Is there anything at all similar for oMage? I've known a game of that I could have joined for a few months, but all the players are experienced and all using multi-adept characters, while my entire knowledge of it comes from reading Panopticon.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
- Location
- America
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thanks!
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Random silly question: Is there a way, with Mage magic, to fake an accent? Like, "I want to pretend to be German" and have magic in some way help the faked accent part. Mind, maybe? To make people hear an accent that isn't there? Or Forces to, I dunno, modify the sound waves?
Grunt
Well, sorry Sword-Princess!
- Location
- Austria
Mind, both for making others hear what you want them to hear, or give yourself the ability so to speak.
Forces as you said.
Life allows mimicry so that works too.
Fate, well, you could just try what you think sounds german and who knows..you may get lucky.
Death so you could summon up a german ghost.
Spirit to summon the spirit of german accents (masters do not care wether said spirit existed before they had need of it)
Matter..well...you'd have to go mighty silly. Same with Prime.
Time, change your timeline to have spent most of your life in germany?
Space...ok, I'm getting nothing on that one.
Forces as you said.
Life allows mimicry so that works too.
Fate, well, you could just try what you think sounds german and who knows..you may get lucky.
Death so you could summon up a german ghost.
Spirit to summon the spirit of german accents (masters do not care wether said spirit existed before they had need of it)
Matter..well...you'd have to go mighty silly. Same with Prime.
Time, change your timeline to have spent most of your life in germany?
Space...ok, I'm getting nothing on that one.
Well, I don't know anything about nMage, but from what I've seen in Panopticon, that would be a Mind 1 or 2 effect to actually rewire yourself as though the accent was natural.
Mind 3 lets you speak/understand any language you want. Therefore, at maximum it requires Mind 3. I'd lean towards making it either Practice of Ruling or Practice of Shielding depending on whether you see what you're doing being tweaking how you speak, or concealing how you speak - either way, Mind 2.
- Location
- Italy
My Mexican Thysus martial artist actually did that using Mind 2 as suggested (or actually, the Mastigos player did that to her, she didn't have any Mind) to hide her accent and turn it into a british one during an infiltration in my chronicle.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Man, 1e Mage Atlantis actually has some pretty...sketchy implications if you think about it. I mean, I suppose a lot of all of them do, but we're talking about a world in which the truth actually *is* hidden in the ancient primeval past, and where there *can't* be any new learning because everything is about revealing the ancient secret truths which are spelled out in an obscure message that only sages can interpret by looking for the small signs and remains of this once glorious truth.
Which can have pretty shifty social implications.
It makes me wonder what weird messages Changeling implies. I mean, I know there's the 'violence against goblins and Changelings is less-bad for sanity than hurting people' thing, and I also know that the fact that Changelings literally make a monarchy is certainly an interesting choice there, but it makes me try to think of other implications of the cosmology.
Like how with Old Mage, authoritarian thought police turned out to be completely right and justified because changing minds *did* change reality, and thus there is such a thing as thoughtcrime and it *should* be punished. Disagreement IS Treason.
Or how oVamp relentlessly pushed a message that appealed to ancient powers and an ancient past, and rather blatantly rewrote all of human history so as to be a footnote to Vampire history.
Which can have pretty shifty social implications.
It makes me wonder what weird messages Changeling implies. I mean, I know there's the 'violence against goblins and Changelings is less-bad for sanity than hurting people' thing, and I also know that the fact that Changelings literally make a monarchy is certainly an interesting choice there, but it makes me try to think of other implications of the cosmology.
Like how with Old Mage, authoritarian thought police turned out to be completely right and justified because changing minds *did* change reality, and thus there is such a thing as thoughtcrime and it *should* be punished. Disagreement IS Treason.
Or how oVamp relentlessly pushed a message that appealed to ancient powers and an ancient past, and rather blatantly rewrote all of human history so as to be a footnote to Vampire history.
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This gets weird when you include the possibility that "Atlantis" probably existed in multiple different locations and times, and each was retroactively erased, and this could have happened who knows how many times.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
That only fits Sycretic thought more often, the idea that there are bits and pieces of some sort of vague, multiple truth in the world, and that one merely needs to find and unearth them to get to the capital T Truth.
Another thing. People have said that oWerewolves are literal fascists. I almost want to talk to someone who has said that and run through the Fascism checklist.
