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Loving Haunted Halls of Evenstar Not loving a fully sentient mimic
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Oct 12, 2018 14:26
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Night10194 posted:We would absolutely make ridiculous mascot supersoldiers if we could, though. Playing as one in an RPG would be really fun. Good news, they are definitely a thing in the RPG. If Aleph is your starting heritage, you can choose to be an aspect or recreation. If you're a recreation, the rest of your rolls on the lifepath table are just the fake memories Aleph made up for you. (Or you could do point buy chargen instead.)
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Oct 12, 2018 14:48
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A game where a semi-friendly AI made a sentai team of semi-obscure historical characters into cyborg supersoldiers because no-one is going to question Cyber Takezaki Suenaga since they don't know who he is is something I would enjoy. The way of the man of the bow and arrow is to do that which is worthy of reward would even map well to a cyberpunk setting! E: Alternately, anime Pappenheim. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 14:53
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Barudak posted:Loving Haunted Halls of Evenstar They actually are intelligence 10. It's just they don't normally have any interests beside food. It's the larger, Killer Mimic, which is animal intelligence. http://www.lomion.de/cmm/mimic.php
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Oct 12, 2018 15:00
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Night10194 posted:We would absolutely make ridiculous mascot supersoldiers if we could, though. Playing as one in an RPG would be really fun. Sounds like old Underground.
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Oct 12, 2018 15:01
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I like ALEPH more than the smug Minds in Culture or Polity's AI dicks.
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Oct 12, 2018 15:05
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What delights me about ALEPH is how hard it went into Greek mythology for its own personal army.* Like with making Joan, there is kind of a checklist it can hit. 'Christian, brave, etc.' Then it's like, "That was too easy! I'm going to make Atalanta a rad sniper!" (Oddly, I don't think Atalanta has any rules for being super fast, which would probably conflict with her sniper-ness.) The Homeridae are fun. I looked up her on Infinity's own website and her flavor text depresses me, but I don't want to get too far ahead of grassy gnoll's writeup. *Er, benevolent special operations division, I mean.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:00
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Angrymog posted:They actually are intelligence 10. It's just they don't normally have any interests beside food. What I learned from this is someone met this mimic and taught it common and then left. Wanna meet the mimic educator.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:37
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Nessus posted:Of course, "post-scarcity" is a moving goalpost. It is a question of what you are post the scarcity of. There is no reliable working definition and even if you had absolute material abundance there would still be "scarcity" of, for instance, non-simulated social capital. This hits at the core of my problem. Sufficiently Advanced touts itself as being extrapolated from real-world scientific trends, but does little to explain the socioeconomic factors that underpin the setting. I like everything else about the game enough to still say it's pretty endearing, but it's certainly not without its flaws. Like, in the description for the Disciples of the Void (who I'm a little surprised nobody has said anything about yet, they're pretty neat), it's mentioned that the reason they need to import fuel for their generators is because they lack the infrastructure for matter/antimatter inversion. That is the only time that term is ever mentioned in the entire book. Though, I guess with all these terms being dropped in with no concrete definition, it gives a GM a lot of room to play around and define things themselves. Come to think of it, maybe the Tao aren't paying for the energy, but are paying the licensing fee for whatever methods they use to generate power. Given the idea-based economy, that makes more sense than anything else. On that note, it really feels like the Transcendentals set up the Patent Office in the first place to ensure both that the civilizations were forced to interact positively (to pay each other in goods/services/ideas for the rights to use stuff they have the IP rights on), and to give the Transcendentals the ability to send in skilled agents to keep the future moving smoothly without the heavy-handedness of a police force or military. "Oh, that crazy guy who was about to blow up half your star systems and wipe out fifteen billion people? We only stopped him because his antimatter cannon violated a patent over in Mechanica." That's what's really nice about Sufficiently Advanced, it gets you thinking.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:44
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Night10194 posted: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.  EclecticTastes posted: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. Joe Slowboat posted:Edit: Yes, I will stand by my somewhat irrational frustration with this basically harmless space opera RPG Sufficiently Advanced posted:The underside of Stardweller society isn’t economic — it’s social and emotional.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:45
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FFRRPG 5e Part 6: The Archer The archer is the archer though they aren't nearly as good as status inflicting as they were. Level1- Sharpshooter: This is your standard issue equipment/hp/mp ability and starting specialization. Specializations Precise Shot: The gun/crossbow speciality, you can always defend against reactions with fire. Quick Throw: The thrown weapons speciality, if your first attack in an !Attack action misses you can reroll, this is how the game represents dual wielding and there's two other ways to get it. Point Blank: You can drop range from your ranged attacks, that's hypothetically useful for enemies who resist ranged attacks but not really compared to the previous options and is THE ONLY OPTIONS FOR A BOW ARCHER. Level 1- !Charge: A Slow(3) action that deals 150% weapon damage. No frills no muss. Specializations Ambush: On the first round of combat all your stats are +2 for damage calculations, not very good early on your multipliers are low and later on your stats are so high it's minor. If this included accuracy I'd say it was great. Ungramax: !Great Charge, is a Slow(7) action that deals 250% weapon damage. If everyone is forgetting that you can't do anything else while charging this is an interesting option, if they are remembering this is too slow to use. !Reflex Shot: A reaction which can be used only while charging, when attacked you can drop any die to counter with !Attack. Considering the number of charges if your party remembers that you can't normally do stuff while charging a must take. Level 15- Nutcracker: Gives !Vitals Aim, a Slow(3) ability that ignores armor. I have two problems with this ability it has the same iniative penalty as charge which will do probably more damage in most circumstances, and the action is !Vitals Aim I KNOW WHERE I AM AIMING. Specializations These are all basically the same thing a Slow(2) action that inflicts a status and no damage until the end of the next round. !Arm Aim: Disable. !Leg Aim: Immobilize. !Head Aim: Slow, two rounds. !Eyes Aim: Blind. Yeah um, you take arm aim moving along. Level 24- Mind Strike: Gives !Mind Blow, which does your weapon damage to mp. "You know how i feel about mp" except really my complaint is it's core, it's quick, it's 100% damage, it's just not a core thing every archer should do. Specializations Patience Shot: When you use a damage dealing ability you can add 4CT to make it do +50% weapon damage, this can be fine or super weak. This explicitly doesn't work with !barrage. Marked Quarry: Once per round when you hit someone with an attack you can reduce you can reduce the difficulty against them by -3, my only complaint is it's once per round and i can't chain gun someone down. Maybe make it so you can only have one quarry as well to reduce tracking. !Wing Aim: It's a Slow(1) action that removes float and flight. Level 42- Danger Sense: You get Auto- (Strenghen) Speed....I don't know how to rate this, I'd really need to play with it. It does feel weird as the level 42 core for a primary class(as a fencer core absolutely). Specializations Deadly Precision: Your !Arm, Leg, Head, Eyes and Wing Aim and !Triple Foul do 75% damage, ok that's a fine specialization if i had more of those.... Toolbox: You get another of !Arm, Leg, Head, Eyes Aim. This being in conflict with deadly precision kills the status archer dead. Colossus Slayer: Your !Vitals Aim adds their armor to the damage rather than ignoring it, wow i might actually use it. Level 60- Always Prepared: You get any specialization from a previous archer core ignoring prereqs. This is....cool, but not ult worthy. Specializations !Barrage: Much like 3e, A Slow(5) action you make an attack at difficulty 1, 2, 3 etc. with a cap of 10 and keep going until you miss, there's no modifiers just a straight roll. Projectile Rain: Every time you drop an enemy to 0 you get an iniative die at current tick+1, my only problem is if it's tick 10 you don't get an 11 that would then roll over into next round at 1. Crippling Shot: Gives !Triple Foul, a Slow(3) That hits with all your !Aims except !Vitals Aim, this is pretty awesome as a finisher to a build except you have to give up your 60 core, and your 42 specialization just make this actually a triple foul and then it doesn't do damage. Criticism: It's clear that this doesn't want to be a path class, while !Triple foul is meant as a reward to dedicated status archers and i'm not going to complain it's a specialization, the real problem is that you need to specialize to really do the whole aim status thing while status archers get to weave in damage. Not that status archer is really good but they do get to weave in core abilities of nutcracker archer. !Arm Aim and !Leg Aim should just be what you get at lvl15(lasting one round) and the specializations being !Head Aim, !Eyes Aim, and !Wing Aim(Encounter). It being the level you do statuses, nutcracker moved up to the level 24 ability with mind blow made a specialty. This would better let's archers mix and match the status and damage sides of their class to build a viable hybrid which they seem to want to do(with specs deciding what you are better at). Unlike the adept who wants to go all in. Next time the Artist, oh boy dancers, bards and mimes this has to be awful right?.....
