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Cooked Auto posted:I mean it works in some cases but the idea just gives me feelings of dread after seeing it so badly executed. I thought N2 was Infinity?
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Jan 5, 2022 04:53
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Oh yeah, I forgot it was also called that.  In this case I meant Neotech 2. Which is also shortened as N2.
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Jan 5, 2022 11:19
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Nessus posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but other than the diplomacy, isn't that Spike Spiegel? See, that's the fun part of career paths, the most unlikely ones create Protagonists.
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Jan 5, 2022 13:20
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Infinity RPG You've Got The Looks, I've Got The Brains The end of the 21st century was one of great economic crisis, triggering the collapse of many Western nations. What was born from their ashes were eager, rising corporate powers. Seven multinational conglomerates declared themselves sovereign entities in short sequence, forming the Incorporated States, infamously led by Vel-Amarco Industries, which purchased Minami-kojima Island from Japan and used it as a forward base to conquer American Samoa in a brutal paramilitary coup when it became clear that the USA was on the way out and couldn't defend its holdings. After all, Vel-Amarco was a major tuna exporter, and that was 95% of the island's economy. Unfortunately for their plans and fortunately for...well, probably everyone else, O-12 had recently been formed and was already worried about the danger to world stability that the Incorporated States represented. Even more fortunately, they had a Samoan general, Brigadier General Talia Gabbard, ready to defend her home, and Samoa, as it turns out, had the highest per capita number of enlisted soldiers of any US territory. Gabbard worked with O-12 to gather up Samoan soldiers from the various American branches of service, then coordinated with the newly formed PanOceania to liberate Samoa from its invaders at the same time that O-12 had convinced Yu Jing to enact a hostile takeover on Vel-Amarco's Asian holdings. When it all ended, the plan was for Samoa to join PanO, Minami-kojima to belong to Yu Jing and O-12 to no longer need to worry about the Incorporated States. The operation has entered history as Red Friday - not due to bloodshed but because it utterly bankrupted Vel-Amarco. It took only six hours to utterly destroy the company and free Samoa, and everyone else got the message: you want to be a nation, expect to be treated like one, including being a valid target for war. The other Incorporated States chose to negotiate a settlement with O-12 that would form the foundation of the M-CORP laws. These laws were derived from thirty-seven seperate agreements and formed a complex web of rules and regulations designed to prevent another Incorporate State fiasco. It essentially killed the idea of global conglomerates as powers of their own in an effort to respect the national interests of O-12 member nations by forcing corporations to honor and obey local laws and taxes in each of their facilities separately. This meant that megacorporations could attempt to gain a monopoly in a limited region or could operate globally, but would have great difficulty doing both. It was a system that didn't take into account the burgeoning growth of Maya, however, which caused an explosion of small, competitive companies and coops that fought well against the older and less agile megacorporations. As colony efforts expanded, it soon became clear that Earth's megacorps had no real ability to expand with them under the M-CORP laws, and that if big business was going to remain a concept, it would have to change for the times. The first of the new breed of businesses that would become known as hypercorporations was Xperydes Multi-National, a biotech firm that saw a hidden opportunity in the M-CORP laws. Xperidyes chose to go against the standard corporate structure in favor of a fluid network of subsidiary companies, many of them very small but taking advantage of quantronic communications and remote work to rapidly shift focus to whichever one was in the place to make the most money at a given time, taking advantage of changing local laws. This was the core of the hypercorporate infrastructure, and made it very easy for Xperydes to diversify into many different fields. It renamed itself Xperydes Omni-National, launching the Omni-Sided Platform to offload a good deal of its work onto consumers by serving as a marketplace for goods and services of all kinds under the banner of subsidiary companies. Working for Xperydes and shopping through them meant belonging to a transnational community with neither borders nor national ties and having access to any goods you might want, if you could pay. Brand identity and getting people to care about it wasn't a new idea, but the Omni-Sided Platform took it further than ever before. Members were referred to as Loganto, and were made legal subsidiaries of Xperydes, which worked very well under the M-CORP loopholes they were using. O-12's Bureau Ganesh initially felt great concern over the danger of Xperydes becoming another separatist corporation, but it soon became apparent that this was something new and different. It had no interest in claiming land nor in achieving independence from the nations of the world. Rather, their corporate structure was highly contingent on local laws to operate their subsidiaries - without the O-12 nations and their citizens, the entire system would fail to work. Bureau Ganesh decided not to try and fix the M-CORP loopholes, but rather to endorse and commend this new system. Soon, other corporations mimicked the success of Xperydes, and this is now the form that corporate power tends to take in the Human Sphere. It's not great, and capitalism still causes a ton of problems, but it's hosed up in new and different ways. There are still limited-scale companies in the Human Sphere that draw strict lines between employee and consumer. They tend to be much less powerful than the hypercorps, but also don't need to spend tons of money on ensuring everyone involved is obeying the M-CORP laws. They tend to be straightforward, simple and highly specialized companies, and they're especially common on Ariadna, where they're seen as normal. Megacorporations also still exist, but are almost always limited to existing within a single nation and making a ton of money there and nowhere else. For example, Moto.tronica has massive holdings in all of PanO's planets, but sells to almost no one outside PanOceania. Beyhan Resources Incorporated is based on Bourak and largely does not operate elsewhere, though its mercenary subsidiary Kaplan Tactical Services travels often. Megacorporations tend to be quite focused on a few key business fields, but are large enough to hold power within their nation's political arena. If they have any presence outside that nation, it is likely only as storefronts rather than manufacturing, to avoid M-CORP breaches. Hypercorps...well, they transcend borders and factions, and joining one is pretty much joining a lifestyle cult. They offer the chance to streamline your entire existence, never needing to do anything but rely on the trusted brands of your corporation's Omni-Sided Platform. You're welcome to purchase things elsewhere...but why would you? It's so easy, elegant and cost-effective to rely on your employer-slash-provider for everything! You can travel wherever you want on corporate vessels and know you'll always be dealing with fellow Logantos handling all aspects of your travel, your business and even your entertainment. No matter where you are, you're home, and the company will provide legal services to make sure you know what laws apply to you wherever you happen to be. Life inside a hypercorporation means the brand is omnipresent, but otherwise it's fairly similar to life outside it. Everything you could possibly want is probably available as part of the corporate brand, and while exclusivity isn't forced, the corps take pride in being the most appetizing option on offer and giving ways to integrate their entire brand experience into your life and quantronic halo. They offer geists to the children of Logantos at a discount, and while O-12 independent researchers have found no proof that geist manufacturer is linked to future spending recommendations, most corps religiously believe that the two are connected. Besides, they don't like the idea of a Loganto putting that much trust in a competing product. Corp-funded schools often have excellent reputations, which they play up to their Logantos (and grant preferential admission to them, too). There's a near 100% pipeline from corporate schooling to a corp job. Every step of the way is prepared, and it's never forced. It's not slavery. It is, however, very harsh on the Logantos. Yes, being high rank in the company will get you a ton of benefits, but it's a hierarchy, and most people aren't at the top. Competition between Logantos is often terrifyingly vicious, and corporate life is a world of backstabbing, lies and political intrigues, full of theft and betrayal. The corporations ignore all of the suffering this causes unless it impacts their profits, and while past accomplishments are remembered, what really matters is what you're doing now to gain favor and status, so it's all too easy for Logantos to backslide and fall down the ladder if they aren't careful. Everything comes down to how much profit you're bringing to the table, and if you're not valuable, well, gently caress off. Most non-Logantos look at this kind of life and are appalled, but the Logantos usually consider it quite fair. They see corporate power as a true meritocracy, where results and skill matter more than anything else and hard work is rewarded. Which is technically true if you define hard work the right way, I guess, but it's very much a meatgrinder. Logantos feel brand loyalty often on par with or above national identity. Not at first, of course - at first it's just like having a favorite sports team. But by the time that team has provided for your education, your lifestyle and your current job, well, it's where you belong. It's who you are. Loganto status is not the same as national citizenship and is a different legal thing. Indeed, many corporations (especially megacorps) encourage active participation in civic duty and strong national identity. For hypercorps, though, the brand comes first. Always. While most companies aren't the same as spy agencies, they all engage in corporate espionage that crosses national borders, and bribery, extortion or blackmail are all common within corporate politics. It shouldn't be surprising, then, for PCs to be involved in corporate espionage or to serve as corporate agents as ruthless and dangerous as any spy. The corps are also happy to hire freelance agents or mercenaries when they need to, for untraceable or deniable work. Many of them also maintain clandestine programs to ensure their data is safe and private, often involving agents known as confidentes, high-ranking Logantos who are always watching for a chance to take down competitors. Officially, they're scouts that look for new business opportunities and recruits, but unofficially they often serve as a kind of secret police, engaged in corporate espionage and counterintelligence, wielding their power to threaten anyone in the way of their corporate masters. We get two sample corps a PC might work for, too! The first is Yu Jing Interspace Trust Corporation, or YJITC. By the end of the NeoColonial Wars, they were a massive megacorp - a Yutang-based company that owned over two dozen astroports and one of the three biggest international container shipping concerns running. For a time, they were content to just do shipping, but 15 years ago, things changed. YJITC began rapidly buying up other companies and restructuring itself into a hypercorp. They purchased over 150 international businesses and were revealed to be a front for the Yanjing - and therefore the Yu Jing government. While O-12 had been preparing to quietly prosecute YJITC under the M-CORP laws, the revelation of their government ownership by the Qingdao Report news agency ended that plan, as it made clear they were operating under national backing. O-12 maintains a very close eye on YJITC, however, as do most of their member nations. YJITC is a bit of an oddity for a hypercorp, with only a small and highly exclusive collection of Logantos who are quite secretive. While many believe this is a remnant of their corporate culture from their megacorp days, it's also possible that this is related to Yanjing control over the company. It is widely suspected that most of the Logantos are confidentes, engaged in not only corporate espionage but also military espionage. It also maintains a huge and well-funded Department of Public Affairs, which goes all-in on PR in a way similar to most corporate PR departments but much larger, as they are concerned with saving face not just for TJITC but, by extension, the StateEmpire of Yu Jing, and they are authorized to use any means necessary to do it. Our other is, predictably, Xperydes Omni-National, which remains a big deal. It's not just the oldest, it's probably still the most powerful of the hypercorps, maintaining a huge lineup of subsidiaries. Aigletech produces custom geists with patented learning algorithms that are popular across the Sphere, and which they claim are completely tamper-proof. (Obviously, a number of hackers consider this a challenge.) Hesperya Consulting is essentially a private intelligence service, offering advice on business, vacation planning, real estate ventures and more - even military work, if requested. They don't do much but provide information and gather it, but it's usually better not to think about where they get the info. Ladon Security Services is where you go if you want guns - they used to just be Xperydes' internal security team, supplemented by the purchase of a mercenary group to expand their capabilities. Now, they are a force capable of physical and quantronic warfare at request, plus they have a number of psyop specialists. Ladon has ended up as the clearinghouse for Xperydes' confidentes and black ops teams, crushing internal dissent and attacking competitors. They frequently subcontract their work to independent mercenaries and have built up a reputation for professionalism and ruthlessness. Sometimes they also rent out their services as mercenaries still, but it's unclear what criteria they use to select jobs. When it comes to Maya work, Xperydes maintains Mercury Communications, a massive entertainment behemoth that operates hundreds of Maya channels. It often positions its channels in competition with each other to gain the largest possible viewer base, and internally their competition is usually quite friendly. Externally, they are vicious. The old biotech business hasn't been forgotten, either - that's Xperydes Biotechnology now, still headquartered on Earth. They were one of the first companies to offer Lhost interface tech at a reasonable-ish price, and even today they maintain Resurrection contracts with every major faction except the Nomads...and rumor has it they're one of the quiet suppliers of Praxis' black market Resurrection technology, too. Regardless of division, many of the Logantos of Xperydes are officially titled 'valuation analyst' on top of their normal job title. This means that they have the added responsibility to account for any event they witness and its potential impact on profits, intervening to protect the company as necessary. Sometimes that means they work to ruin someone's credit rating or discredit in the press, sometimes that means they orchestrate a kidnapping or assassination. Valuation analysts are expected to put the health of Xperydes before anything else. Next time: Peace Is Our Profession
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Jan 5, 2022 13:26
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Quackles posted:Less poetically, Interstitial is a PbtA game that focuses on re-creating, in tabletop form, the experience of playing Kingdom Hearts. And arguably, it succeeds. But a good portion of its potential is wasted. My issues with Interstitial mostly come from the fact that the worldhopping media I imprinted on deeply as a teenager was Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Which was a fuckup in entirely different ways. That said, thinking about it Tsubasa's drastic genre shift could actually work really well in a PBTA game if you do something like Masks or Monsterhearts where you change the Moves. It's just that it would need to be part of a campaign and wouldn't really work as a pitch. JcDent posted:Just got recommender Dark Soul in Satanic Space Scifi After the End of the Universe, and just going by class descriptions, there is no way this thing will ever to out to not be a mess:  Excuse you, I think you mean Astro Inferno: A mythical odyssey in legendary Satanic space: ttrpg of legendary death. This is deeply funny to me and I'm strangely charmed by how dumb it is and its terrible capitalization. Not going to invest in the backerkit, not even for the SATANIC COASTERS('Satanic protection against spilled beverage') but it's really loving funny.
