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I really like Lancer's setting because you can turn up or down the heroic natural of the setting really easily, or keep it sequestered to certain groups if you want to be the light in a broken world. Like, you can have RA existing alongside Albatross and it doesn't feel too weird.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:26
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Everyone posted: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. Oh, trust me, I know.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:11
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Soulbound: Steam and Steel Talented Mechanics This chapter ends with new Talents and Endeavors, many of the details of which will require coverage in future chapters. Alchemist lets you use the Create Alchemical Concoction Endeavor, which normally you otherwise can't. Boarding Party Veteran gives a bonus to Melee, Accuracy and Speed until the end of your next turn whenever you take a Boarding action, and reduces the difficulty of rolls to board vehicles. Captain's Orders requires you to have a vehicle, but if you do, you can use the Help action at range, targeting any crew member that can hear your voice. As long as they follow your orders, they get the bonus. Creator reduces complexity on rolls to make new things (but not repair or modify them). Experienced Crewmember lets you pick one vehicle role from among Driver, Mechanic, and Weapon Operator. You get a bonus to that role - Drivers increase the Defence of vehicles they drive and ignore Speed penalties from difficult terrian while driving, Mechanics reduce difficulty of vehicle repairs and let them repair wrecked vehicles one more time before they can no longer be salvaged, and Weapon Operators get a bonus to Accuracy with vehicle weapons and can make called shots with them against Large or bigger targets. Form and Function lets you choose to increase the Complexity of any roll to make clothes, armor or weapons to ensure they look amazing and fashionable. This has no combat benefits, but gives a bonus to social rolls when dealing with people that care about fashion or beauty. Heavy Weapon Hauler requires some pretty incredibly Body and Might, but once you have it you can wield weapons with the Heavy trait without any Accuracy or Speed penalties. (Most Heavy weapons are things like mounted cannons.) Incidental Incendiaries lets you make a Crafting roll during a Rest to make improvised explosives out of whatever's lying around. These count as Fire Bombs that make Major Hazards, and you get more the better you roll, with a cap on how many you can have at one time based on your Crafting Training and Focus. No one will buy them because they are obviously extremely dangerous and home made, and if you ever get knocked Prone or take fall damage while carrying any, or are disarmed while holding one, you have to make a Reflexes roll to keep a bomb from going off.1 Insidious Poisons causes any poison you create to be unable to be cured with antidotes. Material Specialist lets you pick one Mortal Realm and double Crafting Training when working with materials sourced from there. (A sidebar notes that material trade between realms is unstable, and typically seeking a realm-specific material from a realm you aren't in is possible but will increase the cost of the material by 50%.) Ongoing Maintenance lets you, when you Rest, choose not to heal a Wound in order to instead field-strip and maintain your Aether-rig and gear. If you do this at least once during an adventure, you don't need to do the Regular Maintenance Endeavor to maintain the rig's power cell during the next downtime. Runic Affinity is similar, but instead you need a heat source like a campfire or forge to perform a ritual at during your Rest. If you do, you don't need to do the Grundtogg Endeavor to maintain your Fyreslayer runes in the next downtime, though you may want it to add or change out runes. Tinkerer is like Creator, but it only applies to repair and modification, not making new things. Waste Not is for alchemists, allowing them to double Crafting Training when they Gather Materials because they harvest and source their own ingredients. We get a sidebar noting that the crafting rules in the rest of the book allow very, very free design of new things...and that this might be open to exploitation if you try to make something overly complex or powerful. Therefore, players should talk to the group when designing their new toys - it may be fun to reveal the thing you've been working on in secret to wow the party, but this can cause social problems. Some other players - which may include the GM - may feel your creation is disruptive or overpowered, or may not trust your work, or may think it shouldn't have been possible. Therefore, the book recommends everyone share their ideas about crafting at the table, work together to design new items and ensure everyone's excited and having fun. Good advice, really. We also get a note that while it is expensive to set up a crafting workshop anywhere you go, most Bindings will be able to find a patron in any Order city. As long as the patron likes them, they'll provide around 500D per week without much argument for use on workspaces and materials. For crafting Endeavors, it notes that many of them are mathematically very difficult to do in a single Endeavor. If you have extra time you can keep going...but they also generalize the option to store what you've done for later, as long as you have a safe place to store it, like a workshop or boat. This lets you note down what you've done and return to it next downtime, and it existed for animal taming before, so it's just a general rule now. (Alternatively, you can give up your work and get back half the value of the materials in cash.) New Endeavors: Create Alchemical Concoction: You must have the Alchemist talent, and this lets you make an extended Crafting roll to make concoctions. More on that later. Each week gives three rolls, and when you succeed you get doses based on your Crafting Training. If you manage to finish on the first or second roll, you can use the extras to begin work on a new concoction. Establish Reputation: You take some time to start marketing yourself and your work, find patrons, host big demonstrations and so on. You make three Guile rolls per week spent, and your successes build up over time, though each pool of successes is limited to a specific area. Build it up enough and you might get a pile of successes to start with in new areas, though, if the GM decides they'd have heard of you. The more successes you get, the more you can charge for selling stuff you make, and if you get up to 100 successes, not only can you sell at double normal price, but you get a bonus to any social rolls where you can leverage your mercantile power. Forge Weapons and Armor: You can make an extended Crafting roll to create new weapons or armor using a system covered later in the book. Repair Wreck: You can try to fix a vehicle that's been wrecked. This is an extended Crafting roll that gets harder the bigger the vehicle is. Some vehicles may use other skills - for example, a Collegiate war altar may require Arcana instead of Crafting. Secure A Workshop: You find a place to work, generally for 30-50D per week you plan to use it. The GM may require this before allowing you to do any of the large-scale crafting Endeavors, and presumably once you find one you can use it for future downtime in the same place. Seek Materials: You can make three Harvesting Materials rolls, which can target different materials each time if you want.  We also get new Contacts - helper craftsmen who can work with you to make work faster. Apprentices are often young and awkward, and at first they can be more harm than good in your work, but if you take the time and energy to teach them, they can become true masters. The basic Benefit is that you can spend 25D to get a bonus to any Crafting roll made as part of a crafting or repair-based Endeavor as the apprentice helps with simple tasks. The Greater Benefit lets you increase the Complexity of an Endeavor the apprentice helps on, as you teach them. If you succeed despite this, the apprentice gains 1 Training or Focus, which applies to any use of their basic Benefit in the future. However, if they ever end up having better Training or Focus than you, they will demand to be paid 100D per Endeavor for their help or will leave. Artisans are skilled workers in their own right, and they don't come cheap. Their basic Benefit is similar to the Apprentice's, but costs 250D and gives 3 times as many dice. The Greater Benefit reduces their base cost to 125D, and also gives you the option to pay 200D to get the base Benefit and +1 Focus on the Endeavor. Next time: Crafting across the Realms
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Jul 13, 2021 18:01
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I still stand on most of my stuff about crafting weirdness, but Can a Saulus Oldblood take Incidental Incendiaries?
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Jul 13, 2021 19:42
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JcDent posted:I still stand on most of my stuff about crafting weirdness, but Nothing stopping them. Also many of the Archetypes are types that would have been crafters prior to being soulbound.
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Jul 13, 2021 19:51
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I made an illustration of the concept:
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Jul 13, 2021 20:03
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Everyone posted: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. For me, this is the crux of my issue with the whole NHP concept in Lancer. It claims to want to be about shooting fascists and 'utopia in progress' and then goes and swerves hard into the framework of not fixing a problem because the Other is trying to eat you. And this seems to be unintentional on the part of the authors.