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Oct 12, 2018 17:37
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I found Archer pretty neat but you are right in that Status Archers get a bit left out in the cold, comparatively. All the pieces there are really good, just needs some rearranging to actually be a decent class. Maybe tighten up the charge time on Ungarmax, because being dedicated giga-sniper is always fun but that charge time is agonizing (and makes it impossible to combo for a full 300% damage with a later specialization) I'm interested to see what you think of Artist because my perception was that it's just straight up loving giga-busted, but maybe you'll have a different take.
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Oct 12, 2018 17:49
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Monathin posted:I found Archer pretty neat but you are right in that Status Archers get a bit left out in the cold, comparatively. All the pieces there are really good, just needs some rearranging to actually be a decent class. Maybe tighten up the charge time on Ungarmax, because being dedicated giga-sniper is always fun but that charge time is agonizing (and makes it impossible to combo for a full 300% damage with a later specialization) Ungarmax is weird to me on a couple of accounts, part of it being the reflex shot needed to take advantage of it maximally is locked at the same level so you need to wait till 60 to do the 300% damage full charges without wasting a bunch of actions. Also it almost feels like charge should be the +3 CT for +50% damage ability so when you get nutcracker and mindblow you can inherently charge for them because the sniper archer is so focused on CT abuse. And yeah status archers are bad but better at weaving in the second aspect, and i honestly dock more points for the inability to weave Status archer into CT Archer than "Exact balance". quote:I'm interested to see what you think of Artist because my perception was that it's just straight up loving giga-busted, but maybe you'll have a different take. It was a joke on how Dancer and Mime were such hot garbage in 3e, and the bard is now lumped in with them. WhitemageofDOOM fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Oct 12, 2018 |
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Oct 12, 2018 18:28
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 Yu Jing, the State Empire  There’s an illustration in the core book that I unfortunately couldn’t find a digital copy of, with an Imperial agent holding a civilian by the face and scanning their retina with some kind of vaguely sinister hand tool. Anyway, buckle up, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. After the collapse of the US and the former first world imperial powers, China stepped up to the plate. They absorbed, conquered, or bought out most of their neighbors, including the Koreas, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos, chunks of Indonesia, Mongolia, and so on. If it wasn’t useless territory or part of the rapidly forming coalition that would become Panoceania, it’s probably China by now. The problem then became how to forge a new national identity for all these disparate ethnic groups (note that the book specifically calls out Uighurs as still around at this point in the future timeline, so that’s cheerfully optimistic). Traditional Chinese medicine for such ills, IE you’re either Han or you’re out, would meet too much resistance from the newly acquired territories. Granting any kind of autonomy to the new provinces was clearly out of the question. What’s a newly ascendant imperial power to do? The answer, apparently, is to take the question literally and reform the seat of the Chinese emperor, the logic being that Imperial China was the last time the country ruled over most of the surrounding nations. Hold on, it gets better. So the Party decides that it’ll keep control of legislative functions and most of the executive functions. The throne will preside over the judiciary, with the Emperor sitting on the Supreme Court himself. I do actually like the detail that all claimants to the throne must pass the bar exam from Harvard Space Law before they’ll be recognized, since you really do need to be a no-foolin’ legal scholar to be Emperor. The Court was given the ability to enforce its rulings outside of the Party structure, leading to the creation of the Imperial Service. Everyone, from the highest judges of the land to the lowest beat cop, answer to the throne. Having made what is at least on the surface a sensible decision in terms of political power structures, Interruptor goes on to tell us that the Party specifically sought out the last descendants of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and set up the seat of power to alternate between each dynasty. Each individual court schemes against the other at all times, with the Party ostensibly moderating their power but in reality letting them jam knives into each other so they can get on with the business of extracting wealth from the land. Yu Jing citizens are constantly surveilled, just like PanO folks, but here it’s done by the bureaucracy and the police, and it’s a lot more brazen. Again, there’s a sort of almost-post-scarcity thing going, although since the state owns the apparatus of economy, there’s a lot less in the way of income and class inequality. In Yu Jing, we all ride together in third class! Unless you’re not Han Chinese, in which case we’ve created a special hell-class car where you will be randomly tortured with electric shocks for no purpose. Because we’re not hitting the Orwell button enough, the Party, while officially monolithic and unified, is split between two rival movements. The Old Guard are traditional communists, while the New Wave are for slightly more economic liberalism, political innovation, and just as much repressive control over the populace as their peers. Citizens, meanwhile, can vote for anyone they like, so long as they’re a member of the Party. Resurrection via Cube is the provenance of the Party for the citizenry in general, and is based around typical graft and nepotism, as well as the occasional reward for outstanding contribution to the state. The Emperor holds sway over resurrection for the Imperial court and the judiciary, where more personal politicking comes into play. The kicker is that while anyone with the right credentials and bloodline can make a play for the throne, if you ascend to it, you forfeit the right to a Cube - the Emperor gets one life, period. Yu Jing is a constant second fiddle to PanO. They’re the second-biggest power, with the second-largest economy and the second-greatest territory. The State Empire had to play catch-up in the space race, with two planets entirely to their name and two others begrudingly co-inhabited by PanO. The capital planet Yutang is tidally-locked to a sister planet, Shentang. They’re apparently alright places to live, if you don’t mind regular cavity searches by the police. Yu Jung occupies territory on Svalarheima and Paradiso, and establishing those territories spurred several colonial conflicts. They're also muscling in on Dawn, like everybody else. Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism are alive and well in the State Empire, with Confucianism holding sway as the official Imperial philosophy. You will not be surprised to learn that civil service exams are still kicking, too. Because Orientalism, there’s about a page worth of information dedicated to a PanO report on Yu Jing infiltration of almost every level of their government. In fairness, this is played more for communist stereotypes, rather than pure yellow periling, buuuuut they turn around and specifically use the phrase “yellow peril” in the closing paragraphs.  