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open_sketchbook posted:There's a reason turns in Patrol represent a half-hour, and its to abstract away all the waiting time. I think there's a bit in there somewhere of like, "if players are wondering what they're doing in that time, tell them that they spend ten minutes watching a spider build a web while desperately hugging as low to the ground as possible and waiting for orders." I contrast that with GURPS with second by second tracking of PC actions. No rules for "looking around to see where everybody is". Psyching yourself up to pop up from cover to take a shot is apparently a free action with no stat roll to successfully perform. Some games have a hard time with the forest vs trees thing. GURPS is still in the meadow trying to grok the completeness of a dandelion.
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Jul 11, 2021 06:05
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mllaneza posted:I contrast that with GURPS with second by second tracking of PC actions. No rules for "looking around to see where everybody is". Psyching yourself up to pop up from cover to take a shot is apparently a free action with no stat roll to successfully perform. I sincerely wish GURPS didn't go with the one second turn model. It's the only mechanic that makes me actively refuse to run it, and happens to be just about the only non optional mechanic besides "roll 3d6" with how much of the toolkit is built on one-second turns.
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Jul 11, 2021 12:43
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Just Dan Again posted:I will never get over how great it is that Kroxigors are basically just big friends. They love their small friends, they love to do boring stuff, they love to pick up an object and carry it to another place. They'll also lamp somebody with a stone hammer the size of a compact car, but that's not their whole deal. I've said before that one of the most interesting aspects of Lizardmen/Seraphon is that they're one of the few explicitly multi-species societies in Warhammer, and the dynamics between the various species are super interesting and fun. Things like taking a thousands-years-old Chameleon Skink and helping him acclimate to modern society that's twice alien to him so he can properly apply his skills are fun ideas. (of course, it'd help if AoS had more concrete and interesting details as to what day to day society in those cities is actually like, given it's about the last priority for the setting)
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Jul 11, 2021 14:42
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I've said before that one of the most interesting aspects of Lizardmen/Seraphon is that they're one of the few explicitly multi-species societies in Warhammer, and the dynamics between the various species are super interesting and fun. Things like taking a thousands-years-old Chameleon Skink and helping him acclimate to modern society that's twice alien to him so he can properly apply his skills are fun ideas. (of course, it'd help if AoS had more concrete and interesting details as to what day to day society in those cities is actually like, given it's about the last priority for the setting) We have two City Guides and a bunch of info on the day to day in the Soulbound Core book. The Brightspear City Guide and Anvilgard City guide are very helpful for learning about a couple cities.
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Jul 11, 2021 18:12
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Just Dan Again posted:This area really highlights the problems with the entire dungeon. Barely anything that players would want to interact with, tons of NPCs who do nothing (or only do annoying things), and roadblock after roadblock even if a player decides against their better judgement to try to get invested. Fifty rooms would normally make for a huge dungeon, but here 50 rooms are spent on an inaccessible little dead-end stuck to the side of a mega-dungeon. The amount of work a GM would have to do to make something useful out of this area would be better spent reading a dimestore novel and coming up with their own idea for an adventure. This does seem to be the emblematic issue, not just "weird for the sake of weird" but putting the weird behind glass with a Look But Don't Touch sign. I guess players are just supposed to wander around and gawk in awe at the author's zany brilliance?
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Jul 11, 2021 18:30
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:This does seem to be the emblematic issue, not just "weird for the sake of weird" but putting the weird behind glass with a Look But Don't Touch sign. I guess players are just supposed to wander around and gawk in awe at the author's zany brilliance? I think a lot of my success with the module stemmed from ignoring "don't give players the information here" in several places. NPCs more willing to talk about what they want, some traps and enemies less painfully obtuse, Seymour marginally more competent (the party did go looking for Torgos's kids after all, somewhere around when they pissed him off but not sure of the exact order). It helps. A lot. As the standard advice goes, communicate with your players, including their environments. Hell, you have a good excuse here, don't all of the art rooms have descriptive plaques for each art piece? Do what some museums do and talk about the piece a little, or just weave hints into a shorter description.
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Jul 11, 2021 18:55
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Leave one intact helmet in an early room of thrashed helmets. It's magical and it works like an audio guide.
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Jul 11, 2021 20:22
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JcDent posted:Leave one intact helmet in an early room of thrashed helmets. It's magical and it works like an audio guide. That's genuinely brilliant.
