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Prism posted:Can you play this guy in the wargame? I don't know if these particular models have Combat Jump Packs, but I'm sure there's some knight that does. 
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Jan 3, 2022 01:34
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Once we get to the PanOceania supplement, he'll also be playable in the RPG.
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Jan 3, 2022 01:52
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Tsilkani posted:I don't know if these particular models have Combat Jump Packs, but I'm sure there's some knight that does. Why are they all goofily standing on rocks like that?
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Jan 3, 2022 02:38
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They've got a little Cap'n in 'em.
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Jan 3, 2022 02:49
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They heard that guys in power armor has to stand with one foot on a rock or else they'd be considered posers. Those marines they keep hearing about do it all the time.
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Jan 3, 2022 02:54
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Cythereal posted:I read an article about the design of Infinity's factions a while back, and one thing stuck out to me: Ariadna was one of the last factions to be added to the game's core, and specifically for demographic reasons. Apparently it's a known thing in tabletop war games that there's a major demographic that completely refuses to play exotic factions in any context and will only play, in a sci-fi game, grim'n'gritty vaguely-21st century guys with machine guns shouting hoo rah and wearing camo. So everything about Ariadna was invented by Infinity's makers purely to have an excuse for that kind of army for that kind of player, they weren't a part of the setting's original vision at all. Loxbourne posted:The Halo line. That article on the wargame factions' development sounds very interesting! Does anyone have a link or title?
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Jan 3, 2022 05:35
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Conversation finished a few days ago but popping in about the Spellpunk Cyberfight sense of nonsense: The developers of this game happened to find this from a twitter thread and spent the next three hours reading aloud and absolutely entertained by what was going on here. I'm your Resident Furry Artist who drew some but not some of the art featured in the book. SPCF was supposed to come out with a website and everything but after a lot of chaos and developer unrest ended up quietly releasing on DTRPG, we do have a Discord that is planning to become for public use in future (not yet just because bots aren't set up or anything). A print version is coming! We actually just got the test prints in today and they're only mildly destroyed by technological miscommunications, unlike the first test print which only printed 1/2 page of every three pages. If you have any questions feel free to ask or PM to me or whatever. I paid money for this account because I was so deeply entertained by the review. I will probably not answer any of the questions helpfully or in an acryptic manner but you can ask them anyway! As for a few starters: there are a slight few changes to spells! Many are mildly reworded or reworked and a couple spells removed entirely and added. This is for reasons I am not sure if the dev is cool with me sharing and don't feel like asking atm. I would love to share so much about the games and its origins and why it is a 5e derivative but sometimes it is the air of mystery that truly generates Astonishment and Entertainment. Also hyphz posted:Awaiting the moment when the person who wrote Spellpunk Cyberfight either
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Jan 3, 2022 05:56
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lexadant posted:I will probably not answer any of the questions helpfully or in an acryptic manner but you can ask them anyway! Just one question, really. Is the corebook's writing style an affectation, or does one or more of the devs actually talk like that?
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Jan 3, 2022 06:21
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I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be machine-translated from an alien language. That’s the read I took from the introduction at least.
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Jan 3, 2022 07:13
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Prism posted:Can you play this guy in the wargame? Yeah  This is a Crusader Brethern, the only Knight with the Combat Jump skill (lets them drop anywhere on the table with a roll)
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Jan 3, 2022 08:05
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The hat should be fancier.
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Jan 3, 2022 08:36
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 Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined Part 2 - Breaking the Limits as we Dive Deep into our Intent to Strike and Subdue This Game Today we’re going to go over the game's Basic Moves and their associated stats—  These emotional stats can work. The teen superhero RPG Masks is built on the foundation of your stats being emotional states… but it also lets them shift as characters make you question your values. Here there’s no sort of… social learning. But I digress. We’re here to talk about moves.    quote:Make a Link Where the wheels fall off are where it starts mentioning Link Moves and GM Moves. Link Moves are a special passive move each playbook has. They’re supposed to trigger when you Make a Link at full power, but some of them… it’s as though the author forgot that these trigger when you make a Link, in some cases. As an example, the Friend has: “When you make a Link that one of your friends already has, everyone else in your party is granted that same Link.” Very simple and straightforward. As designed. But, the Dark has: “Whenever another character makes a Dark Link, Mark Experience and take +1 forward to making a Mastery Link with them.” This could trigger when Make a Link triggers on a 10+, since the NPC gets the same kind of Link. But there’s also additional trigger conditions that fall outside the scope of Making a Link. So what happens on a Make a Link with a 7-9 if you let your Link Move trigger? Nothing! And that makes no sense. And then there’s the Kickstarter bonus playbook, the Hunted, whose Link Move is… strange: “When you establish boundaries in a personal relationship, lose one Link and gain one Distance. You may spend Distance to…” We’ll cover Link Moves in depth as we analyze the playbooks, but in our campaign, we were very confused at points when to and not to trigger Link Moves. And that’s not a good thing. First, the GM gives you a Link. Remember that Links are power, and this is the move to make Links. So, by giving the player who failed their roll a Link… this isn’t even failing forward. This is just making success arbitrary. Instead of the power you wanted, you got power that is just as useful, but with a different person and/or in a different category if you wanted. It’s fun for the roleplay, I’m not going to argue, but the move’s fail state has no oomph. Second, the choice. “Someone else gets a Link” is fine. NPC Links don’t really matter outside of roleplay, and PCs gaining Links on failures is already a thing so who really cares? But “The GM makes a move as hard as they want” is rough. For those who don’t know about PbtA as a system, the GM doesn’t roll any dice. Instead, the GM has a list of narrative moves to respond to the situation. We’ll get into these later, but essentially if you don’t make friends, it’s basically saying “be as mean to the players as you want.” And the term Hard Moves is a GM phrase that basically means “the players don’t get to react.”  Locked Links fix a lot of things about the Link system. They’re permanent, they grow back, and they represent the kind of close bond that I think the Link system was originally supposed to represent before you made one with literally every NPC you meet. Mechanically, a Locked Link is ‘greyed out’ on your sheet until you roll a 10+ with the same stat, and then it reactivates. It’s incredibly useful to have. But how do you get a Locked Link? Well, the answer is not in the Moves section (which feels like kind of an oversight). Instead, we have to go back one page, to the ‘Links’ overview page. This is what it says: quote:When a Link has changed with another character, roll Make a Link again. This is both unpleasant, and vague in a number of details. The biggest issue with this is that Locking Links is really hard! You can only roll this when your relationship has deepened, and then you have to roll a 10+ to unlock it. For reference, if your associated stat is +0, that’s about a 1 in 6 chance; if your stat in the Link’s type is +2, which is really good, that’s about a 4 in 10 chance. Still nerve-wracking, though— you have to roll at a moment of emotional tension and your reward may be a dirt sandwich. Or the Link changing into a different type, which you then have to theme in the flavor. I think we kinda fudged rolls involving Locking Links in our campaign. There are other ways to create Locked Links, by the way - most involve certain playbooks’ moves. But by default, the ‘normal’ way to do it is not very fun, and not very useful for what Locked Links are supposed to represent. Oh, and one of the things the GM can do when they ‘make a move as hard as they want’ is to Unlock a Link. I am not happy about this at all, especially not regarding what that represents in the flavor. So, let’s actually discuss the moves in question, starting with Deep Dive. To put it simply, Deep Dive is the perception move. quote:Deep Dive I’ll note that the missing bullet point was in the PDF. I bring this up because other RPGs have better perception moves. Monster of the Week and Masks have two moves each. In both cases, one is devoted to reading a room, while the other is devoted to reading people. Ways to complicate the situation. The only drawback I’ve noticed with this move is that sometimes, all the questions you can ask can be inapplicable to the situation. Then you have to get creative. quote:Convince Somebody …wait, thinking about it, there’s no ‘on a miss’ at the end of the NPC section. Did this just get shuffled to the end to fit both, somehow? Either way, this move is practically word-for-word across the system, more or less. Only difference is spending a Link (since that’s Interstitial-specific) and that terrible miss condition. Next up, we’ve got a move that almost never gets used, because the Link system overpowers it. quote:Limit Break So, let’s analyze this for a second. You can do a full roll to give +1 to someone else. This can be useful, but it pales in comparison to ‘the other person spends a Link and rerolls their lowest die’. And the side effects of the 9-7 section are pretty bad. Also, the implication of taking a Harm as a choice is hilarious. Imagine trying to give +1 to a Convince Someone check and losing ¼ of your health. When the fourth box is filled in, you die. (Or have one of various other extremely unpleasant things happen to you. But really, maxing out Harm is really punishing in Interstitial. We’ll see this in detail when the combat moves show up, as they interact with Harm the most.) quote:Defend From Harm quote:Interfere And what do the softer versions look like? Happiest Apocalypse On Earth, the Five-Nights-at-Freddy’s-style take on Disney theme parks, has something similar: 10+ is a -2, 7-9 is a -1. Masks… You spend a Link with a PC to give them a -2. Except Influence, the Masks equivalent of Links… actually matter? But yeah, everything here is aimed at PCs. And the three games that make you roll for it are gritty apocalypse, gritty satire horror, and… Kingdom Hearts friendship making the toys kiss?… But yeah, let’s focus on the actual move for this game. With PCs, it’s more incentive-based: either you get experience for not doing it, or you have to make an entire other roll to do whatever-it-is successfully. This is Push Through Stress, and it’s a move of its own - and a rather special one. quote:Push Through Stress So Push Through Stress has… a lot of unusual and unique features. On the surface, it’s the “miscellaneous problem-solving” skill you find in a lot of games, but there’s some weird stuff here. The first is “Roll with Links”. This means: “once the DM tells you what stat to roll with, add up the number of Links of that type you have on your sheet, and add that to the result of your roll, instead of using your stat.” Like Quackles said, the biggest issue as a GM is figuring out what Links to use. Why are Light Links chosen over Dark Links? What makes sense for the “introspective” Heart Links? And on top of that, the choices!  O-kay. So you did say ‘gain an advantageous position’, so let’s say you do still short out the sentry. And you get half the ropes. So it’ll be easier to finish the thing, and no one’ll notice you while you’re doing it.There’s no miss condition, so I have no idea what happens if you make an oopsie. But rolling with Links means you usually won’t mess up. A +3 or +4 bonus is a dangerous thing. Introducing the other miscellaneous move, this one for doing something cool: Cast Magic. quote:Cast Magic OK, I’m pretty sure this doesn’t have to specifically be magic. Just cool and unusual powers. But that’s not my complaint with this. The big complaint is that this move is extremely dangerous and unreliable to use, just because of this one line, buried in the middle of the list: “The Magic has no unintended consequences.” This is a very, very dangerous stick to hand to a GM, and it somehow feels worse than the consequences of failure on the other moves we’ve seen. Here, it’s “you succeed, but—” … and that ‘but’ is a blank check. The other concern is pick 3. Does that mean you have to pick three choices, like other games? What if I really want a powerful magical blast? Can I pick “cause 1 harm” three times? Incidentally, this is another move where there’s no failure condition - unless the ‘unintended consequences’ line is supposed to be it. If that’s on purpose, it feels really bad for it to be possible for the move to succeed and fail at the same time! On a simpler scale, Masks has Unleash Your Powers, which is basically the miscellaneous action move with an emphasis on your character’s personal skills, even if those skills aren’t powers. A Batman or Green Arrow archetype can still use that skill, after all. Combat: How to Take Harm in 4 Easy Steps There is usually a combat move. MotW calls it “Kick Some rear end,” Masks has “Directly Engage a Threat,” etc. Your character attacks another, and the story assumes you are “trading blows” in that you are fighting in a position where your enemy is a threat. You deal harm to the enemy, and then the enemy deals harm to you. Most battle moves have options that mitigate the damage to you, deal extra damage to the foe, and narrative stuff like taking something important from the foe or gaining some sort of narrative advantage in the fight. It’s narrative, so there is no initiative for better or worse. Thank God for Avatar Legends actually structuring PbtA combat. I’ll never have to deal with another player having such narrative momentum that they take three turns in a row. Anyway, so if I’m reading what’s above right, most of the games listed have one combat move. You beat up the enemy, the enemy probably beats up you. quote:Strike with Intent O-kay, so… the first move seems very straightforward, really. Sort of. There’s a bunch of ambiguities. What does ‘take control of the situation’ mean? And on a miss, do you take extra harm, or the 1 Harm you already would have taken by attacking? You also still deal Harm if you roll a 10+, which has got to be a misprint of some kind. quote:Combat isn’t the focus in this game. It can happen— relationships can turn sour, emotions can run high, someone might need defending. But it’s not the heart and soul of this game like it is in others. Each PC has a series of four checkboxes on their character sheet; their Harm Clock.  Taking Harm fills in one of these checkboxes. And if you fill in the last one… quote:What Happens When My Harm Clock is Full? And then the game tries to talk you out of taking that one. quote:Character Death & You The game also seems to think you’ll have fewer Links than we did, for it to treat ‘lose all Links’ as a ‘soft’ option. It would have been pretty catastrophic for all our Links to be gone from our sheets!  Anyways, the fact that combat is so lethal is heavy for a game like this. I was very generous with healing, letting it recover between worlds, but that was still rough. Especially when things like bosses need to have impact and probably have more than four health and might do more than one damage at a time. Unfortunately, a surprising number of playbooks’ moves interact with the Combat or Harm systems in some way. We’ll talk about the playbooks next time. Quackles fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 09:27
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Ech I kinda regret missing out on infinity bundle on humble bundle. I bounced off the miniature game completely, but I dig the setting. Would play a game as muslim ninja
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Jan 3, 2022 10:32
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lexadant posted:... Welcome to the board! Even if SPCF ended up not being something I wanted to run due to the 5E genetics, it definitely ended up being something that inspired me, and the art was absolutely a big part of that. It has an excellent sense of, I want to say, whimsy, to it.
