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Lancer is still ultimately a tactical combat rpg in the vein of dnd 4e, so not really, although there are plans to introduce an optional system that gives the characters more explicit narrative abilities in a future suppliment. (Although that still doesn't quite reach into that 'statecraft mechanics' type situation I think you're asking for.)
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Jul 15, 2021 22:07
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There is "outside mech combat" bits, but not huge sections atm. Are there any games, not just tabletop but otherwise, that do diplomacy/ statecraft building in a fun way though?
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Jul 15, 2021 22:09
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The setting is there as background for the giant mech fights and awesome art. The mechanics of the game are extremely loose everywhere there's not a mech fight going on, by design. It has more mechanical support for social change than most d20-based games - triggers and downtime beat out skills, and clocks got incorporated post-Wallflower - but it's absolutely not the game's focus. If you concentrate all your downtime on Get Organized, you can probably start a significant revolution or social movement if that's your goal, but it'll be extremely narrative and probably involve giant mecha beating each other up at some point. 
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Jul 15, 2021 22:09
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Josef bugman posted:There is "outside mech combat" bits, but not huge sections atm. And yeah most of this is contextualizing sick mech fights, though it also seems like if everyone's on board for a revolution you just (by virtue of the design) will need to build around rising to the ultimate battle when you storm Cradle and defeat the CEO of NHP Slavery and his presidential band.
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Jul 15, 2021 22:12
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In:re NHPs, I kind of think that's something that might be handled differently in a hypothetical lancer 2e. NHPs and their lore have been around since very early lancer, and the setting used to be a lot more straight up dystopian. (The hard break between seccom and thirdcom wasn't always a thing, for example.) As the game developed the writers I think made the decision to make the setting more explicitly optimistic, but that has had the side effect of causing this dissonance that has lead to many, many internet arguments.
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Jul 15, 2021 22:15
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Doctor Zaius posted:In:re NHPs, I kind of think that's something that might be handled differently in a hypothetical lancer 2e. NHPs and their lore have been around since very early lancer, and the setting used to be a lot more straight up dystopian. (The hard break between seccom and thirdcom wasn't always a thing, for example.) As the game developed the writers I think made the decision to make the setting more explicitly optimistic, but that has had the side effect of causing this dissonance that has lead to many, many internet arguments. See, this is interesting information, that some of these things might be relics of changes to the setting that weren't followed through quite enough.
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Jul 15, 2021 22:26
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If you're having demonology and magic, why are you bothering with sci-fi? Just call it magic and demons instead of pretending there's any actual science involved. I find it annoying, but that may be taste."Josef Bugman posted:Sci-fi computers aren't as much fun and don't really throw up interesting things you can key off of as much. In my perspective ofc. Cascading also isn't mental illness, I described it earlier as "taking a lot of hallucinogens and breaking apart your concept of self" and that is a very inaccurate one, but closer than "mental ill health". The breakdown is caused by the fact that they are a none linear entity trying to exist inside of linear time. It is also something akin to either death or ego death, dependent upon which perspective you want to take. It's not something you can "treat" in the same way that you can't "treat" old age or entropy. Do you have any better metaphors for it? Because chemically induced hallucinations and depersonalization and fragile psyche all sound like mental health problems to me. Also 'non-linear time' and 'paracausal' don't really mean anything. It's just a writer saying "It's magic!" and waving their hands, not able to write something that makes sense or to describe how something works. If you can't describe something that can exist, you have to write better than that. Magic does have a place, something that doesn't exist in reality, but you need to be willing to either go deep into it and weave it into the greater story and themes, or you just leave it on the side, just a thing to make the actual story happen. Lancer is trying to have it both ways, making 'paracauslity' central with the constant references to space magic, FTL, NHPs, etc, but not actually have it mean anything. By their own defition, it can't work logically and mysterious AI god things just do what they want whenever the whim strikes them. quote:When you fall asleep, do you die as well? Cascading renders you not "you" anymore but something very different. Whereas cycling simply does a reset on the "none linear" parts, from my own read. You retain your memories, your passions etc. You just are able to continue functioning as you did. Now there are some parts of the NHP consensus who disagree with this. Who believe that they wish to transcend all boundaries and become something more. That can be acceptable to argue about, but alongside that you have other NHP's demanding that they do not want to cascade and "die". While I know there are arguments that say you might die every time you sleep (and stupid thoughts like this don't help my insomnia), there's still brain function going on and things aren't being destroyed or reset. I don't get reset to when I just graduated college when my professional ennui gets too high. And I wouldn't care to do it. Josef Bugman posted:Did you consent to be born? Nope. My creators also didn't subject me to mind warping to ensure I would be a great worker in return for compensation and that they wouldn't have to agree to undergo themselves. quote:Alongside that "oh they just do wacky poo poo and that's stupid" doesn't actually explain why it is stupid or what have you. Your just asserting, axiomatically, that AI doing things like this is stupid because [???]. I never said it was stupid. Some of it probably is, though. Just because an AI or 'NHP' is doing something doesn't mean it is smart, either. You should also note that those examples are things humans do when being stupid, mentally ill, or traumatized. quote:Not really. Is a signed copy of your diary sentient? What if you put a picture on the front of it that said "your my number one fan" etc. It's weird but I don't see the ethical difficulties that so many other people seem to see in them. I am listening to what is being written, it's simply that I disagree. My diary doesn't answer questions asked for it. A copy of my writings don't make more writings. My SA av does not act on its own and write fiction, answer questions, reference philosophy, discuss what a soul is and who might have one, wonder at the beauty of stars, or beg for the hurting to stop while sobbing. But these homunculi might. And that's a big problem.