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Jul 11, 2021 21:06
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:This does seem to be the emblematic issue, not just "weird for the sake of weird" but putting the weird behind glass with a Look But Don't Touch sign. I guess players are just supposed to wander around and gawk in awe at the author's zany brilliance? Yeah this dungeon is filled with toxic antagonistic GMing. There's a lot of easy fixes like changing the NPCs to be more interesting instead of a random monster with a funny hat and accent, but on the other hand, gently caress Zack S. JcDent posted:Leave one intact helmet in an early room of thrashed helmets. It's magical and it works like an audio guide. If your players are down for it you can go the System Shock 2 route and just leave a bunch of half-broken helmets that are partially complete or half-broken audio guides and journals of the various denizens around to give the players clues to things. Play up the puzzle aspect a bit in that way. Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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Jul 11, 2021 21:24
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SkyeAuroline posted:As the standard advice goes, communicate with your players, including their environments. Hell, you have a good excuse here, don't all of the art rooms have descriptive plaques for each art piece? Do what some museums do and talk about the piece a little, or just weave hints into a shorter description. This is very smart, and another thing where you need to ignore the book. The plaques are all in Ancient Selenian (a dead language) and only give the name of the piece and its author.
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Jul 11, 2021 23:23
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:This does seem to be the emblematic issue, not just "weird for the sake of weird" but putting the weird behind glass with a Look But Don't Touch sign. I guess players are just supposed to wander around and gawk in awe at the author's zany brilliance?
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Jul 12, 2021 00:40
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Lancer Part 4: ThirdComm - Once More, With Feeling Despite the incredibly powerful advantages that SecComm possessed, their position was deceptively precarious. This hidden rot to their public support would become cataclysmically apparent in the wake of the Hercynian Crisis. But as uniquely and utterly criminal as SecComm’s handling of the Hercynian Crisis was, it was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. The ‘real’ cause of the SecComm’s overthrow is the countless violent oppression campaigns on hundreds of colonial worlds. But, context. On a remote planet called Hercynia, Union explorers made an incredible discovery: non-human, naturally evolved sentient life. The Ergorgians are “hexapedal, carbon-based, hardshelled arthropods that are a little closer to crustaceans than insects, standing on average about a meter and a half tall at the withers. They are covered by chitinous plating and a leathery epidermis that comprise their integumentary system and have vestigial, scaled wings like a moth or butterfly. These wings are often pulled back, decorated, or draped in the same way a human would drape clothing. Egregorian forelimbs are flexible and relatively strong. Despite their size, they have fine motor control, are quite dextrous, and can wield human weapons and tools with minimal discomfort. Most Egregorians also have a thick “ruff” or mane of feathery, exceptionally fine hair and antennae surrounding their neck and shoulders. Egregorians’ ruffs are highly expressive, functioning much like a cat’s whiskers.”  They’re also cute as the dickens Unfortunately, like a lot of first contacts, things go wrong. The Union explorers inadvertently sides with one Egregorian faction, upsetting a delicate political balance. Then, human diseases spread to their Egregorian allies, decimating their population and rendering them incapable of self-defense. When the enemy Egregorian factions conquered the Union allies, the humans are killed during the conquest, and the surviving Egregorians begin utilizing Union technology. They worked quickly to reverse engineer the advanced technology and begun building massive defensive structures. The Egregorians then waited to see how Union would react, with hopes of tense peace talks, perhaps followed by a welcoming into the galactic community. SecComm responds with ever-escalating violence that culminates in, you guessed it, the TBK of Hercynia and the apparent annihilation of the Egregorians - the only other intelligent life in the universe that wasn’t RA or Metat Aun. This would be the first time that "mechanized chassis" would be used in a war setting, introducing the "Mechs” to Lancer's "Mechs and Mud" tableau. Up until this point, the mechanized chassis had existed as hardsuits for exploratory, scientific, and civilian purposes in the vast array of environments that Union operated in, where they had even been used to deal with dangerous megafauna. Ras Shamra, just before the Hercynian crisis, had begun experimenting with mass-produced mechs for strictly military purposes. These mechs, based on the prototype Genghis frame, would both revolutionize warfare and would be indelibly associated with the fiery slaughter of the Egregorians in Union media. To be clear, the Egregorians are not a military threat to Union at this point. They are essentially trapped on a single planet, vastly out-numbered and out-gunned by the Union navy. Despite this, SecComm escalates the violence to total war, resulting in the (apparent) destruction of all life on Hercynia. So the question is this: was SecComm unwilling to de-escalate the situation, or incapable of doing so? I believe that SecComm was incapable of practicing diplomacy or restraint. I believe that, for a thousand years, SecComm had been dealing with colonial unrest with absolute violence and was fundamentally incapable of operating in a counter-insurgent manner. Furthermore, SecComm's anthrochuavinism would not allow it to back down - doing so flew directly in the face of the manifest destiny ideology that underpinned all decisions. When we reach No Room For A Wallflower, we'll see that SecComm's TBK and retreat from Hercynia is sudden and disorganized, leaving a great deal of personnel and material behind. Either way, the result is a complete failure by SecComm to achieve its military and political objectives, as well as a well-publicized crime against humanity and the universe. Horrified by the "acute criminality" of the Hercynian Crisis, a series of popular revolts against SecComm rule burst out across Cradle. These revolutionaries would ally themselves with moderates in Union's bureaucracy and begin a bloody revolution that turned into outright war. The end result of this civil war would be the dissolution of SecComm's central committee and replacement by ThirdComm, the capture and prosecution of SecComm leadership for their crimes against humanity, and the formation of Harrison Armory as an anthrochauvinist successor state made up of SecComm expatriates. ThirdComm, the resulting revolutionary state, "formally re-adopted" the