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Tsilkani posted:The guy behind SIGMATA is also the writer of Cryptomancer, also in the bundle, and it is another lovely game where if your rebellion goes too big, the immortal wizard-kings immediately find you and blow you up, the end, no moral, next time try more incrementalism.
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Apr 27, 2023 20:24
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SIGMATA is the game where one of the factions you're meant to ally with in order to fight the Fascists is the KKK. That should tell you a lot about the author.
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Apr 27, 2023 20:26
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Yeah, it's funny that he openly bragged about how he would play his game with Republican veterans and it's changing hearts and minds, but he has absolutely no tolerance for anyone an inch to the left of Bernie Sanders. Some other weird things about Sigmata I remembered: There's an in-character speech where a Resistance leader is criticizing divisions among the left, demanding unity and telling everyone to shut up and REPEAT THE SIGNAL, and the character giving the speech is named Chaka Hobbes. So he's using the voice of an imaginary (presumably) nonwhite guy to go after his Posting Enemies in a game about a magic radio signal. All of the revolutionary Factions have a sort-of timeline for what happens if they become too dominant and overthrow the Regime. The Billionaires, John Birchers, and Fundamentalists do what you'd expect, but the leftist Party is being manipulated by Russia. This Signal Repeats Horseshoe Theory. Oh, right. The tagline for the game is "This Signal Kills Fascists," but agents of the Resistance are forbidden from using violence except in self-defense. You are specifically forbidden from assassinating fascist politicians. Just REPEAT THE SIGNAL. It's a very specific "lifestyle anarchist" fantasy of overthrowing fascism with graffiti and zines. It's like he thinks the Weather Underground only failed to incite the overthrow of the US government because they didn't have super powers. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 20:35
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SIGMATA makes a lot more sense as being about Gladio cells empowered by US intelligence agencies to stamp out leftists.
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Apr 27, 2023 20:39
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This Signal Mildly Inconveniences Fascists
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Apr 27, 2023 20:40
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The mana cost is low, but you have to pay $250,000 to purchase the card.
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Apr 27, 2023 20:41
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This Signal Critically Supports The Regime On Aerosmith
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Apr 27, 2023 20:43
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IIRC, Sigmata was basically a straight transplant of the Arab Spring with the names of the relevant groups crossed out and the equivalent US groups sharpie'd over them, and the author basically did not think about the differing circumstances between the two at all and then became Extremely Not Mad when he got called out over it. Cryptomancer was more of a treatise on hacking/cracking inserted into a fantasy world than an actual game. The explanation for the doom spiral built into the exposure track was supposedly to put in a moral about the value of a doomed struggle- you aren't expected to be able to win against the machine by yourself, but your fight will inspire others to follow in your footsteps. In a vacuum it's not that objectionable, just kind of dumb, but once his views started coming out more it started getting side-eyed a lot harder.
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Apr 27, 2023 23:01
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Nessus posted:I recall that fatal and friends panned Sigmata for being terminally centrist and generally weak tea, but I do not recall Assad coming up at the time. Has there been new information regarding Mr. Assad? Last I had heard he did not sound like a very good guy, albeit not one who had yet been featured in, say, a Vampire RPG book. I believe Halloween Jack mentions Assad because the faction design was based on loosely on the relative positions and relationships of groups involved in the Syrian Civil War, but transposed (clumsily) into an American context.
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Apr 27, 2023 23:16
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kvx687 posted:you aren't expected to be able to win against the machine by yourself, but your fight will inspire others to follow in your footsteps. In a vacuum it's not that objectionable, just kind of dumb I felt this way about Spire
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Apr 27, 2023 23:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:I believe Halloween Jack mentions Assad because the faction design was based on loosely on the relative positions and relationships of groups involved in the Syrian Civil War, but transposed (clumsily) into an American context.
