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InfiniteJesters posted:The more I examine this game the more I love the idea and hate hate hate the execution. That's just it though. Science fiction, or at least science fiction that leans more heavily on the fiction end of it, isn't about technology at all. Not really. Its speculation about what sort of unique social constructions and situations and personalities would be enabled (or even required) by hypothetical future technologies. Some even comes at it from the other direction, and dreams up technologies to enable the author to play with situations they find interesting, or to explore contemporary issues without freighting them with the baggage that comes along with the real world.
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Mar 7, 2012 05:05
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Baby Babbeh posted:That's just it though. Science fiction, or at least science fiction that leans more heavily on the fiction end of it, isn't about technology at all. Not really. Its speculation about what sort of unique social constructions and situations and personalities would be enabled (or even required) by hypothetical future technologies. Some even comes at it from the other direction, and dreams up technologies to enable the author to play with situations they find interesting, or to explore contemporary issues without freighting them with the baggage that comes along with the real world. Well, they certainly freighted over some real world baggage with the Jovian Republic!  And with this breed of sci-fi the social examinations come across as rather bitter and clinical to me! Maybe it's the intense specificity of it. Everything is so elaborated at length to where you know more about political blocs than people. But I do understand the idea of sci-fi-as-social-mirror. It's just that done badly it can be rather dry and also rather...Bleh, I forgot what I was going to say. I'll come back to this tomorrow once I've actually slept. InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Mar 7, 2012 |
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Mar 7, 2012 05:10
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InfiniteJesters posted:Oh man. I just thought of a thing. Given the scope of OA, and that EP already has issues with balance and over-crunchiness, I think it would be less 'running' and more 'hitching forward every so often'.
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Mar 7, 2012 05:17
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I find it amusing that almost every complaint about Eclipse Phase's setting I've read mentions the Jovians and/or Christianity. Nothing else about EP even comes close to those two elements.
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Mar 7, 2012 07:36
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InfiniteJesters posted:And with this breed of sci-fi the social examinations come across as rather bitter and clinical to me! Maybe it's the intense specificity of it. Everything is so elaborated at length to where you know more about political blocs than people. It is dystopian horror, I'd kind of expect that sort of thing. But you are right, there's so much focus on the negative aspects, when there's all these tantalizing glimpses of really awesome, uplifting things going on. Naturally, since games in general are about conflict, the solar system's problems are more important from a development standpoint than the peaceful utopias, but still they need to accentuate the positive a little. You know, eliminate the negative. Latch on to the affirmative. Don't mess with Mister In-Between.
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Mar 7, 2012 08:02
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I guess one reason I really like Charles Stross' stuff is that it never looses its sense of humor. I swear the sentient Communist lobsters were my favorite characters in Accelerando. Meh. I guess all I want to really know is whether it's sci-fi authors that have their panties in a bunch, or me, or both. Anyway. Having discovered the existence of sentient parrots in Panopticon, my next endeavor shall be to make space pirate NPCs.
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Mar 7, 2012 14:47
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Well the obvious answer is to go Alien/Event Horizon. Have something horrible be on the ship that they have to deal with, particularly something nasty that's hunting them. Maybe an exhuman predator. I had this idea already but I was hoping someone would have a different suggestion so that I could avoid recreating Alien or 90% of outer space based horror. Last night right before falling asleep I had a different idea and this is what blindly scribbled down before falling back to sleep: You farcast in, sleeving into cheap synthmorphs, androgynious with unsettling plasticine features. Automated messages guide you to a storage locker where a worn out and whining fabber dispenses clothing and gear for your squad. A data file is waiting on your mesh to download. It contains info on the surrounding area, scematics for the automated mining facility you are to guard and background details on past anarchist attacks. You spend a few uneventful days, mostly playing the single vr game loaded in the battered and shabby rec lounge. The automated guns pick up and fire on distant targets from time to time but don't seem to hit anything since there hasn't been any remains around any time you check. Each day you ping an all's well to the only other automated mining station in mesh range and get a return ping back. One day, the ping doesn't come back. I think I was going for a twist that rather than being farcast in, the players are actually dubbed alpha forks constantly being downloaded into the same cheap synthmorp then erased at the end of their "rotation" for years and the nearest automated facility going dead is the dubbed forks over there realizing the truth and going rogue. I need help on where they are located, why they are abandoned and what happens after they come into contact with the rogue forks.
