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Okay, not gonna lie, the idea of a society eternally replaying the drama of the rise and fall of the Khanate as both a means to understand history and a popular tv show owns. E: like, I would play Chagatai, Son of Temujin, Temporarily On Loan While He Pretends To Be Sick In Story. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 22:57
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If I remember right, the Cognitive Union is the only culture that's even based on a coherent real-world philosophy, and it's "Socialism is brainwashing." It's quite telling. Most of the others are based on a subculture. Not just subcultures that have fully-realized communities--there are Nano Gypsies and Nano Amish--but some that explicitly evolved from fandom like the Tao of History. It's a real shame that even when people imagine a post-scarcity near-utopia, the dream is to just make your entire life a twee club scene. It reminds me of nothing so much as when I was reviewing Tradition Book: Hollow Ones, and I realized that all "Awakening" meant to the characters is that they'd have the resources to make everything in their life exquisitely goth without running out of money or suffering negative social consequences. Like, yeah, I'd love to inherit a pile of money too. Anyway, I presume the Eternal Masquerade is largely inspired by Jack Vance's "The Moon Moth."
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Oct 11, 2018 23:01
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Joe Slowboat posted: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.' Halloween Jack posted:If I remember right, the Cognitive Union is the only culture that's even based on a coherent real-world philosophy, and it's "Socialism is brainwashing." It's quite telling. I mean, I did some research, and not really? I mean, in the broadest terms, there's clearly some borrowed ideas from The Culture, but The Great Diaspora is not a coherent society so much as a collection of different far-future potential societies. Also, the Cognitive Union isn't actually socialism. A totalitarian state cannot, by its nature, be socialist, even if there truly is nobody at the top. Rather, it's collectivist. There's a true socialist culture coming at the top of the next update, don't you worry.
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Oct 11, 2018 23:10
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I don't mean to pour cold water on what you're doing, by the way. Reviews of flawed games are illustrative, and I like reviewing ones that are downright terrible!
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Oct 11, 2018 23:19
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Humbug Scoolbus posted: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. And the cows only because they're too stupid to be angry. Has an awful introductory adventure though.
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Oct 11, 2018 23:37
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EclecticTastes posted:I mean, I did some research, and not really? I mean, in the broadest terms, there's clearly some borrowed ideas from The Culture, but The Great Diaspora is not a coherent society so much as a collection of different far-future potential societies. Also, the Cognitive Union isn't actually socialism. A totalitarian state cannot, by its nature, be socialist, even if there truly is nobody at the top. Rather, it's collectivist. There's a true socialist culture coming at the top of the next update, don't you worry. I specifically meant that the Transcendentals and their Inspectors fulfill precisely the role of Minds and Special Circumstances, in a similar posthuman milieu, with similar moral aims, but without the coherent ideological framework that both makes the Culture believable as heroes and makes their flaws follow from their purpose. E: agreed that I still appreciate the review
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Oct 12, 2018 01:02
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Angrymog posted:And the cows only because they're too stupid to be angry. Dogs of War (the Washington DC supplement) was pretty cool. I have the original not-d20 version somewhere.
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Oct 12, 2018 01:40
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The Tao of History reminds me of the Reservations from Transmetropolitan.
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Oct 12, 2018 03:46
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Sufficiently Advanced Part 3: Even thousands of years in the future, the Amish are still around. Alright, let's keep this train rolling, and continue exploring space societies! The Illustrious Stardwelling Armada: Don't let the name fool you, they're not really a military body, they're really quite friendly, if you can understand them. The Stardwellers are the most advanced of the civilizations, and travel the universe in vast fleets. They constantly alter their bodies, minds, and social structures, always seeking new ways to live. That's one way to seek out new life and new civilizations, why go where no one has gone before when you can bring where no one has gone before to you? Their ship designs are as varied and unusual as their physical forms, and it's impossible to talk about the "average" Stardweller because such a concept doesn't exist. To modern-day humans, they'd look like a vast alliance of alien species, rather than an offshoot of our own. Some Stardwellers even exist as group minds. Their society's overarching philosophy is one of mutual reliance. None of them can survive without the others, and thus, they work together closely. The Stardweller economy is designed to push everyone towards the same wealth level, with only the barest minimum of capitalism or class division. Recognition and esteem are considered far more valuable than money (well, ideas-as-money). Leadership in the Armada is determined through a thorough analysis of a candidate using advanced psychohistorical analysis and mimetic profiling, that all comes together to create the most accurate prediction of a person's suitability for a given role possible. While one could use lenses and the like to improve their compatibility, it's generally discouraged, as nobody in the Armada wants to see a dozen identical candidates specifically tailored for the job. Stardwellers manage to pay for all this fancy stuff, by the way, by hiring themselves out to the other civilizations for deep space research, surveillance, or even just to host orbital art galleries. Stardweller PCs suffer no penalties for being in zero-g, and gain a bonus Locality skill (basically knowledge: local) from how well-traveled they are. Their CVs are Freedom (primarily ideological freedom, used to ensure one's liberty to think what one wants) and Diversity (used when combating bigotry). Like most open societies, the Stardwellers treat Inspectors like the FBI. Here's the fiction: A Riding of Stardwellers posted:The Grand Convention takes place every year — Old Earth years — in a location chosen at the previous Convention. The first Convention was held above Old Earth itself, and it was generally agreed that, unless there was a great need for memory and mourning, such a thing should not happen again. The Rememberance is a time for mourning and solemn contemplation; the Convention is a time for jubilation and the exchange of ideas. A Riding of Stardwellers posted:Not everything here is organized, though. Out of the limelight, old and new friends meet. Things as small as body type, chemical base, communication schemata, or neurotype will not keep these people apart. Some put their best faces forwards, holding back the parts they don’t want others to see; others dive in with passion and enthusiasm. There are latenight conversations, movie viewings, long walks, games, poetry jams, fistfights, reconciliations, purchases, collaborations, and every inch of everything humanity is and could be and wants to be all rolled into one.  Pictured: Humans. Roamers: Space gypsies. Get it? Roma, Roamer? Yeah, this one's kind of dumb, if I'm being honest. Conceptually sound, but the execution feels a little dumb. It's harmless enough, I suppose, and I do like the idea of more insular Earth cultures maintaining their traditions into the spacefaring age, but still. They dress in what once would have been seen as wildly colorful clothing, and more notably, it's all hand-sewn from real cloth. They're basically the same as the pop culture version of present-day Roma, but in space and more high-tech. They make their livings by hiring themselves out as spies for other civilizations, which has made them welcome, but distrusted, pretty much everywhere. They maintain the rich cultural traditions of the Roma, as well, with leadership handled by family elders. Due to their tight-knit society, Roamer PCs get two free Twists each session that can only be spent through the Empathy theme to get assistance from other Roamers, and are conversely encouraged to take Complications related to Roamers mooching off them in turn (you may want to come back here after we get to chargen). The CVs for the Roamers are Secrecy (protecting the Roamers' secrets, specifically) and Wanderlust (which aids in escaping both physical and abstract forms of keeping you in one place). Inspectors are treated like local police officers, and you can just guess how eager the Roamers are to talk to cops. Travel with the Roamers posted:The wormhole snaps shut, and the subsonic noise and sounds of rushing air end abruptly. In the aftermath, twelve wagons stand on a hillside, brightly colored ribbons streaming in the wind. An orange sun sits in a midnight-blue sky, and the Roamers laugh, pat each other on the backs, and begin to set up camp. Travel with the Roamers posted:Each side spies on the other. The Replicants use satellites, infosphere sifting, and biometrics. The Roamers sneak nanotech devices into the orbital tower, analyze traffic patterns, perform psychohistorical surveys on the citizens that visit them. The majority on both sides know nothing of this, but there are those who recognize what’s going on. Eventually the Roamers accept a contract from certain Replicants to do the same sort of spying on someone else — and they smile, pocketing the money. They step down their operations just enough so that the Replicants know things are better, and they stay to rake in more money. The League of Independent Worlds: Not everyone was 100% onboard with the Transcendentals. They didn't necessarily distrust them, they just wanted to make their own technological advancements, with the sweat of their own brow. The League exists as a future analog to present-day Earth, with much the same culture, attitudes, and economics. That said, this game was written during the Obama administration, so adjust your expectations upward, compared to today. Their resources are more limited than most cultures, but the everyday citizen still wants for nothing in terms of basic necessities, like everywhere else. Their technology tends to be idiosyncratic and unusual, as they're developing it the old-fashioned way, rather than all at once. Outside researchers are frequently unable to make heads or tails of the stuff. Even their Infosphere (global cloud-based internet) works differently, making their system much harder to hack, at least by outsiders. Due to their unusual choice to forgo technological uplifting and cultural similarities to Old Earth, the Independents also make a