|
The Void Engineers are also the guys going out and murdering all the pixies and Changeling protagonists and everything else both harmful and harmless in the Umbra, so their good natures are also a matter of perspective.
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 19:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 12:48 |
|
|
Bobbin Threadbare posted:The Void Engineers are also the guys going out and murdering all the pixies and Changeling protagonists and everything else both harmful and harmless in the Umbra, so their good natures are also a matter of perspective. Murdering Changeling protagonists doesn't make them bad guys. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 20:19
|
|
|
The Void Engineers are also the one convention that skirts the line of 'heresy' within the Technocracy, because their members openly acknowledge (at least among themselves) that what they're doing is, in fact, magic with a different coat of paint. The rank and file of the other conventions have no idea that they're actually mages, because every Technocrat undergoes a form of brainwashing during recruitment and training, courtesy of the New World Order. It makes them (almost) completely subservient to Control and unable to accept the existence of 'magic' at all. However, the Void Engineers have a division that's responsible both for mental health and counseling, and also deprogramming all of their members. It's why they're also the only ones not at risk for being mind-controlled by Threat Null. Edit: Also, the Syndicate is even worse than some realize. They're the one convention that doesn't believe that all people should get to Ascend. They're completely devoted to the idea that there will always be haves and have-nots, and a majority of people need to be Sleepers just so that the Awakened can feel more special about themselves. Additionally, there's a faction within the Union that wants to create an Orwellian cyberpunk dystopia with the brainwashed Sleepers at the bottom and the Technocrats themselves all the way at the top. How influential that faction is seems to vary from sourcebook to sourcebook, and one of the Ascension scenarios covered a civil war between the 'bad' Technocrats and the 'good' ones. Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Dec 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 20:22
|
|
|
A Curvy Goonette posted:So whats the role of a Technocrat's Avatar then if they're basically just deluding themselves into performing their version of 'science' that is reinforced by consensus? Would they even need to Awaken if the science->consensus->science feedback loop supported them enough? Their Avatar is the same as it is for a Tradition mage, but couched in more acceptable terms to the individual scientist; sudden breakthroughs, strange dreams, unthinkably understanding mentors who only show up when other people aren't around, etc. The Technocrats aren't deluded, per se; they're simply enacting a rationalist paradigm. One of the things about Mage that is, again, a difficult concept until you get used to it is that nobody is exactly wrong here; a die-hard Technocrat using social engineering, hyper-technology, and handheld devices to work "Enlightened Science" is no more or less correct in his perception of reality than a woman who summons spirits and smites enemies by carving runes into her arm with a bone-handled knife. Reality is subjective; the ways in which it can be usefully manipulated are subjective. Everything is true; nothing is forbidden. Bobbin Threadbare posted:The Void Engineers are also the guys going out and murdering all the pixies and Changeling protagonists and everything else both harmful and harmless in the Umbra, so their good natures are also a matter of perspective. Yes and no. The Void Engineers are rather specifically concerned with Deep Umbral threats (and, in more recent sourcebooks, Threat Null), so they don't have a lot of time to go after the rank-and-file supernaturals anymore. There are also a fair few Umbral realms where the Void Engineers flat-out cannot go. Anyone who uses "magical technology," for example, is simply not allowed to know that the Aetherial Reaches, the realm where most of the planetary spirits like Luna exist, can be reached. A mystic mage or werewolf can go up in the Umbra far enough and will eventually end up having tea with Helios, the spirit of the sun; a dude with a jetpack will simply find sky, sky, and more sky. citybeatnik posted:WW kinda screwed the pooch with making the Union the "bad guys" because the problem isn't the evils of science, it's the conflict of free will verses conformity. Taken to its extremes, the Union encourages mindless drones that are safe and secure and living very, very boring lives. Yeah, Mage in particular has an issue with the line's evolution. In first edition, the Technocracy is a largely faceless, Orwellian construct made up of a conspiracy theorist's nightmares. It's very much the "punk" part of Rein-Hagen's "Gothic-Punk" philosophy, writ large; the Technocracy is the Man taken to an almost farcical extreme. In second edition, when Brucato and Kathleen Ryan come in, the Technocracy starts slowly evolving towards being a more three-dimensional adversary, which is a narrative that reaches its arguable apex with the Sorcerer's Crusade throwback book and the Player's Guide to the Technocracy. They're actually trying to protect humanity, after all; it's just a question of what one thinks it should be protected from. And yeah, the Syndicate seems to be the Convention that's gone the furthest afield. Iteration X's rank-and-file are arguably better off post-Avatar Storm, since their leadership was a big part of the problem, but the Syndicate's way too close to Pentex and is basically in full Gordon Gekko mode all the time anyway. Even the New World Order, given its scary name and outright mind-control techniques, is basically a bunch of cops at heart.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 21:16