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Mar 7, 2012 15:48
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Chance II posted:I had this idea already but I was hoping someone would have a different suggestion so that I could avoid recreating Alien or 90% of outer space based horror. If you're concerned about recreating Alien on originality grounds your recreation of Moon could stand to be a little less on-the-nose. Maybe the twist isn't the real twist. The other forks are hostile when the players get there. Because they just fought off a cleanup team that was also player forks hired as a security crew. The PC group has been hired and dubbed by the same company who knows how many times for vaguely similar functions, and a system has been devised to keep them from recognizing each other and breaking script. The whole process is a lot more automated and self-sufficient than it seems, the death-and-rebirth process has been repeating itself for generations. The mine has been abandoned because it's depleted/forgotten/there's nobody left out there anymore, and the players need to work out how to survive on this homocidal robot base without breaking it because they have nowhere else they can go. Maybe they aren't even being wiped on purpose, there's just a backup system with a flawed memory capture and the players are all stuck in a loop that ends in getting themselves killed and respawned because it's the exact same people being dropped into the exact same scenario over and over and over loving up in the exact same way because they can't remember or learn from the last time. This time some new stimulus has come into the system that changes the script (maybe), a stray comet knocked out a communications dish or something. Tubgirl Cosplay fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Mar 7, 2012 |
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Mar 7, 2012 16:22
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Thanks for the ideas, and yeah the only difference between recreating moon (I had forgotten the name) and recreating Alien is that no one I know has seen Moon.
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Mar 7, 2012 16:26
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In that case go for it, it's a legit story. I'd just be concerned that someone had seen it and would ruin the plot for everyone else early on, but if you know they haven't cool (also show them it afterwards).
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Mar 7, 2012 16:28
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Dareon posted:It is dystopian horror, I'd kind of expect that sort of thing. But you are right, there's so much focus on the negative aspects, when there's all these tantalizing glimpses of really awesome, uplifting things going on. Naturally, since games in general are about conflict, the solar system's problems are more important from a development standpoint than the peaceful utopias, but still they need to accentuate the positive a little. The main reason I'm dubious about Eclipse Phase is that this transhumanism is still too "utopian" in my mind, and the dystopian horror only exists to provide an actual game to play in, but could easily be pushed aside. Speaking of dystopian horror...I still have a hard time thinking what can destroy the 'transhuman' race, other than mass insanity, the destruction of the "stacks" necessary to generate new copies of bodies, or alien/AI invasion with the expressed purpose of causing mass insanity or destruction of stacks. And all these three mass extinction problems are rather remote and possibly preventable, so in the short-term, nobody really have an incentive to care about the end of the transhuman race. Even bioweapons and weapons of mass destruction isn't that big of a deal, so long as they don't target the "stacks" that are necessary for you to be 'recreated'. The penalty for death is somewhat severe...You suffer some insanity as your "memory" gets transferred to another entity, memory loss, and maybe have to pay higher insurance premiums. It's still much better than the oblivion that awaits you later on. I don't care about the Jovians or Christians, because honestly, transhumanity raises far more troubling questions than mere "ideology". Transhumans quite easily have the potential to become immortal gods...or arrogant monsters. If they haven't already.