fair bit of income from tourism, as people flock from all over to see what it's like. Independent PCs get a +1 to their effectiveness from their quirky technology, but suffer -1 to their defenses. The League's CVs are Self-Reliance (which helps when you insist on doing something yourself) and Teamwork (which helps you form a team, keep it together, and take certain group actions). Inspectors are granted observer status only when operating in League space, and must rely on local authorities for actual enforcement. For the fiction here, I think it's actually worth Pastebinning both pieces this time, they're both worth a read. The first to get a feel for the baseline level of knowledge everyone has in the Sufficiently Advanced setting, and the second because it's the first piece of fiction thus far to mention the Patent Office. Mad Science in Independent Space and Independent Politics posted:Check it out. The Association of Eternal Life: At long last, the mysterious Replicants! Replicators are pretty cool, they can perfectly duplicate basically anything. Even people. The Replicants have been doing just that for thousands of years now, under the belief that a perfect copy of a person is, in fact, the same person. However, only a destructive scan can be thorough enough to completely recreate somebody. Thus, the Replicants are in a constant cycle of killing themselves to create copies that go on to outlive their original. This is seen as achieving immortality, and in terms of memory, this is true, but the rules explicitly state, if you're a PC, and you scan yourself for this, you're dead. Because the writers here understand the ideas that eventually went into making SOMA. Outside of their hosed-up use of replicators, the Replicants are quite reasonable, if overly bureaucratic. That said, most civilizations aren't fans, because of the whole cloning thing. Because every individual has dozens of copies of themselves out there somewhere, they tend to be pretty reckless (but again, if the character on your sheet dies, that's it). Childbirth in Replicant space is strictly controlled, to keep pace with colonization and their low death rate. Some fearmongers suggest that someday, they may truly run out of room, but no, space really is infinite in this setting, so they could keep expanding forever without crowding anyone out, it's more a matter of speed than space. Psychohistorical projections predict that if left to their own devices, the Cognitive Union and Replicants will spawn a splinter group that's a mixture of the two, an entire civilization of cloned slaves. Not even the Replicants want this to happen (the Union is largely indifferent on the matter). Their government is a krytocracy, run by judges and legal officials. Replicant PCs get some free skills from their active lifestyles, and assuming you haven't cut ties with the Association, you enjoy the benefits of having a bunch of clones of yourself (you can spend Twists via the Plot Immunity theme to declare that the guy that was just killed, arrested, etc. was actually one of your clones, and step back in from offscreen). Inspectors are treated as observers only, and have no legal authority in Replicant space. The fiction for these guys is pretty neat, have a look: Scene of the Crime posted:It has been a very, very long time since anyone here has managed to get away with murder, and I’m not about to let it happen now. Scene of the Crime posted:One of my instances pulls me aside and I talk to myself for a while. Micro-wear measurements on the floor show a couple of visitors, but there’s no traces of DNA — no skin flakes, no hairs, nothing. Someone scoured the whole place with microbots. We got here only three hours after the crime — for them to have gone through so fast, they’re almost certainly still nearby. Then I look at the replicator and my heart sinks — if this guy can erase logs, he probably just piled the ‘bots in there and deleted them. The Rationalist League: So, back before the Transcendentals, some scientists conducted a mad social experiment. They took some embryos, cut out the genes for emotions, put in extra genes for logic, then recorded the results. Some of the kids survived, so they continued making more generations of them. By the time the Transcendentals were born, the nascent Rationalist League numbered over ten-thousand, and were among the first to request passage off-world. They quickly set up a little empire for themselves. There's no crime, no internal conflict, and no strife. Only cold, hard logic. To imagine a Logician, think about Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He couldn't really feel, but he could still become puzzled, or experience basic forms of frustration in certain circumstances. That's what Logicians are like, except they think it's a good thing. They're not hostile to anyone, but they're certain everyone would be a lot easier to understand if they, too, were Logicians. Logicians also retain functional nervous systems, and thus can feel both pain and pleasure, among other sensations that are generally tied to emotions, but are not strictly emotions themselves. What few holidays they have are not celebrations, but mere reminders of past events, because not all of them have perfect memories yet. The long-term goal of the Logicians is the eradication of all emotion, on the premise that cold logic is better for survival. Psychohistorical analysis bears out this theory, though the general consensus among everyone else is that it wouldn't really be all that worth it to merely survive if one cannot appreciate it. Further, due to every single Logician acting with perfect logic at all times, the Rationalist League is able to employ Psychohistorical analysis to perfectly predict and identify any and all disturbances the moment they happen, making them extremely resistant to outside interference, even if their own inability to comprehend emotion hamstrings their ability to interfere with other cultures. On top of that, their lack of drive and ambition has led other civilizations to outstrip them technologically, making more conventional methods of conflict unfeasible. It's worth noting that the sole reason the Logicians have yet to adopt the Union's system of slave meshes is that their own Cognitech studies have been focused more on enhancing intelligence. Essentially, they can't afford to give everyone a mesh yet. Logician PCs are immune to emotional appeals and the Romance theme. The CVs for the Rationalist League are Logic (resisting emotion-based arguments) and Efficiency (making processes more efficient). Inspectors are treated as advisors to local law enforcement, making the Logicians the most friendly of the "bad guy" civilizations towards the Patent Office. By the way, the Logicians hold the Sol system as part of their territory, something that I think warrants another Pastebin: "Earth and the Logicians posted:Enjoy. The Association of Stored Humans: So, when the Replicants became a thing, some of them decided not to come back out of the computer they'd been scanned into. Now they're the Stored, an entire race of humanity living in a simulation. They interact with the world using "remotes", which can be anything from normal robot bodies to any of the larger and stranger stuff you'd find in Mechanican space. Though, with the advent of the infosphere and neural meshes, the Stored can often interact with other people just by using augmented reality. If you have a good enough friend with a neural mesh, they may even let you "ghostride", allowing a Stored to directly experience the sensory input of the physical person, something that appeals mostly to older Stored, who at times feel nostalgic for their physical bodies. Within the simulated space, older Stored tend to keep their living spaces as close as possible to real-world accuracy, simulating as much as possible with the processor cycles they're allowed. Younger Stored, on the other hand, often live in what they call "rendered" spaces, which only simulate sensations when they're useful or interesting, rather than copying the real world's constant input. Computing power is a public utility in Stored space, with each citizen allotted a certain amount, with surcharges for overages. Poorer citizens often try to save cycles by either reducing resolution (usually of their living space or body representations, sometimes of their minds), or "optimizing" themselves to run more efficiently. This doesn't always work out, and can result in a computation monstrosity, something that was once a person, and is now less than human, but more than just scrambled code. With a population of only about fifty million, the Stored are quite small, and they're facing a major generational divide. Younger Stored see little point in maintaining a connection with the physical world, and their thinking is growing more and more alien. Psychohistorical projections predict that the Stored will need to solve this problem, or face balkanization. The culture of the Stored revolves mainly around artistic pursuits that work to either hide or expose the digital medium. A painter might create a portrait by perfectly simulating every atom of paint individually, to make a statement, while another artist designs a simulation space using the impossible dimensions of MC Escher. Very few people join the Stored over time, and the Stored would never encourage someone to make the leap. Unlike the Replicants, the Stored understand that their original self is dead, and see becoming Stored as tantamount to suicide. This is why they have a long-standing enmity with the Replicants, who they see as irresponsible and dangerous. They also don't copy themselves, both to preserve a sense of individual identity, and to save on processor cycles. They don't have a formal government, but will gin one up when a problem necessitates one, using complex psychohistorical analysis to determine the best form their ad-hoc government should take this time. Stored PCs only use their Stringtech and Nanotech scores when defending their home server (and will likely have help from any other Stored living in there), and usually use the Nanotech scores of their remotes instead. They also have no Biotech score, because they don't have any bio. The CVs for the Stored are Identity (in this case, the raw certitude that there is only one of you in the universe, rather than the Masquerade's version) and Life (a respect for all living things, and also the Stored tend to include a lot of computer-based entities in this definition). Inspectors are treated similarly to local police, but enforcement tends to be tough when a witness can just bail into cyberspace. Here's a little taste of what life is like in cyberspace: A Stored Dilemma posted:I’m working on a poem. A Stored Dilemma posted:Wait a minute. Those are all the major factions to be found in The Great Diaspora, but there's still a few minor groups out there to cover. They are as follows: Old Worlders: When most of humanity fled to space, and the remaining world powers strangled each other to death, there remained a few people to pick up the pieces. They were never interested in fancy technology, even when "fancy technology" just meant "indoor plumbing". Now they're all that remain on Old Earth, living simple, agrarian lives. The Amish are a textbook example of an Old Worlder community, and in the thousands of years since The Great Diaspora, they haven't changed all that much. The Old Worlder economy runs mostly on barter; there's still money floating around, but it's only really worth its value as a memento of