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Yeah, that makes sense. It sounds thorny, especially since in a lot of ways you're kind of looking at a pulp-fiction parallel to the Shadowrun cyberpunk aesthetic. I hope you're able to get out of the hole. Ultimately speaking, of course, the thing is that it works this different way because you (the author - or in this case, authors) said it did, and you have to express your vision. Also, have a system that isn't insanely boring if you don't want to jack off to gear porn. Do at least one of those things
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Jul 20, 2021 06:23
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Probably doesn't help that Shadowrun like most 90s stuff is very End of History in all the worst ways. Though I always kinda felt the joke was that corporate states end up basically indistinguishable from medieval feudalism.
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Jul 20, 2021 07:30
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Probably doesn't help that Shadowrun like most 90s stuff is very End of History in all the worst ways. There's been a lot of talk of the failure of boomers, both in general and in the field of gygax, etc putting garbage into the hobby from the start, but while I've think we've started on the path, we really haven't reckoned with how poisonous a lot of Gen-X tropes, especially south park style nihilistic "nothing matters" irony, is a loving plague. Nessus posted:Yeah, that makes sense. There will be frequent sidebars explaining artist/writer intent on various things, under a picture of a skeleton at an old-timey type writer covered in cobwebs. Because I'm already dead, you see. I refer to the concept as "Author striking back from the grave"
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Jul 20, 2021 07:59
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Ronwayne posted:There's been a lot of talk of the failure of boomers, both in general and in the field of gygax, etc putting garbage into the hobby from the start, but while I've think we've started on the path, we really haven't reckoned with how poisonous a lot of Gen-X tropes, especially south park style nihilistic "nothing matters" irony, is a loving plague. Maybe have the skeleton using a typewriter to show the "undeath" of the author?
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Jul 20, 2021 10:54
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Just because the laws of life and death and physics as we know it have clearly been violated doesn't mean he's any more productive than previously.
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Jul 20, 2021 11:15
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Libertad! posted:Shadowrun is quite right-wing as a setting by cyberpunk standards. Actually overthrowing capitalism on a systemic level will result in the world's destruction. In SR Dragonfall one ending has the world fall to Lovecraftian horrors and civilization ends if you unleash a bio-plague which kills all dragons. As dragons are quite literally mega-capitalist hoarders in charge of the highest levels of power, maintaining a capitalist status quo is the better option. God, Christ, and Fanon. Dragonfall is the worst for that. It's so stupid.
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Jul 20, 2021 13:16
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Fivemarks posted:God, Christ, and Fanon. Dragonfall is the worst for that. It's so stupid. I think it's not quite as bad as that, it's mostly that the plague kills Dunkelzahn before he casts his sacrificial ritual on the night of his inauguration. That ritual throws up a stronger barrier that prevents the horrors from slipping in early or something. I'm still pretty firmly on Team Kill the Dragons though, to be clear. In other news I'll be returning to my own F&F soonish.
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Jul 20, 2021 14:35
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It's perfectly fine to kill the dragons, you just need to be ready to take over the thing they were doing that matter.
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Jul 20, 2021 15:19
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Wrong thread because I have too many tabs open...
Humbug Scoolbus fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 16:31
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Hipster Occultist posted:I think it's not quite as bad as that, it's mostly that the plague kills Dunkelzahn before he casts his sacrificial ritual on the night of his inauguration. That ritual throws up a stronger barrier that prevents the horrors from slipping in early or something. Except I know Shadowrun lore, Dragonfall changes it to "The Dragons simply existing stops the horrors" from "The Dragons are just very smart anti-horror bioweapons" . It should be perfectly fine to kill the dragons, its just that like nobody knows about the Horrors who is willing to do poo poo about them or let the world know in general so things can be prepared to deal with them.
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Jul 20, 2021 17:05
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Fivemarks posted:Except I know Shadowrun lore, Dragonfall changes it to "The Dragons simply existing stops the horrors" from "The Dragons are just very smart anti-horror bioweapons" . It should be perfectly fine to kill the dragons, its just that like nobody knows about the Horrors who is willing to do poo poo about them or let the world know in general so things can be prepared to deal with them. That's not what it says. It's likened to an ecological niche, but it's just that the people who were taking care of the deep astral problem aren't anymore. That is the only actual problem with killing all the dragons.
