Setting:InfiniCon

NOTE: Everything except for the very basic premise is completely proposed, un-"official" ideas and brainstorming. Everything is open to revision, criticism, or feedback. Just leave some comment in the "discussion" tab saying why you did so.

Welcome to InfiniCon, the Con that never ends.

A Convention so large that it occupies its own city. infinity City, the cleverly named home of InfiniCon is a relatively small, but densely packed urban paradise where fandoms of all kinds coexist in a year-round celebration of anime, video games, sci-fi, fantasy, LARP, and just about any other kind of nerdy subculture you can imagine. With multiple conventions running all the time, each organizing their own large events and gatherings, the city is more or less split into districts.

For some, InfiniCon is merely an event to attend once a year, like any other convention. You get some pictures of neat costumes, meet some popular celebrities from the industry, visit some panels, and that's the end of it. For many more, InfiniCon is home. It is a fan's Neverland, where they get to live the dream, fully immersed in a surreal world where fictional characters roam the streets and where you can go to the local café and find a Jedi, a Ninja, a Space Marine, and zombie, sharing a table and conversing over coffee.

Luckily, for those who wish to stay, there is always work to be done in Infinity City. The large events require organizers, security detail, technicians, craftsmen, janitors, and countless other little jobs to pay the bills and stay just a little longer. Even those who don't want to runt he convention can find a job helping out the various vendors and stores dotting the city. Many talented and entrepreneurially minded citizens have even managed to form personal businesses repairing and sewing costumes, styling wigs, or building the complex and detailed props and armor that the costumed citizens cannot live without.

Now, you may be thinking that this all sounds too good to be true, and you'd be right. InfiniCon is not without its problems, though the people running the show do everything in their power to make sure that most don't hear about the darker side of the Con, but that doesn't stop it from happening. Like any other city on the planet,

The biggest issues in Infinity City are often about property. There's an extensive list of eager fans who want to move in, but there aren't enough rooms to go around. Rumors persist of certain groups muscling people out of their apartments so their property can be sold at a hefty mark-up, while others say that there is a band of unhinged citizens who have been making lesser known attendees disappear to secure some extra property.

Vendors and businesses have to worry about getting their shipments on time as competing businesses make take it upon themselves to take them out of commission by sending other attendees to intercept and steal any incoming shipments. Crafters have to worry about being able to get enough materials to finish their next costume or prop, while still being able to make it look flawless.

Similarly, nerds are quite territorial to begin with, so amongst those who already own property, certain districts and bordering areas are always in disputes amongst different fandoms and whole factions. Little fights break out often over minor things, like which faction owns the local McDonalds or if people wearing a certain kind of costume can even pass down certain streets. In some cases, the results of these disputes aren't too vicious, but there are always those amongst any group who take things too far.

History

The history of Infinity City is something of a mystery. Even long time citizens aren't quite sure when the place first popped up, though most agree that it has been around over a decade and much of the city was already built even when the convention first started functioning year round.

The most common theory is that the person who built Infinity City won a major lottery or contest or something that landed him with more money than they could ever spend in 100 lifetimes. Like any of us might do, they poured that money into the things they loved, like anime and comic books and games. When that wasn't enough they began to put all that money into conventions, which proved to be enormous successes. Soon, they were buying out entire city blocks and re-purposing them as property for their convention, which continued to grow faster and faster. Before long, Infinity City was born, owned and supported by it's own, everlasting convention.

There are a lot of unanswered questions from that explanation, but seeing as the Chairman of InfiniCon, the person running the whole show, is incredibly reclusive, no one is really quite sure what the truth is. The whole thing has made the Chairman something of an urban legend with some claiming he's just wandering the streets, just another face in the crowd, while others insist that he has to be some sort of investment super genius or maybe even a collective of the most brilliant minds from each faction. Others still will warn you not to go digging into the subject too much, because they knew a guy, who heard from another guy that trying to find the Chairman got some guy killed.

The Plan so far

InfiniCon is meant to be a setting, first and foremost. The initial idea was to create and explore the concept, expanding and detailing the things that hadn't been touched on yet. This went far better than expected and before I knew it, there were all sorts of anons chiming in and writing short stories and bringing the idea to life. Soon after, the thought of homebrewing a system to go along with the idea. I'm not quite sure what's happening with that, though I'd rather work out some of the larger details before getting that deep into this, as my plan was originally to run it as a World of Darkness setting.

Additionally, InfiniCon exists in a couple different flavors at the moment.