the world that once was. The Rationalists control the space around Old Earth, keeping the planet intact as a silently implied bargaining chip, but the locals don't care much for them. Some Old Worlder cultures, however, were part of The Great Diaspora that just lost all their technology and knowledge at some point during their journey, and decided they liked it like that. Old World PCs get a bonus CV of their choice to represent the specific community they hail from, and never take low-tech penalties when using old technology. The CVs common to all Old Worlders are Tradition (similar to the Tao's CV, except with a stronger air of superiority) and Simplicity (helps you resist the temptation to rely on technology, and resist the fast talk of them slick spacefolk). The Patent Office doesn't hold much sway with Old Worlder leadership, but Inspectors will usually be allowed to advise the local law enforcement when necessary. Spacers: So, before the Nanotech Wars, back before the Transcendentals uplifted humanity, Earth sent out other ships to colonize planets. These were massive colony ships, the sort you see in much harder sci-fi than this. Well, with all the rush and excitement surrounding wormhole travel and The Great Diaspora, these intrepid colonists were basically forgotten as they floated slowly through the void towards their destinations. Well, once the dust had settled, somebody remembered them and plotted out where they were. Imagine their surprise when they learned that other people had gone on ahead to their destination without them. By then, the rest of humanity saw them more as floating museums, closer to Old Worlders than to the new, modern breed of humanity, and we're exactly begging them to come to the table. Despondent that their purpose had been stolen from them after literal generations of floating through space, many of the early Spacers joined up with the Stardwellers, or just let their ship fall to ruin. The five remaining ships of the original dozen banded together, though, and resolved to preserve their tradition of dogged determination. The Spacers had a new goal. They hadn't been sent out to colonize a specific planet, they were sent out to ensure that humanity would never fade from the face of the universe. All those people on the ground were too vulnerable and reliant on technology, the Stardwellers to experimental and trusting of the Transcendentals. No, the Spacers would forge their own way, eternally exploring the void, fearless and tough! Spacer PCs are completely immune to fear of all kinds, and get free points in the Spacer skill. The Spacer Core Values are Independence (which keeps them from truly uniting, but also keeps them out from under one another's thumbs) and Diligence (helps when you do something carefully, triple-checked and without haste). Inspectors are generally treated like space cops when they show up. Cargo Cults: While many groups from The Great Diaspora lost all of their tech, and became Old Worlders, Cargo Cults only lost most of their tech, retaining only a few powerful pieces of modern technology, with nobody left who really knew how it worked. Eventually, they each began to worship it. The term "Cargo Cult" is a catch-all for all such groups, as they have the common trait of worshiping what little technology remains in their hands, not knowing how or why it works. Also, the majority of all inhabited planets are inhabited by Cargo Cults. A PC from a Cargo Cult can use practical technology without training, but can't use Reserve to add to the roll. The CVs of Cargo Cults are Ritual (provides bonuses to using the type of technology your cult sprang up around, with the drawback that you have to perform the same religious rituals while using it; yes, you're basically a Techpriest with a very narrow focus) and Worship (similar to the Disciples, but usually crazier). Inspectors pretty much never get any recognition or rights in the eyes of Cargo Cults, as they're outsiders and therefore dangerous infidels to one degree or another. To give you an idea of what Cargo Cults are like, here's a listing of sample Cargo Cults from the book: Sufficiently Advanced posted:List of Cargo Cults There, that's the full breadth of human culture in The Great Diaspora. At least that anyone playing the game is going to find. Next Time: Not-so-secret Societies and actual aliens! Stay tuned! EDIT: As an aside, while I'm waiting to explain all these game terms I keep dropping until we get to the sections with actual rules, the glossary at the front of the book does explain what they all are in basic terms, unlike certain other games I've reviewed. EclecticTastes fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 04:04
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 Panoceania units on parade Fusiliers  You’ve seen Fusiliers before. They’re a good example of your basic line infantry, though, and therefore a good excuse to talk about some generalities.  Here’s how an Infinity profile breaks down. LI is Light Infantry, a general classification. You can expect light infantry in general to be cheap, to move 4-4, and to provide a regular order. They carry a broadly comparable selection of weapons, and are mostly interchangeable across factions, with some minor tweaks - Fusiliers are shootier than most line infantry, but have worse willpower. Most of them have a Cube, the resurrection thingy, which is the blue square with the staggered silhouettes in it. The green circle-and-triangle means each Fusilier you take generates one Regular Order. You can spend a regular order on its owner, or anyone else in your army. It’s a good idea to have a stash of these in your list to blow on rambo units, infiltrating specialists, and other power pieces. Orders also come in other flavors, like Irregular (you can only spend that order on the unit that generates it), Impetuous (usually in addition to a regular or irregular order, you may spend that order, before any other type of order, on the unit that generates it, AND they must move as far as possible towards the nearest enemy), Extremely Impetuous (like impetuous, but you MUST spend it or spend another order to cancel it), and Lieutenant Orders. Your army must have a Lieutenant. Sometimes this will be obvious, sometimes you can hide your lieutenant. Your LT generates an order that they can use for their own purposes, but if you spend it, you reveal who your LT is. Either way, if your lieutenant is killed, it can wreck your day as your force panics, and all your regular orders are converted to irregular orders at the start of your next turn, since now it’s every man for himself. Some types of units are immune to this panic. Why would you ever spend that order, then? Sometimes, you just have to have one extra order to score points in a round. Other times, your LT is a total beast and they can eat most of what gets thrown at them, so they get a free action at the cost of some extra risk. Sometimes your opponent has puzzled out which of your models is your lieutenant and is actively working to assassinate them, and you may as well get the extra order out of them before they get merked. It’s a balancing act, and it’s a pretty nice little minigame that doesn’t require a lot of rules bloat. Back to stats. MOV (Movement) is given in two values, the first and second distances you move in an order, expressed here in inches; it’s a Spanish game, so there’s also a metric version for you Euros. A Fusilier moves four inches their first move action, and if they move again in the same order, move an additional four inches. Compare this to someone who moves 6-2. If they’re both double-moving, they end up the same. But the 6-2 move guy can move and shoot/dodge/whatever and get up the board faster. Also compare with medium infantry, that tend to be better equipped and more skilled, but usually only move 4-2. CC is Close Combat, and BS is Ballistic Skill. Price-is-Right roll these to melee or ranged attack a fella, respectively. CC 13 is about average, while BS 11 is more average for your grunts. Infinity is very much a game focused around ranged combat, so keep that in mind. PH is Physique, your trooper’s general burliness and poise. PH is used for dodging attacks, throwing grenades, resisting certain statuses, and some other actions. 10’s not great, to be honest. A fifty-fifty chance of avoiding a bullet isn’t something to bank on in this game. WP is Willpower, used to resist freaking out when you get shot, passing objective tests, using advanced skills, resisting statuses, and other things. PanO doesn’t do well at WP. Elite units are generally higher WP than their pleb counterparts, even if they won’t be actively using the attribute. ARM/BTS stand for Armor and Bio-technological Shield. Save vs. physical and save vs. magic, in short. They both work the same way. Let’s say Fusilier Angus gets hit by a rifle shot. The rifle is listed as Damage 13, along with a bunch of other stats we’re ignoring for the time being. Armor/BTS rolls go the opposite direction, because negative AC is bad, same as damage 1 being more dangerous than damage 20. You roll a d20 and add your armor or BTS value, and you must be above the damage threshold - if you hit exactly the value, you still eat dirt. If Angus rolls a 12 here, his total armor roll is 13, and he fails. If he were armor 5, which is pretty high up there, he’d need to roll a 9 or better, and so on. You want to avoid getting shot or hacked or exploded as a general rule, because otherwise the suppression mechanic kicks in. If you get hit, and either pass your ARM/BTS roll and don’t take damage, or fail and take damage and are not instantly incapacitated, your trooper has to pass a WIP check (called a Guts Roll) to stay still. Pass and you shrug off the fact you came within a hair’s breadth of dying, NBD. If you fail your WIP check, as PanO guys are wont to do, you have to take cover. If you’re near cover, you have to move to it. If you’re in partial cover, you have to move into total concealment from the thing that attacked you. If you’re out in the open, you drop prone, etc. You can never tuck and roll towards the enemy who attacked you, and you can’t run away into base to base contact with another enemy. W (or sometimes STR, if it’s a machine) are Wounds or Structure. They represent how many hits you can take before you lose consciousness. One wound, one failed armor check, unconscious. This is your trooper bleeding out. They can also be overkilled - if your Fusilier is hit by a five-die burst, and all of them cause damage, he’s instantly dead, no chance of revival. More W/STR == better than. S stands for Silhouette, and is Infinity’s way of resolving the problems inherent to a true line-of-sight system. Models have a Silhouette value from 1 to 7, or 8 if you’re the Haqqislam spider-tank. Silhouettes are arbitrary values based on the type of unit, so the sculptors can do crazy interesting poses and not have to worry about a line trooper crouching having a mechanical advantage. There’s a chart [url=”http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Volume_and_Silhouette_Templates%94]here[/url] for a more graphical representation. Volume is cubic, if you recall basic math, and size adds up fast. You want to be as small as possible, so less of you is exposed to get shot at. On the flip side, tall stuff can hurdle terrain and cover that smaller models would have to stop and climb over. I’ve found this is rarely super important, but YMMV. AVA is for availability. This determines how many of a given unit you can take in your list. You could take an unlimited number of the non-lieutenant Fusliers in your PanO list, but you wouldn’t want to. Sectorials will have different availabilities, so while you can only take so many Bolts in a vanilla list, you can have as many as you can afford in a Neoterran Capitaline Army list. Really elite units will have an AVA of 1 or 2, for the most part, with 4 or 5 being about average. There’s the basics, finally. Let’s take a closer look at Fusilier loadouts.  