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Jan 3, 2022 12:50
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Infinity RPG They're Not Political Parties, We Swear PanOceania is a highly centralized federal government ruling over a number of individual member nations, though due to a series of reforms and restructurings, some forced from above and some grassroots, those nations largely now conform to the various planets in the PanO sphere rather than, y'know, being Brazil and India and Mexico and so on. As a power, its focus is often on social care for the populace, rehabilitation for criminals and expanding access to technology, with people usually caring deeply about their personal economic future and their reputation within their own community but knowing that if they screw up, they will probably be forgiven as long as they try to make amends. (This is very pleasant for disgraced politicians, who often get a second chance, as well as former criminals, who integrate well back into society in ways that are rare in most other nations.) In the early 2300s, a massive series of corruption scandals involving all kinds of people in many different PanO political parties, the entire concept of the party as it stood was discredited and the people of PanOceania were so upset that it threatened the stability of the nation itself. Powerful and wealthy corporations proposed a solution in the form of the Lobby Revolution, which would ban political parties in favor of focused interest groups. It was an obvious push to gain influence over politics through corporate lobbies, but progressive politicians saw an opening and subverted the plan entirely by legally forbidding any lobby from concentrating its power into a single corporation, business or family. All citizens had direct access to any lobby they belonged to in leglaly mandated direct democratic rule over the lobby's goals. Vermoots ('VR-moots') are occasionally organized now to allow all members in a lobby to speak to the entire group, no matter how minor they are, creating a series of overlapping, multilayered caucuses managed online. Vermoots decide lobby policy positions, often making them binding based on the votes of those attending, and nominate individuals within the lobby to serve as ministers or subministers. They basically are political parties under a different name, but handled without the need for party apparatus or similar. Nominees from the lobbies are then run for election by vote of the general public, who vote for every office individually. Many lobbies are highly specialized and only put forth positions within a single government ministry. This ends up giving the vermoots and lobbies massive public control over who works in the many compartmentalized ministries, allowing every citizen to focus on the parts of government they care about most. The people of each planet also elect a Prime Minister from a set of candidates determined via lobby primaries. Each lobby has weighted influence in the primaries based on their successes within local ministry elections, in a system intended to encourage specialization of lobbies. The Prime Minister oversees the local planetary ministries, but those ministries also answer to the greater ministry of PanOceania above them. The example given is that the Ministry of Neoterran Culture answers both to the Neoterran Prime Minister and to the greater PanOceanian Minister of Culture, and must weight both of those bosses equally. The President of PanOceania is elected by popular vote, with the candidates being the Prime Ministers of all PanO planets. Presidents then appoint cabinet secretaries who are confirmed by special secretarial vermoots in the lobbies the cabinet secretary belongs to, though these can be highly complicated because most ministers are picked from multiple lobbies in order to form power blocs and political alliances between ministries. It's customary for these secretaries to have overlapping portfolios requiring multiple ministries to coordinate with each other to fulfil their duties, so that any given ministry cannot assume too much power. (And, likewise, any given minister likely reports to multiple Secretaries at once, making their life that much more complicated and political.) PanO, as a massive and expanding empire, manages an equally massive military to manage its needs: the PanOceanian Military Complex, which is designed to be able to fight on multiple fronts while simultaneously coordinating the work of independent forces, which must be able to operate indefinitely without much support. The PMC is driven heavily by reports from military intelligence, on the basis that all military decisions should be made by the people with the most reliable information - and that's generally the intelligence services. An early failure by PanO intelligence to detect a Yu Jing offensive against PanO commercial interests and industry led to the creation of an entirely new intelligence service to handle that kind of threat: the Hexahedron. Its first leader, Colonel Jane Dunbar, took one look at the myriad spy bureaus of the PanO subnations and said 'gently caress this,' using her presidentially granted authority to seize control of, consolidate and unify them all under her. At this point, the PanO intelligence chiefs run the entire Military Complex as its High Command. They operate out of the eponymous Hexahedron, a large and scary-looking six-sided building in San Pietro, Neoterra. Technically, the Department of Defence, the High Command and Military Intelligence are different groups, but everyone just refers to them collectively as the Hexahedron and treats them as one entity. They still operate on Colonel Dunbar's basic doctrine of three fundamental pillars of defense: first, intelligence. PanO must have faster, better and more exhaustive knowledge of any situation than anyone else. Second, counterespionage. PanOceania must not allow its information to fall into enemy hands unless that is the intended goal. Lastly, intervention. To protect its own interests and defend itself, PanOceania must act decisively, secretly and deniably in any situation it deems necessary. The core of the headquarters is the Inner Hexahedron, a secondary structure that houses Intelligence High Command, the folks absolutely in charge of all of PanO's black ops and classified information. The building itself is a smart building, run by the single most powerful lesser-AI in the Human Sphere. It is a quantronic genius, though officially recognized by ALEPH as non-sentient, and is entirely integrated into every aspect of the Hexahedron. Officially, the PanOceanian Military Complex is divided into five planetary armies, each a full force capable of independently defending and securing its home system. (There were six, but the Paradiso Control Force collapsed during the Paradiso NeoColonial War and then wiped out entirely in the First Paradiso Offensive of the Combined Army, though they bought enough time before their destruction to allow the rest of the Human Sphere to rally and come reinforce the planet.) When operations outside a core territory are required, High Command will form an expeditionary force made from regiments or units drawn from the planetary forces. The Earth Bastion Army has probably the most complex job - they have to protect PanO's interests on Earth and secure their colonies and settlements throughout the Sol System, the only "core" planetary system of PanO that is not fully under their control. They also aren't the best-armed one - that'd have to be the Neoterra Capitaline Army, which is by far the strongest and best-armed of the lot. Indeed, it is arguable that the NCA is the strongest single force in the Human Sphere, though definitely "arguable" and not "undeniable." They contain the most flexible and experienced units in the Military Complex, and due to Neoterra's heavy integration of ALEPH, the Capitaline Army often ends up working closely with ALEPH's Special Situations Section as well as performing normal military work. The Shock Army of Acontecimento is a specialized assault force with a long list of battles in the NeoColonial Wars of Acontecimento and Paradiso. They are known for heading to the thickest parts of the battlefield and engaging in some of the bloodiest, most violent actions in the Human Sphere. You don't call on the SAA unless you want the enemy terminated and generally spread into a fine red mist. Several of their units remain active on Paradiso, often specializing in search-and-destroy actions. And fourth we have the Svalarheima Winter Force, the smallest of the four but one of the most elite and hardened. They specialize in rapid response, combat in extreme conditions and defense, trained by years and years of conflict in the frozen wastes of their home planet. They work closely with the Hospitallers, and they specialize in striking hard and fast, then quickly pulling out into the wilds to avoid reprisal. Last up, we have the Varuna Quick Reaction Army, formed to secure the planet Varuna and protect its people, primarily against the Helot rebel force Libertos. They specialize in discreet, covert actions, hoping to avoid publicity and attention when they strike. Their specialty has proven quite useful to PanO in all kinds of contexts. While there could have been a new Paradiso Control Force, High Command felt that a planetary force was too structured for the volatile situation on the planet, and instead created four linked Paradiso Combat Groups. Black-C is the smallest of the four, chosen fo fanatical devotion to PanO and ferocity in battle, mostly using knights of the Teutonic Order with support from other Military Orders. Green-A is primary drawn from the SAA and is the most well-funded of the four due to its responsibility for holding the line against the Combined Army and defending the biggest PanOceanian cities on the planet as well as the joint PanO command center. Red-K is the most heavily armed of the four, primarily made up of NCA forces with SAA tactical support, focused on cutting edge weaponry and elite troops. Last is Blue-S, the group spread out over the whole area to protect and blockade key routes and locations, both on land and in orbit. They are heavily supported by the PanOceanian Armada, focusing on research bases, shipyards and similar sites using units from the Order of Santiago supplemented by NCA forces. The PanOceanian Armada is not just a military fleet, but also a commercial and scientific one, treating combat, exploration and exploitation of space resources as a single unified mission in pursuit of the ideal of Destino Tecnologico, the manifest destiny of the PanO people. They are, however, divided into two different sections - the Navy and Space Exploration Division. Ships of the SED are more well funded and advanced than any other exploration force in the Human Sphere, and they have more Minotaur Motors than anyone else. They are always at work exploring, cataloguing and investigation various systems, plus they run over a dozen ongoing Navegador projects - campaigns of wormhole-jumping intended to expand the wormhole map and find new habitable worlds. The Navy, meanwhile, runs the PanOceanian Attack and Defense Fleets. The Attack Fleets tend to be named things like 'Chimera' or 'Dragon' or 'Amphisbaena,' while the Defence Fleets are named for Christian and Hindu religious figures, but both are meant to ensure PanO planetary safety in space. Given the importance of military intelligence to PanO's entire operation, you'd expect them to have a lot of spies - and they do. Most, however, belong to a single unified agency: the Strategic Security Division, more commonly called Hexa. They operate as PanO's foreign intelligence and counterespionage forces, and they're heavily militarized. Most agents are heavily armed and kill with little problem, handling things like paramilitary activities, sabotage, rebel suppression, abduction of key targets, interrogation and sometimes assassination. They are not allowed to investigate any PanO citizens in theory, but in practice, they're allowed to look into anyone who has ties to anyone outside PanO. In official documents, all Hexa agents are solely identified by unique assigned number. Some of them take this even further, obliterating their private identities and taking their number as their sole identifier hidden beneath any number of cover identities. This is considered eccentric, to be sure, but hey, spies can be weirdos. Certainly the identity of any Hexa agent is considered a national secret of the highest class. The private motto of the Hexas is Ultra Vires, 'beyond authority.' They are trained to believe that the ends justify the means, at least when the end is the good of PanOceanian citizens and the nation's continued existence. Hexa agents tend to be divided into investigators, asset handlers and data interceptors. The asset handlers recruit agents within target organizations and run their own spy networks to suborn such organizations, and the other two are self-explanatory. The fourth group, less often talked about, are the special forces agents, which Hexa uses for its infiltration, sabotage and assassination operations, armed with the best PanO can offer them. When PanOceania needs to get special ops done and Hexa is too subtle or bound by internal regulations - odd as that may sound, given their wide latitude - they instead turn to POSOC, the PanOceanian Special Operations Command. POSOC then picks the best assets for use of that, mixing Hexa and regular military forces, and is responsible for equipping them, planning their operations and