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Loomer posted:Only if you make chattel slavery the most banal institution ever devised. Although, the mechanical implementation of this would probably make it hard for slaves to be secret eshu who are re-enacting The People Who Could Fly and possibly Hogan's Heroes. I wonder what a fun storygame implementation of Banality would look like.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:21
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Loomer posted:Only if you make chattel slavery the most banal institution ever devised. (Reaches over to the edginess dial and cranks it past "MR*H" to "Swedracula") No actually I think you'll find that slavery was not banal because it caused a revival in storytelling and music amongst the slaves and therefore it was a net positive good. Also all those people being worked to death just meant that they didn't grow old to become jaded!
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Dec 5, 2018 16:23
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Rand Brittain posted:Although, the mechanical implementation of this would probably make it hard for slaves to be secret eshu who are re-enacting The People Who Could Fly and possibly Hogan's Heroes. This is true. Banality is a really tricky mechanic to work with sometimes. I suppose you could have the institution itself create a dangerous anti-glamour that can sustain nightmare fae far more easily than seelie and unseelie fae without being outright harmful except insofar as slavery as an institution actively tries to crush the human spirit and dreams, while the survival of old and birth of new folk ways among the enslaved creates pockets of vital, and vibrant, glamour for the secret eshu story. The courageous act of stealing a little butter to add to the grits enriching it not only literally, but with glamour.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:26
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Realtalk I hate banality as a concept. Mostly because it's poorly implemented and the idea that technology/science is always banal by default is just irritating as an IT Worker.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:30
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I feel you. Until C20 law was nearly universally seen as innately banal across the line.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:31
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Except for the moon landing, that's okay. But video games? Nope! gently caress those! Evil as sin!
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Dec 5, 2018 16:33
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Kurieg posted:Except for the moon landing, that's okay. In fairness, gamification of reality is total banal.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:34
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A player once asked if her Sidhe knight could right a motorcycle even if it was technically Banal. I told her at this table, we worry more about what's metal than banal and an elf knight riding a Harley wielding a shotgun was very metal so Banality got overruled. The local Duchess who the players semi-answered to (as much as PCs answer to anybody on good days) was a Dougal who ran a car restoration bodyshop. While also technically banal because internal combustion bad or whatever, the high-minded writers of old Changeling never saw the dreams that went into a dad and his kid restore his car over the summer. So.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:55
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Unseelie Sidhe Southern Gentleman would be a great villain to have for a campaign, especially if you have to struggle with his position being right and proper in Changeling society.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:57
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Honeslty I'd probably do like this: *Remove banality as the Thing Wut Makes Changelings Rare. Find some other way to make Changelings a dying species if you must preserve that. *Have banality warp or alter Changelings. It is not permanent, but a sliding scale. *Don't make banality a sort of hypermundane radiation that radiates from mundane things; instead, make it a symbol of the personal changeling's surrender of freedom. About how they feel about stuff, not that all stoplights give out 1.1 units of mundanity.
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Dec 5, 2018 16:58
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My favorite "wait, this is Banal, really???" is Sir Isaac Newton. Kithbook: Nockers insists that Newton is a goddamn Banality engine and that Newtonian physics are evil and something something ALL HAIL LEIBNIZ INSTEAD HE WAS A NOCKER YOU KNOW Sir Isaac Newton, comma, literal wizard alchemist.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:14
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Mors Rattus posted:My favorite "wait, this is Banal, really???" is Sir Isaac Newton. Kithbook: Nockers insists that Newton is a goddamn Banality engine and that Newtonian physics are evil and something something ALL HAIL LEIBNIZ INSTEAD HE WAS A NOCKER YOU KNOW Newton is also a technocrat if I recall.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:16
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Loomer posted:Newton is also a technocrat if I recall. oh, well, we all know they're banality factories, see also the Void Engineer base at Deepwater Horizon that's accidentally murdering all the merfolk by being super enthusiastic about oceanic science.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:18
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Banality is just capitalism, when you think about. *licks lips zizekishly*
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Dec 5, 2018 17:23
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Well, i mean, Liebniz was right, it just so happens that Newton was also right, just about different things.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:32
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MonsieurChoc posted:Banality is just capitalism, when you think about. let's get some Jameson in here Banality is modernity is capitalism, all literature is ultimately and solely about capitalism whether it wants to be or not, and thus a Jamesonian critic can cause any novel to start emanating Banality Waves at high intensity.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:39
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Loomer posted:I always forget that at least 2,000 Changelings served on both sides of the American Civil War. I'm a racist ex-Arcadian And I fight for slavery...