Your average dude is a grunt with a rifle. Other profiles have things like a rocket or a grenade launcher, sniper rifles, machine guns, and so forth. There are also specialists, like the paramedic, hacker and forward observer profiles. These are the guys you need to accomplish objectives in certain missions. Sometimes you score points in a game of Infinity by killing the other guy. Other times, you have to control terrain. A lot of the time, you’ll need to hack a computer, doctor a civilian target, break into a weapons locker, etc. Specialists are the guys who do that, while your weapons-carriers focus on shooting stuff and locking down fire lanes. Cost is a factor. Why take a jerk with a rifle when you could have them all carrying machine guns? The average game of Infinity has a 300-point limit. So, if you were really bad at making decisions, you could take 29 rifle Fusiliers and one Fusilier lieutenant, for 300 points. There’s also SWC, or Support Weapons Cost. Nicer toys cost SWC, which is vastly more limited. You get 1 SWC per 50 points allowed, so a 300 point cap gives you 6 SWC to work with. Notice one machine gunner or missileer costs 1.5, a full quarter of your cool toys pool. Some sectorials will have the same profile as vanilla with a different SWC value to represent greater or lesser access to certain guns or equipment. Trauma Doc  I’m going to show you the crappy parts of Infinity, too. The early sculpts, like the Trauma Doc, can get pretty rough. But the doctor here is not just screaming in anguish because of bad sculpting; chances are good the blood of your soldiers is on her hands. When a unit is hit and loses all its HP, it’s unconscious unless it’s overkilled, or disabled if it’s a drone or tank or what have you. You can use a paramedic or a doctor to try and revive them, so they keep contributing to your order pool, as well as being able to do stuff on account of being alive. Paramedics are cheap specialists and handy, but they only have a medikit. You can use a magical medical dart or something to revive people at a distance, which means you must first pass a BS check to hit them, and all relevant modifiers (cover, any stealth gear, range, conditions) apply. Risky to start with. Once you’ve hit them with the feel-good juice, the target must then make a PH-3 roll. So, if you manage to hit your fallen comrade in the first place, Fusilier Angus has to make a roll of 7 or less to stand back up with one Wound. Otherwise, the shock to the target’s system is too much, and they’re dead and wiped off the table. Doctors, by comparison, can’t make doctoring rolls at a distance, but they make their check against their unmodified Willpower. That’s great if you’re playing Haqq and have the best doctors in the game, who get a +3 to their roll and start at WIP 14. If you’re running PanO, and you really, really need your doctor to make a 60% chance of fixing their friend...well, prayer is appropriate at times like these. Auxilia  Infinity gets complex fast. Check out this profile.  Auxilia are basically identical to Fusiliers, but one point of BS less. A little pricier, because they come with an Auxbot, that unicycle robot thing up in the picture. The green circuit board symbol means the unit can be hacked. Auxilia and their Auxbot use the Ghost: Synchronized rule, which means each pair of infantry and robot act off one order. If you’re in a position to ARO against them, you have to pick one to act on. There’s a host of other complications, but the important part is that they touch on another point of Infinity strategy: forcing your opponent to make a choice between two bad decisions. See, Auxilia carry a rifle just like basic Fusiliers, while their bot has a heavy flamethrower. Template weapons in Infinity are to be feared, flamethrowers especially. They ignore cover, for starters, and they affect everything they touch. The heavy flamethrower template is about eight inches long and three or so at its widest point, so it can conceivably take out an entire fireteam if they’re arranged badly. Flamethrowers don’t roll to hit, they’re just placed and if you don’t dodge out of the attack, you take damage. If you’re hit with a flamethrower, it keeps dealing damage until you make a successful Armor roll.And you don’t get to shoot back against a flamethrower; when you’re the target of an attack, you can respond by dodging, shooting back, or whatever else is applicable. What you do if you really want to make someone suffer is to put them in a position where the Auxilia and the Auxbot can both hit their model, so they have to decide between shooting back against the Auxilia and potentially disabling both infantry and bot, or dodging and potentially wasting their ARO. Bolts  After all those mechanics notes, this one’s a lot lighter. Bolts are the primary Australian contingent. Among their arsenal of stereotypes is the skill Bioimmunity, which means they’re immune to the special effects of ammo eg being immune to poison, and tossing out Drop Bears, little throwable mines in the form of a koala head. Shockingly, there are not Bolts with giant boots or corks dangling from their helmets. Bolts are also immune to the effects of your LT getting plastered, and they’re medium infantry. They’re still not hackable, but their MOV is 4-2. MI got a little boost in the latest Infinity season, with the ability to deploy further up the board right off the bat. It’s a nice little rules patch. Order Sergeant  Order Sergeants are the men-at-arms of the Military Orders. They’re better at melee combat, and have access to some nicer gear than the standard PanO infantry, they’ve got a whole 13 WIP, and they’re pricier. Like the rest of the Military Order troops, they’re Religious, which means when they take a hit on the chin, in a reversal of the normal order they have to make a WIP check to fall back, plus they don’t run away when your army is in retreat. That’s neat, if not always desirable, but the big deal here are the specialist sergeants. The Spec Sergeants get TO Camouflage and Infiltration. TO is a pretty big deal in and of itself. Thermoptic Camouflage is the invisibility suit from Ghost in the Shell. Ordinarily, camouflage puts you into a marker state where you just can’t be acted against unless your opponent makes a check to reveal your unit, or makes a WIP check to blind-fire at you with an appropriate weapon. That’s a really powerful ability in and of itself, which we’ll get into more when I cover the Ariadna units. Most camo also imposes a -3 penalty against hitting your unit, which can stack with cover, for another -3, plus or minus range modifiers. TO’s even better - if you’ve exposed your unit from the marker state, it’s a -6 penalty to hit you. A TO unit in cover starts at -9 to be hit, a negative 45% chance to hit them. That’s crazy good already. As if that weren’t enough, TO units can also use the Hidden Deployment skill. Instead of putting your unit down during deployment, you just note down exactly where it is and reveal it at your leisure. It’s just not there until it is, so while it’s not giving an order to your pool, it also can’t be acted on by your opponent in any way, except to be turned up by specialized sensor units, and then they have to deal with the camo penalties from above. Ordinarily, there’s a set deployment zone based on the mission. On a 4’x4’ table, you can typically deploy up to 12” from your table edge. With Infiltration, you can elect to deploy anywhere on your half of the table, or you can make a PH-3 roll to deploy anywhere on your opponent’s side of the table, barring their deployment zone. So, there may be some rear end in a top hat with a sniper rifle hiding in your vulnerable back line the whole game, and you’d never know until he uncloaks and shoots your guys in the back. Surprise! Crocmen  Survivors of a desperate last stand against the Combined Army on Paradiso. Every setting can generally be improved by the addition of Maori warriors. Crocmen have many of the same abilities as the TO infiltrating Spec Sergeants, but can also do a wicked haka. Tech-bee  Infinity has a problem with women. Some of the newer figures are actually pretty good, but by and large, in 2177 humanity has apparently evolved some sort of pronounced sexual dimorphism that requires women to wear form-fitting power armor and combat heels. There’s a range of models called the Bootleg series. Ostensibly, the Bootlegs are more display pieces, meant for the sculptors to be able to cut loose and make some really elaborate models, ready-made dioramas, that kinda thing. What it turned out to be is mostly a set of one-handed sculptures, which included the original Tech-bee lounging in her underwear on a disassembled mecha. Yeah. Tech-bees are supposed to be like US Navy Seabees, but they’re really not alike at all, so screw you Gutier. Apart from conditioning nerds to get erect at the sight of a pewter miniature, Tech-bees provide an irregular order and a +1 to your Engineer’s fix-stuff rolls. Knights  L-R: Magister Knight, Hospitaller Knight, Santiago Knight, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, Montessa Knight Knights and Military Orders in general are meant to tap into the Space Marine zeitgeist. An MO army will typically have ten to twelve orders, and feature a pain train of heavy infantry knight fireteams. Father-Knights are ordained members of the Church, and generally act as the level heads to the more outrageous personalities of the knightly orders, per the fluff. Which is funny, because at MOV 4-4, CC 23, ARM 5, BTS 9 and two Wounds, they can really rip poo poo. They also have the Assault skill, where as a full action order your model can move its full MOV value and make a melee attack. Curiously, while there are female sculpts for the other knights, Father-Knights are all male. It remains to be seen if the Church has allowed the ordination of women two hundred years into the future. Hospitallers are the big men and women on the monastery campus. They’re the biggest and most popular of the knightly orders, especially after they conspired with the college of cardinals to dissolve the Knights Templar and take their poo poo. The common folk love the Hospitallers because of their medical aid programs, and the military loves them because they’re the PanO pararescue corps. Hospitallers are less killy and a little less durable than Father-Knights, but they’re still strong pieces for a fair bit cheaper, with Doctor specialist options. Hospitallers, like many of the knightly orders, let their zeal get the better of them in a fight, and have the Frenzy rule. Once they kill an enemy, they gain an Extremely Impetuous order. Keeping them in a fireteam means they stay regular, and the common heavy infantry fireteam in MO is a couple of Hospitaler doctors and some Magister Knights to fill out the team for cheap. Magister Knights have devoted themselves entirely to the Church’s military, following strict vows of poverty. They keep their heads shaved so that anyone can see their military implants. They eschew public recognition and praise, preferring to spend their time murdering pagans