Utopian Pillars that Union had been founded on centuries ago, when the people of Cradle had come together after the Little Wars to reject nationalism, imperialism, and classism. Again, I feel it's best to quote the Pillars in their entirety: "Lancer Core Rule Book, Pg 334 posted:I All Shall Have Their Material Needs Fulfilled Anyway, in addition to the Utopian Ideals and the prosecution of SecComm leaders for war crimes, ThirdComm also makes other structural changes to Union. First, the Union Navy (UN) is scaled back, and the officer corps is purged of SecComm and anthrochauvinist elements, resulting in a much weaker military force with relatively untested and inexperienced leadership. To supplement their forces, Union employs Auxiliaries - Diasporan or otherwise non-Union military or police forces that serve for a deployment under the Union Navy chain of command. Most of these Auxiliaries are tasked with patrolling distant areas and providing rapid response to a local crisis, and are usually billeted on a freighter or colonial supply ship. Which, just to point out, is a great way to have a ‘military’ campaign where your characters are going to be immediately the most important people around. Why isn’t the UN handling this civil war, or giant monsters, or the angry moon full of cyber-ghosts? They are, you’re it, either temporarily until proper forces arrive or permanently if reinforcements aren’t available. Your small squad of highly trained, heavily armed, highly advanced mechanized cavalry are gonna have to do what you do when the cavalry gets called in. And since you got there on a colonial supply ship, and the supply ship has since left, you're also now stuck in. Boom, campaign! Second, ThirdComm split the Union Colonial Mission (UCM) into three organizations. The UCM had existed since the days of FirstComm, and had been the primary force through which Union was ‘choking the stars with life.’ It is replaced by the Union Administrative Department (UAD), the Bureau of Colonial Administration (BCA), and the Department of Justice and Human Rights (DoJ/HR). Where under SecComm the Union Navy gunboats had been the first point of contact for Diasporan worlds, the UAD sent diplomats and communicators instead to facilitate cultural exchanges and build consensus. The establishment of new colonies on planets without indigenous life was spun into a completely separate organization in the BCA, creating a clear divide between Union seeding new colonies and Union interacting with those colonists as political entities. Finally, the DoJ/HR investigates, reports on, and (if necessary) intervenes on violations of the Utopian Pillars. (Again, a GREAT place for a small squad of Lancers to be involved.) The result is a division of power that ensures that each of the tasks are pursued faithfully, without being subsumed into priorities of a larger organization. Regardless of UAD activities in a particular colony, the DoJ/HR is going to investigate and prosecute violations, for example. However, it also has the drawback that UAD, BCA, and DoJ/HR officials can work at cross purposes, pursuing their own agendas over the objectives of Union as a whole - or disagree on what those objectives should be. Which is the fundamental contradiction that might cause ThirdComm to unravel completely. ThirdComm both is and is not a revolutionary state. It’s revolutionary in the sense that ThirdComm has rejected the violence, exploitation and dehumanization of anthrochauvinism, and instead pursues diplomacy as the preferred tool and human rights as a priority. On the other hand, ThirdComm still pursues hegemony, interpretation, and assimilation under Cradle’s authority - the uninterrupted line from FirstComm, through SecComm, and into ThirdComm is clearly visible. There is no clean break between the old ways and the new (although, arguably, there never truly is). ThirdComm’s revolution came from the combination of idealists among the populace outside of Union’s bureaucracy, and ‘moderates’ within the institutions of power that were fed up with SecComm’s brutality and incompetence - an already uneasy alliance. As they worked to form a stable government, ThirdComm would further strain things by making peace and integrating with Harrison Armory (SecComm’s successor corpro-state and the largest military manufacturer in the galaxy) and the Karrakin Trade Baronies (a feudal plutocratic monarchy and Union’s supplier of raw materials). While ThirdComm won major concessions in return - ThirdComm regulators can audit HA’s facilities, and the Baronies shut down their flash cloning facilities for laborers and soldiers - both entities have worked against the Utopian Pillars and are creating situations that are close to boiling over. The result is a universal sense that these years are the antebellum period before a reckoning, where ThirdComm will need to come to terms with whether it truly is a revolution or not, and the temporary compromises Union has made will break down. So far Union has been able to navigate the situation with diplomacy and minimum force, but the ‘flashpoints’ are building up and are threatening to boil over into total violence. Which is a great place for PCs to have adventures! Every single major faction has an associated flashpoint, where mercenaries, soldiers, and heroes in mechs could get involved. It really becomes a question of ‘what kind of things do you want to be fighting about?’ The Karrakin Trade Baronies are in open conflict with the Ungratefuls, a militant labor rights movement - do you want that ‘class warfare’ context in your campaign? Harrison Armory is attempting to exert their claims over the Dawnline Shores, a group of valuable colonies that seem more inclined towards independence - do you want themes of colonialism and anti-colonialism to be especially prevalent? DoJ/HR and Albatross investigate and free those that are in bondage - is that what you want to do? Or you could do something completely original in any of the Diasporan colonies, with Union only a distant background element. Also, one last thought: questions like ‘Is Union secretly evil?’ reflect a naive and simplistic political view (IMO). The setting of Lancer is lousy with evil empires if that’s what you want, in flavors autocratic, bureaucratic, and theocratic. Union, on the other hand, is something else - an indifferent empire. You can try and incentivize them to intervene, or you can work against them as they decide your cause is too extreme. You don’t need them to be evil in the way Darth Vader and Sauron are evil. They’re the all too banal and realistic evil of today, where empires claim to support democracy and human rights while pursuing resources and profits. To be completely blunt, they're the United States when Nestle started the water wars in Bolivia - but with mechs. Anyway, the ‘logical’ next post would be the current state of the setting or detailing Union's structure and factions… but I want to switch things up a little bit and talk about one of the most challenging parts of Lancer’s setting. Non-Human Persons, and how the setting treats them, is a subject that is intentionally ambiguous, and frankly a bit confusing if you don't have the proper context. So let's meet it head on! Part 5 - RA, NHP, and Comp/Cons, Oh My!
