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moths posted:It's more a condemnation of "gently caress your culture we know best." Nobody thought to even ask why they were opposed to the practice, or what the consequences would have been. The "superior" side acts without consent and it backfires. See also: Western intervention in everywhere. EDIT: To clarify that sounds like a great episode just yeah that behavior is abhorrent... MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Aug 26, 2021 |
# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:28 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 21:14 |
My impression was always that replicators were an advancement of transporter technology and that it’s not creating something out of nothing (except for the insane replicator mines) but rather taking X matter and reassembling it into Y foodstuff. Which isn’t a problem on a quasi1military starship that runs via some dedicated superscience reactor system, but much more of a pain in the rear end for civilian use.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:29 |
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It's been a while but I think they even warned that the procedure would break his soul. They were written off as dumb superstitious rubes because nobody cared to understand what that meant to them.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:36 |
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Given the timing of TOS I can only assume the whole idea of the prime directive as a concept was a repudiation of western interventionism.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:40 |
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NinjaDebugger posted:Replicator rations are a significant plot point a number of times, it's not like they're unlimited power even where they appear. They don't have magical engines, running out of fuel has been a plot point a number of times, as have resupply stops. Stuff like the TNG tech manual just specifies that the ship's replicators use the same deuterium supply as the warp drive as a source of raw matter. They're not creating something from nothing, they're rearranging it. Recycled items just go back in the tank. Idk if sharing fuel for your engine with your food supply is a good idea, but I guess it makes sense in the view of "hey, all we really need to make the warp core run is some matter to shoot at the antimatter, and all we need for replicators is some matter to rearrange, so we may as well not duplicate separate storage systems"
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:44 |
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90s Cringe Rock posted:Dear lord how did that ogre get into those trousers. You'd have to ask the artist: Kevin Siembieda.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:52 |
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Splicer posted:and the burning out is me making up reasonable sounding bullshit I was under the impression that 'making up reasonable sounding bullshit' was what Star Trek operated on.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:56 |
Fantastic Foreskin posted:Given the timing of TOS I can only assume the whole idea of the prime directive as a concept was a repudiation of western interventionism. I more thought it was a rejection of the Scientist Adventurer style that was so popular in the 19th to early 20th century, where anthropologists were just weird rich assholes who would roll into some indigenous community with their hosed up weird family and a boat full of servants, and would spend like six years making up a bunch of horseshit based on misunderstandings while they totally hosed up the natives society by dint of being a massive disruptive presence.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:59 |
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Star Trek definitely did some of those "Arrogance of Starfleet" episodes too, just not during Roddenberry's egalitarian TNG run. There's an Enterprise episode where the chief engineer takes it upon himself to mess with some species first contact by teaching the lead alien couple's third gender("cogenitor") housemate to read and stuff, which results in botching the first contact and the cogenitor killing themself. Even has T'Pol there as the voice of obvious, when the engineer is all "They didn't even give it a name, it's a human rights violation!" "They aren't human."
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 15:59 |
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We've definitely seen situations in DS9 with the Marquis & season 1/2 Bajor where they talk about farming or needing emergency replicator aid due to famine. Granted, with those cultures specifically there's also an element of naturalism that might contribute to not wanting to replicate everything, but even on Earth, Sisko's father owns a normal restaurant that serves regular food. So, there's very likely still agriculture on Earth, even though it's stated most people can casually replicate food.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:02 |
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theironjef posted:Star Trek definitely did some of those "Arrogance of Starfleet" episodes too, just not during Roddenberry's egalitarian TNG run. There's an Enterprise episode where the chief engineer takes it upon himself to mess with some species first contact by teaching the lead alien couple's third gender("cogenitor") housemate to read and stuff, which results in botching the first contact and the cogenitor killing themself. Even has T'Pol there as the voice of obvious, when the engineer is all "They didn't even give it a name, it's a human rights violation!" "They aren't human." I think it's less "arrogance of Starfleet" and more "arrogance of Charles 'Trip' Tucker III." Even Archer has to tell him in the end "If that's what you think I would have done, then I've set a lousy example as a senior officer" and "I would have expected this from a first-year cadet, but from you?"