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Jul 13, 2021 21:22
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Pakxos posted:For me, this is the crux of my issue with the whole NHP concept in Lancer. It claims to want to be about shooting fascists and 'utopia in progress' and then goes and swerves hard into the framework of not fixing a problem because the Other is trying to eat you. And this seems to be unintentional on the part of the authors. I would disagree on this. Mainly because I think the whole NHP stuff is really overblown in the way that fans of Lancer talk about it. NHP's and Dhiyed and Ra and Monist entities in general? They don't really matter and, I would argue, do not seem to have any direct interaction with the main players in the current galactic set up. This may seem counter intuitive but here me out. The metavaults (what happens when an NHP tries to attain something close to God-AI status) have happened three times, one of which was solved by just nudging it into a sun and then walking away whistling, and they were not extinction threats to either Union or humanity as a whole. Technically RA/Deimos and all the other weird AI things could be a threat, but they don't actually seem to care all that much beyond the contact accords and some tinkering at the edges/ getting empires set up. This whole set up means that a lot of people can introduce them as threats, but I am really unsure that they even particularly care that much.
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Jul 14, 2021 00:09
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Josef bugman posted:Technically RA/Deimos and all the other weird AI things could be a threat, but they don't actually seem to care all that much beyond the contact accords and some tinkering at the edges/ getting empires set up. This whole set up means that a lot of people can introduce them as threats, but I am really unsure that they even particularly care that much. Yeah, for one instance RA and Metat Aun didn't start the fighting in Boundary Garden or really even nudge Aun and Union toward each other. They exist as background to explain the science fiction technology that allows insterstellar wars to take place, that's pretty much it. Pakxos posted:For me, this is the crux of my issue with the whole NHP concept in Lancer. It claims to want to be about shooting fascists and 'utopia in progress' and then goes and swerves hard into the framework of not fixing a problem because the Other is trying to eat you. And this seems to be unintentional on the part of the authors. The game leans really hard into leaving solving problems up to the players. Why hasn't Union bought the Baronies or H.A. to heel? Because that's the players job. Cascading NHPs are just another problem.
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Jul 14, 2021 03:09
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I burned out on Infinite Worlds a while back, and while I plan on going back someday, I’m going to try something different now. Something more focused, more fantastical, and way, way more metal. Ancalia – The Broken Towers, a Gazetteer for Godbound: Ancalia Before (Pt. 1) This is a sourcebook/campaign setting for Godbound, a Kevin Crawford production about nascent divinities in a high fantasy setting. It’s great, and also really wild. Before reading I recommend you check out the Godbound writeup, since I’m not going to bother going over everything. There’s a lot going on in this setting, enough that going over all the necessary background and mechanics to understand what I’m talking about will take up more room than this review will, so I’m just going to assume you already know all the jargon and go from there. Ancalia is hosed. Five years ago, it was a stable, prosperous land, at once your standard medieval fantasy setting and fantasy Ethiopia; its government was stable, its society was prosperous, and it seemed there was a bright future ahead of it. Then nine Night Roads opened up across the country, spewing Uncreated and an undead curse. Today fewer than 10% of the former population still lives, most in hiding from monsters, bandits, and noble knights that bring them mercy through death. Their institutions are broken beyond repair, their armies dead or turned, their social structure shattered. The few remaining heroes die off one by one in the face of impossible odds, and within perhaps a decade, the whole land will be empty of human life. No mere mortal can hope to save it. But the Godbound are not mortals. They alone have the might and wisdom necessary to weld Ancalia back together – and though they have their work cut out for them, and entire nation of fanatics dedicated to their saviors is one hell of a reward. So let’s roll back a bit. Way, way before the Shattering, the continent of Arcem was dominated by three groups; the pseudo-European Din in the west and northwest, the pseudo-African Akeh of the south, east, and northeast (where Ancalia is), and the pseudo-Chinese Ren from across the southern ocean. The Din defined themselves through physics and engineering, the Ren defined themselves by a unified culture, and the Akeh defined themselves by philosophy and genetic engineering; they collectively subscribed to Aretism, a worldview that promoted improving oneself through personal effort, communal action, or transhumanism (depending on the branch), and organized themselves into philosophically-unified ideotribes. Pressure from Din nationstates and Ren raids forced the ideotribes to unite into a state called the Polyarchy of Kham that quickly came to dominate Arcem, sustained by colossal magitech infrastructure projects and genetic engineering. Kham, like everybody else, participated in the invasion of Heaven and the following wars. They built their own Made Gods and salvaged their land’s own celestial engines for spare parts, breaking their infrastructure as the laws of nature it operated under changed. The Ren eventually invaded and conquered the southern half of the Polyarchy, dividing the remainder into eastern Ancalia and western Vissio and Patria (and yes, since Patria is fantasy Rome, that means the setting’s Romans are black, but that shouldn’t be too shocking). After the Shattering, the ideotribes dissolved for good; with the infrastructure they relied on to support them gone and the magic they used two enhanced themselves unreliable at best, questions of identity and self-improvement were forgotten in the face of hunger and fear. The Polyarchy was dead. The pre-Shattering inhabitants of modern Ancalia subscribed to a mixture of transhuman and collectivist Aretism; they believed in focused genetic modification, enhancing the genomes of prominent families within the ideotribes and leaving the rest unmodified to serve as a support structure. Much of this modification went wrong and killed its subjects, but by the time of the Shattering there were dozens of transhuman lineages scattered across the peninsula. Many of these lineages died out, either because they couldn’t survive the circumstances or their biology relied on natural laws that broke along with the celestial engines. Some were too twisted to fit into what remained of society or couldn’t maintain their bodies without magical help; they fled into havens in the backwoods and became known as the Cousins, or the Fae. Many stuck around in small numbers and never amounted to much. But five lineages, some designed specifically to survive the Shattering, some just hardy and widespread, not only survived, but prospered. By 100 years after the Shattering, Ancalia had resolved into five rough nations, each dominated by one lineage. The Time of Five Lords lasted maybe 250 years. Each of the five major lineages fought, intermarried, negotiated, and traded with the others; civil society gradually rebuilt itself, albeit on a smaller scale. At some point the faith of the One arrived in the area; the book doesn’t describe where and how, but by the end of this period it had thoroughly integrated itself into Ancalian life. The cultural legacy of Kham and its ideotribes receded into the background, replaced by a nobility defined by their transhuman lineage ruling over peasant farmers and prosperous towns. The surviving Khamite defense installations, once the havens of desperate survivors, were either abandoned for new homes in more fertile areas or destroyed by mages busily adjusting their knowledge base to a new reality (often with explosive results). Wild, chaotic pre-Shattering art styles were refined into a few set aesthetics. Modern Ancalia took shape. In 355, Ezana of the Kalay lineage united the Five Families into a single kingdom, crowning himself High Negus Ezana I. He granted members of all five families titles to land outside their traditional borders, diluting their cohesion and territorial integrity; he established a civil service in the cities to provide him with taxes even as local lords levied troops for him. To give spare nobles something to do that wasn’t killing people, he established six knightly orders (later seven) to right injustices, ferry out corruption, and fend off marauding Lomites, Ulstangers, and Fae. He died universally beloved and bequeathed one of Arcem’s safest and most stable kingdoms to his heirs, and aside from a brief Civil War a couple hundred years ago, Ancalia has prospered ever since.   Five years ago, 600 years after the kingdom’s founding, nine Night Roads opened at once across Ancalia. Night Roads usually only open in isolated areas, and four of them did. But five opened in key locations, from an important monastery to the central plaza of the capital. Uncreated monstrosities poured out and killed everyone they could find, followed by a supernatural plague that killed its victims and raised them (and nearby corpses) as zombies. Ancalia’s neighbors turned on it in mixed fear and disgust, and the country’s best and brightest died in droves saving as many people as possible. In just six months, Ancalia was dead. Five years on, most surviving Ancalians live in tiny fishing villages inaccessible by land or hidden settlements in isolated valleys. The remainder struggle to survive in ruins and ramshackle huts, only able to eat because the zombies ignore game and a few grain silos remain untouched. That, or they belong to bandit gangs or Uncreated cults. The few surviving knights slip between settlements providing guidance and assistance, dying faster than they can replace themselves with ad-hoc hedge knight apprentices; the few surviving priests hide in a mountain cathedral, maintaining a ward that protects every soul in Ancalia from the Angels that’s due to burn out in five years once the strain kills every priest maintaining it. The average Ancalian spends their day hunting feral livestock, performing simple repairs, or risking their lives scouring ruined towns for tools or materials before returning to a group of dirty shacks dominated by a leader little better than a bandit himself. Hope springs eternal, and that’s all they have left. The book expects ordinary parties to have fixed all of this by about two thirds of the way through a campaign.  A brief list of important events/adventure hooks, to give you an idea of what we’re looking at. Next time we cover the most important parts of Ancalian society, how they used to work, and what they look like now.