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Jul 20, 2021 17:39
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wiegieman posted:That's not what it says. It's likened to an ecological niche, but it's just that the people who were taking care of the deep astral problem aren't anymore. It's the dragons' fault, though, because they won't tell anyone what the hell is going on, and neither will any of the other ultra-powerful folks left over from Earthdawn who also know, for.. Reason? I don't know. I don't think it's ever explained why they don't actually do some Books of Harrow poo poo and actually warn people.
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Jul 20, 2021 17:53
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Hypnobeard posted:It's the dragons' fault, though, because they won't tell anyone what the hell is going on, and neither will any of the other ultra-powerful folks left over from Earthdawn who also know, for.. Reason? I don't know. I don't think it's ever explained why they don't actually do some Books of Harrow poo poo and actually warn people. I think it's because without the rights and with the Earthdawn plot never really going anywhere they're stuck in an eternal plot stasis where effectively they pretend it's not there but they've never actually gotten rid of it, like most of the insane kudzu that is the Shadowrun setting/metaplot. The secret of Shadowrun's setting is that it gets by entirely on an elevator pitch with a clear concept for what PCs are doing and the novelty of the phrase 'we opened fire with a minigun on a corporate wizard and their hellhound security'. It doesn't actually do sci-fi/magic interacting very well at all, and most of the fluff is just this bizarre sprawl of reasons nothing you do matters. It's not actually that good a setting, but a good elevator pitch with a clear 'you are mercenaries who do X job' goes a long way.
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Jul 20, 2021 17:57
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I've never really liked earthdawn and I've especially never liked horrors or insect spirits in SR. Infiltrators tend to make the entire story about them and take away from doing 'we opened fire with a minigun on a corporate wizard and their hellhound security'.Hypnobeard posted:It's the dragons' fault, though, because they won't tell anyone what the hell is going on, and neither will any of the other ultra-powerful folks left over from Earthdawn who also know, for.. Reason? I don't know. I don't think it's ever explained why they don't actually do some Books of Harrow poo poo and actually warn people. Greed is the usual Dragon flaw, but Hubris is a close #2, they're absolutely the sort of personality that tries to do everything on their own even if it fails.
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Jul 20, 2021 18:32
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Ronwayne posted:I've had people in online communities tell me the shittiest things when I brought up changing things for the better, its what pushed me to start working on a new project about tolkein type urban fantasy that specifically rejects that. Then I started reading more about the history of leftist revolution and welp, the other part of your post becomes relevant about the doomed revolutions, but even the successful ones are incredibly grim. When you're writing about gangsters and other kinds of paramilitary hardcases that fall rear end-end into being revolutionaries you are now stuck with the default PC assumption being young Stalin or Mao and I'm trying to write additional options. Try looking at the Zapistas and Rojava, who haven’t been crushed yet and seem to have keep the requisite revolutionary genocide and peasant slaughter to a minimum. I’d also suggest taking a look at Revolutionary Catalonia, which did fairly well until the Stalin-aligned socialists in government decided to annex them… OK so that didn’t end too well but if you remove the Stalinists and weaken the fascist coup a bit you might get something a bit more durable. Fivemarks posted:I never understood why Shadowrun wasn't about fighting about the Corporate World Order. Shadowrun is very much fantasy-infused cyberpunk and one of the recurring themes in cyberpunk is to present the future as a reflection of the future where all the sorry state of the present continues indefinitely. Which is often reflected in a level of powerlessness against the current order, where the protagonists could no more hope to meaningfully fight the Corporate World Order than any of us could, well, than any of us could go topple the our corporate world order. This setting fixture is then used as a vehicle for exploring modern anxieties surrounding corporations, computers, crime, and corporeality (the four C’s of cyberpunk).