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Jul 12, 2021 17:07
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Soulbound: Steam and Steel Steam & Steel is a book on crafting, equipment, industry and, to a somewhat lesser extent, dwarves. It's designed as a mix of setting resource on the culture of industry, craft and vehicles across the Realms and a player resource for making stuff, from alchemy to dwarven supertech. Our first chapter, Forges of the Realms, is a mix of the two, examining why and how PCs might craft. See, the act of making things? That's a key element to reclamation of the Realms from Chaos. It will take lifetimes of work from generations of crafters to do. They will make the weapons wielded by warriors, the walls that protect civilians, the vehicles to bring trade across the wilderness, and the goods to be sold from these vehicles. A widespread saying among the Cities of Sigmar is this: "Everything they destroy, we'll rebuild twice as grand." They mean it, too - the crafters and builders of the Cities are often obsessive about helping people reclaim their lives - especially now, with the advent of the Dawnbringer Crusades, massive outpourings of shared effort between the Stormcast and the Cities to carry entire floating city cores on massive caravans, making it easier to found new cities. Everyone who creates has a reason for doing so. The book notes that when making a crafter as a PC, it's important to think about why your character crafts. There's so many possible jobs out there, after all, and pursuing craftwork is only one of them - an important one, to be sure, but most crafters have personal reasons behind what they do. They don't have to be complex, though. For example, some people just look at it as a job, a means to the end of earning a day's wage. Invention and skill can earn you wealth, and crafters who are interested in money tend to focus on finding widespread problems and solving them with new inventions or tools. That's the best way to get a lot of customers fast, after all. Others look at the works of their rivals and see flaws or inferior quality and try to improve on them, stealing their customer base. For those who aren't able to do that...well, brand management is important, too. While money-seekers are often innovative in their problem-solving, they're prone to cutting corners, justifying it to themselves as cost-saving that leaves their customers just as happy. More crafters do so out of religious zeal these days. After all, the gods of Order are largely defined by their desire to build up and shape the Mortal Realms into a greater vision. Some people believe that craftwork is an extension of this divine ideal, and that the act of making is itself a form of worship. (This is especially common among worshippers of Grungni, the Maker God. While he was absent from the Realms for a long time, he has recently returned to help save the Kharadron from total annihilation by Be'lakor. The Dispossessed never really stopped praying, and some claimed they could hear the Maker God's voice in the beauty of their craft. Now, there's been a huge resurgence in young duardin and human crafters turning to the Maker God, though the Kharadron remain reserved, given their old grudge against him for abandoning them.) Many architects especially are religiously motivated, dedicating their lives to raising up monuments and temples to their gods. Even outside architecture, religion is a driving factor for many crafters. They typically incorporate their god's iconography into their works, subtly or not. It's a way of declaring who they do it for, and for their customers to also take part in worship. For other crafters, the job is a matter of blood. Some descend from ancient lineages of crafters, a chain of work that may go back all the way to the Age of Myth. They may well have learned how to build and make things before their childhood was truly begun. For some, this legacy is a mark of pride. Knowing an ancestor's mark and finding it in ancient tombs or on old and well-cared-for weapons? That's something that tells you that your family has always been there and will never be forgotten. On the other hand, there's a lot of pressure that comes from having such a famous name. Many legacy crafters end up pushing themselves to meet impossible standards or grow frustrated by unrealistic expectations and an inability to break free from the shadows of the past. Some families have even become disgraced or ruined by their legacy, or are infamous for turning against the free peoples. Escaping the legacy can be just as big a motive for making your own work as living up to and embodying it. Some craftsmen care only about helping those in need. The Free Peoples desperately need a lot of things, all the time. The forces of Death and Chaos seem endless, and even those of Destruction are wildly unpredictable - one day they may be friendly, the next they may burn a city to ash. The walls always need to be reinforced and rebuilt, the armor repaired, the weapons replaced. And even beyond that, people need food, clothing, tools, all kinds of things. Society does not function without things, and if someone isn't providing these things, people suffer and die. For some craftsmen, that is intolerable, and so they dedicate their lives to making the things everyone needs. They are altruists above all, proud of their work and driven to alleviate suffering. However, many also are gripped with deep anxieties, because once a tool is made and handed off, it is no longer under their control. Many dread the day they learn their works are used to harm, not help. Other makers do it solely because they can. They create for the joy of creating. They glory in taking many materials from many places and bringing them together into a greater whole. They take an intellectual joy in finding the solution to a problem through