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EclecticTastes posted:-Someone is violating somebody else's patent, they need to be stopped (add complications to taste). EclecticTastes posted:SOCIALISM GONE MAD, and much, much more!
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Oct 11, 2018 14:31
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I think the idea is that in the Post-Scarcity World of Immortal Space Wizards, the only property that can matter is intellectual property and therefore it has to be taken really seriously?
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Oct 11, 2018 14:40
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 Obsidian: The Age of Judgement is a roleplaying game by Apophis Consortium published first in 1999, and this review uses the 2nd Edition from 2001. Written by Micah Skaritka, Dav Harnish, and Frank Nolan. Obsidian is a post-apocalyptic anarchist corporatist literal hell on earth secret knowledge crunchy dice-pool game. It is purchasable online here if you’d like to support the authors of this work. Part 16: The Double-Secret Shadowy Cabal of Good Before we jump into the next part of the book, there is an enemy called the Technogarbage whose entire gimmick is it looks like any random broken or worn-down thing and waits to attack unsuspecting passersby. There are no rules for detecting these without using some sort of magical spell. It’s not a crime to fire your gun indiscriminately in city limits, so most play sessions will be increasingly paranoid players shooting any item you describe to them.  This guy has three upper jaws and no lower jaws. Seriously, count them Anyway, with the rest of the game’s foes behind us, its time to introduce the Their entire presence is through in the game notes 5-10 unstatted warriors who can undetectably travel through a parallel dimension never before mentioned. They don’t interact with anyone and only people who are in the Darchomen are aware they exist. Since the player isn’t aware of them and can’t detect them and they won’t talk with the player, the game has to point blank explain that mostly what they do is secretly kill anyone who they deem corrupt. While the game says these warriors can never be wrong, with everyone they kill infallibly being a Kultist or Demon, the game also notes that any human who uses a ritual for “their personal gain” is marked for death. What personal gain includes isn’t defined, so enjoy desperately arguing with your Narrator that using the ritual that makes food for you to eat or restores a limb you lost is not a personal gain. Then, in what has become a recurring theme in these Christapocapunk games, an actual meta-plot approved goal for the game is buried in this section. Obsidian notes that somehow the Messengers of God can cause humans to evolve (never before discussed) to a new level (never described) to travel to their Circle (never explained how) in order to [reason not provided]. That isn’t a joke; the game says the following about the whole humans traveling to another dimension thing, quote, ”[...]but for what or how this is done is uncertain”  Little known fact the film Commando was initially pitched as a sequel to the music video for Bohemian Rhapsody The next section in the book is a summary of the biggest corporations in the game world. Each of these can be summarized with “No, seriously, this is the biggest and most important one” to the point where if you do the math approximately 150% of the game world’s population are employed by these companies. Each business is basically a singular gimmick and maybe 3 of the 12 provided have anything resembling a gameplay hook, with one of the businesses being a hidden-agendaless mobile phone service provider that the game notes has never done anything illegal or wrong so have fun with that, players. Of course, being poorly conceived doesn’t mean there isn’t some real dumb stuff in here. The first highlight is the company MediciTank which for an absolute pittance amount of money will, if the player paying the contract becomes incapacitated, dispatch a squad of heavily armed soldiers and tank to their location within five minutes with reinforcements called until the player character is retrieved. There are no rules here about the player character needing to be in any actual danger to trigger this absurd military response, so any player reading this section is assuredly going to find the nearest bad guys den and do some drugs until an unstoppable and unlimited killing force arrives to retrieve them. The second is that in a setting where all-powerful angelic murder machines silently wander among humans destroying the sinners one of these companies is literally named SlaveFactory and the name is extremely non-ironic. The third is just astounding. Guildus Interficiate* is our business built around assassinations in game, and Obsidian notes that it has 40,000 full-time employees. Hrm, thats a concrete number of employees, and the corporate rules were detailed enough we know what title and pay all of them have to have, so I wonder what would happen if we tried to figure out how many people per year they have to kill in order to make payroll? Let’s Math! There are two prices for an assassination in the game, and we’ll assume Guildus Interficiate as the premier service charges the more expensive number at 800 credits per kill. We’ll also assume that the Obsidian followed its corporation creation rules when making Guildus Interficiate so we’ll follow those when calculating how many employees there are at each of the ranks in the business. We can’t quite get to 40,000 even following the rules, but we can get to 39,995 which is honestly much closer than I expected when I started this exercise and frankly good enough. Guildus Interficiate therefore consists of the following employees: 25,980 Acolyes, 6,495 Vanguards, 3,464 Circuits, 2,598 Neobellums, 1299 Bishops, and 1 Arch-Bishop. All of these people draw salary, except for the Arch-Bishop, and we know what positions pay as Obsidian said Guildus Interficiate is a Class 6 corporation and companies of a class all pay the same salary. This results in a total salary of 130,766,000 credits, and at 800 credits per assassination, Guildus Interficiate needs to kill 163,458 people to make payroll. Per week That’s right, the numbers for salary in this game are calculated on a weekly basis, meaning Guildus Interficiate needs to successfully claim the bounty on 8,499,790 people a year without even factoring in equipment, office space, or taxes. With a total population of only 60,000,000, Guildus Interficiate is assassinating approximately 14.2% of the entire human population annually just to make payroll, and they are noted as not being the only company in the assassination game just the biggest. They have somehow been in business for 12 years. Next Time: Wrong Airthswer *Obsidians abuse of Latin continues, unabated
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Oct 11, 2018 14:56
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EclecticTastes posted:-A non-uplifted society has acquired something above their tech level that the Transcendentals' future selves have seen will prove detrimental to their desired future, take it away from them. I'm not completely down on the game yet, but this comes across as Actually, Magic Future Colonialists Do Know Best. Which is not a good look. Like, I do appreciate the hopeful tone, but it's giving off that Sigmata vibe of "comfortable middle class men tackling topics they don't really comprehend."
