That's fair, but that's also a lot more nuanced than your original post.
White Wolf's World of Darkness
That's fair, but that's also a lot more nuanced than your original post.
Goblins are scenery.
They are literally animated objects rather than people.
I think they may be a metaphor for NPCs?
Or how in a lot of works the "faceless masses" tend to be treated as a part of the setting rather than actual characters?
Anyway, looking at the Technocracy and the nature of its hypocrisies and its sins, I'd suggest that the Victorian core of the early Order of Reason were indeed the sort of hard-nosed social progressives who made sure their daughters had excellent liberal educations and knew the virtue of chasing after butterflies with a net and keeping rigorously identified collections of dead insects.
And of course, their daughters get to do such things because they have lots and lots of uneducated servants who do all the chores, allowing the elite to have the free time to sit around saying things like "I say, old chap, I do believe that properly educated from a young age a woman from a good family is better than any common riff-raff man who can't even read Homer in the original Greek, what what".
(Likewise, the Order of Reason probably pioneered surrogacy as a medical technique at least in part so their high-value female members didn't get taken out of action by maternity.)
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- They/Them
I also think that when you look at the past, you shouldn't forget that at the time, a lot of people really, really believed that scientific racism was serious and scientific. People published articles, entire careers were built, all of that good stuff. It was surprisingly mainstream.
Similarly, claims that women are biologically inferior due to, say, differences in their brain structure that can be found scientifically had a lot of purchase.
No idea which 'side' would own the Evo-Psych jagoffs that claim/claimed that women are genetically selected to be nurturers.
Or who would be in charge of that silly left-brain, right-brain thing, or any of that stuff.
Probably a little of everyone, since it was and is pretty popular among at least enough people that...
I mean, people read Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus and all of that stuff unironically, you know.
ganonso
Compulsive Quest Starter
- Location
- PACA France
On related matters, I think your approval or dissaproval of the Technocracy depends where you live.
By instance, in France, while there is undoubtelby an anti-science movement, quacks and others charlatans. They are distinctively not powerful as a social force. So the Traditions' questioning of science does not appear to me as inherently dangerous because I don't have political candidates spouting a variant of their views. Idem for the role of religion. Opponents against gay marriage in France did not argue that homosexuality was sinful, they argued that homosexuals were sick people that should be pitied but not encouraged and left near children.
On the contrary, I suspect that having highly mediatical people saying things like "Economical policies shouldn't be decided by the people and its elected representatrive but by experts" or "There is no alternative policies we can enact because economical laws constrain our actions" makes the Technocracy more credible as an antagonist.
By instance, in France, while there is undoubtelby an anti-science movement, quacks and others charlatans. They are distinctively not powerful as a social force. So the Traditions' questioning of science does not appear to me as inherently dangerous because I don't have political candidates spouting a variant of their views. Idem for the role of religion. Opponents against gay marriage in France did not argue that homosexuality was sinful, they argued that homosexuals were sick people that should be pitied but not encouraged and left near children.
On the contrary, I suspect that having highly mediatical people saying things like "Economical policies shouldn't be decided by the people and its elected representatrive but by experts" or "There is no alternative policies we can enact because economical laws constrain our actions" makes the Technocracy more credible as an antagonist.
- Location
- Brittany, France
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- He/Him
It also depends a lot on where you hang out on the Internet
Like I know @FBH posted "I think the Technocracy are the bad guys" in the "unpopular opinions" thread and my reaction was like "but is this even actually unpopular". I think you'd get a very different vibe from the OPP boards, and a still different one from rpg.net or wherever.
NonSequtur
a body
Even assuming fairly identical moral systems, value judgements in Mage the Ascension depend on a number of matters of fact the game line doesn't really bother to solidly or consistently define. How does Consensus work? What does the Technocracy actually do? What was it like pre-modernity? What is it like 'now'?
Nobody knows, and Mage isn't telling. Thus, flaming rows predicated on dissonant readings of the fragility and desirability of modernity, or the ubiquity of magic before the Union's ascendancy, or any number of things never really settled in 'canon' even when the people involved agree on questions of morality.
Nobody knows, and Mage isn't telling. Thus, flaming rows predicated on dissonant readings of the fragility and desirability of modernity, or the ubiquity of magic before the Union's ascendancy, or any number of things never really settled in 'canon' even when the people involved agree on questions of morality.
- Location
- Canada
I always figured that the reason monarchies tended to spring up in changeling courts was because those courts were founded a really long time ago, when just about everything was a monarchy. And that they continued into modern times because court contracts provide an advantage that changelings can ill afford to lose given their constant war with the gentry. I'm sure that there are groups of courtless who have established republic freeholds, it's just that they're in the minority because they are objectively more dangerous than the standard freehold as they have fewer contracts and court benefits.