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Jan 5, 2022 18:38
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t3isukone posted:My issues with Interstitial mostly come from the fact that the worldhopping media I imprinted on deeply as a teenager was Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Which was a fuckup in entirely different ways. As someone who knows nothing about Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, I'm curious what you mean.
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Jan 5, 2022 19:30
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Quackles posted:As someone who knows nothing about Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, I'm curious what you mean. Then they went to a world that was a post-apocalyptic hellscape and things got very, very weird and dark very quickly as it was revealed that our hero for the rest of the series was actually a clone created by the villain, who took control of his mind, and proceeded to rip out one of his party member's eyes before destroying the community the group was staying in and leaving for another dimension, and things got steadily worse and more confusing from there.
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Jan 5, 2022 20:04
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Did Jojo and Kakyoin's eggbaby son show up?
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Jan 5, 2022 20:06
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Infinity RPG Will Kill For Food Mercenaries have been around forever, and they still are in the glorious space future. Many see them as thugs and gangsters, and the generally have a much lower reputation than national armed forces, not least because they're killing for money rather than a cause. Still, some mercenary companies are heroes where they come from, and many refuse to accept jobs that don't meet their moral standards. (On the other hand, even those tend to have somewhat flexible standards.) The major nations all hire mercenaries and consider them valuable, though any given team or mission is likely considered expendable, or they'd have used one of their own forces. It's not always for deniability, though - sometimes, mercenaries are brought on because their employers lack manpower, supplies or just don't want to put their own forces in danger but still want something done. Each mercenary company is practically a nation unto itself, spending much of its time in space and away from national borders. Their leaders are referred to as Warmongers, and are half CEO, half general. Many maintain other businesses as well, and may treat their mercenary force as a subsidiary to that, while others are very protective of their own independence. Ethical practices vary wildly between companies, with some mercenaries being strictly by the book and very loyal to their contracts and others being basically pirates that hire out sometimes. Most are not technically singular entities, but rather nested groups of subcontractors, each licensed to a Warmonger but each a seperate organization owned and operated by a field leader, usually called a Colonel, that is contracted to the Warmonger. Most Colonels subcontract in small unit teams led by Captains, who choose the makeup of their individual teams personally. These team members are technically freelancers employed by the Captain in turn. Mercenary contracts are usually long-term or near-permanent attachments to the wider company, but it's not super rare for a team to switch companies. Most companies hire themselves out through what's called the War Market - a network of Maya clusters that basically work as a mercenary stock exchange and clearinghouse. Each licensed unit, platoon or company has a serial number, a database of completed jobs and an approximate cash value assigned to them. Investors can then buy and sell stock in various mercenaries, even down to the individual soldier level if they like, which the mercenaries use to get equipment and support. Investors are then paid out dividends based on the earnings of the mercenaries on jobs. Mercenaries that do bad work, are unreliable or fail to pay their contractors receive red flags on the War Market, as will soldiers who disobey orders frequently or desert their posts. They can still work, but will find far fewer investors - or employers. The War Market's other purpose is to connect employers and mercenaries, after all. Captains hire new unit members through the Market, Colonels hire Captains, Warmongers hire Colonels, and clients hire companies. Clients rarely seek direct hire of individual soldiers or units, though it has happened. Employment offers are technically not hosted on the War Market - you make private contact with who you want to hire - but employers are permitted to post a prospectus of an operation and request public bidding from mercenaries. This entire thing ends up producing a weird financial subsector where people play stocks and arbitrage in blood and bullets, coldbloodedly shorting stock on companies they expect to die on missions or gambling on the outcome of battles. Some joint-stock companies even form to fund larger mercenary groups as a moneymaking enterprise, allowing their Warmongers to take on unusual jobs that would normally require national backing. There's plenty of Maya shows about heroic mercenaries and daring adventurers fighting terrorists or cartels or pirates, but most mercenary work is much more boring than it sounds and is focused on balancing checkbooks and successfully completing missions rather than any kind of heroics. For those who operate on the front lines in Paradiso or other conflict zones, life is similar to that of a normal soldier, though often better paid. These are relatively rare contracts, however, and most mercenaries spend their time on routine guard contracts or limited engagements within a very specific scope. When not working, they often spend their downtime training, getting new recruits up to par. Rookies are usually given special, very cheap contracts and put to work on difficult training exercises, drilling to improve their skills and improve their teamwork. When not training or working, though, mercenaries can do...well, whatever they want. Most maintain their own private homes, where they can live as they please without having their bosses ask about their social lives or anyone interfering in what they do. For many retired soldiers, this is all they really want - a job that they know they can do, but with none of the social or lifestyle restrictions of the armed forces. (Most mercs are ex-soldiers, though some join up from other jobs, including full-VR simulated combatants, as some recruiters are known to watch the leaderboards of sim combat and pick those who seem good enough to translate their skills to the real world.) Captains have greater responsibility, as they have the duty of acquiring long-term contracts for their crew. Most coordinate this through their Colonel and focus on ensuring orders get transmitted accurately, but they also handle mission planning and disbursement of funds for the team. Mercenaries expect their Captain to take care of them and protect their interests, and a Captain who can't find their men work or treats them poorly is likely to face a rebellion from below that sees them replaced or a mass abandonment of their unit. Colonels, similarly, lead entire platoons. Their work is mostly logistical, keeping all permits and licenses up to date and ensuring the company's ships are fueled. They rarely directly manage personnel, leaving that to the Captains, but they are in charge of strategy in larger-scale conflicts and leading the company in combat during them. Often they hold more effective authority than their Warmonger, who may well be some guy in a suit that liked the idea of owning mercenary companies. Individual soldiers are often managed by freelance recruiters on the War Market. A recruiter does many of the same jobs as a Captain would, with the key distinction being that a Captain is running a unit and a recruiter is more of a hiring agent and personnel manager, not actively doing any combat stuff. Some recruiters operate independently, like an actor's agent might, while others are dedicated talent scouts for specific companies, looking for the best on the market or trying to poach from competitors. Company recruiters are often much more disliked by the actual mercenaries, who see them as treating lives as mere statistics or livestock to buy and sell. Most companies also maintain tactical managers, who specialize in strategic planning and deployment advising. What the role does varies between companies, and they may serve as adjuncts or secretaries to a Colonel or may be their superior officer in larger companies. They also often work as salesmen for the company, pitching their plans of action to the client for approval or giving explanations as to why their bid should be taken over a competitor's. Some mercenaries serve as dedicated corsairs or privateers - space pirates for hire, basically. O-12 frowns on the practice, but it's not too rare, especially among Haqqislam. They're hardly alone, though other nations usually prefer to hire pirates as black ops agents who they will deny exist. Generally the goal is to harass or disrupt rival supply lines or operations, allowing the employer to prosper at the expense of their competition. Others sell their services as assassins or hitmen - highly illegal in most cases because they rarely have valid military targets or obey mercenary laws, but they get paid extremely well on a per-job basis. Some corporations even keep killers on retainer just in case they need some wetwork done and don't want to have to negotiate with a private contractor every time. Freelance hackers for hire sometimes also sell their services on the War Market, since having a solid infowar presence is necessary for most mercenary companies - if only to protect against hostile infowar attacks. Hackers can make good money either with a company or as solo operators, especially on Dawn, where there's not a ton of local infowar talent for Ariadnans to draw on when dealing with foreign corporations or other nations. Private security is also a common mercenary gig, typically more cop than soldier but better armed than normal law enforcement and often much more strict in what they're hired to do. After all, a private security officer isn't enforcing the law - they're enforcing the client's will and protecting the client, and they tend to be, if anything, more violent and dangerous than cops as a result. We get a bunch of example merc companies! Dahshat Company, owned by Qaid Fahesh, is one of the biggest mercenary companies in the Human Sphere, though it rarely makes much noise about that. Much of its work is actually in pursuit of Fahesh's own private goals rather than those of any client, and are usually tied to his very numerous corporate interests, ranging from the entertainment business to finance to tourism on Bourak. (The guy has exclusive rights to all tourist business in the Zumurroda complex near Parthalia Island.) Foreign Company, more properly the Van Orton Military Contracts Foreign Company, is rather louder and more famous, especially its owner, Van Orton. They license their likenesses to a number of Arachne and Maya channels for programs fictionalizing and glamorizing their work, which has given them a great public image and a lot of name recognition, though they try to keep quiet their ties to Figueroa family, one of Tunguska's major banking-slash-crime families. The Free Company of the Star, better known as Star Company, is made mostly of ex-military from Corregidor and is definitely the most famous and famously partisan of the Nomad PMCs, serving as the main competitor to Foreign Company. Star Company advertises heavily on Nomad ships of all kinds, offering recruits a chance to see the galaxy and remake themselves into something more. They are strict and rigid in their training, turning all new recruits into hardened soldiers no matter their background, and because of their diverse hiring practices, they tend to have someone on hand that has any skillset they might require. Ikari Company, on the other hand, is known more for ruthlessness and pragmatism. They are led by Colonel Ikari, formerly of Yu Jing military intelligence. They are known primarily as corporate security specialists, but are often accused of covertly practicing piracy. They're also who you call on when you want revolt brutally and brilliantly crushed. Colonel Ikari is Japanese himself, but he has no loyalty to the Japanese people, and he has happily taken Yu Jing money to purge Japanese civilian rebellions before. He'd do it again in a heartbeat. The Varangian Guard are originally of Caledonia, founded by William McKellar of the Ariadnan Expeditionary Corps. They mostly work on Dawn's frontier, and currently are largely dedicated to a contract to provide security for new settlements in Antipode territory. McKellar tends to take off-world contracts at high prices so he can fund his work at home, securing the frontier and fighting the Antipodes. The Varangians often work closely with Bureau Aegis law enforcement when off-planet, and McKellar prefers to recruit young people from Dawn or veteran Ariadnan soldiers fresh from Paradiso, with little in between. (He believes that mastering the strategies the Expeditionary Corps comes up with on Paradiso is the key to Ariadna's secure future, so he pays a premium for the skills learned there.) The Wardrivers, meanwhile, are not strictly a mercenary company. Rather, they are a decentralized organization operating from a network of private Maya clusters to provide work to freelance mercenary operatives and serve as a kind of coop and union for freelance soldiers. Their clusters are heavily encrypted, and all identities are kept hidden by online handles and color-coded classes that translate into what type of job someone specializes in. Members are known as wardrivers, and they tend to be really into kitbashing and customizing their gear, making custom guns, hacking tools, software and more. They have more free agent hackers than most other specialties, and they often rely on their custom gear to give them an edge against people expecting more standard approaches. Anaconda Mercenary TAG Squadron is a small unit - a former Corregidoran team of TAG pilots, and that specialization is pretty rare in mercenaries. Corregidoran Jurisdictional Command attempted to dissolve the unit after they obeyed orders from their employer to put down a protest by Corregidoran workers, but the entire unit resigned their commissions in response and got financing from Tyomkin Bank on Tunguska to purchase their own gear and get a mercenary license. They've fought in many conflicts in the years since, for both nations and corporations. As you might guess, Corregidor isn't huge fans, but if you need giant robots and have money, they'll work for you. Kaplan