FATAL & Friends 2014-15: The Neverending Storygame

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unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

LatwPIAT posted:

I slightly curious as to why it seems that nobody who wrote about fictional future computers seemed to have heard of, or considered, just applying Moore's Law. Was is just that unknown back then?

It's especially glaring in stuff that came out after Shadowrun, which was smart enough to throw up its hands and just say "We're using completely made up units that have no relation to real world computer stats. It's all MEGAPULSES." And IIRC by 2E was going "Yeah, okay, storage as opposed to active memory is basically unlimited at this point."

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:02

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# ? Oct 11, 2024 11:54

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

LatwPIAT posted:

I slightly curious as to why it seems that nobody who wrote about fictional future computers seemed to have heard of, or considered, just applying Moore's Law. Was is just that unknown back then?

Moore's law is from the mid-60s so they definitely had it. RPGs just have this awesome rich history of putting in computers that are underwhelming practically by the date of publishing. Personally, I think it should be a tradition now and RPG writers should be putting in DVD-RWs that hold TWICE as much as today's or USB connectors that, get this, can be stuck in upside down just fine(!) forever.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:02

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

I think it's pretty safe to say that the Torg developers didn't really "get" computers. I mean, look at Torg cyberdecks; you can't just "run" your software, you have to manually load a program from your (limited) space to the processor before you could use it.

And this is with a world that has a higher tech level than ours in 2015, even though we now have whole OSes that fit on thumb drives, or 32+GB storage the size of your fingernail.

theironjef posted:

USB connectors that, get this, can be stuck in upside down just fine(!)

Well, that'd just be flat-out magic.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:08

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

Genius: The Transgression Part 2: The Cosmos

You will notice I'm not posting any art or graphics. That's because there is none. The Genius online book is 488 pages of nothing but text and charts.

Genius posted:

A genius is a mortal man or woman gifted with extraordinary insight and technical brilliance. A genius is also
a concept, an extra-worldly thing, a muse, an eidolon of imagination and beauty, something that alights for a
time upon mortals or, sometimes, buries itself deep in the soul of a person and does not leave.

This double-truth follows a genius through life: are they extraordinary individuals gifted with a touch of the
impossible, or are they mere conduits for a greater and inhuman power? This question torments many of the
Inspired, and they pore over the accounts of their predecessors and propose monstrous and baffling
philosophies in order to learn what they are: gifted mortals, or mere shells for the idea of genius? Every
genius must ask herself, at some point, am I real? And they must discover for themselves the origin and true
nature of their ideas. Are they Inspired, or are they Inspiration personified? Where do the terrible, beautiful
ideas come from, if not from their own mind? Are they, in some sense, worthy of the wonders they make, or
are they mere midwives for things more beautiful than they―things in some sense, more real?

I actually kinda like this premise for Geniuses: Inspiration is what makes them what they are, but it's dangerous, alien, and potentially horrifying. We then get some elaboration on the danger Inspiration poses to geniuses, that it's the force driving them away from humanity into the realm of mad science. It's the mundane parts of human existence that keep geniuses grounded for the most part, maintaining ties to mundane human existence rather than deciding they're above it all. It's appropriate for the mad scientist mythos, though there isn't a whole lot of crunch to back it up - Genius pretty much expects you to slide into insanity.

Genius posted:

The Breakthrough
At Last I Understand

A genius' Breakthrough―the moment she stops being a normal mortal, however naturally gifted, and
becomes Inspired―is often a traumatic experience, though it is rarely sudden. Over the course of weeks,
months, or even years, a mortal's perspective begins to change. Ideas that once made sense become dubious,
unintuitive, even suspicious, while new notions seem to leap unbidden into the person's mind. These might
be dismissed as madness, if the ideas don't work, or unexpected leaps of intuition, if somehow they do, but
the nagging suspicion remains that the ideas are coming from Outside, that somehow they are not one's own.

Most reasonable people, at this point, retreat from the strange revelations: they shut themselves down, force
themselves to go about their day-to-day lives, and if they're lucky or determined, they won't experience a
Breakthrough at all. They will live out their little lives like the rest of us. But some rush headlong toward
these new experiences, while others cannot or will not escape them, perhaps seeing answers there that have
eluded them before. This is how a genius is born.

The first few months after the Breakthrough are traumatic and infuriating: Inspiration, for all its brilliance,
fears the light of day. Answers that seem so obvious as the genius labors by night in rented laboratory space
turn to nonsense when shown to one's fellows. Many geniuses think they are going mad. Their friends almost
certainly think so. Isolation and madness set in as the Breakthrough drags on: the genius is Inspired, but lacks
any ability to produce something. He is not yet a maker of wonders.

The Breakthrough is what turns a mortal into a genius. It's that moment where a sane scientist starts to go mad, obsessed with peculiar and brilliant ideas that often make sense to the genius but no one else. Of course, in Transgression's case you're going insane on two levels, with the latter being that the source of your sudden brilliance really is an outside force, and it's not really compatible with the human mind.

Also, it's a recurring theme that mortals simply can't understand the mad super-science of the Inspired. Their stuff simply doesn't work by the rules of the normal world and shouldn't work at all. It's the power of Mania and Inspiration that makes these impossible wonders work - that tesla gun, that super-suit, that cybernetic rig... so yeah it's magic for all intents and purposes but dressed up as science.

At this point in the mortal's descent into Inspiration, most go one of three ways: joining the Peerage (the organization of relatively sane good-guy mad scientists the PCs are assumed to be a part of), joining Lemuria (the organization of relatively insane bad-guy mad scientists the PCs are assumed to be enemies of), or becoming Illuminated.

The Illuminated are what happens when something goes deeply wrong or a Genius' morality stat hits 0: the alien force of Inspiration completely consumes the human mind and what emerges is an alien force of intellect and creativity in a human suit. We'll get some more detail on the Illuminated later on, but for now the Illuminated are noted to be very explicitly no longer human in any real sense of the word, and there is no cure of any kind for Illumination. Most end up killed by the Peerage or Lemuria because of the danger they pose to everyone.

On to demographics and the question of who tends to become Inspired.

Genius posted:

According to Genius: A Complete Psychological Breakdown, published by Ayako Von Schreber and Bob "Doc"
Sandwich in 2005, the Inspired are primarily drawn from the scientific, academic, and educational fields. It
should come as no surprise that almost nine in ten Inspired work or worked in such fields: they are or were
scientists, researchers, philosophers, sociologists, professors, mathematicians, engineers, technicians, medical
doctors, or computer experts. Many others are drawn from related fields: Inspired populations boast many
librarians, historians, field guides, teachers, explorers, mechanics, architects, and all-purpose scholars. This is
what geniuses call the breeding pool, the usual "spawning ground" for new geniuses.

Inspiration isn't always random - it can be cultivated in someone, though not reliably. It does take a certain mindset to become Inspired, mainly a mindset capable of thinking and planning, seeing a problem and working out a solution or being struck with some vast question.

We're told now that about 60% of all Inspired come to it naturally, just regular people who suddenly start to see impossible answers to their questions and theories. The rest were deliberately guided as Beholden (read: ghouls) and either deliberately cultivated by geniuses to become Inspired themselves or were intended to be mere lab assistants and servants who suddenly became much more.

Don't really want to play a mad scientist? Worry not!

Genius posted:

About 12% of geniuses become Inspired though they possess no particular scientific or technical background,
nor formal training time under another genius. The old term for such a person was a raudus, a raw "lump" of
genius. They possess no training, but they have raw talent and some kind of frantic drive that pushes them
into a Breakthrough. The beat cop who sees one crime too many and decides to mess around with an armored
suit, the mother whose children are menaced by mysterious underground machines and who ransacks
libraries to find out how to stop them, the laborer who watches a loved one wither of untreatable cancer, and
who starts asking around about "impossible" cures...all these people are geniuses for whom the Breakthrough
comes first and mundane knowledge comes later.

There's a lot of room and suggestion in Genius that if you want to you can play the game as superheroes who build their own super-gadgets, and here's your out. Bruce Wayne and Viktor Frieze can both be reasonably approximated as Inspired.