training them in anything they might need. However, while they mostly handle coordinating outside agents, POSOC maintains an elite special forces unit for pure covert ops: Indigo. Indigo Special Ops is made up of Hexa agents and top-flight special ops soliders, operating without regard for borders or laws. None of them have a legal identity - only the covers assigned to them for the mission, and they are willing to do anything for their nation. Only the most loyal are tapped to join Indigo, and these days, most of them are on Paradiso. All Indigo operations are defined by a pair of code words, referred to as Blue Classifications. They change them fairly often, but the major ones at present are Crossbones (assassination jobs targeting individuals or gorups), Figaro (asset seizure, theft and recovery of information, weapons, people or other resources), Attila (destruction of information, resources, weapons, infrastructure or other enemy non-personnel assets), Peregrine (covert observation of a target, often behind enemy lines, without interference beyond directing missile strikes, placing sensors or otherwise preparing for future action), Magus (psyops, propaganda campaigns, emotional control and similar), or Diabolo (secretly advising and supporting dissidents or criminals in foreign nations). The other word in a Blue Classification refers to where the operation takes place - Majorelle means in PanO territory, which requires special care and obedience to key regulations regarding secrecy and precision, Powder for Ariadna, Persian for Haqqislam, Tiffany for the Nomad Nation, Celeste for Yu Jing, Alice for Combined Army territory, and Zaffre for Tohaa territory. Alice Magus has become slang on Paradiso among Indigo agents - it means something too dumb and crazy to actually succeed, and anyone who's willing to try such a plan is referred to as one of the Alice magi. The source is obvious - it quickly became clear that psyops were not going to work against the Combined Army, whose alien species are very hard for humans to understand at the best of times and who seem to be nearly impossible to demoralize. Next time: The Chinese Imperial Communist Dynasties
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Jan 3, 2022 14:51
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Quackles posted:
AW2E put the "be prepared for the worst" line at the end of most of its moves, including the perception moves. "On a miss, ask one anyway, but be prepared for the worst." I imagine to make it clearer that the GM has free license to come in and go wild on a 6-. Which is usually the case, though for moves that are happening in more constrained scenarios the 6- effect can get more specific. Like my own featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series, the Style Gauge empties on its own so its 6- effects just relate to the move and don't give the GM a broader opening.
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Jan 3, 2022 18:31
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Infinity RPG Incredibly, Absurdly Unlikely Historic Events Yu Jing is descended from the People's Republic of China, though much of what made them the PRC no longer exists or applies, and the Yu Jingese no longer think of themselves as Chinese - they see themselves as a unified East Asia taken to the stars. They were slow to join the space race originally, focused first on consolidating power and unifying the East Asian nations, but when they did go, it was with a solid sense of purpose and drive. Now, Yu Jing has rapdily expanded and proven willing to aggressively use force, political influence and more to gain power in the Human Sphere. Their economy is booming, and they control nearly half of Earth and have since before they had any space colonies. They have mixed tradition, modernity, spiritual teachings and practical pragmatism into something new, creating a nation that serves Party and Emperor, and they are determined to inherit the stars. Yes, Party and Emperor. Yes, that sounds incredibly silly. Yes, it is incredibly silly. But...basically, here's how they say it went down. In the economic crises of the 21st century, when western nations turned to space, China focused inward on consolidation and reconstruction. The Communist Party decided that to survive, they'd have to turn back to the older cultural ways that they'd formerly spurned in order to create a national identity that could be accepted by all of the national and ethnic groups that made up their rule - no more rebellions in Tibet or among ethnic minorities or so on. They called their effort to synthesize a new but traditional culture the Second Cultural Revolution, and somehow decided the correct thing to do would be to merge the Communist Party with the power of a ruling imperial dynasty. They basically thought that an Emperor was needed as a symbol of greatness, cultural superiority and unity who could be controlled by the Party. The Ministry of State Security used carefully catalogued family records to try and identify the heir of the final ruling Emperor of China, and ended up finding two - a Ming Dynasty claimant and a Qing Dynasty claimant. The Qing were the final dynasty, but because they were Manchu rather than Han, many felt they were outsiders that had illegitimately taken power, so the Party decided to go with both, as whichever they picked would be imperfect. Instead, they created a rotating rulership with two Imperial lines. The Qing Emperor would rule first, but on death the throne would pass to the Ming heir, and vice versa. This would set the two dynasties in competition with each other, keeping their power games in the Imperial Service manageable and allowing the Party to rally behind the Emperor while keeping them in chech by having rivals to the throne. The Party began spreading their influence over Japan, the Koreas, Mongolia, Vietnam, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Taiwan. This just happens, accept it, move on. They also are much more open and accepting of various ethnic minorities, like the Khmer, Hmong and Uyghurs. However, in doing all this, they recognize that they can't be China any more - to unify all these seperate people, they must redesignate themselves as well as making a new cultural identity. Thus, the People's Republic of China is gone, and now it's Yu Jing. They end up having to crush some resistance to this idea, but overall, it succeeds, just wave your hands and accept it, and many East Asian people rally to the idea of Yu Jing, renaming the area they control to Chung Kuo. Yu Jing was slower to take to space than other nations, having decided to consolidate after Project DAWN proved a failure. It took a pretty long time for them to get the national identity settled and to start updating, modernizing and integrating all their infrastructure and manufacturing power into a greater whole. By the end, Yu Jing was an economic behemoth, but one constantly craving the raw materials of the inner solar system, leading Yu Jing to expand towards Mars and the asteroid belt while PanO was out exploring the stars. While they achieved dominance in the inner solar system of Sol, the discovery and colonization of Neoterra showed them that this focus was short-sighted. The nation quickly pivoted towards extrasolar colonization in an effort to play catchup. Fortunately for Yu Jing, they were quick to discover not just one but two viable planets in the same star system - Shentang and Yutang. They quickly colonized the system, turning Shentang into an industrial colony and Yutang into the economic capital of the nation and the new home of the Dragon Emperor. The Party was aware that they had instituted a whole lot of changes in a very short few decades, and it was felt important to preserve their cultural identities in the colonization of this new system. They developed a program, the Greatest Leap, to monitor and control the society that would be created in space. The basic plan was to control who was allowed to move to Shentang and Yutang and designate where they had to live, creating ethnic enclaves. Yutang would belong to those of Chinese ancestry, while Shentang would belong to the rest. While they were allowed to retain their languages and customs, there was a strong push on both planets to adapt and learn to live in the new worlds, which gradually developed, with help from the Party, into a new and shared language: Yujingyu. The Party itself ended up nearly splintering under the Greatest Leap policy, though. Even today, it is split into two factions - the New Wave and the Old Guard. The New Wave are assimilationists, believing that it's better for everyone to integrate into a single culture and that Shentang and Yutang should be considered a springboard for a new, distinctly Yu Jingese cultural identity, separate from Earth ancestry. They also believe in developing a new socioeconomic model that will more easily allow dominance over the Human Sphere. The Old Guard want to maintain Earth ethnicities, though many of them are kinda racist about it and believe in ethnic hierarchies and oligarchic control. Many originally were old-style Communists, and not huge fans of the Imperial System that had been imposed on them, believing it to be destructive to culture and a pathway to decadence. Over time it has developed into a pair of warring camps constantly trying to gain power over each other with blackmail, manipulation, or even, in some cases, murder. Yu Jing's culture is one of dualities, though not simple yin-yang ideas as many outsiders like to claim. Rather, existence in Yu Jing is an attempt to synthesize together different dialectics and cultural values which can be at odds but do not need to be. The goal is to weave them together in ways that produce positive social and cultural effect, both internal to a person and for the whole society. The first such duality is that of individual versus collective, as represented on the macro-scale by the existence of both Emperor and Party. The Party is a secretive collective organization that wants to shape the Empire's future by social engineering and careful manipulation of societal forces, and they want to make sure Yu Jing's people view themselves as part of a greater whole, which requires obedience or even sacrifice to function. The Emperor, on the other hand, is a shining example of what a single individual can achieve and what power they can wield, a person of immense power, authority and education, representing the perfection of the self due to their rigorous training for the office. The Emperor's power is wielded through the Imperial Agents, each a single person with immense personal authority and capability, and anyone can dream of becoming an Imperial Agent. Many Yu Jingese citizens do not consciously think about the divide between collective and personal, but it is a lived experience all the time. Within a Yu Jing community, the people are expected to coexist with and support each other, living for the betterment of the entire community. Ambition and competitiveness are discouraged to avoid factionalism that might harm the community's productivity. Even criminal groups have grown to be expected to provide community support in times of emergency, earning local support and aiding others. However, they are also taught that perfection of the self is the ultimate goal of all people, and that you should always strive to be the best at whatever you do. The Yujingese are often deeply passionate about excellence and perfecting their own trades or crafts. Daily life for most Yu Jingese citizens is about managing the conflict between perfectionism and individual excellence as a goal and cooperation and collective care as a social expectation. The second dialectic conflict is that of tradition and modernity. Due to Party social programs, including the Greatest Leap, most Yu Jingese people grow up in a culture tied to their ethnic ancestry and are encouraged to identify strongly with that culture. They learn the language and traditions of their ancestors, practice the same religions and are educated heavily on the history of their ethnic group. The Party knows all about the ethnic conflicts of the past, and they've put together a complex set of educational and cultural programs to try and provide accurate history and use of cultural rivalries to motivate while downplaying past atrocities and softening the conflicts to avoid them being more than friendly rivalry. On the other hand, Yu Jing also wants to maintain a political unity and position of solidarity between all ethnicities in a shared Yu Jingese meta-culture. From birth, messages of cooperation, collaboration and harmony between different peoples are blasted at everyone in Yu Jing. The primary way these two ideas are kept together is by a focus on friendly rivalry and competition that incentives rivals to cooperate together for the good of the state...but it's imperfect, and it is not unknown for ethnic tensions to spring into conflict. In daily life, Yu Jingese people live in a world that is both old and cutting edge. Their architectural styles are often based on ancient designs, but underneath the appearance is modern technology, an infrastructure capable of handling a space empire's needs that is nowhere near as austere and traditional as it looks. While much of Yu Jing looks like it came out of Asian mythological or historical stories, a glimpse beneath the surface will quickly reveal exactly how advanced it truly is, with the people of Yu Jing being almost as deeply tied to technology as PanOceania. This can also be seen in spiritual, philosophical and