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Mar 7, 2012 21:04
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Servant posted:The main reason I'm dubious about Eclipse Phase is that this transhumanism is still too "utopian" in my mind, and the dystopian horror only exists to provide an actual game to play in, but could easily be pushed aside. One of the vague points is that transhumanity is just that - in a transitory stage between two points. We know where humanity is coming from. We don't know where they're going. And the major examples given of potential end points have been the horrifying Reapers, the just enough to be really frighteningly inhuman Remade, the immortal scions of the Consortium who are so old they're actually going insane from it, and...exsurgent. And really, that's the whole point. What threatens transhumanity isn't something that damages their body. It's something that damages their Ego. Sure, you die, someone finds your stack, they reupload you. Or...they don't find the stack, and you are effectively dead, except that part of you is still alive and is going to drift until the end of time. Or they find your stack, but you were infected with exsurgent, and now there is no turning back, because it doesn't matter what body you put yourself in, that infection is there to stay, until it eventually takes you over completely, and you will never know that it did because of how it influences every level of your consciousness. Or someone else finds your stack and you're sold in the soul trade, and it's time you began your literally endless life of eternal slavery where there isn't even the solitude of a peaceful death and afterlife to comfort you. Or maybe you didn't die. You made it from Earth, one of the many who uploaded successfully to avoid the Fall. You've just woken up ten years after you felt that jolt of the ego being uploaded, and there's a list of companies you can work for. No, don't worry about how long you'll work for them. You'll have a body in no time. And you're sure this is the first time you've experienced this. Except maybe it isn't. Or maybe you have your body and a job and you're working with no problems when Something Goes Wrong, that shouldn't have. And then you wake up at your desk again, and the date is different, and you have no idea what happened, but your pay has been docked and two weeks of your existance are gone. Or maybe you complain a bit too loudly, and Direct Action steps in, and when you come to work the next day you smile extra wide because there isn't a thought in your head about complaining about the Consortium, that would be silly! Who would do that? And you really do believe it. You believe it with all your heart and all your ego because their psychosurgeon was good. See, that's where I guess the problem is. You're putting way too much thought on meat problems. But that's the thing - you ARE immortal, because your Ego is transferable. Which means your Ego can be altered.
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Mar 7, 2012 22:46
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InfiniteJesters posted:Why does so much sci-fi feel a need to shove all this ideological stew down readers' throats? Norman Spinrad posted:To make drat sure that even the historically naive and entirely unselfaware reader got the point, I appended a phony critical analysis of Lord of the Swastika, in which the psychopathology of Hitler's saga was spelled out by a tendentious pedant in words of one syllable.
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Mar 7, 2012 23:06
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ProfessorCirno posted:
Well yes, but if you don't buy that idea as particularly horrific, its still kinda lacking. If the PC is changed, welp, they're a different character with different stats, and the show goes on.
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Mar 8, 2012 00:00
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Cirno hits the nail on the head. It's easy to be dismissive of a lot of horror concepts in EP, but in a way the ones left are even scarier. It literally is an existential crisis. It's not just about keeping everyone alive, it's about keeping them human. Which is also the crux of the conflict between the Jovians and Titan - how broadly do you define human? Where does that gray line get drawn between people, who are worth saving, and abhuman creatures, to be feared and fought? Because even scum and morphological freedom advocates tend to think the exhumans are monsters. Chance II: I think the thing you can do with the Alien/Event Horizon story that makes it interesting to me is that it's not actually Alien/Event Horizon. The players are meant to think it is. But the story you're actually recreating is more akin to The Cube or the Most Dangerous Game or Saw. In Alien the horror is the primal one of being prey to an instinctual hunter, and of the whole chestburster aspect. But if you sub in an exhuman predator, you're not dealing with instinct or terrifying nature. The enemy is there for entertainment. It's there to have fun, at the expense of the group. You could even combine the two concepts - the exhuman keeps reviving the party for the hunt, trying to perfect its artistic masterpiece of predation and terror. And as the party realizes just how much they're being toyed with, leave them wondering what spots of hope are really things their adversary has missed, and which are intentional red-herrings.