Next we're told that about one in three Inspired actually has a PhD, but that most are hobbyists. Genius does have a curious blind spot about professionals whose work gives them the opportunity to become Inspired but aren't interested in becoming doctors or professors themselves. Despite all this ground to play a Genius who isn't a mad scientist, the fluff assumes that you're just that.

Genius posted:

There are a lot of Inspired, a fact that startled the Peerage when it was first discovered. Estimates are as high
as one person in five thousand being a genius, though many are lonesomes with no idea of what they are.
More conservative estimates make Inspired rarer, but there are still a good number of them in any major
metropolitan area.

Uh... I'm pretty sure this many mad scientists would be noticed, though we're also told that 30-50% of all Inspired don't know what they are. Which seems weird given that there's an alien power burning in their skulls and Inspired are pretty good about recognizing mad science in action. I can only assume that most Inspired don't actually bother with becoming mad scientists and instead post really weird conspiracy theories and fanfic on the internet.

More demographics come up, telling us that despite the promise that Inspiration can happen to anyone mad science is actually pretty expensive and so Inspired tend to be highly educated and wealthy, with the exceptions being notable and peculiar.

Genius posted:

Obligation
From Up Here They Look Like Ants

A genius' Breakthrough, once she has mastered his first Axioms and created her first wonders, is often
accompanied by a godlike feeling of invincibility and of escape from the fetters of the mundane world. But a
genius cannot escape humanity, at least while keeping his humanity intact.

Instead, a genius is bound to humanity by ties of Obligation. The genius can never again be part of everyday
humanity, or return to his old life. He can never again walk among his former peers as equals, at least not
without danger to himself and to them. But the genius cannot simply be a watcher. Instead he must become a
monitor, a guardian of his world from both his own wonders and horrors and those unleashed by others.
Often dispassionate, but never disinterested, the genius becomes a protector of common humanity

Obligation is the morality stat of Genius, and while it's flavorful and appropriate I don't see why Inspired have to abandon traditional morality. The best analogy I can think of for Obligation is looking at superheroes, actually. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark would be good examples of high obligation Inspired - they're volatile, egotistical, more than just a little removed from ordinary humanity, and definitely a bit crazy, but they view their powers as an obligation to protect mundane people from dangers they can't fight. Mister Freeze and any of the bad guys from the Iron Man movies would be examples of low obligation Inspired.

Genius posted:

Too much Maniacal activity, too fast, can result in the genius cracking as Inspiration overrides parts of her
thinking mind. When this happens, the genius becomes an unmada: the raw energy of Mania echoes her own
thoughts, confirming her prejudices and beliefs. Those beliefs then reinforce her Inspiration, which produces
more bent Mania, producing a hall-of-mirrors or echo-chamber effect where the genius' own subconscious
continually validates her opinions while wiping away contradictory data. Some geniuses escape this fate;
others revel in it.

All Inspired are insane. Period. But some become special types of insane, altered by Inspiration. Unmada/Maniacs are the most common type: Inspiration has warped their senses and minds to the point that not only do they wholeheartedly believe that they are absolutely correct about what to anyone else is patent insanity, they can start warping reality around them to reflect their particular world view. This latter ability is part of what makes Unmada dangerous: if you run into one who's convinced that electricity doesn't work, there's a good chance that anything around them that runs on electricity will simply stop working.

Part of the reason Lemuria are the bad guy mad scientists is because they're comprised exclusively of Unmada, though it's noted that a fair few Peers and independent Inspired are like this as well.

Genius posted:

The Consensus
I Still Remember The Scorn of My Peers

Two geniuses in every three come from some kind of "scientific" background, and one of the first things they
learn is that, after their Breakthrough, they can never return to their former lives. Their mere existence
disrupts research, clouds statistics, and makes a mockery of the scientific method. A genius is not a scientist; a
genius is a wonder-worker whose miracles are technological in nature.

Because of this, the life of a genius is a lonely one. Other Inspired can be allies, but are more often competitors
for the same meager resources. Mortals can turn a wonder into a pile of scrap with a moment's handling, and
the insightful nature of those mortals geniuses most want to associate with―fellow scientists and
thinkers―merely hastens the process of disintegration. Those mortals who have embraced the genius'
worldview, her beholden, embrace it with such feverish devotion and faith that, whatever their other merits,
they are no more than echo chambers for the genius' thoughts.

This is one of the beefs I have with Genius, to be honest. We're told, abstractly, that not only do mortals cause problems when they start handling stuff fueled by Inspiration (which there are rules for), Inspired mess up conventional work... somehow, despite Inspired being assumed to be holding down a regular job. Also, geniuses are explicitly not lonely - that is the entire point of the Peerage in fluff, providing a friendly network of mad scientists to keep you grounded, sane, and funded. There are plenty of real life scientists who hold all manner of bizarre beliefs and crazy ideas, but they still get good work done.

In fact, the very next segment is about Collaboratives and the Peerage and how they exist precisely to provide cooperation, trust, and fellow people who don't think you're any more insane than they are.

Genius posted:

No One Is In Charge

Much of Earth's scientific history is due to subtle manipulation by Lemuria. It is unclear how much control
this group had, and it has become increasingly obvious that Lemuria had far less influence on the
development of the mortal world than they often boast. But what is clear is that for centuries―millennia,
perhaps―they kept a rein on the progress of science, mad and otherwise. Their program for the development
of humanity, the Race History, stamped out innovation and development wherever it appeared, replacing it
with developments spoon-fed to humanity by the Lemurians. Free geniuses were converted or killed.

This system never worked perfectly, and by the 17th century it had begun to unravel. Lemuria took centuries
to die, and it fought for every second of life, crushing intellectual revolutions that threatened to destroy its
hegemony. But new ideas swept across the world, and the Lemurians could not hold them back. Their
techniques grew more severe and unyielding, their philosophy more intransigent, and when they moved to
"set back the clock" in a series of wars that would have left humanity a burned-out shell, the free Inspired
were moved to action: they confronted the Lemurians in open battle, chased down and killed the Secret
Masters that controlled them, and ruined the careful planning behind the Race History. By the middle of the
20th century, humanity was free...and no one was in charge.

No one is in charge now, either. That, say many Inspired, is why we didn't get the future with the flying cars
and the "televisors" and the moon bases: those things were in the works, all set for the Lemurians to hand
them down to us like manna from heaven, and we were supposed to accept them and let our betters maintain
them while we lived our happy, comfortable lives. But Lemuria got its rear end kicked, and has your life ever been
comfortable? It hasn't, say many in the Peerage, because humanity is off the rails, free from control or
intellectual extortion.

So no one is in charge of humanity, mundane or Inspired. We've been forging our own path for fifty years―or
500 years, depending on how you count it. It's been a terrible mess, but it's been our mess. There are no
Secret Masters, no answers hidden by centuries-old secret societies―well, not anymore―no Golden Age in the
past, no Utopia in the future, no free rides, no easy answers, and no one at the wheel. It's just humanity, some
of whom can create fifty-foot-tall robots, trying to get by.

This? I genuinely like this part of the setting. Part of Genius' attempt at horror is the idea that for most of human history civilization was guided in secret by hidden masters that offered stability. A ruthless, tyrannical stability, but someone was in charge of humanity and had a plan. Not any more, though. The Inspired secret societies have no large-scale political power and the aggressive manes (we'll get to those later, in short they're theories literally spawned by their own disproof) like the Martians, Ophidians, and Moon Nazis literally can't exist or impact human civilization in any meaningful way. The godlike beings at the end of time have been wiped out, and the remaining time police are overworked and corrupt.

It's down to just humanity now.

This post is getting rather long, so I'm calling it short.

Next time: More of the Cosmos

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:15

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

Genius is sounding way too good so far, when does it crash and burn?

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:26

Tulul: Oct 23, 2013; THAT SOUND WILL FOLLOW ME TO HELL.

Genius isn't really a trainwreck game from what I remember, you just get this creeping sense of disappointment reading it as you realize that it isn't anywhere near as good as it could be.

