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Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

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MJ12 Commando said:
There may always be a reason there are no massive Void Engineer alternate universe fleets and only the Nephandi have tried to do such stunts. The Nephandi, the people who literally don't care if they end up dying horrible screaming deaths in the process of killing the universe.
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Well, when you put it that way... Also, EarthScorpion has a very good point about alternate realities diminishing the importance of the conflict. When alternate universes aren't an integral part of the premise from the start, they do have a depressing tendency to lessen the emotional impact of the story beyond the cool factor.

And since EarthScorpion has proposed an alternative that makes the Quest more relevant and is less likely to make us explode from paradox (and more likely to be exploded by plasma cannons), my new vote:

[X] To disrupt a Resident deal involving shady things in the Umbra (like evil aliens and Nephandi)
-> [X] By tricking an Autopolitan mothership into blowing up the entire space station it's on.
-> [X] Then sabotage the Autopolitan mothership

Confusion to all enemies.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
[ ] To disrupt a Resident deal involving shady things in the Umbra (like evil aliens and Nephandi)
-> [ ] By tricking an Autopolitan mothership into blowing up the entire space station it's on.
-> [ ] Then sabotage the Autopolitan mothership
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Maybe?

No.

No, sorry this isn't better.

This doesn't seem likely to tell us more about ourselves. This doesn't seem likely to tell us more about the world. This doesn't seem likely to get us another team member. Worse, this doesn't even seem like it would actually hurt Threat Null significantly.

In fact, it feels like Catherine is getting us to help with a personal vendetta.

I get and respect that you have issues with alternate realities (since they seem very similar to the ones I have with time travel), but this option only seems to get Catherine Nichols personal goodwill.

Frankly, you can do better. (Hell, your first option was better and I already pointed out my problems with that.) For instance, if you can come up with a way that the option:

[ ] To get the Void Engineers to acknowledge that their secret is breaking down.

would help with any of the four points I listed above instead of merely putting us next of the list of people the Void Engineers need to kill I'd vote for it in a heartbeat.

Alternatively, would going further back into the past be better or worse for paradox? For instance, if we visited the Sorcerer's Crusade era, would that open us up more possibilities?
 
Nuts! said:
[X]Alternate timeline

I would add that "pinpoint, surgical changes" are not our strong suit. This isn't a tiny roleplay of a few, dedicated players with similar goals and careful methodology, who can avoid pushing the figurative button if it comes down to it. Because if our options are "kill Nephandi mecha-Hitler push the button" or "remain unseen," you know perfectly well that we'll go skipping right past the "die from terrifying amounts of Paradox backlash" bit and go straight to PUSHING THE BUTTON.

Hong Kong? We went in to investigate the sale of magical artifacts. We promptly found the building, snuck some agents inside, had a perfect setup for a Mission Impossible-esque spy technomagicalthriller...and then Jamelia put on her mirrorshades and kicked in the front door to re-enact a martial-arts movie from a gun-lover's perspective. Oh, and we also cleared out a Nephandi Labyrinth using a Marauder and Traditionalist lackeys and blowing up all the things. No big deal, eh? :V

Moscow? We were sent in to investigate the theft at a local museum. We ended up nearly causing Armageddon. Actually scratch that, we caused Armageddon and then promptly un-caused it via the power of FRIENDSHIP and FORGIVENESS and GIANT STOMPY GOD-ROBOTS.

England? Werewolf car chases and caern assaults and Pentex-killing, oh my, plus a bunch of Rogue Council terrorists and Rose tearing a Paradox Spirit apart by hand fang and need I go on?



So no, I don't think that a CTC loop would be a good idea given our general M.O. We aren't operators who operate operationally (in operations), we're the A-Team. We cause chaos, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and we thrive on it too. Our strengths have historically been in our characters' mental, social, and physical adaptability to changing situations: we've been extremely good at re-purposing "useless" assets or turning enemies into kinda-sorta friends, and we've been very capable of coping with chaos and adapting one step ahead of our foes.
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You know...we've been making Jamelia infectious in her M.O.