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:03 |
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Desfore posted:So, there's very likely still agriculture on Earth,
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:16 |
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:I more thought it was a rejection of the Scientist Adventurer style that was so popular in the 19th to early 20th century, where anthropologists were just weird rich assholes who would roll into some indigenous community with their hosed up weird family and a boat full of servants, and would spend like six years making up a bunch of horseshit based on misunderstandings while they totally hosed up the natives society by dint of being a massive disruptive presence. And a dash of anti-imperialism too. It's a social critique, one less novel, if no less applicable, now than it was in 1966. I can't speak to how later series handled it as I haven't seen them, but I have to figure they were stuck with the concept when the original message was perhaps lost, definitely less clear to the audience.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:29 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Picard owns (how, I wonder?) a vineyard sitting on what must be a priceless plot of real estate. If you mean where it came from, it was his family's vinyard. His brother ran it, then left it to him when he died. If you mean how he "owns" it, Star Trek has always wanted to have it both ways with the whole post-capitalist utopia thing.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:31 |
How the economy works or doesn't work in Trek has been retconned so many different times by so many different interpretations that the only real way any of it sticks together anymore is if you just assume that human economical motivations have changed to such a sufficient degree that things like this actually make sense in-universe. Why does Picard have this primo real estate in France? Because nobody else wanted it and he had a family claim. Why does nobody else want it? Because human desires in the metropole have changed sufficiently post-scarcity as to make it so. Also the Federation is gigantic and there are hundreds of colonies probably throwing free real estate at anyone who wants to leave the comfortable life on Earth
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:36 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Picard owns (how, I wonder?) a vineyard sitting on what must be a priceless plot of real estate. I put stuff like this down to the occasional mention of "Federation Credits." Even in a post-scarcity society that can replicate any consumer good you could ever want and focuses on allowing all its citizens to self-actualize however they want, there's only so much, say, arable land in wine-producing regions on earth and if your life's dream is to produce wine in a traditional eight century old manner, that's great, but it's still X hectares of land that can't be used for my dream of building a skate park that covers all of western Europe or whatever, so presumably the Federation must have some equitable means of managing who gets to do what. (The more likely explanation, of course, is that Star Trek writers occasionally forget that whole "we don't use money anymore" thing, but still.)
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:40 |
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In the Cards posted:JAKE: Come on, Nog.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:43 |
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I'm pretty sure this is the coldest take possible but I think Star Trek's ethos has a lot of good ideas that aren't really thought out all that well or are just used in the absolute dumbest way possible to make a conflict for a half hour time slot. Like the prime directive is definitely supposed to be an anti-imperialist idea which is good but they really don't think about it all that well and use it just to inject drama even if it doesn't make a lot of sense and goes against the obvious intent behind it. Like the top example to me is there's Who Watches the Watchers which is like the prime "whoops we hosed up trying to observe a culture" storyline where a bunch of poo poo goes wrong when folks trying to secretly watch people on a planet get discovered. They have this whole prime directive crisis when they try to memory wipe people and it doesn't quite work and a bunch of poo poo gets interpreted as religious experiences and they gently caress everything up as basically a cult springs up around Picard. There's a big dramatic bit where there's someone trying to convince Picard to resolve the situation by pretending to be a god for them and he doesn't want to on moral grounds, but the whole episode ends when they do the drat thing they should have done in the first place which is just sit down with the native people of the planet and explain to them what happened, apologize for the mixup, and move on.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:51 |
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theironjef posted:Star Trek definitely did some of those "Arrogance of Starfleet" episodes too, just not during Roddenberry's egalitarian TNG run. There's an Enterprise episode where the chief engineer takes it upon himself to mess with some species first contact by teaching the lead alien couple's third gender("cogenitor") housemate to read and stuff, which results in botching the first contact and the cogenitor killing themself. Even has T'Pol there as the voice of obvious, when the engineer is all "They didn't even give it a name, it's a human rights violation!" "They aren't human." The cogenitors name was Charles and their entire gender was kept as slaves. As much as it pains me to say, Florida Man was 100% right. gently caress Captain Archer.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:55 |
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There's also the thinly-veiled metaphor for Vietnam episode where the lesson is "it's sad, but we should totally send more weapons to Vietnam."
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:58 |
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Star Trek has trouble distinguishing between imperial capitalism and just, y'know, refusing to give a shipment of self-sealing stem bolts to slavers.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 16:59 |
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GimpInBlack posted:I put stuff like this down to the occasional mention of "Federation Credits." Even in a post-scarcity society that can replicate any consumer good you could ever want and focuses on allowing all its citizens to self-actualize however they want, there's only so much, say, arable land in wine-producing regions on earth and if your life's dream is to produce wine in a traditional eight century old manner, that's great, but it's still X hectares of land that can't be used for my dream of building a skate park that covers all of western Europe or whatever, so presumably the Federation must have some equitable means of managing who gets to do what. Presumably they figured out how to genetically enhance themselves to be less clearly rampantly greedy, before banning the tech.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 17:17 |
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TG As An Industry: Gosh, Another Page of Star Trek
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 17:21 |
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Cessna posted:There's also the thinly-veiled metaphor for Vietnam episode where the lesson is "it's sad, but we should totally send more weapons to Vietnam." A Private Little War is one of my favorite TOS episodes, specifically because it shows that Kirk is a fallible human, and even in this supposedly enlightened age of Trek people are susceptible to really bad ideas. I can't be certain about the writer's intent, but I doubt it's that.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 17:22 |
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actually3raccoons posted:A Private Little War is one of my favorite TOS episodes, specifically because it shows that Kirk is a fallible human, and even in this supposedly enlightened age of Trek people are susceptible to really bad ideas. Well said. It's also fascinating as a time capsule of the 60s Cold War Kennedy "send advisors" mentality.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 17:34 |
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LongDarkNight posted:The cogenitors name was Charles and their entire gender was kept as slaves. As much as it pains me to say, Florida Man was 100% right. gently caress Captain Archer. Meh it's just bullshit sci-fi catch 22 scriptwriting. Think they're so clever for creating a "This species HAS to keep slaves. They're GENETICALLY slaves" thing then standing back and watching people argue about it. It's better to just reject the premise entirely. gently caress you for creating a genetically justified slave species, Enterprise screenwriters.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 17:38 |
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Glagha posted:I'm pretty sure this is the coldest take possible but I think Star Trek's ethos has a lot of good ideas that aren't really thought out all that well or are just used in the absolute dumbest way possible to make a conflict for a half hour time slot. Turns out, when you have to churn out a new story every week, they're mostly not going to be brilliant philosophical treatises. Especially when they're for the average person who just wants to watch cool space people have drama.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 18:18 |
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So, um, how about that Avatar RPG then? $7m funding for a PbtA game? Not as much as for a cartoon about Critical Role, but still, is it going to make people notice more? Or just result in confused hobby entrants?