Although I think the specific line that sums up everything Genius does wrong does from this chapter:

quote:

A genius is not a scientist; a genius is a wonder-worker whose miracles are technological in nature.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:46

kaynorr: Dec 31, 2003

theironjef posted:

Moore's law is from the mid-60s so they definitely had it. RPGs just have this awesome rich history of putting in computers that are underwhelming practically by the date of publishing. Personally, I think it should be a tradition now and RPG writers should be putting in DVD-RWs that hold TWICE as much as today's or USB connectors that, get this, can be stuck in upside down just fine(!) forever.

I suspect that more than a few cyberpunk authors take solace in the fact that William Gibson knew gently caress-all about technology and basically cribbed terms that he had overheard or gleaned from friends. Missing the point that unless you can write prose like Gibson, maybe you want to do a bit more research and grounding for your mirrorshades future.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:48

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Cythereal posted:

Also, it's a recurring theme that mortals simply can't understand the mad super-science of the Inspired. Their stuff simply doesn't work by the rules of the normal world and shouldn't work at all. It's the power of Mania and Inspiration that makes these impossible wonders work - that tesla gun, that super-suit, that cybernetic rig... so yeah it's magic for all intents and purposes but dressed up as science.

Does it still work if the 'Genius' hands it to a non-wizard and leaves?

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:48

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

Zereth posted:

Does it still work if the 'Genius' hands it to a non-wizard and leaves?

No, that triggers Havoc. You want to keep mortals as far away from Inspiration as possible. Mortals who get access to Wonders will quite reasonably point out all the ways it simply cannot work according to the laws of science, which in turn tends to make the Wonder explode or fall apart.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:52

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

So you could do a Find and Replace from Genius to Ork and it'd still work, right?

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:52

That Old Tree: Jun 24, 2012; nah

I think 500 pages of solid text is a great enough sin on its own.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:53

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

theironjef posted:

So you could do a Find and Replace from Genius to Ork and it'd still work, right?

Ork: the WAAAARGHening

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:55

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

One caveat: if a mortal gets access to a Wonder and doesn't wreck it through Havoc, you've either got yourself a Beholden or a new Genius in the making.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:57

Tulul: Oct 23, 2013; THAT SOUND WILL FOLLOW ME TO HELL.

Cythereal posted:

No, that triggers Havoc. You want to keep mortals as far away from Inspiration as possible. Mortals who get access to Wonders will quite reasonably point out all the ways it simply cannot work according to the laws of science, which in turn tends to make the Wonder explode or fall apart.

It's stupider then that, because literally touching a wonder causes ~~Paradox~~Havoc. If a Genius' robot attacks you, just punch it and it might go haywire.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:57

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

Cythereal posted:

No, that triggers Havoc. You want to keep mortals as far away from Inspiration as possible. Mortals who get access to Wonders will quite reasonably point out all the ways it simply cannot work according to the laws of science, which in turn tends to make the Wonder explode or fall apart.

So it's not science. Even a little.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 17:58

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

Zereth posted:

So it's not science. Even a little.

No, it very explicitly is not. You have to take a special attribute to make a Wonder look normal-ish, otherwise it's immediately obvious that this thing absolutely shouldn't work and is patently insane.

The fact that Inspired are for all intents and purposes mages leads to a funny bit near the end of the book talking about how Inspired typically interact with other supernaturals and the book has to dance very carefully around the fact that it's almost impossible to tell the difference between a genius and a mage.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 18:00

Zereth: Jul 9, 2003

If it was obvious that it shouldn't work and was patently insane, but just sat there doing its thing no matter what onlookers thought of it the "Geniuses" would actually have a claim to be mad scientists. They're just weirder more hosed up wizards! :argh:

Tulul posted:

It's stupider then that, because literally touching a wonder causes ~~Paradox~~Havoc. If a Genius' robot attacks you, just punch it and it might go haywire.

I just realized this actually kinda fits in a pulp adventure way. The stalwart good-hearted hero gives the robot a good, solid punch and it flips out and falls apart because the mad scientist was, you know, crazy and didn't build it properly.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 18:11

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

Sounds like they would've been better off doing a techno-mage thing, like an Order or big Legacy that focuses on artifact creation.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 18:15

Kurieg: Jul 19, 2012; RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20

Zereth posted:

So it's not science. Even a little.

There's a reason I called it SCIENCE! the rpg. It's the kind of pulpy super-science that comes out of comic books with a casual disdain for any kind of "real" scientific method or form of research. It was made by people who got mad at the new world of darkness for not supporting that kind of play in the new version of Mage.

Conversely, actual scientists make very dangerous mages. Knowing how to get the most out of your chemical reactions, knowing what elements react with what other elements and in what ways, using a little bit of magic to tweak the stochiometry and you can bring down buildings without paradox so much as rearing it's ugly head.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 18:16

wdarkk: Oct 26, 2007; Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

If they have no relation to normal science, how did they guide human technological advancement and hand down free goodies?

# ? Apr 7, 2015 18:18

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

wdarkk posted:

If they have no relation to normal science, how did they guide human technological advancement and hand down free goodies?

They didn't. Lemuria was playing an entirely different kind of scientific game. Eugenics was one of their main stocks in trade.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 18:24

Green Intern: Dec 29, 2008; Loon, Crazy and Laughable

theironjef posted:

Hey so if anyone wants that Duckman RPG, we just wrote the game (based mostly on a few notes and then our improvised "review"), added a few fixes based on you folks, and then put it on our website along with our newest Afterthought episode. It's exactly as ludicrously overcomplicated as a 90s licensed game should be and we don't recommend playing, reading, or directly handling it.

You're doing some good work right here.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 18:24

theironjef: Aug 11, 2009; The archmage of unexpected stinks.

Green Intern posted:

You're doing some good work right here.

Thanks! I am just realizing that I forgot to include rules for what happens with a total failure roll, but I'll add those to Duckman: Second Edition.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 19:00

wdarkk: Oct 26, 2007; Friends: Protected
World: Saved
Crablettes: Eaten

Cythereal posted:

They didn't. Lemuria was playing an entirely different kind of scientific game. Eugenics was one of their main stocks in trade.

Ah, I was thinking they were just "evil version of the protagonists" and not a broader thing.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 19:03

Crasical: Apr 22, 2014; GG!^*
^*GET GOOD

Cythereal posted:

No, it very explicitly is not. You have to take a special attribute to make a Wonder look normal-ish, otherwise it's immediately obvious that this thing absolutely shouldn't work and is patently insane.

I'm vaguely recalling reading or hearing about raiding a mad scientist's lab where the floor was this branching, sprawling tangled web of daisy-chained power strips plugged into other power strips. When the characters eventually combed through the mess it slowly wound its way back to the epicenter of the power network, which was a single power strip plugged into itself. When they unplugged it, everything else in the building shut off.

It seems like whatever special attribute this is, it's just the art of having mysterious black box casings for your Wonders instead of proudly displaying that your evil island's power grid plugs into an irradiated cantaloupe.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 19:09

Bieeanshee: Aug 21, 2000; Not keen on keening.; Grimey Drawer

The Gordian power strip! I remember submitting one of those to Warehouse 23, back in the day. That and the architecture for a tolkien ring network.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 19:26

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

One of the biggest problems with Genius is the numbers - that many people with magic powers would utterly warp society. There's no way it could be kept secret, and nWoD is pretty good about having the monsters not warp the world to that extent.

Another is tone. The game can't decide what tone it wants - serious and tragic, pulpy, comedic, whatever. It vacillates wildly between all three, doing all of them poorly. And lastly, it is far, far, far too self-referential. Every game mechanic must be understood in character with the same names used by the players.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 19:53

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

Genius: the Transgression Part 3: The Cosmos continued

As a corollary to the fact that no one's in charge anymore, we're given another insistent beat of the game: mad science is expensive, and doesn't pay the bills. Given that all Inspired are insane, many of them have trouble holding down regular jobs, much less keeping the kind of money or access to exotic materials that mad science often requires. This is one of the draws of Lemuria: the organization is shattered, its leadership annihilated, its grand plan for the human race at an end, but the infrastructure backing up Lemuria's agenda of world domination is still there and is always willing to do business... for a price.