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Mar 8, 2012 00:11
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Cirno hits the nail on the head. It's easy to be dismissive of a lot of horror concepts in EP, but in a way the ones left are even scarier. It literally is an existential crisis. It's not just about keeping everyone alive, it's about keeping them human. Which is also the crux of the conflict between the Jovians and Titan - how broadly do you define human? Where does that gray line get drawn between people, who are worth saving, and abhuman creatures, to be feared and fought? Because even scum and morphological freedom advocates tend to think the exhumans are monsters. You're kinda contradicting yourself here, talking about how the strengths of the setting are philosophical on the one hand and advocating for stock two-dimensional slasher movie villains on the other. The bad guy just running around torturing people for the sake of evil (or generic subjective Badguy Motivations that can be immediately dismissed like religious/artistic derangement) is the opposite of interesting, though. Those are acceptable if the antagonist is just a cipher and your narrative is a delivery vehicle for gore and bodily injury, but the reason Alien and Cube endured while thousands of other similar sci-fi horror flicks have been correctly forgotten is their featured nasties follow their own semi-comprehensible internal logic that isn't just about big nasty predator gonna eatchu or sadism for sadism's sake, and in fact is essentially indifferent to such human constructs. The Most Dangerous Game isn't actually intended to be scary, and is a more pointed cultural commentary that doesn't work the same if Zaroff is an ooky space monster. You're not doing those stories, you're doing Friday the 13th, or The Human Centipede. Maybe Saw, never watched those. EP and transhumanist fiction in general lend themselves pretty well to disturbing antagonists following some apparently consistent logic that's so removed from our understanding that it can only be understood by analogy. Whether that's reading the Alien as an avatar of rape or the mindless mechanistic bureaucracy in Cube - it's strongly implied there is a motivation that makes perfect sense, you're just incapable of fully grasping it. They're not scary because they kill people, they're scary because they point to an indifferent and inhospitable universe you're fundamentally unsuited for dealing with. The evil-artist thing could even be made workable, but needs to be dug into a little deeper. Pain and death aren't inherently artistic, especially when you no longer have a meaningful concept of either. Art is communication; what does the art piece convey? Why that choice in venue or materials? Are the killings an incidental byproduct, or do they serve some other function? Who's the intended audience for the piece - other exhumans? The players? Something else? How do they receive it?
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Mar 8, 2012 01:20
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I'm pretty sure I just advocated all that with significantly less stroking myself off with psuedo-intellectual bullshit.
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Mar 8, 2012 02:04
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You could throw the sci-fi inspiration for a loop and take from Zardoz instead of Alien/Event Horizon: the players run across an experimental lighthugger that launched a few years prior to the Fall, populated by a Brinker cult of entitled Methuselahs (or breakaway Argonauts) who foresaw what was going to happen and selfishly took off for Alpha Centauri instead of warning anyone. Unfortunately, they've fallen into sloth and apathy, dying and being reborn in their little self-contained bubble as it zips around in an erratic orbit through the solar system.
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Mar 8, 2012 03:02
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We cannot proceed further without stats for the red diaper.
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Mar 8, 2012 03:09
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The joy of EP is that you can have psuedo-intellectual jerking off and The Cube (In Space) in the same game. It's not like we get to pick one and ONLY THAT FOREVER!!!!!
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Mar 8, 2012 03:16
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Young Freud posted:You could throw the sci-fi inspiration for a loop and take from Zardoz instead of Alien/Event Horizon: the players run across an experimental lighthugger that launched a few years prior to the Fall, populated by a Brinker cult of entitled Methuselahs (or breakaway Argonauts) who foresaw what was going to happen and selfishly took off for Alpha Centauri instead of warning anyone. Unfortunately, they've fallen into sloth and apathy, dying and being reborn in their little self-contained bubble as it zips around in an erratic orbit through the solar system. This owns but what'd be the EP equivalent of the big flying head?
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Mar 8, 2012 03:19
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Somebody hacks the local AR systems and infests everyone's view with their giant-sized disembodied head.
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Mar 8, 2012 03:26
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:This owns but what'd be the EP equivalent of the big flying head? Well, some of the crazier and memorable elements had to be dropped, like the stone head and the Exterminator diapers. But, when you get down to what the Vortex actual is, it's like the hippie version of Galt's Gulch. There's even pings of detached liberal guilt at them closing themselves off from the world and partying while the rest of the world goes to poo poo when Sara Kestelman's character discusses with Zed about the past.