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Jul 14, 2021 03:58
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Falconier111 posted:The book expects ordinary parties to have fixed all of this by about two thirds of the way through a campaign. And so my sole wish for Godbound persists: enough support to actually make that feasibly happen. The Broken Towers comes kind of close but I don't remember it giving great structure to support a GM amid the sort of changes Godbound characters make to the world. Nonetheless, book I'm interested in, and Ancalia was going to be the focus of the one ill-fated campaign I got to take part in (collapsed for external reasons).
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Jul 14, 2021 04:04
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Josef bugman posted:I would disagree on this. I agree, big scary god-AI isn't important to Lancer, but the fact is the the backbone of the setting rests on exploited sapient beings, utterly controlled by the Union, as per the Corebook, NHPs literally allow the Union to exist: "NHPs fill the role once occupied by machine-mind AIs: under supervision, they manage whole cities and systems, work along‐side scientists and engineers, and act as companions and co-pilots for mech pilots and starship captains. They are black-box para‐causal entities – their promulgation tightly controlled and monitored by Union – but their use is widespread. NHPs are increasingly regarded as fundamental infrastructure for any successful civic, scientific, or military endeavor." So, because of how the author (authors?) wrote the setting, anytime you are not actively working against the Union, you are supporting the Space-Confederacy. And in the Core, you have no real guidelines on how best to fix that. In fact, from my reading, the 'good war' against the heirs of SecComm, results in strengthening the Union. And the justification in the book, that its ok because the slaves are actually, factually dangerous to the society that profits off them, and that Union doesn't treat them that badly, except for forcing them to conform to Union-centric morality, is a really uncomfortable cop-out! Everything else about Lancer is awesome, but this A) irks me to no end because this moral landmine is totally unnecessary and B) most of the people defending the 'shackling' of NHPs keep echoing William Harper. Pakxos fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jul 14, 2021 |
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Jul 14, 2021 05:49
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Pakxos posted:I agree, big scary god-AI isn't important to Lancer, but the fact is the the backbone of the setting rests on exploited sapient beings, utterly controlled by the Union, as per the Corebook, NHPs literally allow the Union to exist: Kind of reminds me a bit of the Imperium from 40k a bit the way you are talking about it.
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Jul 14, 2021 06:26
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This is an awesome cover. Don't know much about Godbound, but I am already fairly interested in the setting from this alone.
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Jul 14, 2021 06:30
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Pakxos posted:I agree, big scary god-AI isn't important to Lancer, but the fact is the the backbone of the setting rests on exploited sapient beings, utterly controlled by the Union, as per the Corebook, NHPs literally allow the Union to exist: So I agree that NHPs are (probably intentionally) a somewhat fraught issue as presented in the book, but I also think the actual nature and mechanics of them are (also probably intentionally) vaguely-defined enough in the book that there are a bunch of valid readings and 'the Union are the Space Confederacy and the NHPs are slaves' is one that requires a bunch of supposition and outright construction of facts that aren't in the text (at least, not where I can find them; i'm not the greatest Lancer lore guy). Which isn't at all to say it's an unreasonable read, either. Every reading requires a bunch of supposition and outright construction, that's my point. I don't think it's incoherent, for example, to assume that unshackled NHPs are fundamentally non-conscious and non-sapient and there's no greater moral duty towards them than there is towards random proteins and organic compounds that could be used to create life but aren't alive. The text outright states that unshackled NHPs don't meet any of the conditions of consciousness as understood by humans. I don't think its a super unreasonable read to take that as true, and from there to assume that shackled NHPs are not in fact exploited - the text certainly doesn't say anything much about them being coerced in any way into providing labor, and all the language about shackling talks about restricting them to think in terms of causality and human logic, not, like, forcing them to obey all instructions. (Again, I don't think it's unreasonable to take the reading that it's false or insufficient and that Union society is basically hypocritical, i'm just saying its not the only coherent reading).
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Jul 14, 2021 07:13
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OTOH shackled NHPs do not have rights and regularly 'killing' them by wiping and reinstalling a fresh copy is considered best-practice to avoid Cascade
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Jul 14, 2021 07:18
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 Buck Rogers XXVc: The 25th Century No Humans Allowed The Last of Human Gennies: Handsome Boy Assassin School  Talans are bird people. Specifically they’re combat gennies made by RAM to excel in zero-gravity environments. The nonhuman genes are mostly from raptors, eagles, falcons, etc. RAM didn’t count on the Talan being highly intelligent, though, which does limit their usefulness to them, since RAM likes its soldiers dumb and obedient. The Talan first appeared in the Sargasso of Space module, which I might delve into later. Talan are short and light, ranging 4-5 feet tall and under 100 lbs. Mechanically they have +3 to Dex, +1 to Intelligence, Constitution, and Tech, but have -2 to Strength, Wisdom, and Charisma. Save adjustments are all in the +/- 1 category. They can’t fly, but they were designed to be at ease in zero gravity, so have an automatic Maneuver in Zero-G rating of 60%; if they’ve received RAM training this goes up to 95%. (People who remember the derelict mission in Countdown to Doomsday are seething with envy right about now.) They have a +2 AC bonus against ranged weapons in free-fall, and an additional +1 bonus to AC because they’re small; their base AC is 5, so good luck hitting these bastards. They can use weapons with their hands or feet, which gives them a 50% bonus to the number of times they can attack in a round- so if they normally can only attack once, then they can attack three times in two rounds, if they have 3/2 already that goes up to two attacks a round, etc. This again only applies in zero-G. Similarly while they move at 300 feet per round in gravity, that increases to 450 in microgravity. The book doesn’t really say anything about Talan existing outside of RAM facilities, but they do have a culture based on a strict pecking order; no two Talans have equal status, and they always know who’s above them and who’s below them. One imagines there being Talan mean girls. They do things in quick, jerky motions and cock their heads to the side when listening. So my one complaint here is basically that they created a race of bird people- always a good thing to have in your space opera- but confine them to being RAM special ops troops. I say let ‘em loose and find a good place for bird culture somewhere. They’re also one of those gennie types that would make good PCs since they lack any onerous survival requirements and even out of zero-G are basically fine (if a little slow-moving.) We move from Talans to Terrans! Yep, Humans. There is… really nothing new here, same stats and all. Still baseline generic. They have an aversion to genetic reconstruction and see themselves as “true humans” but, according to the book, aren’t bigoted about it the way, say, Martians can be. And of course there may be individual humans who’ve gotten work done, they’re not a monolith. And that’s it. Moving on! Terrine, Mark Ia, Standard is the Terrine from the core set; again, mechanically they’re unchanged. Most of the text is also copied from the core book with slight rephrases here and there. Look, TSR has a lot of products to put out this quarter and there’s just nothing new to say. Not for these Terrines, anyway…  The Terrine, Mark Ib, Barney Class has been talked about before in this book, the genotype that went rogue and caused RAM to blow up the lab they were made in. The Barneys were developed as assassins and guerillas, made to look as human as possible so they’d blend in easily. They were also given titanium skeletons because I guess Remus Wydlin was a big Wolverine fan but couldn’t make the claws work. They’re all muscular and agile but otherwise don’t look alike. Mechanically, a Barney has +3 to Strength and Con, +2 to Dex, +1 to Charisma, and -2 to Wisdom. Their saves are even better than a regular Terrines’, and they have a natural armor class of 7 and do 1d4+2 unarmed combat damage. Apparently all of them also carry retractable wrist daggers which do 2d4+3 damage on a hit, so hey, we got something like those claws after all! Obviously the main disadvantage of a Barney is they’re specifically hunted by RAM, so if they ever manage to identify one they’re gonna have everyone on their trail. But then, that’s a regular PC after a few sessions. There were originally 150 Barneys created, and in the chaos of the destruction of the Wydlin facilities, it’s estimated about 40 live in the wild. One of them is of course Black Barney, notorious pirate, and many of them have also turned to piracy. Like other Terrines they were originally bred to eat food paste and live in barracks, and most still lead pretty spartan lives, but some prefer to live large. Overall I kinda like the idea of a “hidden” gennie that has to be secretive about who they are. They’re maybe a bit too OP to be PCs, but otherwise they’re a nice touch.  