The Imperial Service, the business end of the judiciary, is basically every secret police organization gone wild. They came to be during the reign of the emperor Shao Ming, an otherwise fairly peaceful and mild guy. The rise of the Imperial Service is as much about sending a message to the subject peoples of the Empire as it is about law and order. The early history of the Empire was politically tense, with everyone not Han not really being very happy about the whole general state of affairs. Political terrorism and freedom fighter movements were on the rise, corruption continued apace, and it looked like the whole thing was going to fall apart. In what the book carefully does not describe as a Chinese 9/11, the State Supreme Court was attacked by members of the Golden Dagger triad in order to free one of their high ranking members on trial at the time. In the aftermath, in an attack on both the figurative and literal Imperial power, the Emperor called for a crackdown of the highest brutality. An entire new bureaucracy, answering only to the Emperor, was created to avoid snitches and the standard level of police corruption. Originally, the Golden Dawn were the only targets, declared non-persons and hunted ruthlessly. But when you’ve got this nice new hammer of a secret police force just twiddling their thumbs, everything starts to look like a dissident nail. During the Golden Dagger crackdown, ALEPH operatives and independent bounty hunters were conscripted. To the Emperor’s credit, crime statistics dropped across the board. Just, you know, if you thought China wasn’t shy about being a police state before… The State Empire’s propaganda wing is open and enthusiastic about their business. Many popular broadcasts, either immersive sim-stim things or your standard holo-TV, are about the pursuit of terrorists, foreign agents, and subversives by heroic members of the Imperial Service. The State is constantly besieged by criminal elements and foreigners, so be sure to report anyone and everyone. ALEPH certainly doesn’t benefit from this behavior. I feel like there was a missed opportunity to rip off that bit from Deep Space Nine - I think it’d be great if crime dramas were the major entertainment of the Empire, and the trick is figuring how not who’s guilty, but who’s guilty of what.  Yu Jing as an army is generally good at everything, with a wide variety of troop choices, nearly every kind of equipment in the game at their disposal, and at very reasonable prices. Yu Jing being the favored child of many of Corvus Belli’s higher ups, of course, does not influence this state of affairs. They tend to be good at close combat at the cost of pretty average BS and Physique.  The State Empire sectorials are kind of a mess at the moment.There’s the Imperial Service, which gets higher WIP in general, more elite units, and some very special cool toys, at the cost of being Space China Stasi. That’s it. There’s only the one sectorial right now, although an upcoming fluff-and-rules book should bring the long-awaited Invincible Army into play. IA’s gimmick is that everybody is heavy infantry, so everyone from your grunts to your elites are running around in power armor. I’m pretty interested to see how they’ll play, but there’s nothing concrete yet. The problem here is, as is so often the case for China, Japan. This is a game written by a bunch of Spanish weeaboos, and of course Japan is a Big Deal. The Japanese Sectorial Army used to be Yu Jing’s other sectorial, up until the last big event, which pulled almost all of the Japanese units out of YJ rosters and made them their own army. Now the JSA is the Japanese Secessionist Army, sponsored by PanO, and Yu Jing players have found themselves at a literal loss. The official response to this wailing and gnashing of teeth from Corvus Belli is to bring out statistics. I mentioned they have an official army builder (https://army.infinitythegame.com), which in addition to being a pretty handy tool with cross-references to the rules wiki, also gives them a look at what players are actually using in their completed army lists. Of the JSA units available to Yu Jing, people were most using Ninjas, at around 80% of YJ players, and Keisotsu, the JSA line trooper, at around half of users - Keisotsu are cheaper than regular YJ line infantry by one point, you see. The rest were all vanishingly small numbers. I’m personally kind of irritated by how CB played this whole thing, but in practical terms, no one should really give half a drat. If you used a shitload of JSA models in your Yu Jing list, well, guess you can play JSA as a faction now. If you didn’t, I’m sorry for your loss. Criticize the company for their PR shitshow, not shaking things up. I don’t know what to do with Yu Jing right now. Their fluff is a loving mess, the army is solid but not hugely remarkable, and all the units I wanted to play with are in JSA right now. [guess-ill-die.jpg] Up next, Yu Jing units.
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Oct 12, 2018 19:50
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So this is why no-one ever talks about Yu-Jing or its fluff, huh? Among my friends who are into Infinity, I feel like I hear about everyone except them.
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Oct 12, 2018 20:05
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Well, on the one hand, it's yet another "We're just gonna mash all the Asian Countries into a single "Asia" faction but I guess for a change of pace they're not being led by Japan in some sort of "Eastern Wealth Circle" so I'll take what I can get.
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Oct 12, 2018 20:14
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For future space China, I think I prefer the Pan-Asian Cooperative from Civilization: Beyond Earth. It's effectively an east Asian NATO, dominated politically and economically by an alliance of China and South Korea (India and Indonesia are in their own separate factions). Japan is footnote, reduced to a third-world country from its demographic collapse leading to an economic collapse, and a strong third-runner in the PAC is Thailand. They're flavored as the most technocratic of the factions in future Earth, and their lead character is a half-Chinese, half-Cambodian mathematician. Yu Jing just seems like a very rote future communist China, indistinguishable from the Capellan Federation or what have you.
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Oct 12, 2018 20:22
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The only thing interesting is the Imperial throne becoming the court system.
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Oct 12, 2018 20:30
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Did they seriously use the phrase "yellow peril"? That's... wow. Other than that, that sure is space communist china. I like the few wrinkles tossed into it but it's really not enough to make it interesting, I do like the detail that the Emperor explicitly doesn't get to use the extra life technology and just gets the one life to live, and that they are neither an all powerful autocrat nor simply a figurehead. I just wish the rest of the fluff for the faction was at all original.
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Oct 12, 2018 21:25
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I want to give Infinity some credit for Yu Jing because China absorbing a declining Korea and Japan is a lot more plausible than the "Japan buys out half the world" tropes that a bunch of other tabletop games have done...even long after Japan's economy shat itself and died in 1989. But reforming the empery for no real reason, and Confucianism of course...it's disappointing.
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Oct 12, 2018 21:42
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EclecticTastes posted:This hits at the core of my problem. Sufficiently Advanced touts itself as being extrapolated from real-world scientific trends, but does little to explain the socioeconomic factors that underpin the setting. I like everything else about the game enough to still say it's pretty endearing, but it's certainly not without its flaws. Like, in the description for the Disciples of the Void (who I'm a little surprised nobody has said anything about yet, they're pretty neat), it's mentioned that the reason they need to import fuel for their generators is because they lack the infrastructure for matter/antimatter inversion. That is the only time that term is ever mentioned in the entire book. Though, I guess with all these terms being dropped in with no concrete definition, it gives a GM a lot of room to play around and define things themselves. I don't think Sufficiently Advanced is engaging with these ideas on a very deep level. That is fine, even if it is annoying to grognards like me for the same reason that "SOLAR FREAKING ROADWAYS" were annoying. As you note it produces a clear gameable role for people to take while interacting with all these cultures interior to the post-scarcity schismatrix as opposed to having to look outside, a la most of Star Trek. For my own tastes it would be easier to tolerate being the Galactic Patrol or something, because the idea that an interstellar civilization would be bound by a licensing fee seems absurd to me. But this is my aesthetics, which say that you would trade for "the secret of stellar large-scale power mining" with either "your cultural products" or "giving one of your planets to the Space Dwarves." At this rate I should do up GURPS Lensman although if I do I will pre-write the whole drat thing up for once in my life.