Genius posted:

The Monorail of Broken Dreams
Mania is the energy of Inspiration; if Inspiration is the generator, Mania is the electricity. But Mania is a
strange phenomenon. It is not generated by geniuses alone. Instead, all kinds of mortal thought can generate
low amounts of Mania, with scientific or mathematical thought generating more, and the sort of thought one
might call "revolutionary" (politically, scientifically, ethically, it doesn't matter) generating the most.

Mania windfalls occur during times of revolutionary scientific development, especially when an old idea is
rejected and supplanted by a new one. These "Maniac Storms" have two effects. First, they birth new
geniuses, as regular scientists (or just normal people with a touch too much curiosity) grow obsessed with
the new revelations about the world. Second, they generate manes, which are places, things, and even
creatures birthed from pure Mania.

When dreams, plans, and revolutions appear, or when they break down in neglect and failure, Maniac Storms
sweep across the world. The twentieth century was practically one big Maniac Storm, and no one knows if it's
over. (Brief periods of peace, such as immediately after World War Two and the Vietnam War, were shattered
by events as momentous as Sputnik and the computer revolution.) These storms leave the world littered with
bardos, false realms brought into existence by their own disproof. Bardos and the manes within them feed on
Mania, and even the most hopeful, Utopian bardo either decays into nothingness or finds some way, however
brutal, to steal Mania from the real world.

You might be detecting echoes of old Changeling. Inspiration is waxing in the modern world, accelerating with the breakneck pace of technological and social change in the modern world. Bardos and manes are name dropped again, visions of reality proven scientifically false but maintain a flickering existence by the desperate belief and Mania that they are still out there. And they're growing in number every year.

quote:

Genius in History and Legend
"3. And Jesus made of that clay twelve sparrows, and it was the Sabbath. And a child ran and told Joseph, saying:
Behold, thy child is playing about the stream, and of the clay he has made sparrows, which is not lawful. And when
he heard this, he went, and said to the child: Why dost thou do this, profaning the Sabbath? But Jesus gave him no
answer, but looked upon the sparrows, and said: Go away, fly, and live, and remember me."
-The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Roberts-Donaldson Translation (Second Greek Form)

The history of Inspiration is shrouded in myths, tall tales, and botched attempts at time travel. What is clear is
that there have been geniuses for nearly as long as there has been civilization. The oldest orphans―wonders
whose creators have disappeared or died―were found in Irem in the 1980s and dated to around 2500 BCE,
and rumors of even older Egyptian orphans and ones of unknown origin are common. Wonders have been
found from ancient Egypt and China, Babylon, Mesoamerica, and the Indian subcontinent. The remnants, no
longer functional, of Greek, Roman, Persian, and Medieval Muslim wonders are common collector's items
among the Inspired, and many orphans from the Renaissance and early industrial period are still in working
order, and treated as status symbols by powerful geniuses.

Like any World of Darkness game line, Genius claims that Inspiration has existed as long as human history, starting in India and the Middle East before the rise of Lemuria with the Romans. Most of Inspiration's ancient history is vague myth and legend, obscured by Lemurian historical revision and the impact of time travel (which is both possible for Inspired and not all that difficult). Lemuria's historical stronghold was in China, leaving the free-willed geniuses who would become the Peerage to the primitive technological backwater of Europe. This status quo changed with the Renaissance, and from the 15th century onwards Lemuria slowly withered and collapsed.

Genius is fairly restrained about claiming historical figures as Inspired, accurately pointing out that one of the main characteristics of a good scientist is an ability to communicate effectively with others and very few Inspired fit that description. The book claims Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Hooke, and of course Nikola Tesla as Inspired, but notes that cases for anyone else you'd care to name are very circumstantial. The Manhattan Project is specifically named as having zero Inspired involvement - both the Peerage and Lemuria watched the program closely, fearing what Mania interference could do.

The early 20th century was Lemuria's last roll of the dice for control of the human race in the form of the World Wars, which were intended to grind humanity back into the stone age. Lemuria failed, bringing us to the modern world where no one's in charge, breakneck technological development brings with it an acceleration of Inspired growth, and the internet has brought Inspired of all stripes together like never before.

Genius posted:

Fundamentals

Sometimes it seems like the modern world is all about brand identity. The ancient one was, too. Even if it
doesn't matter―especially if it doesn't matter―it's important for humans to have tribes, to divide themselves
into us and them, and to maintain nested dolls of familiarity and distance. A genius might be walking around
with an entire universe in his head, but he's still a human being and possesses the same needs and impulses
as any other.

But the foundations―the divisions of the Inspired―do more than just give geniuses a team to root for. They
provide a set of core assumptions that a genius needs to not go mad. Foundations provide axioms as well as
Axioms, setting the genius on the path to understanding Inspiration, Mania, Obligation, and the wider world
into which she has emerged. Further, each foundation offers a clear focus and identity. This is part of a
deliberate effort by the Peerage to help a new genius quickly find a place and a purpose before she succumbs
to one form of insanity or another.

Axioms are the principles and disciplines by which Wonders are built, and we're now given a brief overview of the Foundations.

Artificers practice mad engineering. They're builders, tinkerers, robot-makers, and sometimes computer hackers. Artificers are in this for the sheer love of making stuff.

Directors practice mad psychology. They're interested in the science of power - not just politicians, though they are the political leaders of the Peerage, but information scientists and more.

Navigators practice mad physics. They're Void Engineers from oMage, and they live to do stuff with mad science, frequently with a militaristic air.

Progenitors practice mad biology. They're weird even by Inspired standards, going whole hog on transhumanism and self-transformation.

Scholastics practice mad philosophy. They're the oldest and most traditional mad scientists and scholars, but the new generation style themselves trickster gods.

PCs are assumed to belong to the Peerage, and therefore to one of the Foundations. Like any group of scientists, though, every Foundation is riven with internal divisions and controversies, so there's no groupthink here.

We're also given name-drops of the Baramins of Lemuria, but I'll add a bit more detail. They're divided based on where and how they think human civilization went wrong.

Atomists are technocrats who believe that technology can fix anything and everything, and would have if not for that pesky human element.

Etherites believe in some Grand Unified Theory that completely explains all science, usually one long discredited like the Luminiferous Ether.

Mechanists believe in a possibly literal clockwork universe where everything boils down to predictable scientific equations and concepts like free will don't actually exist.

Oracles hate the modern concept of science in general and want to take humanity back to a time of mysticism and magic.

Phenomenologists are chaos theory types who believe everything is fundamentally chaotic and trying to impose order or morality on it is futile.

Genius posted:

The Nature of Inspiration
There Is A Pattern In This Chaos

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own
mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
-Umberto Eco

Ideas come from somewhere. At least the big ones do. Even the most staunchly rational peer recognizes that
there is something extraordinary at work in the making of wonders. A thing outside the genius, that
transcends mortal ideas of brilliance and talent, is born when a wonder awakens for the first time and stares
down at its creator with eyes of smoky agate or photosensitive titanium alloy. An Inspired is nothing without
Inspiration, and Inspiration is greater than any mortal mind.

But what is it? What is Inspiration? Geniuses throughout history have tormented themselves with that
question, developing philosophies, theories, and incomplete, lurching models to account for all the
phenomena that Inspiration gives rise to. Over the years, those Inspired that comprise the Peerage―the
society of free geniuses―have produced five foundations with philosophies to explain the nature of
Inspiration and to guide new geniuses through their first hesitant experiments.

There is no canon explanation for what Inspiration is or how it works. Instead we're told how each Foundation tends to view it.