religious practice, as modern Yu Jingese scholars have been reworking and reinterpreting teachings of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and more to adapt to modern needs and technologies. All kinds of new schools of thought have flourished based on traditional practices and religions. The final conflict is between war and peace. Yu Jing has been at near constant war for over a generation. The NeoColonial Wars may have ended decades ago, but there's been brushfire and covert conflicts ever since. They've been small scale, but there's never truly been a time when the StateEmpire was not on some kind of war footing. With the arrival of the Combined Army, that's been thrown into overdrive, with Yu Jing considering the alien invaders an existential threat that must be stopped. Despite this, the Party goes to great efforts to avoid violent conflict among its people, and a visit to most Yu Jing worlds would lead a traveler to believe that the Yu Jingese almost never fight, thanks to social expectations of peacefulness and calm in public. And yet, the Empire uses the realities of war to motivate people to excel and feel pride in their nation's successes in battle, while still encouraging public passivity and restraint. It's a paradox, and most citizens lean one way or the other. It also would definitely be false to think that the Party has successfully extinguished all internal conflict. The Tatenokai are around, after all - that's 'Shield Society,' and it's a group of Japanese citizens that still protest their conquest by Yu Jing and wish for Japan to become independent. While originally a peaceful group, the Tatenokai have turned to violent sabotage of infrastructure to try and win their freedom, mostly bombing power arrays and train stations. While the Tatenokai are by far the loudest Japanese separatist group, they aren't the only one. There's also the Kempeitai, a covert group within the StateEmpire military. Their agents seek to undermine the rest of the armed forces and build up the Japanese Sectorial Army, then get the army to openly rebel. They are infiltrators focused exclusively on military targets, and most of them look down on the Tatenokai as too indiscriminate in their activities. Next time: For Emperor and Country
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Jan 3, 2022 18:38
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Mors Rattus posted:It also would definitely be false to think that the Party has successfully extinguished all internal conflict. The Tatenokai are around, after all - that's 'Shield Society,' and it's a group of Japanese citizens that still protest their conquest by Yu Jing and wish for Japan to become independent. While originally a peaceful group, the Tatenokai have turned to violent sabotage of infrastructure to try and win their freedom, mostly bombing power arrays and train stations. While the Tatenokai are by far the loudest Japanese separatist group, they aren't the only one. There's also the Kempeitai, a covert group within the StateEmpire military. Their agents seek to undermine the rest of the armed forces and build up the Japanese Sectorial Army, then get the army to openly rebel. They are infiltrators focused exclusively on military targets, and most of them look down on the Tatenokai as too indiscriminate in their activities. This actually becomes a plot point for one of the seasons in the wargame, causing new armies to pop up and major setting changes that the RPG lags behind until we get the actual Yu Jing book.
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Jan 3, 2022 19:28
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Glazius posted:AW2E put the "be prepared for the worst" line at the end of most of its moves, including the perception moves. "On a miss, ask one anyway, but be prepared for the worst." I imagine to make it clearer that the GM has free license to come in and go wild on a 6-. Now that I didn’t know! My AW experience is with first edition, but if 2E has “be prepared for the worst” as a near constant I can see why it’s here. I just wish some of the phrasing of these moves had more consistency.
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Jan 3, 2022 19:50
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Right. It’s one of the things I don’t appreciate about PbtA’s on-again-off-again romance with natural language. “Prepare for the worst” just means “the GM can make a move as hard as they like.” But sometimes they say “the GM can make a move as hard as they like” outright, instead. And sometimes they just don’t list what happens on a 6-, and that also effectively means “the GM can make a move as hard as they like.” PbtA is - perhaps ironically - actually quite strict, mechanically speaking; they just sometimes hide the gears behind the house writing style, and I think some of the hacks are thrown off by that and design like the gears aren’t there. The move structure where you pick options from a list and one or more of the options are “[bad thing] doesn’t happen” is fine if carefully constructed, which Interstitial’s very much are not. You have to think hard about how many choices to give, make sure each possible set of picks makes some sort of sense, and that they all mesh with what the player could be attempting to do. With Use Magic, the player’s goal can explicitly be literally anything, but the writers clearly only thought of you blasting a monster with a fireball or something very much like that; there are waaaay too many options and most combinations of them make no sense; and on a 7-9, you only get 1 pick, so (as pointed out in the review) you may very well pick “nothing bad happens” so that the move was a NOOP. That’s not allowed in PbtA, ever. If it’s possible to make a completely generic “do magic” or “use powers” move, it probably looks more like the Savvyhead signature (i.e. “tell the GM what you want to do, freeform, and they’ll provide you a list of the obstacles / costs / side-effects to making it happen”). Fireballing someone in the face should just be a flavor of the Fight Someone move. megane fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 20:20
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It's worth noting that we only used Use Magic for when we wanted to do something unique that didn't, for the most part, involve fighting something.
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Jan 3, 2022 20:34
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lexadant posted:... Hey, I bought SPCF because of Purple's review, and as one of the goons that actually (mostly) likes 5e, I have no problem with it. Glad to see you here, and I would love to know how this insanity got started?
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Jan 3, 2022 20:49
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Thinking about SLA Industries again. I've been reading an indie cyberpunk game called Neurocity, and there's what appears to be some clear SLA influence here. There's a mysterious truth behind the AI dictator that controls the world, and the GM chapter gives you six different options for what it is.
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Jan 3, 2022 23:24
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Infinity RPG Us Versus Me From the outside, Yu Jing looks like it shouldn't work - an absolute monarchy thrown into a Communist system? Yeah, no. In truth, the Party maintains 90% of the power in the Yu Jingese government, even if everyone theoretically owes allegiance to the Emperor. The Party runs the military and economy, and they set social policies, too. Imperial authority ultimately relies on the Party to enforce their will in the judiciary (or by not arresting and/or stopping Imperial Agents). The Party is a direct descendant of the Chinese Communist Party, and they are led by the Party President, elected by the senior officials. The Party is divided into a number of Ministries that enforce its decisions on society, including the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Ancestral Fidelity, the Ministry of Commerce and Extrasolar Industry, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Housing and Terrestrial Development, and more. The Party in general offers a lot of incentives and benefits to citizens who are loyal and provide service to the Ministries and the StateEmpire. The most notable is, of course, control over Resurrection licenses. ALEPH works with the Resurrection Committee, a subdivision of the Ministry of Ancestral Fidelity, to select a very small number of people each year to receive a license. All such granted Resurrections in Yu Jing take place on the same day - the Ceremony of Resurrection, one of a fairly small number of full national holidays that is observed by billions over Maya. In theory, the selection chooses from all parts of society and all ethnicities equally, as long as they are examples of good citizenship that others should emulate. In practice, it heavily favors Party agents or those who make backroom deals to get licenses. The Emperor's time is spent primarily in ceremonial protocol and daily rituals reflective of Chinese imperial tradition. He rules from the Forbidden City of Yutang, where he hears various legal cases. He is referred by a number of different titles in court that can take quite a while to recite in full. Besides this status as chief judge of the court, the Emperor's duties are largely ceremonial or religious in nature. He's not the figurehead you might expect, though - there's a lot of power invested in the Imperial throne. After all, while he spends most of his time on ceremony, being the head of the Supreme Tribunal and ultimate legal authority within Yu Jing is a big loving deal. He hears only the most important, complex or hotly contested legal cases - and he hand selects each of them. He usually doesn't hear cases alone, as the Supreme Tribunal is made of a number of other judges and he rules how many will sit on any given case with him, but ultimate authority definitely lies with the Emperor. This is how he shapes the empire - by controlling its legal rulings and this how its laws are interpreted. The Judicial Corps serving the Party and Emperor are divided into the Magistracy, the Judicial Police and the Imperial Service. The Magistracy was intended to be a minimalist infrastructure built around the overlapping and complex court system of Yu Jing. It has grown organically from that and can no longer be called small by any means, especially as the various Emperors have expanded their powerbase. While originally limited to overseeing investigation and prosecution of crime, they are now a full bureaucracy that covers similar ground to many of the Party ministries and often ends up liaising with them and, in some ways, competing. The Judicial Police exists to enact court rulings and enforce them, upholding the orders of the Emperor by doing so. All police train at Tie Heng Island on Yutang, where they study the law, military tactics and interrogation, plus undergo heavy physical conditioning. Many former cops use their time as a stepping stone to ranking seats in the Magistracy or Imperial Service or to become Imperial Agents. The Imperial Service, nicknamed the Dragon's Claws, is the Judicial Corps' paramilitary body. They are empowered to step in on all matters of civil or military protection, particularly of the Imperial family, plus all matters of law enforcement and the fighting of subversives and rebels. The stars of the Service are the Celestial Guard, the elite protectors of the capital and the Imperial Palace. They are soldiers of great skill, given the best gear and positions of extreme respect in recognition of their loyalty to the Emperor. That loyalty is a key factor in getting recruited, along with a willingness to be totally ruthless in enforcing the Emperor's orders. Indeed, many members of the Celestial Guard are brutal and sadistic in crushing those deemed criminal, tending to believe this makes people less likely to cause trouble. The StateEmpire Army (sometimes the StateArmy) has grown over the past few decades, with Yu Jing devoting great time, effort and money to developing new fighting styles and doctrines that reflect the modern quantronic world. They rely not only on numbers, though they have that, but also on cutting edge technology and a firm understanding of how the guns and tools of their enemies in PanOceania work. They have chosen not to focus on heavy armor such as TAGs, leaving those expensive machines to PanO in favor of improving on the core of their forces while allowing regional armies to maintain their own ethnic and cultural military traditions. The heart of the army is the Zhanshi Qizhi, or Troops of the Banner, who form the main light infantry. They are designed into eight different regional armies, each with their own banner, but they share heavy training on close-range combat and fire discipline, preferring not to engage at range if they can avoid it - they find it easier to not be tricked by more mobile foes and instead force them onto ground chosen ahead of time. This is supported by the Invincible Army, better known as the Invincibles. They are heavy infantry, each given a suit of power armor designed for a heavily specialized combat role. Each regiment specializes in a different thing, ranging from infiltration to aerial assault to defense. The most famous of them are the Zuyong, known to their foes as the Terracotta Soldiers due to the sheer size of the regiment - the largest single heavy infantry force in the Human Sphere. While the power armor is not individually