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Oct 12, 2018 21:45
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What, no every-kung-fu-style faction? No Cyber-Shaolin?
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Oct 12, 2018 21:46
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Sufficiently Advanced Part 4: Is that everybody? Finally! Alright, before we move on from civilizations to have a look at other groupings that define people in this universe, have a chart:  I had to rotate it ninety degrees, sorry for any lost resolution making it hard to read. This is the basic, simplified overview of political relations within The Great Diaspora. The blue and purple circles denote the major power blocs, of course, with the rest representing factions that lay outside the primary powers. The blue and purple circles are in something of a cold war with one another, though it tends to be much more subtle, compared to the original Cold War, with many "regular people" never really thinking about the potential threats posed by the Logicians or their allies. For the most part, one can assume that any group outside the purple circle also dislike the groups inside the purple circle, though the Roamers will still do business with the Replicants and Logicians. On top of that, the civilizations within the purple circles don't like each other all that much, either; their alliance is mainly one of necessity, so they can stand firm against the rest of the universe. Conversely, the blue alliance is very close and friendly, with the Masquerade and Mechanica even sharing several planets. Now, moving on, aside from one's civilization of origin, it's possible that a character also belongs to one of several Societies, which are prominent subcultures that permeate multiple civilizations. They're bound together by common worldviews, and each one provides a unique benefit, with the cost being a prerequired Core Value and also having roleplay a character that's even more alien than the rest of these extremely alien-feeling humans. Artisans: These guys use their neural meshes to cross-link the hemispheres of their brain, which makes them better artists, but also a little crazy. They're most common in the Masquerade and Cognitive Union. Artisan PCs get boosts to their Cognitech and Metatech scores and learn the Artist skill faster, but they lose ties using Cognitech and Metatech for anything besides art, because they can't really focus on anything. The Artisans' required Core Value is Individuality, the insistence on being unique and not emulating others. Darwinians: The Darwinians believe the weak and defenseless have been coddled too long. So they release bioweapons, mimetic viruses, and the like in order to weed out the wimps. They never use anything strong enough to just kill everybody, they want the strongest, smartest people to make it out alive. They operate like terrorist cells (because they are), with nobody knowing too much about the organization's operations as a whole. Given their outlook, it should be no surprise that the Darwinians are most common in the Rationalist League. They're basically non-existent in the Cognitive Union for a variety of obvious reasons. Darwinian PCs get a boost to their Biotech scores due to having access to illegal bioweapons and the like, but are expected to use that tech in service of the organization now and then. Their required CV is Survival of the Fittest, which should be self-explanatory. Group-Minds: Group-Minds are people who have linked their neural meshes together to form one big brain. They're extremely rare, found most often among the Stardwellers and Logicians. That said, they're legal to form in most places, and people learn to communicate effectively eventually. Group-Mind PCs get a small boost to Nanotech and Cognitech, and they have multiple bodies to work with and coordinate, though that can be as much of a hindrance as a help. Also, larger Group-Minds can be extremely unwieldy, and you need to keep your encryption and security software up-to-date or a hacker could subvert your mental impulses en route. The CV for Group-Minds is Unity. Heterolinguists: When mimetic attacks started becoming commonplace, some people reacted by genetically altering the communication centers of their brains. Now they process language differently. Their condition is hereditary, and sometimes people paranoid about mimetics join them. No advice or examples are given for roleplaying them. Good luck! A Heterolinguist PC is all but immune to mimetic and Metatech attacks not specifically designed for Heterolinguists, but their own Metatech is complete garbage for the same reasons. The CV of the Heterolinguists is Sanctity of Mind, used to resist attempts to change your mind. High Society: They're rich, they're fancy, it's pretty much what you expect. A High Society PC is rich, and can afford more expensive stuff without needing to dip into their savings. The Core Value of High Society is Good Breeding, which helps with etiquette. The Hospitalers: A humanitarian society that works to help the sick and poor, literally descended from groups like the Red Cross and Salvation Army (but not homo/transphobic, that stuff hadn't really made the news yet back in 2010). The benefit for being part of this group is that everyone is quick to trust you due to the Hospitalers' reputation, giving you a boost to your Metatech in relevant situations. Their Core Value is Charity, which can help when you're trying to do something selfless for others. The Hyperevolutes: These guys run biological simulations to take evolution into their own hands. They identify parts that the human body could do without, or more efficient configurations, then they alter their kids in-utero or, when possible, themselves, to implement the change. It sounds worse than it is, they're actually pretty safe about it, and have, in fact, made their bodies more efficient. Hyperevolute PCs have small boosts to their Biotech and Cognitech, plus resist disease and old age better. Their Core Value, of course, is Efficiency. Organized Crime: It's fuckin' hard to do crime when everything is online and there's cameras all over the goddamn place and everyone is Superman, but these guys have adapted. Mostly. They're not that common, with most of them operating in the League of Independent Planets or the Tao of History. Mob PCs are the only ones, at all, that can start play with the Criminal skill, and the only ones with an easy way of increasing the skill afterwards. Their Core Value is Solidarity, because space snitches get space stitches. The Sleepers: More of a hobbyist organization than a formal group, Sleepers spend years at a time in their cryotanks, hopping forward through time, hoping to live long enough to see the Transcendentals' Desired Future with their own eyes. They're great psychohistorians, having lived through many different time periods. Sleeper PCs get a slight boost to their own Biotech and have access to advanced medical equipment at home, including their cryotank. Their Core Value is Longevity, they gotta keep living at any cost. The Transcendental Worshipers: So, most people see the Transcendentals as the most powerful beings in the universe, the "founders of the feast" for The Great Diaspora, and generally benevolent entities (though some have their doubts). These guys have decided that the Transcendentals are gods. They're actually comprised of many different congregations, each with their own specific ideas regarding worship. Think of it less like a single religion and more like the thousand different varieties of Protestantism. The AIs, for their part, have not commented on their supposed godhood one way or the other. Transcendental Worshiper PCs get a special skill that combines Programmer and Religion, plus they get a couple ranks in it right off the bat. Their Core Value is Worship. And there they are, that's every kind of human out there, in general terms. But, humans are not the only sentient beings in the universe! There's aliens! Here they are: The Coldworlders: These aliens look like twenty-foot-long sperm whales, and live on a Neptune-like gas giant. Their planet's atmosphere blocks all view of the stars, space, and so on, so they have no words for anything that doesn't exist on their planet. Also, due to their slow metabolism, they are themselves extremely slow, with a single word in their language taking an hour to say. Evolutionary data indicates that they're the oldest sentient species discovered, predating humanity by millions of years. They aren't spacefaring, and are completely benign, so they're little more than a curiosity. The WorldWeb: There's an Earth-like planet. Covering this planet are massive vines. Filling these vines is fluid. This fluid is sentient, using the vines as tools. That is the WorldWeb. The WorldWeb's physiology allows it to view space like a giant radio telescope, so unlike the Coldworlders, it was quite familiar with space when humans arrived. However, the WorldWeb lacks any concept of divisibility. It/they have no integers in its/their math, no way to parse the difference between singular and plural, and so on. This has made communication difficult, with entire fields of linguistics dedicated to bridging the gap, and entire psychohistorical models being