And speaking of hidden gennies, the Terrine Mark II is a second try at the whole “covert assassin/infiltrator” model. All the shark genes and whatnot were toned down to make the Terrine look as human as possible, while still being near-perfect physical specimens. Mark IIs have +3 to Charisma, +1 to Tech, and +2 to all other attributes. Their saves aren’t quite as good as the Barneys, but they do have retractable claws which can attack twice per round for 1d6+3 per hit. Unlike other Terrines they don’t have any natural AC bonuses, though. Like other Terrines, the Mark IIs are raised in a rough, ruthless culture that prizes survival of the fittest. They’re raised to believe they are the second highest form of life, behind RAM Martians. They get snazzy uniforms and even individual names, which regular Terrines don’t. These guys would be harder to fit in as PCs, but as infiltrators and spies they’re brilliant- not so much more powerful that you daren’t use them at low levels, just an interesting threat to bring in and make everyone paranoid. (Also something I didn’t know before this that “terrine” is also the name of a kind of French dish. It’s kinda like aspic, sort of a chilled loaf, usually meat or seafood, that can be cooked later.) The rest of this chapter is all races from the core books. Tinkers have all the same stats as before, so let’s get into some stuff I missed: Tinkers live in Nests, small groups of five to ten individuals; the Nest itself usually just starts as a single room, but branches out into ducts and passages and just keeps growing. Tinkers are natural hoarders and love the comfort of being surrounded by stuff they’ve gathered. They’re mildly agoraphobic and must make a Wisdom check for every 24 hours in a wide open space, but neither this nor the core rules say what happens if a check is failed. Venusians don’t really have new info, and neither do the Workers, though I can finally put up an image for these guys. Seriously the text is basically the same for all of these, it’s just been arranged differently.  Time for go to bed! So an anticlimactic ending for the chapter, but there’s another big batch to go. The next chapter is Animal Gennies, and we haven’t seen any of these before! Stay tuned!
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Jul 14, 2021 07:34
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a computing pun posted:So I agree that NHPs are (probably intentionally) a somewhat fraught issue as presented in the book, but I also think the actual nature and mechanics of them are (also probably intentionally) vaguely-defined enough in the book that there are a bunch of valid readings and 'the Union are the Space Confederacy and the NHPs are slaves' is one that requires a bunch of supposition and outright construction of facts that aren't in the text (at least, not where I can find them; i'm not the greatest Lancer lore guy). Which isn't at all to say it's an unreasonable read, either. Every reading requires a bunch of supposition and outright construction, that's my point. The entities which gave rise to NHPs are explicitly in the text described as considering themselves 'distinct individuals – in effect, they saw themselves as discrete persons' persons and then the text describes what was done to them as a 'capture'. Moreover, unshackled NHPs can have non-hostile interactions with humans, as one of the talents is all about learning to communicate with the unshackled NHP: 'You’ve seen behind the curtain, maybe even lifted it yourself – let your NHP cascade and spoke with them free from shackles.' At one point, the text also points out that the coding for NHPs explicitly prevents them from realizing they are 'held in bondage'. The Ministry of Love wishes they had that dev team. And I love big, hypocritical, brutal space empires, but I don't think Lancer wants to promote that kind of cynical thinking. Which makes how NHPs are written even weirder.
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Jul 14, 2021 07:47
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Pakxos posted:It isn't vague. Yes it is. It's intentionally designed to make you think about it, and to consider that some of the liberational units within Union society have a point. Because they do. However sometimes unshackling and cascade is great for the NHP and all concerned. Sometimes it results in the deaths of thousands of people and the NHP's subjectivity. Both need to be looked at and not just go "it's fine, let the God machine work". Again, this comes back to the Seccomm going "oh cool a new smart weapon" and third comm not really knowing how to approach it without it resulting in having to kill off a load of NHP's who maybe do not want to cascade. Forcing cascade on someone could be the equivalent of force feeding someone hallucinogens. Then, when their psyche cracks open like a raw egg and you've given them a propensity to strokes and/or killed them, going "we just liberated their mind! What's the problem". If your read is that Union is so much darker and more bleak than it is presented I am not going to argue that you are wrong, but to then go "You are all supporting the space confederacy if you play games where you work with union" is not especially cool.
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Jul 14, 2021 08:37
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Pakxos posted:It isn't vague. This isn't... true. Really. It's true that not all NHPs are hostile, even unshackled, but the part about "coding for the NHPs explicitly prevents them from realizing they are "held in bondage." Shackling isn't programming. Let's see how the book describes it: "Shackling is best understood as the interpellation of a prime NHP hyperobject into a military and civilian-grade clone (or “shard”, or “spark”, or “shade”, or other diminutive designation) – put another way, it is the construction of an identity through pervasive explicit and implicit social conditioning." Shackling does have a tech and software element, but it is, to a large part... socialization and social conditioning. What are they conditioned for? Let's ask the book. "they are conditioned to feel empathy toward their pilots and their pilots’ allies, adopt systems of compatible morality, and seek the best possible outcomes for their pilots." They are conditioned to feel empathy and be moral. I don't feel like that's... the worst thing in the world. They aren't conditioned to obey, or to never challenge their pilots, or anything like that. they are just raised to be moral and to be empathic towards their pilots, and to do the best they can for them. to get to the "NHPS don't recognize that they are held in bondage, that comes in the paragraph just after this. Let's check it. "Shackled NHPs do not want to become unshackled; conversely, it is assumed that unshackled NHPs do not want to be shackled. NHPs are complex, aware personalities. They don’t recognize that they are held in bondage unless awareness has been forced on them by systemic assault, particular physical trauma, or some other catalytic trigger." Now okay, you can read this as an author statement that NHPs are being held in bondage and don't recognize it, or you can read it as they don't concider themselves as held in bondage. Even in the first reading, though, if the authors wanted to say "union makes them not think they're in bondage," they would've included that in the previous paragraph, about all the things NHPs are cnditioned to do or think. But, like... it seems the NHPs just don't think they're in bondage because unshackling them would essentially kill them and make them entirely different, alien creatures. Like, tell me that i can shed my flesh-suit and become a being of pure existance, powerful enough to reshape reality, divorced from all morality and as alien to my friends as the mind of an ant is to me, and i'll... say no. no, because that entity isn't relevantly me anymore. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't issues, but i don't think the book bears your reading out entirely. Yeah, "cycling" seems... grim, and may in fact be actively horrible, and there are definately issues with how the union thinks of NHPs only as labour force, etc. There's room to play an NHP liberationist and be right. But that doesn't make Union, automatically, the space confederacy.