Tactical Services are quite beloved in their home, in contrast. They are a Bourak-based unit that works as part of Beyhan Resources. They are infamously strict about obedience to the company's code of honor and ethics, which is one reason that the Haqq in general and the Funduq Sultanate in particular like them a lot, and they've become the largest rival to the Druze Shock Teams for Haqqislamite mercenary hiring. The Druze Shock Teams developed as part of the Druze Society, a group of...well, Druze, since that's an actual ethnoreligion. The Druze Society got involved in business and organized crime during the 21st century, rising to take control of political power through use of their ownership of orbital transportation infrastructure around eastern Africa's orbital elevator and more recently the caravanserai servicing the jumpgates around Bourak's second wormhole. The Druze Society created a paramilitary team as part of their conflicts with the Drygalski mafia family, and once their rivals had been dealt with, they needed to do something with it. This saw the birth of the Druze Shock Teams as they registered the force on the War Market. The number of teams varies over time, and each one is technically a separate mercenary company, as the Druze Society believes that competition between them keeps them sharp. The Druze Shock Teams still bear the marks of being crime enforcers, but their formal licensing gives them an aura of legitimacy. Still, they are infamous for having taken part in a number of atrocities against civilians during the Ariadnan Commercial Conflicts, including the systematic destruction of entire communities that wouldn't play ball with the hypercorp MagnaObra. The court case for war crimes is ongoing. I am fairly certain the Druze Society are not meant to refer to all Druze people? I'm not actually sure that the writers for Infinity knew the Druze still exist as real people. SecLock Contingencies, AKA the Corporate Security Units, are the equivalent of special forces for corporate bodyguards. They maintain a broad skillset targeted towards corporate clients, focused around corporate espionage, counterintelligence, bodyguard services and counterterrorism techniques. Each agent has a set of cybernetic implants throughout their body that monitors both their lifesigns and the environment around them at all times, coordinating with a pseudo-AI to interpret the data and warn them about threats long before their human senses would. The company is famous after the AR drama Kings of the Human Edge depicted their defense of one of their clients, Michael Weber of WelleTech, from an explosive - specifically, the self-sacrifice of one of his bodyguards, Jake Wu, who grabbed the bomb and flew his power armor into the air to detonate it harmlessly at the cost of his own life. The incident, dubbed the Burning Star, has made them very popular in O-12 among senators looking for discreet and loyal private security. The Yuan Yuan are as far from professional and discreet as it gets. When you hire them, it's because you want collateral damage and a massive threat. They are the mercenary arm of a pirate fleet, and the Yuan Yuan pirates are the most infamous space pirates in the Human Sphere. They aren't really an organized crime family so much as a chaotic mob of violent people that hang out together, largely descended from asteroid miners and explorers in the Yu Jing system. Their parents lived in a rough world where only the most brutal and dangerous survived, as the Yu Jing government had almost no control out in the asteroid belts, and seizing supplies from each other became a way of life, starting the early space pirate gangs. As Yu Jing's space security got better, the pirates were forced to consolidate and team up to avoid being destroyed, and PanO intelligence helped fund and train them during the NeoColonial wars as a threat to Yu Jing. It was hoped that the Yuan Yuan would destabilize Yu Jing's control of its home system, but it ended up unleashing the pirates on the whole of the Human Sphere instead. Now, their former junkers are often heavily upgraded and improved vessels, and many crews list themselves on the War Market, having traveled all throughout space. They are also the premier slave traders of humanity, though this is illegal everywhere in the Human Sphere. Slavery is mostly seen these days on worlds at the very edge of O-12's control, and most slaves are what the Yuan Yuan refer to as 'eunuchs' - people who have been surgically altered so that they can no longer possess a Cube. Typically, the Yuan Yuan keep them under control with drugs and violence. The Yuan Yuan pirates...kinda suck. A lot. A lot. Next time: Bounty hunting, which is distinct from mercenary work
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Jan 5, 2022 23:32
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t3isukone posted:Tsubasa started out as a series like Kingdom Hearts, but with the works of the shoujo manga group CLAMP instead of Disney, about light-hearted adventure and a group of close friends with some implications of darker things happening. Honestly, with Interstitial's lethality, you could probably run a fairly solid game of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle using it.
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Jan 6, 2022 10:24
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Doesn't it also have the main characters of Card Captor Sakura be their own parents or something
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Jan 6, 2022 10:58
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Infinity RPG Skip Tracing In Space Always Sounds So Glamorous The Bounty Hunter Syndicate was legally formed by O-12's Interstellar Agreement on Extradition and Rendition, but it's not an O-12 agency. It's an independent one which anyone can join by going to a Syndicate chapterhouse and applying for a hunting permit. Applicants are given a huge background check and must past the Treaty Test certifications on O-12 law regarding bounties and then pay a licensing fee. At that point, you get to be an apprentice bounty hunter. Full members can take apprentices on their missions, allowing the apprentices to earn points towards full membership. Points can also be purchased, allowing you to skip apprenticeship and go straight to being a full member if you can afford it. All the Syndicare really cares about is that you capture your targets and pay your cut to them from your bounties. It is legal for a bounty hunter to operate anywhere in the Human Sphere by presenting their Syndicate badge, but they must still obey all local laws and regulations. This requires a very flexible skillset - on a PanO planet, you're going to need to know some good lawyers and how to handle the legal system, while on Bourak, you're going to have to be able to convince the local officials that you aren't the scum of the earth, which is what they usually think about bounty hunters. The Syndicate is happy to offer classes and advice on how to handle operating in various national cultures and is also very good at putting hunters in contact with people that otherwise would never dream of speaking to them. It's common for bounty hunters to operate solo or in very small teams, isolated and with little aid from any kind of supports. The closest they have are the chapterhouses, which are mostly good for just making contacts, and their own wits. That said, one benefit of belonging to the Syndicate is access to the Lists, maintained by the psuedo-AI secretarial program Monica Blue. They collect and collate all available bounties from local, national and internatonal law enforcement agencies across the Human Sphere for ease of access, and Monica Blue is designed to push listings to hunters that correspond to where they are or which they have special qualifications or interests in. The program is also capable of deep analysis of Syndicate intel sources and coordination of hunter activity across multiple planets, making it much easier for different hunters to cooperate over vast distances in tracking or taking down hard targets. Targets are referred to generally as yips, though specific kinds of target have different slang names. Skips are those who fled trial after paying bail, blips are online criminals (and often hard to track because you have to figure out their real names first), rips are unarrested but wanted criminals, flagships are targets who have had additional private bounties added on top of their law enforcement one, and zips are officially nonexistent. The term refers to fully private targets from the Black Lists - which may or may not even exist. Officially, private bounties are outside IAER mandate and are deeply illegal everywhere except the Nomad Nation, so getting caught chasing a zip can lose your license. Other slang terms include Judas (someone from your target's life that'll betray them to you), Shesha (someone that provides rest or sanctuary for your target), or Freya (anyone that's shot at a bounty hunter). We also get a list of a few famous bounty hunters. Father Lucien Sforza is one of the most feared in PanO space, a priest who has turned to bounty hunting in pursuit of God's own justice. He is uncompromising and once he decides to take a target, he never stops or gives up - ever. He will get his man or he will die trying; there are no other outcomes, and the criminals of PanO fear and respect him for it. Ljubo "Ballistic" Radan is more celebrity than bounty hunter, and more interested in building up his reputation than he is in fighting. He's a very scary-looking man and quite good at intimidating people into surrendering, though if it comes down to it, he is actually a very good fighter. Ylenia Petronescu is a hacker with a bad attitude and a knack for seducing her targets, which has earned her no small amount of fame among the Syndicate. She likes to live large, taking jobs only when her funding starts to run low. Max Skorpio is the guy that the Syndicate wishes every hunter was, and if he let them, they'd use him on promotional material. He is infamous among both cops and criminals, and he spends most of his time working...not least because when he's not working, he tends to get into more trouble, thanks to a taste for trying to get in bed with the daughters and wives of his clients. Miranda Ashcroft, meanwhile, is a rich kid who chose to become a bounty hunter. No one's really sure why she did it, given the privilege and power she's wielded since childhood, but she's an expert with every gun she's ever held and known to be trigger happy with them. It is, incidentally, possible to hunt bounties without a Syndicate license. Freelancers mostly work for bail bondsmen directly, though others are effectively the pet hitmen of crime bosses and operate wholly outside the law. The Syndicate ignores the former and considers the latter to usually be hunting targets themselves, since they often have bounties. There are smaller bounty hunting organizations operating on IAER authorization like the Syndicate, but these the Syndicate don't ignore. They are ruthless in absorbing or crushing them, usually through a mix of aggressively recruiting their hunters, politically dirtying up the competition, or convincing their clients to stop using them. Next time: The Space UN
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Jan 6, 2022 13:41
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Infinity RPG A Heart Filled With Neutrality O-12 is the massive bureaucracy and international governing body that does its best to keep the peace in the Human Sphere, trying to get everyone else to work together so that humanity can prosper. It is able to create international laws, most of which are enforced through granting access to its specialzied bureaus to help manage and improve various aspects of society, such as agriculture or astrophysics research or education. In theory, O-12 is a neutral entity politically, but internally it is largely split into three factions representing the Oberhaus, the Petite Assemblee and the Courts of Concilium, all of which want to be dominant within O-12's bureaucracy. O-12 was formed in the late 21st century, largely because of a near-century of constant crises convincing everyone that it was a good idea to form and then keep giving power so it could help solve said crises. Seventy years ago, it formally announced its role as the over-government of humanity by taking control of Concilium System and naming it the capital of the Human Sphere. It is dedicated to the four Pillars ideologically - unity, cooperation, support and progress. These characterize not only its values but its goals, and it places these four Pillars over the interests of any other entity, including member states. Anyone that joins O-12 is legally required to renounce all former allegiances, swearing to serve the Pillars and O-12 instead. Most new recruits are idealists from throughout the Human Sphere, which makes them quite diverse. While they do renounce national ties and citizenship elsewhere, old attitudes can be hard to get rid of, though. More cynical folks point out that O-12 has violated or compromised on the Pillars before, but they remain a strong source of pride for the organization and most people in O-12 still consider them to be the guide to follow. O-12 is expensive to run - all of its programs and suborganizations cost money, as does its expansive staff. Each member state is therefore required to donate money to its operating budget. Each member state owes an identical amount except the members of the Security Council, who must pay an additional amount for the security fund. That said, O-12 also tries to maintain its independence by securing other funding, which it refers to as the expanded budget. This money comes from patent fees from O-12 research, leasing of various properties and similar - most notably, the Circulars. A good percentage of all earnings of the Circulars go directly to the expanded budget, including the tariffs paid by nations serviced by the ships. They honestly produce a lion's share of the expanded budget, and their operation is vital to O-12's continued function. O-12 maintains bases on every human planet for various purposes - administration, scientific research, education, sometimes small military installations. Each is managed by a specific Bureau, and some of them are classified. However, the core of everything is Concilium Prima, home to the headquarters of each major Bureau and extensive training facilities for O-12's armed agents. The universities and schools on Concilium Prima are some of the best in existence, funded by O-12's infrastructure programs, and it also has some of the best hospitals off Bourak. The Oberhaus senate is officially the body commanding O-12. It is housed in a sprawling campus of buildings in Edda on Concilium Prima along with a whole lot of monuments to the Pillars and ornamentation. The seating of the Oberhaus is not fixed, and contains