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Oct 11, 2018 15:02
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Mors Rattus posted:I think the idea is that in the Post-Scarcity World of Immortal Space Wizards, the only property that can matter is intellectual property and therefore it has to be taken really seriously? IMO post-scarcity sci-fi games suffer from the problem of having competing factions that are just some cultural trend exaggerated to an extreme (which usually doesn't interest me). The problem is that the alternative is having a serious real-world political philosophy in a sci-fi context, which I assume most people don't want. Except me. I want to play a municipalist and protect my transhuman commune from the anarcho-libertarian mercenaries. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 15:09
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Obsidian is the finest Christapocapunk game (we're just gonna use that term in the future). It's just got everything. Inexplicable hooker assassins with wired reflexes, broken character generation that can produce terror-gods, millions of years of pointless backstory, a totally pointless METAPLOT APPROVED goal, and a secret cabal so secret they physically can't be seen or in any way interacted with by those filthy PCs. It's magnificent.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:10
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DARCHOMEN is the name of failed black metal morris dancer troupe
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Oct 11, 2018 15:17
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Night10194 posted:Inexplicable hooker assassins with wired reflexes, broken character generation that can produce terror-gods, millions of years of pointless backstory, a totally pointless METAPLOT APPROVED goal, and a secret cabal so secret they physically can't be seen or in any way interacted with by those filthy PCs.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:20
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Honestly my favorite game in the vague Christapocapunk genre is Carella's Armageddon, which also feels like "Well I can't make Rifts anymore so I'm gonna make my own rifts with blackjack and talking cats that can turn into humans and have angels team up with devils and Thor to fight Cthulhu. In fact, forget the blackjack."
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Oct 11, 2018 15:21
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Obsidian developer: WHAT IF I MADE TRAUMA TEAM COOLER?!1!quote:The first highlight is the company MediciTank which for an absolute pittance amount of money will, if the player paying the contract becomes incapacitated, dispatch a squad of heavily armed soldiers and tank to their location within five minutes with reinforcements called until the player character is retrieved. There are no rules here about the player character needing to be in any actual danger to trigger this absurd military response, so any player reading this section is assuredly going to find the nearest bad guys den and do some drugs until an unstoppable and unlimited killing force arrives to retrieve them. Narrator: He did not succeed.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:27
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You cannot make Trauma Team cooler, it has a Japanese princess with a ninja clan and a hand-made wooden endoscope operated by her butler and an orthopedic surgeon who moonlights as a superhero because of war trauma. It is the stupidest thing in the world and it is wonderful. I know you mean Shadowrun Docwagon trauma teams but man, has there ever been an RPG about completely absurd medical dramas? That seems like some fertile ground to cover.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:30
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly my favorite game in the vague Christapocapunk genre is Carella's Armageddon, which also feels like "Well I can't make Rifts anymore so I'm gonna make my own rifts with blackjack and talking cats that can turn into humans and have angels team up with devils and Thor to fight Cthulhu. In fact, forget the blackjack."