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:Even the New World Order, given its scary name and outright mind-control techniques, is basically a bunch of cops at heart. Which leaves things open to a game where you have the NWO playing the Daniel Craig version of James Bond, all serious and down to earth, while the Shadow Ministry of the Sons of Ether are playing the Roger Moore version, just having a blast. *EDIT* Cythereal posted:Murdering Changeling protagonists doesn't make them bad guys. Yeah. The logical response to hearing that someone's a fae should be to reach towards the cast iron skillet and smacking them aside the head. If your magical powers stop working because you have to deal with the real world and grow up you really don't need to be hanging around in the first drat place. citybeatnik fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Dec 15, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 22:05
|
|
|
Of course, even in 2nd edition, the short story anthologies have the Technocracy doing crazy villain poo poo like breeding giant cyborg squids as beasts of war, torturing and brainwashing Tradition mages, and using gay clones as assassins.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Of course, even in 2nd edition, the short story anthologies have the Technocracy doing crazy villain poo poo like breeding giant cyborg squids as beasts of war, torturing and brainwashing Tradition mages, and using gay clones as assassins.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 22:11
|
|
|
Another thing against the Void Engineers is that they spend a lot of time alone, out in the void. Where the Nephandi are. Basically, some of their starships are basically barrabi training grounds.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 22:19
|
|
|
What I'm getting from all this Mage talk is that the only way to really truly win Mage is to run off to a pocket dimension of your own making while flipping the double-bird to everyone you're leaving behind.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 22:48
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Murdering Changeling protagonists doesn't make them bad guys. Yeah - narratively it's bad, but when you consider the actual practice of Changeling Protagonists - SPREAD THE BANALITY
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 23:06
|
|
|
tlarn posted:What I'm getting from all this Mage talk is that the only way to really truly win Mage is to run off to a pocket dimension of your own making while flipping the double-bird to everyone you're leaving behind. The "win condition" of Mage is the perfection of the self and ascension to a personal nirvana, which of course may never happen. A lot of the other poo poo in the game is just the obstacles put in your way by life. Also, as difficult a universe as it is to live in, as I've noted before, you really have to work to make a character in Mage that can't back his or her poo poo up in a battle. It's a very high-powered game, and has antagonists to match.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2014 23:57
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:It's a very high-powered game, and has antagonists to match. Yep, the Traditions certainly sound like tough bastards who can give the heroes a hard time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 00:11
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:Yeah - narratively it's bad, but when you consider the actual practice of Changeling Protagonists - SPREAD THE BANALITY So what's so bad about the Changeling Protagonists?
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 00:42
|
|
|
Arcade Rabbit posted:So what's so bad about the Changeling Protagonists? They engage in horrible psychological torture of innocent people on a regular basis, just to start.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 00:53
|
|
|
tlarn posted:What I'm getting from all this Mage talk is that the only way to really truly win Mage is to run off to a pocket dimension of your own making while flipping the double-bird to everyone you're leaving behind.  “gently caress you; got mine,” taken to the logical conclusion, with the ostensible goal of preventing poo poo like what happened from happening again. It’s much the same in the other lines, but MUCH more clear in Mage. Also, Entropy was split into two separate spheres, Fate and Death, and given as preferred spheres to two different factions. Which is a not inconsiderable part of my dislike for new!Mage. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 00:55
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:They engage in horrible psychological torture of innocent people on a regular basis, just to start. Like Demon: The Whatever the heck it was, you mean?