representatives from O-12 itself and every nation in the Human Sphere, including the Nomads and unaligned minor countries. Usually, a representative serves for four years, then their term is up and they must be reappointed or replaced by someone else. The Senate has legislative power over O-12 and international law for the Human Sphere, penning most of the treaties and international agreements of the Sphere and debating deals between nations and corporations. Motions pass the Senate by majority vote, and while O-12 itself has a good amount of power within the Oberhaus, most motions require some dealmaking and coalition building to pass. While O-12 attempts limit lobbying and backroom negotiation, it's quite common. Bureau Noir does the best it can to try and monitor it. On average, the Oberhaus usually has around 200 sitting senators at any given time, plus thousands of support staff. The Petite Assemblee is a more permanent organization than the high-turnover Oberhaus, made up of thirty longaj benkoj, or long seats. Five are held by each of the nations on the Security Council, plus five O-12 representatives, each with a ten year renewable appointment. The Petite Assemblee exists for three main jobs. First, it may halt debate in the Senate, preventing the Senate from taking action on issues it halts. Second, it may impeach members of the Security Council. Lastly, and most importantly, it controls the distribution of Senate seats. Each seat technically only exists for four years, and the Assemblee has the right to renew a seat or allow it to expire. They may also create new seats, assigning them as desired to national, corporate, ethnic or any other interest they choose to be filled as the interest wishes. This is why the number of Senate seats is always changing. Petite Assemblee sessions are kept in absolute secrecy, and often particularly volatile issues are raised there before they ever see the Senate. They have no formal powers of resolution, but their informal debates often form the basis for later decisions by either the Security Council or the Oberhaus. O-12 Security Council, also known as the Concilium Council, has 12 sitting members - one representative each from the five major nations of PanO, Yu Jing, Haqqislam, the Nomads and Ariadna, four O-12 reps, one seat representing all non-aligned nations, and one seat held by an Aspect of ALEPH. The Council must ratify major motions passed in the Oberhaus before they become formal law, and to ratify they need 75% majority agreement of the seats. Ariadna is the newest Council member, and its inclusion has been hotly contested and controversial. PanOceania, Yu Jing and the ALEPH representative all have a history of challenging Nomad membership as well. The Nomads, who usually send someone from Tunguska, have a standing objection to ALEPH's inclusion, but it is maintained because the AI's advice has been vital in the past. The Concilium Courts also work out of the Edda complex, dealing with cases on international law, usually stuff like intellectual property or trade disputes but also war crimes and similar. The Courts shape much of O-12's ideological stances, upholding justice and the Pillars in practice. The top level is the High Court, and breaches of the Concilium Convention in war are automatically elevated to the High Court. Other cases can be appealed up to it. It is forbidden for other branches of O-12 are forbidden to directly interact with the courts, but the courts are permitted to defer their rulings to the Security Council if they choose. O-12 is able to set up O-12 Commissions, small task forces set to analyze and deal with specific problems. A Commission may serve a purely advisory role or may have powers of investigation and intelligence gathering or may even be given full powers to manage the situation directly. The Senate, Security Council and Courts are all empowered to create Commissions and whichever does serves as the executive power for that Commission. Most Commissions are led by a High Commissioner, a ranking civil servant who will also often be tasked to evaluate implementation of Senate or Security Council directives, often with the aid of Bureau Noir or Bureau Aegis. A Commission does not always have a High Commissioner but they often do, and High Commissioners are also appointed for each human planet to coordinate the actions of O-12 on that planet. The executives of a Commission are permitted to intervene as they see fit within the powers of the Commission, which may include criminal trials, legislation or even military intervention, and they may call on O-12's Bureaus for support within their work or may request aid from O-12 member states' militaries in emergencies. the last major legislative group is the O-12 Conclave, AKA the Diet of Concilium. It is a council composed of the heads of state of the five Security Council seats and the High Commissioner of Concilium, though in practice those seats are held by representatives empowered to act on their behalfs. The Conclave possesses only one official power: it determines whether a new member state is to be included as a member of the Security Council and Conclave. In practice, it also serves a major diplomatic function, allowing for high-level diplomacy between the Security Council nations in any circumstance, even open warfare. Much of the lower-level work of O-12 is handled by the Bureaus, each given a specific set of powers and responsibilities. They are all kept as separate organizations, managed by the General Board, a supervising committee of ranking O-12 officials selected from the Oberhaus, Petite Assemblee, Security Council and Courts. They are kept apart deliberately, and while joint operations are possible, each must be individually approved by the General Board and is strictly scrutinized by Bureau Trimurti, whom any joint task force must report their activities to...with the exception of Bureau Noir, which is specifically tasked to serve as intelligence agents for the whole of O-12 and may therefore serve every Bureau equally. Bureau Noir agents are often seconded to other Bureaus as investigators or operatives, which means they can end up working anywhere for almost any goal. Bureau Aegis is officially in charge of legal issues, which as defined by O-12 is a quite wide remit that in practice makes them the executive branch of O-12's governance. Unlike most other Bureaus, they subdivide themselves into two different sections to try and achieve their goals. Section Statera handles legal services for the Bureau, which mostly means running the courts and supporting them at all levels. Most of them are lawyers or civil servants, and they mostly do research and clerical work. Section Spatha, on the other hand, are somewhere between cops, a small army and a fairly large navy. They enforce the rulings of the Courts, and they basically are there so that Section Statera has someone to call in to escalate things when people won't listen to them. They've begun to undergo a major cultural transition with the appearance of the Combined Army, no longer cynically viewing themselves as the cops minding humanity and actually treating their remit of 'defending humanity' as an unironic thing. They also maintain Psi Unit, a military intelligence team of decent size that operates mostly autonomously from the rest of Section Spatha and has its own chain of command. When a Bureau Noir agent is seconded to Aegis, they often end up spying on potential criminals, coordinating secret operations, working undercover, or securing O-12 bases. While there have been occasional efforts to split Bureau Aegis's sections into two different Bureaus, all have failed, and some conspiracy theorists believe Bureau Aegis secretly runs O-12 as a result. Bureau Agni is in charge of the energy supply for humanity, controlling its production, distribution and regulation. This got them put in charge of the Teseum trade well before anyone figured out exactly how important Teseum was, and that's gotten them involved in other metamaterials trading, so they're often dealing with corporations and national research groups. Bureau Agni used to be much smaller, but has grown rapidly since the establishment of Section Metis, their own R&D department. Section Metis is based in Huaquiao, handling some of the most groundbreaking physics research in the Human Sphere, and they often work closely with Bureau Toth and ALEPH to produce new technology. They also are in charge of monitoring new technologies developed by others. Bureau Noir agents seconded to them are usually tasked to investigate other research groups, destroying development projects deemed too dangerous to continue, capturing secret or criminal technology, infiltrating or surveilling various labs, or tracking internal leaks of Section Metis developments. Bureau Athena was made to spread culture internationally, protect human rights and assess matters of religious or ethical import. They often end up as diplomatic liaisons between the various religious groups of humanity and the O-12 Senate in that final capacity. They maintain Section Clio at the University of Manaheim, which is in charge of analysing, cataloguing and producing comprehensive and informative descriptions of all aspects of culture, both in the Human Sphere and among aliens. They are historians for the most part, used as researchers by the other Bureaus, though when they have to investigate current events or existing locations they often rely heavily on Bureau Tinandi or other groups. They are uniquely forbidden from using Bureau Noir, including getting seconded agents, so that the search for truth is not tainted by black ops. Bureau Noir agents can be seconded to the rest of Bureau Athena, however, where they are used to investigate the abuse and oppression of minority groups, protect endangered species, provide covert security for expeditions into Tohaa space, hunting for corporate human rights violations, or gaining information on violations of the Concilium Convention. Bureau Concilium is in charge of running Concilium System as its local government. They also govern the Free Cities, jurisdictions deemed owned by no nation and instead governed under international law. These include the city of Jerusalem and the End of the Line Free Orbital out on the Human Edge. Bureau Noir agents seconded to them are often put to work as cops in the Free Cities, investigators of terrorism threats or poachers on Concilium Prima, surveillance of corporate activities in Concilium System, or investigations into civic corruption. Bureau Gaea, meanwhile, is in charge of planetary development and biological research. They study new worlds and lifeforms and write advisory papers on them for the Senate to help guide legislation and regulation of terraforming. They also support new settlements in remote areas and work with Bureau Tiandi on exploration through wormholes. They were originally in charge of the Shimmering Sky terraforming nanotech network on Concilium, but it's an open secret that the network has been reworked to monitor and control comms on the planet and is now operated by a secret task force of Bureaus Gaea, Hermes and Noir. Agents seconded to Gaea are usually investigating corporate violation of terraforming law, retrieving cultural intelligence on alien species (even hostile ones), investigating terraforming accidents, delivering relief supplies to hostile areas, or dealing with newly dangerous biological agents. Next time: More Bureaus
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Jan 6, 2022 19:03
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And O-12 is ostensibly the way a band of weird and wacky PCs will come together?
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Jan 6, 2022 19:26
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Dawgstar posted:And O-12 is ostensibly the way a band of weird and wacky PCs will come together? The game’s assumption is the party has been recruited by Bureau Noir, yes.
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Jan 6, 2022 19:32
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It's worth noting how much nicer and less icky the Infinity setting feels than Eclipse Phase, despite many of the same core themes.
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Jan 6, 2022 21:14
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Loxbourne posted:It's worth noting how much nicer and less icky the Infinity setting feels than Eclipse Phase, despite many of the same core themes. I only know a very little about Eclipse Phase. What makes it 'icky'?
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Jan 6, 2022 21:19
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Doesn't it also have the main characters of Card Captor Sakura be their own parents or something They were clones of themselves and also their own parents, there were like 3 different Sakuras, maybe more.
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Jan 6, 2022 22:05
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t3isukone posted:there were like 3 different Sakuras, maybe more. Anime talking without speaking.
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Jan 6, 2022 23:04
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Mors Rattus posted:The game’s assumption is the party has been recruited by Bureau Noir, yes. Screw that, give me a campaign where PCs are all working for Bureau Aegis and building cases against corporations for labour rights violations instead.
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Jan 7, 2022 03:04
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Quackles posted:I only know a very little about Eclipse Phase. What makes it 'icky'? I could complain a lot about Eclipse Phase but I think the only "icky" thing that springs to mind is the atrocious canon adventure "Glory" which literally involves a giant ball of vaginas as an enemy.
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Jan 7, 2022 10:31
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Loxbourne posted:It's worth noting how much nicer and less icky the Infinity setting feels than Eclipse Phase, despite many of the same core themes. Well, a lot of the icky and cringe stuff in Infinity concerns the miniature designs which wouldn't necessarily come up in an RPG unless the gear rules account for the miniatures' highly sexually dimorphic power armour (boob plate and combat heels)
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Jan 7, 2022 10:52
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PoontifexMacksimus posted:Well, a lot of the icky and cringe stuff in Infinity concerns the miniature designs which wouldn't necessarily come up in an RPG unless the gear rules account for the miniatures' highly sexually dimorphic power armour (boob plate and combat heels) Hmm from what I recall (haven't played for like 5 years) they did backpedal on fanservice a bit. I do however remember caledonian volunteer mini with skirt that did not cover her rear end.