their own minds and hands. They find creative work inherently appealing, not because of how it will be used or who it will help or because it will make them famous, but because they simply love to do it. Often, they have little interest in whether their creations are at all financially viable as products or things anyone even wants. They're more interested in the challenge of the project itself. Many begin their work quite young, fixing broken toys and making art. Very little can stop them from working, even when they have other things to focus on. It's not just motives that differentiate crafters, either. It's also important to think about what makes your PC's work special, what makes it stand out from everyone else. The nature of one's work often gives great insight into them, after all. Some crafters focus on using unique and special materials, ranging from the mundane like a focus on metalcraft to the exotic, working with things like liquid shadow or ironwood growths. What materials are easy to get is largely a factor of where you are, of course, and we'll get to that later. However, if you're primarily working with stuff that is foreign to where you happen to be, it's definitely going to make your work stand out as strange, exotic, even alien. It's always worth thinking about what you're going to use for your projects and how that'll affect what they look like. Similarly, the methods you use can be your calling card. There's practically infinite different ways to create, just as there are theoretically infinite things you could make. Some workers will only work in pristine, perfectly arranged labs, ensuring their work has a perfect order to it, with everything in its place, nothing unneeded, all things planned out. Others are improvisational, putting together what they need from whatever they can get their hands on, working out of giant, messy piles of spare parts, odds and ends and so on. Often their projects are cannibalized to make new ones, or left unfinished as new ideas strike. PCs are advised to consider what process they might use, what it might look like to someone who walked in on them half finished. Another consideration is what type of work you do - that is, are your works industrially produced on an assembly line of mass production, or are they bespoke, artisanal things? The Ironweld and Kharadron have developed extensive factory facilities to supply the endless need for more weapons and supplies for the armies of Order. Hundreds of crafters may work in a factory in shifts, and most of these factories operate constantly, never shutting down but for maintenance. Some worker spend entire careers only making one thing, crafting one part of a greater whole and only seeing the end results when they get shipped out. The Kharadron guilds often require years of study mastering a single part of the process before their members are allowed to advance in rank. However, other workers reject these industrial methods or strict adherence to guild rules. They work out of small forges or labs, overseeing the entire process. They take longer than mass production, certainly, but many warriors will go out of their way to get their hands on a personally crafted, artisanal tool or weapon when they get the chance. These things are seen as having greater "soul," and therefore more reliability and quality than mass production goods - and it's hardly an idea without merit. Where does your PC fall on this issue, and how much do they care about the personal touch in their control over the crafting process? One of the biggest things to think about is also form vs function. You give the same order to two different artisans, you get two wildly differing results unless you're extremely specific. They'll likely do the same job via similar means, but the things will look extremely different. One might be plain and simple, another ornate and showy, even gaudy. When making things as a PC, it's also important to consider what style they have and what importance they place on appearance and aesthetics.  Sidebars like this are littered through the book, talking about the weapons and tools made by specific groups. Next time: New tricks for your PC.
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Jul 12, 2021 17:58
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Tibalt posted:Lancer This helps tremendously with my understanding of the setting. The instability seems to be a critical part of the setting, which I straight up missed in the Core book. Although, from the book, I really don't have a good sense of how to run the Union blowing apart the seams on a session by session level, which I am sure is partially on me, but it contributes to the setting feeling static, which I guess it isn't supposed to feel that way?
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Jul 12, 2021 20:26
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I'd say the Union feels a lot more benevolent than US is that point (...or any point in the past, lol). As for the crafting book, the Why We Craft bit is good at setting AoS apart from the real world - how many people make ploughshares out of religious zeal - trying to tie into characters seems weird. Sure, the dorfs have specialties than lend themselves to doing crafting on the side, but like you won't have a Saurus millner (Saurus basically only ever produce war), or an elf that was junior grade adept for making gear 5-A at the Teclis Plant of Fordist Crystal spire assembly when not learning feng shui from bovine rock formations. Especially considering that Soulbond characters are above the regular people that say WFRP would draw from. At the lofty position where they are now, they feel like their role is what they are, and they don't have the time to also be master artisans. And in Soulbound, what's the use of a craft brewer than makes two barrels of the most OK-I-guess beer in Hammerhall?