Are we SURE Kesseler isn't infecting everyone with an "Explosions follow" thing?
 
Hmm. I find the CTC more interesting than the newest suggestion. It does feel a little bit... I dunno, impersonal? There's no personal connections or investments like would come from rooting around in your own past or interacting with alternate versions of people you know. Both the time-travel and alt-universe choices both come with things that make it relatable on a personal scale from the very start; so you've plenty of ground to already work with. Too tired to type much more than just this brief explanation... (trying anyway)

Plus, I think I'm more interested in the Technocracy, seeing what it's like in power and the people are like, than in dealing with aliens. An alien menace that we'd blow up and bait into a war.
(And even if we'd be going into the past mainly to sabotage things... well, it would still involve conspiracy, office politics and dealing with people and seeing old (or alt-versions) of Technocrats.)

[X] I still prefer closing the CTC loop, or the alt-universe, compared to blowing up a that's-no-moon. Currently leaning more towards the CTC loop over an alt-universe.

As for possibly getting the VEs to acknowledge and move on with their conspiracy/secret war? Well... I feel like we'd be in a better spot to do that if we first do the time-travel or alt-universe mission first. Otherwise it feels like... like it's too abrupt.

The current setting feels like there's more of a better set-up for a time/alt-world mission than to start social-fu'ing Void Engineers. It feels like a more natural jumping off-point to head into the past or an alt world. And of course I think that completing the time-or-alt mission would more neatly and naturally lead into a Void Engineer-focused objective... well, that, or, it would lead into more Threat Null or Panopticon stuff!
 
In terms of alternate histories I think of them in terms of probabilities relative to our home timeline. A less probable world, a shadow/echo that MIGHT have been, but isn't, formed by major turning points in ours.
Easier than thinking that everything happened somewhere, somewhen.
sebsmith said:
Maybe?

No.

No, sorry this isn't better.

This doesn't seem likely to tell us more about ourselves. This doesn't seem likely to tell us more about the world. This doesn't seem likely to get us another team member. Worse, this doesn't even seem like it would actually hurt Threat Null significantly.

In fact, it feels like Catherine is getting us to help with a personal vendetta.

I get and respect that you have issues with alternate realities (since they seem very similar to the ones I have with time travel), but this option only seems to get Catherine Nichols personal goodwill.

Frankly, you can do better. (Hell, your first option was better and I already pointed out my problems with that.) For instance, if you can come up with a way that the option:

[ ] To get the Void Engineers to acknowledge that their secret is breaking down.

would help with any of the four points I listed above instead of merely putting us next of the list of people the Void Engineers need to kill I'd vote for it in a heartbeat.
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Hmm...I could back that one, especially if it's a limited disclosure.

Alternatively, would going further back into the past be better or worse for paradox? For instance, if we visited the Sorcerer's Crusade era, would that open us up more possibilities?
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Depends on whether we subscribe to Historical Inertia(big things remain unchanged because there's too many actors pushing towards the 'true' Present that our actions vanish into random noise the further back it is, allowing us to loot dinosaurs without changing history because the Impact wiped them all out anyway) or Butterfly Theory(every actor is important, so the further back the more chaos results from changes).
 
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sebsmith said:
Maybe?

No.

No, sorry this isn't better.

This doesn't seem likely to tell us more about ourselves. This doesn't seem likely to tell us more about the world.
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Sometimes things aren't a psychodrama. Sometimes you just have to go trick the mecha-Tyranids into killing an evil banker and then blow up their Death Star.