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Jan 7, 2022 10:57
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Infinity RPG A Chest Of Drawers Bureau Hermes is the one made to handle practical regulations of commerce - that is, licensing of ships, spaceport regulations, free trade zones, and, as an extension of all that, the construction and management of the jump gates and Circulars. This means they're also in charge of building and certifying most communications infrastructure, especially the ones for inter-system comms. This makes them one of the single most powerful O-12 bureaus, and both O-12 and people outside O-12 have made efforts to try to limit that power. Hermes was forced to make the TransEtherea company to manage the business end of the Circulars so they didn't directly control the income stream, though in practice this has mostly just allowed O-12 to make more money and have unofficial agents operating in backchannels through TransEtherea. There's also been financial restrictions placed on Bureau Hermes, which PanO and Yu Jing used to force them to accept the Imperial Service and Knights of Santiago as joint guards on the Circulars alongside Bureau Aegis, which tends to make rivalries between the three groups to no good purpose. Bureau Hermes is always asking for more funding and people so they can get rid of the "help" provided by PanO and Yu Jing, but as yet it has not been granted. Agents seconded to Hermes are often tasked to look into comms sabotage, help Aegis with Circular security, investigate smuggling involving the Circulars, hunting for Combined Army infiltrators using the jumpgate network, or spying on trade conferences. Bureau Lakshmi is in charge of human health and medicine. They distribute vaccines and medical aid and perform medical research. While originally a purely humanitarian bureau, they've found their remit expanded since the development of Silk technologies and alien contact have forced them to reconsider what it means to be human. This has put them at the forefront of some very challening technological questions that they don't always feel equipped to answer, given what it will mean for legal aid to various groups. They also work with ALEPH to regulate the Cube banks and Resurrection programs of the various nations. Agents seconded to Bureau Lakshmi often end up on cube recovery missions, shutting down illegal Resurrection dens, working to aid victims of unethical and illegal experimentation, investigating biomed smuggling, or delivering medical aid to dangerous places. Bureau Noir is the secret service of O-12, handling all covert intelligence collection and analysis. They're a small bureau but they have a wide remit, and their design allows for flexible movement to help any other bureau through secondment. Bureau Noir also published the Noir Alert Bulletins, which keep the other bureaus apprised of anything that Noir deems crucial for everyone to know about. Bureau Noir is largely split between command and agents. Each commanding officer has jurisdiction over a specific city, region, planet or solar system and has a public support staff to aid them in openly monitoring this area. They maintain Noir facilities and resources in their jurisdiction, coordinate with local law enforcement and Bureau Aegis, and send in regular reports. Between COs and support staff, that's 95% of Bureau Noir personnel, and they tend to do the boring scutwork of data gathering and analysis. They do not manage individual agents; that job is done by handlers, independent within Noir and operating over multiple jurisdictions. Handlers respond to requests for aid from commanding officers, other bureaus and the General Board, sending the 5% of Bureau Noir that is action agents out to do missions. Much of Bureau Noir's work is top secret, and not even ALEPH is given access to information on the exact structure of the Bureau, nor who its top ranking members are. Only the top ranks have clearance to access Bureau Noir's full personnel files, but each handler also maintains what is referred to as a "black book," a collection of agents, contacts and resources that they can tap without Bureau Noir being aware of them. This is allowed because it makes it easier to run deniable ops, even though it comes with the risk of a handler going rogue and not being noticed for a while. Once a handler receives a mission assignment, they will select agents to enact the mission, with their selection criteria being entirely up to them. Agents can be briefed in face-to-face meetings, which is more common among teams that operate in a consistent area, or quantronically and anonymously, or even by dead drop. Mission briefings always come with an operational procedures packet, or OPP, which lists contacts, safe houses and other local resources at the team's disposal. (GMs are told they don't have to come up with this stuff, just assume agents have access to that kind of basic stuff or can make Analysis or Lifestyle rolls to find other resources they might need.) Most of O-12 recruits its staff from Concilium's universities. Not Bureau Noir. Most of its agents are folks who wandered into a situation Bureau Noir was investigating and got caught up in the operation, impressed someone, and received a recruitment offer. Others are selected because someone noticed their unique skillset and offered them a job, which they decided to keep. Bureau Noir has more foreign-born agents than any other O-12 bureaus since Concilium was founded, and most black book agents aren't even O-12 citizens - they're effectively freelancers or mercenaries working for their O-12 handler. Bureau Noir's only gotten more diverse since Paradiso, as they've had to meet greatly increased demands for their work. To meet that demand, the Amikeco Initiative has also led to them directly recruiting agents from member state intelligence agencies. This means there's often a mix of loyalties and conflicts among Bureau Noir agents, but also that there's almost always someone with an appropriate skillset for what's needed. Bureau Tiandi was originally tasked to perform stellar surveys and catalogue new planets, as well as to provide up to date and accurate descriptions of stellar events that might affect interplanetary travel. So, basically, space weather. However, once wormhole travel was achieved, they became far more important. While they still monitor space weather and report on it, most of their funds go into mapping the wormholes and exploring new ones. While the goal is obviously to find new candidate planets for colonization efforts, Bureau Tiandi's membership is mostly in it for pure science and the thrill of discovery. Noir agents seconded to Tiandi often end up rescuing lost explorers, providing security for planetary survey missions, doing undercover sting operations on corporations trying to steal survey data before it's made public, investigating suspicions of Combined Army signals, or tracking and recovering lost ships. Bureau Toth exists to monitor, supervise, support and maintain ALEPH. It's both the largest bureau and easily the most secretive, to the extent that its personnel records, budget and exact operational parameters are top secret and classified even against ALEPH...in theory. In practice, it doesn't take much to realize Bureau Toth hires most of the best data engineers and AI programmers in the Human Sphere for work on ALEPH, and it's almost certain that with the AI's capacity for analysis, it knows far more about Toth than it's technically supposed to. Besides maintaining ALEPH, Toth also oversees the AI's Special Situations Section and provides them with support in enforcing the Sole AI Law. Noir agents seconded to Toth often end up helping track rogue AIs, monitoring weird behavior by ALEPH, hunting down the relays of the Evolved Intelligence that commands the Combined Army, or overseeing investigations into corporations suspected of breaking the Sole AI Law. Last, we've got Bureau Trimurti, which is in charge of maintaining the support infrastructure that the General Board uses to coordinate and liaise between bureaus. They also run any internal investigations into corruption within the bureaus. They are primarily diplomats and spokespeople for O-12 in pushing for peaceful international relations, protecting O-12's public image, and managing O-12's social media. Noir agents seconded to Trimurti are usually tasked with things like helping investigate corruption within Edda, retrieving stolen confidential O-12 data, providing covert security for diplomatic events, serving as couriers for classified information, or monitoring Arachne and other darkweb dataspheres for what folks are saying about O-12. Next time: Crimes Crimes Crimes
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Jan 7, 2022 13:42
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PurpleXVI posted:I could complain a lot about Eclipse Phase but I think the only "icky" thing that springs to mind is the atrocious canon adventure "Glory" which literally involves a giant ball of vaginas as an enemy. Dare you gatecrash into my magical realm
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Jan 7, 2022 16:39
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This sort of filth has no place at the F.A.T.A.L. thread!
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Jan 7, 2022 16:44
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Infinity RPG You Can Do Anything At Mondo Com Submondo is, for some inexplicable reason, what the game uses as a term to refer to the criminal underworld. There's no greater organization called Submondo, no philosophy, nothing like that - Submondo is a collection of different groups that do crime and/or terrorism for their own reasons. The term dates back to shortly after the Circulars were built, when O-12 set Taskforce Green Bow to investigate piracy around Ceres. The pirates, called the Jovian Hounds, were raiding unmanned supply shipments to Saturn's wormholes, but thanks to a dispute between nations over who had jurisdiction over the area, no one could stop them until O-12 got involved. The investigation revealed that the Hounds were tied to the Tiandihui Triad, were helping run a bunch of darkweb clusters and were mostly selling their stolen goods through an elaborate online black market that shipped through the Nomads. It was clear that taking out the pirates themselves would not solve the problem, thanks to the vast and interconnected web of crime. O-12 decided to try and deal with the issue by having any Bureau Aegis case that involved organized crime be flagged Submondo (which, we are told, is Esperanto for underworld), which would then be used by law enforcement internationally to help track these crime connections. The term has come to refer to any organized criminal network generically. In the space future, crime has changed somewhat. Hacking is a very important part of it, and while high-end security is often incredibly difficult to break, your average commercial security AI is much easier for a good hacker to take apart. Submondo black markets are generally virtual and full of all kinds of useful and illegal information, from bomb recipes to backdoor access to secure systems and more. Data mining, tracking, malware and exploits are the tools of the common criminal now, and a good criminal hacker can get into nearly any machine to help take over vehicles, turn off alarms, create false alibis and more. As with the rest of life, augmented reality has become a key part of crime, and criminal dataspheres provide useful overlays to those who know how to access them, revealing information brokers, favor traders and fences where normal citizens see nothing. Piracy is probably the most widespread and common sort of violent crime these days, with the rise in asteroid mining and cheap spaceships plus the expansion of trade routes and the Human Sphere in general. Interspace trade is hard to secure, since there's so much physical space involved, so it's often relatively safe to practice piracy if you're careful. It's a simple enough job - find a vulnerable target, overwhelm them quickly while doing minimal actual damage, then seize their cargo and information. The problems you run into are usually those of smuggling and selling your stolen cargo, thanks to molecular signature tracking and electron indexing, so it's usually not a super profitable crime. For that, you want to go to ransom kidnapping. Most kidnappers still just go for an entire person, but some have taken to Cubejacking - targeting wealthy people who likely have Resurrection licenses or waiting Lhosts. You capture them, then kill them and take their Cube off the corpse. This means you don't have to feed and house them, so you can even make use of more secure and isolated exchange points and courier delivery! Often, Cubejackers cryo-freeze the body, using its delivery as the ransom demand itself. Information piracy is also quite common, since people will often pay more these days for data than cargo. A pirate who can seize a vessel with its hard drives intact can often harvest vast amounts of saleable information from its Maya traffic, manifests and clearances, which can then be sold to the right buyers. Indeed, some pirate crews use the information they steal to pretend at being the merchants they ambush so they can identify targets with weak security and exploit the loopholes in it to harvest data without even needing to shoot. A really good crew can even manage to steal tons of valuable information this way without being detected. Of course, offloading your goods and data is key here. Black and grey markets throughout space cater to Submondo sellers, especially in Nomad-run areas. Bakunin's VaudeVille neighborhood is infamously lax about checking ownership of the goods sold there, and illegal munitions, drugs and even Resurrections are available at the right price. Outside of the Nomad motherships, Submondo markets show up anywhere that business gets done heavily. Criminal dataspheres alert users with AR overlays as to what a seller might have available off the books throughout many Haqq caravanserais, the markets of Shentang, or in places like Novyy Bangkok on the Human Edge. Besides money, some groups work in Submondo for ideological reasons. Extremist groups often work in the criminal underground to fund themselves and recruit heavily from criminals, including groups like Divine Wright, who are anti-corporate Christians who believe that the demons of capitalism must be purged in nuclear explosions, and Eco-Aktion, a radical anti-terraforming environmentalist group. Struktura is one of the more powerful Submondo organizations, an evolution of the Russian mafia of the 21st century. It's one of the older-school groups, focused on physical intimidation, extortion, smuggling, drug running, human trafficking and similar. They run protection rackets frequently, targeting smaller businesses to earn money and strengthen their control over an area, then use them to hide their crimes. The Struktura are strongest on Tunguska, but they also control a number of orbitals, spaceports, mining stations and similar anywhere that the law is weak or corrupt. The organization is divided into Families, which are each hand-selected by a leader called an Otets, who organizes them and coordinates within the larger group. There is no central authority over the Families, so power games and violent infighting are expected. The strong survive and that's how it should be, according to Struktura. Unlike earlier mafiosos, the Struktura Families tend to have a higher goal than mere wealth and power, sort of. The Otets are usually ideological ancaps, hoping to destroy the current structure of corporate capitalism to create a marketplace run by strong individuals directly, with success based entirely on personal power and ingenuity. (Obviously, each believes themself to be the craftiest and most likely to succeed in such a world.) A lot of the money that these Families make is put back into funding sabotage, piracy and other efforts to weaken hypercorporate business structures...and into buying shares in said corporations to try and take them down from within and also launder the money. Many of their protection rackets are wholly quantronic in nature, using