• The Low Fantasy - InfiniCon is slightly more realistic, though no less corrupt and dark once you get into it. From a player perspective, it's more like a Film Noire story with players often playing Mercenary or Hunter types who take up any work they can get that falls outside the normal spectrum of legitimate business. Players might be normals, working as the diplomats and negotiators between the different factions, being the neutral party that isn't sided with any one series or genre.

• The Batshit Insane High Fantasy - InfiniCon is not merely a gathering of cosplayers and dorks, there is something supernatural about it, something that alters the fabric of reality. Those who truly engage themselves in the fantasy of being a fictional character and immerse themselves in their fandom start to take on the powers and abilities of their character and series. Depending on how intense you feel like getting, this could mean a street-level supers type thing with people sporting enhanced agility and strength, or it could be a high end Exalted type rise to Godhood, where fully immersed characters warp the world around them, making it take on aspects of their fandom. This would be represented by an "Immersion" stat.

• Delusions and Overreactions - There is a semi-supernatural phenomenon in Infinity City that allows playing pretend and getting into character to have some serious impact on the citizens. As a person drifts further into their delusion, it becomes harder for them to not react to roleplay as if it were reality. This becomes a bigger problem when the intense delusions of one person can start to drag others in, forcing everyone in the area into their fantasy, crossover hallucination where nerf darts are deadly bullets and the guy in the cardboard armor becomes a fearsome trained warrior. from an outsiders perspective, it's hilarious to watch, but it can be quite frustrating for Con Security when they have to waste time convincing kids that they aren't actually dead after some fight with another cosplayer. This is meant to be an alternate take on the immersion idea, still allowing for epic battles, but without the actual super powers and only a hint of psychic shenanigans.

The City Itself

There are a lot of details and districts and ideas flying around about about the city, so for now let's just compile a few factoids.

One of the largest details worth noting is the Infinity City is a complete city. Meaning, though it largely exists as a convention, there are hospitals, post offices, firehouses, police stations, and all those other little things you take for granted.

Little Tokyo - Anime, Manga, and Japanese Culture District.

Metropolis - The Comics, Cartoons, and Western Media. Modern city, most resembles the real world.

Grimdark Forest - LARP and Renaissance District. Located on the outskirts of the city near an actual forest.

Neckbeard Alley - Traditional gaming and Fantasy District. Located near Grimdark Forest

Unnamed - And, of course, there needs to be a sci-fi, futurist district of the city, but I can't think of a snappy name for it right now.

The UnderCon - Due to the large number of apartment buildings and hotels and high rises, most buildings have basements several floors deep with service tunnels connecting them. Con security and Organizers often use the most well-maintained tunnels are shortcuts through the city, but all those abandoned and unmaintained back halls house the city's homeless con-goers who refused to leave. Some seriously shady shit goes on down there.

Proposed Mechanics

There was discussion about a homebrew system, and the section below will be used to propose and brainstorm ideas for it.

Proposed Stats

Physical/Base Stats

• STR: Strength, Raw muscle strength, for melee and such. This the offensive physical stat.
• BOD: Body, contols sickness, endurance, and general body. This is the defensive physical stat.
• AGL: Agility, for running, acrobatics, and reflexes or aiming a gun. The accuracy/precision/movement attribute.
• INT: Intelect, knowledge, smarts, logic. This is the mental "offensive" statistic.
• WILL: Pain resistance and mental sanity. This is the mental defensive stat.

Social stats

• CHA: Charisma, body language, general speech, good for diplomacy, bartering, etc. This is the main/misc. stat for social interactions.
• ATT: Attractiveness, Hygiene, attire, beauty/ugliness, what people judge on first sight. This can give bonuses to interactions with people with low will, who are easily influenced by looks and lust. This can be improved by costumes and such.
• LEAD: Leadership, controlling people or leading them via impressive stature, intimidation, and a role-model figure. Used mainly with commanding friendlies or intimidation.
• CON: Conning people, deception, and general lying and bluffing. Used for lying to people and deceiving them instead of intimidating them or persuading them.
• IMM: Personal Immersion in fandoms, can be split into multiple fandoms, enables reality-bending trickery at higher levels, and gives bonuses. This is the flagship stat. Also notated as pIMM (Personal immersion) as apposed to the faction equivalent, fIMM (Faction immersion)

Immersion

This is a combination of sanity and "magic". The more personal immersion you have, the more you believe your fandom is real and that you are part of it. With more immersion, you begin to perceive strange things related to the fandom. A Naruto fan may have spurts of martial arts, Furries may have feeling in their tails, or Warhammer 40k fans with nerf guns may start breaking glass with their darts, or their cardboard armor may be more protective than usual.