Actually, I would not be surprised if the Reason court from KCS had founded a couple of those, relying on term limits to ensure transitions of power exist to confuse the Fae. Although TBH, I think that the "confuses the fae" justification is BS, as it's not hard to imagine Fae whose entire story could be based around change and rotating power structures.
Other than that, I usually am bad at recognizing the implications of WW game lines. I really don't see any implications of goblins beyond "hey here's some interesting NPCs to interact with". The less clarity for killing them just follows from human psychology, in that we're hard-coded - to at least some extent - to percieve killing other humans as bad, and something that looks visibly non-human would probably not trigger that instinct to the same extent. It doesn't really say much to me beyond that.
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It also depends a lot on where you hang out on the Internet
It certainly seems unpopular here.
I blame the fact that one of the most popular thread in Quest is Technocratic propaganda.
Edit: The fact is that the Technocacy, as an organization, is a failure at everything its tried to do. Its method, creating consensus reality, has not actually managed to achieve its aims (defeat the monsters, create global ascension)
The World of Darkness is still full of monsters... the most populous of whom the technocracy has treaties with, and allows to prey on humanity providing they don't cause too much of a ruckus.
Meantime, the technocracy has no idea how to create global ascension, and their program has, if anything, prevented people from coming close, and largely blinded humanity to its own ability.
You can further tell the technocracy are the bad guys because when you raise the second thing, Technocracy fans will usually start to question whether uplifting humanity to a state of immortality, bliss and enlightenment is a good thing.
So no, the technocracy are clearly the villains. They're the evil system that holds the world in its thrall, and means that everyone has a depressing life. They're The Man, The 1%, Moloc.
One can ask whether the world the traditions seek to create is any better, they don't know how to create mass ascension either, but really that's something for your PCs to solve.
Now I'll admit my view is mostly based on 2nd edition (IE the best edition) of mage, but still.
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- Location
- Denmark
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- She/Her
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- Denmark
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That's the spirit!
More seriously though, no one is arguing that the Technocracy are the good guys, just that the conflict between Traditions and Technocrats is "grey vs grey" and not "black vs white".
I mean, a lot of us are angry with M20 whitewashing the Technocracy by blaming the Nephandi.
The sins of the Technocracy are the sins of the west and the sins of capitalism and the sins of the scientific community.
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It really depends on what kind of game you want.
If you want a game about flattering things you already believe, saving the world that is, and being amazing cyborgs, play a technocracy game.
If you want a game about creating a better world, about everything you believe being wrong, and about being amazing wizards, play a tradition game.
I just much prefer the traditions. If I wanted my sciencism flattered I could play almost anything else.
If you want a game about flattering things you already believe, saving the world that is, and being amazing cyborgs, play a technocracy game.
If you want a game about creating a better world, about everything you believe being wrong, and about being amazing wizards, play a tradition game.
I just much prefer the traditions. If I wanted my sciencism flattered I could play almost anything else.
NonSequtur
a body
Sure, but Traditions flatter your liberalism.
- Location
- Brittany, France
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- He/Him
And the Technocracy is pretty much Fascism Lite, "now repackaged for the convenience of liberals." Its popularity is honestly a very biting insight into the way progressives can be seduced by fascism-like ideologies and methods. (actual fascists would like it for a different reason)Sure, but Traditions flatter your liberalism.
You play the game as written with the mindset the writers were writing for. And that's a Traditions game.
Like, attempts to gain the moral high ground by arguing that Mage is a game for challenging your beliefs are fundamentally flawed by the fact you sure as hell have to invoke the Death of the Author to claim that. Because otherwise, one word counters that.
And the word is "Brucato".
"Propaganda" apparently equals "the primary antagonist group is the Technocracy, the primary antagonists are the higher ups of the Technocracy, and the party is currently hiding from the Technocracy".
Hmm. I'm not really sure a game where the party Progenitor doctor blows up a Void Engineer spaceship and then teams up with a Hollow One, a Templar and a Euthantos master to kill a senior Syndic is exactly white-washed Technocracy propaganda, you know?
"Brucato".
- Location
- Spain
Yeah. The things is, in a game so metaphysical as mage is, limiting the moral conflicts to who offers more material confort seems... awfully reductionist. It's perfectly argumentable that the TU goals, if achieved, would lead the world to disaster, to a pure deterministic world without true free will that would eventually* be consumed by entropy to boot.
*(Yeah, eventually here means "a fuckton of time", but who cares? Time is but an illusion, and there is a significant difference between eternity and a trillion years.
