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40K and 10 Karma If Jayvon is paying for our training, why do we have to spend Karma at all? I'm thinking after a successful semester and we put up 10 Karma at the beginning we should be rewarded with more than 10 Karma. Is experience points different than Karma?
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Jul 19, 2018 00:09
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jagadaishio posted:1. An outside connection. Sasha doesn't want to be given all-day wireless access to the Matrix. She doesn't want to turn her cabin into a Matrix Cafe. She wants a single fiber optic port capable of accessing the outside Matrix installed in her cabin to give her outside access to mentors and learning materials for her decking - something she's already shown she's serious enough about to take classes. It won't distract her during the day, but she needs it to make progress on her personal projects. Fuzzy's doing fine at the moment, though. This plus tattoo supplies for Kenji
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Jul 19, 2018 00:13
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Toughy posted:40K and 10 Karma Karma are experience points. Jayvon paying for the trainer means that he'll spend money to find someone who can teach Fuzzy. Fuzzy still has to spend karma to learn though. In this game, non-magical skills have to be taught by someone (the teens can learn magic skills for karma only through school). If the person who learns can't find a teacher, they need to spend money on top of spending karma because education is rarely free. So far, many of the skills that have been taught by are people who already possess those skills. Low skills are easy to find trainers for. Higher levels of skill are not. Theoretically, let's say that Kenji wanted to raise etiquette from 4 to 5. That would cost 10 karma. Julian could train him, but let's say that Julian is busy because he's a teacher. So Kenji needs to find a trainer since Fuzzy and Julie can't teach him anything about etiquette for example as their scores are lower. Finding a trainer will take money, karma and time. However, if Fuzzy or Julie wanted to learn more etiquette, they could just ask Kenji. If he agrees, he probably won't charge them at all. So it'll just cost karma (experience points) and time. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jul 19, 2018 |
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Jul 19, 2018 00:17
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Ice Phisherman posted:Karma are experience points. Jayvon paying for the trainer means that he'll spend money to find someone who can teach Fuzzy. Fuzzy still has to spend karma to learn though. In this game, non-magical skills have to be taught by someone. If the person who learns can't find a teacher, they need to spend money on top of spending karma because education is rarely free. So far, many of the skills that have been taught by are people who already possess those skills. Low skills are easy to find trainers for. Higher levels of skill are not. Thanks for the explanation.
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Jul 19, 2018 00:18
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numerrik posted:i don’t know about the rest, but Kenji needs tattoo supplies, real ones not cyber, I’m certain Mr. Peters would back Kenji on this. Sasha might want that matrix connection, but still there’s always salmon run if she’s turned down. jagadaishio posted:1. An outside connection. Sasha doesn't want to be given all-day wireless access to the Matrix. She doesn't want to turn her cabin into a Matrix Cafe. She wants a single fiber optic port capable of accessing the outside Matrix installed in her cabin to give her outside access to mentors and learning materials for her decking - something she's already shown she's serious enough about to take classes. It won't distract her during the day, but she needs it to make progress on her personal projects. Fuzzy's doing fine at the moment, though.
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Jul 19, 2018 00:34
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Toughy posted:If Jayvon is paying for our training, why do we have to spend Karma at all? Tutorsofts and trainers reduce the amount of time required to rank up in a skill, attribute, or other trait - not the amount of karma needed to do so. If I remember right, the number of the interval gets reduced based on net hits on an Instruction test.
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Jul 19, 2018 00:41
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jagadaishio posted:1. An outside connection. Sasha doesn't want to be given all-day wireless access to the Matrix. She doesn't want to turn her cabin into a Matrix Cafe. She wants a single fiber optic port capable of accessing the outside Matrix installed in her cabin to give her outside access to mentors and learning materials for her decking - something she's already shown she's serious enough about to take classes. It won't distract her during the day, but she needs it to make progress on her personal projects. Fuzzy's doing fine at the moment, though. I'm down with this. The important thing about giving the hug offer to Julian wasn't necessarily to get Julian in the hug per se, it was to let him know that he's not just their teacher, he's also their guardian, and that means he's the closest thing to a father figure they have on this island. A fact he's yet to really grasp. Kenji made the gesture and was going to respect Julian's decision either way. And of course Fuzzy's going to take this seriously. It's a promise paired with the opportunity for genuine self-improvement. It's hard work, but also entirely within her wheelhouse.
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Jul 19, 2018 00:49
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Ice Phisherman posted:Their teacher and guardian, still unsure of what to do, put a hand on Sasha's shoulder. Who would have thought it’s easier to drown your own emotional problems in a casual sex than bonding with some troubled adolescents? Everyone, that’s who. Glad to see you grasping for that brass ring Julian, Fire-Bringer would be proud. Well done Ice, as always you do these touching scenes well.  Ice Phisherman posted:"I didn't do much," he said, "It's fine. See you in English class. If you see Sasha, give her the salad I brought her." Kenny you old softee, bet you aren’t even gonna take your cut, huh?  Ice Phisherman posted:CYOA Time Fuzzy: General desire to know that Julian is doing his best to do what’s best for Sasha and Julie. Sasha: I’ll bandwagon the matrix access vote, and, tacking on getting news about her parents. Kenny: Information on Julie, updates on how Julian and the rest of the ‘adults’ are resolving the current Seattle riot and gang hit-list situation. Ice Phisherman posted:2. Was Kenji's reaction to how Julian dealt with the hug? Accepting and respectful. Kenny isn’t new to dealing with people who needs to maintain distance in order to not hurt themselves or each other, teacher boundary or otherwise. As long as Julian isn’t lying to them, they can take time to continue developing this relationship. Ice Phisherman posted:So how seriously does Fuzzy take the job? Not very seriously (no karma), moderately seriously (4 karma) or very seriously (10 karma). Fuzzy currently has 17 karma. Fuzzy doesn’t have a ‘not taking things seriously’ mode, so yes, she takes it seriously. Honestly this deal seems like a win-win; money, contact, and a new skill which she’ll use. Ice Phisherman posted:The original 300 goes to 600 per week for a month. Out of curiousity, how did you get to the original 300 number? Because I would have priced it on a per hour basis, plus a premium for the ‘uniqueness’ of the situation.
