White Wolf's World of Darkness

[ChineseDrone]

You know, from the talk yesterday about governments having Paradox flaws, I was wondering--is it possible to actually create governments using Device rules? Presumably, the rote would be something like Entropy 5/Mind 4/Primal Utility 3/Correspondence 3, with Entropy establishing rule of law and the social contract through a geas, Mind creating a sense of governmental legitimacy, Primal Utility being used for device creation (the government takes in quintessence through taxes), and Correspondence to let the procedure affect the territory of the entire governed region.

 

[Quantumboost]

The Syndicate Convention Book explicates that they can make teams of people into Living Devices (though that's a PU 5 thing, because you're enchanting a dynamic, self-reinforcing structure that can recover on its own from damage), so I don't see why that couldn't be scaled up to a Government Device.

You can tie other Backgrounds to a Device as well, like Legend or Node/Primal Venture (to give it the ability to restore its own Mana/Quint supply), Destiny, and so on.

 

[TenfoldShields]

The Syndicate Convention Book explicates that they can make teams of people into Living Devices for things like assembly (though that's a PU 5 thing, because you're enchanting a dynamic, self-reinforcing structure that can recover on its own from damage), so I don't see why that couldn't be scaled up to a Government Device.

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[linkhyrule5]

You know, from the talk yesterday about governments having Paradox flaws, I was wondering--is it possible to actually create governments using Device rules? Presumably, the rote would be something like Entropy 5/Mind 4/Primal Utility 3/Correspondence 3, with Entropy establishing rule of law and the social contract through a geas, Mind creating a sense of governmental legitimacy, Primal Utility being used for device creation (the government takes in quintessence through taxes), and Correspondence to let the procedure affect the territory of the entire governed region.

Click to shrink...

Well, theoretically, yes.

In practice there are no Device rules beyond the sadly incomplete and insufficient ones found in Forged by Dragon's Fire, so...

(Device and quint rules will be incoming sometime this week, actually! I have a good bit of it done!)

Paradigm, one assumes.

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Nonsense. Everyone knows that the application of deGrassman's breeder allows the easy multiplication of small volumes of plasma, given an appropriate sink for the resultant free charge and a sufficient source of energy.

(Or to be less purple about it, presumably a paradigm exists in the Technocracy that can pull off what's ultimately "super-flamethrower" with a spark, and it only takes the one to mass-produce it. For that matter, the canonical cannons are made at Arete 6 or 8, which is beyond the E5 true-Enlightenment point, assuming you ignore the rather stupid "Technocrats get more bound to their paradigm at high Enlightenment" which, honestly, what does Enlightenment even mean at that point, aren't you measuring Marauder-ness instead?


.. Mm. Losing coherence, should sleep soon. Point being - the Technocracy actually has a pretty decent spread of paradigms within its large metaparadigm, and for the most part they can communicate it, so paradigm shouldn't be an issue with something basic and reasonably non-Deviant like that.)

 

[Quantumboost]

(Or to be less purple about it, presumably a paradigm exists in the Technocracy that can pull off what's ultimately "super-flamethrower" with a spark, and it only takes the one to mass-produce it. For that matter, the canonical cannons are made at Arete 6 or 8, which is beyond the E5 true-Enlightenment point, assuming you ignore the rather stupid "Technocrats get more bound to their paradigm at high Enlightenment" which, honestly, what does Enlightenment even mean at that point, aren't you measuring Marauder-ness instead?

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Strictly speaking (I think MJ was the first to point this out to me)... FbDF doesn't actually cap Arete for a Talisman at the Arete of the Mage. The only thing the Mage's Arete explicitly caps is how much of the Paradox Nullification trait the Wonder can have. Well, that and "what sort of effects can the Mage in question actually put in the thing".