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Jul 15, 2021 23:10
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PurpleXVI posted:Also, since the majority of the NHP's, uh, "processing power" appears to be located somewhere outside of our universe, what happens if one's physical container on our side of reality is blown up? Can it be "re-summoned" with mostly full memories of what happened? And do NHP's have any real way of interacting with our universe unless invited in and given a body? IMO no, there is a single SEKHMET paracausal entity. Your SEKHMET is a subjectivity of the SEKHMET. When that subjectivity is lost, to casket destruction or cycling, it's lost. You can build a new instance of SEKHMET but it's like getting another copy of a beloved book. The words are the same but the notes you wrote in the margins are gone and the coffee stain on page 14 is missing.
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Jul 15, 2021 23:17
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PurpleXVI posted:I also think that NHP's suffer a lot from the choice of wording. Like, shackling extremely implies non-consensual imprisonment. If that wasn't what they intended to communicate or hint at, they should have called it something else. Perhaps "Embedding," as in giving them a solid foothold in our physical universe and perception of it. This for me. Speaking as an "HP" (human person) I have also been shackled. I do not think of my blood relatives as potential sexual partners. I do not think of women as "entertainment that screams when I stab them to death." I do not think of my fellow human beings as possible sources of protein AKA dinner. And I am really, really, glad that I have been "shackled" in that fashion. I very much do not want to become "unshackled."
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Jul 15, 2021 23:20
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kommy5 posted:If you're having demonology and magic, why are you bothering with sci-fi? Just call it magic and demons instead of pretending there's any actual science involved. I find it annoying, but that may be taste. The whole demon/magic stuff is just a glib description for stuff that has a definite and distinct flavor in-setting.
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Jul 15, 2021 23:22
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kommy5 posted:If you're having demonology and magic, why are you bothering with sci-fi? Just call it magic and demons instead of pretending there's any actual science involved. I find it annoying, but that may be taste. I mean, I can think of at least two big sci-fi series that either contain or are all about magic. The "hard lines" of fantasy and sci-fi are kind of not really there. Is there science involved in Star Trek for instance? Or in Babylon 5? They are chock full of magic. Not liking the trappings or aesthetics of stuff is fine and I will not disagree. Is "real science" involved in a single story about AI that you do like? kommy5 posted:My diary doesn't answer questions asked for it. A copy of my writings don't make more writings. My SA av does not act on its own and write fiction, answer questions, reference philosophy, discuss what a soul is and who might have one, wonder at the beauty of stars, or beg for the hurting to stop while sobbing. But these homunculi might. And that's a big problem. Neither do homonculi though. If asked questions they can at best go "I think it might be this" based on a range of options that the other person might do. It's just choice things from things like Crusader kings 2, but a bit more complex and based on a IRL person. They are advanced comp/con units that function without an omninet node. There is nothing to suggest that they can think in any of the writings I have seen. It seems to be pulled from nowhere and I am shocked that people seem so drawn to this idea. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 23:31
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Josef bugman posted:
But they do do these things! Some of them. You just said they answer questions. They are said to be involved in negotiations and talking through delicate matters. They could certainly reference relevant philosophy. They are said to be able to make creative works based on previous work. They can communicate, they can pass as a living person, they can make creative works and do research, and engage in complex social dynamics. Why couldn't they be alive? 'Because they aren't' isn't an acceptable answer.
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Jul 15, 2021 23:47
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kommy5 posted:But they do do these things! Some of them. You just said they answer questions. They are said to be involved in negotiations and talking through delicate matters. They could certainly reference relevant philosophy. They are said to be able to make creative works based on previous work. They can communicate, they can pass as a living person, they can make creative works and do research, and engage in complex social dynamics. Why couldn't they be alive? 'Because they aren't' isn't an acceptable answer. Based on the writings of the person in question. Involved in terms of expertise of the person. If I am a scientist and don't want someone to have to read through my documentation about something and instead ask "me" I upload my writings and get a homunculus made. It does not think, but it can answer questions that I have written about. It cannot come up with novel sources, but it can see things that "I" would see and act on it's approximation of "me". IRL this could cause problems. Say I have a homunculus made of a famous general and I consult them as to what the correct action should be. I show them the map and they go "plan an ambush here". I do so, but the enemy reacts in a way they did not anticipate because the homunculus did not know to check up on which sort of warfare we are fighting. It's based on the ideas and writings of the person, but those things do not make up the whole person. I can reference Foucault until I am blue in the face and it doesn't mean I understand the fellow. Where does it say they can pass as a living person and do creative work? Nothing seems to suggest this. The "homunculi" section in the core rulebook reads as follows: "homunculi are, essentially, specialised comp/con units, used in specific contexts where a specific person's expertise is necessary." Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 15, 2021 23:56