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Jul 19, 2018 01:19
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CourValant posted:Who would have thought it’s easier to drown your own emotional problems in a casual sex than bonding with some troubled adolescents? That caught me off guard for a second until I remembered you were talking about Julian. Yeah. Julian really isn't used to being open and honest with people. He's deceptive, manipulative and often plays the "bad guy", but at his core he uses these qualities to help people. That's Fire Bringer for you. However, I don't see him actually connecting with people at a fundamental level and taking off that social armor with ease. There are problems that accompany too much polish for social operators and having a hard time honestly connecting with people is one of them. quote:Well done Ice, as always you do these touching scenes well. Thank you. Props to Nothingtoseehere for reminding me that there needs to be some amount of professional distance between teachers and students. I trained as an educator for a few years in college and I should have remembered that, but didn't until he reminded me. quote:Kenny you old softee, bet you aren’t even gonna take your cut, huh? Under normal circumstances I think that he would, but Fuzzy and Sasha need that money. What they have looks like a lot of money and it is, but what they're purchasing for next year isn't Sasha's education as much as it's her safety and being able to be close to her friends. It's a high price, but Sasha really doesn't have anyone else that she can turn to at the moment. quote:Out of curiousity, how did you get to the original 300 number? Because I would have priced it on a per hour basis, plus a premium for the ‘uniqueness’ of the situation. The basic 300 was 30 an hour was mostly plucked out of thin air. Despite everything, Jayvon needs Fuzzy to become functional ahead of schedule. So I imagine minimum wage being around 7-8 nuyen an hour for unskilled labor and 30 an hour is how it shakes out for basically skilled labor in a seller's market. After all, Fuzzy is it. Julie is not athletic and she's too tall. Kenji is somewhat athletic, but still too tall. Fuzzy is a foot and a half taller than Jayvon and that's enough to train with. So her time is worth a minimum amount in this situation and I rank that at about 30 an hour. And as her skill goes up, Jayvon is willing to pay way more. However, Jayvon wanted someone better trained than that. That means investment and time. Jayvon would pretty much agree to anything if he gets his mobility back ahead of schedule. What he values isn't money, it's autonomy over his body. And his skills that he talked about are deteriorating. Which ones they are I won't say, though you could read his character sheet and make some inferences. He's got his own motivations and recovering from a crippling injury gets in the way of those motivations. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jul 19, 2018 |
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Jul 19, 2018 02:11
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How does skill deterioration work in shadowrun? Is there any system for it? I'd imagine there isn't, but it makes sense to houserule something that seems realistic.
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Jul 19, 2018 05:11
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That sounds like a horrible idea from a game and character management standpoint. So SR probably does, somewhere.
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Jul 19, 2018 05:33
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Butt Discussin posted:How does skill deterioration work in shadowrun? Is there any system for it? It doesn't exist, because that would make skill maintenance a horrible, karma-draining treadmill. Some realism has to be sacrificed in favor of fun. That's why there's rules for starvation but not for how long you can go without a bowel movement too.
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Jul 19, 2018 11:36
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jagadaishio posted:That's why there's rules for starvation but not for how long you can go without a bowel movement too. What!?? You mean I bought +2 TP for nothing!!?
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Jul 19, 2018 19:50
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CourValant posted:What!?? No, you still get that bonus when you take a duke, you just aren’t punished for not taking it either.
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Jul 19, 2018 19:58
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Kenji, Fuzzy and Mr. Markowitz - Monday, July 23, 2075 - Early afternoon - Blake Island After ordering food with Krupa in the final few minutes of lunch, Kenji made his way to English class. His burger had been eaten and though he wasn’t hungry he ate his apple anyway. Fruit that didn’t come out of a bag or a can was still a novelty to Kenji even a year later. Real food in general was new to Kenji. He’d been raised on a diet of reconstituted soy, krill and rice products that were reshaped into hundreds of different tasting types of food. These sorts of food were almost always found in the refrigerators and pantries of the urban poor. That is when there had been food. This simple apple was a luxury that he’d rarely been able to afford. So he relished it and chewed it not just close to the core, but down to the core until he found a rough inner part, where he stopped. He nibbled at the ends and outsides until the flesh of the apple was completely gone. Only then could he allow himself to throw it away. For Kenji Okamura remembered what it was like to go hungry. Mealtimes were all the more galling when he saw food casually being thrown away by those who didn’t appreciate the ache of an empty stomach or the weakness, dizziness and muddied thoughts that would follow. It was like he’d given the slip to a stalker named Hunger, but that stalker felt like it was always just around the corner. He sat down casually in a seat of his choosing in his first English class of the year. It was near the middle of class, away from the bad kids in the back and the good ones in the front. That was where he could best blend in. With a casual toss, the apple core thunked against a trash can as his shot found its mark. The casual way that he treated food, despite knowing that a younger him would have devoured the entire thing minus the seeds and stem and been grateful. Not doing so allowed him fit in among the corporate crowd. “Two points,” he drawled. No one paid attention. He