Genius posted:

To the Artificers, Inspired who delight foremost in the creation of new wonders, the universe in which we live
is broken, or sick. Once, it worked perfectly, a single, vast organism. But something wounded it, ripped it
apart, flinging scraps of broken life across a dozen realities and leaving howling voids between them. But so
perfect was Creation that the disparate organs still function: this physical world, the world of mechanical law
where people live in skins of meat, still works. It works so well, in fact, that mortals can construct
explanations for how this maimed world functions. The genius, however, sees the whole picture: the physical,
the psychical, the statistical, mathematical, and teleological; she sees it all at once, and those are her laws, not
the half-truths and shadow-answers of mortal science. A genius performs True Science, as if the cosmos were
whole and healthy. What she does looks impossible to mortals, but only because they can only see a single cell
of a far vaster organism.

Directors, with their focus on social interaction, see Inspiration as the �big lie.� A genius, the Directors say, has
learned the science of "tricking" the universe. Modern Directors invoke the principles of quantum mechanics:
the uncertain nature of the universe means that, for very small scales of space and time, the impossible
happens with troubling frequency. And like particles and antiparticles appearing simultaneously out of a
common nothing, the genius' deranged inner state and the mad things he produces exist for a time before
falling back into mundanity. Inspiration is the art and science of bringing those impossible things from the
quantum world into our own macroscopic world, and greater Inspiration allows the genius to maintain her
wonders―and her own perilous, half-mad existence―for longer periods of time. There is no final cheat;
there's only keeping the ruse going for just a little longer.

To the Navigators, Inspired who are as interested in using inventions as conceiving and building them, there
is a sort of existence even in non-existence. "Existence" is merely another property, they say, like "being
green," and things that don't exist still possess properties, not as a sort of play-on-words, but literally. It
doesn't matter that Darth Vader isn't real, right? He's still evil. So it's no surprise that impossible things
happen all the time: a bit of genius, to break down the barriers between the real world and the infinite
reaches of the Not, and a person can call the impossible into the possible realm. It's not easy, and it's
definitely not safe, but it can be done. And impossible things are not limited in such mundane ways as those
things that make up the World That Is. They can be contradictory, deranged, beautiful, and meaningful: they
can be wonders, things that should not be, in a world all too cluttered with Stuff That Just Is.

To the Progenitors, those geniuses obsessed with growth and change, Inspiration is the result of "sheer force"
between what is true and what is false. Their flexible minds embrace the paradox of Inspiration: a genius is
Inspired because he can do the impossible, and since he can do things impossible in this world, he is Inspired.
Little glitches in mind and nature, in the world within and the world without, add up, and at times of great
internal and external stress, spiral out of control. "Impossibility" itself is a sort of power, and that power can
reach a critical mass, and ignite like a new sun. When it ignites, a genius is born.

To the Scholastics, geniuses who see idea and concept as paramount, Inspiration is the manifestation of a
more pure universe, a realm of Idea, as it struggles to enter this dark world. There are things in that realm of
Idea, living concepts, "intelligences" of a sort, and they are curious. Not malevolent―though their intrusions
can be destructive―but determined to enter. Yet they cannot survive in our ruinous world, no more than a
human could survive at the black bottom of the sea or in a poisoned wasteland. Instead they have found a
halfway point in mortal thoughts, "piggybacking" in minds and (now) in computer code. Some minds, the
Scholastics say, are special, somehow uniquely formed, and around these minds, for a time, those beings of
Idea can live for a time in our world, as the wonders a genius creates.

Lemuria, on the other hand, prefers to invoke the Many Worlds model and claims that what the Inspired do is see through the infinite possibilities and can wield influence over all things unlike mortals, who are restricted to their one singular world and interpretation of what is possible.

It's important for Inspired, the game notes, to form some sort of model of how it all works if they are to remain sane. The mind, even the minds of the Inspired, needs a [more or less] rational framework through which to think about and understand the world even if you know you're crazy. Those who believe that they're the sane ones and everyone else is crazy quickly become Unmada, and those who simply don't care about the reasons or logic, however twisted, of what they do are a skip and a hop away from Illumination.

This is the critical difference between the Peerage and Lemuria. Lemuria believes they're all sane - they're Unmada to the last. The Peerage knows they're insane and tries to keep its members grounded in that fundamental fact.

The Peerage, therefore, maintains a set of informal laws of mad science.

Genius posted:

The Law of Broken Theory (aka Popper's Little Secret)

Geniuses are not scientists and once a genius catalyzes he will never again do science as he previously
understood the practice. His Mania makes that impossible. Geniuses aren't clear what Mania is, but it's clear
that the stuff gets into a genius, changing his perspective and disrupting how he relates to the world. In short,
it drives him mad. Not the full-on delusional insanity of an unmada or Lemurian, or the alien psychopathy of
the Illuminated, but Mania changes a genius enough that he is no longer in sync with the rest of humanity.

In short, that you are insane and are no longer playing by the same rules as the rest of humanity. What you do is not science, and you are no longer a rational human thinker.

Genius posted:

The Science Is Science Law (aka the Anticlark Corollary)

Geniuses can no longer engage in traditional scientific research. Nonetheless, they are not "wizards." They do
not do "magic." That is, what they do conforms at least in part to what sane scientists would recognize as the
laws of physics, and is not entirely a product of the genius' peculiar internal state. Even geniuses who have a
strong interpretation of the Law of Broken Theory recognize that wonders can't just pop into existence,
fueled by will and desire. No genius can just wave a magic wand and make wonders happen. Even very old
wonders―ones built centuries or millennia ago―function in ways that seem recognizable as technology.

A flying machine built by a Song Dynasty Taoist who believes in the five Taoist elements will still fly, and it
will fly based on modern principles of aerodynamics, even if it also conforms to other, weirder laws. Even if a
wonder circumvents or ignores physical laws, such as using some kind of anti-gravity technology to fly, a
wonder never flatly ignores the laws of physics. A genius can't just build a wooden bird, dump Mania into it,
and expect it to fly because it's "enchanted." The Inspired are miracle-workers, yes, but they're also
technologists. There are principles at work behind what a genius does, even if they apparently lack
consistency and repeatability, and even if a genius can't figure them out.

Even so, what you do is internally consistent with your personal model of the universe. Your personal conception of science is probably unique to you, but it is still science in your mind and not magic (unless it's magic as a science with predictable laws).

Genius posted:

The Mere Mortal Law (aka Gilligan's Rule)

Regular people screw up wonders. No one's sure why this is so, but mere mortals have a near-miraculous
ability to damage mad science, destroying it or causing it to run amok. If they get their grubby little hands on
a wonder, they'll break it and it will explode or eat them. Geniuses don't know exactly why this happens, but
every genius knows that letting a regular person near a wonder is like giving revolvers to monkeys: only
hilarious from a safe distance. Scientists (sane ones) are included here as mere mortals, and they can be even
worse: a group of trained scientists know just how to fiddle with a wonder in a way that will cause it to break
down. This further alienates a genius from regular humanity: she cannot communicate her ideas to her peers,
or even show off her creations, without risking disaster.

Gilligan's Law, coupled with the Black Box Law, explains why a genius can't just build a teleporter and market
it for three easy installments of $19.99 on her Website: a mortal who gets his hands on a wonder will break it,
and due to the nature of Mania, every mortal who messes around with it will break it in a unique and uniquely
horrific way. Attempts to predict what will go wrong are impossible, and will probably just make things
worse.

Mortals do not play by the same rules that you do, and when they intersect it never ends well. Mortals cannot do what you do or use your mad science.

Genius posted:

The Obvious Truth Law (aka Mulder's Lament)

While mere mortals will screw up a wonder something fierce, there is no cosmic principle or conspiracy at
work that relates to wonders or Inspiration. A mere mortal can see a wonder and she will not forget the
experience. There is nothing in a wonder that "clouds men's minds" or that will cause them to grow confused.
Wonders show up fine on cameras and videos. There are no vast conspiracies to hide the truth from regular
mortals. In fact, the vastest conspiracy out there, Lemuria, wants to make regular mortals aware of their
brilliance.

The nature of Inspiration, instead, remains hidden because wonders are not repeatable and testable. A
regular scientist who handles a wonder will break it, and if she doesn't break it, she's already well on her way
to becoming a genius herself (or at least a beholden). The only results, then, are that a mortal will mess up the
wonder (possibly killing herself in the process) or will turn into a beholden or genius and join the ranks of the
Inspired, which in turn insulates her from regular people.