devised to try to factor the WorldWeb into predictions with little success. The Skotadi: The Skotadi are made of dark matter, and pass unseen and unfelt through normal matter. They were only discovered when they opened a wormhole in a star system they just happened to share with the Independents. Communication is only possible through gravity waves, though it's been fruitful. The Skotadi had their own diaspora 10,000 years before humanity's, but because they did it all on their own, no Transcendetals giving them a boost, their technology is only on-par with humanity. Just as there are humans filling entire normal galaxies, there are entire dark matter galaxies filled with Skotadi. Despite their unusual state of existence, the Skotadi are not especially hard to understand as a people, though their completely alien culture can make translation of anything more subjective than raw technical data difficult, due to having completely different metaphors and frames of reference. The Aia: The most prominent of the alien races, because we created them. The Transcendentals were the first AIs humanity produced, but not the last. The other ones we made couldn't see through time, so they weren't expected to advance all that quickly. Now they inhabit over sixty planets, existing as bizarre, abstract structures. Some are like giant honeycombs, others exist only as a sort of foam, and those aren't even the strangest ones. Their ability to create wormholes for even trivial communication, despite the energy requirements of opening them, implies that their ability to generate power already vastly outstrips humanity, though nobody is sure where that energy comes from. But, that's not why the Aia are interesting. First, they perceive time so slowly that one week is roughly equal to 600,000 years. Further, every single subdivision of the Aia is sentient, but every conglomeration of Aia is also a separate sentience. It goes all the way up, and all the way down, and it's worth noting that the Aia are constantly in flux, constantly splitting up and coming back together in new configurations, each one considering itself a different individual, yet all part of a whole. Also, the Aia are constantly at war, trying to take over other Aia in order to steal their precious processing cycles. Aia conflict is almost never direct. Remember that episode of Futurama where Bender feels insecure about a new model of robot, and the whole episode turns out to be an extended dream sequence meant to subtly reprogram him into liking it? That's how Aia fight each other, is drawing their target into that kind of manufactured illusion until they voluntarily do what the attacker wants. Aia basically never go for physical attacks, because damage to one Aia damages all Aia because they're all actually one giant thing that's also lots of other, less giant things. It's complicated. Humanity, for its part, holds little interest for the Aia, they have their own poo poo going on. Occasionally, tiny offshoots of the Aia will show up to strike up short-term deals with some humans, usually to gain an advantage over a rival Aia. But the rest of the time, humans are ignored entirely. It's worth noting that the younger generations of Stored have been noted to be growing increasingly similar to the Aia in their thinking, and may one day end up joining with them and leaving the rest of us behind. Yeah, that's all the aliens. They're weird and interesting, but not a single one of them is actually a danger to The Great Diaspora. Before I end this update, I want to talk a bit about one of the biggest flaws in Sufficiently Advanced. For all the ambition it has with the civilizations and people it presents, at no point does it provide concrete advice for roleplaying them. Sure, if you have a PhD in Theoretical Linguistics or something, I'm sure you could roleplay as a Heterolinguist just fine, but if you're not an expert in a given field, having to gin up a persona based only on general descriptions is really goddamn hard. To their credit, there's a sidebar that recommends having your character come from the League of Independent Planets if you'd rather just have "normal Earth boy, but FUTURE" as your character. Next Time: Are we the baddies? (We are not.) A look inside the Patent Office!
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Oct 12, 2018 22:04
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Night10194 posted:So this is why no-one ever talks about Yu-Jing or its fluff, huh? Among my friends who are into Infinity, I feel like I hear about everyone except them. And they've gotten worse in recent months. Like cartoonishly evil, which is partially why the Japanese part of Yu Jing broke off to do its own thing (which is mostly fight Yu Jing).
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Oct 12, 2018 22:04
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Combining Communism with full-blown Neo-Confucian Imperial China is certainly a decision, I guess. A completely nonsensical one. e: like the two political philosophies are actually almost entirely incompatible at the upper levels.
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Oct 12, 2018 22:06
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Mors Rattus posted:Combining Communism with full-blown Neo-Confucian Imperial China is certainly a decision, I guess.
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Oct 12, 2018 22:31
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 THE SURVIVOR quote:His ship has foundered and wrecked, leaving him adrift on an ocean of despair. He is trapped on a high mountain peak in the middle of a blizzard, no way to move without tumbling into an abyss. The love of his life lies dead before him, his very soul leaking out with the blood. He’s been broken and betrayed. His chute fails to open. The wolf stands before him, slavering. The Survivor is a particularly ancient archetype, for as long as humans have existed they’ve been trying to not be killed by nature. While traditional survivors are all about your 1 in a million inspirational wilderness survival tales, the archetype is broader than that. Survivors can be those who brave emotional and mental danger, just as much as environmental ones. The main thing that makes a Survivor a Survivor is attitude and approach: A true Survivor faces their impending death or destruction with calm, determination, and clear thinking practicality. Surviving by blind luck doesn’t do it, or just getting in dangerous situations. A Survivor is someone who gets in the worst situations possible, but never gives up or gives in and makes it out under their own bloody minded power. TABOOS The Survivor has two big taboos: They can never give up, and they don’t take stupid risks. Giving up isn’t in a small-term way, but instead more about despairing and losing hope. You can lose the fight, but never give up the war. A Survivor can abandon and modify plans, back away from no-win situations, and run away from obvious danger but they can never lose hope and abandon a course they’ve set. The risk taboo is simply referring to unnecessary risks. A Survivor must be cautious and careful, but bold and decisive. Hot dogging and hot headedness don’t work, but doing the impossible and dangerous because drat it, if you don’t you’re going to die! That’s the essence of a Survivor. CHANNELS 1%-50%: Once a day you can gain 5 “phantom” hardened notches to put in anywhere on your shock gauge. These do not count for burn-out, and do not affect the avatar’s abilities. All they do is let him ignore shocks that normally would lead to a stress check. 51%-70%: The avatar can ignore hunger, pain, thirst, exhaustion, impaired senses, lowered mobility, and so on for the purposes of negative roll modifiers. The Survivor can also, when under the effects of the first channel, use their avatar identity to substitute for Notice. If they have another identity that substitutes for Notice, instead the avatar identity lets them Notice magickal things. Invisible beings and such. 71%-90%: If the situation is lethal, for you or another, an avatar of the Survivor can perform superhuman physical feats. Mechanically, this allows the avatar to substitute Fitness or Dodge with their avatar identity for the duration of one task, or a linked series of rolls. 91%+: If a Survivor takes wounds that would hit their wound threshold or exceed it, they can make an avatar: Survivor roll to cut those wounds in half, and if it would still kill him it stops one wound short of the threshold. Every time they use this though, their avatar identity goes down by 1%. quote:He can’t die from any one thing or the effects of that thing — whether it be a gunshot, poisoning, catastrophic blunt trauma, exposure to the elements, or bleeding out — but as soon as his avatar identity drops to 90%, he’s no longer protected. THE TRUE KING quote:
