Nomad Know the roads like the back of your hand. Navigate the veins. Cool for: Road-trippers, Van-lifers, Runaways and Fugitives Disco Analogue: Encyclopedia Nomad provides you with the hyper-local slang, news, and ghost stories that you've absorbed over your decades-long affair with the open road. It's the part that has opinions about hotels in downtown Cincinnati, recommendations for gas stations along the I-95, and facts about the temperature range of Death Valley. At high levels, Nomad is like a family member's vacation photo slideshow, where each photo is a cue to recount yet another tedious story. At low levels, the only thing you'll remember is something about gas station sushi...something about it...something...good? Critic See the forest from the trees, the poutine from the fries. Cool for: Judges, Skeptics, Holistic Detectives. Disco Analogue: Logic, Visual Calculus Critic sees a world of systems intertwined to the point of circular dependency, where pulling one thread might unravel a thousand. Critic says to judge not by analyzing each individual ingredient of a dish, but by stepping back to examine how all those pieces operate as a whole. When you apply this philosophy to a plan—or a person—then truly extraordinary insights can arise. At high levels Critic might give you a holistic understanding of the large scale systems of systems, but will leave you unable to appreciate the small scale (what's this pineapple burger got to do with the grand scheme of things?) At low levels you'll spend hours studying minutiae while true understanding drifts ever further out of reach. Corporate Hierarchy Disrupt Paradigms, Leverage Synergies, and Maximize Metrics Cool for: Suits, Politicians, Ladder Climbers Disco Analogue: Rhetoric, Authority Corporate Hierarchy verses you in the labyrinth of rules—explicit and implicit—that keep a corporation as large as Paramount Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. running. It enables you to understand your place in the larger organism, how to make the best use of the smaller fish and avoid getting eaten by the sharks. Maybe you can even get out of this mess higher up the food chain than you started. At high levels it becomes difficult to see the world as more than pieces moving on a board, and your priorities will often seem inhuman to others. At low levels you'll struggle to see the board at all, leaving you a pawn to be played by others. Presentation Strut your stuff on stage. Stick to the script. Cool for: TV personalities, Politicians, Liars Disco Analogue: Drama Presentation is your ability to read a script, stand in front of a camera, and deliver your lines in a natural and believable way. But that's obvious, pedestrian. You never needed a camera or a script. The magic was in you all along. Any plan and audience will do. At high levels, Presentation will give you the preternatural ability to stick to a predetermined plan without faltering. The flip-side of "yes and," Presentation allows you to steamroll through distractions with a "no but," even when changing circumstance opens up a clearly more preferable avenue. At low levels, you'll find yourself fumbling even a simple "welcome to Flavortown!" into the wide black iris of a studio camera. ​ Joie de Vivre Fan the flames of passion. Keep your Morale up Cool for: Foodies, Artists, Idealists Disco Analogue: Volition Joie de Vivre reminds you why you got into this business in the first place --the love of food. It keeps you in touch with your passion for flavor, and even for other less important things. This enables you to resist being ground down and flattened out by the world around you, improving your Morale. At high levels, Joie de Vivre makes you place your passions over more practical concerns. There's a reason they don't just let any guido who "loves food" have his own cooking show. At lower levels you'll be the apathetic corporate puppet the haters say you are, it'll be a struggle to yank the strings hard enough to keep yourself dancing. Mayor of Flavor Slow your thoughts. Make them make sense. Cool for: Meditators, Therapy patients, Gnosis junkies Disco Analogue: Inland Empire Mayor of Flavor is your own mental introspection toolchain. Not just thinking about what you're thinking, but why you're thinking it, why you're thinking about thinking it, and—in rare glimpses—why you even think at all. It's the ability to moderate the voices in your head. To hold a respectable quorum and get down to brass tacks. At high levels, you will have no trouble parsing the dispatches from Flavortown city hall. You'll have a complete understanding of all your complexes and insecurities, however you'll gain a tendency to project them onto others as well. At low levels you will have difficulty understanding what the hell is even going on up there, for better or worse. Everyman You're a person. They're a person. Talk about it. Cool for: People, Earthlings, Lifeforms