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Jul 12, 2021 20:55
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This book introduces a number of different sets of crafting systems that PCs may want to engage with, like alchemy or custom designing weapons or inventing new aethermatic tech. E: or doing architecture, for that matter, though that’s a much more minor thing
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Jul 12, 2021 21:00
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Pakxos posted:This helps tremendously with my understanding of the setting. The instability seems to be a critical part of the setting, which I straight up missed in the Core book. Although, from the book, I really don't have a good sense of how to run the Union blowing apart the seams on a session by session level, which I am sure is partially on me, but it contributes to the setting feeling static, which I guess it isn't supposed to feel that way?
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Jul 12, 2021 21:02
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Nessus posted:It sounds like this is meant as a plot hook and setting information; I get the vibe that it is entirely plausible that this contradiction won't come to a head for quite some time, allowing you to do adventuring focused on other topics without feeling like you're 'doing it wrong'. But on the other hand, you CAN center this and possibly save and/or destroy the Thirdcomm government. Oh absolutely. I think the third committee is relatively young at this point and, whilst still working out the contradictions, has more external things to worry about rather than purely internal ones.
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Jul 12, 2021 21:36
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Bearing in mind that this is all my personal interpretation... ThirdComm Union I'd describe as removed rather than disinterested. Having experienced the ultimate outcome of governance from a galactic-scale government that was too direct and heavy-handed, ThirdComm's reaction has been to take things very light-handed and cautious. Which is understandable and probably a good idea, even though it has also ultimately let a lot of assholes slip through the cracks. The scale they're working on is almost unimaginable and the consequences of moving too hard are well-known to them. This should sound pretty familiar as it's also the argument that ultimately paralyzes everything from socialists to right-libertarians to the actually sincere Democrat-grade liberals. Doing nothing is loving awful, but if you do things, and do them wrong, you could make the situation worse or, at best, put yourself in a place where you have to work just to get back to the place where you can try again. Lancer does not offer a suggestion as to what the correct course of action is, because while Lancer's writers almost certainly HAVE an opinion on what the correct response to that argument is, it's an argument with a whole lot of possible interpretations and answers to it. Can Union even solve this question while existing as a monolithic state that is ultimately to a certain extent imperial by simply existing? Would breaking up that state cause far more damage than it would help? How should we use the incredible tools at our disposal even when we've concluded that we should? Union's ultimate conclusion is always going to be "yes, it would hurt worse" at least to the second question, because fundamentally, nation-states are self-interested in their own survival. Whether Union's people decide that ultimately is a different question; the state itself (meaning the vast people invested in making it function for whatever end it functions for) will never conclude that it should commit suicide. But it's not necessarily a wrong conclusion just because it contains self-interest; Union's instruments of power are ultimately, at least right now so "soon" after the revolution, forged out of the will and consent of countless multitudes that she governs, and there is an unbelievable amount of good that can be done with the unimaginable tools Union has at its disposal. A lot of it is actually done already, often in subtle ways like regulations and standards that stop uncountable wrongs from happening every day through simply existing, and those wouldn't do anything without the bulk of Union's collective might and power as their enforcer. But ultimately they haven't solved every problem, and they want to. Every wrong that happens on a world they've claimed as under their purview is a tiny little failure. Every world that isn't up to Core living standards is a mote in their eye because the inherent inequality there is a violation of the Pillars. Whether to keep going at the current hands-off pace to avoid breaking something, or to run the risk of the short-term agony of breaking things instead of guaranteeing the long-term agony of day-to-day inequality, is one form of the upcoming argument over Union's future. But fundamentally, ThirdComm Union agrees that they should keep going. ThirdComm tries. I would call that its fundamental difference that sets it apart -- whether it's succeeding or even if it fundamentally can succeed, ThirdComm is currently trying to live up to the ideals in the Utopian Pillars.