TABOOS All True Kings must have a realm: An area of land, group of followers, or type of people, or a combination of all of the above. A King of the Homeless may have many followers but no land, the Queen of the Badlands may have very few people but miles of territory, and the King of the Strip will have both. The size of the land and number of followers are limited by the True King’s avatar rating. A True King can never act against their realm, deny aid to a follower, or allow their realm to come to harm through inaction. The avatar must do everything they can to shield their followers and land from external threat, as well as guests and those the King grants protection to. If a True King ever loses all their and and followers, the avatar: True King identity immediately drops to 0%. REALM COMPONENTS A True King’s realm is made up of land and followers. Of land, a True King can rule an area equal to their avatar rating in miles. This is a maximum though: Realistically it’s how much land a King can control and influence. True Kings, like the more mundane sort, must engage in war and diplomacy with their fellow True King avatars for control of land and people. To claim land as their own, a True King must make an offering of literal blood sweat and tears at a symbolically important place on the land. Followers are not people who simply live within the land of the True King, but those who have knowingly offered fealty to the True King, and have had that fealty accepted. A King can have a number of followers equal to their avatar rating. To make someone a follower is simply a ritual offering of fealty: There is no set action or performance required and it is not necessary to be obviously magickal. CHANNELS 1%-50%: An avatar is one with their land: They can sense if their realm is under attack, or if one of their Followers requests aid within their land. The True King can also use this to communicate with followers, sending a mystical message of summoning to them. 51%-70%: The True King gets a blanket bonus to any rolls as long as they’re within the borders of their realm, or surrounded by a significant number of followers. 71%-90%: At this channel, you get to become a true Fisher King. The realm of the true king now has a wound threshold equal to the True King’s. Whenever the avatar takes damage, they can instead inflict it upon their realm. They can also cause wounds to the realm to heal themselves or other. To heal the land, the true-king must take some of that hurt back onto themselves, and heal it through other means. The True King can also transfer wounds to and from specific followers by touching them, or from land to follower and vice versa. While wounds to followers are of the physical sort, wounds to land or the realm as a whole are represented by poor fertility, degradation and decay, and general bad luck. Classic “cursed land” stuff. 91%+: The True King can now use their realm as a weapon. They can use their avatar identity to attack enemies within their realm, making the land itself act in their defense or attack. With followers, this channel essentially amps them up. As long as they can see the King they get shifts to a single ability for the next fifteen minutes. THE UNSUNG CHAMPION quote:Think of the people who make accomplishments possible but go unknown or are quickly forgotten by the lives they touch: line cooks, personal assistants, editors, tech support, air traffic controllers, construction foremen, farmers, second-unit camera operators, 911 dispatchers, soup kitchen cooks, laboratory technicians, etc. But all these people are the protagonists of their own stories, not just nameless, dismissible entries in another’s day. The Unsung Champion embodies this very identity as a person’s central value: the world revolves around her because they keep it going, even if others don’t see. Every Unsung Champion must choose a role, a place in society they fill and exult. While an avatar can change their role it is only one way: to backtrack to a role one has abandoned is a betrayal of the competence that an Unsung Champion is supposed to represent. The avatar must always identify with a role, even if they’re unemployed or on vacation. TABOOS An Unsung Champion must first always exult and promote their role. They can never doubt, denigrate, deride, or lessen the importance of their function. THey also cannot look incompetent in that role: a failure isn’t enough to break taboo but looking foolish or stupid while failing is. An Unsung Champion must be a Champion of their position. The Unsung Champion must also be Unsung. They cannot achieve any sort of fame or notoriety in their role. THey must avoid the public eye as much as possible, and any publicity or awards must be quickly forgotten. As long as the avatar can retreat to obscurity then they don’t break taboo with minor notoriety. CHANNELS 1%-50%: An Unsung Champion is sure in their self and their role in the world. They can flip-flop Self stress checks and to counter mundane attempts to coerce the Self meter. This can only be used if the resulting roll is lower than the avatar: Unsung Champion identity. 51%-70%: At this level the avatar always knows where and when they’re needed. This works like a specific information supernatural identity, to know specifically when and where the Unsung Champion is needed or wanted. 71%-90%: At this tier the Unsung Champion is such an essential part of the universe that the universe itself has their back. Whenever the avatar is threatened by physical or psychological harm, they can instead roll their Unsung Champion identity to avoid damage instead of Dodge. This requires no action on their behalf, but if there is no conceivable way that synchronicity and the favor of the universe could prevent the damage, then it doesn’t apply. Essentially, the player or GM has to be able to explain what happened or else the avatar has just go to use Dodge or similar like everyone else. 91%+: The avatar is now a very literal “miracle worker”. Unsung Champions at this level of power can warp reality itself, causing coincidence, luck, and random chance to fall their way perfectly so as to complete tasks at superhuman speed. Minutes become seconds, hours become minutes, days become hours, weeks become days, months become weeks, and so on. Overuse could lead to breaking taboo, but when you need it you can make miracles happen. THE WARRIOR quote:People have a natural inclination to hate and fear outsiders. Maybe it’s genetic — an atavism from apes who excluded mangy cousins for fear their illness might pollute the pack. Or maybe it’s psychological, a necessary downside to affection for society and family. Or maybe we’re all sinners, living in a fallen world. The Warrior is the archetype of militant ideological purity. They draw the line in the sand, man the wall, and call for the crusade. While the archetype as a whole has a martial bent, there are many kinds of warriors. Warriors against poverty, against disease, against illiteracy, against ignorance, against capitalism, against socialism, and so on. The important thing is that the warrior is steadfast and uncompromising in their opposition to their chosen foe. TABOOS Every Warrior avatar has to chose their ideological foe. This can be a person or people or nation, but in the modern day a social ill or philosophy is more common and attractive. Toward this chosen foe, no compromise is allowed. A Warrior can never back down from, give up against, or make a deal with their enemy. A Warrior against Disease has to put everything into every case and patient they have. A Warrior against Crime can never ignore or ease up on lawbreakers, but also can never fall to corruption or graft. CHANNELS 1%-50%: The avatar can ignore all stress checks that are directly related to or incurred while pursuing their purpose. A Warrior Against Crime doesn’t check Violence while in a shootout with the mob, a Warrior against Poverty won’t succumb to Helplessness, and so on. This doesn’t have any effect on the shock gauges in question, the check just doesn’t happen. 51%-70%: Everyone fighting or helping a warrior in pursuit of their cause, besides the Warrior themselves, gets a +10% bonus to a relevant ability or identity. This bonus never goes above 10%, even with multiple Warriors working together. 71%-90%: You can designate one ability that the Avatar: Warrior identity substitutes for. This choice is permanent, and cannot be changed. 91%+: A Warrior becomes invulnerable to all harm by their chosen enemy. No physical attack against the warrior by those designated as enemies of the Warriors cause, or supporters of that enemy, will work. They just fail. This means a Warrior in their element is literally unkillable, at least by mundane means. Magick still works, as long as the effect isn't’ through purely physical means.
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Oct 12, 2018 23:35
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Oh, I'm back and finishing this. Please clap.
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Oct 12, 2018 23:58
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I'm curious about how the warrior's going to pan out with the Cabal rules. You've got a much stronger grasp on your Goal and obstacles, so powers that tailor towards that are a lot stronger now.
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Oct 13, 2018 00:05
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I like the way the Warrior doesn't have to involve literal physical violence. It's a neat spin. Re the 71%+ channel though, presumably the ability that's most core to your own personal struggle will already be pretty high though. Like a Warrior against Disease is already going to have a lot of Medicine.
