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| − | ''"They all laughed at my theories! They called me mad! But now I'll have my revenge!"
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| − | ''If only it were so simple. They laughed because you WERE mad. They laughed because your inventions crumbled when unveiled and your theories turned to gibberish. You wept when you saw your equations riddled with childish errors.
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| − | ''
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| − | ''But you know what you accomplished: you broke gravity's spell; you programmed a computer to dream; you banished death! These weren't delusions or lies!
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| − | ''Maybe they were right.
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| − | ''Or maybe just one more experiment will show you the truth. You can do everything you said. There's a price to pay, but you can do it. And you're not mad. The things you do...maybe they're not right. Maybe your peers would recoil in horror. But you're not mad. And you'll show them all.''
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| − | Genius: The Transgression is a fan-made role-playing game for the New World of Darkness. In it, players take on the roles of mad scientists and wonder-workers, driven to the brink of insanity by the secrets they have uncovered. Version 1.1 of the rules is available for free download as a .pdf file:[https://sites.google.com/site/moochava/genius]
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| − | = Genius: The Transgression =
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| − | = Table of Contents =
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| − | == Prologue: Behold, The Secrets of Immortality! ==
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| − | == Introduction ==
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| − | ''"Silence. I am not interested in your imbecilic mouthings. All of you have demonstrated your lack of vision by
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| − | demanding my resignation from the faculty. Well, you have accomplished your purpose. You cast me out. You
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| − | robbed me of everything that I held most dear in life: position, honor, respect. You framed me as a madman, held
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| − | me up to ridicule before the whole world. But now I'll have my revenge....Now you'll pay for your folly. There's no
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| − | escape for any of you. You shall die, one by one, at the hands of the scientific marvel that you scoffed at."
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| − | -Dr. Lorenzo Cameron, The Mad Monster
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| − | ''
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| − | Ever since we bent our minds to technology―not with the computer or the automobile, but with fire and
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| − | language and visions of tomorrow's hunt―we walked away from the path laid out before us. No longer were
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| − | we to struggle and die like the other animals. No longer would we be allowed lives defined by a blissful
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| − | eternal now. We opened our eyes, regretted the past, feared the future, and became fully human.
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| − | But there were some who wished to know more, and to see farther, no matter the price. Mortals accepted into
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| − | their midst tricksters who delighted in showing the failure of the powerful, visionaries who dreamed of
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| − | worlds never before seen, fanatics determined to change the world by changing how we thought. The genius
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| − | stands outside of society and its narrow bounds, whether hailing from some crude some village where no one
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| − | knows what lies beyond the forest or gleaming metropoli whose inhabitants are bored with walking on the
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| − | Moon. They bring us marvels, and we make them pay for their transgressions.
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| − | As humanity has always admired and feared its law-givers, it has always admired and feared its law-breakers,
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| − | its madmen, its geniuses. Every society has stories of those who went too far, who asked too much, and who
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| − | suffered for it. The mad scientist is new, but the genius is an old dream indeed: the prophet, the trickster-god,
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| − | the master of techne, the artificer who makes the world, the demiurge who seeks to control, bind, and direct
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| − | it.
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| − | Genius: The Transgression is a game about those men and women and almost-gods, the ones who went too
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| − | far in their and hope and spite and fear and arrogance. They are doomed to watch their discoveries dissolve
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| − | into dust and broken lines of code, to see their inventions rampage out of control. But between that first
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| − | discovery and their last, when they transgress once too often and the universe wipes them away, they can
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| − | create wonders.
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| − | A Game of Forbidden Science:
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| − | Break the rules and you get in trouble. Break the law and you go to jail. Mouth off to your boss and lose your
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| − | job. Jump off a building and...But it doesn't have to be that way, says that little voice in the back of your head,
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| − | your personal genius. You ignore it, but you can't silence it. But a genius gives in to that voice, becomes that
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| − | rules-breaking thing, that maker-trickster-savior, and begins a life of pain and glory unimaginable to mere
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| − | mortals.
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| − | The genius sees the truth, but she cannot get there. In her heart she knows, but she cannot explain why. She
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| − | flouts social convention, ignores the sneering voice of authority and dogma, and casts aside the ethical
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| − | concerns of her peers. She breaks the rules of the universe we know to glimpse the truth of the universe as it
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| − | must be. But there's a price. There always is. She is not just isolated from the "common man," but from the
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| − | very discipline that birthed her. In her heart, she knows that what she does is not science, which is ultimately
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| − | about systems and about cooperation. Alone, she walks a new path, wearing the trappings of her old life but
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| − | no longer capable of touching its essence.
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| − | == Chapter One: The Cosmos ==
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| − | == Chapter Two: Character Creation ==
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| − | == Chapter Three: Systems and Foundations ==
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| − | == Chapter Four: Special Rules and Systems ==
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| − | == Chapter Five: Storytelling and Antagonists ==
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| − | == Appendix One: Samples Wonders ==
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| − | == Appendix Two: The Fellowships ==
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| − | == Appendix Three: The Seattle of Tomorrow ==
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| − | == Epilogue: The Answer to Everything ==
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