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joshua
– Admin
11:37 am – October 1, 2009
posts 159 |
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(I haven't read most of the Episode 5 thread because I wanted to get some coherent, independently authored thought going. It's probably very productive over there, but I want to get this thought down, then I'll go over there, read, and come back to make some sacred burgers.)
LIFELESS (OK, I read far enough to see that word in big letters.)
Your family is in tatters. Your country has no name. Your religion is run by fanatics. Your enemies are your neighbors. Money is meaningless but wealth can buy anything. Sex and love are fleeting pleasures when your partner will be gone so soon. Your only hope in life is that your death might mean something and end this endless war.
And now you have an opportunity. And you might get to see what your actions mean, after all.
The black market is bubbling with technologies from the nations and corporations that stand to gain the most from the struggle you swim in every day. Some technologies are reproduced locally. Some seep in osmotically.
The technologies change you. And you're the last person you want to be.
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joshua
– Admin
12:14 pm – October 1, 2009
posts 159 |
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You have identities that are your friends — family members, lovers, members of your religion, members of your ethnic group.
You have identities that are your enemeies — religious opponents, ethnic opponents, loan sharks and black marketeers, unrequited lovers.
People are made of multiple identities. A given person will probably be some enemy and some friend.
Daily life in this non-nation is composed of food and violence. Love is expressed by sheltering, fighting for, and feeding your loved ones. Violence is capricious as the weather but can be controlled, if only through further violence.
Technologies can change the things you can do in order to protect the people you care about.
Thoughts that come next:
- How to make technologies so that they give you new capabilities but change who you are.
- “How much do you change who you are to get what you need?”
- I want to hide “who you are” in “what you can do”.
- Transhumanism is very close to being the Fantasticizer for real world issues here. I think I'm OK with that, but would like to really give the game bizarro implications to the technologies as time goes on.
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joshua
– Admin
5:10 pm – October 1, 2009
posts 159 |
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An obvious influence here is District 9, but I've been thinking about our various wars and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict a lot lately, as well as the Yugoslavian… area? Conglomerate of rival states? Eritrea and Ethiopia come to mind, as well.
I'm thinking about pulling a Lehman and saying, “This is a refugee camp where you are right now, 30 years on.”
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joshua
– Admin
12:33 am – October 2, 2009
posts 159 |
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Making technologies
- Technologies start with known current high technology: eInk; cloning; autofabrication. Players (or a GM/Antag-like role) point arrows where those technologies are going.
- A player makes an “If only I could…” statement.
- “If only I could communicate with the guy on the other side, I'm sure we could work things out.”
- The technocrat player describes a technology that is becoming available that gives the character capabilities in that direction.
- The new technology goes on the Technet.
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This is really strong stuff, Joshua.
What does “Fantasticizer” mean?
Finish this sentence: “In Game X, you play a character/characters who….”
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Simon C – Member
2:20 am – October 6, 2009
posts 81 |
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Here's the rule I'd make:
Technologies are what they are, they do what they do. There no “Describe a new technology to get +1 to your Communication stat”. You say what new technology you've got. You say how that changes the character (physically, in the short term). You say what the technology does. If it sounds like that would give the character +1 to their Communication stat in some circumstances, they get the +1 in those circumstances.
No whether some “Technologiser” player is responsible for making up all the new technologies or whether that's a dialogue between players I'm agnostic on. But that sense that technologies are what they are, and do what they do, I think is really important to the idea of finding out how these technologies change who the characters are. The technologies should obey no budget of influence, and have no restriction on how they are used.
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