Selling yourself short
Last year, I mentioned I wanting to spin an entire game or campaign out of three lonely paragraphs from Greg Stolze's ...in Spaaace! I've finally done something with that impulse.
The Thursday Night Crew is going to try In a Wicked Age, but we wanted to come up with our own setting and random inspiration generators. So we all submitted ideas and voted for the three we liked best. My first choice ended up winning: Sam Z. (detritus9 )'s After the Flood, a mythic setting of survival, secrets, and stranded sea-monsters.
For my entry, I took Stolze's Telepublic Democracy idea and ran with it. IAWA probably isn't the right game for the setting (Sam suggested Shock), but this idea isn't going away. Here's almost exactly what I posted to the mailing list:
With apologies to Greg Stolze, or perhaps apologies to everyone, since I haven't read IAWA yet:
In a Wicked Age, a psychic super-computer was invited to read the mind of a nation. Public policy is enacted based on direct measurement of the conscious and unconscious will of the multitude. Psychic Aggregate Receptors are installed on every cell phone, radio, and television tower to monitor the broad, background thoughts of the population. Every month, or more often in times of crisis, the computerized Legislative Engine promulgates the latest changes to the laws of the nation.
"Will of the multitude" is perhaps not the best description. "Whims of the multitude" is more appropriate. The changes in the nation's legal code can be described as erratic or impulsive at best, though the system is eventually self-correcting. Thankfully, law enforcement is still mostly in the hands of human agents. However, some districts are finding that the convenience of infraction-bots outweighs the discretion of human police officers and prosecutors.
Besides the obvious security and transparency issues and the potential for privacy abuse, a glaring flaw in the system has recently come to light. Two months ago, a paper describing an individual possessing paranormal psychic abilities and the experimental method by which these abilities were verified was published. Thousands of psychic individuals across the nation have been discovered since then. Though the extent and manifestation of their abilities vary greatly, all psychics have an disproportionately large effect on the vote. Every effort is being made to "disenfranchise" these aberrants and preserve the votes of normal citizens.
Sample Oracles and Elements:
The Hunted
-Aberrants are being relocated to remote reservations.
-A telepathic infant is ripped from the arms of her parents.
-A young couple both manifest psychic powers for the first time in a crowded theatre.
The Hunters
-The chief of police uses his position to hide his aberration.
-Robots are deployed against the Aberrant.
-PAR antennas can be re-tuned to find psychics.
The Nation
-An ugly prejudice is ensconced in law.
-A popular product becomes a mandatory purchase.
-Tax incentives for vices lead to public health crisis.
The World
-Foreign powers make use mass media to influence the ballot.
-A change in public opinion leads to the abandonment of an ally.
-Isolationists move en masse to coastal/border regions to influence local laws regarding immigration.
In conclusion, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I might be on the right track.
--
George Austin's Working on It:
http://zoatebix.livejournal.com
P.S. The original text from Greg Stolze's ...in Spaaace! follows:
Telepublic Democracy
Democracy seemed like a great idea but, in actual practice, most people found it to be a real drag. It wasn't just that you had to go and wait in line to punch a ballot only to wonder if the system was really working or if it was all smoke and mirrors and the election officials were making it all up while ingesting government-funded drugs from the navels of government-funded hookers. More than that, it carried with it an obligation to be informed. People had to know the issues, know the sides, know the facts, know the opinions, know the opinions about the facts, know the facts about the people giving the opinions so that they could recognize opinion disguised as fact... it degenerated into a depressing haze of recursion and lowest-common-denominator demagoguery.
The theory behind telepublic democracy was that, with mind-reading technology, it would be possible to do an end-run around all that 'informed citizen' crap. Computers would use broad telepathic scans to produce an aggregate model of voter values, and that model would be applied to issues without having to bother the citizens. It promised all the sovereign representation of democracy, without troubling people to pay attention to creatures egotistical and smug enough to want to run things.
There are a few telepublic democracies still up and running, and they've been described as "nightmare utopias". The legislation that emerges from the mob unconscious is capricious, to say the least. These are societies in which 'ugly' people (who are identified as such by a specially programmed league of aesthetic-bots) are required to conceal their features in public, on pain of being disfigured. Foreign relations veer between violence and cowardice, while fiscal policy has been underwriting the candy and deep-fat industries for decades. The sick are 'disappeared' to luxurious state hospitals which they can never leave and from which outgoing mail is not permitted. Taxes seem to be assessed completely at random.