So, as written, you can just take a dude with Enlightenment 3, Forces 3, Primal Utility 3, and a whole bunch of Tass, then have him try to make plasma cannons. This isn't quite as effective as a Master doing the same insofar as the rolls are more likely to get up to that level with a more Enlightened creator, but you can do it.

This might normally be interpreted as an oversight, but it actually does imply that the canon-listed plasma cannons can be built by Technocrats who aren't actually at transMastery levels of Enlightenment. That also means that they, and Devices like the Deep Space Combat Armor can be things that just get issued to people without being massively rare and valuable superweapons. Which actually strengthens the verisimilitude, so it's probably the safer conclusion to go with.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Strictly speaking (I think MJ was the first to point this out to me)... FbDF doesn't actually cap Arete for a Talisman at the Arete of the Mage. The only thing the Mage's Arete explicitly caps is how much of the Paradox Nullification trait the Wonder can have. Well, that and "what sort of effects can the Mage in question actually put in the thing".

So, as written, you can just take a dude with Enlightenment 3, Forces 3, Primal Utility 3, and a whole bunch of Tass, then have him try to make plasma cannons. This isn't quite as effective as a Master doing the same insofar as the rolls are more likely to get up to that level with a more Enlightened creator, but you can do it.

This might normally be interpreted as an oversight, but it actually does imply that the canon-listed plasma cannons can be built by Technocrats who aren't actually at transMastery levels of Enlightenment. That also means that they, and Devices like the Deep Space Combat Armor can be things that just get issued to people without being massively rare and valuable superweapons. Which actually strengthens the verisimilitude, so it's probably the safer conclusion to go with.

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Rather than that, I like PQ's solution: Yeah, someone with Arete 6 or 8 really did design the blueprints. Thing is, once it's designed, the Technodigm says that anyone can assemble the Device if they can follow instructions to the proper precision. So your hypothetical E3/Forces 3 Technocrat goes "Huh, I sort of see what this is doing, but man it's a lot better than I could ever do and I don't even understand all of it. But that doesn't actually stop me from just blindly copying it, because I'm not some mystic that needs to be initiated into the holy mysteries." and then gets to work making Devices by, heh, Rote.

So you can mass-produce these things, you just can't produce specialized designs without taking up the time of E6/E8 people.

 

[Revlid]

Like, I have to take, "Everything I know about the U.S. Civil War" and then ask "What if oWoD Vamps were there, they'd clearly be major parts of history because nothing gets done without supernatural beings in the oWoD, so how do I shove this nonexistant thing into the gaps of my knowledge of this timeline without something blowing up."

Click to shrink...

A bunch of vampires were probably Southern slave owners with ghouled-up plantation managers who bought into "blacks are less than human" and drank from them like animals. Or didn't believe that and did it anyway. The pre-Civil-War South is bascially perfect conditions for a vampire, because you can do all the horrible things a modern vampire wants to do, and so long as you complain of a poor constitution that means you have to keep indoors (or hell, just pretend to be bone idle), the law and your fellow countrymen will back you to the hilt.

By contrast, the vampires on the "side" of the North have nothing to gain but the ruination of their fellows... which is plenty, in fairness.

So it's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, basically.

 

[The Laurent]

A bunch of vampires were probably Southern slave owners with ghouled-up plantation managers who bought into "blacks are less than human" and drank from them like animals. Or didn't believe that and did it anyway. The pre-Civil-War South is bascially perfect conditions for a vampire, because you can do all the horrible things a modern vampire wants to do, and so long as you complain of a poor constitution that means you have to keep indoors (or hell, just pretend to be bone idle), the law and your fellow countrymen will back you to the hilt.

By contrast, the vampires on the "side" of the North have nothing to gain but the ruination of their fellows... which is plenty, in fairness.

So it's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, basically.

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Okay, I admit that I actually sorta liked Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, sorta, though that's mostly because I didn't take it seriously at all. Which was kinda the point.

The book, of course! Which is always better than the movie because I'm a snob. (And don't watch movies much.)