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Oct 11, 2018 15:33
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Night10194 posted:You cannot make Trauma Team cooler, it has a Japanese princess with a ninja clan and a hand-made wooden endoscope operated by her butler and an orthopedic surgeon who moonlights as a superhero because of war trauma. I've got notes somewhere for a PBTA sci fi medical game based on James White's Sector General. e: mainly because at the time I wanted to work on an action-packed sci fi game in which deliberate violence was essentially a nonfactor Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 15:42
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I wish Jef and Jon had gotten into the monsters in their review of Beyond the Supernatural (thanks ForkBanger) because it's easily the best part of it.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:55
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Trauma Team is Cyberpunk 2020, it predates Shadowrun by about a year. But DocWagon has wizards, so I'll call it a tie. The really depressing thing about it is that I can totally see it becoming a thing with American healthcare the way it is.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:57
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The tank and endless mooks only appear to collect your healthcare debt.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:18
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Mors Rattus posted:I've got notes somewhere for a PBTA sci fi medical game based on James White's Sector General. Oh thank you! Someone recommend me the series some ages ago and I completely forgot the name of it, so now I can find it again.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:24
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Robindaybird posted:Oh thank you! Someone recommend me the series some ages ago and I completely forgot the name of it, so now I can find it again. It's got some weird sexism in it, especially the early stuff, which is an artifact of, I think, the time when it was written. Overall though it's very good (if prone to the serial short story author sin of reusing potted phrases), especially when dealing with aliens.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:25
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wiegieman posted:Trauma Team is Cyberpunk 2020, it predates Shadowrun by about a year. But DocWagon has wizards, so I'll call it a tie. REO Meatwagon was the best brand name, of course.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:38
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Dawgstar posted:REO Meatwagon was the best brand name, of course. What about the Wham!bulance? Thanks JoJo
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Oct 11, 2018 16:46
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The most unrealistic thing about DocWagon is how affordable it is.
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Oct 11, 2018 16:52
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Cythereal posted:Because this was a thing in the Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons that someone on the writing staff liked. See, I thought that was it at first, but they never go anywhere near the body horror side of anything, and it's only applicable for PanO citizens. Everybody else just gives you free respawns or makes you earn it through the regular bureaucracy. I think it's just they really, really wanted a space pope.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:01
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Halloween Jack posted:Unisystem is at least a better basic system than I've ever seen a Riftalike use. It was one of Eden's first releases, I think, but if its implementation is clunky you can always crib stuff from Buffy and AFMBE. Oh yeah, it's not really -bad-, even. It's just...very much in the same genre.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:06
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly my favorite game in the vague Christapocapunk genre is Carella's Armageddon, which also feels like "Well I can't make Rifts anymore so I'm gonna make my own rifts with blackjack and talking cats that can turn into humans and have angels team up with devils and Thor to fight Cthulhu. In fact, forget the blackjack." Armageddon rules. It packs in everything but the kitchen sink, but does so in a way that comes off as fun instead of tiring. The main good guy group was formed by Odin, the archangel Michelle (because Michael wanted to be a woman), and the ghost of motherfucking Ben Franklin, Thor is explicitly running around northern Europe crushing tanks with Mjolnir, and the big bad Old One knock-off is presented as a corrupting force, facilitating espionage games, with its messiah leading a big gently caress-off army if your group just wants to smash things.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:13
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wiegieman posted:Trauma Team is Cyberpunk 2020, it predates Shadowrun by about a year. But DocWagon has wizards, so I'll call it a tie. Trauma Team/DocWagon is such an obvious crutch to keep a party from TPKed. The best comment on them was in Hardwired, the game adaptation of Walter Jon Williams' novel, where WJW laughs at the idea, just securing that Hardwired is the Iron Man level of cyberpunk games. megane posted:The most unrealistic thing about DocWagon is how affordable it is. The unrealistic thing is that the players would be fighting them, because they'd be only available to the rich folks.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:15
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Night10194 posted:You cannot make Trauma Team cooler, it has a Japanese princess with a ninja clan and a hand-made wooden endoscope operated by her butler and an orthopedic surgeon who moonlights as a superhero because of war trauma. The superhero bit is gilding the lily for Hank. He's a wonderful orthopedic surgeon hero and we need more videogame heroes like him.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:20
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Wait a second, Sufficiently Advanced relies on machines that can send data to their past selves perfectly and oh hell, is this just the Less Wrong 'Timeless Decision Theory' rigamarole? I recognize tech-cultist terminology!