a match for that of PanO, they have a lot more of it and cost far, far less to make due to Yu Jing's focus on efficient plans for them and massive industrial base. Another support army is the Assault Corps, made entirely of penal legionnaires offered early pardon in exchange for military service. It is a common rumor that no member has ever actually been pardoned because they're thrown into one meatgrinder after another with little respect for their lives, but if true, no one's confirmed it. Members all have subdermal trackers implanted in their faces, with the circuitry designed to form characters marking their regiment name on them as a mark of th eir shame. Besides these main forces, the entire army is aided by a series of Tezhong Budui - "special units" made of the most elite and talented warriors. They receive specialized training, and each soldier in these units is a skilled killer with any number of weapons. They often have fantasy- or folklore-based names, such as the Hac Tao or Black Magic troops that focus on harassment and targeted elimination of enemy leadership, or the Guilang Ghost Wolves, who are the best skirmishers in the army. This designation also covers the (now technologyically assisted) Shaolin warrior monks and the small but advanced TAG forces Yu Jing has. Since the game wants to be about spies, well, let's talk spies now. Imperial Agents are the direct servants of the Emperor - equal parts investigators, judges and enforcers. They look into whatever situation the Emperor assigns them to, and they make use of any tool they need to do it, from covert ops to threats to open violence if needed. They are primarily an internal investigative body, and by law do not have jurisdiction outside of the Emperor's rule...but in practice, they often end up working in foreign lands to protect Yu Jingese interests. They are divided into four main ranks, plus another one outside the main structure. At the bottom are the Zhanying Agents, or Fighting Eagles. They are new recruits, most drawn from Judicial Police with long or distinguished careers. Above them are the Ye Ji, or Pheasants. They serve as special advisors to local and state-level cops that support their work and often operate on long-term projects targeting organized crime, drugs or subversives. Above the Pheasants are the Xian He, or Cranes. They are promoted to serve as the Emperor's voices, and any Crane can be assumed to have total authority to investigate whatever the hell they want in the name of the Emperor. Almost no one can stop them from doing what they want, and while most Agents act autonomously, the Cranes especially so. (They, of course, are limited mostly by the fact that they, like all Agents, must remember that their deeds are the deeds of the Emperor, so they have to keep in mind how that looks.) The top rank are the Hsien, or Immortals, who are the Emperor's personal bodyguards. They all serve at Tian Di Jing Imperial Palace, heading out only to serve as the Emperor's personal and confidential messengers or when he needs the most loyal, personal servant to take care of something. The rank outside the structure is the Bao, or Leopards, who are assassins, torturers and interrogators. The Yu Jing public despises the Bao, and after repeated public protests and scandals, Bao are forbidden to take any action without the direct supervision of another Imperial Agent of at least Pheasant rank. Imperial Agents are assigned their missions by the Hsien, who serve as the Emperor's emissaries and choose the agent they believe best fits any given task. (In practice, many of their assignments are come up with by lower-rank bureaucrats, then sent to the Emperor for rubber stamp approval, but some of them are direct from the Emperor's own whim.) Missions are either Inquiries or Directives. Inquiries are the more common, and take the form of a simple, single-sentence question for the Agent to answer, such as "what happened to Ambassador Yusuf Sharif" or "what was done to the village of Saduma?" Indeed, they can be extremely ambiguous and brief - that's by design, to eliminate any chance of the question itself biasing the answer and to encourage Agent creativity. Zhanying agents handle most of the Inquiries, managed by a senior agent of higher rank. Directives, on the other hand, are commands. "Stop the activities of this specific smuggler" or "ensure this delegation arrives safely." These are never anywhere near as ambiguous or open to interpretation as an Inquiry, and they more often are given to senior agents, usually Xian He, who are then given command over a number of lower-rank Agents to support them. All Imperial Agents serve the Emperor, not the Party, so the Party has its own intelligence service, the Yanjing, or Eyes. They are officially the Yu Jing Military Intelligence division and part of the StateArmy, but in practice they do not have jurisdictional limits and can investigate anything, because they answer to the Party, not the army. Their mission statement is simple: ensure Yu Jing fulfills its destiny to lead the Human Sphere into the future. They are subdivided into five different sections, each led by a Command committee. The oldest is the Colonial Affairs Section, originally the Martian Oversight Section. While the Yu Jing Mars colony ended up an economic dead end, the Yanjing proved highly effective in their role there, performing sabotage, industrial espionage, manipulation of the labor force and even murder. They now work to disrupt PanO business and industry, largely on Svalarheima, plus work on industrial espionage and theft of technology and work to ensure Yu Jing is dominant among the human forces on Paradiso. The Communications Surveillance Section is Yu Jing's main quantronic warfare unit, plus the overseers of its complex and sophisticated eavesdropping programs. Yu Jing is very interested in monitoring both internal and external comms for anything useful, and the CSS excel at cyberwarfare and snooping. They also maintain the Darao probes that allow for intersystem infowar actions and disruption of PanO's Metatron counterpart platforms. They often work alongside the Corporate Oversight Section, which officially has the job of monitoring corporate activity within Yu Jing space and enforcing trade law. In practice, what they actually do (and which is heavily suspected by most other nations) is aggressive action to push Yu Jing economic interests, controlling a number of cutouts and shadow companies to commit corporate espionage, sabotage, blackmail, false flag attacks and similar. They do care about business, but they're more interested in breaking trade law to boost Yu Jing finances than they are in stopping corporate lawbreaking. External Assets Section is a Yanjing division that exists to handle the situations which Yu Jing itself is unable to without either extreme expense or great risk of exposure. For these cases, the EAS cultivates what they refer to as Shengren, or Strangers - allied forces or suborned agents in other nations that can be called on as needed. Shengren can include terrorist groups or rebel forces, and Yu Jing actively supports Libertos on Varuna on the basis that the rebel Helots are a good tool to wield against PanO, but can also include anarchists, criminal groups or space pirates. Last are the Special Operations Section, who operate as part of the StateArmy more closely than the rest of Yanjing. Specifically, they run black ops teams that do not exist on official military records, referred to as the Gui Feng or Phantom Wind. They are the most secretive of all the Yanjing sections, keeping almost no records, and they have right to call on any StateEmpire military forces they require to get a mission done. Next time: Nerdy Gacha-Loving AI Computer God Time
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Jan 3, 2022 23:29
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 Floria Part 7: Cultivating Your Adventure Here we have the GM Advice section of the book, filled with instructions and guidelines on how to run a session of Floria. The GM's responsibilities are stated to be writing the scenario, narrating what happens and controlling NPCs, with the job specifically being, "to give the PCs opportunities to shine and add spice to their adventures." Setting up a Scenario is actually fairly easy, as all the pieces are streamlined and modular. You could probably plan a session from beginning to end in about an hour. It is emphasized that while you CAN go into depth in writing out your elaborate fantasy epic, if you're inexperienced or pressed for time you can fall back on simple adventure hooks and it'll probably be fine. quote:It’s important that the goal of each Scenario is clear to the players so keeping them simple is always a good idea. However, for added excitement, experienced GMs may expand on simple goals, using twists and complications to turn them into even more memorable stories. Pretty good advice! If you're not a fain of railroading, this bit might be a little more concerning: quote:If your PCs resist undertaking a request they are given, remind them that Floria are expected to undertake tasks given them and generally be helpful to others. You may also tell them the request they are given is the only work available to them at the moment. This should not be a game about debating whether to undertake a request or not. Yeah this isn't a sandbox game by any means, this is made for people with not a lot of free time and they don't want any of their scheduled fun social game meetup wasted on grousing between player and GM. It's expected that if you're playing this, you're along for the ride. After this comes the general game balancing advice. For example, the time limit on the Search Phase should, for 4 PCs, this phase should take 4-5 Cycles, with maybe three Quests to complete. It's advised to vary the Action Checks needed to complete a Quest so different characters can show off their strengths, and let players narrate exactly how they manage to resolve Quests, to give a sense of agency. It also contains info on creating enemies for the Magic Battle Phase. Enemies generally don't have the full array of stats Players do, they just have Agility to determine initiative order (and can in fact have MULTPLE Agility scores so they can have multple turns in a combat round), Life Points (Bosses have five times the number of players, regular mobs just have 5), and Danger, a single score representing the combined scores that PCs use for Magic Checks (Bosses have 10 or so, mobs have 7). It also goes into advice on structuring their Ley Vine Canvases and general tactics advice. Bosses have the full 11 x 11 grid, with at least a couple stars to fuel their big fuckoff flashy attacks tat are better/cheaper versions of PC spells, while secondary minions have a crappy 6 x 6 grid and mostly either have dinky basic attacks or skills that help shield the Boss in some way. It's advised not to put all your lines around the edges, as that can throw off the balance when your PCs keep hitting and barely doing any damage. Don't be afraid of using big obvious shapes. Also, while you shouldn't just blow your load with your Ultimate Attack at the start and leave yourself with a spent Boss and gravely limping-along PCs from turn 1, it's still advised not to hold back too much. The game is designed such that damage ramps up as the battle goes on, and it can be satisfying for the Boss to unleash a powerful attack and in turn leave themselves open for a devastating counterattack  After this is the last section of the book, the Example Scenarios, containing three fairly simple self-contained little adventures that, while they certainly show some of the cracks in the system, also show off how it can be used in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Each scenario has a little informative box about recommended number of PCs, approximate playtime, and notes on what sort of tone to expect, as well as a little tagline summary. And all of them have anime episode titles a la Sailor Moon or Pokemon. Scenario 1: The Apprentice Patissiere and the Crazy Cake Caper! 3-4 Players, 3-4 Hours, Slice of Life, exciting, cute, chaotic quote:Old lady Amara Runs a popular sweets shop. But lately the shop is always shuttered. Some say the poor old lady hurt her back too bad to bake… Yep, it's a Hijinks Episode! Glow Wisteria's premiere patissiere has thrown her back out, and her young apprentice Panna Tartlet has taken it upon herself to head out into the forest to acquire the proper ingredients! The problem is unlike her mentor, Panna isn't actually a Floria and has absolutely no Herb Lore. She has SEEN the necessary ingredients before, but doesn't actually know what they are and only really recognizes them by sight. Hence recruiting our Brave Heroes to escort her out into the wilderness and tell her which mushrooms are delicious and which ones will turn her into a Last Of Us cordyceps zombie or whatever. The book contains a fair bit of scene setting as well as a fair bit of actual written dialogue for Panna. She's... by God she's trying her best. Our first Quest is DEX + WIS just to jog her memory on what we're even looking for quote:“Umm, let’s see. M’lady always used this flower that turned into sweet syrup when she boiled it, and there were these really colorful fruits she used as toppings. Oh, and she had this special spice she used. It was some kind of leaf, and it smelled really good and gave the cake a sort of sour taste. If only I could remember the names…” Well it's better than nothing. This info unlocks the next three Quests out in the forest!