 

[Revlid]

Okay, I admit that I actually sorta liked Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, sorta, though that's mostly because I didn't take it seriously at all. Which was kinda the point.

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On the one hand, sure, it was a big dumb action movie.

On the other hand, it was a big dumb action movie with the balls to say that the Antebellum South were basically leeches. Parasites with disgustingly nostalgic good press in America, recognised as repulsive literally everywhere else in the world. Of course they were vampires, and Lincoln, representing everyone willing to abolish slavery (and in the modern day, not put up with the Confederate flag), was a vampire hunter. It's a very apt metaphor, and one that I didn't think I'd see made so blatantly in America for a long while. Hell, it took a church shooting to turn public opinion against the America swastika.

Vampires thriving in the South makes total sense in-universe, and out-of-universe is solid historical commentary. There's no reason not to use it.

 

[EarthScorpion]

While I agree that nWoD insistence in saying everything's the same, nothing to see here, move along in regards to history is sometimes SoD breaking, "simplistic and weak" is still giving too much credit to the oWoD's take on it, even examining each gameline by itself without frankensteining their backround histories.
And I say this as someone not really attached to historical accuracy in my modern settings.

And I'm curious what do you mean @EarthScorpion when you say "mage-sleeper political flaws"?

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The Mage-Sleeper thing is really the bit I care most about for both WoDs.

Now, for the case of the oWoD, oMage bluntly needs Mage supremacy if you're going to make sense of it. And once you isolate it of the rest of the oWoD's themes, mages are essentially super humans. Not in the sense of capes, but in the sense that they take a human and make them more. More everything - Magedom needs strong will, even low level spheres make it easy for you to lower your difficulties of things you want to do, provide ways for you to self-improve yourself and in essence on all sides of the Ascension War mages effectively represent the 'best' specimens - both at a metaphorical and capability-wise level.

Hence, no, don't wuss out. Mages are totally involved in every big human event in history, because mages are human. It doesn't disempower "humans" to have mages take credit for things and be involved to the core, because mages are symbolic representations of 'great men' - exemplars of an ideology.

Now, on the other hand, the nWoD's pretence that Mages can float along not being involved is just ridiculous. The entire nMage splat effectively fills the narrative roles of the "secret masters" and the "conspiracy of occultists" and shit like that, and a majority of the factions in Mage have an interest in controlling elements of human society. It is a raison d'etre for the Seers and the Silver Ladder, the Guardians need to be the secret masters for their own ideology so they can protect the truth and ensure the world is preserved for the coming of the Hieromagus, and the Mysterium is a born mystery cult. In fact, nMage is effectively covering part of the conspiracy myth that the Technocracy doesn't touch - the idea that there are secret probably-satanic warlocks in the Illuminati and there are secret societies of the rich and powerful where they take place in weird rituals - a la Eyes Wide Shut.

(Eyes Wide Shut is a very nMage-y film, as befits something done by Stanley Kubrick. Tom Cruise is a Banisher as Banishers showed us plays someone who just touches on the edge of the occult world - and then runs away back to the safety of the Lie, after dipping his toe in. It's basically a Failed Awakening.)

So, no, Awakening just wimps out. For Awakening to do things properly, things like the Skull and Bones Society should be embedded into the world of mysteries and conspiracy of nMage. There should be rumours that the UN Security Council secretly meets in a chamber whose geometry makes every discussion a prayer to the Unity - and that the true power in the UN is the fact that the Hegemon Ministry controls the translation corps, allowing them to hide their secret prayer-mnemonics within the words piped straight into the ears of world leaders. nMage should be a game filled to the brim with esoteric phenomena and crazy cult things - because all the protagonist factions are crazy cults, and the antagonists are crazy cults too.