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Mar 8, 2012 03:29
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Young Freud posted:Well, some of the crazier and memorable elements had to be dropped, like the stone head and the Exterminator diapers. But, when you get down to what the Vortex actual is, it's like the hippie version of Galt's Gulch. There's even pings of detached liberal guilt at them closing themselves off from the world and partying while the rest of the world goes to poo poo when Sara Kestelman's character discusses with Zed about the past. Yeah but conning less-developed peoples into sustaining your ridiculous lifestyle and wiping themselves out in the process without you having to lift a finger or even look up from your eternal technomagic orgy is transhumanist as gently caress. I forget were they just feeding the Vortex or actually terraforming the outer world to suit them, the latter would make for a pretty rad adaptation.
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Mar 8, 2012 03:37
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:Yeah but conning less-developed peoples into sustaining your ridiculous lifestyle and wiping themselves out in the process without you having to lift a finger or even look up from your eternal technomagic orgy is transhumanist as gently caress. No, they were just feeding the Vortex. However, my idea of the lighthugger ship came from a throwaway bit of dialogue from the film, where Zed comes across the Tate Museum storehouse and Friend informs him that they and the creation of the Tabernacle were originally for colonizing other worlds, which turned out to be a dead end. I got the impression that a bunch of the Eternals got into a space ship, rocketed off at the speed of light to Alpha Centauri or Barnard's Star or other solar system, realized there was no inhabitable worlds, got bored and came back after a hundred years or so and wrote the whole thing off.
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Mar 8, 2012 03:52
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Ronwayne posted:We cannot proceed further without stats for the red diaper. +3 Moxie while worn.
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Mar 8, 2012 03:57
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I have concluded that the Jovians are less of a story-idea tumor and more of an amusing sideshow if you imagine that they based their entire society off of the Terran Federation from the Verhoeven Starship Troopers movies. WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? 
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Mar 8, 2012 10:01
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Ronwayne posted:Well yes, but if you don't buy that idea as particularly horrific, its still kinda lacking. If the PC is changed, welp, they're a different character with different stats, and the show goes on. If you don't find the idea of someone being able to gently caress with you at your most fundamental level, at will and without your consent, horrific, I think you might actually have a problem. 
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Mar 8, 2012 12:22
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Lemon Curdistan posted:If you don't find the idea of someone being able to gently caress with you at your most fundamental level, at will and without your consent, horrific, I think you might actually have a problem. Quick gear-rules related question; you can buy blueprints for an item at one cost higher than the regular item cost (so about 4x/5x the cost), so if you wanted blueprints for a Cornucopia Machine which would on its own cost 20,000 they would set you back about 100,000 credits? I know they're awesome but that seems too pricey even still, after all you still need the right elements for the feedstock and a place to print your first machine where people are arguably going to want to gank you for the blueprints themselves. How might I fairly price such an expensive blueprint so as not to be prohibitive but still make it a worthy goal / something a character with maxed Programming cant just belt out of a Simulspace in a week?
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Mar 8, 2012 12:46
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InfiniteJesters posted:I have concluded that the Jovians are less of a story-idea tumor and more of an amusing sideshow if you imagine that they based their entire society off of the Terran Federation from the Verhoeven Starship Troopers movies. Well, yeah, I'm not sure anyone could really take them seriously. It's possible to use their ideology in a serious fashion, of course. As presented, they are really rather cartoony caricatures of the Tea Party, Hitler, and conservatives in general. With any luck, we'll look back on this characterization as amusingly quaint and mired in the outlook of the day, much as most 80s and 90s modern/future setting Western RPGs are. What follows is an exercise in spin.  