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ganonso
Compulsive Quest Starter
- Location
- PACA France
While owerewolves fill some of the facist's checklist (glorification of war, exaltation of the past, focus on bloodlines) they lack the most important traits of worshipping the state or the focus on industry.
Hell you can make a more compelling argument about the Technocracy being facist, and even then this is not exactly true. (They are however high modernists authoritarians)
Hell you can make a more compelling argument about the Technocracy being facist, and even then this is not exactly true. (They are however high modernists authoritarians)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well, worship of the state isn't necessarily needed for Fascism. I like Eco's Ur-Fascism definitions, though he makes it clear you don't have to check every box. Also some of these inherently contradict each other because Ur-fascism itself isn't exactly coherent, and that's the point.
1) Cultural Sycrentism and a worship of tradition. It doesn't have to be a coherent tradition, and you can set it in the ancient past (Atlantis
), but what matters is the overall valorization.2) Irrationalism and a rejection of modernity (often political modernity because most states have to use some technology).
3) Act, don't think. A cult of action that values action over reflection. (So many Splats I can't even count).
4) Disagreement=Treason (As if thought crimes exist...*glances at oMage)
5) A fear of difference. Often racism, but it could potentially manifest in other ways.
6) The one most every group is least likely to actually ping: appeals to a frustrated middle-class.
7) An obsession that there is a plot or scheme to run or ruin the world. Oddly enough, in the World of Darkness there is...but being right doesn't stop it from being hallmark fascist.
8) The enemy is strong, but weak. They are rich, powerful, and decadent...and yet can be overcome. They are dangerous and to be distrusted, yet can be beaten.
9) Life is war, pacifism is weakness, glory to bloodshed! Skulls for the Skull Throne!
10) Contempt for the weak, and popular elitism. There are the weak, and the strong, and the strong deserve by their merits to lead the weak, thus justifying a hierarchy while disclaiming it. Establishing it. This weakness probably could be spun into 'knowledge' though this would contradict the anti-intellectualism of other points. But, for instance, one could say, "Non-Mages are contemptible, weak nobodies, and for their own good they should grant us absolute power and authority."
11) "We can be heroes, just for one day!" Everyone is educated to be a hero. To die gloriously to save the world. Not just an exception, but the rule.
12) Machismo, often in the form of sexism or homophobia (again, this is one that WoD at least hits somewhat more rarely than the others, though it's implied that the Technocracy might have once been certain things before rewriting history so that they were never on the wrong side.)
13) Selective Populism. You appeal to the people, without asking persons. You have a dictator who hears the "Voice of the People" yet you despise parliaments and want this voice heard in a vague, qualitative way, not in anything like, say, actual voting.
14) Newspeak. Now, every splat has more than a little of this, honestly.
It's surprising how many of these are hit by different splats.
NonSequtur
a body
You're telling me WW splats weren't supposed to appeal to middle class American teenagers and young adults?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
True, I was mostly talking about IC. I'm more interested in, like, the in-world ideology, worldview, cosmology and justifications rather than a target market.
Like, what does it say that C:TL takes place in a world where oaths can be made binding, symbols/concepts can make binding pacts, and Changelings seem to inevitably form Monarchies for self-protection.
What's the implication behind Goblins? Or etc, etc (I was just mentioning C:TL because it's my baby).
ganonso
Compulsive Quest Starter
- Location
- PACA France
The Technocracy is explictly noted by the authors as constantly rewriting its own history to present itself as egalitarian while they were as homophobic, racists and sexists than the societies they evolved in.
Which is a fallacy you see often even in educated people. The thought that the West "gave" by sheer enlightnment rights to minorities and that these rights are automatisms in any given societies.
Which is a fallacy you see often even in educated people. The thought that the West "gave" by sheer enlightnment rights to minorities and that these rights are automatisms in any given societies.
Right, every single reform against racism and sexism was actually done by the Traditions despite the fact that this makes zero sense. I think @Eukie and @Revlid have been over this.