But then again, my Awakening leans a lot towards Unknown Armies - I know exactly what I want from a game of gnostic horror and conspiracy and shape things to encourage it. And I find canon nMage often rather milquetoast about how it addresses such things. Don't just tell us that the Guardians have labyrinths - show us how they riddle through society and it's hard to tell if a secret cabal is influenced by the Ladder, the Seers or the Guardians... or has been forgotten about entirely.

 

[hyzmarca]

A bunch of vampires were probably Southern slave owners with ghouled-up plantation managers who bought into "blacks are less than human" and drank from them like animals. Or didn't believe that and did it anyway. The pre-Civil-War South is bascially perfect conditions for a vampire, because you can do all the horrible things a modern vampire wants to do, and so long as you complain of a poor constitution that means you have to keep indoors (or hell, just pretend to be bone idle), the law and your fellow countrymen will back you to the hilt.

By contrast, the vampires on the "side" of the North have nothing to gain but the ruination of their fellows... which is plenty, in fairness.

So it's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, basically.

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Up to a point.

There are still areas of risk, though. If you don't indoctrinate your slaves and one escapes (which happens often enough) then they could potentially hook up with the wrong people and bring vampire hunters down on you.

Likewise, if you go full depravity people are going to notice. There are ultimately lines that you're not supposed to cross, even if your victim is a slave. People crossed those lines anyway, but they were discrete about it.

Magically combining a dozen slaves into a twelve-headed monster with razor sharp penises for arms is probably one of those lines.

So, being an feudal lord with a heavily fortified castle is still better for the average Tzimisce.

 

[BlueBiscuit]

The Mage-Sleeper thing is really the bit I care most about for both WoDs.

Now, for the case of the oWoD, oMage bluntly needs Mage supremacy if you're going to make sense of it. And once you isolate it of the rest of the oWoD's themes, mages are essentially super humans. Not in the sense of capes, but in the sense that they take a human and make them more. More everything - Magedom needs strong will, even low level spheres make it easy for you to lower your difficulties of things you want to do, provide ways for you to self-improve yourself and in essence on all sides of the Ascension War mages effectively represent the 'best' specimens - both at a metaphorical and capability-wise level.

Hence, no, don't wuss out. Mages are totally involved in every big human event in history, because mages are human. It doesn't disempower "humans" to have mages take credit for things and be involved to the core, because mages are symbolic representations of 'great men' - exemplars of an ideology.

Now, on the other hand, the nWoD's pretence that Mages can float along not being involved is just ridiculous. The entire nMage splat effectively fills the narrative roles of the "secret masters" and the "conspiracy of occultists" and shit like that, and a majority of the factions in Mage have an interest in controlling elements of human society. It is a raison d'etre for the Seers and the Silver Ladder, the Guardians need to be the secret masters for their own ideology so they can protect the truth and ensure the world is preserved for the coming of the Hieromagus, and the Mysterium is a born mystery cult. In fact, nMage is effectively covering part of the conspiracy myth that the Technocracy doesn't touch - the idea that there are secret probably-satanic warlocks in the Illuminati and there are secret societies of the rich and powerful where they take place in weird rituals - a la Eyes Wide Shut.

(Eyes Wide Shut is a very nMage-y film, as befits something done by Stanley Kubrick. Tom Cruise is a Banisher as Banishers showed us plays someone who just touches on the edge of the occult world - and then runs away back to the safety of the Lie, after dipping his toe in. It's basically a Failed Awakening.)

So, no, Awakening just wimps out. For Awakening to do things properly, things like the Skull and Bones Society should be embedded into the world of mysteries and conspiracy of nMage. There should be rumours that the UN Security Council secretly meets in a chamber whose geometry makes every discussion a prayer to the Unity - and that the true power in the UN is the fact that the Hegemon Ministry controls the translation corps, allowing them to hide their secret prayer-mnemonics within the words piped straight into the ears of world leaders. nMage should be a game filled to the brim with esoteric phenomena and crazy cult things - because all the protagonist factions are crazy cults, and the antagonists are crazy cults too.