I personally think the Jovian Republic is pretty horrid as presented, and have no love for the systems it espouses and is based on, but I'm gonna see how it could be pulled into the ranks of the neutral. Just as a thought experiment. This is gonna be a whole big pile of  to no great effect, ignore it as you like.Now, the primary memes of the Jovians are Bioconservatism, Fascism, and Security. These are people who do not want to be transhuman, and see transhumanism as a blight on the face of humanity, much like *insert reviled minority here*. They do not want to lose their humanity. At the same time, I could definitely see them espousing Nietzschean philosophy, particularly the concept of the Übermensch. If I gently caress anything up while talking about Nietzsche, either just bear with me or assume a similar gently caress-up was intentional for spin purposes and the incorrect meme has propagated through Jovian society. I'm learning about this stuff as I go. So, the Ubermensch (gently caress your umlauts. Idly checking autocorrect gives me "Lumbermen," which makes the argument very silly) is easily portrayed as the goal of the Jovians, but at first glance this clashes with their bioconservatism and dislike of the rest of transhumanity. However, if you look at the transhuman condition as taking the easy way to the top, the classical Ubermensch is more about training and developing humanity over generations. Given how badass the Jovian troops apparently are, that seems about right. As a bonus, when talking about Nietzsche, you can get some decent something-or-other by bringing in the other Also Sprach Zarathustra. I'm not sure you can avoid getting cartoony when dealing with fascism, however. You have a single-party system where unions and corporations represent the populace, and the military controls dissenters. I can only spin that by saying the Jovians likely have the highest degree of national identity. Because as much as I decry the "Unity Through Strength" part of fascism, I can definitely identify with the "Strength Through Unity" part. I mean, that's something every single leader has espoused. Moving on... Yeah, I can't even spin their opposition to nanofabrication/digitization at a cultural level, although I could posit a common citizen opposing nanotech because "You can't see what it's doing!" and digitization over some postulates as to the nature of the soul. I think the majority of gamers would have to work very hard to run Jovians in such a way that they don't come off like WWII Disney Hitler. Still, in theory, at least it is possible.
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Mar 8, 2012 13:03
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Dareon posted:However, if you look at the transhuman condition as taking the easy way to the top, the classical Ubermensch is more about training and developing humanity over generations. Given how badass the Jovian troops apparently are, that seems about right. There are not enough  s to describe how wrong this is.Jovians come off as Disney Hitler because that's what neocons come off as nowadays. Yeah, the EP writers are hamfisted about how they deal with it, but the source material doesn't exactly help. There's nothing comical about totalitarianism, though - it's not something we've eliminated from the real world. A nation of religious conservative totalitarians who bunch together because they're afraid of the future isn't something that's inherently funny and impossible to play straight. The key thing to remember is that Jovians are the way they are because they're afraid of the potential to do evil with e.g. nanotechnology. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 13:35
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Lemon Curdistan posted:There are not enough Well clearly the Jovians are wrong then! 
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Mar 8, 2012 13:39
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ProfessorCirno posted:See, that's where I guess the problem is. You're putting way too much thought on meat problems. But that's the thing - you ARE immortal, because your Ego is transferable. Which means your Ego can be altered. You do have to understand what Ronwayne says though: Ronwayne posted:Well yes, but if you don't buy that idea as particularly horrific, its still kinda lacking. If the PC is changed, welp, they're a different character with different stats, and the show goes on. Even if the PCs don't care about transhumans "changing", the NPCs would. Especially if they're the ones being changed. I think there's much potential for a campaign where the PCs getting heavily involved in this conflict over the future of transhumanity and ultimately cast the deciding vote, and I am beginning to find this ideological conflict more appealing than the hypercorps, the anarchists, the bioconservatives, the Factors, the Exhumans, or even Firewall itself... === Now...have the published supplements and missions actually dealt with "Ego modification"? And by that, I ask even more pointedly, has Firewall dealt with this? I have only read two Firewall missions: one was the introductory Quick Start mission where you have to stop a bioweapon (but fail miserably thanks to railroading), the other was to shut down a dangerous AI who was willing to reconstruct reality to answer a simple question and thus cause an unfortunate case of insanity. The latter can be seen as an example of the Ego being changed, but it seem most of the problem was it seemed Firewall wanted to exterminate it because it was a dangerous AI, and dangerous AIs are bad because, uh, they're dangerous AI. "Meat problems" again. So I might be wrong, but the published material seems to not care about "Ego modification". Even Firewall may not care about "Ego modification", instead contending itself with "lesser" threats such as the "meat problems". In which case, for EP to actually work as a plausible and interesting "horror" setting, you have to modify EP to such an extent that...it's no longer actually the EP that the authors originally made. Wouldn't it just be better to explore those themes in a new setting then, to start a-fresh?