Disco Analogue: Empathy Everyman urges you to recognize the fundamental truth: at the end of the day, we're all just some guy. It urges you to remember when you were that little guy, that eventually all of this will be over. It urges you to see that we're all human, and that all we really have is each other. At high levels you'll feel a deep abiding connection to other people, even when they don't feel the same way about you. At low levels you'll spend your idle time hypothesizing why all these people aren't as successful as you are. Amuse-bouche Connect with kitchen staff. Bond over plastic food containers of tap water. Cool for: Restaurateurs, Culinary school kids, Anthony Bourdain types Disco Analogue: Esprit de Corps Amuse-bouche is your connection to the professional culinary world. Amuse-bouche wises you to the thought patterns, collective imagination, and global culture of the professional kitchen. At high levels your tendency to see the world through the tired eyes of a chef will overtake other, more useful skills. At low levels the people you'll meet in the kitchens will see you as you truly are—an out of touch sellout. Cherubic Show them your winning smile. Be a big teddy bear. Cool for: Sweethearts, Socialites, Sugar Babies Disco Analogue: (Opposite of) Half Light, Suggestion Cherubic urges you to be friends with everyone, not with specific insight into their individual needs but through sheer affability. It enables you to win the hearts of those who meet you, forming all kinds of connections. Some of them might even be genuine. "Fight or Flight" gets a lot of credit, but for a social animal "Fawn" can make all the difference. At high levels, Cherubic prioritizes your own needs after the compulsion to keep even your enemies smiling. Your boundless charm will be more that of a hapless child than a lovable oaf —easy to love but difficult to truly respect. At low levels, however, it will be difficult to turn the charm on in the first place. Take The Heat Go through hell. Do it again. And again. Cool for: Fighters, Pyrrhic Victors, Tumbleweeds of scar tissue Disco Analogue: Endurance, Pain Threshold Take The Heat is the calluses you've developed from your years on this screaming Earth. You might stumble through your lines, might mess up your on-screen appearances, but if you want to survive this then it's strength that you'll need. At high levels you'll be hardened to the world, as hardened as you need to be to block out every little thing that pains you. At low levels you're liable to be knocked down by a stiff breeze, or a mild pepper. Improvisation Make it up as you go. Adapt to the world around you. Cool for: Comedians, Livestreamers, MacGyvers Disco Analogue: Reaction Speed, Conceptualization Improvisation reinterprets the world around you --constantly thinking of new ways to use an ingredient, new riffs on old jokes. It enables you to react to unprecedented situations without missing a beat, never at a loss for words or ideas. At high levels your mouth, and body, are faster than your brain. This could lead to a lot of retakes, or something worse for situations where you can't rewind your words. At low levels, though, you'll end up needing those retakes because any little thing could disrupt your flow. And of course, there are opportunities that pass by those too slow to seize them. On The Line Be a cook. Work the equipment. Sharpen your knives. Cool for: Head Chefs, Line Cooks, Kitchen Porters Disco Analogue: Interfacing, Physical Instrument On The Line is the years of kitchen work lying dormant in your muscles, keen to hop back into the grind. It's the footwork of navigating a crowded room with a pot of boiling oil. It's the dance of using the meat slicer without cutting your thumbs off. It's not the strength or endurance to use the wall-mounted french-fry cutter, but the technique to do it without popping a disk in your spine. At high levels, On The Line will have you itching to test your mettle in the kitchen, even if it means upstaging the real chef. At low levels you're liable to slip on an obvious oil spill and steady yourself with both palms on the flat-top. Gastronomicon See, smell, and taste everything. Soak in the flavors of reality Cool for: Supertasters, the Detail Oriented, Dogs Disco Analogue: Perception, Visual Calculus (mostly for taste) Gastronomicon urges you to focus on the sensory experiences around you. This enables you to notice the finer details of the places you visit, the people who inhabit them, and especially the dishes they serve you. With just a few bites you'll be able to tell how exhausted the chef is, the amounts of each spice in the rub, and even how surprised the chicken was. At high levels you'll find the world's bounty overstimulating, missing the forest for the trees. At low levels, though, you'll miss the trees entirely - unable to tell a diner from a dive, or a filet mignon from a filet-o-fish.