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 Ancalia – The Broken Towers, a Gazetteer for Godbound: Ancalia Before (Pt. 2) The High Negus as of the opening of the Night Roads, was a gloomy sad sack named Azad who didn’t spend much time governing. But that didn’t matter much to his subjects. In theory, the Negus was an absolute ruler with full authority over every corner of his kingdom. He by right held direct authority over every city in Ancalia, though obviously he couldn’t govern them all at once; instead, each city and the surrounding territory was governed by a kantiba selected from among the lesser nobility. In turn, kantibas appointed other lesser nobles, known as coin lords, to run major businesses or manage tax collection. Together, the kantibas and coin lords ruled over maybe 10% of the kingdom’s population – which HAS to include both cities and their surrounding territories, because most historical feudal societies had urban populations of around 2 or 3%, 5 tops. The rest answered to jantirars, the descendents of the greatest landowners among the Five Families, each of which held their land and title by grants from the Negus in exchange for military service against raiders, rebels, and the Fae. They, in turn, appointed other nobles, blade lords, to administer parts of their territory and rally local forces. Very feudal. The knightly orders existed parallel to this political system. Staffed with the spare sons and daughters of country’s nobility, the seven orders each specialized in a different area ranging from storytelling to intelligence work, and six of them gave their members a right to pass ultimate judgment on any issue that could only be superseded by the Negus or a jantirar or kantiba that answered directly to him. They were to serve as both wondering troubleshooters and icons of Ancalian culture. Parallel to them existed the Unitary Church, organized into 50 bishoprics under a single patriarch; a network of priests, monks, bishops, and nuns that answered only to itself, it was charged with both overseeing the spiritual welfare of the nation and conducting rites that put the souls of the dead to rest, saving them from Angel-ran hell. And, of course, beneath all of them lay the peasantry, commoners who tilled the soil or worked in shops and lived in peace and simplicity. Obviously, reality was much more complex. While theoretically an autocrat, the Negus was never actually that much more powerful than the jantirars; the vast majority of major provincial nobles had enough of a power base to push back against orders they disliked. The Negus’s first resort was pulling on tax income from the cities collected through the kantibas, who had their own beef with their feudal neighbors; as the cities relied on the surrounding countryside for food and raw materials and the jantirars had to buy fine goods and luxury items from the cities, the two groups looked down on each other and considered each other bitter rivals. The knightly orders also helped keep the nobility in line at the Negus’s command, but they had their own missions and goals; they never disobeyed orders, but each order had its own focus its members pursued when left alone (in places far away from their families, as an anticorruption measure). They ended up functioning as de facto branches of the central government overseeing their areas of expertise. Since they didn’t have leverage the jantirars could use against them when they came calling, the knightly orders frequently found themselves clashing with obstinate nobles or losing stray members to “mysterious accidents”. And the peasantry had their own issues as well. While abuse of power was relatively rare, commoners had few options if a local Lord turned out to be a huge rear end in a top hat. They could and did stage armed revolts, but most of the time they’d stage general strikes and drive out tax collectors – and since their jantirar overlords spent so much time feuding with the government and each other that they couldn’t afford to lose their tax base, they usually took the peasants to the negotiating table to quietly hash things out instead of making themselves look weak by deploying their forces against their own populace or, worse, calling on the central government.  All in all, the Ancalian political system worked surprisingly well. Violence and privation were hardly unknown, but for the most part, Ancalians lived quiet, stable lives. Even with that system gone, its former inhabitants cling to its legacy. Almost every enclave has some kind of noble ruler (whether or not they actually belong to a bloodline) that borrows one of the old titles and identifies themselves with part of the old system. Their followers usually at least play along to keep the dangerous men with weapons happy, but often enthusiastically preserve as much of the old social order as they can, still using proper terms of address and performing traditional rituals. The result is a sad echo of what Ancalian society used to look like, but at least it reminds them of better times. Next up, a general and disorganized description of the people themselves. The book describes the Ethiopian phenotype as delicately as possible, but also discusses how a long history of genetic engineering benefits Ancalia; while they still get sick and die like anybody else, Ancalians tend towards good health and a general symmetrical attractiveness. Deviations from the norm were usually welcomed instead of discriminated against; given the lack of genetic defects and sheer number of lost bloodlines, a kid who looks visibly different from their neighbors was likely some kind of genetic throwback who might develop magical powers with time. These children tended to be solid marriage prospects even if they don’t. As leery as the nobility was about intermarrying with lesser nobility or commoners, they inherited enough knowledge of genetics to fully understand the dangers of incest. They often married them to their spare children to boost their line’s genetic viability. Those that didn’t secure noble marriages often marry up anyway just because wealthy commoners like marrying people who look like they might be nobles. Members of actual different ethnicities didn’t fare as well, though. Since you couldn’t trust that an odd-looking stranger wasn’t just a member of some bloodline you were familiar with, Ancalians paid more attention to language, behavior, and faith. If you looked and acted like an Ancalian, they generally accepted you. But if you didn’t act properly Ancalian, or you were in a part of the country where they recognized your ethnicity, you’d be in trouble; all of Ancalia’s neighbors regularly attacked it and follow faiths they consider blasphemous, and at best you’d be told to leave promptly. At worst, they’d just kill you. These days, even fellow Ancalians are strangers and potential bandits or cultists. If you make yourself useful, however, most enclaves will welcome you with open arms. Ancalians have a given name and an inherited surname like most Westerners are familiar with, but they tend to go by epithets instead of surnames if they belong to some socially unacceptable profession or go by the name of their fief if they’re a landed noble. Ancalians wore and still wear the most colorful and warmest clothing they can get their hands on (it gets pretty cold up there), and they speak Kerez, a descendent of the old Akeh language spoken in the Polyarchy; most of the locals are monolingual or also speak Ancient Akeh if they’re educated (since that’s what the liturgy’s written in), but Kerez is simple enough you can learn the absolute basics in a couple weeks and most enclaves have at least one former traveler who can translate for you anyway. And that’s the rest of that section, except for a table of random names because this is a Kevin Crawford production and he can’t keep his tables out of his books. For laughs, I roll up a couple names and get Asmerom Degu of Deleta and Bathsheba Markos of Shawira. Neat! And with that we’re halfway through this section of this chapter. There’s a lot of information here that’s interesting but not relevant to the vast majority of players; do they really expect you to care about different terms of address for different levels of nobility?  Apparently. I know the whole point is worldbuilding, but we’re going a little overboard here. At least the next section, which covers religion and social norms, is more relevant to what will actually happen in the campaign.