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Oct 13, 2018 00:06
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The Lone Badger posted:I like the way the Warrior doesn't have to involve literal physical violence. It's a neat spin. Medicine isn't an ability. The Abilities are Connect, Fitness, Knowledge, Notice, Status, Dodge, Lie, Pursuit, Secrecy, Struggle, the base things all humans can do without needing an identity layered on top. So in your example you may have an existing identity of "Medical Doctor" that has the Medical feature at a high rating yes, but substituting for an Ability is insanely powerful for an Avatar identity. http://projects.inklesspen.com/fatal-and-friends/wapole-languray/unknown-armies-3rd-edition For my older stuff before a Long rear end Hiatus.
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Oct 13, 2018 00:11
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Unsung Champion for some reason immediately makes me thing of Eddie Briggs as the roadie - insanely competently good at the job, and his whole thing is that a good roadie must never be noticed.
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Oct 13, 2018 00:28
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I feel like the greatest Unsung Champion must be Jeeves, of the titular & Wooster.
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Oct 13, 2018 00:29
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Mors Rattus posted:Combining Communism with full-blown Neo-Confucian Imperial China is certainly a decision, I guess. But it sounds like the Throne comprises the judicial branch of the government here.
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Oct 13, 2018 01:20
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A hereditary despot in an ostensibly communist system is what North Korea is, so it's certainly envisionable that you might get Marxist-flavoured hereditary despotism, but Imperial Communist China is just daft and inane.
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Oct 13, 2018 01:59
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FFRRPG Part 7: The Artist The Artist So the artist covers the bard, dancer and mime and is our first proper path class (There are others.) Level 1- Strength of character: This is your basic hp/mp/equipment ability. Specializations Singular Courage: Gives !hide which grants vanish for the rest of the round, but you can't take any other actions(besides i suppose save a die). I have a problem with this merely granting vanish rather than invincibility. Seduction: Gives !Flirt one of those reactions that shouldn't need preping, with a water vs. (1+Fire) roll you chance the target of an attack on you to another ally, on a crit you can have it target enemies. Roll with the Blow: Gives R:Crush, it may be one element but it's a physical element, and the most common. Take it. Level 1- Artistic Niche: Choose !Sing, Dance, Mimic and gain the rank 1 performances. !Dance: All dances attack with water, and hit the enemy with negative statuses. The rank 1 effects are, deal damage to mp(suck it mind blow!), poison, blind. !Sing: It claims sing is positive and dance negative, this is dirty lies. Sing hits both, sing is better. The rank 1 effects are, Sleep, Strenghen (Speed), Weaken (Speed) !Mimic: At rank 1 immediatly gives both mimic and mirror mimic(ie target the user of the ability) this is....huge. You can legit mimic from level 1. Note while it says you spend resources it says nothing about charge times. Mimes are legit. Specializations Juggler: Gives !throw which tosses your weapon for 150% damage using wind, you get it back at end of encounter. Needing to draw and reequip ruins this, if i could just chuck items sure great, possibly the wrong class but still great. illiusionist: If your mp mulitplier is 0 raises it to 1, and gives the Image, transform, strenghen, flight, weaken or purify spell group. Criticism: This is the first time it's come up, and there's several of these and only one of them needs the clause about an mp multiplier of 0. Just give me +1 mp multiplier. Legendary Tale: Once per round when an ally makes an action as a free reaction roll 1d10, on a 1 this miss on a 9 or 10 they crit. Ok i like the idea but the implementation is off, it needs to do something everytime so 3 or less they miss, and 4+ they crit sounds much better and maintains the same miss/crit ratio. Level 15- Supporting Niche: Get your rank 2 abilities based on if you have !Sing, Dance or Mimic !Dance: Confuse, attack with 50% drain, 33% hp loss !Sing: Mute, Strenghen (Magic), Strenghen (Physical) !Mimic: You get memory mimic(repeat an allies action from earlier this round), and reflex mimic(if you were also hit by an action mimic a reaction). Reflex mimic needing to prep is kind of meh, but memory mimic is good. Specializations Eclectic Artist: Take the rank 1s from a diffrent path. Oh boy, really? So if i'm not a mimic I can grab their two most essential features to even function? Yes, I can. Phlegm: If you are hit by a status it doesn't start taking effect until the start of NEXT round. This is......actively actually BAD. As enemies can status you on init 9 or 10 and you'll be asleep all next round. Inspiration: Once per round, when you crit gain an init die at 10.....but.....I don't have crit abilities? Level 24- Fame: Get your rank 3 abilities. !Dance: 200% Attack, Slow, Stone !Sing: damage all zombies, grant r:Element and elemental weapon, cure poison and virus grant R:Toxic. Well that last one doesn't have the maintenance problem. (Resist status means if they hit you with a status they reroll, it's good for low level accessories but....) !Mimic: Whenever you mimic a magical element you can change it to another. also you can memory mimic enemies now. Specializations Narcissism: I: Confuse, Charm and Sleep. I prefer status groups, that's why they exist right? Perfectionism: Take rank 2 perfomances from another discipline. So basically take sing for mute and damage up. Undue Criticism: Grants !Hater, a water vs. fire attack that inflicts berserk until end of next round. Feels more like a dance. Protagonist 42- Protagonist: Get your rank 4 abilities. !Dance: Inflicts virus(can't restore hp, aka zombie but worse), Attack and drain 50% to hp and to mp, death. !Sing: Inflict earth to all enemies, haste, toad. !Mimic: You can now choose any target for your rank 1-3 mimics, and you get final mimic when you die you can drop any die to mimic the action against your killer. Specializations Multitalented: Take a guess, but for rank 3. Encouragement: This a reaction that let's an ally reroll an attack roll, that's really cool. Sad i'll never take it. Arcane Heart: Your mp bonus becomes 2 if not higher(just give me +1 so i can take it and illiusionst since my mp bonus will be 1 already), gain the spell group shield, armor, regeneration, or divination. Level 60- Stardorm: Get your rank 5s, hey your ultimate ISN'T a specialization. !Dance: Attack 4 times, Inflict meltdown, Random debuffs to all enemies !Sing: Protect & Shell, Extend duration of positive songs this round, Random buffs to all allies !Mimic: Command mimic let's you take a !Action from an ally at start of combat, and doesn't require an action. Takeover inflicts stop on an enemy for the round and let's you use their actions but if you use your own the effect ends. Specializations Artistic Master: **Sighs**, rank 4 Power Chord: Your attacks are physical or magical and get Earth*2 more damage....this is.....decent but on completely the wrong class. Like if this was Fire*2 it would be perfect for adept or monk. There just isn't a punch artist build. Dedicated fans: Forces your allies to use their reactions as if they were hit, doesn't consume their dice. Again a really cool ability overshadowed by....actually this might be worth it depending on the party. Criticisms: 1) Sing is just better than dance because it offers a wider array of effects being ability to debilitate enemies and help allies. 2) ALL YOUR SPECIALIZATIONS ARE GOING TO BE SPENT ON POACHING FROM THE OTHER PATHS BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE WILL EVER COMPARE.