There is no Hysteria protecting you. If your wristwatch fires blaster bolts at a man who's turned himself into a spider-creature in the middle of Times Square, everyone is going to see it. The problem is that while they will be able to see it, they will never be able to duplicate it unless they become Inspired themselves.

Genius posted:

Catalyzing

Geniuses do not know what they are, and this torments them. Is a genius a mortal touched by something
transcendent, or is he transcendence itself, a mathematical icon given form and temporality in the body and
mind of someone who was once human? What is the "genius"? The man, with his unique gifts, or the spirit,
that takes up residence in the cramped and fleshy home of a mortal mind? Many peers torment themselves
over these questions, for there are no clear answers. A genius' Breakthrough is a traumatic experience that
can wipe away sections of memory and radically change parts of a new mad scientist's personality; for every
one of the Inspired who catalyzed gradually, her mundane concerns slowly transforming over the course of
weeks or months into Inspired conceptions, another experienced a Breakthrough like a lightning-stroke that
wiped away consciousness and intellect and left mind and spirit utterly transformed.

Every genius has a Catalyst, an emotional drive that fueled their Breakthrough and descent into madness. This emotion is what fundamentally ties the genius to humanity and propels their use of Inspiration. A genius' Catalyst does not and cannot change, and may or may not reflect the kind of person they were before their Breakthrough. Either way, it defines how they achieved that shattering moment of revelation and is a measurable psychological phenomenon common to all Inspired. Among their effects is that each Catalyst gives the Inspired a natural channel to one of the Axioms, and an innate disposition towards a particular Derangement. There are five Catalysts altogether: rage, hope, sorrow, rejection, and curiosity.

In a collaborative, each Catalyst brings a different kind of personality or drive to the table, and geniuses who Catalyzed the same way are not guaranteed to get along.

Next time: Grimm, the Catalyst of Fury

# ? Apr 7, 2015 19:55

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

Mors Rattus posted:

One of the biggest problems with Genius is the numbers - that many people with magic powers would utterly warp society. There's no way it could be kept secret, and nWoD is pretty good about having the monsters not warp the world to that extent.

Another is tone. The game can't decide what tone it wants - serious and tragic, pulpy, comedic, whatever. It vacillates wildly between all three, doing all of them poorly. And lastly, it is far, far, far too self-referential. Every game mechanic must be understood in character with the same names used by the players.

nWoD games try to avoid giving normie-to-monster ratios for exactly that reason- they gave a 50,000:1 ratio with vampires that completely breaks down at a couple points. The structure for the Ordo Dracul given in one book would require an urban area the size of Shanghai or Tokyo. The only number they give now is "However many you need".

That ties into the tone issues. NWoD kept the "secret masters" poo poo to a minimum for a reason- "street-level" was the term I always heard. Genius has a bunch of different ideas colliding in it and the Ascension parts brought the metaplot and setting in with it.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:11

Halloween Jack: Sep 12, 2003; La morte non ha sesso

Bieeardo posted:

The Gordian power strip! I remember submitting one of those to Warehouse 23, back in the day.

Okay, when I was talking about finding out about RPGs on the Internet in the 90s was a fun mystery? Warehouse 23 is A+ #1 100% what I was talking about.

Evil Mastermind posted:

I actually played Immortal: Invisible War.

It's pretty terrible.

I'm very, very, very curious about anything and everything you have to say about actually trying to play Immortal. Chiefly because Immortal ties in to what I was saying earlier, about RPGs that don't give the PCs a clear mission or a specific framework in which to operate. Some of these games seem like the rules weren't playtested at all--how could you actually play a Kult campaign saddled with the way the Mental Balance rules work? How could an Everlasting group actually track all those stats while trading characters around?

In Immortal you play characters who are immortal, and they have magic voice powers, and they can shapeshift into an alternate form, and they have to drain life-force from mortals, and they have a bunch of past lives constantly whining for attention, and they can't use their powers openly without bad guys detecting them, and their attributes literally manifest as coloured auras, and if they get weakened too much they get sucked into another dimension...

Sometimes it seems like Ran Ackels must have stuffed all these things into the Immortal mythos because he wanted to be able to explore each one of them exclusively, and imitate each of his 20 favourite fantasy movies. Did your GM get around this by just ignoring large swaths of the rules? That's the only way I can think of to make it playable.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:25

Mr. Maltose: Feb 16, 2011; The Guffless Girlverine

I do like, with all the comparisons to Mage, that Genius takes the reverse tack even if it doesn't do much with it: Mage is the progression to an actual higher truth, and mortal minds may one day see what you see and do what you do. Genius states directly that you are not finding a better or new way of looking at the real world, you're permanently askew from how things should and actually do work so deal with it.

Pity about ever other thing about it being trash.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:27

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

Mr. Maltose posted:

I do like, with all the comparisons to Mage, that Genius takes the reverse tack even if it doesn't do much with it: Mage is the progression to an actual higher truth, and mortal minds may one day see what you see and do what you do. Genius states directly that you are not finding a better or new way of looking at the real world, you're permanently askew from how things should and actually do work so deal with it.

I've mentioned that time travel isn't very hard for Inspired to do, and there's a section later on that talks about it and includes a timeline of how things will go until the end of time. If you use the presented timeline, within a thousand years or so all of humanity will be Inspired and there will no longer be such a thing as mundane people.

I have no idea why you would use the presented timeline, though.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:32

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Why would you even include that? 'Oh by the way here's the metaplot accounting fora ll time travel ever.'

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:33

Mr. Maltose: Feb 16, 2011; The Guffless Girlverine

The timeline is obviously included in the Trash section.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:34

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; Can't post for 22 days!

Mors Rattus posted:

Why would you even include that? 'Oh by the way here's the metaplot accounting fora ll time travel ever.'

Mainly for the Cthulu knockoffs that live at the End of Time and their cultists in the present era as antagonists.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:35

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Ah, of course. Because we can't just import one boring uncreative idea.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The basic idea in Genius feels like it could be salvaged for a hell of a tragedy: The idea of being useless, the horror of being the universal Ideas Guy because the comics' editor will never let Reed Richards cure cancer, as an effective sort of hopelessness. A game about having immense power that is completely useless (because it can never be shared with others or used to actually change much) in a group of secret societies who in no way actually manage to influence the world would be interesting as a storytelling device.

You're a comic book Genius and it means nothing. Overcoming your condition and working like a sane person is your only hope to change the world. Keep the idea that they desperately see how the world 'ought' to be and force them to reconcile giving up their power to work with others to try to change the world, to sacrifice the dream of the Great Man who discovers everything, and you'd have an interesting campaign about intellectual coming of age that you can only run once.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:37

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

You'd also have to deal with the fact that most people who play Genius just want to play Girl Genius: Modern.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:39

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

The storm has a name... - Let's Read TORG

Part 12a: Nippon Tech - Mission Statement

An executive works desperately in his office at 3 AM, seeking to recoup the �50,000,000 loss he is responsible for due to a deal gone wrong. He knows that if he fails to do so by the end of the day, he will be required to kill himself. He also knows that if he runs, he will be hunted down and killed by order of the board of directors.

A gun dealer sells stolen high-tech rifles to a group of Yakuza enforcers. Little does anyone know that one of the enforcers is actually a plant from corporate security, and his allies are closing in on the meet. Little does the plant know that he's also on the kill list.

A homeless man, unable to afford even the basic air mask now needed in Tokyo's terrible environment, volunteers for a drug testing program. Within a month, his body and mind will be so mutated by the chemicals in his system that he's nothing but a monster. The researchers will simply dump him back on the street when done with him.

A ninja slides into a 30th story window to assassinate an executive who framed his own brother for embezzlement to claim the brother's position. The brother eagerly awaits word of the executive's death, already preparing to reclaim his former wealth and position.