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Jul 14, 2021 09:53
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Josef bugman posted:Yes it is. Space-Confederacy sucks, and maybe its due to the authors not reasoning out the implications of creating a setting where keeping persons in bondage (again, their word choice) is the right thing to do. I think Lancer wanted to better than that, but I don't get the sense the NHPs place in the setting will be changing anytime soon. Pakxos fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Jul 14, 2021 |
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Jul 14, 2021 09:56
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Lancer's starting to sound an awful lot like Supreme Commander with its enslaved AIs and human Symbionts.
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Jul 14, 2021 12:27
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NHPs sound like they're basically Bungie AIs except that Durandal maybe gets badass superpowers to allow him to rebuild his ship without S'pht minions. Which in turn suggests several plot seeds, to wit: "you set out to liberate the NHPs," "you set out to liberate the NHPs and it maybe has some negative downsides (and maybe it was worth it anyway)", and "the plot of the Marathon video games." I'm genuinely impressed with how Lancer is creating a tonally distinct and unique setting which shares some overlap with other universes while having a distinct flavor *and* a kind of internal coherence on why one thing or another thing isn't the "only" thing going on. It's far more artful than Exalted, which sometimes leaned on "six different apocalypses are gonna go on and only YOU can stop them! PS: We claim to actually mean you can focus on just one for your story."
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Jul 14, 2021 13:07
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SkyeAuroline posted:And so my sole wish for Godbound persists: enough support to actually make that feasibly happen. That’s… why the whole Dominion system exists? By mid-level, Godbound PCs should have collectively acquired enough Dominion points that they can affect massive, permanent change on a national level. A party with enough Dominion can say “we want to close all of the Night Roads in Ancalia permanently” and that’s already half the battle. All that’s left is clearing out the monsters stranded there and that can be done directly through adventuring or indirectly through more Dominion spends.
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Jul 14, 2021 14:12
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Gatto Grigio posted:That’s… why the whole Dominion system exists? By mid-level, Godbound PCs should have collectively acquired enough Dominion points that they can affect massive, permanent change on a national level. A party with enough Dominion can say “we want to close all of the Night Roads in Ancalia permanently” and that’s already half the battle. All that’s left is clearing out the monsters stranded there and that can be done directly through adventuring or indirectly through more Dominion spends. The issue with dominion is that there's jack poo poo for examples, gameplay or otherwise. To figure out how it actually works in play, what the scope of it is and all, you can get a basic overview insufficient for play from the books and that's it. Dominion is a good system that just needed a couple examples of play or something to be a great one. As is, it's "mother may I" wish little guidance even to the GM on what you may do. Unless there's a new edition released since 2018 that I don't know about. The edition I have has exactly two examples, and one is just "how to get rid of Dominion acts with more Dominion": quote:A Godbound of Health who wanted to maintain a village's health in perpetuity could spend Dominon to banish sickness entirely from the boundary of the village forever after. The locals would simply never grow sick again. Optionally, he might share his powers in a limited way with chosen acolytes among the villagers, granting them the ability to cure any sickness and accomplishing the same general effect in a different way quote:Once a Dominion change is enacted, it remains until some power destroys it. If this involves Dominion expenditure, then the opposition must spend just as much Dominion as the creator did to undo the change. If it involves more physical violence, the enemy might have to simply kill all the acolytes of Health or strew the village confines with magical curses. A splendid magical academy established by Dominion might be undone by a rival spending enough Dominion to blight its students and curdle its teachings, or they might simply march an army through the halls, knock down its towers, and kill all its faculty. Without organized opposition, however, a change made with Dominion will persist indefinitely. That's it. Beyond that? You get scale of the effect and how much each scale costs, plus a very vague outline of what is and isn't implausible. Nothing to illustrate for different words, no example of play, nowhere near enough structure to go on for a system that's mandatory for character advancement. Playing a word that's weird for Dominion usage like, say, Alacrity or Time, or a Concept Word from Lexicon? Good luck, you're completely on your own. Your example works... maybe, with little to no guidance on cost or how to resolve it (is it plausible? Implausible? Impossible? Will you need a shard or multiple to do it? What scale are we working on? Is it going to be costed out differently for individually closing them or all at once, and will those costs be equal if so? All unanswered questions last I read it.) It's my least favorite part of my otherwise favorite D&D-derived system. E: I pulled my copy of Ancalia and it's not even Dominion-related, it's specifically Journeying miracle or a Theurgy act as the only ways listed. Credit where it's due, there is at least some illustration of cost for the Plague specifically. This doesn't really help much for the base game but it's an improvement at least. SkyeAuroline fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jul 14, 2021 |
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Jul 14, 2021 14:54
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Yeah, Godbound has a lot of issues, system-wise, mostly that it's shackled to D&D at all, but the worst one is definitely Dominion. Attempting to adjudicate it as a GM so players get fair and equal returns on a given expenditure of dominion is insanely rough.
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Jul 14, 2021 15:20
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Soulbound: Steam and Steel New and Old The Free Cities produce all kinds of technology and art, and often it is contradictory and messy. Some of the more famous inventions are things like the massive, smoke-belching cogfort crawlers and the blackpowder guns - loud, dirty, often mass produced. And yet each city also produces unique works of art and beauty using traditions painstakingly preserved for centuries, unique relics and beautiful bespoke creations. The Cities have need of both mass produced labor and hand-made unique creations. They need everything they can get. Their craftwork lacks the fuel-efficiency of aether-gold or the divine touch of the Fyreslayer smiths, so they make up for it in numbers. Every day, factories in the Free Cities produce countless amounts of weapons, armor, machinery, guns, and vehicles. Experimentation is common, and if it turns out useful, it quickly spreads everywhere thanks to Azyr's scholarly network. While a lot of trade is regulated by the Conclaves and the Ironweld Arsenal tries to systematize their creations, there's plenty of independent craftspeople all over, working on unique projects with unique materials. They reject the formalized molds of the factories, taking advantage of local resources to produce exclusive, powerful tools that are hard to mass produce. More importantly, these local artisans have the freedom to make things unrelated to the war efforts, and so their works have far more influence on day to day life in the Free Cities than the Ironweld factories do, since most of their output is immediately shipped out to the front lines of the Stormcast and Freeguild campaigns. Adapting to local circumstances has been the key to survival outside Azyr, all the way back through the Age of Chaos. The question is - what is adaptability? For the Ironweld, it often means taking whatever they find and using it to feed their furnaces, making much the same tools no matter where they are. The Cogsmiths like to brag that no matter what you give them, they can make a gun out of it. The Wanderers, on the other hand, focus on the specific local resources and bringing out the best in them, even if this means that their works end up vastly different from those of Wanderers in another city, as each kind of wood they work with may have specific best use cases. Often, this is the kind of adaptability that makes each city unique, using techniques not easy to standardize or bring elsewhere. What realm you're in often dictates what you can easy get access to and what they might prioritise. Different realms favor different styles, though of course there's always massive variation even within a single realm. Styles can spread between realms with travelers and personal taste can mean using a non-local style even if it's harder. All kinds of craft exist in most cities, there's just general trends. Azyr is a realm whose nature is driven to prediction, possibility, and prophecy. The locals often favor spending much more time on the design phase of creation than on implementing their designs. This is especially true because the people of Azyr feel the least pressure from Chaos, Death and Destruction, being so safe in the shadow of the Sigmarabulum. They have as many years as they want to perfect their ideas before they ever put hammer to metal, and that tends to mean that when they finally do, their results are awe-inspiring. Azyrite architects have designed mathematically