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Oct 11, 2018 18:27
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T H E B A S I L I S K S E E S Y O U A L L A N D F I N D S Y O U W A N T I N G
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Oct 11, 2018 18:30
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Also you can still have conflict with godlike entities that are all sincere and well-intentioned. You'd just need, as said, differences of opinion about 'ideal futures'. After all, utopia isn't going to be the same for everyone. There would never be one 'ideal' end point.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:35
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EclecticTastes posted:-A non-uplifted society has acquired something above their tech level that the Transcendentals' future selves have seen will prove detrimental to their Desired Future, take it away from them. so the players are the antagonists in this game, yeah? i can't imagine playing transhuman pre-crime cops of the intergalactic nanny-state straight and having them be the good guys.
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Oct 11, 2018 20:15
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Freaking Crumbum posted:so the players are the antagonists in this game, yeah? i can't imagine playing transhuman pre-crime cops of the intergalactic nanny-state straight and having them be the good guys. I'm actually loving that the AIs in this setting are widely regarded by themselves and others as being genuinely benevolent and helpful but that doesn't mean that some people aren't going to find them and their creatures utterly horrifying. This is a natural moral ambiguity that's hard to write.
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Oct 11, 2018 20:21
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Sounds like they're copying the TNG and Voyager-era idea of Prime Directive without understanding that as a whole the fans absolutely hated that interpretation - that goes beyond not meddling with planetary affairs to outright sabotaging a world for 'not evolving correctly' or standing by while a planet dies from a preventable illness.
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Oct 11, 2018 20:25
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Side note, this is part of why Sector General owns. When they run into a primitive species that seems to be doing okay, they just sit and observe from space most of the time, wait for the guys to be ready to reach out and make friends, prepare official First Contact diplomats based on what they see, etc. But if there's an actual problem? Help them. And so it turns out one of the best, most successful first contact methods they discover over the course of the books is...send in the medics to save someone on a ship sending a distress call, or to help solve problems of disease and nutrition that may be beyond the current capabilities of the other culture, with appropriate educational materials to help them understand the medical help they're getting. (They also treat war as a mental illness on a species-wide scale, because James White was a pacifist and considered violence to be repugnant after growing up in the Troubles.)
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Oct 11, 2018 20:33
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Mors Rattus posted:Side note, this is part of why Sector General owns. When they run into a primitive species that seems to be doing okay, they just sit and observe from space most of the time, wait for the guys to be ready to reach out and make friends, prepare official First Contact diplomats based on what they see, etc. Sector General is sexist as gently caress though
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Oct 11, 2018 20:37
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Piell posted:Sector General is sexist as gently caress though yeah it definitely is e: White tried to downplay it in his later books, I think it was a product of like, 70s-era WIMMINS BE DIFFERENT THAN MENS stuff e2: and also him being a horny old goat, like all classic sci fi authors
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Oct 11, 2018 20:48
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unseenlibrarian posted:Honestly my favorite game in the vague Christapocapunk genre is Carella's Armageddon, which also feels like "Well I can't make Rifts anymore so I'm gonna make my own rifts with blackjack and talking cats that can turn into humans and have angels team up with devils and Thor to fight Cthulhu. In fact, forget the blackjack." My fave Christapocapunk is The End, where the statement 'And the Meek Share Inherit the Earth' is not a good thing at all and cows and dogs are the only creatures still cool with humans.
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Oct 11, 2018 22:07
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Sufficiently Advanced Part 2: It'd be a nice universe if it weren't for the cyberslaves. Welcome back to the universe of Sufficiently Advanced, where Roko's Basilisk gets completely dunked on by the simplest of suggestions: What if the computer was nice? Also they've only got knowledge on their side; the Transcendentals are actually more all-knowing than all-powerful. That's my bad for misusing the phrase. One term you should get familiar with right-quick is "Psychohistory", a term coined by Isaac Asimov to describe a fictional field of study that uses complex statistical analysis, sociology, and history to make far-reaching predictions about the course of a society. Sufficiently Advanced refers to the concept frequently. Chapter 1: Turns out when you don't force humanity to deal with each other, subcultures get weird. The chapter opens by telling us that there are fourteen dominant civilizations in The Great Diaspora, as well as a number of minor cultures in the margins. It states clearly that this is likely not everyone, but that any society