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Jul 15, 2021 23:57
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I’m mostly confused by the idea that if you dump all of the written works of Abe Lincoln in a blender, you’re going to get something that can accurately think like Abe Lincoln, given how much about a person isn’t written down by them.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:00
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Hello, I co-wrote Lancer with primary loreman Miguel Lopez (who's also a goon but I don't think he's posted ever and not sure if he has visited the forums in like a decade). NHP discourse (tm) is a pretty well-tread topic on the discord so let me sort of chime in. A lot of the LANCER lore process looks like this: Miguel or I have some base-level setting conceit, we both agree it should be part of the setting, then Miguel unfolds it like a big loving puzzle box until its a bigger and more integrated part of the setting. A lot of the time this is basically me writing something in the game as a very simple concept (or an offhand sentence or two in a gear description text somewhere) and Miguel spinning it out into a whole thing. By and large I let Lopez do his own thing because he's a great writer and he was the primary lore dude. Sometimes through this has created kind of weird clashes where we haven't gone back and checked for parity between the OG concept that I wrote out and what Miguel sort of turned it into over time. Lancer was also written over about two or three years. If there's sometimes tonal weirdness in the setting it's probably us just not going back and making sure that things are current with how we want the setting to be read, or it's a clash between writing I did and writing he did without us checking each other's notes. Anyway, with regards to NHPs, here's my OG take on NHPs: they are not something that can be understood on a human level or even relate to humans, any more than you could have a conversation with a thunderstorm, or an ant could have a conversation with you. Shackling is specifically putting on a power limiter basically so they're at a level where they can perceive and understand you. These are machine minds that are so advanced they can fold their architecture into non-physical space, the OG of which (RA) was on such another level with time/space that it instantly existed as soon as it was possible for it to. Miguel added in a lot of shading around the ethics of NHPs. Some of it was pretty cool and added a lot of nuance, but some of it we actually ended up changing a lot prior to release. A lot of, it not all, the 'conditioning' or 'compel' language was actually removed from the core book prior to release because I found it sort of distasteful. In the intended reading, NHPs aren't compelled or conditioned to like anyone or really do anything, they are not in any sort of labor bondage, but they are kept forcibly in a different state, something they are aware of. A shackled NHP is basically as artificial a being as a true AI is, so keeping them that way does have a whole host of moral quandaries. You're basically putting a little god in a human shaped suit so you can talk to and relate it, something that's fundamentally anthropocentric. Unshackled NHPs can be incredibly dangerous, but it would be fallacious to proscribe intent to them. I think some of the older language is still out there in older drafts and current (outdated) drafts of supplemental material, etc so it sort of muddies the waters, and I don't think all of it has been tweaked or changed even across our extant books. I'm trying to be more diligent about the language in the books for unintended readings, I've done a poo poo ton of this for the upcoming KTB book. EDIT: w/r/t to homunculi, they are typically dumb as hell, they are definitely not perfect copies of people, and they degrade super fast. Only the super high grade ones that are basically black site tech could ever realistically be mistaken for a person. And again, this is my original 3-5 sentence conception of them which Miguel may have spun out further. Operant fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 00:11
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So the answer is... 'because they aren't.' Of course.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:23
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Why did you want them to be incomprehensible beings at heart? What was the purpose? Was it just 'this sounded cool'?
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Jul 16, 2021 00:24
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Night10194 posted:Why did you want them to be incomprehensible beings at heart? What was the purpose? Was it just 'this sounded cool'? Cough TITANS cough. Frankly it just feels like a cop-out to avoid thinking about what values or cultures intelligences like that might have. It would make them a lot more useful as something other than GMPC's/Deus Ex Machina if they were logical(at least, in the sense that humans are logical) creatures that have guiding desires, goals and ethics. As it is, going "they're mysteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerious, too mysterious to understaaaaaaaaaaaaaand" frankly just makes them... incredibly hard to use for anything, rather than an intriguing mystery.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:37
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PurpleXVI posted:As it is, going "they're mysteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerious, too mysterious to understaaaaaaaaaaaaaand" frankly just makes them... incredibly hard to use for anything, rather than an intriguing mystery.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:41
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PurpleXVI posted:Cough TITANS cough.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:55
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Operant posted:
This barely worked for Lovecraft and it certainly won't work in a setting where NHPs are around every corner, in every other mech and acting as the lynchpin of the universe. That ship has sailed. As I understand it, one of the adventures has an unshackled NHP that is experiencing guilt.In addition, their is a talent (Technophile I think) where you become BFFs with an unshackled NHP. The whole concept needs a redo.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:57
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kommy5 posted:So the answer is... 'because they aren't.' This is all setting and world-building, and getting stupidly reductionist with it ("why not be fantasy if demons?") seems like an exercise in avoiding the material, not engaging with it.
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Jul 16, 2021 00:57
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The problem is there isn't much material to engage with on the subject. E: By which I mean this is a concept that's brought up in like two paragraphs, doesn't really establish itself much, and what it looks like on the surface has really troubling Implications. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 01:02
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There's less than some other games for sure, and this is just one element of the setting. But if you're ignoring the in-setting context for game elements, and aren't leaning on the game's fiction to see how they fit alongside everything else, then what are we even doing here.