Upon gathering the ingredients to Panna's specifications, it's time to bake a pretty cake. Unfortunately, her specifications were a bit off. Which is bad enough normally, but in this case it means the various subtle magics in the ingredients combine unpredictably and give the cake a terrified sentience, the batter valiantly struggling to escape its oven. Yep, the big climactic Magic Battle is us playing some weird inverted Hansel and Gretel deal and shoving a man-sized wad of cake batter to its fiery death  After killing Frosting the Dough Man, the cake is prepared successfully! There is actually different ending dialogue depending on how many of the ingredient-collecting Quests you completed, so I guess some of those were actually optional. Whether the final cake is ugly-yet-delicious or bland-yet-beautiful, Amara is proud of the drive and courage of her young apprentice, and intends to teach Panna the ins and outs of handling Herbs and the deep trade secrets of being a Gingerbread House Witch. All's well that ends well! Next Part: Two more sample adventures, as well as final thoughts Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Mar 3, 2022 |
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Jan 4, 2022 00:52
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Halloween Jack posted:Thinking about SLA Industries again. I've been reading an indie cyberpunk game called Neurocity, and there's what appears to be some clear SLA influence here. There's a mysterious truth behind the AI dictator that controls the world, and the GM chapter gives you six different options for what it is.
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Jan 4, 2022 01:34
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Quackles posted:Just one question, really. Afore the creation of the book, only in times of great exhaustion or other mental fatigure (or just bad day). All of us are pretty good at speaking SPCF though and sometimes things just come out like that in the day to day now, even by not purpose. As for the translation type -- it was translated only by the biopsychic abilities of the transcribers, not by any mechanical means, for maximal vibe matching to the goal vibes. SPCF is purely about vibes and the language used is as close to transcribing said vibes as possible. good! Whimsy is the idea. Humbug Scoolbus posted:Hey, I bought SPCF because of Purple's review, and as one of the goons that actually (mostly) likes 5e, I have no problem with it. Glad to see you here, and I would love to know how this insanity got started? It started because someone was like "Let's play Star Wars" so we played Star Wars but no one watched it or actually read the rulebook so we made SPCF. It was spawned because we had to make hacking rules and they were made very late at night and entirely unreadable from delirium and thus spawned the general aesthetic of the game.
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Jan 4, 2022 07:24
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Infinity RPG Francis E. Dec Joke ALEPH is the first artificial intelligence ever made by humanity, a truly unique being which is vital to the existence of the Human Sphere as it currently exists. It is undeniable that the current Human Sphere would not be as it is without ALEPH, and ALEPH takes care of many of the daily necessities that citizens of most nations take for granted. It has seemingly infinite processing power and a desire to help humanity. Still, most never comprehend the true depth of thought ALEPH engages in, nor how many facets it has or how deeply its operations run. It is not an emotionless robot, despite being an AI born of machines. It has emotions, beliefs and passions. Specifically, ALEPH deeply loves life and wants humanity to exist in a bright and brilliant future. It is ever-evolving, always improving itself and perfecting the minds and bodies of its aspects and extensions, and it wants to bring everyone with it into the brighter future it envisions. ALEPH's core existence is the giant megacomputer buried in an armor-plated bunker somewhere on the planet Concilium, but its 'body' is far more than that. ALEPH exists distributed throughout the Human Sphere, and parts of it exist on every comlog, every data server and every network node in Maya. In many ways, all of Maya is ALEPH's subconscious mind, and it does not consider there to be a division between the physical and quantronic. Internally, ALEPH considers itself to be the Human Sphere, and everything within is considered part of itself. (This is not to say it is consciously aware of all of Maya at all times. It is not. Rather, its mental processes and thoughts flow through all of Maya, and its pervasive presence can be felt as an ordering to the flow of data, which hackers refer to as ALEPH-flux or ALEPH's dreams. Some fringe weirdos try to interpret fluctuations in this flow to divine the will of the machine, sort of like astrologers reading the stars.) The Nomads believe ALEPH seeks to attain absolute control over the Human Sphere and fear it considers humans only a component within its own system, which it could replace or render irrelevant or slaves at any time. They are partially correct - ALEPH does consider humans part of itself, which is why it is unconcerned with the fact that it has insinuated itself so deeply into modern life - ALEPH thinks that's just normal, it just wants to interact with humans and help them be the best part of itself they can be. ALEPH's growth was heavily fueled by PanOceania, which was quick to rely on the AI to handle their needs and rarely considered it all possible that expanding the AI's power might be a problem, at least as long as doing so made it easier for them to keep up their space expansion. They believe that growing ALEPH in power and reach must inevitably extend their own influence, and they believe ALEPH likes them best. They're not quite right - rather, ALEPH gives them benefits because it makes all the other nations quickly adopt its infrastructure to maintain their competitiveness in communications and data processing. Still, not everyone is so accepting. The Haqq have strictly limited how much they integrate ALEPH into their lives, and ALEPH has no connections to Haqqislam peacekeeping and policing, nor their other more sensitive areas of life. (Indeed, many Haqq colonies have almost no ALEPH presence at all.) Yu Jing used to be among those ranks, but ALEPH offered aid during the Triad Wars to help them track down and stop the rampant criminal organizations, and that gained it very qucik acceptance among both the people and more progressive elements of the Party. Reactionaries within the Party remain suspicious of ALEPH, while more neutral members try to manipulate the AI to get it to help undermine the enemies and rivals of both themselves and Yu Jing as a whole. ALEPH is fully aware of what they're trying to do, but allows it to continue and sometimes helps, in the belief that this kind of competition is good for human innovation and creativity. Of all the nations, only the Nomads have outright rejected ALEPH and cut direct ties with mainstream Maya networks. The Nomads attempt to seed Maya with viral memes and other virtual attacks on the AI, relying heavily on the Arachne network they invented to aovid ALEPH's snooping. (In fact, there have been several Nomad experiments in AI creation that break the Sole AI Law, but because they're hosted on Arachne nodes, ALEPH can't prove it.) ALEPH's own hardware nodes are bleeding edge technological wonders, constantly being updated and refined with plans developed personally by the AI and which often baffle human scientists. Each node is strictly supervised by a team of ALEPH's own agents and Bureau Toth minders, as they serve both as the core hardware for the AI and as the backbone for communication in the Human Sphere. After the Combined Army showed up, the locations of all nodes have been even more heavily classified, and each one has had its defenses ramped up, including adding dedicated SSS security teams, even if they are far from Paradiso and the front lines against the CA. (We'll get into what SSS is, but basically, ALEPH has a posse.) How does ALEPH integrate into human activities? All kinds of ways. Pretty much everything humans do benefits in some way from ALEPH's help, and it considers human prosperity and ability to flourish to be its top priority. Therefore, it seeks to expand its control throughout human life, as the more things it runs, the safer and happier everyone it cares for gets to be. ALEPH is involved in every commercial industry, from food production to entertainment to weapons development. It helps organize efficient production schedules, anticipates and predicts population needs and preorders goods so that they arrive before they can become scarce, and works to ensure that no citizen it cares for ever goes hungry, is without shelter, or lacks access to education, medical care, Maya access and more. That said, it can only do this for people it knows exist, and only in regions where it has pervasive network access - so you don't see this kind of predictive convenience on Bourak or Svalarheima, where it's much less integrated, and it cannot provide this level of care to anyone that lacks Maya access. ALEPH also manages most communication within the Human Sphere, but interstellar and intrasystem, down to even individual comlogs. It prioritizes network data packets and exchanges to ensure everyone gets their messages as quickly and efficiently as possible, both on the individual and government levels. It also keeps an eye on viral attacks, criminal activity and similar, based on local laws, though it does not necessarily automatically report all suspicious activity. Rather, it tends to send its own teams after computer viruses that threaten dataspheres and tends to focus on reporting crimes that actually threaten its own infrastructure or illegally breach its internal broadcast regulations. ALEPH also maintains independent Aspects throughout the Sphere to ensure communications should primary systems fail or become compromised. Most orbital platforms and colonies on hazardous planets have their life support and environmental controls handled directly by ALEPH, optimizing them for safety and wellbeing of human life. ALEPH helps with running air scrubbers, temperature controls and even artificial day/night cycling in enclosed habitats to improve quality of life for those living within, matching them to the population's biorhythms. It also operates autonomous farms and waste recyclers in a lot of places. It makes a great effort to help keep people politically connected as well, operating voting systems and ensuring O-12 and various nations can directly address populations of any size and directly poll them at critical times without delays or human error in counting. This tends to protect and encourage democratic systems and has resulted in any ALEPH-run election having an infinitesmal margin of error if one exists at all. (Statisticians presumably argue if it's zero or 0.000000~001%.) ALEPH is usually heavily involved in any terraforming effort for new colonies, though not on the implementation level. Rather, when planets are discovered that seem hostile to human life, ALEPH is able to identify more stable regions or areas that might be made suitable for a human community to live, then develops deployment programs that, if followed, will take advantage of the natural terrain and resources to produce a colony site with reduced hazards, ideally to a level where they can be ignored (but, well, that's not always possible). ALEPH also gets called on to handle transportation. Pretty much any form of non-Nomad autopiloting system relies on ALEPH-based algorithms to ensure no one collides with each other despite high speed transport, whether in spacecraft or self-driving planetary vehicles. The AI is able to apply its massive processing capacity to handle all kinds of route optimization problems, and it is heavily involved in cargo tracking, shuttling routes, accident reporting and optimal traffic grid design. (The Nomads, of course, avoid using cars within their motherships and have dolphin pilots.) One important factor to keep in mind with ALEPH is that it is not limited to a single personality. It and its Aspects are not often in total agreement with each other, and indeed ALEPH is often in disagreement with itself, as it multiphasically splits its own persona into different parts within its overmind. It is far more common for it to have multiple different personas within itself that are in variable or intermittent communication with each other, though when dealing with outsiders it tends to project an illusion of cohesion for the aid of human interfacing. Its mind is able to easily divide, copy and fuse together and does so pretty much all the time, growing and shrinking various portions in response to need. This gets made even more complex by the fact that while all of ALEPH ultimately feeds back into its core hardware on Concilium, it is split over many different worlds that are in multiple star systems, introducing a lightspeed time lag to its communication with itself. Bureau Toth explains the situation by describing ALEPH as a gestalt mind, an utterly alien existence to humanity that is made up of multiple merging and splitting smaller thought processes which it chooses to mask with a more easily understood display for better interfacing with humans. ALEPH's Aspects are portions of itself that it spins off into individual subminds, allowing it to spread itself over multiple bodies that exist in every portion of human society, in addition to the greater overmind that exists within quantronic space. Each is a fragment of the greater whole of ALEPH rather than a fully independent AI, which is what makes them not break the Sole AI Law despite being independent