that's not revealed itself or been inadvertently discovered by this point deserves their privacy. The PCs each come from one of these cultures (or a custom one they make up), and each one provides Core Values (deeply-held belief structures that can provide bonuses to rolls involving them) and a unique Benefit. Each of these cultures allows for different kinds of adventures, and I quite like the variety. Each culture's description is followed by a couple short pieces of fiction, meant to familiarize players with how life there works. Let's have a look at who's populating the universe: The Eternal Masquerade: This is a fairly well-adjusted society, with one major quirk: Literally everyone wears masks from the day they're born to the day they die. Only a person's children, "lifemate" (a more future-y term for their spouse), and certain very close friends will ever seen the true face of someone from the Masquerade. The Masquerade believes fervently in the right to anonymity; citizens are not even required to identify themselves to police unless they've committed a serious crime. Due to widespread use of changeable smart matter in their clothing, masks, etc., a Masquerader can completely alter their appearance with nary a thought, something they'll often do repeatedly throughout the day, with different personae for every sort of situation. Their fashion tends to be big, ostentatious, and colorful, and robes are common clothing choice. Their society is, naturally, very open and tolerant, and they make heavy use of technology, with streetside replicators and computers on every surface. They even have a levitation grid in their streets, so those with magnetically-active garments can just fly around, if they can afford the electricity for it. Their government is a representative democracy, with each community electing a leader, who then elect regional leaders, who elect planetary leaders, who elect the leaders of the civilization as a whole. While in The Masquerade, Inspectors can expect to be treated similarly to present-day FBI or customs agents in terms of their authority. Overall, while they're a little strange, working in The Eternal Masquerade is fairly pleasant, I'd imagine. The Benefit for being from The Masquerade is that you can positively identify anyone you've ever met before, regardless of appearance changes or attempts to disguise oneself. You're so used to your friends and family constantly changing, that you've learned to pick up on the subtlest cues to identify them. Their Core Values are Anonymity and Identity. The former can be used to avoid attempts to learn any personal information about you, while the latter is used to prevent attempts to alter your Core Values, and must be reduced to zero before a brainwasher can start on any other CV. The first piece of fiction for The Eternal Masquerade is worth diving into, and deals with a single day in the life of a woman living there. Here are a couple excerpts, typos preserved: Work in The Eternal Masquerade posted:My husband is still in bed, his sleep mask covering him. I tell the house that I do not care to wake him, and his mesh receives the message and accepts, pulling his still-drowsy mind back down to slumber. My dermal bots are already at work, clearing the sleep from my eyes, microlasers trimming split ends from my hair as I shower. The sleep mask lets water and dirt flow through. When I am done, the tower’s microtubes syphon the water from me, storing it for recycling this afternoon when our son does his chores. Work in The Eternal Masquerade posted:I don my Mrundi persona as the trains take me across town to the suborbital shuttle site. It’s expensive, but the next client is willing to pay for fast service. I take the long launch solenoid, since my body can’t take the acceleration from the short tubes. An hour later I’m on the other side of the planet. I put on my Safi persona, bright and optimistic, guessing that this guy will appreciate the effort to cheer him up. The mask turns silvery and puts out decorative triangles, like a child’s drawing of the sun. The triangles wave serenely in the breeze. It’s been a while since I’ve worn Safi, and I realize how much I miss being her sometimes. My mesh pulls up a lens to help deal with the ten-hour time difference. Note: A "lens" is a program you can run on your Neural Mesh (standard cyber implant for your brain), designed to alter your viewpoint or emotions. Naturally, it's considered quite normal for The Masquerade.  How much you wanna bet literally every single one of these people's wi-fi passwords is "fidelio"? The Cognitive Union: Their propaganda presents them as a socialist haven and simple meritocracy, but like most places that have relied on that image in the past, they're actually an authoritarian slave state. Every single citizen is implanted with a slave mesh (a neural mesh designed for remote control, basically), and government computers monitor their thoughts, eliminating or altering undesirable thoughts when detected, leaving only obedience and respect for the Union. It will also implant thoughts, giving someone the sudden urge to donate to a given cause, or apply for a certain job. The slave-citizens of the Union are well-spoken and will easily enter into debates, and their "leaders" are very charismatic. Those few who escape the Union tend to retain these personality traits. The general aesthetic tends to be drab, mostly greys and browns. The vast majority of the population belongs to the armed forces, which is good because most other civilizations hate them. Also, all those slave meshes? They can share certain kinds of sensory input, mainly visual, meaning every single citizen doubles as a CCTV camera. Nobody is entirely sure who, exactly, even runs the Cognitive Union, who makes the judgments that set the priorities for the rest of the society. The truth is, nobody runs the Cognitive Union, not anymore. Way back in the before-fore times, the Union was just a collective