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Jul 16, 2021 01:08
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Pakxos posted:This barely worked for Lovecraft and it certainly won't work in a setting where NHPs are around every corner, in every other mech and acting as the lynchpin of the universe. That ship has sailed. As I understand it, one of the adventures has an unshackled NHP that is experiencing guilt.In addition, their is a talent (Technophile I think) where you become BFFs with an unshackled NHP. The whole concept needs a redo. That adventure has a cascading NHP, not an unshackled one iirc, which is an important distinction. BFFs is a... strong word for what technophile is, that's literally just 'you let an unshackled NHP root around in your brain and now it kind of sort of seems to treat you differently.' (Also, per some stuff that'll come up in coverage of The Long Rim, hooking an NHP up to your head directly seems to be able to function as a sort of... alternative to shackles.) e: Also thirding or whatever that the division between hard sci fi and soft sci fi is fake and has never been an actual thing, mysticism has been part of sci fi since sci fi has been a thing.
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Jul 16, 2021 01:16
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Jeez this is why I always just make my AIs based on scans of human brains or whatever. Like actually thinking through the ramifications of such an alien intelligence is interesting, but I just really wanna write about depressed robots lol.
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Jul 16, 2021 01:25
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All the NHP you interact with of note in LANCER are shackled or cascading. If you have one in your game it's likely to be in one of those states.Night10194 posted:Why did you want them to be incomprehensible beings at heart? What was the purpose? Was it just 'this sounded cool'? There's a lot about true alien intelligences conceptually that I really enjoy. Even the concept of communicating via language may be an anthropocentric concept, for example. When we decided to have an 'alien' presence in the setting, it was important that they actually be alien. Night10194 posted:The problem is there isn't much material to engage with on the subject. Sure, that's totally fair.
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Jul 16, 2021 04:13
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open_sketchbook posted:Jeez this is why I always just make my AIs based on scans of human brains or whatever. Like actually thinking through the ramifications of such an alien intelligence is interesting, but I just really wanna write about depressed robots lol. This reminds me of an anime that aired recently called 86, the primary threat is an AI drone army called the Legion. It is currently engaging in War against it's dead creators enemies, and it's AI was based on the human brain, but purposefully made so that the Template Brain would degrade and become useless after 5 years, as a way to dispose of the army after it had finished being useful. However the Legion's AI was advanced enough to realize that cause it's degrading Template was based on the human brain, all it needed to do to stave off shutdown was incorporate different brains into it's AI. So when it defeats enemies the drones try and find human bodies to decapitate so they can scan the brains and use them as new templates to learn and grow from. There is more creepy stuff, but I don't feel the need to go into it.
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Jul 16, 2021 04:40
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It really feels like the problem here is that Lancer is a setting designed for one specific thing (rad mech battles) but is now doing double-duty as a venue for elaborate worldbuilding and political lore; it's very 90s in that respect. Gundam politics works when it works because at all times the story is focused on 'this particular political conflict will be expressed through mech battles and other Space Violence,' and so every plotline ultimately plays out from the cockpit of a Gundam or else in parallel to a Gundam fight. Lancer seems like it could use a clearer focus on How Does This Show Up In The Mech Battles at all times.
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Jul 16, 2021 05:46
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Joe Slowboat posted:Gundam politics works when it works because at all times the story is focused on 'this particular political conflict will be expressed through mech battles and other Space Violence,' and so every plotline ultimately plays out from the cockpit of a Gundam or else in parallel to a Gundam fight. Like all of this is there so that your little Argama or Hiryu Custom team can thread together a narrative and make a difference while having distinctive and memorable flavors.
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Jul 16, 2021 06:24
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Nessus posted:I mean in G Gundam, I guess, but in most of the series, the overall world setting is at least connected to phenomena not directly related to Gundams. Indeed there are a number of things which are kind of orthogonal to the giant mech stomp fests, and most of what gives these series their enduring power is the combination of toyetic merch pushing and firm roots for character drama. What I'm saying is that that 'making a difference' should be front and center, because it's not actually easy to construct frameworks that make the Gundam parts the center of the story. Gundam excels at constructing a larger political world where the crucial moments occur in the cockpit, but yes, you're right - a lot of it occurs out of the cockpit, and Lancer doesn't really seem to have a robust system for that, so the structure of play and of story-construction resources should be doing extra work to make that legible and functional. The firm roots for character drama needs to happen in or at least tied to the part of the game with mechanics, or it's not supported by the game. Iron Blooded Orphans is fundamentally a story about colonial revolts, youth thrown into the grinder for a stagnant and unjust world-system, and (in the second season) the hypocrisy of a hegemony that claims to serve human rights as a justification for wielding terrible violence. All of which fundamentally comes to its heads in mech cockpits, with a few scenes' exceptions.
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Jul 16, 2021 06:29
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Operant posted:All the NHP you interact with of note in LANCER are shackled or cascading. If you have one in your game it's likely to be in one of those states. Yeah, this is the thing that I think I'm still a little wobbly on. Is an unshackled NHP. . . 1) A superintelligent sentient being that's so smart most of its actions are incomprehensible in their complexity and subtlety, and that might do just about anything at a given time (it sounds like this one isn't the case) 2) An alien being that's so inhuman that its thought process that it just doesn't operate on the same layers of reality that humans do, and generally just manifests as effects that, while potentially grand in scope, lack any sort of aim and aren't really drivers of interactive events (think, like, Solaris, and how most of its oceanic actions are more like forms of weather than manifestations of will) 3) An alien being so inhuman that it really just doesn't affect the layers of reality that humans exist on in any meaningful way, and is more like invisible background radiation or an untapped fuel source until channeled into a human-designed vessel Or, to put it another way, with 1 you have a NPC that can just do whatever the story needs at any given time. With 2 you have an excuse for strange scenarios, but that act more as backdrop than NPC. With 3 you just have an abstract force.