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Jul 20, 2021 19:05
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LatwPIAT posted:Try looking at the Zapistas and Rojava, who haven’t been crushed yet and seem to have keep the requisite revolutionary genocide and peasant slaughter to a minimum. I’d also suggest taking a look at Revolutionary Catalonia, which did fairly well until the Stalin-aligned socialists in government decided to annex them… OK so that didn’t end too well but if you remove the Stalinists and weaken the fascist coup a bit you might get something a bit more durable. The counter argument I've heard against that (from both the M-Ls and liberals) is because both of those had larger nation states protecting them and without them they die, more or less instantly, because anarchism is weak. The liberals tended to find them worthy only of sneering and contempt and the M-L perspective on anarchist death seems to be chuckling and lol-ing hearty lols. My basic issue is I'm brain poisoned from reading C-Spam and keep thinking they're right on some level, usually as some response to thinking the crueler something is the more truth there must be in it, and well uh quote:CIA-SPAM - People say I 'idolize' Stalin. Not true, I hold a fair and balanced view. I don't want to believe in this, but I find it hard to get this awful idea out of my head that the way the 20th century left played out was the best possible case. Unlocking the Communist thought in Disco Elysium was the hardest I have ever been owned by a videogame. LatwPIAT posted:Shadowrun is very much fantasy-infused cyberpunk and one of the recurring themes in cyberpunk is to present the future as a reflection of the future where all the sorry state of the present continues indefinitely. This is not an attack on you Law, so much as me getting angry at people who love this trope and think its the only take of capitalist commentary possible. This is the Gen-x end-of-history brainworms I was referring to and that theme should be contested as vile and false whenever it appears and the person reproducing that theme, knowingly or unknowingly, confronted over it. "Better things aren't possible" anti-utopianism which is a core part of capitalism's propaganda effort to perpetuate itself by making any other alternative unthinkable. Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 19:46
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LatwPIAT posted:Shadowrun is very much fantasy-infused cyberpunk and one of the recurring themes in cyberpunk is to present the future as a reflection of the future where all the sorry state of the present continues indefinitely. Which is often reflected in a level of powerlessness against the current order, where the protagonists could no more hope to meaningfully fight the Corporate World Order than any of us could, well, than any of us could go topple the our corporate world order. This setting fixture is then used as a vehicle for exploring modern anxieties surrounding corporations, computers, crime, and corporeality (the four C’s of cyberpunk). God, what is it with stuff from the 80's and 90's and going "Actually trying to change things is stupid"? Between this and White Wolf and South Park, I think we should toss it all into the trash. Enlightened Apathy is bullshit. And none of this is a dig at you, Lat.
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Jul 20, 2021 20:19
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Ronwayne posted:The counter argument I've heard against that (from both the M-Ls and liberals) is because both of those had larger nation states protecting them and without them they die, more or less instantly, because anarchism is weak. The liberals tended to find them worthy only of sneering and contempt and the M-L perspective on anarchist death seems to be chuckling and lol-ing hearty lols. My basic issue is I'm brain poisoned from reading C-Spam and keep thinking they're right on some level, usually as some response to thinking the crueler something is the more truth there must be in it, and well uh I mean if better things are only possible through mass murder and wanton genocide with inevitable rollback to a capitalist state, then better things aren’t actually possible, which I believe is what you rage against in the next paragraph. Fivemarks posted:God, what is it with stuff from the 80's and 90's and going "Actually trying to change things is stupid"? Between this and White Wolf and South Park, I think we should toss it all into the trash. Enlightened Apathy is bullshit. And none of this is a dig at you, Lat. It’s an expression of a feeling of powerlessness and anxiety. It’s not saying that trying to change things is stupid, it’s saying that we’re afraid of not being able to change things, which can serve as fatalistic resignation, yes, but also as a warning, or simply to explore that feeling of powerlessness and alienation through the comforting distance of fiction.
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Jul 20, 2021 20:33
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All this is reminding me of why I dropped that fantasy Western project. Too fraught with too many issues I didn't and don't have the answers to. I empathize, Ronwayne. I'm sure y'all can make it work.
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Jul 20, 2021 20:38
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Ronwayne posted:The counter argument I've heard against that (from both the M-Ls and liberals) is because both of those had larger nation states protecting them and without them they die, more or less instantly, because anarchism is weak. I am not super-versed on the 21st century history of revolution, but maybe you need to allow yourself one or two miracles in order to construct the political climate you need? I mean, at several points any revolution/war the winning side is blessed by a confluence of political, economic and military luck. The US has always been an unstable country, which up until recently just blundered into making the exact right choices to become a world super-power. Yes, it might not feel as 'real' as you want it to, but maybe that would help with the block you're hitting.
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Jul 20, 2021 20:45
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The thing that makes anarchism viable in science fiction and fantasy is democratization of superweapons. Settings like Eclipse Phase or Iron Sunrise, where rapacious national governments can't just roll over a single commune, because they're afraid of bathtub antimatter bombs and home cooked superdisassembler swarms. Widespread availability of magic WMDs to nonstate actors would make your not!Shadowrun world very volatile, but volatility is a positive if you want a dynamic setting where the players are expected to build and break things.
mellonbread fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 20:59
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"Bathtub antimatter bomb" is a hell of a visual.