and heretics. Magisters are a little psychotically dedicated to killing, so they have Frenzy as well. They’re lightly armored, with light shotguns and disposable rocket launchers. They’re also 23 points for the standard model, about half the cost of other knights. Unlike many units, they can’t form a fireteam of their own, but require pairing with either Hospitalers or Santiagos. Monstessa Knights are the lightest of the standard knights, formed when the Church looked at Aconticimento and said “Wait a minute, we don’t have a military presence there.” They’re 3 ARM and 3 BTS, with slightly lower stats than a Hospitaler, but for a higher price. I think they’re a touch expensive, unfortunately, which is a shame because the Mechanized Deployment skill they have lets them deploy in a group with any other MD units anywhere in your half of the table. Montessas can form a two-man fireteam with each other, but that’s about a hundred points for two guys with very little gain in order efficiency. A remorseful pass, since the model is great. Sepulchrist Knights are the last line of defense for Military Order positions, and are the order primarily charged with the protection of Earth and all its holy sites. They’re too expensive for what you get, but they do have very nice purple robes. Teutonic Knights are one of the newest knightly orders, formed in response to the invasion of the Combined Army. They’re meant to be lighter knights, built for close combat, and constructed to fight against CA units. They’re reasonably priced, but not good at much but swording aliens. They have Frenzy as well as the Berserk skill, which is kinda neat - instead of making opposed rolls, you and your opponent roll unopposed Close Combat attacks, giving yourself a +6 to hit. You might both kill each other, depending on the breaks. If you absolutely gotta have a thing dead, Berserk’s certainly a way to try. Corvus Belli was absolutely certain that Teutons were going to be a big hit in Central Europe and Russia, and don’t seem to get why that went over like a fart in church. The Santiago Knights are my guys, and it’s a shame there’s not a lot of reasons to take them over Hospitallers. Stats-wise, they’re approximate to Hospitalers, with slightly weaker statlines and slightly higher prices. Their equipment lets them ignore facing, and they ignore the effects of zero-g terrain. Their real weakness is that their weapons loadouts are all short range, if highly devastating, because these are literal space knights. The Order of Santiago has a mandate to defend pilgrims, and that means spaceships. In addition to a generally mendicant life wandering the wormhole network, Santiagos are specialists in zero-g boarding actions. They also look great, with that Diego Velasquez chique. TAG rundown   Above: Squalo with Fusiliers for scale Nerds love giant robots, and Infinity delivers in spades. Infinity has some great sculpts in general, and the Tactical Armored Gears (because we wanted a cool acronym for TAG) are a big factor in a lot of people’s decisions to pick up the game. And that’s a problem, because TAGs are not something you want to use in your first couple of games. TAGs do a pretty good job of operating like tanks - they’re well armored (light TAGs start at ARM 5, and can go as high as ARM 10) and carry heavy weapons that can shred entire squads (like chain railguns, giant machine guns with programmable ammo, and of course, flamethrowers). They’re also really big targets, both literally and in terms of value. If you spend between seventy and 150 points on one order, you bet I’m going to try and kill the hell out of it. Plus what can really break a newbie’s heart are critical hits. If my grunt gets spectacularly lucky against your showpiece model TAG, rolls three dice and gets exactly the number she needs to hit on each die, those hits bypass armor and automatically deal a point of damage. All that armor, all those huge guns, going to down to a couple of really lucky shots. It’s not probable, but it does happen, and golly does it suck to experience. PanO TAGs have a lot of cool toys the other factions don’t get. All of them are Remote Presence machines, as opposed to piloted craft. Because they’re piloted by some goon in a trailer away from the frontlines, Remote Presence machines can elect to pass or fail their Guts Roll as they choose. Because there’s not any squish meat inside, when they get overkilled, they have an extra hitpoint they can take before they’re destroyed outright. They’re still knocked out, it’s just harder to coup de grace them. The Squalo is the closest thing PanO has to a “standard” TAG. They’re MOV 6-4, CC 18, BS 15, PH 17, WIP 12, ARM 8, BTS 6, STR 3, S 7, and availability 2, if you like each one running you 93 points and 2 SWC each. The secret to Squalo success is to take the Heavy Grenade Launcher profile, so you can sit back and drop bombs on the other guy at range from behind concealment. The Uhlan, the Neoterra TAG, and the Cutter, the Varuna model, have regular and TO camouflage respectively. You tend not to have larger models with camouflage, since it tends to give away what they are; nothing else in the game has TO camo and a 55mm base. The Tikbalang, Aconticimento’s TAG, has jungle abilities and an extremely sweet giant sword. There used to be a special character Tikbalang, Toni Macayana. She was an upgraded version with better stats and mines, and honestly, she was a little OP. Tony bought it in an event that temporarily introduced some special characters for all factions, who in turn were whittled down to one survivor who got assimilated into the Combined Army. SAA also has the Dragao, which is like a Squalo with a railgun instead of an HMG. The Knights get their own TAG, the Seraph. It’s got angel wings for jump abilities and it looks an awful lot like Eva Unit-00. It’s not very good, but it does have an Auxbot. If you play PanO, you’re gonna have a lot of Auxbots in very short order. The final PanO TAG is the Jotum, built on Svalarheima. The Jotum is basically a winterized Squalo, built off the same framework as all the other PanO TAGS, and then they threw a shitload of armor on top of it. The really neat part is that when you build the model, you’re actually slapping armor plating on an underframe, like a Gundam model. It’s got the highest armor rating in the game at 10, with BTS 9 to boot. It’s hard to kill a Jotum in a firefight. Swiss Guard  After all that talk about TAGs, going back to infantry may be a little underwhelming. Here’s the thing though - this gives you all the good parts of a TAG for cheaper with fewer liabilities. Swiss Guards have generally good stats, although despite the sweet zweihander you probably don’t want to let this guy get into close combat. He’s ARM 5, BTS 6, two wounds, and equipped with TO camo. Swiss can’t do the far up the field shenanigans, but they can still pop out of hiding in cover somewhere and wreck shop, especially since they all come with some serious business heavy weapons. A missile launcher on a roof somewhere that’s nearly impossible to hit, quite durable when you do manage to pop it, and only person-sized is a force to be reckoned with. As with the current papal Swiss Guard, all members of the group must be natural citizens of a Swiss canton, of good moral and legal character, mustered out of the Swiss armed forces, and generally a group of martial experts. Unlike the current papal contingent, the Infinity Swiss Guard lets women join. Since these are still the guys who literally protect the Space Pope, and also stand around wearing slashed coats and stockings, they’re only detached to other duties on special occasions. Joan and Recreations  ALEPH, determined to prove that even nigh-omniscient AIs can make dumb decisions, decided that having aspects of itself downloaded into androids just wasn’t cutting it. How can it gain information on the big human questions, all Data-like, when it only has access to every bit of communication in the entire human sphere? Clearly, more elaborate measures were required. To whit, it decided to simulate what it imagined historical and fictional personalities might be and dump them into highly advanced cybernetic bodies. If ALEPH is evil, at least we can take some solace in the fact that it appears to be very stupid. Strap in, the Recreations are only going to get weirder. Jeanne d’Arc (1412-1431, 215X-current), former crispy critter, Catholic saint and possible schizophrenic, was simulated by ALEPH, retrained and rebuilt with vastly improved tactical and combat abilities, and unleashed on the enemies of Panoceania. Joan joined the Hospitallers at the bottom rung, and quickly climbed the ladder during PanO’s colonial wars with Yu Jing and the eventual EI invasion. She was transferred to the Order of Santiago (hence her Hospitaller tabard and Santiago shoulder plate) to take part in the defenses of Mars and Neoterra, the latter of which she commanded. Joan is a brilliant strategist and charismatic beyond description. If you see Joan on the table, kill her. She has two profiles, one built for direct combat and another for maneuvering. Joan 1.0 is MOV 4-4, CC 23, BS 15, PH 15, WIP 15, ARM 5, BTS 6, two wounds, S2, and unsurprisingly, AVA 1. Joan 2.0 is MOV 6-2, at the cost of 1 PH and 2 ARM. Her skills are superb. She can choose to fail her Guts Roll or stand her ground; she has No Wound Incapacitation, which gives her an effective extra Wound in most circumstances; she’s got Martial Arts level 3, which lets her pick between an extra +3 damage or giving herself a simultaneous boost to her close combat rolls and a penalty to her target’s roll, and her mobility profile has an extra movement bonus when she dodges in the reactive turn. She’s got a close-range machine gun and a template weapon, so she can force that bad decision on her opponents all by herself. She can pick between an AP sword, which halves the target’s Armor rating, or a double action weapon, which effectively doubles the number of hits she inflicts. She costs about 50 points, so she’s just a hair cheaper than some of the other knights, but if you take her as your Lieutenant, and if you take her you will, she gives you SWC. Forget all of that crap, because she also has Inspiring Leadership. When an Inspiring Leadership character is your LT, you may treat any Irregular orders as Regular. Would you like to pay three or five points for an order you can spend on anybody? Yes, yes you would. The only thing that keeps this from being broken is PanO’s relative lack of cheap irregular orders. In a Military Orders list, Joan can also rock out with the band, a fireteam of up to four other Hospitallers or Santiagos. Joan lists tend to rely very heavily on her presence, and that's probably a mistake, because as soon as she comes out, she's priority number one. That she frequently rolls around with a bunch of doctors just as beastly as her complicates matters. You can try and shoot her down, or you can take the alternative means of conflict resolution with highly elite lists, and that's to go murder their squishier units that feed the big buff dudes orders. Joan, along with several of the other Recreations, is something of a darling at the Corvus Belli offices. There are no less than five sculpts of her, two for each of her profiles and one limited release for Angel Giraldez’s painting book. I get the impression she’s somebody’s waifu, because even her enemies love and respect Joan. Still, she’s a friggin’ beast. I’d take her in any army, given the chance. Next: Yu Jing, and headaches for Sinologists.