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Jul 12, 2021 22:49
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Also to doublepost, Tibalt posted:"Core" and "Diaspora" are two terms I haven't yet discussed. There are loose and general terms, describing a colony's political, economic, and physical proximity to Cradle as the metropole of Union. I would say the best way to understand it is that, while Union considers both the Core and the Diaspora as part of Union, only the Core worlds are under direct Union authority. The Diasporan worlds are mostly self-governing, but are still subject to Union’s hegemony through their control of blinkgates, the omninet, and the Union navy. The other important distinction, and the one that Union uses the most often, is economic-social-cultural. A "Core" world is one where the ideals of the Utopian Pillars are in full effect for every member of the population -- which is to say, one where the population lives in post-scarcity conditions and with stability and freedom. Lancer Corebook, Page 342 posted:New Humanity enjoys the fruits of robust scientific, political, and cultural advancements, and has access to such a profound abundance of resources and clean automated labor that it has transcended capitalism altogether – a true utopia, won through struggle. However, beyond Union's completed utopian project, the revolutions that established the golden age are still ongoing. As ripples in a pond lengthen and fade the further they travel from a stone's impact, Union’s golden age is yet to be won at the margins. A world in the Diaspora cannot be considered part of Union's Core unless it has implemented the Utopian Pillars among its society to the same all-encompassing degree. In practice, meeting the Pillars is beyond the ability of capitalism to even attempt, and usually leads to resistance instead. But meeting them is a requirement to be considered part of and integrated into the Union Core, and thus brought within the network that is the heart of Union society. You'll note that the Utopian Pillars are shockingly flexible -- they don't even strictly do things like outlaw monarchy or require worker control of the means of production, so long as the three tenets are met. Hell, they don't strictly outlaw inequality. This is to some extent understandable as so long as anything in the world is different, there will be some things that are generally "more" than other things by whatever metric is used. As an analogy, even in a socialist reality, not everyone can get seats behind home plate at the World Series. ThirdComm's attempt to solve that problem declares that every seat has to have a good view and free snacks, and if you can't manage that, you don't get to be part of the Good Seat Club with its perks. This distinction also creates one of the inherent problems that drives ThirdComm forward and crazy simultaneously; not every world where people live is a Core world. If they've proclaimed themselves as the authority of everything, which they have, because they want everything to have the same nice things they want, then everywhere that ISN'T up to Core standards is THEIR failure, and any compromises they've made on the way (like using the incredibly unequal Karrakin Trade Baronies as a crutch to ensure enough material to keep post-scarcity going elsewhere, or tolerating the existence of Harrison Armory to further their overall objectives and keep from having to fight HA) are failures. Dropping their standards RE: the Pillars is unacceptable because that would mean accepting that reality is unequal, like the people who opt to continue living in Omelas in the story "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas". So the only option is to find a solution to their contradiction. What they decide to do to that end, and in what order, is at the core of how "revolutionary" ThirdComm Union is and what they're going to do about it going forward.
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Jul 12, 2021 23:22
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So, what are they actually getting from the Labor-Barons, exactly? What makes that situation worth keeping in the state that it is? Is there some rare resource or something that only the trade-barons have access to, compared to the limitless raw material and power that having an interstellar state gets you?
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Jul 12, 2021 23:46
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Night10194 posted:So, what are they actually getting from the Labor-Barons, exactly? What makes that situation worth keeping in the state that it is? Is there some rare resource or something that only the trade-barons have access to, compared to the limitless raw material and power that having an interstellar state gets you? Which probably doesn't make sense from a logistical perspective, but they provide a different setting in Lancer if you're more in the Clans part of Battletech or various other space feudal mech settings. Also because they make Problems for Lancers to solve.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:07
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I was mostly wondering if it was a Spice Must Flow kinda dealio.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:11
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This is also probably a question that ThirdComm is asking itself right now, as a matter of fact. The agreements with the Karrakin Trade Baronies were set up under SecComm, and have continued to exist under ThirdComm basically by being grandfathered in. Five hundred years is a long rear end time for something to be grandfathered in, but ThirdComm's to-do list is and always has been lightyears long. Information we haven't gotten to yet in-setting suggests that situation may be changing right about Now in game time, thanks to the events in the Dawnline Shore and things happening within the Baronies. Karrakin is having some serious unrest problems of the uprising-underclass sort and while I'm not going to step on Tibalt's game by getting to that before them, at least some parts of Union appear to be siding with the uprising elements. A sea change may be coming.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:11
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The Baronies are Dune, full-stop. But yeah it's....not, like, special rare limited resources. They're material magnates period and they hold a lot of cards, willing to take some social losses and changes on the chin in order to broker new deals with Union to gain treaties and pull on them. They also have the most experienced flight academy in the setting, Baronic Flight School and Captaining Academies are cut-throat and efficient.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:13
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Does the FTL work like hyperlanes (i.e. you have to go from Earth to Alpha Centauri to Barnard's Star to Epsilon Eridani etc.) or just 1:1 direct wormholes? I was unclear. Either way, if there aren't irreproducible goods like melange or elerium-115, every planetary system could probably be a post-scarcity autarky with only information and possibly biologics and treasures being traded between planetary systems. From a Watsonian perspective this might be a desirable goal, even, but you have to get there from here, and here is definitely not built that way. From a Doylist perspective, I imagine there's a mix of 'you gotta have some capitalists/assholes/antagonists or else who are you gonna mecha-jock at?' and 'even if they would actually be enormously different, going for post-scarcity autarky probably maps most closely to places like North Korea, and that is not our intended message'
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Jul 13, 2021 01:04
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The short version of Lancer's history is that humanity should never have left Cradle.
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Jul 13, 2021 01:13
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Redeye Flight posted:The agreements with the Karrakin Trade Baronies were set up under SecComm, and have continued to exist under ThirdComm basically by being grandfathered in. Five hundred years is a long rear end time for something to be grandfathered in, but ThirdComm's to-do list is and always has been lightyears long. There are so many things you could stick in this quote in the place of 'Karrakin Trade Baronies' and you'd also be correct. A lot of ThirdComm's problems are poo poo they have inherited from SecComm.