grumbled internally, sat down and projected an air of boredom. Fuzzy sat in a desk right next to him a minute later as more students slowly walked inside. “Hey,” she said. “Hey yourself,” said Kenji. Fuzzy fidgeted nervously with her hands as she looked away. A few seconds later, as Kenji suspected, she spoke up. “Did you put that meeting together?” asked Fuzzy. “Nope,” responded Kenji, “He asked me about you, I checked him out and he seems okay. Otherwise I would have told you to stay away. He seems all right, but I’ll do some digging on him later to make sure he checks out if you want.” He was going to do it anyway no matter what she said, but it would take some time. It would be two weeks before he’d be allowed to leave the island. This presented a problem as Fuzzy might be leaving as soon as this week if Jayvon was able to get her off the island. Covertly getting word off island was still an ongoing problem for him. “It might be a while though. Think you can handle yourself in the meantime?” he asked. Fuzzy smirked in response. “Yeah,” she said, “But thank you. It means a lot.” “It’s fine,” he said, “He would have talked to you on his own given time.” Fuzzy turned away and frowned. Guilt crept onto her features. Her voice was a whisper now that the seats continued to fill up. “I don’t feel good about feeling good,” she whispered, “Julie is in the mind hospital thing and here I am feeling good about stuff.” Kenji was about to respond when a light skinned ork in his late-middle age with a white dress shirt, brown khaki pants and black dress shoes walked into the classroom. His face was round, eyes blue, hair short, blond and precisely cut, his small tusks that jutted out at the corners of his lips were white and his body was a little thin for an ork. It was still large compared to a human or an elf though, which constituted all of his class. “Hello all,” said the teacher, “I’m Mr. Markowitz, and this is English two. Please take your seats.” Most of the students went to their seats, but a few lingered and talked with one another without sitting. He cleared his throat loudly. “In your seats, ladies and gentleman,” he said, his tone more resonant this time. The remaining students ended their conversation and slowly made their way to the remaining seats. Mr. Markowitz nodded. “Excellent,” he said, “Now, as I said before, this is English two. Welcome. If you check your commlinks and download the file I just sent you then we’ll go over the expectations for the year. If you didn’t get it as I understand that happens sometimes, check with your neighbor or come to me. I’ll try hard to keep it brief since we’re a day behind, so I’m going to move fast. Please pay attention.” He went through the syllabus, though he hadn’t called it that, for the next ten minutes: Expectations, rules, grading policy, etc. Near the end he came to the books. “We’re going to be reading and talking about a few books this semester, what these stories mean to us and the symbolism that the author was trying to convey,” said Mr. Markowitz, “We’ll be learning how to think critically about the subject matter. We’ll be going over a wide range of books. However, for our first minor project I thought we’d do something fun. I want you all to think about the book you like the most. This would be a book that truly excites you or is somehow special to you. So while we begin to read our first book for the semester, I want you to bring a book you’ve read back here and we’ll do a report on it for Monday. No video games please. Just books.” There were assorted groans from the mixed crowd of students. Homework was never appreciated. Especially the kind that cut into their weekends. “Now, now, it’s not so bad,” said Mr. Markowitz, “I don’t expect you to bring in a physical copy of a book, though you can if you want. I just want you to bring your opinion about your favorite book. It couldn’t be simpler.” This mollified the class. That good cheer was lost when Mr. Markowitz pulled out a box and began to pull physical copies of books out of it. “Please hand these backwards,” he said, to one student. Each student took a book and handed the rest backwards. Fuzzy and Kenji grabbed their own and handed the rest back. That’s when Fuzzy slowly sounded out the title. “The Great Gatsby,” she said, haltingly, and then more quickly, “What’s a Gatsby?” “No clue,” said Kenji. This sentiment was shared with much of the class as they looked at the books. In these days, books were rare. It was far more common books to be contained in digital format. After all, one high end commlink could hold more books than someone could read in an entire lifetime. Fuzzy frowned as she thumbed through hers. A student raised his hand and Mr. Markowitz called on him. “Yes…Ah…Andy. What’s your question?” asked their teacher. “Can I get a digital copy?” asked Andy. “No, not for this book,” said the teacher, “I know most of you have held a book before, but that’s growing rare as time goes by. Just this once, I’d like everyone to enjoy a normal book as it was originally made.” “So no audiobooks?” asked another student, without being called on. Mr. Markowitz remained patient as he gave the obvious answer. “No,” said Mr. Markowitz, “I’ll give you digital copies and audiobooks for the next assigned book, but for this one, I want you all to try it in the original ink on paper format. There’s something special about a book that digital and audio copies just can’t replicate. After this we can switch something more familiar.” There was grumbling and few of the students were happy with this. E-Books and audiobooks were far more practical than paper books. Since this was the first day, nearly everyone more or less knew one another, and Mr. Markowitz already had their names and faces so he could know them, this rendered ice breaker exercises moot. So the teacher assigned some quiet reading time. Some read, but some others quietly fooled around on their commlinks as talking wasn’t permitted. Mr. Markowitz assigned the first chapter which was silently read in class, though since it was short, most of the students treated the last half of the class as a free period and texted peer to peer. The bell rang sometime later and the students got up and left. Everyone that is except for Fuzzy and Mr. Markowitz, the former of which approached her teacher’s desk. “I have some questions,” said Fuzzy. “Ask away,” he said, with a toothy grin, “Fuzzy, yes?” Fuzzy nodded seriously. “Yes. What if I don’t have a favorite book?” she asked. Mr. Markowitz’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You don’t have a favorite book?” he asked. Fuzzy held up