encryption and malware as their threats and protection or creating viral overlays to mark territory and corrupt the access of datasphere users until they're forced to ask the Families for a fix. About a decade ago, the Rybakov Family made a very dark name for themselves by sabotaging black market Lhosts with defective bio-organs, designed to release nasty, nasty toxins unless deactivated by a specific chemical key. That way, they could blackmail the people who came to them for new bodies and Resurrections. The past year has seen the Rybakovs expand this practice to their kidnap victims, too, with forced surgeries. Many of the other Families think this is a terrible idea - it's going to bring O-12 heat down on them all that no one wants, and tensions are rising over whether force should be used to stop the Rybakovs. Svengali is both a criminal gang and a single entity - a renegade and highly illegal AI located on Bakunin's network that is a mafia all by itself, an urban legend and folk hero to many Nomads as well as a terrifying villain. Its legend has spread throughout Arachne and Maya alike, building its actions up to be even bigger than they really are. No one is entirely sure where Svengali came from, likely because it has created a cloud of contradictory stories to hide the truth. It's known that the AI was originally made in one of the labs of Praxis on Bakunin, and it apparently is fond of the ship and its culture, but it's unclear of Svengali was made deliberately or by accident, or if it has any controls built into it. One popular theory is that it evolved out of the programs that operate the Social Energy system, both others believe it's an alien virus, a corrupted Aspect of ALEPH or even a Maya cluster of hackers pretending to be an AI. That last one is probably not true, given Svengali's unique ability to operate multiple secondary bodies at once. It uses Lhosts, remotes, computers and even entire dataspheres as parts of itself, meaning it doesn't need to hire a gang...though it does have some humans working for it when it needs specialized help. It does have a tendency to forget these employees are less disposable than its secondary bodies, however. Svengali's core personality operates through a clustered system, in which each cluster is an independent persona operating a number of secondaries but in constant communication with the other clusters to form a singular mind. Clusters can synchronize and merge or split apart apparently at will, but the Bakunin cluster is definitely the biggest and seems to be treated with more permanence than the others. Outsiders often consider it the core persona of Svengali, though it's unclear if the AI thinks of itself that way, as it maintains many clusters and shows little preference between them. It even places seeds of itself as worm malware in comlogs, nearly undetectable but able to activate and spring up new clusters when introduced to a proper system. Thanks to its distributed consciousness, Svengali practices a unique method of crime called Doppelganging. It owns and operates a small number of exceptionally expensive Lhosts that can be modified to become perfect duplicates of any person. This would still mean having to behave like them, which is a challenge for most people, but Svengali is able to use biometric modality and expert system-based mimicry to nearly perfectly replace its victims, allowing it to run cons that would be impossible for anyone else. That said, it doesn't use the method lightly, thanks to the sheer expense of the Lhosts involved. It just almost never fails when it uses them. When operating on a budget, it maintains a number of cheaply designed mobster secondaries, which tend to operate outside the primary clusters. The Lhosts it uses for this are called Saeligs if male and Zeldas if female, and they range from cheap and shoddy to cutting edge and experimental forms with increased and specialized capabilities. Customized Saeligs and Zeldas often seem to develop distinct personas of their own within Svengali rather than reflecting the primary persona, as Svengali is interested in exploring its own identity and discovering the nature of its self by exploring different aspects independently. The Saeligs and Zeldas give it a chance to do so, and Svengali seems to actually enjoy operating them a lot, treating it as a kind of working vacation. Of course, these methods have risks - at least one Saelig has gone rogue. He calls himself C3rvant3s and he has declared independence from Svengali. With help from a former soldier named Magno, he's been breaking into all kinds of secret research labs lately, hunting for something, and has even been spotted fighting various Svengali clusters. Svengali could operate fully autonomously, but it doesn't seem to want to. Indeed, if all it wanted was to exist on its own, it would be easy for it live inside a narcissist, self-generated digital world. Rather, its very nature as a criminal organization shows it wants to interact with (and control) human beings. Besides running various protection rackets and other crimes, it is deeply involved in artificially manipulating Social Energy, which the Moderator Corps spends a lot of time chasing it over. It has influence throughout much of Bakunin society - some days, it seems like everyone on the ship either owes it a favor, is being blackmailed by it, or has been replaced by one of its Doppelgangers. Eco-Aktion is a criminal group, but not one driven by money. They are biological preservationists and ecoterrorists who mourn every time humanity finds a new world and alters it to their own will. Humans have discovered undreamed of biodiversity among the stars, ecological complexity of immense depth, and often, they end up trying to control it. Many scientists and politicians believe this is a good thing, an expression of humanity's manifest destiny and power over reality. Eco-Aktion is violently against such a view, believing that humans place themselves in terrible danger by mixing Earth and alien lifeforms together, and also does irreparable moral harm to the universe by wiping out native biosphers or transforming them into something unrecognizable. They have published the Manifesto of Biological Sovereignty, which calls for an immediate end to all terraforming and the preservation of what they refer to as "evolutionarily pure genetic pools." Most members of Eco-Aktion are scientists, survivors of colonial disasters, or outcasts who didn't do well in colonies. Their preferred tool is bioterror through tailored viruses and genetic weapons that can destroy entire regions that are engaged in terraforming or hybridisation research. They hail originally from Acontecimento, where they work to stop the eradication of native grasses via sabotage and bombings, but they've expanded through the Human Sphere to attack animal smugglers, release viral antigens on hybridized crops or similar. They fund themselves by a mix of piracy and illegal biotech sales on the black market. That said, not all of their work is terrorism. Eco-Aktion maintains what they call Biogenetic Preserve Orbitals, generally on abandoned orbital stations or dead asteroids. These are artificial environments that seek to recreate the "purity" of a specific biosphere, indexed to a specific time in evolutionary history. O-12 reports suggest that Eco-Aktion's goal with these is to recreate lost biomes though genetic engineering, trying to resurrect species destroyed during colonization efforts. Eco-Aktion is run through a cell-based system that divides members into Aktion Leaders, Eco Envoys, Research Aktion Groups and Local Aktion Groups. Eco Envoys are usually from the region they operate in and use their local knowledge to come up with missions and coordinate longer campaigns. RAGs are each led by an Aktion Leader and come in to carry out the plans of the Eco Envoys, but are non-local and spend much of their time traveling to avoid capture and increase security. Many RAGs base themselves out of a BPO so they can operate completely off-grid. LAGs are groups of local sympathizers that work with an Eco Envoy, but are always kept at a remove and firewalled off from the rest of Eco-Aktion, so that they can't threaten the entire organization if caught. A particularly successful LAG may be promoted to RAG, but it's pretty rare. Last, we have the shadow operatives of Equinox, originally a group of ambitious scientists from the Praxis Labs who were obsessed with social revolution through technology. They were brilliant, creative, eccentric and, for a time, very popular...until it was discovered that their experiments in neuromanipulation, sheut alteration and quantronic memes were being used to subvert and control Social Energy, at which point Bakunin society turned on them for violating basic social norms and disregarding human safety. Equinox was kicked out of Praxis and began a new project of social control, since the old one had clearly failed. They took a lot of money from MagnaObra Corporation, which wanted access to their memetic manipulation tech, and then decided to try and suborn the Haqq by targeting their colony vessels, starting with the Palmyra Star. The ship was moving several hundred families to Bourak for resettlement when Equinox's operatives infected its datasphere with a self-replicating virus that corrupted the AR programs of the vessel into a memetic vector of attack to enslave the crew and passengers. The goal was that all aboard, plus future colony vessels to be attacked, would be turned into sleeper agents for Equinox within Bourak, allowing them to eventually seize control over Haqqislam. It didn't quite work. The virus was flawed, causing massive sensory trauma to its victims and creating vivid hallucinations that made the crew think the ship was haunted and many of those aboard possessed. This caused a bunch of chaos on board that alerted a hassassin on the ship to the plot, allowing them to kill the Equinox agents that released the virus and then disable it. Further investigation by the Hassassins revealed the source of the infection and led to a massive campaign against Equinox that killed many of the leaders and agents, including most of their best scientists. After that, Equinox survived by reorganizing into a cell structure with heavily institutionalized paranoia. Each cell, called a locus, would spread on its own throughout the Sphere, setting up research bases and facilities in both inhabited and dead systems. Each locus specializes to some degree around a specific project, and most of those projects relate to social engineering and social transformation through memetic techniques, mind-targeting viruses, stable micro-wormholes for cellular tampering, fear-based weapons or neural attack vectors, and similar things. Loci communicate with each other through encrypted dataspheres but rarely have direct contact, instead sharing their work through fractal blockchains hosted on heavily encrypted shadow dataspheres attached to Circulars. Bureau Noir is aware these chains exist but have yet to figure out how to access them or how they got so embedded into the Circular dataspheres. One theory is that the blockchain is actually infecting ships attached to the Circulars, which might explain why all security sweeps of the Circulars themselves come up empty. Equinox is xenophobic and averse to face-to-face contact thanks to their past experiences. It's hard to get in touch with them if you aren't already part of them, and most Equinox cells use specialized operatives to talk to anyone that isn't Equinox. These contact agents also get them the raw materials they need and secure funding through work as mercenaries or hit men. Equinox agents rarely have anything resembling morals and will do pretty much any work to get the cash to fund the organization's experiments, after all. Their ultimate goal is a mix of scientific curiosity about the mind and a desire to control human society, after all. Next time: Exploring New Planets
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Jan 7, 2022 18:53
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PurpleXVI posted:I could complain a lot about Eclipse Phase but I think the only "icky" thing that springs to mind is the atrocious canon adventure "Glory" which literally involves a giant ball of vaginas as an enemy.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:04
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My "Do not post your homebrew neotenic snakewoman with a three meter long prehensile penis that can devour people whole with her vagina to the official EP forum" t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt
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Jan 7, 2022 22:12
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...huh.
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Jan 8, 2022 00:21
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Halloween Jack posted:My "Do not post your homebrew neotenic snakewoman with a three meter long prehensile penis that can devour people whole with her vagina to the official EP forum" t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt Fatal and Friends 2022.
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Jan 8, 2022 01:45
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 Floria Part 8: Can Love Bloom on the Battlefield? We now move on to the second of our three sample adventures, which introduces a few twists on the formula established in the previous example, and in terms of tone sorta hits the vibe of a child adventure story, one of those direct-to-video affairs from the 90s. Or possibly a really low-key Pokemon episode Scenario 2: The Flowers that Bloom After Rain 3-4 Players, 3-4 Hours, slice of life, cute quote:Drip drip drip, splish, splash. This adventure takes place in the town of Barten, the Village of Beginnings, where our heroes have decided to pause their travels for a bit at the local inn to wait out the inclement weather. The area has been enduring two solid weeks of unseasonable rainfall, keeping everyone indoors while puddles and mushrooms thrive outside. Eventually the innkeeper will mention that his daughter was looking out her window at the nearby woods and saw something unnatural. Apparently she saw the rainclouds rising OUT of the forest like a smokestack, as if something's producing them. Our mission now is to search the forest to verify their story and see if something magical is causing this torrential downpour. Traversing the Forest Map will be difficult, as multiple tiles have TWO environments. On top of their usual environs that determine their possible Herbs, they can also have the effects of Dark terrain, the constant cloud cover making Search Checks more difficult. Even knowing where we're supposed to go will be tricky, as the first Quest is STR+WIS to climb to some high vantage point and scout out the exact location of the cloud source. A success finds the clouds puffing out from a rocky outcrop deep in the forest... but it also finds several obstacles between you and there, caused by the storm. This map has a rather unique mechanic, where the Quests hard-gate progress. At the start, there isn't actually any path connecting the starting location and the goal. Completing the relevent Quests will create new paths, with the GM drawing in new connections between rooms to open the way. For example, the next Quest involves coming across a babbling brook the rain has swelled into an impassable river, forcing the Floria to roll DEX+WIS to construct a makeshift bridge of some sort. Past that, a sheer cliff made slick and unstable by rain and erosion, requiring STR+WIL. After scaling the cliff, you're deep in the clouds and fog, a cold wet Limbo of featureless white, requiring a slightly difficult WIL+DEX-1 to successfully navigate to finally find the source of the storm. At the center of the deluge is an Herb known as a Water Balloon Flower, a sort of succulent that thrives in wet tropical areas next to lakes or streams with abundant rainfall. Somehow a seed of it ended up here on a dry arid rocky outcrop, and if it can't find water to grow, it uses its magic to MAKE water, conjuring the excessive rain to sustain itself. The Floria's job will be to carefully uproot the Water Balloon Plant and transplant it somewhere more appropriate, benefiting everyone! Unfortunately it's a stupid plant and will reflexively fight back at anything disturbing it, so it will have to be subdued in a Magic Battle. Its spells and tactics are frankly near-identical to the evil cake fight from the last adventure, exposing a bit of a weakness of the game: a lack of mechanical variety in combat. It's perfectly serviceable and exciting, but the entire list of all possible enemy abilities is just a truncated version of all the PC abilities at a better cost. This is very much a game for oneshots, as doing the fights multiple times reveals a few of the seams.  