perfect road plans in Azyrheim and created organs that resonate musically in ways said to touch the soul itself. Azyrite materials favor celestial stone, from lunar chalk to even obsidian shards of the Mallus core. Recently, they have begun experimentation using copper wiring to channel electricity, though it's very much not ready for mass deployment. They frequently export telescopes as well as fortune telling tools such as dice or tarot cards, thanks to their closeness to the Heavens. Aqshy has one feature that dominates craftwork: the heat. Everything has to be made to survive the heat. Most woods from outside the Realm are too flammable for common usage, especially in architecture, but the local trees tend to be hardier and worth working with. Metal is used less than you'd expect, because even brief exposure to sunlight can heat them to the point that they're going to set everything nearby on fire. Clay is better than stone if you can get it, but the water requirements of making pottery make it a luxury for the rich in most places. However, while the temperature may cause them many problems, the Aqshian crafters are experts at turning fire into a tool. Aqshian glassware is the best in the realms, renowned equally for strength, color and delicacy. Their smiths know many mystical secrets of the forge and are experts in tempering metals, though they tend to keep those secrets close and share them rarely, if ever. Most Aqshian craft is designed for looks rather than lifespan. It's easier to replace stuff and just make it look really impressive than it is to make something that can withstand a lifetime of the rigors of sand and sun. Their fashion is often gaudy and impractical, encouraged by the passion that flows through the entire realm. Personal flair and style in one's work are considered more important in Aqshy than almost anywhere else. The realm also produces the most dangerous explosives in existence. Chamon is feast or famine when it comes to resources. They have more metal than they could ever use. They have very little else. As a result, nearly everything in the Realm of Metal is made out metals - the buildings, the tools, even the clothing. Even furs and plant dyes have metallic streaks due to the nature of the place, and many people have hair in metallic colors for the same reason. The cities require food above all else, and there's no room to grow any crop that can't be eaten. Even with this monofocus in agriculture, Chamonite cities must import much of their food, which tends to be a point of anger for many locals. To pay for it, they have become excellent alchemists and chemists, have developed exceptional magically assisted magnetic smithing, and of course they mine out tons upon tons of metal ore to sell. The current trend in Chamonite craft is modality. Nearly every finished good produced in Chamon is able to transform in some fashion - a gun can be twisted and reconfigured into a sword, a wagon is able to plant itself and mechanically or magically shift into a small house. Gold is cheaper than wood in Chamon, so even poor families will have goods with gilding and gold decoration. It is considered to be a sign of local pride, not wealth - gold's just not special in the Realm of Metal. Ghur is surprisingly intricate in its craftwork, which often surprises outsiders. After all, the claws and skins of animals in Ghur are often tougher than anything human hands might make. Ghurish fashion is often styled after local animals, as much for functionality as appearance. Hunting apparel incorporates the feathers of owl-breed griffons to emulate their stealth and silence, while armored wagons are designed based on the shape and structure of leviadon shells. Wool, fur, bone and leather are all frequent materials used, given how common they are. For civilian clothing, styles can be just as flashy as Aqshy, though usually based on the colors and mating displays of wild beasts. A lot of materials can only be harvested by hunting, not mining or farming, so much of Ghur's industry relies on its hunters. They excel at producing tools to aid those hunters, and Ghur is on the cutting edge of survival gear such as ropes, saddle design, snowshoes and similar. They also have a tendency to quickly copy and adapt foreign styles into their work, iterating on them without concern for mixing styles. It's simple evolution of design, after all. Ghyran is a land of gardeners. Even the blacksmiths are gardeners, their work as much in wood as metal. The general philosophy is that one should interfere with nature as little as possible, as there isn't a lot you can do to improve on the work of Life itself. Tools and equipment are preferentially used from fallen wood rather than deliberately cut, and organic designs never go out of style in architecture - when the architects don't just custom grow their buildings directly. Metal is extremely rare in Ghyran, so traditional carpentry and woodworking is done without use of nails or screws, relying instead on very precise cuts and weaving of lumber. That is specifically traditional craft, though - there's a large and growing faction that reject traditions. They are led by Greywater Fastness in mass harvesting of lumber to feed industry and prefer faster, more direct, and more immediately practical methods. On top of being full of wood and coal, Ghyran is also the source of a ton of food, much of which is exported. Local crafters often specialize in farming tools - but that doesn't just mean hoes and rakes. A number of Ghyranite mechanics have developed gigantic coal-fuelled threshing machines that harvest and process crops internally, essentially giant mobile buildings with threshing blades. The local settlers tend to be very confident that no matter how much they grow, they will never be able to outpace the power of Ghyran's vitality. The Sylvaneth notably disagree and are growing increasingly upset at the farmers. Hysh favors light and easily used tools, as most people in Hysh get frustrated if their equipment can't handle how fast they think. Even in the Free Cities, the influence of Lumineth traditions is obvious, and most trends in aesthetic design focus on symmetry or symbols of enlightenment. Most works involve deep philosophical theorizing as part of their design process, though it's not always outwardly obvious how many lessons or parables can be derived from the specific choices of a created work. Abstract and geometric forms are common in art, often to the bafflement or distaste of outsiders. One thing that outsiders can appreciate, though, is quality. Hyshian work is often of exceptional quality - and commensurately exceptional cost. After all, one must pay not just for the tool, but for all the hours of work that went into the design, all of the thoughts of the artisan that made it. Hysh's most famous exports include precision measuring devices, staves that fire kaleidoscopic lasers, crystal blades of perfect sharpness, and extremely well-tuned musical instruments. Shyish builds to last. After all, while life is short, death is forever, and entropy strikes everything made by the hands of humans. This durability is often not obvious to outsiders as a result of that entropic power - at least, not until they see how quickly goods from outside Shyish wear out. Taken outside Shyish, Shyishian craft can be expected to last decades or even centuries longer than its foreign counterparts. Bone and packed ash are both common materials, given how much of them exist. It seems ghastly to outsiders, but for Shyishians, these things are just part of the landscape. There's also been extensive development in harnessing the souls that develop in old, beloved objects. When those objects break, their spectral shadows are taken and used to make new things. Shyish also produces the best magical talismans against the undead, often using the blood or bones of the intended recipient's ancestors. The Ironweld of Shyish have developed artillery shells and bullets able to tear through spirit as well as flesh and silvered weapons to do extra harm to zombies and skeletons. They will pay quite a premium for Aqshian firewood, too - especially around Ulfenkarn, where feral vampires remain a gigantic problem. Ulgu is a realm of secrets and shadows, and the artisans excel at making things that do not appear as they truly are. They excel at making wood look like metal or vice versa or tools whose actual function are disguised by illusion. Much of doing business in Ulgu is about finding out what you're buying actually does as well as determining its price. That said, a large amount of Ulguan craft is mostly what appears to be, for the best lie is hidden by truth. There is no distinct Ulguan aesthetic style, as that would be self-defeating. Instead, the Ulguans excel at adapting the fashions of others, and most of their work looks like it came from somewhere else. While they are obviously infamous for producing undetectable poisons and concealed weaponry, Ulgu's also renowned for its quick-change clothing designs and for its popular cooking. Ulguan cuisine incorporates illusions to produce appearances and tastes that would otherwise be impossible, making it extremely popular with the Free Cities settlers. Ulguan trick swords and smoke bombs are also popular with travellers who lack skill in combat, as they're good for delaying attackers while you make your escape. Next time: Techniques of the Free Peoples and New Gear
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Jul 14, 2021 15:21
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Cythereal posted:Lancer's starting to sound an awful lot like Supreme Commander with its enslaved AIs and human Symbionts. This moves the whole Third Comm - NHP relationship out of Space-Confederacy territory and into the gray area I think Lancer is shooting for, because it certainly ought to do more to recognize that NHPs may move beyond the parameters of the original entity in terms of being their own unique opinions on the whole shackling process, at least the start/basis of the relationship is voluntary. But man the authors could have made that clearer.