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Oct 12, 2018 04:13
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Huh. I'd always gotten the impression the Recreations were nationalist prestige projects and pop culture icons (that also happen to be murderous supersoldiers). I didn't know Aleph made them for silly reasons. Literal pop culture fanfic 'historical' supersoldiers are hilarious and the exact kind of ridiculousness people would build if we could, though. Armies led by the imagined superbeings dreamed up by a thousand frenzied Paradox game forum posters? That's the good kind of stupid. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 04:28
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The Rationalists are nonsense, unless we are going to start defining desires as non-emotional. Logic is a tool to find solutions, and cannot provide either goals or starting premises.
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Oct 12, 2018 04:50
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Mors Rattus posted:The Rationalists are nonsense, unless we are going to start defining desires as non-emotional. Logic is a tool to find solutions, and cannot provide either goals or starting premises. Of course they are, but it's interesting how omnipresent the 'cold rational logic people who are right but creepy' tend to be in pop sci-fi. I always wonder if the Vulcans were just that influential or if it's something else.
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Oct 12, 2018 04:57
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Will there be a Fate: GO crossover?
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Oct 12, 2018 05:01
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Night10194 posted:Of course they are, but it's interesting how omnipresent the 'cold rational logic people who are right but creepy' tend to be in pop sci-fi. I always wonder if the Vulcans were just that influential or if it's something else. It's way older than Vulcans, I'm pretty sure that character archetype was a staple of pulp sci-fi since its inception, usually the domain of evil robots or aliens. If anything, the Vulcans and Data are rare positive examples in sci-fi, even though both have their flaws. That said, Logicians have more in common with Data than Vulcans. It's not that they're suppressing their emotions, they're literally incapable of them. The totally unethical experiment that spawned their forebears involved stripping emotional responses from the genome.
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Oct 12, 2018 05:04
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That specifically is why they’re nonsense. Without emotions and thus desires, they should spend all their time solely on survival with minimal discomfort and then just sitting there, and that only if we accept self preservation as a fundamental instinct. E: without a goal, derived by some means that cannot be pure logical process, they have no reason to perform actions.
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Oct 12, 2018 05:07
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Mors Rattus posted:That specifically is why they’re nonsense. Without emotions and thus desires, they should spend all their time solely on survival with minimal discomfort and then just sitting there, and that only if we accept self preservation as a fundamental instinct. So... you've just never seen Star Trek: TNG? Data had no emotions, but he had desires. You might think that makes no sense, but, neither does a universe where entropy and the concept of a finite universe don't doom all of existence to an eternity of nothingness after a relatively brief window of time in which things happened. So, I dunno, take it or leave it, I guess.
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Oct 12, 2018 05:20
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Data has directives given to him from without to begin with - he is directed to perform actions, to learn and serve as a Starfleet asset, and therefore proceeds logically to achieve this, but these goals aren’t and cannot be derived from pure logic. His story is also about, y’know, developing the capacity to understand and feel emotion. Where do the goals and desires of these asshats come from? E: this entire thing is a huge pet peeve of mine because it demonstrates a consistent failure to understand logic and is always presented as a Correct And Rational but is manifestly neither. Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 05:24
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Mors Rattus posted:Data has directives given to him from without to begin with - he is directed to perform actions, to learn and serve as a Starfleet asset, and therefore proceeds logically to achieve this, but these goals aren’t and cannot be derived from pure logic. His story is also about, y’know, developing the capacity to understand and feel emotion. Data is only in Starfleet to advance his own self-motivated goal of personal growth. In his off time, he studies art, reads, and even makes use of holodeck programs. You could argue that this is because he was programmed to go forth and prosper, but humans have more instincts than just "don't die". The Logicians are just looking to multiply and prosper, like any living creature, they just see emotion as the primary obstacle to their future prospects (and just because they're right doesn't give them the right to wipe out all emotion).
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Oct 12, 2018 05:41
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EclecticTastes posted:So... you've just never seen Star Trek: TNG? Data had no emotions, but he had desires. You might think that makes no sense, but, neither does a universe where entropy and the concept of a finite universe don't doom all of existence to an eternity of nothingness after a relatively brief window of time in which things happened. So, I dunno, take it or leave it, I guess. Much like being In Trouble, a fundamental conflict between Logic and Emotion is a fake idea.
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Oct 12, 2018 05:54
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It's a paradox. You can't claim an outcome (such as "eliminating all emotions") is good without an emotional motivation. There is no such thing as a purely objective "good". Even the survival of the species is only "good" if you have an emotional connection to humanity. There would be no reason to take any action without emotions. Purely instinctive actions like avoiding pain, seeking comfort, etc might be possible..but taking any action beyond that requires something that you desire. Desire is an emotion, which is why characters like Data and Spock are incoherent (the mere fact that data wanted to have emotions is a paradox as old as wizard of oz). They're still valid enough stock character types, but the entire philosophy behind them (spock in particular) is, surprisingly, illogical. oriongates fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 06:05
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Nessus posted:Speaking as a big "Trek Head," Data clearly had at least some limited emotional responses, and it is an interesting question whether this was emergent or not. What he lacked and very gradually, grindingly, painstakingly gained was emotional intelligence. The problem becomes one of defining what is an "emotion." Yeah, I mean, I could go on for hours about how Data had plenty of responses that could be broadly construed as emotions even though they fell outside the dynamic of happiness, anger, sadness, fear, love, and so on. He was often puzzled, sometimes frustrated, but, as mentioned, these are more emergent responses to cognitive dissonance and undesirable outcomes than genuine emotions as defined by the series. Ultimately, as you say, there's no real way to truly separate things like logic and emotion, beings like the Logicians are purely a hypothetical construct for the sci-fi genre, and you kind of just have to take their existence as a conceit of the setting.
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Oct 12, 2018 06:13
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And the idea Logic and Emotion are opposing is patently absurd if you look at recent studies into neurology and animal behavior. Animals that are closer to humans in intelligence levels have or shown logical processes (such as Ravens making tools, dolphins getting high off of pufferfish or our primate cousins) display much stronger and more recognizable emotional behaviors such as grief and holding grudges. And there's a huge dollop of sexism underpinning the idea that being emotional is bad.
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Oct 12, 2018 06:18
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oriongates posted:There is no such thing as a purely objective "good". Even the survival of the species is only "good" if you have an emotional connection to humanity. This is a matter of some contention. There are moral philosophies which hold that good, bad, moral imperatives, etc. are fundamental in the same way physics is, and logic, reason, and moral philosophy can be used to determine these fundamental moral truths. It's not a moral philosophy I give much credit, but it's one that exists.
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Oct 12, 2018 06:24
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Night10194 posted:I recognize tech-cultist terminology! The fact that we get Less Wrong and not Mechanicum to be our tech cultists just reinforces the idea that this is the worst timeline.
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Oct 12, 2018 06:27
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Also, uh, the Armada is the Culture though? "Weird posthumans who live on ships and travel constantly ever outwards" is what the majority of the Culture look like to other factions. This game is absolutely deeply indebted to the Culture, and the fact that there's 'the minimal necessary capitalism' in the Armada is pissing me off. Why is it necessary? What is the point or need for any capitalism, whatsoever, in a Culture knockoff? It's like spitting on the books from orbit.