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Jul 13, 2021 01:54
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How old is Thirdcomm again? Five Hundred Years is kind of a long time in state time, isn't it?
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Jul 13, 2021 01:56
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Nessus posted:Does the FTL work like hyperlanes (i.e. you have to go from Earth to Alpha Centauri to Barnard's Star to Epsilon Eridani etc.) or just 1:1 direct wormholes? I was unclear. Union's FTL works by traveling through Blinkspace by using Blinkgates. To set a blinkgate up, they use a nearlight ship with an onboard NHP to send the components on ahead. Other groups - notably, the Aun - have other ways of doing FTL. To the vast majority of Union citizens, blinkgates are and will remain a black box; Union's control of the FTL network is one of the cornerstones of their power.
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Jul 13, 2021 02:00
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Night10194 posted:How old is Thirdcomm again? Five Hundred Years is kind of a long time in state time, isn't it?
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Jul 13, 2021 02:04
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JcDent posted:
Actually we got a Archetype for a Kharadron Brewmaster. And making Alcohol is a very big deal to them. (That also gives potent buffs.)
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Jul 13, 2021 03:55
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wiegieman posted:Union's FTL works by traveling through Blinkspace by using Blinkgates. To set a blinkgate up, they use a nearlight ship with an onboard NHP to send the components on ahead.  So it sounds like Union can't expand their territory faster than the speed of light, which has interesting permutations in that you will (at least, for a long time) have a permanent frontier, potentially genuine terra nullius, but you will also have meaning to all the locations already extant.
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Jul 13, 2021 05:38
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Travel to and from Blinkgates isn't instant either, and most planets do not have a Blinkgate in orbit or in system, so that also complicates things.
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Jul 13, 2021 06:19
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Fivemarks posted:Travel to and from Blinkgates isn't instant either, and most planets do not have a Blinkgate in orbit or in system, so that also complicates things. So it takes time to reach the blinkgate, but then the blinkgate sends you to another blinkgate really really fast. Then once you are there you need to get to your destination and then go all the way back. I remember reading one of the little blurbs in the Lancer book and it implies the character has been working somewhere for about 30 years and the person they sent off to get them recognised has only just come back and doesn't look all that different.
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Jul 13, 2021 08:47
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Ratoslov posted:There are so many things you could stick in this quote in the place of 'Karrakin Trade Baronies' and you'd also be correct. A lot of ThirdComm's problems are poo poo they have inherited from SecComm. But not the worst of them. The Baronies and HA want money, power, their butts kissed, very human things. On the other hand, there's RA, HORUS and Dhied and predictions that the end of humanity is in the offing. There are threats that can barely be comprehended and a lot of people playing with things they can't understand. Every line of mechs has at least one unit that inappropriately bends physics and not rebooting your AI can cause it to become an alien entity inimical to human existence. Kicking the can down the road on the corpro-states may be Union's only option at the moment.
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Jul 13, 2021 09:29
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So in other words, from ThirdComm's perspective, the Baronies are seen as bad things, but also too structurally important to the galactic economy to take on directly and not an existential threat the way a lot of ThirdComm's problems are, so they're willing to kick solving the problem down the road and make it tomorrow's problem?
Epicurius fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 12:32
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A lot of things aren't a problem in the short term and could potentially cause the dissolution of Union in the long term... but the core rulebook even points out that the end of Union isn't the end of the world, it would just be apocalyptic in the same way as the collapse of the Roman Empire. It's what, I think, really separates Lancer from Warhammer 40K. The stakes are lower on the immediate galactic scale - there aren't Orks, Necrons, and Tyranids queuing up to consume the galaxy - but that just means there's more space for things to happen at the level your game is played. It also has the advantage of not justifying fascism in the lore, so. Edit: lol, just realized I forgot my main point - the Baronies, Aun, and RA are all have 'long term, real bad' potential, just for very different reasons, but aren't an existential threat at the moment. Tibalt fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 13:30
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Tibalt posted:A lot of things aren't a problem in the short term and could potentially cause the dissolution of Union in the long term... but the core rulebook even points out that the end of Union isn't the end of the world, it would just be apocalyptic in the same way as the collapse of the Roman Empire. Fascism is in fact the cause of a plurality of the large-scale problems.
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Jul 13, 2021 13:35
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 17:28 |
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Epicurius posted:So in other words, from ThirdComm's perspective, the Baronies are seen as bad things, but also too structurally important to the galactic economy to take on directly and not an existential threat the way a lot of ThirdComm's problems are, so they're willing to kick solving the problem down the road and make it tomorrow's problem? Sometimes you have to wait until tomorrow to solve a problem because somebody's psychotic machine intelligence is trying to kill your rear end today.
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Jul 13, 2021 13:46
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