A office worker dies at his desk after his twenty-second 12-hour shift in a row. Before his body has finished cooling in the morgue, his assets are packed up and sold off by the corporation, and his replacement is already beginning work at the same desk.

Just business as usual in Nippon Tech, as ordained by its High Lord and CEO, Ryuchi Kanawa.

Nippon Tech
(Now, before we go any further, spend some time looking at this web site, particularly "overworked to suicide" and "internet cafe refugees", and watch this video. That's depressingly similar to what Nippon Tech is like.)

With the massive destruction in North America and multiple invading realities in Europe, the world economy is in chaos as the largest economic forces are tied up in the battle for reality. Thankfully, Japan has managed to improve its financial standing on the world stage, taking up the financial slack and keeping the global economy moving. Japanese corporations have begun directly aiding other countries, expanding and building locations that provide much-needed money and employment for the ravaged countries of Core Earth. Foremost of these is the Kanawa Corporation, which has recently become a major player on the world stage under the guidance of its CEO, Ryuchi Kanawa.

What nobody knows is that Japan has also been invaded by an alien reality known as "Marketplace", and by relying on Japan, the world is playing right into the hands of its High Lord, the head of the Kanawa Corporation, the ruthless 3327.

(And yes, his name is actually 3327. In his home cosm of Marketplace, names were long ago replaced with identification numbers. The numbers are four-digit numbers followed by seven decimal places, but people are referred to by their first four digits. This was decided long ago so that these "names" could be used as universal access codes for everything from online shopping to to banking, and put the people further under the control of the corporations.)

3327 managed to keep the invasion of Japan secret by having advance agents found the Kanawa Corporation with the wealth of other worlds, building a massive empty skyscaper to serve as "corporate headquarters", and dropping the bridge inside the husk of the building. He specifically chose Japan as the initial invasion point because it most closely resembled his home cosm, making subtle expansion easier.

In fact, it would be almost three years before the world would learn that Japan had been invaded in the first place. And as much of a surprise as it was to the world, it was more of a surprise to the transformed inhabitants of the realm.

By then, of course, it was far too late to do anything about it.

3327, a.k.a. Ryuchi Kanawa

_{3327, High Lord of Marketplace}

3327 has always been obsessed with profit, to the exclusion of everything else in his life. He has only ever performed one "good" act in his life: saving his mentor 2174 from a knife-wielding attacker. Even then, it wasn't at all selfless.

3327 posted:

"I could manipulate 2174, as I might not be able to his successor. It was in my interests at the time to keep him whole."

In thanks, 2174 put 3327 on the promotion fast-track. 3327 rose in the ranks of the Ursan Corporation, and repaid his mentor's generosity by passing along false financial reports that caused the older man to make unwise investments. In Marketplace, the price for financial failure is board-mandated suicide, and 3327 maneuvered his mentor so well the old man never knew he was stabbed in the back.

quote:

The man called 3327 did not start at the soft tone which summoned him to the Ursan Industries boardroom. Indeed, he had been expecting it, and welcomed the message it brought.

The meeting had already begun when he arrived. 2174 was pacing about the room, looking pale and unhealthy. He had failed to recoup the loss - it was all over but the begging, 3327 knew.

The meeting progressed as if he himself had scripted it, as he had, in a way: 2174 sweating and sputtering, trying in vain to explain why he had invested the firm's credits in an enterprise that collapsed; board members angrily pointing to plunging profits this quarter, and looking none too well themselves; and 3327, he who had engineered 2174's fatal error, doing his best not to let a smile disturb his carefully-rehearsed look of concern.

At last, the board had heard enough. Marketplace Security was summoned, and 2174 went with dignity to pay the cosm's penalty for unwise investment. When he was gone, all eyes in the room turned to 3327-without a word, the young executive walked to the head of the table and assumed the seat of power.

He had achieved his first conquest...

3327 rapidly turned the Ursan Corporation into the most powerful economic force in Marketplace, and also managed to seize control of the Triad, the governing force of Marketplace himself.

And just as he started becoming restless after taking control of his world, 3327 came across his world's Darkness Device. This artifact, which he later named Daikoku, promised the CEO more worlds to conquer, new wealth to accumulate in return for the possibility energy of these worlds.

Unlike other High Lords, 3327 did not work his way across the multiverse with rampaging armies. Instead, he approached every invasion as he would a corporate takeover: domination through financial control rather than strength of arms. There were times his forces were so subtle the invaded world didn't even know they had been taken over until it was far too late.

As 3327's empire expanded, he found it harder and harder to control the myriad worlds under his control. This was further complicated by the fact that 3327 refused to give anyone under him any real power in case it would be used against him. Then he hit upon the solution: through a combination of Marketplace's technology and the power of the Darkness Device, 3327 grew five clones of himself and copied his mind into each one. The clones were mentally linked to each other and to the original 3327; any thought or emotion felt by one would be felt by all. Now that he had these surrogates, he could truly run his multiversal empire from multiple places at once. Daikoku, for its part, fully supports this idea because it sees it as a sixfold return on its investment.

When approached by the Gaunt Man to help invade Earth, 3327 decided to manage this invasion personally instead of leaving it to his clone or to underlings as he normally did. He sent his agents to Earth on dimthreads to begin taking control of companies in Japan, laying the financial groundwork for the eventual takeover. He created the persona of "Ryuchi Kanawa" and created the Kanawa Corporation to undermine the country of Japan from within.

3327's whole worldview is based around the ideas of profit and loss. He is nearly emotionless, feeling only greed. Despite being a textbook sociopath, 3327 has spent a long time learning how to read and predict people to make up for it.

The only thing 3327 fears is bankruptcy; he barely fears death thanks to his clone back-ups, but despite that he knows he can still be executed by his board of directors for failing to turn a profit. Core Earth is his riskiest venture to date, and despite his personal wealth it's still possible for him to cut a loss if things go against him.

3327's to-do list is pretty much what you'd expect for the High Lord of a reality based around profit and gain.

1. Acquire Wealth. Profit rules all in Marketplace, and even as High Lord he has to maintain profits to stay in charge. But because he's a Possibility Raider, he has access to the wealth and treasure of countless realities. As it stands right now, 3327's net worth is in the trillions, but it is still not enough.

2. Become Torg. 3327 seeks material wealth, not ephemeral power, but becoming Torg would make him truly immortal without needed to rely on his Darkness Device, and immorality means an eternity of gaining wealth.

3. Keep the realm a secret. Kanawa's operations on Core Earth are dependent on nobody knowing that Japan has been invaded. The other High Lords know he's there, of course, but don't seem to be interested in leaking the information to the world.

4. Expand the realm. More territory = more stolen possibility energy. 3327 knows that his Darkness Device is as dedicated to profit as he himself is, so he makes sure to keep it happy.

5. Find eternity shards. Daikoku can drain possibility energy from these artifacts, so 3327 seeks them out to feed to the Darkness Device.

6. Recruit new forces. 3327 is always on the lookout for new sources of profit, so he has begun an effort to recruit operatives from other realms. Partially so he can get inside information on the other High Lords, but also because he wants access to the technological assets of the Nile Empire and the Cyberpapacy.

7. Contain the other realms. 3327 has no direct allies. He sees every other High Lord as a threat to be dealt with (even as he sells them weapons). 3327 knows that he controls the least amount of territory out of all the Raiders, and he needs territory to expand into for possibility energy and raw resources. This also means he needs to drive the other realms off existing resources.

At the core of everything 3327 does is the drive for profit. It informs every decision he makes, and he sees nothing wrong with selling to every side as long as he makes out on the deal. 3327 has no allies, only customers and tools.

3327 and the other High Lords
3327 sees every other High Lord as a pawn to be used in his own long-term plans, or against each other. He has made no serious alliances with anyone, and in fact actively works against almost every single one of them.

3327 sees Dr. Mobius as one of the biggest threats due to his scientific knowledge and unpredictability. 3327 has been attempting to turn one of Mobius' overgoverners against him, but it's slow going. 3327 has also been funding Israeli forces fighting against Mobius so the Kanawa Corportation can seize control of the oil fields.