And, you know, the Void Engineers would probably rather appreciate an Autopolitan Death Star being blown up and the murderhobos not working for Threat Null because Threat Null pays well and has enslaving binding contracts.

sebsmith said:
Worse, this doesn't even seem like it would actually hurt Threat Null significantly.
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Yeah. Sure. Because setting a bunch of powerful murder spacehobos on a personal vendetta against the Autopolitans so they'll stop working as freelance mercenaries, murder a senior Resident and for the encore blowing up the freakin' Autopolitan Death Star isn't a significant hurt.

Pray, tell me what you think is "significant hurt", then.

sebsmith said:
I get and respect that you have issues with alternate realities (since they seem very similar to the ones I have with time travel), but this option only seems to get Catherine Nichols personal goodwill.
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Oh, heavens no. Merely the goodwill of an archmaster, the destruction of a major Autopolitan fleet asset, the loss of a dangerous force to Threat Null, the murder of a powerful Resdient, and a lessening of the pressure on the Void Engineers as Threat Null are forced to devote more of their forces to dealing with even more intense spacewards conflict.

Howsoever will we cope?

sebsmith said:
Alternatively, would going further back into the past be better or worse for paradox? For instance, if we visited the Sorcerer's Crusade era, would that open us up more possibilities?
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Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorse.

Ze butterflies, zey are made of murderknives and Paradox. Oh, and as an added bonus even more of your personal magic is vulgar. Oh, and your handgun is now a vulgar Device.
 
People should be considering the other side, i.e. getting the rest of your bros into space so you might be able to do weird stuff. Possibly in the past. Possibly the QUEST's nuclear-grade armaments might be useful for selective erasure of certain objects. Possibly simply because the moment Nichols starts ritual casting for 15+ years of time travel Threat Null will know.

EarthScorpion said:
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorse.

Ze butterflies, zey are made of murderknives and Paradox. Oh, and as an added bonus even more of your personal magic is vulgar. Oh, and your handgun is now a vulgar Device.
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It's more like "it depends." On one hand, because there's far more time to smooth out changes, actions you take are less likely to cause effects in the present, thus less paradox (Time is weird like that.)

On the other hand, if you manage to change the present, the fact that that means it's a massive change is likely to lead to horrible levels of paradox possibly up to the retroactive erasure level.

(I will not confirm or deny if I'll get a mod or admin to delete the entire Panopticon thread if you get retroactively erased).
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
It's more like "it depends." On one hand, because there's far more time to smooth out changes, actions you take are less likely to cause effects in the present, thus less paradox (Time is weird like that.)

On the other hand, if you manage to change the present, the fact that that means it's a massive change is likely to lead to horrible levels of paradox possibly up to the retroactive erasure level.

(I will not confirm or deny if I'll get a mod or admin to delete the entire Panopticon thread if you get retroactively erased).
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So...what about time traveling to just before a major disaster and looting knowledge/stuff?

Like looting choice works from the Library of Alexandria moments before the Great Fire, listening to the gossip at Hiroshima about an hour before the nukes hit, kidnapping dinosaurs before Extinction Event happens, etc.
 
veekie said:
So...what about time traveling to just before a major disaster and looting knowledge/stuff?

Like looting choice works from the Library of Alexandria moments before the Great Fire, listening to the gossip at Hiroshima about an hour before the nukes hit, kidnapping dinosaurs before Extinction Event happens, etc.
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If it doesn't actually change the future in a meaningful way, the paradox costs of what you do are much-reduced. If it does change the future in a significant way, you suffer paradox, and the more significant the higher the cost is.
 
Switching to a more grounded option, also because it gives us the clout to just go into convincing the VEs that their masquerade isn't long for the world. Granted with Nichols returning with us we will have hilarious amounts of clout since Ivanova was her protegee but this has less chance of being retroactively erased

[X] To disrupt a Resident deal involving shady things in the Umbra (like evil aliens and Nephandi)
-> [X] By tricking an Autopolitan mothership into blowing up the entire space station it's on.
-> [X] Then sabotage the Autopolitan mothership
 
MJ12 Commando said:
If it doesn't actually change the future in a meaningful way, the paradox costs of what you do are much-reduced. If it does change the future in a significant way, you suffer paradox, and the more significant the higher the cost is.
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But you get a small amount of 'dox if your only change is that there's a few less ashes in the Library?
 