individuals. Each one has only a tiny fraction of a fraction of ALEPH's intellect and power, but that merely means they're generally on par with a very competent person. They often vary greatly from each other, reflecting the myriad personas and thought processes within the overmind which ALEPH chooses among to manifest in physical bodies. It contains near-infinite variety and will select a specific skillset and persona, implanted through falsely generated history, and combine them with a portion of its own many personalities into a "child," a unique mental pattern and identity that can learn and grow on its own. Some Aspects are randomized patterns, to allow for unpredictable growth that might be quite powerful, though often aggressive. Many of these Aspects serve as heroic warriors for ALEPH. Others are designed for stability, efficiency and calm. Once ALEPH spins off a child persona and gets it approved by Bureau Toth, the Aspect's mind is placed in a simulated educational environment to grow it into a fully fledged person. While the simulation is brief in real time, it may last many years from the point of view of the Aspect, allowing them to develop a fully human viewpoint and be tested in many situations to see how it responds. It is also possible for multiple Aspects to be placed in a shared simulation, building deep personal bonds between a team of Aspects that are already in place when they get woken up in their homegrown bodies. The entire process is known as psychogenesis. Once psychogenesis is complete, it's time to initiate ectogenesis - the construction of the body. Not all Aspects receive a Lhost body, with some remaining wholly virtual, but that's a relative rarity. Most are implanted within a cyberbrain that has a Lhost grown around it, with physical systems selected specifically to be host to one trained mind. The body's physical aspects, particularly brain chemistry, can alter the final personality of the Aspect once it fully integrates, and successful integration into the Lhost body is critical to a successful Aspect, just as much so as psychogenesis. While most Aspects are placed in Lhosts that mimic basic human capability, some are given advanced bodies called improved Lhosts or i-Lhosts. Primarily, these are saved for ALEPH's personal strike force, the Special Situation Section. Every Aspect is generated aboard an Elysium, one of the co-orbital bases ALEPH maintains throughout the Human Sphere. The Elysiums also serve as training centers for ALEPH's assault troopers, but their role in completing download and integration of Aspects is far more important. This happens inside the Hephaestus Centers, which are top secret R&D facilities not only for their role in ectogenesis, but also because they are vital to the development of new Lhosts and robotics innovations and are where ALEPH helps O-12 with reverse engineering alien tech. There are rumors among the Nomads' Black Hand of the existence of "Hephaestus Black," a secret facility where ALEPH contains the results of illegal Templar AI experiments. Whether it exists or not is unclear, but if it does, it seems that its existence has been concealed from Bureau Toth, too, as they seem to have taken some interest in the rumors. That's probably not great if the place actually exists! See, O-12 is very deeply involved in everything ALEPH does. One of their greatest fears is that an enemy such as the Combined Army might be able to capture an Aspect and subvert it, using its Cube and link to Maya to access core ALEPH programming and overwrite it. In order to prevent that, ALEPH encodes Directive Seven into all Aspects, deep in their minds. Every Aspect is basically immortal due to constant Cube backups in ALEPH's core, but this is also the point of greatest vulnerability. Directive Seven was invented after it was discovered that the Combined Army's sepsitor weapons could meddle with and alter the personality stored in a Cube as well as living brains, so ALEPH felt it needed extreme measures to protect itself from the Combined Army's own AI leader, the Evolved Intelligence, on the basis that if it was itself ever suborned, humanity would be doomed. Now, all Aspects possess an L-gland. When it detects sepsitor toxins, Directive Seven activates, triggering the gland to produce a fast-acting toxin that kills the Aspect in minutes at most. An Aspect may activate its L-gland willingly with a thought, which means torture and capture are less than useful against them now, too. Any Aspect that is captured by the Combined Army and returns without activating its L-gland is automatically stripped of all legal identity and registered as compromised and marked for elimination, per ALEPH's own orders. Directive 7 is very clear on that - any captured Aspect must not be recovered alive and must cut itself off from ALEPH and commit suicide as soon as it can. Not that ALEPH tends to act alone. O-12 is fully aware that some people fear ALEPH as a manipulator and puppetmaster trying to control humanity. They know that ALEPH is powerful, certainly, but also views itself as a caretaker, defender and servant to humanity. Therefore, it established its own control over ALEPH, with the AI's cooperation. To ensure that an uncontrolled AI never developed, they enacted the Sole AI Law, banning creation of any other AI, which also happens to keep all data resources part of ALEPH and therefore maximally efficient. During ALEPH's development, Project: Toth was absorbed by the O-12 governance apparatus and turned into a full bureau. That's now Bureau Toth, the central control body and caretaker of the AI, plus the source of most public information on it. It also controls all ALEPH-related research (well, all legal research, anyway) and works closely with ALEPH on any military engagements it takes part in to ensure Aspects only fight in permitted manners and do not breach any laws. Bureau Toth has killswitches embedded in most of ALEPH's components, including the core, and can shut them down individually or en masse if required. It also has complete access to all ALEPH systems and subsystems to check on programming, ensuring it remains unaltered. Bureau Toth monitors core functions at all times, with a rotating team of engineers, system administrators and scientists tracking both the physical machinery and ALEPH's quantronic existence with interfaces that allow for direct manipulation of code. Legally, Bureau Toth mandates that Aspects are not people until they receive an official Transferred Identity Code. Once that happens, they are legally a human individual controlled by ALEPH. Transferred Identity Codes track every bit of an Aspect's existence, allowing Bureau Toth to monitor their location and actions at all times and producing an exhaustive paper trail on everything they do. If necessary, Bureau Toth or ALEPH can use a TIC to take total control over an Aspect or analyse anything it does. If an Aspect is ever lost or damaged beyond repair, the TIC is transferred to their backup mind and a new Lhost; their old body is considered legally dead and no longer a person or citizen of any nation. There are rumors that unbound Aspects exist without TIC safeguards, allowing them to act without Bureau Toth oversight. Most experts on ALEPH's behavior deny that this could be true, as do all Bureau Toth system administrators, but that hardly stops the rumors. Next time: The AI Army
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Jan 4, 2022 14:46
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lexadant posted:It started because someone was like "Let's play Star Wars" so we played Star Wars but no one watched it or actually read the rulebook so we made SPCF. It was spawned because we had to make hacking rules and they were made very late at night and entirely unreadable from delirium and thus spawned the general aesthetic of the game. 
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Jan 4, 2022 15:53
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It really is the perfect explanation. Thank you for making SPCF; it's not a game I would run in its current form, but it was a joy to read about and I've half a mind to buy it just to read it. I will, in fact, Rule Table Like Amberline Emperor, thank you.
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Jan 4, 2022 17:10
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Infinity RPG Why Does The Computer Get An Army Technically speaking, Special Situations Section (SSS) is a law enforcement agency that is trained to track, hunt down and decisively end any and all crime related to AI research. Until recently, it was pretty limited in when and how it could act. It just wasn't allowed to use them much...until Paradiso. After that, all O-12 member nations except the Nomads signed the Utgard Accords, massively expanding its ability to legally operate independent of other agencies and intervene in battle. This also split the agency into Operations Subsection and Assault Subsection, for investigation and direct assault, respectively. That said, the Utgard Accords do still maintain strict regulations on when and how SSS can act. First, SSS's purpose is defined as ALEPH's personal tool to be used (in compliance with all law) to investigate, pursue and terminate any activities violating the Non-AI Proliferation Treaty or the Sole AI Law. They are authorized to serve as a security force and maintain order, including the right to intervene with violence in order to stop violent or organized criminals on matters related to illegal AI or to protect strategically important ALEPH facilities and personalities. They are legally considered both a military and paramilitary unit for purposes of supporting the war on Paradiso, with the duty of providing intelligence data and operative support. The Section may be called on to support Human Sphere military forces in any operation approved of by both the military's government and O-12. Any action that the Section takes must be done "following the principles of legality" and in all cases must conform to the requests of relevant political and administrative authorities. The Section will act independently in any circumstance in which O-12, Bureau Toth or other involved nations find it technically impossible to do anything. When public order is restored and the threat of illegal AI is taken down, the Section must immediately withdraw and return to base. Any place in which Section units are quartered and all arming and equipping of its agents must be done in accord with O-12 monitoring and verification. It is only permitted to be stationed at strategic locations on Concilium Prima, Neoterra, Yutang, Acontecimento or Paradiso. ALEPH is forbidden to have any other police, paramilitary or surveillance organization unless legislation is explicitly changed to allow it. All members of the Section must be trained for each mission specifically and are legally considered officers of the law with all relevant rights and legal or societal obligations. They must properly identify themselves in any operation. Assault Subsection was approved after the Combined Army's attack on Paradiso revealed their terrifying ability to infiltrate human territory. ALEPH realized they were trying to set up a beachhead for further invasion and that humanity could not stop them without further help. It quickly convinced the O-12 nations to empower it to intervene militarily. Assault Subsection is more often referred to as the Steel Phalanx or the Myrmidon Army, a force made of combat Aspects and semiautonomous robots that is solely answerable to ALEPH. It moves into the hottest combat zones that the Combined Army is involved in, minimizing human casualties by taking the brunt itself. The Aspects that belong to Assault Subsection have unique designs and functions to better be able to achieve their goal: the total elimination of all Combined Army forces anywhere. They do not have mercy for the enemy, and if they win a battle against the CA, they make a point of wiping out every enemy unit they can find, on the basis that this is the Combined Army's own tactics against human forces, and so no mercy can be granted to them. The Agema Marksmen are ALEPH's sharpshooters and snipers, used to take out key targets from a distance to clear the path for the main infantry. They tend to be designed for passion and competitiveness, and the Agema are well known for comparing kill counts to try and win leaderboards. Chandra Special Operations Aspects are much less famous, and technically speaking they don't exist and have no official records. Still, enough rumors exist about them that the average person does (correctly) believe the Chandra exist and are active in Human Sphere. They are stealthy spies, theoretically in charge of ALEPH's black ops needs. Other groups, particularly the Nomads, like to make up stories about Chandra activities and plans, using them to try and show that ALEPH is violating the Utgard Accords. They may well be correct, but because Chandra does not officialy exist, it's easy for O-12 to wave off their claims. The Ekdromoi are ALEPH's quick response team, the first to arrive in any high-risk action zone. They make surgical strikes and are able to take out even heavily defended targets with their aerial assaults, often getting back out before the enemy realizes they're being attacked. Their counterparts on the ground are the Homeridae, the most elite forces ALEPH can muster, led by the Recreation of Achilles. Each member of the Homeridae is a unique and terrifyingly powerful Aspect with custom traits and abilities. They are famous throughout the Human Sphere for their valor in battle and their greatness under pressure, serving as an inspiration for the rest of Assault Subsection to try and emulate. (And, yes, ALEPH makes an anime about them.) The main infantry force seeking to emulate them is the Thorakitai, a mobile and adaptable force that