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 18:24 |
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theironjef posted:Meh it's just bullshit sci-fi catch 22 scriptwriting. Think they're so clever for creating a "This species HAS to keep slaves. They're GENETICALLY slaves" thing then standing back and watching people argue about it. It's better to just reject the premise entirely. gently caress you for creating a genetically justified slave species, Enterprise screenwriters. Looking up stuff about this episode and it’s discourse mostly just makes me real mad at both the writers and audience.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 18:42 |
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homullus posted:TG As An Industry: Gosh, Another Page of Star Trek
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 18:55 |
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theironjef posted:Meh it's just bullshit sci-fi catch 22 scriptwriting. Think they're so clever for creating a "This species HAS to keep slaves. They're GENETICALLY slaves" thing then standing back and watching people argue about it. It's better to just reject the premise entirely. gently caress you for creating a genetically justified slave species, Enterprise screenwriters. It's worse than Alien Nation's tri-gendered plotlines, I guess? I seem to remember those still being bad... Like, didn't they portray the 3rd gendered person in AN (the character was a janitor) as being weaker and possibly less intelligent than the male/female analogues, or am I wrong?
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 19:03 |
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Halloween Jack posted:Replicators are more practical than having starships carry food supplies and operate kitchens, but you're still condensing matter from energy, which is insanely wasteful. (Dilithium deposits must comprise a significant percentage of the potential energy of the entire universe.) Throughout the series it appears that most people still eat "real" food, preferably without importing it from across the galaxy. Replicating and distributing food to millions or billions of starving people must be unbelievably expensive compared to growing food and shipping it.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 19:06 |
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hyphz posted:So, um, how about that Avatar RPG then? $7m funding for a PbtA game? Not as much as for a cartoon about Critical Role, but still, is it going to make people notice more? Or just result in confused hobby entrants? Masks is perfectly legible as a system for new players, and the Avatar RPG is looking a lot like a greebled Masks. There's no reason to believe the people brought on board by the Avatar RPG will be any more confused than they would be if they started on D&D, which is only an easy entry if you have someone at the table who already knows how to play. (Granted, D&D is never a super hard entry, because so much of its tropes are now part of popular culture and video game design)
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 19:40 |
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OK as much as I love star trek chat - and I've watched all of it and recently re-watched a lot of it and have a lot to say about star trek - this really has gone on long enough. There are star trek threads in GBS and TVIV, and also the trad games chat thread is there for non-trad-games chat with your fellow TGers - so it's time to put this thread back on its rails, please. Kindly post about things relevant to the trad games industry, thanks!
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 19:40 |
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Kestral posted:Masks is perfectly legible as a system for new players, and the Avatar RPG is looking a lot like a greebled Masks. There's no reason to believe the people brought on board by the Avatar RPG will be any more confused than they would be if they started on D&D, which is only an easy entry if you have someone at the table who already knows how to play. A lot of it will depend on what's in the adventure books. I've never really seen many of these for PbtA.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 20:31 |
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Hello TG friends! I have recently stumbled into a job in the board game industry totally by chance and found this thread. Does anyone know about any good blogs or podcasts about the industry that would be helpful for someone new to it? Digging into stuff like mechanics, playtesting, factory/production info, advertising, etc. would definitely be helpful. And if anyone else is in the industry and has tips for people starting out, that would be appreciated as well.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 20:44 |
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Speaking of that Avatar KS, is that company legit? I see that this is their 3rd project, but I'm not sure if the previous ones even shipped or not. Insight?
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 20:57 |
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EdsTeioh posted:Speaking of that Avatar KS, is that company legit? I see that this is their 3rd project, but I'm not sure if the previous ones even shipped or not. Insight? They're a real company who makes real games, yes.
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 21:06 |
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EdsTeioh posted:Speaking of that Avatar KS, is that company legit? I see that this is their 3rd project, but I'm not sure if the previous ones even shipped or not. Insight? Masks shipped. You can buy it right now on Amazon. Root is "almost at the printers".
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 21:07 |
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# ? May 26, 2024 21:14 |
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Oh, I didn't realize they did that new version of Masks; very good; getin' in this KS. Thanks guys!
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# ? Aug 26, 2021 21:09 |