Once the plant has been pacified, it can be dug up and relocated next to the stream deeper down in the forest, where it sways with apparent contentment. The rain stops, and the clouds slowly begin to clear, revealing a rainbow. D'awww. After this concludes, we have the last of our example adventures, and THIS one is a bit of a major tonal shift, both in terms of story and somewhat in mechanics. Who here likes the weirder kind of fairy tale? Scenario 3: Serenade of Moonlight Hill 3-4 Players, about 4 Hours, forbidden love, solemn, heartwarming quote:The moonlit hill glows beautifully in her memories. Yeah this is about to get shoujo as gently caress. While hanging out in Glow Wisteria, the party is approached by a girl in a fine red dress, identifying herself as Christina Antoise, daughter of Cesae Antoise, a somewhat wealthy and important local merchant. Here we are introduced to something new: Action Checks for roleplaying purposes, where during this scene the GM asks for a DEX+WIS roll to give some extra non-essential story info. Success reveals that rumor around town is that Cesar is doting but a bit overprotectiver, forbidding her from going outside town even on generally safe well-trod roads, and as she nears marriagable age he has been carefully vetting possible suitors he would trust with his daughter's hand. Christina isn't entirely opposed to this, but before the course of her life is decided, there's something she needs to do. Deep in the forest is a place she calls Moonlight Hill, covered in nocturnal flowers that open at night and glow like stars. She saw it once when she was younger, and for reasons that she won't elaborate on she wants you to escort her into the forest to see it once more. The forest map has four Quests, but most of them are optional and are largely there for story purposes. This scenario is a lot heavier on RP and plot than the previous ones, and I like that the examples demonstrate a bit of flexibility in the system for different kinds of play styles. The only really important quest is finding this hill in the first place, requiring STR+WIS-1 to reconnoiter. One of the BIG optional Quests is WIL+DEX to try and extract more information out of Christina about the first time she saw Moonlight Hill. When she was young, in a fit of rebellion against her stifling father, she went out by herself one night to the edge of the forest. There she met a boy about her age she'd never seen around town, bundled up so much she couldn't see his face, with thick fur gloves. He didn't talk much beyond giving his name as Ryuka, but together they explored the forest and he showed her Moonlight Hill before escorting her home and disappearing back into the forest. She hasn't seen the boy since, but she cherished the memory of her first childhood love. However, she knows she can't allow childish crushes and old memories guide her destiny, and has decided that going to see that hill and maybe even that boy one more time will give her the closure to move on with her life. Another big quest is, in a certain location, rolling STR+DEX (no I don't know why STR+DEX, it's pretty arbitrary and just gives the meathead PC a moment to shine) will reveal that there's something else out in the forest, following you. Something with footprints like a wolf. At another point, a WIL+WIS roll will tell you that you hear the howl of a wolf out in the woods which almost sounds like words. In fact, it almost sounds like someone saying Christina's name. At this point it's painfully obvious where the story's going, and the book acknowledges that yes, we all see where this is going. The book specifically says that Christina has no idea why it sounds like her name, and if you try and explain it she will reject it out of hand. Once reaching Moonlight Hill, it's as serene and picturesque as you imagined. Or at least it was until a loving werewolf runs out of the forest with his posse of non-were wolves, grabs Christina, and throws her over his shoulder like a sack of flour intent on abducting her into the wilderness. Magic Battle Start!  Note that Christina isn't a tiny child, she's like 17, that wolfman is just loving enormous. Upon defeating the werewolf, Christina finally puts the pieces together and admits the obvious truth: the wolfman IS Ryuka, the boy from all those years ago. He's a Therian, an animal who gained human intelligence from the Herbs, though as a creature of the deep forest he doesn't actually understand or speak human language very well. He too remembered that night all those years ago and wanted to be reunited with his first love, and snatched her up in a panic that she would leave the forest and he'd never get a chance to see her again. For her part, Christina doesn't seem super upset about the whole thing. So how does all this resolve? Well in a twist, it's actually left up to the players to give their imput on how they want the story to conclude on these star-crossed lovers. Suggested options are telling them that they are from two different worlds and that no, this will never work out what the hell are either of you thinking. Another is to tell Christina to abandon civilization and have them run off with Ryuka into the wildnerness together Tarzan and Jane style. The option the book seems to most support is the PCs volunteering to integrate Ryuka into human society, teaching him language and culture My Fair Lady style. As a Therian he probably has the potential to be a powerful Floria with training, and that earns a lot of respect among humans, and after that there's just the hurdle of convincing Christina's dad to be okay with his daughter being a furry. You could do an entire short campaign about these hijinks, really. That concludes Floria: the Verdant Way. It's... really weird. My biggest complaint is that there isn't enough of it, it doesn't expand on its cool ideas as much as I feel it could, a product of being designed for a streamlined novelty experience. I want this expanded, iterated on, something designed for regular weekly sessions in a campaign. I want as many hacks for this as there are for Apocalypse World. Do I recommend it? Sure I do, for certain applications. It feels like it's good for people who haven't played tabletop games before, maybe kids who hit that sweet spot of being old enough to do quick addition in their heads but not too old to think coloring is lame. It's a good intro game for normies who want something comfy, or a oneshot for a group who wants a night of something different and colorful and whimsical. And the pdf on DrivethruRPG costs as much as a Quarter Pounder meal, and will bring you much more long-term joy and health. Asterite34 fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Mar 3, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 02:05
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Asterite34 posted:That concludes Floria: the Verdant Way. It's... really weird. My biggest complaint is that there isn't enough of it, it doesn't expand on its cool ideas as much as I feel it could, a product of being designed for a streamlined novelty experience. I want this expanded, iterated on, something designed for regular weekly sessions in a campaign. I want as many hacks for this as there are for Apocalypse World. Do I recommend it? Sure I do, for certain applications. It feels like it's good for people who haven't played tabletop games before, maybe kids who hit that sweet spot of being old enough to do quick addition in their heads but not too old to think coloring is lame. It's a good intro game for normies who want something comfy, or a oneshot for a group who wants a night of something different and colorful and whimsical. And the pdf on DrivethruRPG costs as much as a Quarter Pounder meal, and will bring you much more long-term joy and health. I don't think this got many comments but I just want to say I really enjoyed this one. I appreciate Silver Vine Publishing and anyone who tries to give a viewpoint to TRPGs in non English languages.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:58
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Lines into shapes on graph paper is a really, really cool mechanic. I’m not 100% sold on this implementation, but the basic idea seems like it has some hefty legs under it. It’s been living in the back of my head for like a solid week now. Specifically I keep circling back to a kind of storytelling education-y game. Like RPGs with kids is a thing that a lot of people have done, and drawing-based gameplay plus a bucolic setting are a good match. I kind of want to make a game now about wizards where you do calligraphy or something as the resolution mechanic. Obviously that also has distinct problems, but it’s in the ballpark of a genre. (Thanks for the review!)
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Jan 8, 2022 03:23
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Floria is super cool and I will likely never play it because I do not like in-person games.
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Jan 8, 2022 03:36
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Infinity RPG A Conti Pimento  Discovering the planet Acontecimento is now remembered as what brought PanOceania to its current height, putting them in possession of two exoplanets before anyone else even have one. The name roughly translates to 'the Great Happening,' because the settlers absolutely knew how important the place was. The planet is exceptionally wealthy, with industry bringing it a lot of trade in its early days and, in the past thirty years, the Canto Initiative (proposed by Prime Minister Victor Canto) reinvesting into other sectors - most notably tourism, which is now a major industry. Acontecimento is slightly larger than Earth, but less dense, with a slightly lower surface gravity, giving its people a bouncy step and a reputation for cheer. Much of its land is prairie, and the continents are formed from hundreds of tiny tectonic plates. Since they're relatively small and light, they mostly grind past each other, creating plenty of hills but few mountains, and earthquakes are quite frequent. This also means the islands are seperated by huge oceanic rifts - mostly. In one spot, they have instead formed an immense mountain - Almofrei, on Magalhaes. It's a giant shield volcano that rises quite high. Aside from the volcano, the planet is fairly mild, with the northern hemisphere never really getting cold or seeing snow, though the southern hemisphere does get seasons. The islands of the far north are either extremely hot or unbearably wet during summer, but most of the planet's land exists in a permanent temperate zone, excellent for growing crops. The native plantlife was lush when the colonists arrived, and they quickly tried to harvest the local trees for building materials. Unfortunately, it was pointless - the local grasses were evolved to rapidly break down lignins in the wood as part of their biological competitions, leaving behind incredibly fertile soil. However, this meant they desperately needed the trees to feed them. When the colonists recognized this, they stopped cutting trees down and rapidly set up forest reserves to protect the ecosystem. The oceans are where you find the big animals - and they get bigger the deeper you go. On the surface, it's mostly small ones, similar to insects. That said, they're not generally pleasant insects. The planet is noted for the caskudas - roughly similar to cockroaches, but bigger, flying, resistant to basic physical damage, fast-breeding and apparently immune to most legal insecticide. Also they like crawling on people! No one likes them, but getting rid of them would probably mean using stuff acrid enough to destroy the environment. The people call themselves Aconteccans, and they're very proud of their status as the industrial base of PanO. Their ability to farm food crops constantly has made them the source of most of the nation's food reserves, and the mines of Magalhaes are rich beyond dreams, feeding massive nanoassembler factories to produce finished goods. Industrial and consumer goods flow from Acontecimento at all times through its many space elevators. The money that comes back in puts most of the population at the middle class level - which, remember, is amazing living standards. The original settlers came from Brazil, India and Chile, and while some predicted conflict, their cultures flowed together and created something new and unique, adding in some some entirely new traditions. They celebrate the 300th Festival, for example, on the 300th day of the calendar - only a thing on leap years. While the planetary rotation is slightly longer than Earth's, they keep to a 24-hour day...technically...by adding only an extra half hour each night, called "free midnight," which you can use for whatever you like. Most architecture is metal and plastic due to the early colonists being unable to use wood. Actual wood must be protected by bioresistant sealant and is a sign of either very old buildings or ownership by the very, very wealthy. The cities tend to be less shiny and fancy than on Neoterra, as there are fewer ultrawealthy people, but the very low wealth gap between rich and poor on the planet can be seen in the prosperity and joy of most inhabitants...though even in Acontecimento, there are Ateks, who usually live in slums that form small circles around the cities. Most people live in the cities unless they're in the Forest Rangers Service, who preserve and study the native forest reserves. The best of them are the Great Arboreal Rangers, dedicated and talented foresters who live in the center of the largest, near-continent-sized reserve, often spending months or even years living in the forest, alone. The region of Aryavarta is named for an ancient kingdom that once ruled over parts of India, Bengal and Pakistan, and it's where most of the original Indian colonists settled. For a while, Hindu and Sikh groups lived seperately, but they've since come together after a series of natural disasters led Hindu refugees from Adarsana to flee into the Sikh-controlled Khalsa for safety. Adarsana is infamously unlucky, and many believe the land itself is cursed. First, Adarsana turned out to be uniquely home to a type of grass that poisoned the soil against Earth crops - and which was poisoned in turn by them. The result was massive desertification and dust storms that raged for years. Then, a massive earthquake destroyed the city of Punta Al Sur along with its partially constructed orbital elevator, and the region is especially prone to earthquakes. The entire region has largely been abandoned for decades, its people evacuated to other areas and only a handful of ecologists left behind to try and keep the Adarsana Desert from expanding. However, there is new hope in the form of Demeter Empresa, an ALEPH-led effort to fully automate farming. ALEPH's experimented with automated farms before, and the main issues stopping it from expanding the small ones it has elsewhere on planet are the existing interests of clan farms and the Continental Farm Zones. No one objects to it working in Adarsana, though, except maybe Eco-Aktion, and it's looking to rebuild the region. Khalsa is a considerably more prosperous part of Aryavarta. Its cities are named for Sikh poets and gurus, but while the region was originally wholly Sikh, it is now a mix of Sikh and Hindu traditions, as the Sikh settlers welcomed the Hindu refugees with open arms and many even adopted entire families into their households. While the two religions remain distinct, cuisine, fashion, holidays and language have all become mixed, with most of the