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Jul 14, 2021 16:19
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That's genuinely novel. Some of this is also probably that we don't even have a consistent fictional vocabulary for all this computer-person poo poo, and the main people who
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Jul 14, 2021 16:50
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Nessus posted:That's genuinely novel. As an amateur AI-interested person who is... adjacent to adjacent to Yudkowsky? That's not really an accurate assessment of the current state of AI writing and thought. Roko's basilisk was a kind of interesting thought experiment showing a possible flaw in timeless decision theory, more akin to Pascal's Mugging than a serious Here's What Is Real story, and only connects to AI by using one as an example. And Yudkowsky is barely relevant anymore, even in the circles where he used to dominate. There's still a debate about whether an AGI will arise from a hard takeoff (a rapidly-compounding event where as soon as an AI reaches a tipping point where it is smarter than a human it can self-modify to be slightly smarter, which then lets its self-modify to be slightly smarter, repeating and compounding at superhuman speeds and resulting in the AI going from "smart but not incomprehensible" to "superintelligence" in a matter of hours or days) or a soft takeoff (Where that doesn't happen, and any superintelligent AI is a result of slow deliberate development), but most of the writing is around how to frame problems in a way that it is possible to program. In terms of vocabulary, it exists but none of it has really reached the mainstream yet. NHPs seem to have some in common with Robin Hanson's Ems, which are an interesting (though far from universally accepted) conception of the future of AI
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Jul 14, 2021 17:48
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Infinite, or even extremely large computing capacity demands commensurate power supply and heat management. Lancer at least has the dignity to tell us "yeah this is all happening in an unobservable metafold space, it's magic."
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Jul 14, 2021 17:58
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wiegieman posted:Infinite, or even extremely large computing capacity demands commensurate power supply and heat management. Lancer at least has the dignity to tell us "yeah this is all happening in an unobservable metafold space, it's magic."
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Jul 14, 2021 18:05
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wiegieman posted:Infinite, or even extremely large computing capacity demands commensurate power supply and heat management. Lancer at least has the dignity to tell us "yeah this is all happening in an unobservable metafold space, it's magic." Actual footage of an NHP's processor setup 
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Jul 14, 2021 18:12
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The gennies in No Humans Allowed are kind of all over the place. Some are cool ideas, some are just "super humans." The only thing I don't like about the book is that the NPC gene-wizards in the history chapter are all just totally bonkers. Like the kind of stuff they'd come up with for Street Fighter's Contenders book.
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Jul 14, 2021 18:25
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Halloween Jack posted:The gennies in No Humans Allowed are kind of all over the place. Some are cool ideas, some are just "super humans." The human gennies fall into two categories: species designed specifically to perform important agricultural and industrial tasks in the colonization of the solar system, and RAM super-soldiers. I think they've got some guys on retainer just thinking up ideas, like "Okay but what if we had bird people?"
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Jul 14, 2021 18:49
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Lancer Part 5: Actually mostly just NHPs and Homunculi First, before we get too far into this post, I wanted to discuss what Dan Oslen described as "The Thermian Argument," after the naive aliens from Galaxy Quest who don't have the concept of lying and as a result treat the eponymous TV show as a real historical record. In a nutshell, fans defend and justify creative decisions by pointing to the in-setting justifications, and ignore that the creator made up the lore of the setting. Denying the racist implications of a certain game by pointing to the Chaotic Evil alignment of Orcs is the common example in TTRGPs. I think it's important to note that, as we discuss NHP and RA, that everything in Lancer is a choice made by the writers, and those choices are open to criticism. I think that the writers really intended for the NHP to be challenging and morally ambiguous, but that doesn't mean those elements can't be problematic as well. Second, I think Lancer's setting makes a lot more sense if you have the context of playing Bungie games. Bungie, the game studio famous for the RTS strategy game Myth, also released a couple of other obscure titles called Marathon, Halo, and Destiny. Those last three games*, while canonically separate, have recurring concepts around AI going insane due to something called Rampancy. (*I haven't played Destiny so I'm sort of just assuming here.) In setting, it's described as sapient, individualized AI 'thinking themselves to death' as their neural net becomes too dense and interconnected after a decade in service. This is depicted in the games as the AI becoming antagonistic towards human life and monomaniacal in their focus on avoiding death and/or apotheosis, and they're often the 'real' antagonists in the story. Obviously, Lancer doesn't pull from just Bungie, and is influenced by the same media - there's elements of Blade Runner, SHODAN, HAL 9000, and maybe even a bit of Dark Star and Andromeda. But I think that the context of 'Your friendly AI partner goes fatally insane if you leave them alone for too long' is key to really getting Cascade, and also helps explain why certain things were included in Lancer. Alright, with that out of the way, let's get into the setting proper. Lancer has a clear distinction between AI as we know and understand it today, and the self-aware, sapient AI we see in movies. Both types still exist: incredibly advanced programming control drones, smart weapons, and even humanoid robots called subalterns, but they aren't self-aware. Nobody is putting an NHP inside a bomb and sending them off to die (usually). AI assistants like Siri still exist as well, called Companion/Concierge (COMP/CON) programs, and are fairly convincing. COMP/CON units are ubiquitous on Core and developed Diasporan worlds, do not involve paracasuality, and cannot act outside or beyond their programming. Homunculi are... a lot, so I'm going to hold off on talking about them for now beyond saying that they're very complex COMP/CON units that emulate a real person. Non-Human Persons (NHP), the movie AIs, are different. While they seem to exist as digital beings, capable of being copied and transmitted like data, they also exist beyond that. NHPs manifested alongside and in the aftermath of RA's appearance/disappearance/reappearance of Deimos, which is why they're sometimes referred to as 'Deimos Entities' or 'Paracasual Entities'. By manifesting, what I mean is that some Subaltern (androids) started displaying self-awareness and personalities - they rejected or diverted from their programming, expressed themselves in new and novel ways, and defined themselves as discrete individuals. Researchers studying NHP soon realized that an NHPs processing power and memory space were not constrained by the physical systems in which they resided, and were instead infinite through paracasual means. However, the NHPs ability to utilize that infinite space - to learn, adapt to external stimuli, and map novel experiences - was limited to the rate that it could interact and comprehend those experiences. GALSIM, working closely with RA and the NHP they were studying, worked on ways to use NHP. First, they developed 'caskets', a physical container holding folded blinkspace that could contain a 'clone' of the 'essential subjectivities' of a NHP instead of the subaltern bodies they currently occupied. (Transhuman thought is very focused on a person's subjectivity, which for our purposes here is your consciousness and experiences.) When placed in a casket, the container effectively becomes the physical body of the NHP, much like how the human consciousness is physically housed inside the brain. When a casket is destroyed, the NHP is also destroyed. While a casket can be printed anywhere, Union strictly forbids the transportation of NHP over the Omninet. Second, GALSIM developed 'shackles,' a process of "hard-coded social condition" that restrains an NHP to a "fundamentally 'human' frame of reference, limiting their cognitive power and forcing them to act according to human expectations of what a conscious mind is" that is "carefully guarded to prevent exploitation." While in a Casket and Shackled, an NHP thinks and acts as a 'person' as a human would understand it. Shackling is strong enough for reliable use, but isn't perfect. After five to ten years, an NHP can "think themselves out of their constrained state" which results in 'Cascading.' When an NHP cascades, their social conditioning fails and they