her copy of the Great Gatsby as if to illustrate. “No, I’ve never read a book,” she corrected. “Not one?” he asked. “I don’t think so,” said Fuzzy, “Does Azzy count? I don’t really want to talk about Azzy, though.” “Azzy?” asked Mr. Markowitz, his tone one of polite interest. Fuzzy pulled out her commlink and produced her A through Z reader program, which she’d nicknamed Azzy. It was the program she’d started around this time last year in order to learn to read. It had taken her from a pre-school to a fifth grade reading level. She’d used other programs to get caught up, and not just in English, but history as well. Math and science were coming along with time. Mr. Markowitz looked at it and frowned. Then his eyes went out of focus for a few seconds as he checked his notes through augmented reality. “I see,” he said, quietly, “I may be able to waive that assignment, though it is hard to believe that you haven’t read any literature before. Audiobooks are pretty common nowadays. I’m noticing that there are gaps in your notes from last year. In fact I don’t see any notes from last year’s English teacher. Who was your teacher? I’m going to need those notes.” Fuzzy paused and thought about how to tell him. “You’re new here this year, aren’t you?” asked Fuzzy. “This is my first year here, yes,” he said. “Okay, that makes sense,” she said, “There are no notes because I wasn’t in class last year. I was catching up from basically nothing. That brings me to my other problem. This book. I don’t understand it.” “Okay, no notes. I’ll work with what I have then. Very well, what part don’t you understand?” he asked. “So far?” she asked, “Page one.” Mr. Markowitz smiled knowingly. “Perhaps if you’d spent a little less time on your commlink you would have gotten past page one,” he gently chided. Fuzzy’s nostrils flared and she grunted. “I was looking stuff up,” she corrected, “I barely understood page one. I know what the words mean by themselves, at least mostly. I looked up the ones that I don’t. I wasn’t playing games or anything. You can check if you want. My problem was that together the words don’t mean anything to me.” Mr. Markowitz frowned as she opened up her copy of the Great Gatsby to page one, ran her finger under a line and Mr. Markowitz followed her. “So I understand that the first part is about not criticizing people, because they didn’t have the advantages I have,” she said, “And since I’m here now, I understand that very well. I keep going and I get stumped for a minute at “becoming the victim of veteran bores”. That took me a while to understand. Then I come down to, “Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope”. I look at it and have no idea what that means.” Mr. Markowitz laced his fingers together and put on his most patient smile. “First, I’d like to apologize. I thought you were goofing off. I was wrong,” he said. Fuzzy grunted and nodded. “Okay, apology accepted,” she said, “What about the words?” “Those ones? Let’s see. It means something along the lines of a…” he began, and thought about it, “A sort of willingness to delay judgement on people who behave badly, but done in a bad way. We want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but some people just don’t change and behave badly forever. Therefore you reserve your judgement forever when you really should be judging them.” Fuzzy nodded a few times in agreement and her face softened from frustration to concern. “Okay, that makes sense,” said Fuzzy, “I was going through my dictionary. It’s not just the words that are the problem. There are references to all sorts of times and places that I don’t understand. I like history, so I get that he was a soldier in World War Two.” “The first one, actually,” said Mr. Markowitz, “But you’re on the right track.” Fuzzy closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm down. “Mr. Markowitz, learning how to read took lots of help and a lot of programs and lots of time,” she said, “It was almost always straightforward. Words mean what they mean. Sentences made sense. I look at this and it makes references to things that I barely understand. It’s like I’m not supposed to understand the words. He says the reserving judgements hope thing when he could say what you said and I would get it. I’m not stupid, but so far this book is making me feel very stupid. Is the rest of this book like this? If it is, I don’t have eleven more hours to understand everything else. I have a lot of responsibilities.” Mr. Markowitz nodded a few times in thought. “Okay Fuzzy, since this is different for you, this is your first time in a class like this, right?” he asked. Fuzzy shrugged in response and fidgeted with one hand as the book was in her other hand. “I had magic classes and sometimes teachers would tutor me,” she said, “No English classes though.” “Okay,” he said, patiently, “What I want you to do is this. Read the first chapter and make notes about what you do and don’t understand. This book is hard to read, but that’s part of learning. There are valuable lessons in this book. We’ll talk about those lessons in class. It’s not like one of your programs where you’re meant to understand everything all at once all in a row. This is a different kind of teaching. That’s why we’ll discuss the book. Through that discussion, you’ll be able to learn more than you will on your own and from many different points of view. How does that sound?” With a deep breath, Fuzzy calmed down and nodded a few times. “I can do that,” she said. “Good,” he said, happily, “I’m probably going to need your files as well so I can get a better sense of where you are. Do you need a note to your next class? I don’t want you to be late.” “Please,” said Fuzzy. Mr. Markowitz’s eyes went out of focus as he sent a tardy note to Fuzzy’s final class for the day. “Done,” he said, “Try not to stress about the reading. Learn what you can and I’ll help you fill in the rest.” “Thank you,” she said, quietly. Fuzzy smiled briefly, went back to her desk, picked up her school bag and left with her book in hand. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Mar 11, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2018 05:35
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I loving love The Great Gatsby. Really interested to see where you're going to go with this, considering how many corporate teens would probably hate this book. I can't decide if they would hate the depiction of Tom Buchanan or decide he's the only good character.
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Jul 20, 2018 06:23
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Oof, that was rough.