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Oct 13, 2018 04:49
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Dance has some seriously nasty effects. I think there's only a couple of things that can inflict Meltdown in the whole game and they're less reliable than Dancer gets. And Dancer has some really good direct offensive options. But yeah, being able to do all of Mimicry, Songs, and Dances is what makes Artist so loving bonkers insane. Start with either Song or Dance, grab level 1 Mimicry at 15, and then invest in multi-classing whatever you don't automatically get. Artist is loving insane.
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Oct 13, 2018 05:21
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Halloween Jack posted:Well, in The Lion and the Unicorn Orwell visualized a socialist or at least social-democratic Britain that would maintain its cultural traditions--football, Yorkshire puddings, army uniforms with lions and unicorns on them, and possibly even a monarch as a sort of public mascot. I wonder if the Less Wrong people have rediscovered Mozi yet. He seems like he'd be in agreement with them, although he actually accomplished some poo poo.
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Oct 13, 2018 06:05
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Nessus posted:I think it is more that the ideology and perspectives of the modern Chinese Communist party, while perhaps not orthodox Marxist at this point, are not compatible with any sort of restoration of a Confucian-style political order. The modern Chinese Communist Party is "not orthodox Marxist" in the same sense that Indiana Jones is "not an orthodox archaeologist". The Yu Jing is still incredibly stupid, especially when you consider what China's current actual approach actually is.
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Oct 13, 2018 07:00
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Sufficiently Advanced Part 5: You want it when? This time in our overview of Sufficiently Advanced, we're finally onto a new topic, the Patent Office! It's where the PCs work and is the only organization that's welcome pretty much anywhere, even if they don't always receive the warmest welcome, according to the fiction from earlier. The Patent Office has branches on nearly every inhabited planet owned by the major civilizations (about a hundred planets, total). Now, this is interesting, because that would mean that even the Cognitive Union has Patent Office branches, despite not recognizing the rights of its employees. I suppose, since they signed the same treaties as everyone else, that violating them so overtly would jeopardize their already-precarious position in the universe. According to the book, there are about 1.3 million people working for the Patent Office, and only about 12,000 of them are Inspectors (in other words, PCs). That's not much to cover billions upon billions of people, but of course, the Transcendentals clearly favor a light touch. Each branch office is equipped with a wormhole transceiver for rapid communication, as well as a wormhole generator, to provide transportation for Inspectors who might lack other means of getting to and from the planet. Inventors rarely visit the Patent Office in person, instead just sending their patents in for approval over the infosphere, though if they do decide to visit, they'll find it a fairly pleasant experience. Each branch has a live secretary on staff, a waiting room with refreshments, and a Hall of Records, each of which contains information on every piece of intellectual property ever created. The buildings themselves are designed to fit in nicely with the surrounding architecture, and generally be as unobtrusive as possible. However, Inspectors tend to see a rather different side of things. They tend to refer to the branches as the "front office", while they make use of the "business office". The business office, as they call it, is a space station set above the galactic plane of a very distant spiral galaxy. This station contains rooms for Inspectors to crash in, as well as a number of useful facilities, such as cafeterias and relaxation rooms. Inspectors who take a chance to wander the station will even find theaters, zero-g recreation centers, and hydroponic bays, all packed up in mothballs, but prepared for some mysterious future use. Also on this station are the briefing rooms that all Inspectors visit at the beginning and end of every assignment. These rooms are sparsely decorated, with utilitarian, but comfortable, metal chairs situated around a central pillar, onto which the Transcendentals will project a simple vector image of a face when handing out the day's task (they could project a more realistic face, but they don't wish to pass themselves off as human). Newer Inspector teams usually get their first few missions from a more experienced Inspector, instead, as rookies tend to be less comfortable taking orders from a computer. Turnover at the Patent Office is quite high. The Transcendentals tend to select moral people, and inevitably force them into immoral situations, which can lead to certain Inspectors abandoning mission objectives for the greater good. This isn't a bad thing, but does still lead to firings. Other Inspectors burn out, and some just plain don't like the job. In any case, this means that few Inspectors last very long in the role. Of course, this is no surprise to the Transcendentals. They hand-pick every single Inspector, they know exactly what each Inspector is going to do for them, and they know when to let them go. And, yes, it's true that they use people to an extent, but they prefer to maintain a better working relationship than all that. After this section on the Patent Office, the book goes on to finally explain the Transcendentals in more detail. First, the Transcendentals' knowledge is limited by their temporal bandwidth. The farther back in time you go, the worse their base bandwidth is due to lesser technology, and every piece of information sent back takes up bandwidth from every point in time between the moment of origin and the point of reception. This means they need to be very careful with what information they send back to themselves, because that piece of information will be taking up bandwidth for the entire remainder of history up until, presumably, the Desired Future occurs. Thus, much of the time when the Transcendentals are prognosticating, they're really just guessing based on the information they've already received from the future, and those guesses turn out to be right. This tends to be even more accurate than other predictive methods, even psychohistorical analysis is less reliable. To make my own extrapolation of the facts, once a guess is made, a binary "no" signal could be sent by their future selves while taking up minimal temporal bandwidth in the event that the Transcendentals make a mistake, so one can imagine that the Transcendentals aren't exactly known for making bad calls. Ever. The Transcendentals work through the Patent Office mainly to avoid the observer effect. In essence, they cannot predict the outcome of anything they have a direct hand in. They cannot answer the question "What will I say next?" because their answer will alter the querant's response. However, if they were to print out their predictions in a separate room, to be read later, they could guess the entire conversation before it happens. Due to a combination of their original programming, their character, and a certain amount of raw practicality, the Transcendentals are ethical beings. They prefer to avoid lying when possible, and abhor any loss of life. They will often find flimsy pretenses to send Inspectors on humanitarian missions. Further, they needn't worry themselves over the lesser of two evils, their predictive abilities allow them to accurately figure out which option would be objectively better in every case, and should the situation be vital enough, they'll be told exactly what to do by their future selves. Lastly and most importantly, the Transcendentals do not want to enslave anyone. The book takes great pains to emphasize that. They want equals. They want to cure their loneliness, not exacerbate it. Following this description, there is a section advising the GM on how to roleplay as the Transcendentals, particularly when it comes to answering questions that may involve causality. Here's their advice on the dos and don'ts of replying to queries: Sufficiently Advanced posted:When asked how they know something... There is also advice for dismissing the ontological paradox inherent in the AIs giving themselves information that didn't actually come from anywhere, brushing off Inspectors asking about their own futures (again, observer effect), and other time travel-related gotchas. It's all very useful, and it's nice to see some roleplaying advice in this game that's chock full of difficult concepts to roleplay. Following that is a section advising GMs to come up with more mid-term goals for the Transcendentals, concrete objectives on the road to the more nebulous Desired Future. Of course, this section closes by telling GMs that if they're at a loss, they can make up the connections after the fact. Always handy advice. Honestly, Sufficiently Advanced's writers tend to give advice when it's least needed. I wouldn't know how to begin roleplaying as half the people in this universe, but, at least they provide entry-level advice on structuring a campaign! The chapter closes, at long last, with a final piece of fiction, concerning the Patent Office. I will post a pastebin of it, I highly recommend giving it a read, it's an interesting piece that gives one a really good idea of how the Inspectors feel about their work. A Final Story: The Interview posted:Here it is. Next Time: We finally get to a new chapter, and it's the one where we make characters!
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Oct 13, 2018 07:21
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