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 01:02
|
|
|
GrimRevenant posted:Which basically sums up why Mage: The Awakening (new World of Darkness) is the way it is. Well...technically the Avatar Storm made it so that no one can linger outside of Earth for very long without risking getting turned into a spirit. Permanently. That alone took care of most everyone that thought leaving Earth was the best solution. Also Entropy getting split and the Data aspects getting pulled out of Correspondence/Space are both reasons why I hate nMage.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 01:07
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:Threat Null (the result of too much of the Technocratic leadership falling prey to the natural results of being way too far from Earth for far too long) is actually a really cool villain overall, but yeah, it's one more reason why the Avatar Storm was a stupid idea. (I actually forgot the Avatar Storm is a thing when I went all spergado on those posts.) They sound... machine like. Give me more words about Threat Null.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 01:10
|
|
This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
|
Cythereal posted:Yep, the Traditions certainly sound like tough bastards who can give the heroes a hard time. Honestly, the further you get into Mage, the more it becomes the Traditions and Technocracy vs. Everything Else in the Entire Universe, with outlier factions on both sides who are still kind of fighting the Ascension War. For most of the Tradition mages on the planet, the worst thing you can say about them is that they could be helping people more than they are.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 01:10
|
|
|
DeusExMachinima posted:They sound... machine like. Give me more words about Threat Null. I just read about them myself--turns out there were a bunch of Technocracy sourcebooks released from Onyx Path only a couple of years ago, which act as if the Ascension book that closed the line didn't happen--so this may not be as detailed as some other people could provide. In Mage Revised, there's a thing called the Avatar Storm that, long story short, makes it very difficult for Awakened humans to cross the barrier between the "real" and "spirit" realms without risking permanent damage or death. Since many mage-created pocket dimensions rely on energies from Earth to function, this wreaked havoc on almost all mages' off-world activities. Relatedly, the older a mage gets, the more Paradox a mage accrues for still being alive. It's not hard to de-age yourself in one way or another, but eventually you have to start consuming raw magical energy to fuel whatever spells are keeping you alive and that in turn makes normal Earth reality hostile towards you. The oldest mages tend to move to pocket dimensions or off-world facilities at this point, where they pull strings from afar and teach apprentices the ropes. (The oldest mage they ever recorded that I know of is Medea, who is literally the same woman from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, and who is a two-thousand-year-old Marauder with Life 6, which means her longevity process mostly consists of not giving a gently caress. Most of the time, she's easy enough to deal with as long as you can speak Ancient Greek.) When the Avatar Storm hit, it thus had the side effect of separating the mages on Earth from most of their leadership. In particular, it virtually decapitated the Technocracy, since four out of the five Conventions were led from off-world facilities like the Iteration X stronghold of Autocthonia. (The Void Engineers are mostly Earth-based, for all the traveling they do.) For a long time, the Technocracy operated on the assumption that their leaders were simply dead and rebuilt as if they were. What happened instead was that a good chunk of the Technocracy were marooned off-world with no way back. Iteration X actively cannot use Spirit magic, or even the Technocracy variant of Dimensional Science, and a lot of the other Conventions simply have other areas of expertise. As a result, all of them got hit with what's called Void Adaptation, which is what happens when a human spends more than 88 days or so in the Umbra. You go slightly nuts, get acclimated to your surroundings, and eventually "go native," at which point you're basically a spirit and can't go back to Earth. Threat Null are thus four factions of Void-Adapted Technocrats who aren't human anymore, pursue a bizarre version of their former Convention's ultimate goals, regard themselves as the real Technocratic Union, and who can "convert" Earth-bound Technocrats in seconds by employing the old Technocrat brainwashing as a sort of mental infection vector. Since the Void Engineers actively deprogram their people once they're beyond the other Conventions' reach, they're immune to Threat Null's conversion tactics, but a big part of keeping Earth safe from Threat Null thus lies in making sure that the Earth-bound Technocracy has no idea Threat Null even exists. The Void Engineers are thus allies of convenience with the Traditions, most commonly the Sons of Ether and Euthanatos, against Threat Null. Wanderer fucked around with this message at 01:38 on Dec 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 01:36