But then again, my Awakening leans a lot towards Unknown Armies - I know exactly what I want from a game of gnostic horror and conspiracy and shape things to encourage it. And I find canon nMage often rather milquetoast about how it addresses such things. Don't just tell us that the Guardians have labyrinths - show us how they riddle through society and it's hard to tell if a secret cabal is influenced by the Ladder, the Seers or the Guardians... or has been forgotten about entirely.

Click to shrink...

On this I agree, Awakening takes too many half measures when it comes to it's conspiracy stuff, giving very wide generalities for the various cults used by mages to influence sleepers (Cryptopoly, Labyrinth etc) while showing very few if any proper examples of how they actually work.
Even the Seers orderbook flip-flops around when talking how powerful and influential the Greater Ministries are supposed to be.

It's actually kind of funny how much nMage struggles to stay at the city/focused level of the other nWoD games, and even more amusing when the writers just give up on it and put stuff like Athanasius Kircher being associated with the SL, Antipater being a Myrmidon proximus or again the Silver Ladder acting to depose the Merovingians.

I guess then our difference is more one of personal preference: I really dislike Unknown Armies, and I'd sooner name GURPS Illuminati or Cabal as influences on my Awakening, although I have taken some things from UA (Entropics are just too perfect as Abyssal manifestations to not use them).

 

[NonSequtur]

I mean, that leaves us with the "so why don't they just use a perfectly mundane arc welder or, yes, a lighter, and Forces 2" question. It'd save them a quint a cannon...

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You can't make a cannon or a firestorm with Forces 2, basically. You can redirect a cannon ball, but you can't make it fly off unless there's a convenient source of kinetic energy - and you can't game it by saying 'heat is a type of kinetic energy' because that's explicitly under Forces 3. Similarly, you can't make fire with Forces 2. I suppose they could make guns with flywheels within them for projectile things or active nuclear reactions for energy weapons, but that's either a) a device anyway or b) perfectly mundane and thus probably not that effective and also really unsafe.

 

[vicky_molokh]

You can't make a cannon or a firestorm with Forces 2, basically. You can redirect a cannon ball, but you can't make it fly off unless there's a convenient source of kinetic energy - and you can't game it by saying 'heat is a type of kinetic energy' because that's explicitly under Forces 3. Similarly, you can't make fire with Forces 2. I suppose they could make guns with flywheels within them for projectile things or active nuclear reactions for energy weapons, but that's either a) a device anyway or b) perfectly mundane and thus probably not that effective and also really unsafe.

Click to shrink...

I always was fond of gravity guns . . . though those things tend to be fiddly . . .

 

[WhatIf]

You know, from the talk yesterday about governments having Paradox flaws, I was wondering--is it possible to actually create governments using Device rules? Presumably, the rote would be something like Entropy 5/Mind 4/Primal Utility 3/Correspondence 3, with Entropy establishing rule of law and the social contract through a geas, Mind creating a sense of governmental legitimacy, Primal Utility being used for device creation (the government takes in quintessence through taxes), and Correspondence to let the procedure affect the territory of the entire governed region.

Click to shrink...

The Syndicate Convention Book explicates that they can make teams of people into Living Devices (though that's a PU 5 thing, because you're enchanting a dynamic, self-reinforcing structure that can recover on its own from damage), so I don't see why that couldn't be scaled up to a Government Device.

You can tie other Backgrounds to a Device as well, like Legend or Node/Primal Venture (to give it the ability to restore its own Mana/Quint supply), Destiny, and so on.

Click to shrink...

Also, note that governments and other non-commercial institutions might claim Primal Venture status as well, but Syndicate agents rarely make use of these — they stick with businesses and organized crime. (A few NWO agents trained in Primal Utility do make use of these, however. Enforcers keeps an eye on these agents, as potential sources of economic sabotage.)