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Jul 20, 2018 06:28
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Dr Subterfuge posted:I loving love The Great Gatsby. Really interested to see where you're going to go with this, considering how many corporate teens would probably hate this book. I can't decide if they would hate the depiction of Tom Buchanan or decide he's the only good character. Yep, that's what I was going for. They're going to be looking at the Great Gatsby from a far different point of view. I'm not going to delve too deep into it, but I think it'll be interesting. The Great Gatsby is more of a staple of high school English class in the US. Since I bounced around schools a lot as a kid I read it four times in high school and middle school along with To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies twice. Remember that Tom is a literal white supremacist, misogynist and all around garbage person. And I sort of wonder how many people would sympathize with him. It's a sneaky good pick for the corporate elite. We'll come back to it once or twice for discussion. Mostly I want to show that Fuzzy is adapting to school and that this isn't just a magic school. It's regular school too. Last year she would have gotten frustrated and angry, like she did at the math teacher. This year she's patient enough to hear an explanation even though the book is difficult for her. Not because she's dumb or uneducated, but because it's chock full of flowery prose which is hard to decipher as well as cultural stuff that the Fuzzy has almost no connection to. The Great Gatsby is her first non-textbook and that's a pretty big leap. I imagine that her education was very straightforward and that she missed a lot of cultural stuff that would normally be taught in school in order to get speed. One of the biggest if not the biggest reasons for school is to indoctrinate children into the culture that they live in. It's a sort of cultural touchstone since parents are super busy and can't do that anymore and in history, it was usually the mother who would educate the child within the household in terms of reading, writing and arithmetic. Now schools do that. Education in my opinion is one of the primary functions of public schools, but not the primary function of public schools. Not in the US anyway. Otherwise the priorities would be way different. Anyway, I've said this before, but there's this sort of conceit in Harry Potter where normal school ends at middle school. They had no core classes (English, math, science, history) save for history of magic and if you stretch it, maybe chemistry for potions and arithmancy which was only mentioned, never shown and Ron and Harry never took it. So their normal education largely ended in middle school and it doesn't engender a lot of good feelings about their education system. Edit: Getting The Great Gatsby in your Shadowrun because I'm a weirdo. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 19:00 on May 18, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2018 06:42
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Ice Phisherman posted:Yep, that's what I was going for. They're going to be looking at the Great Gatsby from a far different point of view. I'm not going to delve too deep into it, but I think it'll be interesting. The Great Gatsby is more of a staple of high school English class in the US. Since I bounced around schools a lot as a kid I read it four times in high school and middle school along with To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies twice. Oh wow, did you end up getting anything out of all that repetition? I know I went from being kind of meh on To Kill a Mockingbird the first time I read it to loving it after reading it again a few years later. Never ended up reading Lord of the Flies. Tom is indeed a terrible person, and the closest thing to their representation in the book. So do they hate him because they see him as a misrepresentation, or does someone sympathize with him because he represents them, in spite of being terrible? Maybe not the most important question you could highlight, especially considering that there are also new rich people on the crowd who might see a lot of themselves in Gatsby instead, but it was definitely the first thing I thought of. You really have quite the setup: the Gilded Age through the lens of a Cyberpunk future with a class of people who are either new rich or old rich with two people thrown in who would most easily identify with the valley of ashes. Sick.
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Jul 20, 2018 07:30
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Dr Subterfuge posted:Oh wow, did you end up getting anything out of all that repetition? I know I went from being kind of meh on To Kill a Mockingbird the first time I read it to loving it after reading it again a few years later. Never ended up reading Lord of the Flies. I got nothing out of it all four times. I hadn't been exposed to how careless the wealthy could be until much later in life. I did enjoy To Kill a Mockingbird. Lord of the Flies was pretty meh, but a lot of that had to do with teachers trying to teach symbolism and lessons with books that were not at all designed to do that. Years later I remember how my teacher kept going on and on about how Simon was a "Christlike" figure (a character in the Lord of the Flies). A lot of that probably had to do with the fact that she was religious and so was the majority of my class, so she was trying to connect the otherwise bored and disconnected students to the story. I will say that reading for critical thinking and analyzing every little thing really destroyed my ability to enjoy books for a while and I was the sort of person who read voraciously. Several dozens of books a year. The Great Gatsby and books like it are profound, but reading them like I did was a chore because we'd comb over them in a way that found answers that were obviously never there. I regurgitated answers back to the teacher that she was looking for because that's how I would pass the class. The class was a critical thinking and writing class and the books were largely irrelevant. I'm not sure how critical thinking should be taught, but I wish that it wasn't by ruining books for everyone. I also remember that my classmates were also...Well...I remember basically repeating the sixth grade in eighth grade. Not because I'd been held back, but because my parents moved from a good school district to a bad one. Then I went to the South and I felt like I was repeating the sixth and seventh grades in ninth grade. I didn't reach new material in English and History until my junior year. Everything was watered down because more than half of the kids dropped out. The education system where I live is garbage. At least when I went through it. Then I look at this book that I read in high school, which was a chore, but doable for me, must have read like it was in some foreign language to a teenager from a kid who was reared in this terrible education system. Fuzzy is a bit how I imagine that kid. They have few if any cultural touchstones with the story, it's written in a way that they don't understand, they often have responsibilities that reading this gets in the way of and they see this story as meaningless and if the teacher is lucky the kid may seek out a reason to read it rather than just blowing it off. That said, I don't want to dive too deeply into the Great Gatsby in the text. Not everyone has read it and I'm not going to make that assumption. We'll see it once or twice, and I can get away with explaining almost everything because teachers tend to spoon feed their students during critical thinking exercises. Fuzzy has seen Tom and Daisy Buchanan in the flesh, or at least elements of them. They were Sasha's parents. Not perfectly, as they weren't the idle rich, but they