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NonSequtur
a body
That's the point, as it were. If we're going to use Mage as a means of not "flattering things you already believe", where "everything you believe [is] wrong" then the setting where the metaphysics make liberalism dangerous is a useful reading if you're actually interested in self-examination.
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Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
This logic applies in reverse too; the Technocracy not having properly figured out Ascension yet is just a problem for Technocracy PCs to solve.
They actually do. By slowly bringing more things into consensus and making it more restrictive, they create global ascension by creating a world where there's no difference between the willworker and the sleeper and the latter can do what the former can do and vice versa. It is telling that in all the endgame scenarios, the only two factions who actually can win without Deus Ex Machinas are the Technocracy and the Nephandi. Both of them actually are capable of reaching their victory using the same means they have been using before. (In fact, the Technocracy victory scenario is largely about deciding what levels of free will are acceptable in such a victory.) Meanwhile, the Traditions need about a dozen deus ex machinas being thrown their way to possibly achieve global Ascension.
The Technocracy is authoritarian and (well duh) technocratic, and believes that the vast majority of people cannot actually be trusted to make good decisions. This is not a terribly popular viewpoint in the first world but is also not the same thing as fascism. Fascism is explicitly nationalist (which the Technocracy rejects-One World Government and New World Order is the name of the day), is regressive in a sense that it hearkens back to an old golden age and revitalization of the state (which the Technocracy rejects-it rewrote the golden age of Creation into a time of reptilian rage and senseless savagery
), and it also comes with ideas about constant struggle between nations and races which build into the social Darwinist viewpoint-things which again, are rejected by the Technocracy in the form of globalization and one world government.There are fascist elements to the Technocracy, but there are fascist elements to a lot of ideologies because fascism is fundamentally incoherent.
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ganonso
Compulsive Quest Starter
- Location
- PACA France
Actually the Technocracy ideology is older than facism. Its nearest analogy in the real world would be 19th century empire building (at least from a French perspective). Mundanes cannot be trusted to rule their own affairs and it's the burden of the enlightened to guide them and rule them to help them develop.
And of course real life technocrats, people that assume that the plebs is not qualified to rule and that "experts" could rule according to scientific mandates and laws, exist. In Europe we have heard these last years many things about how the Greeks are not entitled to their own decisions and how their elected government must bow to unelected experts.
And of course real life technocrats, people that assume that the plebs is not qualified to rule and that "experts" could rule according to scientific mandates and laws, exist. In Europe we have heard these last years many things about how the Greeks are not entitled to their own decisions and how their elected government must bow to unelected experts.
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- They/Them
Of course, the real life ideology of technocracy and its long and storied record of success and talent as an ideology of course makes it deeply attractive to its many billions of fans.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, let me put it to you this way: if we take your (rather generous) interpretation of it, the Technocracy is authoritarian-progressive. It's just really authoritarian in its progressivism. "Authoritarian-progressive" isn't a term you see thrown around much, in part because I made it up and in part because what I mean by it gets lobbed in with "liberalism" in the typical American political discourse, but it's pretty far from liberalism. The Technocracy has a lot of appeal among a certain crowd because while that crowd is often referred to as "liberal" they're actually not liberal at all. Their point of view may be "not terribly popular in the First World" but it's been super-popular in certain progressive elites of the First World for over a century now, and you see a fuckton of it among educated nerds.The Technocracy is authoritarian and (well duh) technocratic, and believes that the vast majority of people cannot actually be trusted to make good decisions. This is not a terribly popular viewpoint in the first world but is also not the same thing as fascism. Fascism is explicitly nationalist (which the Technocracy rejects-One World Government and New World Order is the name of the day), is regressive in a sense that it hearkens back to an old golden age and revitalization of the state (which the Technocracy rejects-it rewrote the golden age of Creation into a time of reptilian rage and senseless savagery
There are fascist elements to the Technocracy, but there are fascist elements to a lot of ideologies because fascism is fundamentally incoherent.
When I look at "Technocracy as the good guys" arguments - or even "both sides are equal" arguments - I don't really see some kind of dark side of modernity that only a few are willing to stomach by putting aside their liberal sensibilities and accepting its dark implications. I see something that speaks the language of a certain crowd, and which gets popular because that group actually doesn't like "naive liberals" at all. The Technocracy speaks to these people: they don't support it because they're better capable of advanced reading of the material and critical thought, they support it because it agrees with them politically. It's just that this is non-obvious due to the way modern American (and to a lesser extent all Western) politics are framed.
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Wait, the dinosaurs are a lie of the Technocracy?