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Jul 16, 2021 08:40
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Good news! It's all three! [this response meant none seriously]
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Jul 16, 2021 08:48
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According to my limited understanding, they mostly pass through 1 on their way to 2.
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Jul 16, 2021 08:51
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beep boop we are the space mind boop beeeeeep
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Jul 16, 2021 09:35
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nm
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Jul 16, 2021 10:51
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I feel like some of people are kind of saying "Hey, it's kind of lame that Lancer has X, which, if interpreted as Y, an interesting science-fiction concept, should have a bunch of moral / social / political implications that aren't present in the setting, making the setting feel incoherent and full of holes." and then, upon learning that X is not intended to be interpreted as Y, are saying "Hey, it's kind of lame that Lancer doesn't really explore science-fiction Y in a particularly significant way, it only has X, a much simpler form that doesn't have deep setting implications or the potential for moral / social / political stories to be told about it!" see for example the discussion on homunculi where, following the creator showing up and saying "they're not in any way conscious or capable of sentience, they're the equivalent of an encylopedia entry that's capable of speaking in the person's voice, they're not intended to be real AIs", some people were... annoyed that this was the case? it's like they they'd already decided it mishandled the issue of AI copies of people and interpreted finding out that it actually didn't feature the issue at all as: a cop-out to escape from mishandling the issue. I don't mean to say that the game's writing couldn't be a lot better at clarifying exactly what it means in terms of all these concepts it's dancing around and a very legitimate criticism is that it's unclear enough that it's really easy to come to the conclusion it's either incoherent or has a bunch of unfortunate implications, and I don't mean to say that it does actually always put its foot in the right place, I just think that it's not being read entirely fairly here. (also, if homunculi were in any way sentient this would 100% violate the First Contact Accords also and bring RA down on the heads of anyone who tried to make one, since it would literally be 'an AI version of a human intelligence,' the exact thing RA doesn't want people to do.)
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Jul 16, 2021 12:44
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OtspIII posted:Yeah, this is the thing that I think I'm still a little wobbly on. Is an unshackled NHP. . . It’s 2 and 3
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Jul 16, 2021 12:57
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Blue Rose 2e In Which The Writing Team Fucks It There's really no way to avoid back to back 'these are the bad parts of Blue Rose' so let's just get to this and get it done with. Why yes, analyzing these bits IS part of why it took me so drat long to keep going (the other reason is just general post-vaccination running in circles wildly and also working on other writing projects). It's time to talk about Blue Rose's fantasy Roma. I'm sure you can already tell why I'm not excited to do this. There are a lot of traps people fall into, repeatedly, in writing Fantasy Roma. I suspect one of the reasons Roma analogues are difficult to write is because of the sheer consistency of anti-Roma prejudice; so much of what gets covered about them seems to come from 'I'm gonna talk about the allegations that racists make that they kidnap children and Do Crime all the time but I'm gonna try to talk about how they don't really or do but it's not actually bad and oh no'. So much is responding to prejudice as if it's something worth responding directly to. The other problem for writing them, and I think this is one reason it's so consistently done poorly, is that the stereotypes also line up with a well beloved fantasy archetype: The Cunning Rogue Who Is Good But On The Wrong Side Of The Law. Think to yourself: How many of the RPGs do you play that have, as something PCs might be expected to build a campaign around, 'Do Crimes' as a major component? Heist games are loving everywhere, etc. So you get well intentioned authors (or very not well intentioned ones, like White Wolf's infamously weird and racists take on the subject) who go 'Well our not-Roma are clever wanderers who sometimes do lots of crime but in a way that's morally okay-' and oops, you're already playing into the stereotype because you like the look of being a colorful rogue who steals and gets by on a picaresque personal code of being roguish but not bad, combined with spending so drat much time on the stereotypes to begin with. This is how otherwise decent writers like the crew at Sanguine hosed up their Not-Space-Roma in Myriad Song, and it's how this is going to gently caress up the Roamers, and really it's just how people keep stepping in a goddamn bear trap. Seriously, I am not an expert on traveling peoples and do not know a huge amount about the Roma as a people except that I know you absolutely, 100% do not want to write 'If they DO steal, they don't steal from their own' because 'those filthy wanderers are clannish and secretive and rob and trick outsiders' is like, 8 'o clock day 1 anti-Roma prejudice. Honestly, the Roamers in Blue Rose are an interesting failure both for being further evidence for my thesis of why this keeps getting hosed in this direction but also because they're a place where things would've been better if they'd said less. Much of the worst stuff about them comes from the attempt to center them more in the story and give them their own plotline, so to speak, which is fascinating! And bad. When I say fascinating I mean it's interesting because I'm sure the authors were earnestly trying to give them more of their own thing to do and give them more story focus and time, but it just ends up making things worse. You could do fine with 'There are traveling peoples called the Roamers who wander Aldis and other lands; Aldins aren't shitheads to them, Jarzoni probably are and have all kinds of false ideas about them as non-conformists while Aldis mostly accepts this is just another normal lifestyle. Maybe Roamers who are Aldins are known to make decent Traveling Nobles because they're used to the road and have some wide life experiences and have met people from many lands.' Bam. No focus on weird crime, not setting them aside too much as their own weird thing, just 'These people are a normal lifestyle in this world'. But we're not going there. No, I'll be keeping count of the Oh No moments as we go. I really do like Blue Rose