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Apr 27, 2023 23:41
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I'm probably never going to resume that F&F because I'm burnt out on the hobby and also because I don't want to and I extremely started that review from a point of self-hating despair (spoilers: turns out I'm not cishet!) because I was drinking directly from the political hose but one of the most telling things about SIGMATA is that, as it's written, there will be an inevitable betrayal that happens in the course of play. Yeah the Resistance is allied with tankies, Randians, right-wing militias and fundies and fighting against stuff, but there's a balancing mechanic of who likes who at any given time and when you trip into endgame, the least-favored faction joins the fascists and in the process basically kills everyone involved in the Resistance who is problematic and obstructive to true change. It's a hugely Harry Potter-rear end "evil defeats itself" idea because it does the dirty work for you, their betrayal galvanizes the survivors into becoming the true Resistance who then can win the day for good and stomp a hole in evil's rear end forever.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:01
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Cool Dad posted:Am I confusing SIGMATA with a different game or isn't that guy a dumbass who would tell us we should ally with the Pinkertons to fight fascism or something Nope, SIGMATA is the game that presents a retro-transistorpunk world where you fight the power by allying with the fascists to overthrow the fascist government, and the writing has to bend over backwards to make the government completely evil without even accidental good points to make that remotely palatable. It fails, because anyone left of Nixon reading it won't go for 'we're playing Hard Men making Hard Choices' compromise as the theme of a game about being anti-fascist insurrectionists. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Apr 28, 2023 |
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Apr 28, 2023 00:02
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My favourite detail about Sigmata is the Old Men, the loose coalition of survivalist militias and their backstory of having gotten curbstomped by the Regime leading them to realise that American people of colour have been the real freedom fighters this whole time. Less plausible than the radio cyborg stuff. The author also has this incredible act where when people offhandedly made fun of Sigmata he'd go "I'm sorry you hate real political action and want the fascists to win, look how this one group in Italy have bought my book as a teaching aid" and when people actually knuckled down and critcised it substantively he'd throw up his hands and go "woah woah, this is just a dumb game about cyborgs punching nazis, why are you taking it so seriously?". Real coward hours.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:19
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He also wrote—after Sigmata—Bombs and Balaclavas, an attempt at a more realistic and contemporary take on freedom fighters/terrorists. In this game you create the resistance movement you're a part of. He gives plenty of words to Hard Choices, and he gives two examples of faction creation that includes a bloodthirsty Islamic Caliphate bent on world domination and the execution of any infidels who will not convert. Then you immediately get a sidebar sneering at the reader who asks about playing Boko Haram or ISIL. So you can create a wholly original made-up Fox News nightmare segment, but don't you dare ??? in the game you sick freak. Like, dude, I'm not enthusiastic about any of this but I'm getting The Mixed Signals here. Buddy's politics are some real weird trash.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:20
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Saguaro PI posted:My favourite detail about Sigmata is the Old Men, the loose coalition of survivalist militias and their backstory of having gotten curbstomped by the Regime leading them to realise that American people of colour have been the real freedom fighters this whole time. Less plausible than the radio cyborg stuff. Yeah, he canceled my KS pledge when I made too much noise about how poo poo the politics of it were.  The factions, for reference: The Old Men are former soldiers, cops, and other violence workers. Their beef with the Regime is that it’s unconstitutional. The Party is a leftist alliance of Socialists and Union Members. Their beef with the Regime is that it’s Rightist. (They turn out to be tankies working for the Soviets later on.) The Faith are Christian missionaries and true believers. Their beef with the Regime is that its “faith” is centered on big-money mega-church televangelism. The Makers are pro-business libertarians and free market Liberals. Their beef with the Regime is that it represses the Invisible Hand. Guy's a technofetishist libertarian who dresses his opinions up with leftist terms.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:24
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I mean I'd be down for Cyborgs vs. Nazis. Here, I'll save them the trouble. Militech attempts to create personality constructs based on media imagery of historical figures. After some limited success with Elvis and George Washington, they attempt to do it with Adolf Hitler, but pop media contamination breaks the parameters and now AI-DOLF has gone rampant and is seizing mental control of Militech security forces and assets. Initially left alone because their quarterly numbers were good, you, hearty edgerunners, must now save Night City from becoming Nacht City under the steel boot of the Fourth Reich.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:27
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Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, he canceled my KS pledge when I made too much noise about how poo poo the politics of it were. who the gently caress is even in the regime at that point if those are the people who aren't in it
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Apr 28, 2023 00:27
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Good question, they're utterly nondescript fascists. Like NPCs from Central Casting with question marks for faces and shirts that read 'BAD GUY'.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:44
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Piell posted:who the gently caress is even in the regime at that point if those are the people who aren't in it You know, the constitution-eroding, money-grubbing conspirators who cynically exploit good old-fashioned Christianity and who are secretly at fault for the free market not delivering good outcomes.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:49
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Piell posted:who the gently caress is even in the regime at that point if those are the people who aren't in it People who are axiomatically evil in annoyingly vague but also annoyingly specific ways because they people that are basically evil down to the molecular level in order to make the factions palatable.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:49
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The soulless minions of orthodoxy.
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Apr 28, 2023 00:50
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Bar Crow posted:SIGMATA makes a lot more sense as being about Gladio cells empowered by US intelligence agencies to stamp out leftists. I really need to run my Delta Green game set in 1970s Italy where the PCs are DG agents stashed in Italy early in the Cowboy Years. “Sure,” says Detective Lenzi. “We’re real sure those leftists are cultists. Y’all better go smash them.” Fairfield was canonically associated with Gladio.
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Apr 28, 2023 01:05
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Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, he canceled my KS pledge when I made too much noise about how poo poo the politics of it were. Given that the factions are basically the ones in the Arab Spring with the serial numbers filed off, I'd guess they'd line up with: Military/former militias that were deposed by the current regime Youth college movements and Leftists Muslim religious groups sidelined by the regime Western business interests Revolutions make extremely strange bedfellows as it happens so often in history, but playing some of those more dogmatic, terrible, or otherwise morally questionable groups seems more fitting for a semi-competitive board game rather than a TTRPG. Even Comrades has a Religious Demagogue sheet which is not unlike the Ayatollah during the Iranian Revolution, but it requires a lot of delicacy to do the sort of retheming SIGMATA's creator tried to do and maybe a bit more cynicism and humility.
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Apr 28, 2023 01:25
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These categories would work better if you had something more regional, too.
