The Monkey King has overthrown Buddha, and the ineptness of his Celestial Bureaucracy has led to an increase in Rogue Poltergeists and the active participation of the Numberless Courts of Hell in the affairs of the material world. Recursers, individuals capable of reincarnating between the material world and the Numberless Courts of Hell, sometimes moonlight as Poltergeist Investigators, managing the affairs of the afterlife where the system has failed.

Poltergeist Investigators acquire Karmic Attachments as they search for Rogue Poltergeists and infiltrate The Numberless Courts of Hell. While this Karma is what empowers their Poltergeist Forms, a Recurser who accrues too much Karma becomes an Ashura, a Karmic Devil. If one chooses to engage with these themes, it is a game about navigating within and operating in defiance of a dysfunctional system, of trying to better the world while recognizing one's own dysfunctions; where in failing to do so, reincarnation after reincarnation, one will eventually reach Maximum Recursion Depth.

Maximum Recursion Depth is a rules-light, Into the Odd-based game set in an alternate version of the modern world, inspired by Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, and weird urban magical realism like Doom Patrol and Persona. It's a dark examination of the self and society, but equally full of camp and humor and absurdity.