Nevertheless, the people there seem pretty content.
Until next time!
The Thursday Night Crew is going to try In a Wicked Age, but we wanted to come up with our own setting and random inspiration generators. So we all submitted ideas and voted for the three we liked best. My first choice ended up winning: Sam Z. (detritus9 )'s After the Flood, a mythic setting of survival, secrets, and stranded sea-monsters.
For my entry, I took Stolze's Telepublic Democracy idea and ran with it. IAWA probably isn't the right game for the setting (Sam suggested Shock), but this idea isn't going away. Here's almost exactly what I posted to the mailing list:
With apologies to Greg Stolze, or perhaps apologies to everyone, since I haven't read IAWA yet:
In a Wicked Age, a psychic super-computer was invited to read the mind of a nation. Public policy is enacted based on direct measurement of the conscious and unconscious will of the multitude. Psychic Aggregate Receptors are installed on every cell phone, radio, and television tower to monitor the broad, background thoughts of the population. Every month, or more often in times of crisis, the computerized Legislative Engine promulgates the latest changes to the laws of the nation.
"Will of the multitude" is perhaps not the best description. "Whims of the multitude" is more appropriate. The changes in the nation's legal code can be described as erratic or impulsive at best, though the system is eventually self-correcting. Thankfully, law enforcement is still mostly in the hands of human agents. However, some districts are finding that the convenience of infraction-bots outweighs the discretion of human police officers and prosecutors.
Besides the obvious security and transparency issues and the potential for privacy abuse, a glaring flaw in the system has recently come to light. Two months ago, a paper describing an individual possessing paranormal psychic abilities and the experimental method by which these abilities were verified was published. Thousands of psychic individuals across the nation have been discovered since then. Though the extent and manifestation of their abilities vary greatly, all psychics have an disproportionately large effect on the vote. Every effort is being made to "disenfranchise" these aberrants and preserve the votes of normal citizens.
Sample Oracles and Elements:
The Hunted
-Aberrants are being relocated to remote reservations.
-A telepathic infant is ripped from the arms of her parents.
-A young couple both manifest psychic powers for the first time in a crowded theatre.
The Hunters
-The chief of police uses his position to hide his aberration.
-Robots are deployed against the Aberrant.
-PAR antennas can be re-tuned to find psychics.
The Nation
-An ugly prejudice is ensconced in law.
-A popular product becomes a mandatory purchase.
-Tax incentives for vices lead to public health crisis.
The World
-Foreign powers make use mass media to influence the ballot.
-A change in public opinion leads to the abandonment of an ally.
-Isolationists move en masse to coastal/border regions to influence local laws regarding immigration.
In conclusion, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I think I might be on the right track.
--
George Austin's Working on It:
http://zoatebix.livejournal.com
P.S. The original text from Greg Stolze's ...in Spaaace! follows:
Telepublic Democracy
Democracy seemed like a great idea but, in actual practice, most people found it to be a real drag. It wasn't just that you had to go and wait in line to punch a ballot only to wonder if the system was really working or if it was all smoke and mirrors and the election officials were making it all up while ingesting government-funded drugs from the navels of government-funded hookers. More than that, it carried with it an obligation to be informed. People had to know the issues, know the sides, know the facts, know the opinions, know the opinions about the facts, know the facts about the people giving the opinions so that they could recognize opinion disguised as fact... it degenerated into a depressing haze of recursion and lowest-common-denominator demagoguery.
The theory behind telepublic democracy was that, with mind-reading technology, it would be possible to do an end-run around all that 'informed citizen' crap. Computers would use broad telepathic scans to produce an aggregate model of voter values, and that model would be applied to issues without having to bother the citizens. It promised all the sovereign representation of democracy, without troubling people to pay attention to creatures egotistical and smug enough to want to run things.
There are a few telepublic democracies still up and running, and they've been described as "nightmare utopias". The legislation that emerges from the mob unconscious is capricious, to say the least. These are societies in which 'ugly' people (who are identified as such by a specially programmed league of aesthetic-bots) are required to conceal their features in public, on pain of being disfigured. Foreign relations veer between violence and cowardice, while fiscal policy has been underwriting the candy and deep-fat industries for decades. The sick are 'disappeared' to luxurious state hospitals which they can never leave and from which outgoing mail is not permitted. Taxes seem to be assessed completely at random.
Nevertheless, the people there seem pretty content.
Until next time!