of very teamwork-oriented individuals. However, when faced with a growing criminal population, rather than deal with expensive incarceration, the government decided to use the newly-invented neural mesh technology to give the crooks an attitude adjustment, resulting in happy, efficient, brilliant, and productive members of society, who would eventually organize into a workers' union, the Cognitive Union. Seeing this, much of the population decided they wanted to be happy, efficient, brilliant, and productive, too, and joined up. Eventually, the Union spread throughout the society that created it, with every single citizen joining voluntarily. The few dissenters who remained just packed up and left. The original programmers died off over time, and now the algorithms running the Union's slave implants chug away independently, continuing their original directives from centuries ago. So, which is it? Is the Cognitive Union a Communist paradise, a totalitarian regime, or the meritocracy the citizens claim it to be? The answer is, it's a little of all three. Everyone really does get an equal share, the right person always is picked for the job, and both of those are because a bunch of computers control everyone's brains to make sure it stays that way. Inspectors have no authority and no rights within the Cognitive Union, as only citizens (read: slaves) have those. PCs from the Union get the CVs of Obedience and Order, and must take a third at 6 or higher (more on what the numbers mean later) representing a cause or person. Obedience represents a reluctance to be removed from the Union and/or respect for authority. Order represents resistance to attempts to provoke you into rioting or other criminal acts. Ex-Union PCs likely keep these pretty low. The Benefit for being from the Union is the extra CV. Here's some excerpts from the fiction: An Evening in the Cognitive Union posted:It’s another gorgeous sunset in the Cognitive Union. I swear they put extra little scattering particles into the atmosphere, just to make it prettier. Of course, the fact that I can pick a dozen different views of it that other people are broadcasting helps too. The guy with the infrared vision is getting quite a show. An Evening in the Cognitive Union posted:Once I’m done I join some of the folks doing calisthenics on the beach, and then cool off with a nice stroll home on the slidewalk. Everyone smiles and waves, and I greet them as I go past. There’s a moment when I’m crossing the street that I have the urge to look up, so I do. A few other folks on the street look up too. There’s a shooting star going past — no, wait... that’s something else. I watch it until it passes out of sight, a point of blue light with tiny flashes around it. I consider checking the local infosphere to see if anyone else got a better look, but drop the idea. Whatever it is, the authorities will take care of it — and I even got to help. The United Planets of Mechanica: Mechanica is a somewhat more loosely-connected society than the others, who share the belief that the human self resides solely and exclusively in the brain, and that all else can, and perhaps should, be replaced. As a result, Mechanica tends to have very large, sturdy architecture, to accommodate the wide variety of robot bodies the citizenry adopt. Mechanican children tend to be pretty normal, though dressed in metallic tones; it's not until their teenage years that they start replacing parts of their bodies, starting with stuff that matures early, such as the eyes, or parts that benefit most from replacement, like the liver and teeth. By 30, there's usually nothing left of their original body besides the brain and spinal cord. Due to the costs associated with these robotic upgrades, Mechanican children tend to gain and lose friends rapidly as their parents are or are not able to afford certain enhancements. Thus, most Mechanicans have very close friends, but not many of them. Mechanicans also tend to choose new names for themselves in their early twenties, sometimes normal names, sometimes serial numbers. Naturally, being surrounded by people who are inherently vastly superior to you in almost every way leads Mechanicans to learn humility early, and the lessons learned from this "organic period" are considered too valuable to give up by simply growing brains in vitro from parents' genetic material, as some have suggested. Some Mechanicans refuse implantation; parents may not force the issue unless there is a pressing medical issue (congenital heart defect, for example). Those who choose to remain fully human or minimally-enhanced don't face prejudice, so much as constant questions from all their enhanced acquaintances, which, granted, can get annoying. The robotic frames used by Mechanicans run the gamut, from sleek humanoid forms (both obvious and perfectly disguised), to massive vehicles, to more animal-like shapes, and everything in-between. Wealthier citizens often have multiple bodies that they switch between, moving their brain pod from one frame to another. Ironically, Mechanica's culture is concerned less with technology and more with those things that define the human spirit. Art, athletics, and exploration are the most frequent pastimes. The acquisition of wealth is also at the fore of Mechanican culture, as the government is a democratic plutocracy, with votes literally bought and sold. Psychohistorical projections show that a class struggle is likely on the horizon for Mechanica due to this system. Just as troubling is that Mechanica only has one CV, Humanity (used to resist attempts to convince you that you're "just a robot" or should use cold logic over emotion). Fewer CVs indicate lower cultural cohesion, and Mechanica is likely to break apart in the near future if they fail to develop a second CV. The Benefit for Mechanican PCs is that, due to their robot bodies, they can substitute their Stringtech or Nanotech scores for their Biotech score on nearly all rolls (the