The Civil Rights Movement, Feminism, and LGBT rights being the work of the Traditions really stands out as a passionate attempt to play into right-wing conspiracy theories without all the racism and bigotry involved. As I touched upon earlier, and ES explained, the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory is realized in oMage as the Ivory Tower-half of the NWO. The Frankfurt School conspiracy theory, also known as "cultural Marxism", is the probably anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that all of modern identity politics are a liberal/socialist/communist tool for controlling thought through newspeak and Political Correctness. It teaches that sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, etc. are all fake, created for the purpose of shaming white heterosexual men and bringing the communist Liberal Elite to power by promising ethnic minorities, women, and homosexuals priviliges over white hetero men.
In oMage, the Ivory Tower are all the parts of the academic establishment except the academic mainstream that uses critical theory to focus on the plight of minorities. This aspect of thought-control has been left out of the NWO, presumably for the same reasons that Andrew Wakefield is strangely absent from the Sons of Ether. If anything, the Civil Rights Movement, LGBT rights, Feminism, and handicap parking should be major victories of the Technocracy, since they're thematically part of the Technocracy's tools and part of the Ivory Tower's conceptual space.
While you can certainly create a game where the international banking conspiracy is strangely absent of Jews and is being actively opposed by the ADL, and the cultural Marxist academic elite are actually trying to crush communism and LGBT rights, as oMage has already proven, it has this innate sense of internal contradiction to it. It tries to use the actual conspiracy theories and present them as "real", yet at the same time it scrubs them of anything that might offend the liberal sensibilities of oMage's target audience. It's like verisimilitude in Science Fiction; the spaceship that runs on pixie dust can do a lot more fantastic things than the spaceship that runs on fusion before I start objecting, because I know how fusion is supposed to behave, but pixie dust is just fucking magic. I know how the conspiracy of ivory tower intellectuals is supposed to work, so when oMage shows me that the Cultural Marxists are trying to stamp out LGBT rights and oppressing communists, I call foul.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
That's not what ganonso said at all. Hell, what he said directly agrees with what you've said before.
You are defensive about the Technocracy, if you literally take criticisms *you've* admitted were valid before and even directly stated, but if someone else stays it it's clearly they're actually being a giant strawman so that you can attack them.
Edit: And now you've quoted an giant post of Eukie's so you can further attack the strawman that only exists in your mind.
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It doesn't, though. The Technocracy is imperfect and morally dubious, but that's not carte blanche to paint it with every form of imperfection and moral dubiousness.
I am 'defensive' about what a certain set of people do which is basically take the 1E "everything good was the Traditions, everything bad was the Technocracy" arguments and make them unironically, as ganoso did. I think that the best way to represent the social science conventions in the Technocracy is Jeremy Bentham. And he advocated for gay rights two centuries before it was cool. He also advocated for universal surveillance, for the government to know everything about you, and a very utilitarian set of ethics which would potentially allow for Jack Bauer to Jack Bauer, but you take the good with the bad. I have no problem with the Technocracy being imperfect. I have a problem with the Technocracy being Baen villains where they become this incoherent pastiche of progressivism and first world problems with any of the actual good parts of the first world being stripped away and granted to other people.
EDIT: In fact, ganoso's post is the exact thing I've stated I don't accept before:
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Um, except no. Ganoso didn't even mention the Traditions. How is "The Technocracy once was racist even though it pretends now that that never happened" in any way equivalent to "And therefore the Traditions were anti-racists heroes."
It could be that both, founded in a racist society and made up of members who were part of that society, were pretty darn racist. Maybe in different ways, of course.
Also, I'm pretty sure scientific racism/sexism (and my god was it common) is totally the Technocracy's baliwick, as is any appeal to "Our culture is more civilized", for the same reason that the Traditions definitely have a lock on the, "I'm afraid of the other" and "Let's throw a Pogrom" sorts of things. Historically, at least.
Ganoso's point is that the Technocracy, like many modern societies/groups, likes to rewrite its history so that it was always a stalwart defender of what it now thinks valuable. I should search this thread, because I'm pretty sure you've said EXACTLY THIS before. In this very thread. Which you are now attacking.
Unless you view History as a thing where the Technocracy and the Traditions have to be on different sides, one right, one wrong, your objection doesn't really make sense.
Bentham was Technocracy, sure. So was Scientific Racism guy and 'I have charts that prove women are inferior' guy. The Technocracy's big, it has room for a lot of people.