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Apr 28, 2023 01:32
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So crucially in Sigmata you're not actually playing any of those groups, you play as the *real* resistance, which is sort of a vague leftist but not *too* leftist org that has no real unifying goals or ideals beyond not liking the Regime, which is why they can ally with a bunch of monsters but also get mad when any of these groups are like "actually we have political goals we would like to see realised." I distinctly remember that in the Kickstarter promo the bit where eventually one of the factions will side with the regime in desperation is described as "the ultimate triumph of idealism over pragmatism", because, you know, selling out your beliefs in order to achieve power is what idealism is. Saguaro PI fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Apr 28, 2023 |
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Apr 28, 2023 01:34
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Don't forget that a major mechanic is balancing appeasing all of those factions at once or they'll just go over to the regime because they don't really have any substantive disagreement with the party in power.
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Apr 28, 2023 01:36
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Liquid Communism posted:Yeah, he canceled my KS pledge when I made too much noise about how poo poo the politics of it were. Everyone wants antifa clout without antifa consequences
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Apr 28, 2023 01:42
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Oh, hey, don't forget this: https://twitter.com/HoldenShearer/status/1279092075250757637 https://twitter.com/HoldenShearer/status/1279092409771667458
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Apr 28, 2023 01:51
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Tsilkani posted:Oh, hey, don't forget this: Yeah that was from their latest game which had in addition to that some art plagiarism drama, a game about playing eco-terrorists trying to stop billionaires from loving up a precarious ecosystem by pillaging the planet to build giant spaceships to colonize other worlds, only guess what happens if you do too good a job at it.
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Apr 28, 2023 01:56
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah that was from their latest game which had in addition to that some art plagiarism drama, a game about playing eco-terrorists trying to stop billionaires from loving up a precarious ecosystem by pillaging the planet to build giant spaceships to colonize other worlds, only guess what happens if you do too good a job at it. yeah dont fix the world just turn a barren loving rock into the world shits easy
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Apr 28, 2023 02:44
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It makes a smidgen of sense if you view it through the lens of Syria/the Middle East, where you might have Assad as an autocrat on one side, and then on the other side you might have Islamists on the far-right, a nominally leftist organization like the PLO, and then whatever other "moderate rebels" the CIA decides to back in the middle. Even a free-market faction could be something like Ahmed Chalabi. It's just that it falls apart once ported over to the US.
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Apr 28, 2023 02:54
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admanb posted:wouldn't that no longer count as "on sight"? I have much to think on
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Apr 28, 2023 03:08
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah that was from their latest game which had in addition to that some art plagiarism drama, a game about playing eco-terrorists trying to stop billionaires from loving up a precarious ecosystem by pillaging the planet to build giant spaceships to colonize other worlds, only guess what happens if you do too good a job at it. The real fun thing is you're not even trying to *stop* the billionares from ruining the planet, the planet's already doomed, you're just trying to keep them from escaping the consequences of their actions. Which like, as a premise, it's bleak but sure - but at that point why *not* burn everything down?
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Apr 28, 2023 03:10
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Nessus posted:I mean I'd be down for Cyborgs vs. Nazis. I want to play this game.
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Apr 28, 2023 03:19
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joylessdivision posted:I want to play this game.
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Apr 28, 2023 03:38
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Doctor Zaius posted:The real fun thing is you're not even trying to *stop* the billionares from ruining the planet, the planet's already doomed, you're just trying to keep them from escaping the consequences of their actions. Which like, as a premise, it's bleak but sure - but at that point why *not* burn everything down? What if, say, we played the group that co-opted these giant arks from the fat cats so regular folks could flee the planet?
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Apr 28, 2023 04:11
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Dawgstar posted:What if, say, we played the group that co-opted these giant arks from the fat cats so regular folks could flee the planet? Not allowed, says the game.
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Apr 28, 2023 04:30
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Doctor Zaius posted:The real fun thing is you're not even trying to *stop* the billionares from ruining the planet, the planet's already doomed, you're just trying to keep them from escaping the consequences of their actions. Which like, as a premise, it's bleak but sure - but at that point why *not* burn everything down? My understanding was that the original premise was that the planet was in the process of a very tentative recovery BUT the billionaires were going to go ultra instinct strip-mining and turbofracking everything to build their escape arks because they didn't believe the ecosystem could recover in time and this would push everything into terminal collapse, but also yes, you had to interfere with them but only so far or else they'd go full scorched-earth with nuclear weapons. But then when the actual game came out there was also a horrible plague virus that had spread everywhere which I feel has to be a later stage addition because I genuinely don't remember anything about that, which makes the whole "save the earth" thing a lot weirder because now even if the billionaires happen to be stopped for good everywhere but a few places is infected by the virus or some poo poo. The point is that this guy has the most uncanny ability to come up with a premise that sounds good on paper (cyborg freedom fighters versus fascists, eco-warriors stopping billionaires from burning earth to cinders in a mad dash to escape to Mars) and making each and every one of them suck rear end.
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Apr 28, 2023 05:07
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Should have gone with The Hammer and the Stake for that bundle instead.
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Apr 28, 2023 05:32
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