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:Threat Null are thus four factions of Void-Adapted Technocrats who aren't human anymore, pursue a bizarre version of their former Convention's ultimate goals, regard themselves as the real Technocratic Union, and who can "convert" Earth-bound Technocrats in seconds by employing the old Technocrat brainwashing as a sort of mental infection vector. Since the Void Engineers actively deprogram their people once they're beyond the other Conventions' reach, they're immune to Threat Null's conversion tactics, but a big part of keeping Earth safe from Threat Null thus lies in making sure that the Earth-bound Technocracy has no idea Threat Null even exists. The Void Engineers are thus allies of convenience with the Traditions, most commonly the Sons of Ether and Euthanatos, against Threat Null. Not only that, but part of becoming a spirit means becoming an exaggeration of ones own personality traits and goals. Those Technocrats that were trapped off-world by the Avatar Storm/Dimensional Anomaly happened to be the most conservative and obsessed of the bunch, such as Control itself. When they became spirits, they basically became parodies of themselves taken to the ultimate conclusion of their own madness. Being spirits, they can't really get to Earth normally, but they can always corrupt their still-mortal cousins, and maybe even find a way to get summoned on Earth the way the Nephandi always try to bring their supposed-gods over. Pussy Cartel fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Dec 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 01:43
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:(The oldest mage they ever recorded that I know of is Medea, who is literally the same woman from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, and who is a two-thousand-year-old Marauder with Life 6, which means her longevity process mostly consists of not giving a gently caress. Most of the time, she's easy enough to deal with as long as you can speak Ancient Greek.)  Glad to see Medea is still getting some respect. Wanderer posted:When the Avatar Storm hit, it thus had the side effect of separating the mages on Earth from most of their leadership. In particular, it virtually decapitated the Technocracy, since four out of the five Conventions were led from off-world facilities like the Iteration X stronghold of Autocthonia. I know the "Exalted is oWoD's distant past" got dropped really early, but everytime Autocthonia is mentioned I can't help but think that the traditions found Autochthon's corpse and repurposed it. It's terrifying.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 01:57
|
|
|
So TN is post-human in the woooo sense not cybernetics/Singularity.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:06
|
|
|
Arcade Rabbit posted:So what's so bad about the Changeling Protagonists? Now the problem is how it was written. It comes across like the authors were the people from theatre class who were too weirdly immature to be worth talking to. In the writing, "glamour" is often associated with selfish, irresponsible whimsy while "banality" is associated with science and with anything having to do with growing up. (Changelings are literally considered elder "grumps" by the age of about 30, and have higher Banality and lower Glamour ratings than child changelings. Few make it age 50 before Banality overwhelms them.) Also, Glamour is hard to come by, and some of the main ways of getting it involve inspiring mortals to create until they burn themselves out and harvesting the Glamour thus created. So whereas the idea behind the game is that they're warriors for magic and wonder in the face of the soul-crushing oppression of the World of Darkness, to the discerning reader they often come across as body-stealing, soul-eating aliens who are "whimsical" in the same way as, say, Charles Manson.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:09
|
|
|
DeusExMachinima posted:So TN is post-human in the woooo sense not cybernetics/Singularity. Yeah, in the scary sense. One of the "factions" within Threat Null, the evolved Progenitors, is a hive-mind of impossibly-beautiful, identical androgynes that calls itself "Transhumanity." If you're looking for cybernetics and the singularity in a less horrific standpoint, Iteration X and the Progenitors are your guys. They gently caress up all the hell over the place, but that's just so you know they're still human. Hell, for a while in second edition, they made a point of saying that Iteration X specifically has a lot of recruits who suffered from chronic conditions, like Thalidomide defects or motor neuron disease. Iteration X shows up one day and says, "Well, your mind's okay and you seem like a decent sort. You want your own Gundam?"
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:11
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:(The oldest mage they ever recorded that I know of is Medea, who is literally the same woman from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, and who is a two-thousand-year-old Marauder with Life 6, which means her longevity process mostly consists of not giving a gently caress. Most of the time, she's easy enough to deal with as long as you can speak Ancient Greek.) So basically if you can actually communicate with Medea you can get her to go "yeah, sure, whatever" and leave you alone unless your goal is really against something she cares about?