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Oct 12, 2018 06:33
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Robindaybird posted:And the idea Logic and Emotion are opposing is patently absurd if you look at recent studies into neurology and animal behavior. Animals that are closer to humans in intelligence levels have or shown logical processes (such as Ravens making tools, dolphins getting high off of pufferfish or our primate cousins) display much stronger and more recognizable emotional behaviors such as grief and holding grudges. Neither Star Trek nor Sufficiently Advanced have said that being emotional is bad (but, agreed that the people who do say that are sexist, I'm well aware of the sort of people you're probably thinking of). In Star Trek, the Vulcans are given to myopia, cognitive bias, and hubris, while Data's entire character arc is about how he wishes he could feel emotions (the episode "In Theory" is absolutely heartbreaking). As for Sufficiently Advanced, the Logicians are bad guys. While their logical approach may be good for survival in a raw statistical sense, surviving slightly better at the cost of the ability to truly appreciate it is at best a hollow victory, and the game fully understands that. As a matter of fact, sci-fi/fantasy almost never sides with the "purely logical, no emotions ever" people. If they're villains, they're shown to be sociopathic monsters without empathy or guilt to stop them, and if they're good guys, they're shown to be limited in their thinking in some way or another that leaves them helpless in a situation where the more emotional characters excel. Joe Slowboat posted:Also, uh, the Armada is the Culture though? "Weird posthumans who live on ships and travel constantly ever outwards" is what the majority of the Culture look like to other factions. This game is absolutely deeply indebted to the Culture, and the fact that there's 'the minimal necessary capitalism' in the Armada is pissing me off. Why is it necessary? What is the point or need for any capitalism, whatsoever, in a Culture knockoff? It's like spitting on the books from orbit. I did say that this game does seem to borrow a fair bit from The Culture. Also call me crazy but a small amount of economic mobility within an otherwise socialist culture sounds like a good way to spur innovation and ambition and so maybe this version is actually better? That said, here's the actual text, since I was paraphrasing: Sufficiently Advanced posted:The Stardweller economy is set up so as to bring everyone towards the same wealth level, with little enough capitalism and class struggle to allow for economic incentives other than money. Peer recognition is more important to most Stardwellers than cash, especially since the civilization takes great care to ensure that the basics of life are available to all. Unfortunately, this does lead to those who are, for whatever reason, unable to receive recognition becoming rather angry and disaffected. The underside of Stardweller society isn’t economic — it’s social and emotional.
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Oct 12, 2018 06:40
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The Rawlsian liberal position that limited inequality is good to the degree that it improves the general prosperity or livability of a society is not new or innovative. There are arguments for it, though I'm not personally particularly convinced by them, given that any material distinction of class in a post-scarcity society is necessarily the imposition of less than perfect resources on 'unproductive' members of that society purely for an abstract notion. Art and culture isn't a race, and people will always be driven to be creative. The idea that in a post-scarcity environment we need to coerce people to do what we do now, in a society that actively penalizes creativity and following one's dreams (I mean, hell, consider literally any RPG writer, they're not making bank off that work, and in pure capitalist terms would be better off doing almost anything else) is insulting. Now, to be clear, I'd be much less angry at this if there was, in fact, a socialist society not framed as 'we set up the economy to provide everyone with equal-ish wealth so class distinctions are minor' and not 'everyone is brainslaves.' There's a clear politics to the decisions made, here. The Stardwellers are social democracy at its ideal pinnacle, sure, I'll believe that can work in an optimistic science fiction setting. If there were a similarly ideal socialism in play, I would even forgive the most obviously Culture-derived group being somewhat capitalist. But Banks is barely cold in the ground, and making mind-control socialism a villain splat and social democracy with neoliberal 'perfectly balanced economics' heroic, in a setting clearly deeply modeled after the Culture, it grinds my gears. Also the Roamers/Roma pun is from the Saga of Seven Suns, a sprawling space opera that I eventually gave up on when one too many magical alien precursor civilizations showed up to completely change the political situation in the last chapter of a giant book. Edit: Yes, I will stand by my somewhat irrational frustration with this basically harmless space opera RPG Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 07:35
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Another day, and the journey into the  continues...  Last time the party mostly survived The Worst Room, and managed to get some treasure that was guarded by a crawling claw. Now, into the Throne Room High ceilinged room, smashed hardwood doors depicting armoured men fighting various monsters. Large black table just to the right of the door. Despite having been hacked apart by a previous adventuring party, a large rune still glows softly on the remains of its surface. At the far end of the room is a high-backed throne atop a triangular, three stepped dias, Under the throne are the remains of a smashed treasure chest. Finally, in the centre of the south wall is a large painting, showing ancient men and elves fighting. The painting is animated. This is a magical Myth Drannan painting, and can be sold for as much as a small keep or 4 resurrection spells. Most magic won't affect it, but Dispel magic will cause it to start bleeding actual blood for 1d4 turns (10-40 minutes), and a second Dispel magic in that time will explode the painting. Mags and Janie's secondary skills as a mason and a painter respectively allow them to both appraise the painting and work out a way to safely remove it given the appropriate tools and time. Bhed, with his teamster training says that it wouldn't be a problem to transport on a cart. The party starts discussing how they'd spend the money. But for now there's a dungeon to finish exploring. They look at the smashed table and decide that that's all it is - a smashed, once-magic, table. Quota goes to look at the throne and the small chest under it. At which point the mimic (for that is what the chest and part of the throne are) attacks him. Quota isn't surprised, but the mimic goes first, hitting him and dealing enough damage to drop him. Realising that it’s outnumbered and possibly surrounded, the mimic decides to speak out, "Heh. Whoops. Instinctive reaction. No harm, no foul right? I mean, you can fix the harm right?" It dissolves the glue that's currently sticking Quota's soon to be corpse to it. The party actually takes the opportunity offered, dragging Quota away. Unfortunately, they're out of healing, Janie having memorised other spells, and Bhed having used his lay on hands ability earlier to save Brian. There are some healing potions in the dungeon, behind the lock lurker in the northern privy, but the party only got one of those, and it's already been used. Janie waves good bye to her share of the payout from the painting, stands up and turns on the mimic, commanding her dogs to attack. "I'll give you instinctive reaction!" After a couple of rounds of combat, the nearly dead mimic fails a morale check... For its action, the mimic is going to plead. "Hey, hey! I'm sure it's fixable! I know where there's loads of loot! You'll be able to pay to bring him back, right? That's something you humans do." The party, including Janie, back off to listen. "Right, so, take the south door, ignore the bones, then there's a secret door in the south wall. Through there is a tomb, with a dead guy, and he's got a necklace of massive rubies." The party disagree on whether to investigate, eventually deciding to have a look and run away if anything looks super dodgy. Janie takes the holy water from Quota's belongings, and the party follows the mimic's directions. Quota's player starts rolling up a new character just in case they don't manage to get the loot together. The module specifically calls out the mimic as being prepared to talk to the party and tell them things about the dungeon. But who the hell talks to mimics, especially ones that are hidden at the start? Directly the through southern door is room 13 - Audience Chamber. The entire room is filled with piles of ash, and looks like a fireball detonated in it. In the centre of the room is a charred human skeleton tangled around a stone warhammer. During their search for the secret door, Janie finds a copper ring engraved with a lightning bolt engraved on it. This is a ring of shocking grasp. The secret door, when found, opens on to a steep set of slimy stairs that head downwards. The party start advancing cautiously, with Brian checking for traps as they go. This doesn't stop them from having to make dexterity checks to avoid slipping. Both Brian and Janie fail, Brian taking one point of damage. Janie avoids damage, but does break the vial of holy water. Falling arse over tit isn't the final indignity that these stairs have to offer. Once someone has fallen, they have a 25% chance of falling all the way to the bottom and having to make a dexterity check to avoid being impaled on some rusty swords that have been set into the door there. Brian goes sliding down the stairs, but manages to avoid being impaled, which is good as he's down to 1 hp. In case the party manages not to slip on the stairs due to the slime, there's one step that's set at a funny height, which they have to make an intelligence check to avoid if they're in a hurry or the light is poor. If the check is failed, that character gets to go through the falling down process. Bhed fails, takes a point of damage, but doesn't fall down the rest of the stairs. Finally, if the trip step (or the one below it) is stepped on, a Stirge that was in stasis in the ceiling is released. It attacks the party. WTF, stairs. Why bother with all the elaborate nonsense when your goal is clearly to have the party in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, being attacked by a stirge? One simple trap that turns the stairs into a slide would have been enough. Anyway, Stirge (AC 8; MV 3, Fl 18 (C); HD 1 + 1; hp 9; #AT 1; Dmg 1-3; SA blood drain (1-4 dmg per round after strike until 12 hp are drained or stirge is killed); ML 8; AL N; THAC0 17) attacks. Party goes first and manage to kill the stirge before it manages to latch on to anyone. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, the party discovers that the door is locked, and barred on the stair side. The party unbar the door, and Brian steps forwards to pick the lock. Failing miserably. Fortunately this door does not state that it can't be broken down (though it is noted that the key is lost) Bhed and Brian decide to work together to smash the door open, which gives them a 11/20 chance of opening it - 7 from one of them, and the second one adds half their chance to open it. Unlike picking locks, this is something that can be attempted several times, but gets harder each attempt. Fortunately for the party, they succeed on the first attempt and go tumbling through into the Crypt proper. Inside the crypt are two closed stone coffins, one which has been pushed open from the inside. Its former inhabitant, a skeleton, lurks in the corner of the room. The skeleton has totally normal attributes except that it can't be turned and regenerates 3hp a around which ceases when it's destroyed. The only potential complication is that its ThAC0 is 12 rather than 19. All in a pointless monster with a stupid gimmick, as the worst that happens is the Cleric wastes a round trying to turn it. No-one is surprised, and the party goes first, with Bhed and Janie destroying it before even the dogs get a look in. The skeleton's coffin is empty, and so the party turn their attention to the other two, starting with the centre one, which contains a human skeleton, buried with a tome bound in black leather. It's a tome of stealthy pilfering, which will allow a Thief character an automatic level up after a month of study. Not particularly valuable to a low level character, but a nice thing to have saved for later on in the campaign. If a Paladin, Ranger, or Priest, tries to read the book they take 5d4 damage, and possibly have had to atone if a spell save was failed. That's a bit of a serious gotcha for a low level party; I'd maybe give some clues to the book's nature, or have it closed with a particularly complex lock (that automatically opens for thieves). Unfortunately for the party, I'm running this by the book, and Bhed is the first person to pick up the book, and he has a look inside, taking 16 points of damage, which instantly drops him to -11 and instantly dead, his mind apparently liquefied by the terrible secrets within. Mags picks up the book and carefully packs it away. At this point the players go "gently caress it" and push open the last coffin, revealing, as described by the mimic, a dead guy with a necklace of massive rubies. Next - Dead guy with necklace of massive rubies... Score RIP Aiden (lock lurker) RIP Belle (trap) RIP Quota (mimic) RIP Bhed (treasure) RIP Quota's equipment (green slime) RIP Holy water (Pratfall stairs)
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Oct 12, 2018 07:39
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grassy gnoll posted: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 don't think anyone gets a free ride, as, again, Silk is expensive. Then again, PanO has the highest density of Cube'd infantry - with only Teutonic knights being a very deliberate exception - besides them, only Order Sergeants and Garda de Assalto lack them for some reason. Honestly, I love that they took one look at Altered Carbon and said "gently caress that" and Catholic Church cubed everyone. Aleph gets Cube 2.0, which doesn't need to be physically recovered. I just checked, and Yu Jing has basically the same amount of non-cubed dudes (a stat maybe helped by removal of Japan), two of the units being the suicide bombers and the penal battalion infantry.