Baruk Kaah hates 3327 with a fiery passion. Kaah has learned that American freedom fighters are getting their arms from the Kanawa Corporation, and 3327 was instrumental in the destruction of Kaah's western bridge and loss of most of that territory. In fact, 3327 would drop a bridge in California shortly thereafter, further cutting off that land from Kaah.

While the techno-demon Thratchen is technically not a High Lord, he is managing Orrorsh in the Gaunt Man's absence. Thratchen has recently learned that the reason the Tharkhold invasion failed because the Russian psychic research project that predicted it was funded by the Kanawa Corporation. The only reason he hasn't acted on this knowledge is because he doesn't have his own Darkness Device to back him up.

3327 was as shocked as anyone when Pope Jean Malraux initiated the Tech Surge, and this had a strong effect on 3327's plans. Before the Surge, 3327 pretty much wrote off the False Papacy as a backwater realm that wasn't a threat. Now, he wants access to the cybertechnology of that realm. He has begun sending in operatives and opening factories in the realm to reverse-engineer the technolgy so he can sell it to the rest of the world.

Like the other High Lords, 3327 isn't sure what to make of the situation of Aysle. With the former High Lord Uthorion ousted from the body of Lady Ardinay, he's decided to take a wait-and-see approach until he knows if a new High Lord will arise.

Axioms and World Laws
The world laws of Marketplace have evolved to compliment and reinforce the way the overall culture has been driven.

First up is The Law of Intrigue, which may be a side-effect of 3327's control of the cosm. This law states that deception is easier in Nippon Tech, and betrayal is common. The mechanical effect is that skills like stealth or disguise get significant bonuses, as do attempts to use skills like persuasion when you're lying. A side effect of this Law is that any organization that has at least 100 members will have at least one traitor in its ranks, and larger organizations will have whole cells working to undermine them. Betrayal has become so common it's now baked into the reality itself.

Next is The Law of Profit, and it's the reason why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. This law states that people of means will be able to spend less money on goods and services, while poorer people will have to spend more.

I'd be remiss to not let Sir Terry Pratchett sum it up better than I ever could:

Men At Arms posted:

�The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a
pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only
afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet
feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.�

This law doesn't mean that prices will change at the register; it means that the available options to buy things varies depends on who's buying, and the rich will have access to places that will charge them relatively less.

Because of this, if you start sliding down the socioeconomic ladder it's drat near impossible to claw your way back up. It's not just that the upper class is keeping the lower classes down, it's reality that's keeping them down.

The final law is The Law of Vengeance. This law is tied to the Law of Intrigue, and rewards an "eye for an eye" system of justice. The short form is that any character who takes revenge against someone who wronged him will gain six extra possibilities at the end of the act. It does need to be revenge for a significant loss; you can't get revenge for someone shooting you in the leg, but someone shooting you in the leg and leaving you for CorpSec so they can get away is worthy. The only other limitation is that you have to wait at least 48 hours after being wronged. Best served cold, and all that.

The axioms of Marketplace and Nippon Tech reflect the decline of "human" culture and the rise of corporate culture, yet are close enough to Core Earth's that the inhabitants of the realm have barely noticed any major change apart from "wow, things are getting pretty bad in this neighborhood".

Technology: 24 The technology of Marketplace is just ahead of Core Earth's by maybe a
decade. Unfortunately, this is from the point of view of the early 90's so you get a weird mix of stuff
that's still not even close to being possible (laser rifles, flying cars) and things that are low-tech by
modern standards (supercomputers with 256Mb of RAM).

The two technological fields that are having the largest effect on the rest of the world are medical technology and weapon development. Because Nippon Tech corporations aren't bound by those pesky medical ethics or worldwide regulatory programs, human testing is pretty much "anything goes". This has led to some more advanced technologies like better replacement organs and functional prosthetic (not cybernetic) limbs, it also means that human testing often involves hiring homeless or lower-class people, pumping them full of drugs, and seeing what happens.

Weapons technology has become a booming industry, what with the battle for Core Earth and all. Because everything in Nippon Tech is dedicated to profit, Nippon Tech companies are more than happy to sell to anyone. They'll sell guns to NATO forces in preparation for an attack on a Nile Empire outpost, then turn right around and sell guns to the Nile Empire. As a result, the other High Lords aren't too happy with 3327 because he's arming the "good guys" as much as he's arming the other High Lords.

(It's important to point out that because 3327 understand reality mechanics, he maintains companies and manufacturers who build weapons for lower-tech realities using the methods of those realities. Yes, if you buy a Nippon Tech rifle it's going to be Tech 24, but you can also buy a Tech 15 matchlock musket to use in Aysle, or a Tech 22 .30 M1 Carbine that works fine in the Nile Empire without causing a contradiction.)

One side effect of Kanawa Corporation's operations is that the technology of Core Earth is getting a bit of a boost as Core Earth manufacturers reverse-engineer the higher tech.

Social: 22 This is a weird one. While technically a bit higher than Core Earth's social axiom, the fact that the culture is a mix of corporate culture and feudal culture means that things have gotten worse in Japan. The crime and unemployment rates have more than tripled, suicide and drug use rates have skyrocketed, and the class divide is wider now than it's ever been. Being an employee of a megacorporation means that they pretty much own you, and even if you're on the the board of directors you're still considered a completely disposable asset.

Magic: 2, Spiritual: 8 Nippon Tech has the second-lowest magic axiom out of all the realities (Living Land it the lowest at 0). The drive for material profit has resulted in a cultural mindset of cold rationality, driving out the concepts of spiritual fulfillment, and magic was never a large part of the culture to begin with.

A side-effect of the low magic and spiritual axioms is that, to Core Earthers or people from other realities, everything in the realms feels...off. Part of what most people think of as "normality" is due to the natural levels of magic and community we live with daily. In Nippon Tech, visitors are deprived of those levels. It's like the sudden absence of a sound you've heard so much you don't notice it until it's gone.

As a result, everything feels empty. People on the street don't even come close to making eye contact no matter the situation. Every strange event seems larger and more oppressive. Death or suicide due to overwork is incredibly common because there's no sense of fulfillment outside of your job.

The combination of all these factors results in a world of almost total oppression. The inhabitants are barely even treated as people by the corporations, the crime lords are running rampant because the cops now only serve corporate interests, and it's impossible for most people to rise above their current financial situations.

Now, this is where I'd normally say something about the heroes fighting back and how there's still hope for the common folk and yadda yadda yadda.

But that's not the case here.

Here, you're barely a person. You're a cog in the machine, a tool to be used by your corporate masters. Once you're used up, you're thrown away and replaced. If you complain, you're out on the street. If you're on the bottom rung of the ladder you're staying there, and even if you're on the top rung one mistake will get you kicked off the ladder. The only possible help can come from outside the realm, but why would anyone help when they don't even know you're in danger?

And if you've got a problem with that, there are hundreds of people out there who'll be more than happy to fill your position. I can go down to HR and pull five names at random that can do your job. So keep your head down, shut up, and do your job unless you want to wind up on the street.

Now get back to work.

NEXT TIME: Economic realities!

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:39

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# ? Oct 11, 2024 11:54

Mr. Maltose: Feb 16, 2011; The Guffless Girlverine

Night10194 posted:

The basic idea in Genius feels like it could be salvaged for a hell of a tragedy: The idea of being useless, the horror of being the universal Ideas Guy because the comics' editor will never let Reed Richards cure cancer, as an effective sort of hopelessness. A game about having immense power that is completely useless (because it can never be shared with others or used to actually change much) in a group of secret societies who in no way actually manage to influence the world would be interesting as a storytelling device.

You're a comic book Genius and it means nothing. Overcoming your condition and working like a sane person is your only hope to change the world. Keep the idea that they desperately see how the world 'ought' to be and force them to reconcile giving up their power to work with others to try to change the world, to sacrifice the dream of the Great Man who discovers everything, and you'd have an interesting campaign about intellectual coming of age that you can only run once.

Genius ripping Promethean more than Mage would be pretty great, yeah.

# ? Apr 7, 2015 20:39

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