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:23
|
|
|
It's worth mentioning that without their rear end in a top hat bosses around, the earthbound Technocracy are on the whole much cooler dudes now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:25
|
|
|
I dunno, I'm finding the Technocracy incredibly sympathetic and interesting. Sure they've got a shitload of problems, but science is and should be loving awesome, and who the gently caress should need a spellbook when you can have a smartphone? Playing as the Technocracy aiming to bring about a second Renaissance for all of mankind despite opposition within and without the Technocracy sounds like an amazing idea for a game. The future can and should be better, humanity should be better, and thanks to how reality works, it's possible. ...I suppose that makes me not exactly oMage's target audience.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:25
|
|
|
Best part of the Technocracy? You can play Magic X Files.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:30
|
|
|
Shugojin posted:So basically if you can actually communicate with Medea you can get her to go "yeah, sure, whatever" and leave you alone unless your goal is really against something she cares about? Medea is arguably one of the most overpowered characters in the setting; she has every Sphere at 4 or higher and Life 6 means she has complete voluntary control over her personal biology. You cannot actually hurt her unless she, for some reason, decides to let it happen. She also has a bunch of Black Fury werewolves with her at any given time. If she's between you and whatever your character's trying to accomplish, either your Storyteller is a dickhead or your character is, because Medea spends most of her time kicking Nephandi in the teeth. That said, her personal delusion is fairly adaptable--she consistently sees the world around her as if it were Ancient Greece--and she's reasonably approachable. You could learn a lot from Medea; she knows pretty much all there is to know about the Umbra and she's rumored to take on students from time to time. It's not that hard for a mage to come up with a way to at least temporarily speak Ancient Greek (Mind 3 is enough to do the Emma Frost "telepathic language download" trick, for example, or there are all sorts of translator items), so if you have a compatible magical style to Medea's (she was a Verbena before the Tradition technically existed), you could hit her up for information or an apprenticeship and theoretically come away with your sanity intact. Cythereal posted:I dunno, I'm finding the Technocracy incredibly sympathetic and interesting. Sure they've got a shitload of problems, but science is and should be loving awesome, and who the gently caress should need a spellbook when you can have a smartphone? Playing as the Technocracy aiming to bring about a second Renaissance for all of mankind despite opposition within and without the Technocracy sounds like an amazing idea for a game. The future can and should be better, humanity should be better, and thanks to how reality works, it's possible. Yeah, that's not an unpopular viewpoint. Remember, they started the game as Orwellian supervillains and only became as sympathetic as they are because of years of fan feedback. You can really see the change if you go back and read the late-1st/early-2nd Convention sourcebooks, particularly the one for Iteration X. They go from emotionless killing machines to a Convention of tinkerers and tool-users who see mankind's facility with tools as a route towards Ascension via a singularity. That said, the Traditions are fairly sympathetic even in books written from a Technocrat's viewpoint, with the notable and constant exception of the Order of Hermes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:44
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I dunno, I'm finding the Technocracy incredibly sympathetic and interesting. Sure they've got a shitload of problems, but science is and should be loving awesome, and who the gently caress should need a spellbook when you can have a smartphone? Playing as the Technocracy aiming to bring about a second Renaissance for all of mankind despite opposition within and without the Technocracy sounds like an amazing idea for a game. The future can and should be better, humanity should be better, and thanks to how reality works, it's possible. Let me tell you about the Sons of Ether...
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:48
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:They engage in horrible psychological torture of innocent people on a regular basis, just to start. As others stated, there's also the fact you can roll up a Satyr (sexual creatures) with the body of a child, and how Autumn People list concerned mothers and librarians as horrible Banal-causing monsters who won't let the Changeling color on the walls and deserving of being driven insane for funsies.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:51
|
|
|
citybeatnik posted:Let me tell you about the Sons of Ether... Steampunk doesn't do it for me, sorry.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 02:59
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Steampunk doesn't do it for me, sorry. I like that they (in a nutshell) get some leeway with paradox by just looking really complicated. It's a cute exploit.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 03:04
|
|
|
Shugojin posted:I like that they (in a nutshell) get some leeway with paradox by just looking really complicated. It's a cute exploit. Oh, I agree steampunk tends to look neat, but the underlying philosophies behind a lot of steampunk settings and the original writings is very bothersome to me and highly relevant in a setting like oMage as I understand it. No, I don't really want to live in the resurrected British Empire's glory days, thank you very much. Racist, classist, and sexist as all hell, and I have issues with that level of naked imperialism. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 03:10