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Jul 20, 2021 21:01
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SkyeAuroline posted:"Bathtub antimatter bomb" is a hell of a visual. 
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Jul 20, 2021 21:04
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A bunch of tiny polities, all of which can kill billions at the press of a button, sounds like both hell and also a situation that will explode in short order.
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Jul 20, 2021 21:04
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Night10194 posted:A bunch of tiny polities, all of which can kill billions at the press of a button, sounds like both hell and also a situation that will explode in short order. More so than larger ones?
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Jul 20, 2021 21:18
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Night10194 posted:A bunch of tiny polities, all of which can kill billions at the press of a button, sounds like both hell and also a situation that will explode in short order. True, but if you're at the point where you can just casually manufacture antimatter genocide bombs like it's ANFO, you're probably at a point where "potentially kill billions" doesn't sound so impressive anymore
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Jul 20, 2021 21:19
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Josef bugman posted:More so than larger ones? More actors means more people who can make the one decision necessary to kill billions of people. It's standard anti-proliferation. Also, you've seen what individuals do with automatic weapons. Give them an anti-matter explosive that an individual can manufacture in secret and potentially deploy by themselves and see what happens.
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Jul 20, 2021 21:20
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Ah, the price of freedom 
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Jul 20, 2021 21:23
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Pvt.Scott posted:So with Godbound’s Ancalia setting and the setting of Spears of the Dawn, did Kevin Crawford manage to set two games in Fantasy Africa without loving it up and going full-on Dark Continent poo poo? I haven’t given either more than a cursory skim, so maybe they have some bonus not-Roma making GBS threads things up. I'm not too familiar with Spears of Dawn, but the thing I remember most about Ancalia is that while the residents are dark-skinned and have African names, nothing else about them culturally is particularly African. With the knightly orders and all they resemble Fantasy central/northern Europe a lot more, so I don't really think I'd say Ancalia ever made me feel like it was set in Fantasy Africa in any sense. LatwPIAT posted:Try looking at the Zapistas and Rojava, who haven’t been crushed yet and seem to have keep the requisite revolutionary genocide and peasant slaughter to a minimum. I’d also suggest taking a look at Revolutionary Catalonia, which did fairly well until the Stalin-aligned socialists in government decided to annex them… OK so that didn’t end too well but if you remove the Stalinists and weaken the fascist coup a bit you might get something a bit more durable. If we're looking at reasonably successful left-wing revolutionaries who aren't huge shitheads, aren't the Naxalites(I think that's the one) in India doing pretty well? I remember for a while something like 20% of the country was no-go for government security.
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Jul 20, 2021 21:29
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mellonbread posted:The thing that makes anarchism viable in science fiction and fantasy is democratization of superweapons. Settings like Eclipse Phase or Iron Sunrise, where rapacious national governments can't just roll over a single commune, because they're afraid of bathtub antimatter bombs and home cooked superdisassembler swarms. Widespread availability of magic WMDs to nonstate actors would make your not!Shadowrun world very volatile, but volatility is a positive if you want a dynamic setting where the players are expected to build and break things. This come up when people are trying to design Science Fiction settings without giving every freighter captain world ending power. It's fun when you realize that the acceleration generated by any Space Opera propulsion system means that Mal Reynolds could probably crack a planet open if he was willing to sacrifice his ship and crew, it's just a matter of acceleration. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/glossary.php Jon's Law: Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage. "Interesting" is equal to 'whatever keeps the readers from getting bored'. Burnside's advice: Friends Don't Let Friends Use Reactionless Drives In Their Universes.
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Jul 20, 2021 21:35
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Servetus posted:This come up when people are trying to design Science Fiction settings without giving every freighter captain world ending power. It's fun when you realize that the acceleration generated by any Space Opera propulsion system means that Mal Reynolds could probably crack a planet open if he was willing to sacrifice his ship and crew, it's just a matter of acceleration.
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Jul 20, 2021 21:40
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Night10194 posted:More actors means more people who can make the one decision necessary to kill billions of people. It's standard anti-proliferation. True enough. It just seems sad that there seems to be no way to stop the strong justifying their rule and oppressing folks without threat of violence.
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Jul 20, 2021 21:58
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Servetus posted:This come up when people are trying to design Science Fiction settings without giving every freighter captain world ending power. It's fun when you realize that the acceleration generated by any Space Opera propulsion system means that Mal Reynolds could probably crack a planet open if he was willing to sacrifice his ship and crew, it's just a matter of acceleration.