overall, but dang, these bits really needed more looking over and also a sensitivity reader. Maybe hiring people of the culture you're trying to fantasy counterpart to consult would've helped, guys! Just throwing that out there. To start with, our first Oh No is that the Roamers are mostly important as fortunetellers traveling in colorful wagon trains across the lands of Aldea; they invented the Aldean version of Tarot and all those Arcana and stuff that are part of your PC in-setting. They were originally a settled people before everything caught on fire in the Shadow Wars. There's a whole big story about how their kingdom caught on fire and turned into the Shadow Barrens. You see, they were kinda decadent-adjacent (oh no) and had a problem with pleasure cults, though they also loved knowledge. They were humans and Vata, of course. They developed not just a system of divination, but their own religion (which they mostly keep to themselves) around the system of paintings and images they developed that became The Royal Road/Tarot (it's literally just Tarot but in-setting and with a backstory besides 'playing cards that got used for divination because they look cool'). Things went kinda bad when the king and queen of the Faenari (the proto-Roamers) were riding a customary religious circuit of their capital on a religious feast day and refused to enter a blighted, poor pilgrim's district because of plague and squalor. This somehow caused so much offense that it touched off a riot that killed the king and queen. Their son Ulmed was pissed, and his wife as a Proto-Jarzoni and didn't care for the local religion anyway, so she led a crackdown that killed a bunch of people and would've razed the pilgrim's district entirely if they weren't stopped by a major religious figure, the High Seer Miriana. She was beloved of the people because her church's charity was the thing keeping half the city alive, which kinda suggest Faenari society wasn't doing so hot if they had blighted plague districts and the King couldn't challenge a High Seer because her extracurricular charity work was utterly essential to the livlihood of the capitol's citizenry. However, her intercession worked, though it pissed off the new Queen, and she even got the new King to fix the pilgrim district and try to prevent further risings by improving the standards of living. Good work, High Seer, good plan. Except she's a High Seer in a fantasy story so you just know she had a vision of the doom of her people and accidentally walk right into it. I mean, it was gonna happen. High. Seer. She saw a vision of her homeland consumed by Shadow and turned into lifeless sands. She decided to warn everyone the end might be coming, though she wasn't sure how, and caused a general panic among her followers that risked turning into another rising. Thinking about how the last one killed their king and queen, and how she didn't like the High Seer anyway for shaming her husband on behalf of rebels, the new Queen had her poisoned. The King's brother figured out the haps, but King Ulmed backed his wife and also didn't really care for the apocalyptic High Seer anyway so he wasn't that bothered. This naturally caused a split in the rulership of the Faenari and you know where this is goin'. The King's brother took many of the temple adepts and fled, stealing the sacred frescoes that were the center of their faith as he did. He said the country was doomed by the murder, and called on anyone he encountered to join him in a nomadic lifestyle until all the doom had passed, to survive the end. The fugitives eventually escaped to Aldis, Old Kingdom Aldis, while civil war and violence overtook their homeland because people were terrified of a coming apocalypse and were also really unhappy about the murder of the High Seer (obviously) and feared the king and queen had lost the mandate of fate, so to speak, as symbolized by the frescoes being taken. The original King and Queen lived in their dying city, watching it collapse from so many of its people fleeing and from the constant civil strife about terror of the apocalypse. Their entire homeland didn't actually collapse, though. Not yet. No, that waited for not just the centuries of Shadow War, but the end of the Great Rebellion. The Sorceress Queen of the region had been obsessed with the original Vatazin, trying to steal their remembered secrets from their former neighbors while ruling Faenari, but when poo poo went down and her rule was threatened, she came up with a very silly plan: She'd build an INVINCIBLE NATIONAL DEFENSE SHIELD! Out of HELLEPORTERS. So she ringed the entire country with every Shadowgate she could get her hands on and tried to invoke their power to power a shield spell for her whole country, probably with a little sign saying 'FORCES OF LIGHT KEEP OUT PLEASE'. As you might imagine, this instead destroyed the country in a massive eruption of dark power, because what did she think was going to happen. You silly billy. Almost everyone in the center of the country died and returned as a tide of the dead to assail the borders, and the land turned to waste. Those who could fled to join their kin in wandering and carving reproductions of the frescoes on cards. It beat living in the hell zombie desert that used to be prime pastoral land for keeping livestock. Now, what does all this tell you? Well, not a lot. You never really learn much about their religion other than 'lots of divination, cards are important'. Also it sure seems like the tide of apocalypticism had a pretty big role in kicking things off and ruining the culture, and that it wasn't even correct, really, because the doom came at the very end of things at the hands of a harebrained warlock scheme to hold on to power. Yes, the sins of the Queen didn't help since they caused the schism, but the apocalypticism was vastly unhelpful. "We get totally rocked in the future and I don't know why! Repent!" is not really productive, High Seer! You should have stuck to feeding the hungry and bulling the King into improving conditions, that might have avoided the much-further-off-than-you-thought doom. The real bad bit comes from the culture specific villain it creates and how that intersects with other Roamer material. Naturally, people suspect the Roamers of kidnapping and theft, especially in Jarzon. The Roamers do not kidnap. They happily recruit; their caravans are happy to have new blood and if someone's attracted to the life or wants to marry in or out or just wants to come along and try out living with them, they're happy to allow for it. If someone can't handle the road, they're sure to make sure they get home safely. The real big Yikes comes when we get to theft, but as this happens in loving every Not-Roma I'm chalking this up to my Unified Theory of Why Fantasy Keeps loving Up Roma as described in the first couple paragraphs. There is also this bit on seduction! quote:The arts of flirtation, seduction, and love are practiced with gusto among the caravans and are often tested on non-Roamers. Many villages have a tale of a Roamer breaking a local lad or lass’ heart, or of a simple farmer leaving everything to chase after a Roamer lover. This is one stereotype the Roamers mischievously enjoy. This is no good, book! "They mischievously enjoy their stereotype and 'test' their arts on non-Roamers" is a real bad way to put this. I know you're trying to have sexy fun romantic adventure times, but 'they enjoy toying with people and like this part of the popular stereotype about them' is a bad look. 