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Oh, I agree steampunk tends to look neat, but the underlying philosophies behind a lot of steampunk settings and the original writings is very bothersome to me and highly relevant in a setting like oMage as I understand it. No, I don't really want to live in the resurrected British Empire's glory days, thank you very much. Racist, classist, and sexist as all hell, and I have issues with that level of naked imperialism. Funnily enough, it's repeatedly stressed in the books that as hidebound and crotchety as the Traditions can be, the Technocracy has a really big problem with being pretty much treating white/male/straight/"Christian" as the ideal. Comes up repeatedly in the NWO books especially that women and minorities get hushed and run into glass ceilings. It was Technocratic conservatism, combined with their backing the Axis in WW2 and murdering Alan Turing, that led the Virtual Adepts to rebel. The Anarchs claim to be anarchists, but the VAs take anarchism and socialism very, very seriously.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 03:15
|
|
|
Pussy Cartel posted:Funnily enough, it's repeatedly stressed in the books that as hidebound and crotchety as the Traditions can be, the Technocracy has a really big problem with being pretty much treating white/male/straight/"Christian" as the ideal. Comes up repeatedly in the NWO books especially that women and minorities get hushed and run into glass ceilings. It was Technocratic conservatism, combined with their backing the Axis in WW2 and murdering Alan Turing, that led the Virtual Adepts to rebel. If I were to run an oMage game, I suspect I'd say that the Technocracy murdering Turing is something the Virtual Adepts made up. Humans have never needed supernatural slap fights to do lovely things to each other for petty reasons, and Ada Lovelace could easily be played up as a Technocratic heroine.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 03:19
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:One of the things about Mage that is, again, a difficult concept until you get used to it is that nobody is exactly wrong here; a die-hard Technocrat using social engineering, hyper-technology, and handheld devices to work "Enlightened Science" is no more or less correct in his perception of reality than a woman who summons spirits and smites enemies by carving runes into her arm with a bone-handled knife. Reality is subjective; the ways in which it can be usefully manipulated are subjective. Everything is true; nothing is forbidden. This isn't really true. Only some of the ways to usefully manipulate Reality will not result in Reality smacking you and saying "Don't Do That." The ones that will not are objectively more true. Admittedly, which ones that is can be changed over time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 03:20
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:If I were to run an oMage game, I suspect I'd say that the Technocracy murdering Turing is something the Virtual Adepts made up. Humans have never needed supernatural slap fights to do lovely things to each other for petty reasons, and Ada Lovelace could easily be played up as a Technocratic heroine. Iteration X straight up says that the VAs made it all up, but then NWO goes on to say it actually did happen, but it was all an accident because some of the NWO's MiBs thought 'intimidate' meant 'pump full of lead'.  I'm a sucker for the VAs, and those Etherites that go for pulp instead of steampunk.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 03:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 12:48 |
|
|
Cythereal posted:If I were to run an oMage game, I suspect I'd say that the Technocracy murdering Turing is something the Virtual Adepts made up. Humans have never needed supernatural slap fights to do lovely things to each other for petty reasons, and Ada Lovelace could easily be played up as a Technocratic heroine. That'd be an interesting plot hook for your first game: undoing decades of misinformation by trying to conclusively figure out who did kill Alan Turing. It's fairly obvious from historical context that something hinky happened there. ulmont posted:This isn't really true. Only some of the ways to usefully manipulate Reality will not result in Reality smacking you and saying "Don't Do That." The ones that will not are objectively more true. Admittedly, which ones that is can be changed over time. That's just splitting semantic hairs. In the broad sense of being able to affect change through Will, any Awakened individual with the right Spheres can affect the same kind of change. Perception and belief count more in the Awakened worldview than objective truth; it's the will of the Awakened observer that counts for more than all the rest of it put together. The question I was answering was simple: aren't Technocrats just deluding themselves by pretending they aren't using magic? No. There's no delusion because for them, that's How Things Work. You could bring in voodoo priests and blood magicians to chant and sing and cut heads off chickens all god damned day and show a Technocrat that they're doing the same thing, and the Technocrat would still be a Technocrat at the end of it all because that's what he believes. Pussy Cartel posted:I'm a sucker for the VAs, and those Etherites that go for pulp instead of steampunk. Yeah, the whole Two-Fisted Tales of Pulp Action! thing you get with the Sons of Ether is way, way more attractive to me than any amount of steampunk batshittery.
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2014 03:29
|
|