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Oct 12, 2018 07:59
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EclecticTastes posted:I did say that this game does seem to borrow a fair bit from The Culture. Also call me crazy but a small amount of economic mobility within an otherwise socialist culture sounds like a good way to spur innovation and ambition and so maybe this version is actually better? That said, here's the actual text, since I was paraphrasing: I certainly appreciate the attitude of "this setting has had positive outcomes," but I feel all this capitalist claptrap shows an actual decline in the imagination of society since the first half of the 20th century. Check out what some literal Technocrats said on this topic: quote:((|6.18)) What would we do with our leisure time?
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Oct 12, 2018 08:00
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Joe Slowboat posted:Now, to be clear, I'd be much less angry at this if there was, in fact, a socialist society not framed as 'we set up the economy to provide everyone with equal-ish wealth so class distinctions are minor' and not 'everyone is brainslaves.' There's a clear politics to the decisions made, here. Keep in mind, the Cognitive Union is mainly a "bad guy" because every other culture reflexively hates the basic premise of their society. In other words, because every other superpower has decided that their way of life is inherently and by necessity evil and wicked, they have forced an otherwise-benign society into the role of an antagonist. Consider, then, that this might be a metaphor for the way socialism is treated by modern capitalist culture, with the frequent knee-jerk reaction that equates socialism with Soviet communism (which was actually a fascist totalitarian state for most of its lifespan, and only paid the barest lip service to communism), making socialists the "bad guys" when they're just trying to even the playing field a bit. Plus, I think you're being a bit negative about the Cognitive Union in the first place. Once you get a broad view of its origins and history, it looks a lot more morally ambiguous. It's clear that the only reason the Union is even antagonistic towards the Masquerade, Mechanica, etc. is because none of these other cultures are capable of accepting that the Cognitive Union and the people within it are perfectly happy just the way they are. The same could be said about the Replicants. Sure, they're idiots who don't understand how consciousness works, but they're otherwise quite reasonable. Of the three "bad guy" civs, only the Logicians are actively and intentionally villainous, the others have just been violently rejected by the rest of The Great Diaspora. Nessus posted:I certainly appreciate the attitude of "this setting has had positive outcomes," but I feel all this capitalist claptrap shows an actual decline in the imagination of society since the first half of the 20th century. Check out what some literal Technocrats said on this topic: A post-scarcity society is not, necessarily, a post-labor society. That said, one thing I will say is that Sufficiently Advanced actually presents the economy of its universe in a very inconsistent and confusing fashion, such that I have a hard time commenting on it on the macro level. For example, the Tao apparently need lots of money from other societies in order to pay for all the energy they use. But how is that possible when they own all of the planets those activities take place on? Any power generation would have to be coming from space controlled by the Tao, and even if they pay private owners for it, all of that money stays within the Tao's economy, so it would eventually circulate right back to the government, to pay more energy bills. Ultimately, I think the writers' reach may have exceeded their grasp when it comes to the field of economics.
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Oct 12, 2018 08:11
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EclecticTastes posted:A post-scarcity society is not, necessarily, a post-labor society. That said, one thing I will say is that Sufficiently Advanced actually presents the economy of its universe in a very inconsistent and confusing fashion, such that I have a hard time commenting on it on the macro level. For example, the Tao apparently need lots of money from other societies in order to pay for all the energy they use. But how is that possible when they own all of the planets those activities take place on? Any power generation would have to be coming from space controlled by the Tao, and even if they pay private owners for it, all of that money stays within the Tao's economy, so it would eventually circulate right back to the government, to pay more energy bills. Ultimately, I think the writers' reach may have exceeded their grasp when it comes to the field of economics. Paying for energy is strange in this context. Do the Tao not control stars? If you have political control of a few average stars and are willing to put some work in, you do not have energy problems.
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Oct 12, 2018 08:20
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I wonder how much of the 'logical and rational' people portrayal is based on this game being released before it filtered into common consciousness that 'I am logical and rational' is just a canard for 'I am a self-obsessed rear end in a top hat incapable of realising my own intrinsic biases'. Also, everything Mors Rattus said about the impossibility of a purely logical society.
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Oct 12, 2018 08:44
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EclecticTastes posted:Keep in mind, the Cognitive Union is mainly a "bad guy" because every other culture reflexively hates the basic premise of their society. In other words, because every other superpower has decided that their way of life is inherently and by necessity evil and wicked, they have forced an otherwise-benign society into the role of an antagonist. Consider, then, that this might be a metaphor for the way socialism is treated by modern capitalist culture, with the frequent knee-jerk reaction that equates socialism with Soviet communism (which was actually a fascist totalitarian state for most of its lifespan, and only paid the barest lip service to communism), making socialists the "bad guys" when they're just trying to even the playing field a bit. Your description of them from the book, which I assume is either from the Patent Office and Transcendants' perspective, or from a supposedly neutral third person viewpoint, keeps using the word "slaves." That can be a little incendiary.
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Oct 12, 2018 08:54
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I don’t hate the Union as a setting conceit like I do the Rationalists but you also established that happiness with the situation is decidedly non-optional due to the whole telepathic nanotech hive that literally monitors and controls emotions and injects thoughts into people. Like, sure, they’re happy, they’re programmed to be happy. If said programming was removed, who the gently caress knows what they’d feel about it?
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Oct 12, 2018 10:43
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Angrymog, your write-up is really funny and I appreciate it!
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Oct 12, 2018 11:34
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JcDent posted:Angrymog, your write-up is really funny and I appreciate it! Same here. It's a cool way to take a look at a module and how it actually functions with players involved.
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Oct 12, 2018 12:37
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Night10194 posted:Huh. I'd always gotten the impression the Recreations were nationalist prestige projects and pop culture icons (that also happen to be murderous supersoldiers). I didn't know Aleph made them for silly reasons. Mostly it was a chance to bag on ALEPH. It's sort of both? PanO is the faction most closely linked into ALEPH. They whip up Joan, ALEPH does a lot of the heavy lifting. Yu Jing sees this and gets pissed they don't have their own pop star death monger, they go to ALEPH and say "Hey, give us one of them, but make it even better at warfare." ALEPH goes "Sure, have this off-brand Sun Tzu, who is absolutely not spying on you or giving you reasons to suspect me. I promise I'm making these guys to learn more about humanity and spread good will to all men." ALEPH gets what it wants, the factions get what they think they want, and everyone's happy and dumb.
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Oct 12, 2018 13:54
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We would absolutely make ridiculous mascot supersoldiers if we could, though. Playing as one in an RPG would be really fun.
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Oct 12, 2018 13:59
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