So do the Traditions. The traditions might have the 'sexual liberty' guy, but also the homophobe who thinks god mandates the death of gays, and the person who thinks being gay is unnatural, and the person who thinks...etc, etc, etc.
Note the many, many times in which he referenced the Traditions and how amazing they are and how they are everything good about everything ever. Oh wait.
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grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
Before it was cool in the Anglosphere, anyway.
Five years after he wrote "Offences Against One's Self", France legalized sodomy.
There's a difference between what you're suggesting-the Technocracy is imperfect and divided-and the implications of what ganonso wrote-"the Technocracy never advanced egalitarian causes and just rewrote history so they were."
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hmm, that's not how I read what they wrote, I more read it as 'They did no more to advance egalitarian causes than any other group, or were not the special sauce that made the world great, but after the fact claimed to be central to it.' Or something like that.
However, I'm just going to ask @ganonso what they meant.
Also, I love how sarcastic nMage is about all of these things we're taking seriously. It basically directly says that all of these Mage groups taking desperate credit for everything that ever happened are a bunch of deluded idiots who didn't, on the whole, actually write history.
"Uh...see here, this one poetic tradition, we were clearly behind it and should have credit because reasons."
...in oMage, this is actually taken seriously to the point where we can argue about whether the Technocracy was a historical force for good or not, where in nMage the matter is more 'did Mages even matter enough to have a debate about the extent that they wrote history?'
With the implication that most of history got along fine on its own and Mages just were along for the ride while doing their own thing. Mostly.
nMage has consistently been a reaction against the excesses of oMage, which is why it's like this about all of sekrit history-the wizards are too busy being assholes to each other to fuck with regular people.
ganonso
Compulsive Quest Starter
- Location
- PACA France
Or as in RL, egalitarianism came about minority people taking enlightenment philosophies, among other things, in direction not really foreseen by the theorists. I still think that it's in characters for some members of the Traditions (and the Technocracy) to be parts of these movements because they were members of these minorities, but I see no reason to have Mages be responsible for them entirely.
It's like the French Revolution. While it took its roots in Enlightnement philosophy, none of the Enlightnement philosophers foresaw it or would have approved of it. Hell of them, only Rousseau was what we'd call a democrat.
Also having the Technocracy being pro-gay in the 19th century would paint them as incompetent in pushing their agenda. The RL paradigm shift from "homosexuality as a sin" to "homosexuality as a disease" did not make life easier for gay people and in many ways worsened their conditions (Notably by linking homoerotic situations and links that were allowed to homosexuality proper).
FYI I present the Technocracy in my games as genuinely pro what we call now Western values. I just contest the fact they were defending these values from their beginning for this plays directly in the fallact I"ve described above.
Enlightnement did not give minorities rights. Minorities fought for these rights.
@MJ12 Commando
I would say that the Technocracy advanced egality by destroying the concept of nobility and divine right. I hesitate to make them full opponents of religion when one of their founding groups is the Cabal of Pure Thought but I'd say they would be sensible to people like Spinozza or Giordano Bruno's plight.
Also while I don't see them as vangards of egalitarianism, I say once an advance has entered the mainstream thought (or at least the mainstream educated perspective) they defend it.
It's like the French Revolution. While it took its roots in Enlightnement philosophy, none of the Enlightnement philosophers foresaw it or would have approved of it. Hell of them, only Rousseau was what we'd call a democrat.
Also having the Technocracy being pro-gay in the 19th century would paint them as incompetent in pushing their agenda. The RL paradigm shift from "homosexuality as a sin" to "homosexuality as a disease" did not make life easier for gay people and in many ways worsened their conditions (Notably by linking homoerotic situations and links that were allowed to homosexuality proper).
FYI I present the Technocracy in my games as genuinely pro what we call now Western values. I just contest the fact they were defending these values from their beginning for this plays directly in the fallact I"ve described above.
Enlightnement did not give minorities rights. Minorities fought for these rights.
@MJ12 Commando
I would say that the Technocracy advanced egality by destroying the concept of nobility and divine right. I hesitate to make them full opponents of religion when one of their founding groups is the Cabal of Pure Thought but I'd say they would be sensible to people like Spinozza or Giordano Bruno's plight.
Also while I don't see them as vangards of egalitarianism, I say once an advance has entered the mainstream thought (or at least the mainstream educated perspective) they defend it.
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