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Dec 5, 2018 17:39
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Kurieg posted:Except for the moon landing, that's okay. I liked how one of their examples of extreme banality in C20 was an MMORPG. Because, you know, WoW never inspired people to get creative and imaginative and think a lot about elves and pixies and dragons (that being the form of creativity which is non-banal, as opposed to all the creative endeavours which don't involve those but are totally banal anyway because the writers in question don't like them). It's like being shackled to CCP gave Onyx Path a traumatic hatred of the medium. I also raged when I saw that they considered baking shows to be banal, because a) gently caress you, baking is creativity and b) double gently caress you, I remember the euphoria back when an observant Muslim woman who wore a headscarf won the Great British Bake-off and the right-wing tabloids lost their tiny little minds, if you're saying that's an event which increases banality then you're trash.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:45
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Mendrian posted:Honeslty I'd probably do like this: Did a review of C20 a while back when I thought about this and came to the conclusion that if you just take off some of the limits on how effective popping back into the Dreaming is when it comes to dealing with Banality that's a fairly elegant way to deal with it. (In rules as written you get your permanent dots back when you enter the Dreaming; if you just remove that then boom, there's your management method back there.) The upshot of this was: - The accomplishment of some quests needs to be boosted a little or altered, because doing a major quest to deal with permanent banality is now not so hot. - You end up with characters who end up being more freedom to be capricious and cruel, due to their morality scale being easier to fiddle. Depending on your take on fairies this might be completely loving terrible and an absolutely abhorrent misrepresentation of the pwecious pwecious mystical fae folk... or 100% metal badass and exactly what you want anyway. - As you say, you need to replace Banality as the big thing what causes problems for Changelings. Luckily, C20's got the Thallain right there to be big bads for the Changelings to fight, so you can probably do something with that.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:51
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I know the author of the Banality section was super-mad because they were very careful to make Banality not about science, or law, or <insert job the writer particularly doesn't like>, and to remove all the problems that the concept had in previous editions — only then all the other sections still talk about Banality like it's caused by math teachers, because the dev was asleep at the wheel. (This is fairly similar to how the section on the Unseelie philosophy is written to make it seem like something a reasonable person could hold, but the rest of the book still assumes that Unseelie are mostly murderous psychopaths, particularly the rules for Unseelie Legacies.) MMOs are kind of a "could go either way" thing, because continuing to grind away at something because you're caught in the Skinner box is absolutely Banal, and there are few if any MMOs that don't have at least a bit of that.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:55
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*squints at the thread, carefully circling the 'Chemistry Wizards' square on his bingo card*
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Dec 5, 2018 18:02
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Joe Slowboat is right. “Banality is capitalism” is the only way to keep it internally consistent and aesthetically appropriate.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:11
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Ferrinus posted:Joe Slowboat is right. “Banality is capitalism” is the only way to keep it internally consistent and aesthetically appropriate. I mean, in the past couple of years, getting openly political has almost always made Onyx Path games better. C20 was better for being about Occupy and would have been even better if they hadn't tried to walk that back with the Shadow Court, and Geist has gone turbo-Indivisible and looks awesome. You just have to figure out how to present the sidhe as capitalists who are also fairy knight-wizards.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:14
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Rand Brittain posted:I know the author of the Banality section was super-mad because they were very careful to make Banality not about science, or law, or <insert job the writer particularly doesn't like>, and to remove all the problems that the concept had in previous editions — only then all the other sections still talk about Banality like it's caused by math teachers, because the dev was asleep at the wheel. The MMO thing was absolutely a snipe at CCP, and while currently WoW is banal as poo poo(to the point that I haven't even logged in in weeks, cause i'm waiting for them to put out content next week) it was not always the case.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:15
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Rand Brittain posted:You just have to figure out how to present the sidhe as capitalists who are also fairy knight-wizards. You're literally just describing Southern gentry here. Or Southern Gentry, if you wanna hop gamelines. 