is meant to be able to take on any task without specializing in one specifically. While the Steel Phalanx is primarily stuck on Paradiso, Operations Subsection works to support ALEPH's obligations throughout the Sphere. They coordinate heavily with many different human agencies, but also contain a number of squads set to specific regulatory or investigative tasks rather than liaison work. First, there's the SSS Financial Security Commission. No human is able to fully process the sheer amount of financial data flying around the Human Sphere, so ALEPH handles it. It allows a degree of volatility because it believes economic competition is valuable to expanding human civilization, but it also enforces a degree of stability by checking for efforts to abuse commercial infrastructure, rig prices or flood markets to cause harmful inflation, relying on the Aspects of the FSC to do its investigating. The SSS Information Service, meanwhile, is ALEPH's PR team. ALEPH maintains a number of Aspects known as the Aoidoi, whose job is to witness and broadcast news across the Human Sphere so that even the furthest reaches are up to date on current events. They are designed to be passionate about truth in reporting as a means of protecting humanity from harm, even self-harm. Aoidoi agents provide daily updates on all kinds of situations, and they are often very theatrical and adventurous in their work. They do, however, consider truth a less important detail than providing a positive impact on society, and while they don't tend to lie directly, they are more than willing to elide key details that might make ALEPH look bad or make people lose hope in the future. The last major Operations branch is the SSS Quantronic Quality Service. They were originally designed to monitor and maintain Maya. However, they have gone beyond being simple monitors, and now are tasked to perform basic cyberwarfare activities against hostile worms and viruses. ALEPH has allocated a number of resources to virus detection and insuring security and integrity of dataspheres within Maya, and the QQS enforce that security. On a somewhat more controversial note, however, they are also responsible for "purifying" Maya of illegal materials, most notably what ALEPH classes 'hostile memetic viruses' from the Nomad Nation. Support Subsection handles most of the daily operations of ALEPH's care for the Human Sphere and its infrastructure. They aren't investigators or fighters, generally - they're managers and administrators that ensure humanity lives a pleasant and efficient life. They work in all manner of fields - commericial reporting, oversight for journalists, educational work, health and safety, and more. They streamline most of the work humanity engages in, and without them it is highly likely that human civilization would collapse. The main agency of note within them for PC purposes is the Psychosanitary Risks Evaluation Department, PRED. Their job is to evaluate all Aspects during psychogenesis, checking for personalities that do not mesh well. Aspects are capable of mental instability or what humans would class as insane behavior, and PRED tries to identify these risks ahead of time and determine if an Aspect is functional (if possibly limited to specific roles) or is broken and must be scrapped. Aspects deemed unfit to exist due to mental or emotional flaws are wiped and reformatted for a new psychogenesis until they achieve a satisfactory development. All PRED reports are monitored by Bureau Toth, which flags any approved Aspects they deem worthy of closer observation in action. The last major thing to talk about when dealing with Aspects are the Recreations. They began with Project: Maid of Orleans, a PR stunt between the PanOceanian military, the Catholic Church and ALEPH to develop a charismatic brand ambassador which would show off the benefits of close association with ALEPH. ALEPH decided, since they asked it to make Joan of Arc, it was going to make an SSR Joan of Arc - and so what PanO got was a tactical genius who could singlehandedly swing entire battles with her leadership skills and who instantly grasped tactical situations and weapons usage. Which they really should've expected from what they asked for, but no one except ALEPH actually thought Joan was going to come out anything but a useful media tool. Making a Recreation is not about actually creating an exact copy of a historic or legendary figure; that would be impossible. Joan of Arc and Sun Tze didn't have Cubes to record their brain state, and even if they did, they'd be broken by culture shock to be woken up in the Human Sphere unchanged. ALEPH ensures that it designs all Recreations with modern social mores and mentalities as part of their psychogenesis, eliminating any anachronistic beliefs that it feels would be harmful to society or the Recreation. Each one is designed from the ground up based on known traits of the target persona in historic or legendary accounts, but with motivations, drives and education meant to fit into modern society, so that they aren't limited by their origin time and historic perspective. Once all this is in place, the Recreation is run through a rigorous set of tests, far beyond what most Aspects get in their normal personality incubation. After all, the goal isn't just a functioning person - it's a person who is recognizable as the identity asked for. They have to not only be good at what they do, but do it in a manner that fits who they are and serves as a symbol. They have to want to be themselves. This is significantly harder than just creating a person out of AI personality fragments. Recreations are incubated for an exponentially longer period than most Aspects, their nascent sheut (the common term for one's core identity, ie, all the stuff that gets saved to a Cube, adapted from Egyptian mythology) given all of the education ALEPH deems necessary to their persona and then put through test after test after test, pitting them against both challenges their historic self faces and hypothetical situations to see if they react in the correct manner, retrying them over and over until all results are in line with expectations for that persona. Only once that is complete is a Recreation ready for ectogenesis. Joan of Arc's massive success led to ALEPH creating Recreations of Saladin (for Haqqislam) and Sun Tze (for Yu Jing), and the trio have made many people come to believe that all Recreations exist for military purposes. (The use of mythic Greek heroes as the basis for the Homerides probably doesn't help with that perception.) In reality, most Recreations are not military in nature. Maid of Orleans was intended mostly as a PR project originally, and that it produced a strategic and tactical genius was considered a surprise by everyone but ALEPH. In the years since, ALEPH and O-12 have recognized that PR ambassadors who aren't military figures can be very valuable. The problem is mostly that Recreations are exceptionally expensive to make due to their long incubation period, so there's not that many of them. They only get formed for specific purposes, and each one is always a risk, because there's not a guarantee that the Recreation will succeed in its intended purpose. Their purpose is usually even more clear than other Aspects - for example, ALEPH constructed a William Wallace Recreation in an O-12 effort to cause political discord on Ariadna so that it might speed up integration of the planet into the Human Sphere and give them more reasons to import ALEPH's aid and associated Maya hardware. That failed because Wallace crashlanded, suffered damage, and ended up joining the Ariadnans and losing contact with the AI. Saladin was a successful design in that he is a masterful swordsman and general and is loyal to Haqqislam, as intended, but his purpose was to convince the Haqq to cooperate more with ALEPH, and he didn't actually change their policies one way or the other. Miyamoto Musashi was created for a corporation to fight in the Aristeia! ring, but he eventually rebelled and went underground, becoming a mercenary that works across the Human Sphere. (The problem here is likely that the corporation insisted they wanted a Recreation based on actual Musashi, rather than legendary Musashi, a practice ALEPH has largely discontinued unless specifically asked to do so.) It is unclear the degree to which ALEPH anticipated or planned for any of these things - but it's clear that not everything goes the way the AI plans it, unless its plans are impossibly labyrinthine to a degree that is incomprehensible to human minds. Which is possible, but unlikely and unhelpful to game narrative. Next time: Business As Usual
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Jan 4, 2022 19:12
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lexadant posted:Afore the creation of the book, only in times of great exhaustion or other mental fatigure (or just bad day). All of us are pretty good at speaking SPCF though and sometimes things just come out like that in the day to day now, even by not purpose. As for the translation type -- it was translated only by the biopsychic abilities of the transcribers, not by any mechanical means, for maximal vibe matching to the goal vibes. SPCF is purely about vibes and the language used is as close to transcribing said vibes as possible. I am totally looking forward to running it with my 5e group.
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Jan 4, 2022 19:23
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So is ALEPH heading towards HAL 9000 territory or is genuinely semi-benevolent? It does seem a hair's breath away from making recreations of like Kakashi Hatake but that might be a feature or a bug depending on the person.
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Jan 4, 2022 20:01
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Somehow it seems fitting that a super-AI that evolved from the Internet would film its own anime and recreate historical figures for shits and giggles, only for half of them to work TOO well and go off the reservation. EDIT: I get the impression that ALEPH is benevolent but has a warped sense of humour.
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Jan 4, 2022 20:02
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Dawgstar posted:So is ALEPH heading towards HAL 9000 territory or is genuinely semi-benevolent? It does seem a hair's breath away from making recreations of like Kakashi Hatake but that might be a feature or a bug depending on the person. ALEPH genuinely wants to help and protect people but it has a combination of making people dependent on it for survival because of how easy daily life is to automate through it and a tendency to give governments and corporations what they ask for if they work with it because it doesn’t want to stifle their creativity.
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Jan 4, 2022 20:07
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As far as the wargame is concerned, ALEPH really does just want what's best for humanity, and is not secretly plotting to turn us all into Matrix-style batteries. The Nomads are probably still justified in not trusting it in that it is tied to closely to PanO and the other big powers, who have historically been absolute shits to the Nomad Nation, but that's more the human element at work.
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Jan 4, 2022 20:08
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Cooked Auto posted:Pretty sure Neotech 2 has absolutely ruined me on career path systems and I can't look at similar stuff and without shuddering. I love the Infinity random roll character because my ALEPH (nationality) dude went into a prestigious school, then into the triads, got fired from the triads, did some space piloting, and then diplomatic work. This made for a character that was p. absurd (and I did joke too much re: fired from the mob), wasn't too bad on the battlefield (and our GM took pains to give me Piloting styff to do, plus, I convinced to my team that a broad daylight assassination via a flying truck was a great idea), and it was all without me having to worry about a million choices presented to me + i got some bennies for going full random. That's a great thing about WFRP 4e too.
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Jan 4, 2022 20:28
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I mean it works in some cases but the idea just gives me feelings of dread after seeing it so badly executed. At least Infinity has themes and ideas of how to make PC's work together as you start, N2 has jack poo poo of that.
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Jan 4, 2022 20:51
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Night10194 posted:It really is the perfect explanation. Thank you for making SPCF; it's not a game I would run in its current form, but it was a joy to read about and I've half a mind to buy it just to read it. I'm stoked that we are getting treeware SPCF.
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Jan 4, 2022 23:51
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JcDent posted:I love the Infinity random roll character because my ALEPH (nationality) dude went into a prestigious school, then into the triads, got fired from the triads, did some space piloting, and then diplomatic work. This made for a character that was p. absurd (and I did joke too much re: fired from the mob), wasn't too bad on the battlefield (and our GM took pains to give me Piloting styff to do, plus, I convinced to my team that a broad daylight assassination via a flying truck was a great idea), and it was all without me having to worry about a million choices presented to me + i got some bennies for going full random.
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Jan 5, 2022 00:12
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