were definitely selfish and often careless people, and would move people around like pawns, Fuzzy and Sasha included. quote:Tom is indeed a terrible person, and the closest thing to their representation in the book. So do they hate him because they see him as a misrepresentation, or does someone sympathize with him because he represents them, in spite of being terrible? Maybe not the most important question you could highlight, especially considering that there are also new rich people on the crowd who might see a lot of themselves in Gatsby instead, but it was definitely the first thing I thought of. You really have quite the setup: the Gilded Age through the lens of a Cyberpunk future with a class of people who are either new rich or old rich with two people thrown in who would most easily identify with the valley of ashes. Sick. Yeah, the rich students are going to hate this book. Looking at a direct critique of how ugly the lives of people they know are, if it's not just them who are the idle, bored, spoiled rich. It is extremely uncomfortable and subversive. Imagine a class full of Toms and Daisies who are forced to look at their potential future. These are teens who are primed to be careless, selfish people who move others as pawns and don't give a poo poo so long as they're comfortable. I see Shadowrun as a sort of neo-gilded age. Corporations are dominant, governments are weak and corrupt and the people are downtrodden and highly marginalized. I see the guilded age as part of an arc that repeats over and over again in human history. People make money, clamp down and make monopolies to collect rent instead of providing a service, those monopolies are abusive, then they grow stale and bloated. Then a sort of demagogue comes along and promises to give power back to the people, and either that happens or it gets worse when the demagogue acts in bad faith. I feel like the megacorps are trying to permanently stick the world in the abusive monopoly part of the cycle or to corrupt the demagogues so they can cycle back to even more money by making sure they constantly act in bad faith. It would be trivial for one or two nations to crush a corporation like Ares for example and nationalize the majority of their assets. The problem is that there are a lot of these little nations, called megacorps, and the big nation probably wouldn't survive the deluge of money and arms to their national enemies while the other corporations refuse to do business with them. Meanwhile the people are getting abused and will turn to anyone who will promise to make it stop no matter how lovely their policies are. Poverty fuels extreme ideologies and you see during the great depression a lot of people asking themselves if capitalism just doesn't work, and if they'd be better off with socialism and/or communism. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Aug 20, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2018 08:18
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Dr Subterfuge posted:You really have quite the setup: the Gilded Age through the lens of a Cyberpunk future with a class of people who are either new rich or old rich with two people thrown in who would most easily identify with the valley of ashes. Sick. Cyber-noir/chrome gilded age is probably my favorite angle on megacorporate-oriented cyberpunk when I'm not going deliberately neo-80s neon-and-filth. The comparisons to historical robber barons, industrialists, and celebrity inventors draw themselves, really.
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Jul 20, 2018 14:50
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"Cyber-noir/chrome gilded age" is a great way to describe this setting. Sure, it is missing the part about people transforming into elves and dragons running for elections but it gets at the core of what it is about.
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Jul 20, 2018 21:04
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Ice Phisherman posted:“Hello all,” said the teacher, “I’m Mr. Markowitz, and this is English two. Please take your seats.” Nice to see that ork or no, English teachers of the cyberpunk future are still properly named. Ice Phisherman posted:“Can I get a digital copy?” asked Andy. /sigh . . . I do so despise millennials at times. Ice Phisherman posted:“This book is hard to read, but that’s part of learning. There are valuable lessons in this book. We’ll talk about those lessons in class. It’s not like one of your programs where you’re meant to understand everything all at once all in a row. This is a different kind of teaching. That’s why we’ll discuss the book. Hey Ice, your inner literary snob is showing. Ice Phisherman posted:“I can do that,” she said. Good show Fuzz, we’ll get you spouting Romeo and Juliet yet. Ice Phisherman posted:Edit: Getting The Great Gatsby in your Shadowrun because I'm a weirdo. Give me Great Expectations or I’ll hold my breath till I turn blue.  For real though, Gatsby is a great choice. Can’t wait to see the parents complain about how “Mr. Markowitz is teaching their youngin’ leftist anti-capitalism socialist propaganda”.
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Jul 20, 2018 21:05
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jagadaishio posted:Cyber-noir/chrome gilded age is probably my favorite angle on megacorporate-oriented cyberpunk when I'm not going deliberately neo-80s neon-and-filth. The comparisons to historical robber barons, industrialists, and celebrity inventors draw themselves, really. GimmickMan posted:"Cyber-noir/chrome gilded age" is a great way to describe this setting. Yeah, I'm trying to get away from the super fantasy or super high tech stuff. Unless it's somehow predictive of something to come or reflects something that is already happening or revealing about a character, place or the themes, I'm not interested. No dragon presidents, no gestalt artificial intelligences, nothing like that. If anything, the fact that the teens can use magic makes me want to ground the story even harder in the day to day world, which while it's set in the future, is still something that we can understand. So the pick for the Great Gatsby is a deliberate choice. And since a ton of people (at least in the US, not sure about elsewhere) are passingly familiar with the text, I'm not just spinning my wheels. It's me deliberately talking about how rich people can be cruel and careless and how that can do significant harm. Not that rich people automatically are bad people, but money sure multiplies the amount of damage that they could do. CourValant posted:Hey Ice, your inner literary snob is showing. Sort of. It's more me trying to think of what an English teacher would say to motivate a student who doesn't understand the work. He asks for Fuzzy's patience and trust because he assures her that there is something meaningful in the work. She's able to do this when last year she didn't during her math tutoring sessions. It's a small admission of trust and I'm trying to show growth in small ways. I'm also trying to communicate that reading this sort of work is hard through Fuzzy. I didn't have a lot of empathy for people whom I viewed as "dumber than me" while growing up, and looking back at the book evokes empathy in me now that I'm older. So while I said I didn't get anything from reading it throughout middle school and high school, I do now. It's that this book is hard and a chore to read if it's for a class. It makes paying attention difficult, especially if that student has responsibilities or a dysfunctional family or is dealing with basic food security stuff. That said, it's rare that I speak with my own voice through the characters. Unless the message is very important, I view sock puppeting them as clumsy. I prefer for the characters to be their own authentic selves and not a vehicle my opinions. My opinions are more shown in what I