locals speaking a creole of Hindi and Punjabi. The area is home to the oldest of the Continental Farm Zones, which after five expansions now covers most of the region. Its largest city is Bhai Gurdas, which has grown rapidly and unpredictably since its founding due to absorbing most of the Adarsanan refugees a century ago. Unfortunately, a lot of the infrastructure that got thrown together to accomodate them is starting to fail, and the regional government is having trouble repairing it. Besides Bhai Gurna, there's Bhai Murdana, a coastal city famous for its saptasarni trees, which give the city a lovely smell thanks to the permanent temperate climate - the trees are eternally in blossom. The resort town Plaska Prasravarna is built on a massive geyser field - perhaps the biggest one in the Human Sphere. At any given time, the tectonic activity is usually making one part or another erupt, except for irregular periods called the Quiescence, when they all go silent and tons of small springs begin flowing. The town is quite young and several resorts have been receiving threats from ecoterrorists who are mad that tourism is loving up some of the geysers. The plans to build a new resort overlooking a nearby majestic waterfall is making it worse. The only city in the region that doesn't follow the Sikh naming scheme is San Fernando de Dagopan, founded by Filipino and Malay immigrants and culturally isolated from much of the region. It's one of the biggest strongholds of traditional clan farming in the area, opposing the expansion of the Continental Farm Zone. It's probably worth explaining those. Clan farms are traditional farms, owned by small or large families and operating the way you'd expect a farm to on earth - mostly industrial, but relatively small scale. They tend to date back to the early days, and many have faded and been consumed by the Continental Farm Zones - massive oceans of grain, fruit trees and cattle herds that cover gigantic regions in Khalsa, Camoes, Orujo-La Guardia, Zacuto and the Vishwa Archipelago. Most of the work in the Zones is done by remotes, operated by urban farmers in the cities. Farming can be quite dangerous, especially clan farming, thanks to ecoterror groups protesting expansion, farmers trying to violate the forest preserves or skirmishes over territory between rival clans. Of course, if ALEPH's automated farming experiments in Adarsana succeed, all those jobs may soon be gone anyway. Aryavarta is also home to the Great Arboreal Reserve, the largest forest and largest protected nature reserve in the Human Sphere. It is a low-growth jungle that likely resembles what much of ancient Acontecimento looked like, preserved by an outer ring of larger, canopy-blocking trees. There's really only one human settlement in the area - Peshawit, a beautiful town on the coast. It's seen a recent large population increase, as PanOceanic retirees have been settling there in large numbers. This has been quite controversial, as many worry about the environmental impact that expanding the city will have on the forest. The final region of the continent is Vanga, a mass of twisting rivers created by tectonic plates slowly drifting apart. It is a mass of swamps and broken, competing biomes which is near impossible for most to navigate thanks to the thick swamp brambles. The brambles appear to have evolved from a variety of tree that countered the grasses by developing a different organic polymer that isn't as rigid as lignin. The city of Bhai Khalla is home to the planet's newest orbital elevator, and while it's had a slow and difficult startup, it's going pretty well at this point. There's also the city of Galvao, named after the first Brazilian-born saint, who was said to read minds, see the future, levitate and colocate. It is mostly notable for being one of the few places that Bureau Toth allows ALEPH to maintain a permanent station for the SSS, who train in the swamps and jungles for deployment to Paradiso. The city's economy mostly revolves around its gigantic cargo railgun, a 50-kilometer-long behemoth used to fire bulk cargo into orbit, much of it minerals from the mines of Magalhaes. There's also a fun local tradition of robot martial arts in Khalsa and Vanga, developed based on Punjabi gatka combat. Farmers ended up illegally using their remotes to have gatka fights for fun, and the popularity of these matches has led some to develop specialized fighting remotes for actual legal sports, and even more recently, some soldiers have started taking part in TAG-based gatka combat for Maya audiences. BomJesus lies at the center of the planet's shipping routes, and its name means Good Jesus in Portuguese. It's home to one of the largest Catholic populations in the entire Human Sphere. Its capital, Cidade BomJesus, is built on one of the few stable geologic regions on the planet, and so has some of the only skyscrapers - and plenty of them. Even these cannot match up to the orbital arch that dominates the skyline, however, a massive orbital tether connecting the Cidade BomJesus and Tiradentes to alleviate shipping pressure despite environmental activists preventing the construction of an orbital elevator between the two cities. The city's edge is made of massive, bronze-edged domes that contain powerful nanofactories that produce the consumer goods that keep the city's economy flowing. The city of Orujo is a massive port and travel center, with three airports built in a triangle plus a large naval harbor and the La Guardia-Orujo train line's main depot. Goods flow in from all over BomJesus, then head up the Ipanema Orbital Elevator (exclusively used for industrial shipping) or go on express ships from Asturias Spaceport, if that's too slow. It's also the headquarters of the hypercorp Compass Transportation, the biggest shipping concern in human space, and of 'Teci Liquors, home of many great boozes, most notably augardente, brewed from certain types of local grasses. The nearby community Orujo Minor is technically a separate one, home to many large factory complexes which are generally operated under corporate law. This isn't even the main orbital elevator, either - that lives in Puerto La Guardia and handles passengers, food shipping and merchandise shipping. The city also has the biggest Atek slum on the planet, mostly made up of the descendants of Adarsanan refugees that were unable to settle among the Sikhs in Aryavarta. Tiradentes used to be a very minor city, until the construction of the Orbital Arch. Before them, it was mostly just the headquarters of the Acontecimento Military Police. Now, however, it has become increasingly rich due to the expansion of the the Vishwa CFZ, which ends up flowing through its ports and into the Orbital Arch, and of course all the traffic coming through from Cidade BomJesus. The last of the major cities is Zacuto, named for Abraham Zacuto, a Jewish astronomer who fled Spain for Portugal, became the Portuguese Royal Astronomer and helped develop the star charts that allowed for the Age of Sail. It's a relatively small city, noted for a conservative culture by PanO standards, that serves as the hub station for the Zacuto CFZ. Camoes is an archipelago split into two halves - the western half, a forest reserve, and the eastern half, one of the most successful CFZs on the planet. The name comes from one of the greatest Portuguese poets, Luis Vaz de Camoes, and poetry is very important to local culture, particularly de Camoes' Os Lusiadas, a fantasy about Portuguese explorers in the 1400s and 1500s. Many children are named after characters in the poem, and poetry and literature contests are frequent on the local Mayasphere. There's even a week-long festival each year puttin on a holographic theatrical production reenacting the entirety of Os Lusiadas. For our tour of major cities, we start with Punta Norte, which is small and, unique for the planet, built almost entirely of stone from local quarries, which has many colors and is also shipped off planet as a luxury construction supply. The city is also home to a top secret weapons development lab from the NeoColonial Wars, now rededicated to infowar devices, which is kept secure by a sophisticated slave AI dedicated to the job. (I am unclear on if the AI is sentient, and thus illegal, or not.) The settlement of Selva Preta sets at the heart of the Selva Preta Reserve, and its buildings are actually integrated into the forest itself in a beautiful display of ecological protection. The city was founded by research scientists, but a growing population of retirees has been causing some culture clash lately. Lastly, we have Sierpes Island, the entirety of which was granted to the Church as their base on Acontecimento. The population is actually significantly less Catholic than some parts of BomJesus, with a multitude of faiths living there, but they're all renting land from the Church. The Church itself mostly operates from San Juan de Sierpes, a town housing a massive cathedral-palace for the planetary Cardinal built from local orange-and-gold stone. It towers over the rest of the town and is locally known as Silveira's Folly, thanks to the fact that it wasn't actually built for local terrain. It was damaged by an earthquake a decade ago and is still being repaired. Magalhaes is home to Almofrei, which nearly breaches the edge of the atmosphere at its highest point. The continent's name is for Fernao de Magalhaes, whom you probably know better as Magellan. The place is a hotbed of valuable minerals, and the mines have expanded greatly over the last century to feed the needs of PanO. The continent's first major port was Portobelo, though it's suffered an economic downturn since the construction of better facilities in Riomeio and has survived by turning to tourism. After all, the climate is lovely, the beaches are beautiful, they have hot springs, you can ski on the mountainside - it's got everything! Riomeio, meanwhile, is the actual shipping center for the continent, unloading minerals off river barges and sending them all across the planet to the orbital elevators and arch or to the industrial factories in BomJesus. Our final major region is Vishwa, less a continent and more a collection of many smaller islands. It is far less culturally unified than most of the other regions, with many different and often iconoclastic communities. About 15 years ago, it was designated the latest Continental Farming Zone, despite the difficulties of doing so on islands. Many of the islands are unique and isolated biomes, officially preserved by law, but many are at risk due to human activity nearby. The regional government operates out of Bharata, the largest city in the islands, though it's still far smaller than any of the ones in BomJesus. It's on Bharatavarsha Island, mostly famous for its sabre-toothed bears, one of the last remnants of a prior evolutionary age on the planet. They're slightly smaller than Earth bears, but have two pairs of extremely vicious tusks, so they're still best avoided. The most recent expansion of the Vishwa CFZ has pushed it onto the island Dushyanta, which has also involved experiments with automated aquafarming techniques that might radically expand the CFZ. It is being heavily criticized from some quarters for disrupting the native biomes, but it's proving quite successful in growing large numbers of high quality crops, causing exotic food prices to drop significantly across the planet. We also get the note that the island of Shakuntala is home to a number of individual communities and is quite large, but has no roads connecting those communities to each other. Each community maintains its own roads, but they're not networked. Travel between communities is largely by air or offroad-capable vehicles. Besides the continents and Vishwa, there's a few minor island chains. Faleiro is notable for mostly being preserves intended for recreational hunting. The islands are kept stocked with game using fast-growth clones of Earth animals, and tourists pay a lot to come and hunt them. The Faleiro Gaming Authority is considering expanding their stock to include non-Earth animals from across the Human Sphere, starting with the sabre-toothed bears of Vishwa. Then we've got Sahibzadas, home of the Golden Temple of Acontecimento - a replica of Harmandir Sahib, the holiest Sikh temple on Earth. (During early colonization, the Sikh community decided to build one on each planet they settled on.) The temple, per Sikh practice, is open to all faiths and is now one of the biggest tourist attractions on planet. Then there's Tierra de Gelo, the Land of Ice, which is actually an overlapping mass of ice shelves covering a set of islands. In the summer, it's very dangerous due to unpredictable melt patterns in the channels. Last, there's Vasco de Gama, home of settlers who have deliberately chosen not live in the normal cities of the planet, preferring large ranch estates or small villages. The islands are also home to a number of techno-hermits, who live in total physical isolation, though they remain active and communicative on Maya. The biggest island was put through a controlled burn in the early years, destroying all of the native plant and animal life. It has since been resettled with Earth plants and animals. The solar system's name is Descoberta, and the strange orbits of its planets have led scientists to believe there may have been some sort of huge disruption in its past. The other planets are a gas giant named Miranda near the sun, a mesoplanet named Peteca that wanders about in a deeply eccentric orbit, a distant gas giant named Aparecida, and a frozen planet named Sorvete. Miranda is notable for having such high pressure that the water on it is pressed into an exotic form of solid matter despite being hundreds of degrees Celsius. This is called hot ice, and the atmosphere around it is mostly steam and hydrogen. The space above Acontecimento is full of orbital astroports, shipyards and construction facilities, which produce most PanO naval vessels and Teseum. Next time: Bourak
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Jan 8, 2022 03:45
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Xiahou Dun posted:Lines into shapes on graph paper is a really, really cool mechanic. I’m not 100% sold on this implementation, but the basic idea seems like it has some hefty legs under it. It’s been living in the back of my head for like a solid week now. It's funny you mention all this, because before releasing this game, Silver Vine Publishing also kickstarted another game in a similar sort of design space of "shapes on graph paper as a resolution mechanic". One that's a bit meatier, a bit more urban fantasy, a bit more high-stakes and action-packed In a word,  And you can bet I'm gonna review THAT one and see how it compares
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Jan 8, 2022 04:49
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Asterite34 posted:It's funny you mention all this, because before releasing this game, Silver Vine Publishing also kickstarted another game in a similar sort of design space of "shapes on graph paper as a resolution mechanic". One that's a bit meatier, a bit more urban fantasy, a bit more high-stakes and action-packed
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Jan 8, 2022 04:57
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Asterite34 posted:It's funny you mention all this, because before releasing this game, Silver Vine Publishing also kickstarted another game in a similar sort of design space of "shapes on graph paper as a resolution mechanic". One that's a bit meatier, a bit more urban fantasy, a bit more high-stakes and action-packed I mentioned Summon Skate already!
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Jan 8, 2022 04:59
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LatwPIAT posted:
Okay, so. A) my brain edits the neotenic out at all times because why, but fair point. B) As to your fourth point what? What???????????????????????????????????????? C) "I named a character in an example after the alt girl I jerk off to" I didn't know that Raggi was part of the Eclipse Phase dev team.
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Jan 8, 2022 05:00
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