Misspent Youth: The Tangle

For the third time, I am running Misspent Youth! Unlike the first game (which I'm not linking because the write-up is on RPGnet and I don't feel like triggering myself today), which was set in a more grounded version of our world, or the second game, which was this weird, trippy, space opera-adjacent kind of thing, this one has a less-human Authority. (I mean, the Celestial Bureaucracy wasn't human, but they had, like, limbs n' shit.)

So: Our Authority here is The Tangle, a network of fungus that has basically taken over the world. Its Vice is Utopianism; it wants to make the world perfect and homogeneous and quiet. Its Victim, then, is Freedom (though it certainly wouldn't see it that way). Its Visage is Systemic; it's taken over the whole world and has basically become the only higher power anyone has or needs. It also has reduced or eliminated technology on a massive scale, as it finds most tech too chaotic and disruptive. The world, therefore, has largely returned to a more primal state (go have a look at Life After People for the general vibe). 

The Tangle can infect people with its fungus, and I think what we're leaning towards is that it can exert varying levels of control once it does. Sure, it can reduce you to a Last of Us style "zombie", but that actually makes you less useful overall because you can't really think. Also, for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be able to infect younger people (which is how our Youthful Offenders avoid becoming mushroom'd). 

The Tangle's Systems of Control are:

• The Tendrils: People who have been infected and act as spies and enforcers. They retain some of their personalities, so these are people who probably would have been cops or soldiers in our world. There aren't huge numbers of them, but they're pretty ubiquitous and they're always watching out for discord.
• The Graveyard Mark: This is a chemical mark that the Tangle can put on a person that indicates that they're not useful to the Tangle anymore. If you've got it, anyone infected knows that you're fair game - you're only useful as raw material.
• Torpor Timeout: The Tangle can produce spores that induce docility. It can't infect younger people, but it can incapacitate them for a while. The Tangle uses this stuff to put people down while they heal from illness or injury, or as a cooldown period after they do something wrong. You know, just a time out.
• The Silver Spore Movement: These are teens who have bought in. They believe that the Tangle is going to save the world, and actively go out and recruit others, basically convincing them not to resist infection when they get old enough.
• The Slumbering: These people are infected, but don't know it. The Tangle can "activate" them when it needs to.

Into this particular mushroom salad, we have our Youthful Offenders:

• Anderson "Sparky" Lee: A baseball player and Ex Silver Spore. The "ex" part probably isn't common knowledge, as he's still Trusted as far as the Tangle is concerned.
• St. Exupery: Somewhere between The Little Prince and the kid from Love, Actually. Small, impish, thrill-seeking, and Always Underestimated. St. Exupery is an Orphan, so doesn't have a lot of people looking over their shoulder.
• Tate McGibb: The Bad girl. Tate's parents are infected and loyalists, and that makes Tate Influential (we kind of had to massage a couple of the closed Convictions for them to make sense in this setting; "Rich" didn't work as written). Tate is what you call a Bad Seed. 
• Quinn Morrigan: Quinn is a goth girl, very solid and strong (what you'd call a "gym bat"). The Outrage is obvious, but even beneath that, she's The One That Will Set it on Fire. 
• Sandalwood Adams: Sandy is a skinny girl with freckles and a weird quirk that gives her a Pleasing odor to the Tangle (again, slight change from Pretty). She is a Forager and something of a hippie. 

There ya have it. We'll see where our first episode takes us in a few weeks.