write about and how I express the themes of the story. I was raised on 1950's-1960's science fiction when moralizing through sci-fi was still new. Or it was new back then. So people like Azimov and Heinlein were how I came to science fiction and morality both since church really didn't do it for me as a kid. But Heinlein especially had a bad habit of going on these long monologues where one character is obviously right and one character is obviously wrong and the right one might as well be speaking with his voice and the wrong one easily accepted the answer by the end of the conversation. In fact you get a number of self-insert characters from him where Heinlein basically writes himself into his own work which is a cardinal sin for writers. His work pushed the boundaries for the time, but his characterization was frequently awful. What I prefer to do is to have two or more different and conflicting opinions, each with valid point, and have those opinions duke it out. Then add the fact that the individuals who have these opinions are flawed characters who are separate entities from these ideologies. While these points aren't all the same in terms of strength, people do gravitate towards ideologies that empower them and so the logical consistency of an argument might not matter for them so long as it empowers them. Or both might be right in their own way, or both wrong, or one is right in a calculating way while the other is right in a moral way. I don't really want to pick favorites for most ideologies. I'd rather people think for themselves and become exposed to other ideologies that they otherwise wouldn't hear, because they haven't tuned out because I don't moralize. Or at least I moralize very rarely. quote:For real though, Gatsby is a great choice. Can’t wait to see the parents complain about how “Mr. Markowitz is teaching their youngin’ leftist anti-capitalism socialist propaganda”. I'm looking forward to Fuzzy blurting out that almost every single person in the work is horrible when I critically glitch an etiquette roll. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 21:19
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This teacher's competence should be judged quite harshly at this point. The fact that he appears to have done literally zero research into even the school's notes regarding his brand new hyper-elite, wizard students. "Hmm... new to the school, tons of extremely valuable/high risk children, unfamiliar surroundings? I should definitely not do even basic note/record-checking on my students before class. None of them might be the son/daughter of megacorp senior management, and therefore potentially be able to cause problems for me." He says as he shits himself and tries to eat a banana without peeling it. "I find it hard to believe you haven't read literature before." He says to the person who thirteen months ago was a rag-wearing, semi-feral, illiterate barrens orphan concerned almost entirely with getting food (specifically porks) and not dying/not being brutally raped by the pimps in the neighboring area. I sorta wish Fuzzy *hadn't* taken more etiquette training, because being polite to this person was an astonishingly saint-like reaction to their clear and present detachment from the realities of their situation. I'm sure he has a good excuse for being so blindingly incompetent, but drat, that this teacher was able to get dressed in the morning is impressive to me. I suppose he's an English Lit teacher, but to teach at Blake island I would have assumed he had to be good at his job, but on literally his first day he's firmly established that he is not.
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Jul 20, 2018 21:37
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Zodiac5000 posted:This teacher's competence should be judged quite harshly at this point. The fact that he appears to have done literally zero research into even the school's notes regarding his brand new hyper-elite, wizard students.[.quote] Yeah, this is something that I'll go back and change. He's a teacher at a good school and he is teaching at most around sixty students total. Probably less. He should at least have a cursory knowledge of who they are going in. Point well taken. I'll go back and fix that. All part of the rough draft process.  In retrospect I think that he should understand who Fuzzy is and where she comes from, and have done some work in how to deal with children from impoverished environments, but not really understand what any of that means beyond the coursework he did. Book knowledge versus experience. However, there's also something to be said about him just being a fuckup. People get hired for positions they're not qualified for all of the time. I'll think about it. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 21:46
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I feel like the pilot program kids would also have a flag in the system that would clue teachers, especially new ones, as to the whole circumstance regarding it considering that, even if they weren't literally feral and out of water, that they would be on 50 different levels than most their peers from an educators perspective (I presume).
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Jul 20, 2018 21:56
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Ice Phisherman posted:Yeah, this is something that I'll go back and change. He's a teacher at a good school and he is teaching at most around sixty students total. Probably less. He should at least have a cursory knowledge of who they are going in. Oh, I wouldn't say you *need* to change it. I just wanted to raise that as written this guy is *completely* incompetent. Not even hyperbole there, Markowitz is just objectively a poo poo teacher, and he's established it on day one in the most beautiful manner possible. He's going to piss off literally an entire class of megacorp CEO children by teaching The Great Gatsby, and going by his dialogue, he either doesn't know or doesn't care about what that means in practical, real-world terms. Julian in his speech mentioned he spent lots of time and work negotiating with parents and corps about the conduct rules. This dude showed up to his job (teaching the most elite wizard kids in north america) on day one without reading a single note on anybody in class (which includes a teenage elf who has *literally* murdered several people in the tenement from hell, one time just on a *hunch*, a neighborhood folk hero whose claim to fame is uppercutting the teeth out of another student and single-handed beating up multiple racist thugs, and oh, right WIZARD CHILDREN FROM THE UPPER ECHELON OF THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC GEARS OF SOCIETY), then assigned a book about how rich people are terrible as the very first assignment. It's... almost art, imagining how bad you have to be at some very simple reasoning skills to do this, or how little grasp of the consequences of his actions could have are. Plus, this gives Fuzzy a new teacher to hate since we appear to be warming on Julian. Honestly, I vote you keep him completely and totally incompetent. Zodiac5000 fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 22:03
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I think what might be easiest going forward and for Ice not having to rewrite the previous update is that for the various lectures he’ll give fuzzy time after class to ask clarification questions, and provide her with supplemental material such as his lecture notes or just some breakdowns of the more complex or niche topics for her to study on her own time, if she needs more help, we’ll, that’s what his office hours are for. That seems to me to be the kind of thing he would do.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:04