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Mar 8, 2012 16:34
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Quite possibly. IMHO the authors couldn't seem to decide which direction to go in with the game. The book talks about the possibility of exsurgent contact ending in a fate worse than death, but that's only really possible if they somehow get to your neural backup a long long way away, and furthermore the example adventures don't really even give good examples, which sort of takes the dread out of the whole thing. "OH WHOOPS BETA FORK JUST GOT TORN TO SHREDS AND UPLOADED INTO A SIM OF <insert horrible thing here>. SUCKS TO BE BETA FORK. "Also, keep in mind one of the authors worked on Shadowrun 4E. So if anything seems familiar...That's why. Also, why does a game that has a sourcebook with AN OCTOPUS AND GORILLA GLADIATOR MATCH on its cover take itself so seriously instead of having fun? Why does this industry take itself so seriously when half the time play sessions turn into bloody versions of Keystone Kops? WHYYY? InfiniteJesters fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 17:24
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InfiniteJesters posted:Quite possibly. IMHO the authors couldn't seem to decide which direction to go in with the game. Meathab.
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Mar 8, 2012 18:29
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InfiniteJesters posted:Also, keep in mind one of the authors worked on Shadowrun 4E. So if anything seems familiar...That's why. Not just one of the devs, but one of the guys who wrote Renraku Arcology Shutdown, which it and Deus could be seen as an inspirational precursors to the TITANs. Also, I think looking at the Jovians as comic book dictators is wrong. My view, and it's something I've talked about before, is that they're more about preserving "freedom" at any costs, much like the Chilean junta during the '70s and '80s and the Greek military in the '60s. It's why they draw the line at Splicers, since it removes hindrances like hereditary diseases but doesn't add anything that could upset others access to equal opportunities. It's why they don't consider AIs truly sentient lifeforms, because they're programmed by human hands and thus really have no real free will. It's why psychosurgery is forbidden, because it has the potential to reduces humans to programmable zombies, just like AIs. It's why they only view destructive uploading as the only true way to morphswap, because egobridging really just copies the ego and doesn't really transfer the soul or what have you.
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Mar 8, 2012 19:06
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My view on the Jovian Republic is that essentially all those people you see in EP conversations who think that transhumanity is freaky and wrong have a valid viewpoint, an some of them survived the fall. When they looked at the rest of the system, full of transhumanity going *weird* in seven million different directions, they reckoned that they were the only surviving true humanity and prioritised their own security as much as possible. Look at it this way; Cthulhu just rose up, ate all the major cities, then buggered off who knows where leaving the deep ones, Dagon and Hydra behind to wreck poo poo. You managed to flee to the mountains to hide, and you hear that other people escaped too. Trouble is, everyone else is all like 'being a deep one hybrid isn't so bad! Now I have these fancy gills! Glub glub." or summoning eldritch entities to mangle their soul so they can come back to life after death. In that situation, wouldn't *you* get at least a little paranoid and armed-up?
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Mar 8, 2012 19:13
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But the question is at what point do I start naming my home after arch-right wing dictators?Lemon Curdistan posted:If you don't find the idea of someone being able to gently caress with you at your most fundamental level, at will and without your consent, horrific, I think you might actually have a problem. Eh, after a rather amazingly lovely series of life experiences and jobs I've come to associate "horror" with "annoyance, boredom, dull despair, and having to work unpaid overtime." You know, things you don't want in an RPG when you're trying to have fun. In addition, living in dread of things you have no control over is a mindnumbing way to live, and few things are as out of your control as a Exsurgant problem. Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 19:17
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dp
Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 19:22
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 01:20 |
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Ronwayne posted:But the question is at what point do I start naming my home after arch-right wing dictators? At the point where all the half-fishmen are all like "You're just dissing on my cthonic lifestyle because you're a backwards fascist conservative!" and you're all like "FINE, say hello to my shotgun Pinochet!". After a while, I can kinda see them just doing it as a middle finger to everyone else. I should say I don't think this is all that in line with the written material, but it's how I'd run them in a game.
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Mar 8, 2012 19:51
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