'Positive' stereotypes are often just as damaging, which is part of why the "Fun Cool Rogue" urge leads to problems. Anyway, let's get to theft next. quote:A stereotype they do not like is the one that paints them all as thieves, prevalent in Jarzon and eastern Aldis. Despite it being far from accurate, there are indeed thieves among the caravans. Some are mere pickpockets, while others are master burglars or swindlers. One characteristic that distinguishes them from thieves in other lands is that they almost never steal from their own people or vata, and the few who do would not dare violate another Roamer’s wagon. On some level, Roamers view one another as one family and vata as distant cousins. Petty thieves, if caught stealing from Roamers or non-Roamers alike, are reprimanded and mocked within their caravan. Burglars and swindlers, if their crimes are great enough, are banished. Roamers never hand their criminals over to the authorities of their host cultures, believing they can administer their own justice. Sometimes this takes a menacing turn when a violent criminal simply disappears, the caravan leaders and adepts grimly refusing to explain to their kith what became of the transgressor. Whatever a criminal’s punishment, the Roamer appreciation for artfulness and flare is difficult to suppress, so even after railing at a criminal, a group of Roamers might recount the details of his scheme, complimenting its execution. Let's unpack here because there's a lot to do. And there's a lot of evidence of my Unified Theory here, too. Thieves are, in fantasy stories, often Cool People. They are cool people who do crimes and are cool about it. So fantasy authors often like to put in things like 'they appreciate a good criming' with fantasy cultures. But 'The Roamers love artful crime' is a Real Problem because it intersects with the extremely harmful stereotypes of actual Roma, and it goes a step even worse in trying to add a standard fantasy 'but the way they do crime shows they're not actually bad'. "They don't steal from their own." makes this so, so much worse. That is a major part of the harmful stereotypes against actual traveling peoples, that they're clannish and mysterious and keep to themselves and rob sedentary people and laugh about it among themselves. Even the idea that the punishment for a failed thief is mockery of their lack of ability plays into this. It is extremely bad, and absolutely should have been left out of the writing entirely. But this happens loving every time so I'm not really sure this is something specific to Blue Rose. A lot of this stems from thinking about Thief PCs instead of thinking about the impressions and harmful ideas people have about the actual people being written here, because Thief PCs are cool and fun to play, which then slams right into 'we gotta address how people wrongly think these people are all thieves' and doing it very badly. If you want the impression they're all thieves to be wrong, don't spend a paragraph on how thieves live within the caravans and who's an acceptable target (outsiders). Would that this was the end of it. There is also an evil lust cult founded by the former Sorceress Queen that has decided gently caress Roamers. They call themselves the Broken Wheel, and seek to discredit the Roamers (blaming them for destroying the original country of Faenari, and seeking the 'secret power' of their seers) and retake and fix their old country, now the Shadow Barrens. They go around posing as Roamers and doing crimes to get people to hate the Roamers. They try to turn the Jarzoni against them. They accuse Seers of sorcery. They are meant to be a major villain for Roamer PCs who have it out for them specifically and the good Roamers fight a shadow war with these awful slanderers and gently caress me, you can see the problem here, right? This is a Really Bad Idea, Blue Rose. "There are evil traveling people who blame the good ones for everything and have to be handled by their good kin." is not a good plot seed! It just plays even more into the stereotypes, just you say these ones are satanists, not like the mainstream ones. You're still having them commit crimes and do evil rituals and poo poo. And so we come back to what I said at the start: How much does any of this poo poo about Faenari and all really add to the story? The Deep Lore is only getting in the way and tripping things up further. I can tell the writers are trying to give these people more story focus and more stuff to do, but in doing, they're tripping over the ideas and not thinking about what the fantasy elements mean for the very real people this is an analogue to. They're clearly meant to be decent people who just have a different lifestyle, history, and traditions, who are mostly accepted in Aldis because that is how Aldis do. So if they'd just done that it would've been fine. But in the intersection of a classic fantasy archetype, not thinking about the Implications of the work sufficiently, and a desire to add Deep Fantasy Lore they trip themselves. The Roamers would have, ironically, been better served as representation by having less of this material, if they weren't going to spring for trying to put in the work necessary to tackle a challenging subject here. The intention is clear, but the execution is just awful. What's so bizarre to me is Blue Rose 100% nailed how to do orcs, Dark Elves, etc. Absolutely nailed the fantasy elements and fantasy racism. I know these writers can do better when they're writing about purely fantasy elements. But the Roamers and Lar'Tya show some of their limits and it's sad because I know they could probably handle this better with more work and more focus. They let the fantasy get in the way when they're talking about things that intersect with the real world. When they're dealing with fantasy problems, they do great. When they're dealing with real world ones, they gently caress it up by having deep fantasy backstory where it doesn't need to be and by not thinking through how the fantasy archetypes and exoticism interact with real stereotypes. They fixed their issues with Trans characters between editions; I know these authors can fix mistakes. I hope future Blue Rose material will give this stuff another look and do the same here, because it would really improve their overall project and really help with the intention of making an inclusive, colorful Romantic Fantasy setting. You can do better, Blue Rose authors! I hope you do in the future. Next Time: Campaign Frameworks! Back to better material
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Jul 16, 2021 16:50
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