So we're not operating on the butterfly effect, then? This is a weakly-fated universe where outcomes tend to converge?

...

[JK] "...open Stein's Gate."

Arcus2611 said:
But, if Panopticon Quest gets retconned out of the timeline, technically the request was never made because the quest thread never existed...

:o
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Unfortunately, "it never existed, so nobody deleted it" is a perfectly consistent timeline. :p
 
Winged One said:
But you get a small amount of 'dox if your only change is that there's a few less ashes in the Library?
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You'd probably get away with no paradox except for what you got traveling back in time (which is probably somewhere around 5 if you're careful to not have witnesses in your entry and exit points). In Panopticon, time travel to change the past is very hard, not utterly impossible. In general, masters only use it to create small changes they can take advantage of, versus aborting their enemies when they're fetuses.

@EarthScorpion is, however, right about mundane actions possibly leading to paradox. Something as simple as wearing clothing that doesn't make sense for the era (Jamelia wearing a suit in the 1920s, for example) might hit you with some paradox! (It'd admittedly be 1 or 2 points, but still). Paradox flaws and paradox burn are a way to mitigate some of this, as is Prime 5, but in general you are incentivized for doing fairly minor changes. Misplacing or stealing some documents or books from a place about to be burned down or destroyed, for example, killing someone a day or two earlier than they would have died anyways, or preventing hostile time travelers from acting, is generally how you're going to be using time travel. Note that simply by acting in the Umbra, you'll get a moderate buffer against the paradox of time travel, so you can possibly engage in a lot of minor changes or save up your paradox budget for one large change.

Amusing fact: Primium, as straight-up Prime "this is what reality should be fuck you reality warpers", may protect its bearers from changes in the timeline from time travel. Yes, this is me imagining the Chrononauts Initiative having this massive sealed Primium vault somewhere that housed the time machine and records of all of history, which an old transistor-powered Iteration X supercomputer the size of several rooms constantly compared historical records outside to historical records inside.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
Amusing fact: Primium, as straight-up Prime "this is what reality should be fuck you reality warpers", may protect its bearers from changes in the timeline from time travel. Yes, this is me imagining the Chrononauts Initiative having this massive sealed Primium vault somewhere that housed the time machine and records of all of history, which an old transistor-powered Iteration X supercomputer the size of several rooms constantly compared historical records outside to historical records inside.
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Also, it suggests that if you're going to send someone back in time to change it, that agent should be have some Primium, so they can remember their mission. In fact, you might want them to have, say, a Primium endoskeleton.

An Austrian accent is preferred, but not required.
 
Drakeneisen said:
Also, it suggests that if you're going to send someone back in time to change it, that agent should be have some Primium, so they can remember their mission. In fact, you might want them to have, say, a Primium endoskeleton.

An Austrian accent is preferred, but not required.
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As an actual Austrian, you have no idea how impossible it is for me to watch Schwarzenegger movies in english (except for Conan, for some bizarre reason).
 
I am probably closing the vote sometime tomorrow afternoon.

This means that you people should probably figure out what Kessler is actually doing before I count the votes, and consider what Jamelia is going to be doing. Currently the vote is 17 for alternate universes versus 15 for closing a timeloop.

You may want to vote for something on the Kessler thing because that is also important.
 
I already voted for a decapitation strike, because we can always just tell other 'crats where to find the resources when we're done jacking the spaceship, and, as said before, there's a countdown to Evil Space Jamelia.
 
[X] Find the mages and do a decapitation strike.
[x] To close a CTC loop.

I'm just not that interested in an alternate universe, but I'd love to see a Technocracy at the height of its power.
 
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