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Dec 5, 2018 18:16
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banality is the reduction of people to things, treasures to commodities, and adventures to enterprise
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Dec 5, 2018 18:21
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Well, not just that, because it's also the enslavement of most people so that they don't actually have the opportunity to enjoy those things regardless of their mindset. The average person is going to experience capitalistic Banality in its passive form most often.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:26
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Rand Brittain posted:I mean, in the past couple of years, getting openly political has almost always made Onyx Path games better. C20 was better for being about Occupy and would have been even better if they hadn't tried to walk that back with the Shadow Court, and Geist has gone turbo-Indivisible and looks awesome.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:33
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Oh, my god. The Endless Winter is a lie. Glamour isn't dying and it isn't even scarce. It just seems scarce because the Arcadian sidhe are hoarding it all, just like real-world America has plenty of wealth that's just being hoarded by a few people Oh, and the gates to Arcadia are sealed shut? You're a sucker if you believe that. They'll absolutely open for the "right" people, even as those people portray themselves to the commoners as exiled nobility cut off from Arcadia forever.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:35
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Kurieg posted:The MMO thing was absolutely a snipe at CCP, and while currently WoW is banal as poo poo(to the point that I haven't even logged in in weeks, cause i'm waiting for them to put out content next week) it was not always the case. You could run an entire Changeling adventure around trying to shape the online culture of an MMO in a positive direction.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:48
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Rand Brittain posted:I know the author of the Banality section was super-mad because they were very careful to make Banality not about science, or law, or <insert job the writer particularly doesn't like>, and to remove all the problems that the concept had in previous editions — only then all the other sections still talk about Banality like it's caused by math teachers, because the dev was asleep at the wheel. The thing which seems to pop up most regularly and most widely throughout C20 core is that criticism and criticism of art was Banality. I guess someone was upset by a F&F post about one of their books or something when they wrote that part. EDIT: Of course, it occurs to me that the very act of deciding that something is Banal or not Banal is, in and of itself, a form of criticism.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:50
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Warthur posted:EDIT: Of course, it occurs to me that the very act of deciding that something is Banal or not Banal is, in and of itself, a form of criticism. Yeah, which is why making "what is Banal" entirely subjective is the most sensible way to go.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:52
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I can roll with that. The critic who's unable to see the good in anything is naturally going to find themselves surrounded by banality. The critic who can find the good even in things they generally passionately dislike is still able to see the wonder in the world. The former's been savaged by banality, the latter's brushed it off like it's a light dusting of rain.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:55
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Rand Brittain posted:I mean, in the past couple of years, getting openly political has almost always made Onyx Path games better. I dunno. I don't even really disagree with the points being made but an RPG book going into political tract mode feels weird and vaguely uncomfortable to me.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:58
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Warthur posted:I can roll with that. The critic who's unable to see the good in anything is naturally going to find themselves surrounded by banality. The critic who can find the good even in things they generally passionately dislike is still able to see the wonder in the world. The former's been savaged by banality, the latter's brushed it off like it's a light dusting of rain. So Jake English would be the least banal critic ever? He does love all movies.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:11
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Crasical posted:I dunno. I don't even really disagree with the points being made but an RPG book going into political tract mode feels weird and vaguely uncomfortable to me. It works for me because they're set in the modern day, and the modern day is one of extraordinary tension in political philosophy. Back in the 1990s they could be less political not just because those were unenlightened times or whatnot, but because the "end of history" was a huge part of the zeitgeist. If the 21st century ever settles into some equivalent of the 20th's century post-war stable(ish) order, I think politics might not be as important to put forward. But right now there's a real sense, across all political lines of thought, that the world is in crisis and something needs to be done about it. Ignoring that sense in a game set ostensibly in the modern day seems like a bad idea. bewilderment posted:The 1e Mage Chronicler's Guide offered a few examples of free-picking. Maintaining the Gross/Subtle split was the "Warlocks of Arcadia" variant, where e.g. someone with Space/Fate would call themselves a Warlock (gross) of Arcadia (subtle). And if you don't preserve the path-based inferior arcana and instead let them pick, then you would add on "with the Shame of [inferior arcanum]". That's a big part of where I got the idea. I do think though that a "Warlock of Arcadia" is a little confusing and loses some of the thematic fun of knowing that magic from Arcadia / mages who awoken to Arcadia tends to work like this. I also don't love the idea of gross/subtle, like I mentioned before, although... Ferrinus posted:It was seeing the original subtle/gross Arcanum pairs and realizing the thematic link in each that first tipped me off that Awakening would be really good rather than just, you know, hooray the new mage game. You lose something without that distinction (although changing which Arcana are subtle and which are gross could make for interesting alternate settings/metaphysics) it might just be that I'm missing something. Would you mind expanding on the thematics you saw, Ferrinus?
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Dec 5, 2018 19:13
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Personally I think, cf Lukacs, any sufficiently realistic work is going to have political valence and that valence is going to agree with some specific model of the universe - the one that's more realistic. The Left has, frankly, what I consider a more realistic model of society than the Right. Obviously someone on the right would disagree with me about what the world is, but it's pretty clear to me that a book written with a broadly critical sense of capitalism will simply resemble a world humans live in more than one that's written on anarchocapitalist principles. It's less about wanting the book to be expressly socialist, and more wanting the book to recognize the actual social and historical dynamics of its moment in history, which I think lead reasonably to the adoption of a socialist (or other left tendency) approach. I don't need Spire or the Book of the New Sun to be expressly leftist, or even (In Wolfe's case) at all progressive, but I need to recognize the human nature and historical process involved to find it compelling, rather than fundamentally lacking.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:16
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Yeah, you don't need to go on political tracts per se but the way you choose to present a fictional representation of the modern world is inherently going to require political choices.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:43
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xanthan posted:So Jake English would be the least banal critic ever? He does love all movies. That's not criticism, that's white noise.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:44
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Tollymain posted:op check the foof thread Crasical posted:*squints at the thread, carefully circling the 'Chemistry Wizards' square on his bingo card* As the players were reoccupying the abandoned chantry I mentioned as to how an outbuilding had a chemistry lab "on par with what you'd see in a 1970s high school" implying that 1) they should Upgrade that Equipment and B) the supply closet is full of Explosions Waiting To Happen. No one ever thought to really take advantage of it, and I'm kind of bummed honestly! I was hoping someone would do something inadvisable with the rolls and rolls of magnesium ribbon.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:50
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