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Jul 20, 2021 22:15
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FMguru posted:See also how every power supply or battery with the energy density necessary to make cool scifi gadgets viable (robots, power armor, laser guns, cyberlimbs, etc.) also makes that gadget an extremely powerful bomb. I remember seeing something that it would take about a million joules of thermal energy to vaporize a bullet-sized hole through a person like a laser gun does in scifi, which is an equivalent kinetic energy to firing about a thousand regular bullets. Energy densities in space opera scifi are insane for what effects they tend to actually have in-setting.
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Jul 20, 2021 22:21
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PurpleXVI posted:If we're looking at reasonably successful left-wing revolutionaries who aren't huge shitheads, aren't the Naxalites(I think that's the one) in India doing pretty well? I remember for a while something like 20% of the country was no-go for government security. No idea. I looked at them a few days ago when someone asked me about successful revolutions that met my standards of not just re-implementing a form of state tyranny on the population, and all I could find about the Naxalites was that they existed and continued to exist. I suspect for this question I’d say they haven’t really succeeded yet, so it’s not very useful. Though again, who’s to say, not a lot of detail in English that I could find.
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Jul 20, 2021 22:50
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Night10194 posted:A bunch of tiny polities, all of which can kill billions at the press of a button, sounds like both hell and also a situation that will explode in short order. That's kind of the point. Although the EP authors are biased in favor of anarchism, the Autonomist societies they wrote are home to a lot of social problems. I forget who posted it, but someone responded to PurpleXVI's writeup of EP 2e's anarchist societies as "Mean Girls in Space."
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Jul 20, 2021 23:36
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Libertad! posted:That's kind of the point. Although the EP authors are biased in favor of anarchism, the Autonomist societies they wrote are home to a lot of social problems. I forget who posted it, but someone responded to PurpleXVI's writeup of EP 2e's anarchist societies as "Mean Girls in Space."
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Jul 20, 2021 23:48
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LatwPIAT posted:I mean if better things are only possible through mass murder and wanton genocide with inevitable rollback to a capitalist state, then better things aren’t actually possible, which I believe is what you rage against in the next paragraph. THANK YOU for articulating that thought. I was running with unironic western Dengists for awhile and my brain started to get mushy. SkyeAuroline posted:All this is reminding me of why I dropped that fantasy Western project. Too fraught with too many issues I didn't and don't have the answers to. Thank you Skye, my thinking is, if people that want to avoid saying and making terrible things avoid making anything at all, it means the shameless assholes are going to be the ones making everything. At this point, making it is a risk that needs to be taken. Even if it fails it can serve as a cautionary tale that's more specific than, say "Don't do a Roma book, or be Zak S, or be James Raggi or..." Pakxos posted:I am not super-versed on the 21st century history of revolution, but maybe you need to allow yourself one or two miracles in order to construct the political climate you need? I mean, at several points any revolution/war the winning side is blessed by a confluence of political, economic and military luck. The US has always been an unstable country, which up until recently just blundered into making the exact right choices to become a world super-power. Yes, it might not feel as 'real' as you want it to, but maybe that would help with the block you're hitting. This is very true. Sometimes "Materialism" gets used as a kind of inevitability, or even as a leftist version of the divine right of kings for the Vanguard. As I've gotten older I've learned to start ignoring my gut rather than listening to it, because, well, the gut is an organ that is full of poo poo. Past a certain point, there's no value in listening to what I "feel" is true if all it does is make me miserable and incapable of doing anything. Libertad! posted:That's kind of the point. Although the EP authors are biased in favor of anarchism, the Autonomist societies they wrote are home to a lot of social problems. I forget who posted it, but someone responded to PurpleXVI's writeup of EP 2e's anarchist societies as "Mean Girls in Space." For someone bad at social cues who has routinely been bullied by social predators, the Autonomist societies as described are a variant of hell for me. I dont' want a GBS superstar with the power to chuck me out an airlock. Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jul 21, 2021 |
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Jul 21, 2021 00:24
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I can’t find the videos now, but I watched some stuff on YouTube about some relatively successful native Taiwanese leftists with anarcho-communes or whatever. There’s communities out there that make this stuff work, so it’s not all doom and gloom. I wish I had more details, but I was pretty drunk at the time.
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Jul 21, 2021 01:49
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I wish you all the luck and strength Ronwayne because what you have described sounds really intresting
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Jul 21, 2021 06:11
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