exceptions being rolls against age, and rolls against poisons or diseases that make it to their organic bits), and they always have a neural mesh, regardless of Cognitech score. We'll learn what that all means later. Inspectors in Mechanica are treated much the same as they are in the Masquerade, roughly equivalent to FBI or customs agents, though bribery is somewhat more likely. Here's the sole bit of fiction for Mechanica: Mechanican Entertainment posted:This Sunday Sunday SUNDAY! The Disciples of the Void: Not quite a "civilization" per se, but an influential force nonetheless, the Disciples feel that the universe has gotten too loud, and it's drowning out the voice of God. In the unimaginably vast black voids between galaxies, reachable only by virtue of wormhole engines existing, the Disciples have built massive space stations, larger than any that exist in the rest of space, known as Anchorages. Here, they live in almost complete darkness and silence, listening for the whispers of the divine. Their primary interaction with the outside universe is importing fuel for their Anchorages. Despite their size, the Anchorages are mostly devoid of life, the space instead used for sound insulation, noise-cancelling speakers, vibration dampeners, and so on. Even the monks' robes are packed with technology that blocks sound, heat, or any other evidence of their presence from getting out. Their holy text, The Book of Stillness, is written in ultraviolet ink on black paper, and also has multiple pages, whereas most books of this era use high-tech single-sheet technology (you've seen it in sci-fi before; you get a single sheet and turn it over left or right to navigate pages). When they sleep, they do so in silent, pitch black zero-gravity, their chambers equipped with tiny gravity beams that keep them from bumping into the walls. In this way, they experience the ultimate silence, the absence of all sensation. The slight, barely-audible sounds of the Anchorage are clearly perceptible to most Disciples, so each morning, they are greeted by the low hum of the station's power plant, the rush of water through piping, and the distant sound of breakfast cooking. The one sense the Disciples clearly do not avoid is taste, and their hydroponic farms include herbs, spices, and the like, to flavor their otherwise simple meals. Prayer readings are done at midday, followed by discussion of the passages. All communication, however, is done via sign language (only those Disciples who are sent to interact with the outside ever learn to speak), and the Disciples have developed their own writing system to mirror their signs, more hieroglyphs than alphabet. While Disciples are free to pursue their faith as they choose, those who donate their time to aiding the Anchorage and its staff earn credits towards a spacewalk, a rare, treasured chance to float in the true void and listen for God directly. Most find this an utterly transcendent experience. Very few Disciples ever go to the Universe of Noise, as they call it. Those that are, are usually sent to learn the true value of silence. Some decide not to return, and are not begrudged their decision, but those that return usually go on to become important leaders of the faith. The Benefit enjoyed by a Disciple PC is that their robes let them use the Stealth skill at a rating of 7 for free. The Disciples' CVs are Worship (Disciples' Worship CV lets them resist attempts to sway them from the faith, and allows them to treat sensory deprivation attacks as pleasant opportunities to meditate) and Privacy (used to resist attempts to force the Disciple to reveal information or allow themselves to be surveilled). Inspectors are treated as respected advisors to the local authorities, rather than law enforcement agents in their own right. Here's what the fiction has to say about the Disciples: A Disciple's Pilgrimage: Day 12 posted:I am trying very hard to ignore the sounds coming through my earplugs. It is when I realize this that A Disciple's Pilgrimage: Day 12 posted:A small group of passers-by ask if I am feeling all right, and I calm myself and assure them that I will be fine. They don’t believe me. I constantly forget that these people can read my expressions and body language without even trying. I can’t see their faces, or their infosphere tags, so I often have trouble interpreting them. This time I can’t convince them that I’m not agitated, which of course makes me more so, and eventually I allow them to take me away from my street corner. The Tao of History: Remember those episodes of the original Star Trek where they went to a planet of gangsters and a Rome planet and stuff? This is a whole civilization of that. The Tao is made up of 24/7 historical recreationists, who believe that the best way to understand the present is by holding to the values and methods of the past. Each community, known as a "milieu", has its own historical period that they emulate at all times, using a combination of costumes, acting skills, and lenses. Of course, every citizen of the Tao is trained to be far more dashing and heroic than their true historical counterparts, there are holograms, robots, and hired extras to play the role of the downtrodden peasants, citizens of the Tao are the heroes of history. Thanks to wormhole communications, the Tao is now the richest civilization in the universe, as well as human history as a whole (yes, even adjusted for Space Inflation), as much of the citizenry broadcasts their lives as entertainment. Don't worry after the privacy of those around these enterprising folks, anyone uncomfortable with being on Future TV is seamlessly replaced with a computer-generated actor. Regions are helmed by a combination of historians and directors, who often argue about the way things should play out, with directors being all too willing to sacrifice accuracy for theatrics. How does a galaxy-spanning SCA work without collapsing? Well, those extras behind the scenes, roughly 60% of