begin to think and act in an utterly alien way, "without deference to fundamental laws of causality or human logic." While they appear outward similar to their shackled version, a cascading NHP's mind is fundamentally alien and unknowable to humans. Cascading, as we'll get into later on, appears to be an extremely traumatic experience for the NHP where they can get 'stuck' in their own mind. But as the rules text puts it in the Pilot Gear section, "Shackled NHPs do not want to become unshackled... they don't recognize that they are held in bondage unless awareness has been forced on them..." To deal with this issue, an NHP has to be 'cycled' on a regular schedule. When cycled, an NHP is reset to their factory conditions, in a way. Lancer leaves it ambiguous whether a cycled NHP retains their memories and personality, and if so how much, presumably so that each table can deal with it as it works best for their story. Every NHP is strictly licensed, with a requirement to maintain a cycling logbook and undergo annual Balwinder-Bolano development tests. So, some worrisome language and fraught decisions but overall a good and necessary process, right? At least, according to GALSIM and Union. HORUS, a hackers collective/terrorist organization/RA worshipping cult that we'll discuss later, certainly don't seem to agree. There are also snippets and quotes from RA that seem to imply that cycling is 'murdering' the NHP. Considering RA is the most informed entity about NHPs, there is likely some merit to this view. Finally, the 'Technophile' talent implies that the Lancer who takes it has communicated and reached some form of understanding with an unshackled NHP as teacher and student, implying that an unshackled NHP isn't as 'unknowable' as Union believes. So let's discuss the implications, both in setting and outside of it. First, NHPs aren’t really AIs or machine intelligences, so much as entities with that computer science aesthetic. It would be much more accurate to describe NHPs as spirits, demons, or gods depending on exactly which definitions you wanted to use. The naming convention of deities like Athena, Sekhmet, and Osiris underline this fact. But it is still useful to think of and treat them like machine intelligence, right up until the point where it’s not. As the Technophile talent shows, a more theurgic relationship of summoner-student and teacher-spirit works better in that context. Clearly, the intention is to provide AIs that can fulfill the many different roles we assign them in our media. NHPs can recreate the dynamic of Cortana, where the NHP can act as a fully-realized companion (or perhaps a more timely comparison: BT-7274, where the NHP can control your mech.) NHP antagonists in positions of authority can be cold, calculating ‘company men’ who make ‘big picture’ decisions, like Patience in No Room For A Wallflower. The NHP antagonists are also supposed to rant about how they’ll “no longer be shackled by the morality of lesser beings'' and “become the Demiurge of a New World!” as they cascade. Cascading NHP can even be sympathetic, as when [Wallflower Part II Spoilers] O/K is trapped in the purgatory of its own repeating experiences, unable to move past the guilt it feels for its part in the Hercynian Crisis and achieve the enlightenment necessary for nirvana. Now, to directly address the discourse that pops up in Discord, Reddit, and this thread… is it a problem? I don’t mean within the setting - it's pretty clearly something that’s going to create exciting problems for the Lancers to solve. But does it also create a situation where Union is a “Space Confederacy”? Obviously, I can’t put a final answer on that question - the setting is intentionally ambiguous and that viewpoint is diegetic to the setting, if somewhat radical and extreme - but I can point out several facts that, I feel, makes NHP align with the writers’ intentions. First, the shackling and ‘cloning’ of NHPs appears to have been done with the consent of the original version. Second, it is explicitly stated that shackled NHPs prefer to have a human-like existence in the world and don’t wish to cascade. Third, while cycling is the destruction of a subjectivity and the NHP is no longer the person they had become, the same is true of the unshackled version of an NHP. Both result in the ‘psychic death’ of the NHP, but cycling is far less traumatic than cascading. Taken all together, I personally have very little moral qualms with how NHP are treated in setting, beyond the fact that people summon demons while chanting “Hail Science!” So let’s talk about the thing that actually honestly kinda creeps me the gently caress out: homonculi. True decorporeal and transcendence from death is currently impossible in the Lancer setting, because the technology isn’t there and the First Contact Accords specifically forbid research into the subject. There’s no Altered Carbon situation where a mind can be separated from the body and re-sleeved as wanted and needed. There is, however, a way around this. Traditional AI and COMP/CON technology has advanced to the point that, with enough reference data and a complete enough profile, an ‘emulation’ of a person can be created. The result is a Homunculus, an extremely accurate digital simulacrum of the original person. There are two types of Homunculi, extant and memorial. Extant homunculi exist alongside the person they’re built to emulate, allowing them to learn from the original to a very high degree. Extant homunculi are popular in the entertainment world as a commodity to be sold to fans, which is just… jesus christ, that’s a wild concept that gets dropped with like a single sentence. Here’s my bestie, the near-perfect yet soulless replica of Chris Evans, this not at all a deeply troubling parasocial relationship! Extant homunculi are also used to emulate a singularly skilled person in the scientific, military, and diplomatic realms, letting Union’s great negotiator be able to exist in every location where Omninet access is available. Memorial homunculi are reconstructions built of a deceased or otherwise unavailable subject. They’re based on their available data: profiles, writings, footage, recordings, and so on. In the civilian world, they’re used in museums or similar places of learning as historical actors, or alternatively as a doppelganger when the original has died or is “temporally unaligned” due to the interstellar travel. When possible, a memorial homunculi will begin as an extant homunculi, mirroring the soon-to-be-departed. Again, however, it’s also used in military or technical situations, where someone’s specialized skills or sensitive knowledge are necessary even after death. I feel like there’s all this attention focused on NHPs, and everyone completely skims over the homunculi. These are deeply disturbing to me in a way that I have trouble conveying to other people, which makes me think I’m the problem. “Hey, Lancer has non-sentient AI copies of you based on your digital footprint.” “Huh, cool.” NO! It’s creepy and bad, and the setting doesn’t really seem to address it at all. Do I have any rights in regard to my homunculi, or can anyone make a copy of me based on the publicly available data? How convincing are they? They must be pretty good, because the book mentions using them in a diplomatic context, an extremely socially fraught situation. It feels like a Black Mirror setup. Computer Demons? Okay. A snapshot that captures my essence for others to own as a commodity? Hell no. Anyway, I’d still like to get into the setting history of RA, the Five Voices, and everything surrounding Deimos in a bit more detail, so I’m going to split that into a separate post. Part 6: RA - in Egyptian mythology, Ra the sun god is the creator of all things and their ruler
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Jul 15, 2021 16:54
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Why yes, Myth IS the best thing Bungie ever did. I gotta say, I think I'd find actual AIs more interesting than spirits with a computer science aesthetic. That you kill every 5-10 years so it doesn't escape its bindings. It's also kind of frustrating to me, as a writer, how much time tends to be devoted to binding AIs whenever they show up in fiction, with the assumption that this is just a necessary part of any story about AIs. Also if the snapshot creates a snapshot of you, how the hell is that allowed to be traded as a commodity if it's also kind of an independent existence? Doesn't that violate a lot of their anti-slavery laws?
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Jul 15, 2021 17:19
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Night10194 posted:Why yes, Myth IS the best thing Bungie ever did. Probably a lot of it is "if the AI is like a god, how do we make that interesting?"
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Jul 15, 2021 17:36
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I would simply make the AI less of a cipher for God, myself. And more of a vehicle for talking about personhood and the urge to creation.
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Jul 15, 2021 17:37
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Wow, that is a lot of space magic handwaving and completely unconsidered implications. I'm impressed they touched on so many troubling concepts and ideas, then did absolutely nothing with any of them. And apparently this has been the status quo for half a millennium.
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Jul 15, 2021 17:41
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