Faction/Fandom Immersion would be something each faction has as a shared collective, and it warps reality a bit on their own turf. D&D elven cosplayers may have heightened senses in their area, or that TF2 scout cosplayer may, when drinking his soda (with "Bonk!" taped over the original soda), would be a bit faster.

Immersion effects, as currently proposed, would be very, very low-magic. Most normals (with low IMM) wouldn't notice things like this.

Also, Immersion has been talked about being tied into social encounters, with a sort of "Will + Immersion" check when someone disses your faction. If the check fails, you would physically assault whoever dissed the faction.

There is a proposed idea of being able to "rub" this immersion onto others, like /d/eviants turning their prisoners more and more into the slaves they desire, or furries capturing and trapping poor victims in fursuits to brainwash them (AKA increase their IMM of the furry fandom).

The catch is, this doesn't really happen (to some extent, supernatural stuff still occurs occasionally), and all this thought of being killed by a nerf dart or some superpower is delusion from the immersion. The delusions are sometimes so intense that people actually believe they die when they are hit by a nerf dart between the eyes, and occasionally do.

Faction Mechanics

Factions would have stats. The following are proposed stats for factions.

Faction Stats

• REP: Reputation, or if the faction is known around the convention. This stat would be a duel-numbered stat, designated by "X/Y".
  • X would be the general knowledge of the faction. Zero would be absolutely nobody knowing about it, and higher numbers being the common knowledge of anyone at the convention.
  • Y would be the "Karma" or moral view of the faction. Negitive would indicate hated factions, while positive numbers would be generally liked.
  • Examples would be Furries being 10/-5 (Well known, but disliked), or 3/5 (Not too well known, but generally liked by the general public/other factions).
• IMM: Faction Immersion, or fIMM, would be the collective IMM of the entire faction. Low IMM factions would be something not tied to fandoms such as guards, and high-IMM factions would be factions completely immersed in their factions, such as Furries. High-IMM factions are almost completely living in their own fantasy. Anyone in the fandom would have increased IMM in their own territory (fIMM + pIMM in their own territory?).
• POW: Power. This designates the influence over the general con. More land, more resources, more people, and better equipment are indicaters of higher powered factions. A high-powered faction may have a low REP, as it could be a secretive faction, like Elder Scrolls Dark Brotherhood fans making a assassination cult beneath Infinity City.
• POP: Population. This is simply the count of members.

Archetypes

The following are the proposed archetypes of people in the convention area.

• Staff: They have power all through Infinicon, as the convention IS their fandom. (Possibly have "moderator" like powers?)
• Security: Have the power to greatly reduce the effects of immersion. No kid, don't tell me about Homestuck. Get on the golf cart and put the puppet down.
• Vendors: This sometimes has some bleedover, but anyone who sells pockey, Ramune, plushies, or food or merchandise could also have some Immersion in a certain faction. Vendors simply sell things at their stands, as traders or merchants of a sort.
• "Norms": These are people who are either not aligned with one fandom in particular, or are, but haven't begun to walk down the "Path of Immersion". They make good social characters, and all fandoms are willing to interact with them. Usually.
• Fans: This is anybody who's primary affiliation is with one fandom. Their reputation within the fandom, and how much they immerse themselves within the fandom grants them powers. Due to the slippery slope nature of this, by mid-level immersion cosplay is a necessity. Eventually, along with powers and stat bonuses Fans start physically changing according to their fandoms. You may take on the personality and looks of Naruto, or start yiffing and barking as a furry. This change almost always takes the personality of the fan into account, so your happy little hyperactive preteen won't be mysteriously changing into an emotionless zombie.

Proposed Factions

These are the factions being talked about currently.

Furries Furries are hated by most, and have a reputation for swarming and being general annoyances. Their extreme immersion makes some believe they actually are their "fursonas", and their expensive fursuits may literally become a second skin. With this also comes rumors of animal-like senses and reflexes. If they capture you, you may just end up like them.

Narutards These are the Naruto fans. These folks specialist in martial arts and "jutzus". Their immersion brings on hyper-martial arts, such as super-fast kicks, shonen-style punches, briefly running up walls, and with extreme bouts of Immersion, minor jutzus.

Strawhats The Narutards mortal enemies, the one-piece fans. They dress in pirate costumes and speak in terrible accents. Their Immersion brings on increased fighting skills, much the same as the Narutards, general toughness, a love of treasure and glory and at high levels some members might even begin to display Demon-Fruit style special abilities

Original Threads

First:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/17597062/
Second:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/17603755/

Contributers

• InfiniCon OP !!eo4aiy7L/b7 / InfiniCon Chairman !!eo4aiy7L/b7
• hungarian LARPfag
• Jarboot !!w46wwO99b1K
• Anonymous