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Zodiac5000 posted:Oh, I wouldn't say you *need* to change it. I just wanted to raise that as written this guy is *completely* incompetent. Not even hyperbole there, Markowitz is just objectively a poo poo teacher, and he's established it on day one in the most beautiful manner possible. He's going to piss off literally an entire class of megacorp CEO children by teaching The Great Gatsby, and going by his dialogue, he either doesn't know or doesn't care about what that means in practical, real-world terms. I'm imagining that after The Great Gatsby is finished he delves directly into the Lord of the Flies, a book about children who are stranded on an island who begin to kill one another near the end. And just being totally blase about the subject matter.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:15
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It really seems like he’s just presenting Fuzzy with a series of arguments as to why she should be running the shadows after graduation.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:21
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Ice Phisherman posted:I'm imagining that after The Great Gatsby is finished he delves directly into the Lord of the Flies, a book about children who are stranded on an island who begin to kill one another near the end. And just being totally blase about the subject matter. I'm imagining this starting some sort of Harry-Potter-Dark-Arts-teacher-esque "Why do our english lit teachers keep getting found filled with lead and tied to cement blocks in Puget Sound" situations. edit - Or, even better, like halfway through the year he's going to actually read about the place where he works, then he will read about the rest of his students, and then he's just going to start sweating nothing but bullets because every single person in his classes hates him with the fire of a thousand suns and he literally gave them a book about children murdering people on an island, like you said. Talk about priming the pump! Zodiac5000 fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jul 20, 2018 |
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Jul 20, 2018 22:22
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numerrik posted:It really seems like he’s just presenting Fuzzy with a series of arguments as to why she should be running the shadows after graduation. Why not before? She can intern! Zodiac5000 posted:I'm imagining this starting some sort of Harry-Potter-Dark-Arts-teacher-esque "Why do our english lit teachers keep getting found filled with lead and tied to cement blocks in Puget Sound" situations. I'm imagining this guy who's covered in flop sweat now who has earned the ire of sixty or so teens, each of which could ruin his life, and the sudden realization that he really hosed up. Thank you for calling my work "almost art" by the way. High praise.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:31
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Ice Phisherman posted:Thank you for calling my work "almost art" by the way. High praise. Oh, your work *is* art, and it's very good art! I've been reading not quite since the beginning, but not too long after Fuzzy got to the island. I was trying to compare his in-universe stupidity to an art form (like that Shania Twain song lyric, "You've got being right down to an art" except for instead of being right it's stupidity.), and didn't mean at all to denigrate you or your output!
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Jul 20, 2018 22:40
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Zodiac5000 posted:Oh, your work *is* art, and it's very good art! I've been reading not quite since the beginning, but not too long after Fuzzy got to the island. I was trying to compare his in-universe stupidity to an art form (like that Shania Twain song, "You've got being right down to an art" except for him it's completely ignoring the situation), and didn't mean at all to denigrate you or your output! That was tongue in cheek. I didn't take it that way. Thank you though.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:42
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Well, Kenji hasn’t had any runs since the lab, she can go on the next one, but seeing as he’s her only known fixer, unless she’s going to dive with him, her running opportunities seem limited, unless we’re going to run on that humanis base, clowning on them more.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:43
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I'm imagining Kenji and Fuzzy having a conversation about how Markowitz is an idiot, and it starts out with them citing completely different reasons. Fuzzy realizes it was a lapse for him not to already know about her, Kenji has already looked up what the book is about and can clearly see how poorly it's going to go over.
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Jul 20, 2018 22:46
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Man, I hope Julian didn't hire this guy, I wonder if his fragile sense of self-worth could handle "Your English Lit teacher was found in several pieces, each piece had a knife with a different corporations logo on it stuck into it, and there were several puns involving The Great Gatsby written in what appears to be blood surrounding the corpse. We would know for sure, but somebody appears to have sent a Red Samurai squad to guard it, so we can't move it until their contract runs out in six weeks. Renraku sent a very polite letter explaining that while they had nothing to do with this tragic and senseless death, they would pay for the groundskeeping mess out of a sense of charitable giving. They did suggest not investigating this any further, and that future teachers should display more tact than, quote, 'A bull in a china shop covered in land mines.' I'm inclined to agree with their assessment."
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Jul 20, 2018 22:58
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Zodiac5000 posted:Man, I hope Julian didn't hire this guy, I wonder if his fragile sense of self-worth could handle "Your English Lit teacher was found in several pieces, each piece had a knife with a different corporations logo on it stuck into it, and there were several puns involving The Great Gatsby written in what appears to be blood surrounding the corpse. We would know for sure, but somebody appears to have sent a Red Samurai squad to guard it, so we can't move it until their contract runs out in six weeks. Renraku sent a very polite letter explaining that while they had nothing to do with this tragic and senseless death, they would pay for the groundskeeping mess out of a sense of charitable giving. They did suggest not investigating this any further, and that future teachers should display more tact than, quote, 'A bull in a china shop covered in land mines.' I'm inclined to agree with their assessment." Everything about this post would be a loving hilarious nod to the setting's usually heavy-handed "it's entirely a coincidence that I happen to be holding a firearm and this person has been shot, and my team of lawyers will keep this tied up in court until the heat death of the universe if you try pursuing it." corpy-ness.
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Jul 21, 2018 00:14
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I, too, vote for keeping Mr. Markowitz incompetent, in a "Was good in a completely different situation but now displays a complete inability to read the situation or adapt" kind of way. There should be an interesting reason for how he was able to stumble into this job, and rather than just having him killed, the rich students he annoys should do something like framing him for hitting someone close to him with a car, or something like that.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:47
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