares the 
  INTIMACY ROOT of their character in turn. 
  Each player is free to have 0 to how many shared intimacy names 
  as they want with other players. 
  INTRAPERSONAL APOCALYPTICA 
  A N D  T H E  W O R L D  C O M E S  D O W N  O N  Y O U  
  The people who love you now will tell you what the hardest thing 
  for you to do is. They may build on the details you’ve provided 
  with your HEARTH, BONDS and MEMORY.  
   
  IF you created no bonds, then you will make this yourself.  
  THIS IS YOUR TASK OF COURAGE.  
  Note that the hardness comes from a personal root, the task of 
  imagining here is to make this as nuanced and directly rooted into 
  the character previously ﬂeshed as much as possible.  
  Sensitivity to the life of the character created is key and imagining 
  complexities from 3 varied roots is part of the game.  
  Openly narrate this. 
  You have no guide questions.  
  D O  Y O U  T A K E  T H E  T A S K ?  
  Take a highlighter and highlight what phrases of your roots are 
  most powerful for you. If taken from cafeastrology website, write 
  these down anywhere in any order on your character generation 
  paper.  
  Choose a song that you’d think most of the table would be familiar 
  with or has a tune you would not be afraid of singing. This may be 
  a love song, a grieving song, a sexy song, a battlecry. Whatever 
  you feel embodies the solution to your “TASK OF COURAGE”. 
  Now with the words highlighted or written on your character 
  sheet, device new lyrics for the song you chose in one of the key 
  scenes that you’re bonds have described. You must use the name 
  only you call yourself. (CONTENTMENT) 
  You win the game when you sing it.  
  You may instruct the table to sing with you. 
  
   
  GENERATIONAL ADD-ON 
  H O M E  H A S  C H A N G E D  
  To continue playing in the world you previously created, create 
  new characters that are the children of your characters, or maybe 
  not. They can be from the bonds you created or be entirely made 
  up. They must have a strong relationship with the character of 
  your previous session. They idolised them, hated them, is named 
  after them and so on.  
  The game session goes on as it is usually played with the added 
  mechanic of: 
  The song that must be used, must include a mash-up of the 
  previous song created from the session before. It can be an 
  answer and call format, a battle, a symphony.  
  It must still declare all of your names.  
  You still win the game as you sing it. 
  SOLO-PLAY OPTION 
  S O M E T I M E S  T H E  W O R L D  I S  S I L E N T  
  The amount of change in your current wallet is the amount of 
  tokens you have. 
  Generate a character as usual, have 3 names. 
  Every time you pull out loose change, you are automatically 
  playing a turn of this odd - in your life - personal apocalyptica 
  thing. 
  You try to: 
  - reveal one of your character’s names to a stranger as a friend or as 
  yourself having a problem with the name’s corresponding ROOT (the 
  Starbucks cashier, a so-so acquaintance, the toll gate person etc) 
  - Whatever name is used, based on the reaction of the stranger, and 
  the situation - expound further on this name and aspect of the 
  character with the stranger or just to yourself. You may or may not 
  reveal that this is a game. 
  - You are allowed to further ﬂesh out this character’s internal world in 
  the lulls between tokens being spent. However you are not to reveal 
  names “in story” 
  NOTE 
  - Should you reveal all your names before the coins of your wallet 
  is depleted. You win. 
  - If not, you may choose to take on a TASK OF COURAGE. In the 
  precise spot of where you gave your last coins away. Sing, sing 
  about the story unﬁnished, of the names unrevealed. Like you 
  were an old carpenter’s song telling a tale of someone 
  important. 
  - If anyone, other than you, looks and/or hears. You win. 
  
  ABOUT 
  Dreamt of on Sept 8 2019 
  By Maria Mison 
  t: @mariamison 
  itch: mariabumby.itch.io 
  patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mariamison 
  — 
  Hi I’m Maria and I enjoy the cross of participatory art, 
  equitable play and collective narrative in TTRPG & 
  LARP. All of which are political and catalysts for 
  personal and collective change. It looks harmless, 
  that's the point. Help make chaotic-righteous-hopeful 
  spaces by supporting my patreon!  
  — 
  CREDITS 
  Photographs from unsplash.com powered by creators 
  who believe in empowering others to make. 
  Particularly the genius JR Korpa. 
  Illustrations from Old Book Illustrator 
  Fonts: The Foregen & Baskerville 
  License: Attribution-ShareAlike  
  4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).
  ON 
  APOCALYPTICA 
  This game is inspired by a baby game jam from the 
  Blind Sword Discord Server with the following 
  prompts: 
  Memory, Intimacy, (Breaking) Bread OR Hearth, 
  Songs, Courage, Tokens, Roots OR Sources, 
  Contentment, Personal Apocalypses, Solo or Dual 
  Play Compatibility, Writing/Drawing Something 
  Physically, Generational Storytelling, Teaching / 
  Learning 
  Special Shout-out to the hosts: 
  @waveechocave @jdragsky @fencedforest 
  @bigstuffedcat @temporalhiccup @kazumiochin and 
  @mariaison cause sometimes you gotta thank yourself 
  okay? 
  If you want to make a blindsword game feel free to 
  submit this to the #jammijamjam on itch.io. So many 
  of the themes under Jammi jam jam fall under here. 
  KH
  Bx
  dj
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Collections/Self-Exploration, Emotional, & Relationship/Personal Apocalyptica.pdf