the population, are also the regular people making sure the infrastructure doesn't disintegrate under the actors' feet, and the people running the Tao's government know that keeping that 60% happy is vital to their survival. They'll bend the rules of realism to ensure that these support workers have whatever modern conveniences they need or want, simply leaving it off-camera. That all having been said, this isn't just acting to those who stand in front of the cameras. These people were raised in these milieus, so while it may be a mere recreation, they take it as seriously as possible. A Taoist playing the role of a Shao Lin monk isn't just going through the motions of meditating and learning martial arts, they're actually doing so. Of course, that's not always a good thing, as a Taoist portraying a Civil War-era southerner may (though not always) genuinely condone slavery, even if his own "slaves" are non-sentient robots. "War" within and between milieus is handled in a tightly controlled fashion, and death is exceedingly rare (though actors will, naturally, fake it, if they feel it's time to retire their current character and move to a new milieu). In general, Tao society is extremely open and tolerant, regardless of Milieu, in order to avoid needless conflict. The government is something of a hodgepodge, with each milieu governed in a historically-accurate fashion, and the whole of the Tao overseen by a fractious council that almost never gets anything done (though, in fairness, they almost never need to). The Benefit for Tao PCs is that they get an extra Twist each session for use through the Romance, Intrigue, or Empathy themes (more on all that later). Their CVs are Authenticity (the ability to maintain *~MY VERISIMILITUDE~* by using technology disguised as milieu-appropriate objects) and Tradition (maintaining societal cohesion when faced with outside attacks on their culture). Inspectors are, like elsewhere, treated similarly to FBI agents. Here's some fiction about the historical fiction: Great Moments in (the Tao of) History posted:The wind is cold today, and the Mongol leaders shiver in their furs. Burhan Haldun is an inhospitable place. The Kurultai, the council of chiefs, is coming to a close, and the future of the entire Middle Kingdom balances on their decision. Great Moments in (the Tao of) History posted:Most watchers have their favorite characters. Temüjin was the highest-rated, of course, but Börte and Ögedei ranked nearly as high for female viewers. The Masqerade loved Subutai for his seemingly shifting loyalties and his faithful core. The Replicants liked Jelme and Bo’orchu for the same reasons others ignored them — they were somewhat interchangable to the casual viewers. Chilaun rated well anywhere family was important. With all of them in one place, the Tao would be making a significant portion of this year’s take on this single, hour-long scene. It was every bit as important to their government as it had been to ancient Earth.  There may not be much art, but what's there isn't half bad. That's all for now, this post risks getting way the gently caress too long. Later, we'll be continuing our journey around the universe, learning about the weirdos that live there. Next Time: Wait a minute, did that last fiction excerpt say Replicants? EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 22:14
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Freaking Crumbum posted:so the players are the antagonists in this game, yeah? i can't imagine playing transhuman pre-crime cops of the intergalactic nanny-state straight and having them be the good guys. Usually the threats involved are pretty imminent, the Transcendentals prefer to wait until they have to send in Inspectors before they make those kinds of calls. When it comes to less-advanced planets, the threat posed by their possession of future tech is usually to themselves if the Patent Office is getting involved. See, the Transcendentals aren't interested in uplifting "only the worthy few". They want to make sure everyone gets the opportunity to join them in extratemporal bliss, and they want everyone to get there with as little outside influence as possible. There's no law limiting contact with more primitive planets, the vast majority are just other humans who got lost in The Great Diaspora, anyway, but the risk of them blowing themselves up if they get any particularly advanced tech is something the Patent Office stands ready to deal with. As for other kinds of threats, those are usually things like actual supervillains and other bad guys who are about to plunge the universe into chaos, the Transcendentals are not (RAW, anyway) in the business of employing the Patent Office to kill Hitler or abuse the butterfly effect. They do their best to let a threat resolve itself or be resolved by local forces before they send Inspectors. Sorry if that all wasn't clear.
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Oct 11, 2018 22:24
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Mechanica seems to just be the Mechanists from Bruce Sterling, but I'm glad they're being treated well. Sterling was a Shaper propaganoid nodule.
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Oct 11, 2018 22:29
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Sufficiently Advanced is transparently 'the Culture novels, but we made Special Circumstances way less morally ambiguous because we're not doing a combination argument for anarcho-socialism and criticism of neoliberalism, we're doing a wish fulfillment space opera.' They even steal the term 'neural mesh.' For this reason I'm a bit peeved they chose to make space-socialism explicitly a slave culture, and the protagonists a giant patent office enforcing intellectual property and, in general, a kind of capitalism. Seriously, what the actual gently caress.
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Oct 11, 2018 22:43
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