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So, that is to say, the American Order of Reason was a cultural fracture of the British Order of Reason. Its reasons for aligning with the existing tensions and probably instigating it were probably both ideological and more materialistic - they wanted to break away from the (as they saw it) the stultifying hand of the aristocracy-aligned Order and take advantage of the blank canvas of the Americas to advance their social plans and build a new society with no aristocrats and where the young radicals' ideas of democracy could be implemented in a more advanced form than the more slow, limited plans that the British had [1].

But of course, there were probably also more base reasons, like "we want to stop sending tass back to the UK" and "we want to get rid of the old conservatives that the Order puts in high positions because goddamnit we want to have those positions" and of course, "the old masters are too conservative and have signed treaties with those native savages, we want their land".

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This gave me an idea:

It was sometime in the 1770s. Masters of the Order of Reason met in a cramped room, lit only by the light of lanterns. Dadaleans of a particular skill set were assembled to discuss plans. Among them were members of the High Guild, former Craftmasons, and members of the Cabal of Pure Thought who would later lay the foundation of the Lightkeepers. The discussion on the table: The American Experiment.

"The Sons, and Daughters, of Liberty have already began to seed the grounds for change." A Cabalman proclaimed. "Next move, if we're sure of this course, is to begin disseminating pamphlets, feeling out who can be trusted, where to push."

"The high literacy of the Colonies makes for fertile soil for such ideas. Many of the colonists are already familiar with the works of Locke and Rousseau." A former Craftmason added.

"These ideas shall not take root without bloodshed. We have to ensure the people are ready for the Revolution." A High Guildsman interjected.
"Will we have the aid of France or Spain if we undertake this endeavor?" he questioned.

"If we can show the legitimacy of our cause, the French will likely aid us. As for the Spanish, one can only hope that they will take advantage of Britain's weakness." Answered the former Craftmason.

"Let's hope you're right." responded the Guildsman "I'm not eager to risk the gallows. For surely you know that is a risk if we fail."

"Don't speak to me of risk Guildsman! Your kind wouldn't undertake a righteous cause unless there was coin to be made!" Attacked the former Craftmason.

"Gentlemen," spoke the Cabalman "We undertake these risks together. Providence necessitates we place our faith in our fellows."

"Faith is in short supply among their kind!" Spat the former Craftmason, now glaring at the Guildsman. "He'll be the first to back out if anything goes awry, mark my words!"

"There is no faith but what we make." The Guildsman replied wryly. "Without coin, there is no Revolution. Do you think the colonists would be so riled up without the taxes?" "In god we trust, utter the Cabal. But you know what men really trust?" "Men have faith," he says the word as if it bothers him. "In what they make with their own two hands." "Mutual trust? Social Contracts? Those must be backed by coin. Rifles and Revolutions don't come free."

"We understand the importance of you and your fellows Guildsman, but both of you need to sit down." Uttered the Cabalman in desperation, glaring at the other two parties. "This ritual requires a harmony of voices, not a cacophony. Everything must be in Concordance. Everything includes both of you."

 

[veekie]

So, what about religion taking deep roots in America? Chorister counterplot?

 

[Quantumboost]

So, what about religion taking deep roots in America? Chorister counterplot?

Click to shrink...

...Why would the Choristers need to be involved? This is the 1770s, the Cabal of Pure Thought are still around, and heavily Christian. They'd be actively encouraging that sort of thing, not trying to prevent it.

They wouldn't be removed and the Order wouldn't be really heading for a secular direction until more than half a century afterward.

 

[EarthScorpion]

So, what about religion taking deep roots in America? Chorister counterplot?

Click to shrink...

The Order of Reason hardly sprung, fully formed from the earth. It's one of the things that trying to treat the Technocracy as anything other than a particularly successful Tradition misses.

The roots of the Technocracy effectively lie in the synthesis of Hermetic and Abrahamic European paradigms (with some more esoteric bits assimilated in from things like the Greek Euthanatoi and other such niche groups). You have to consider them in the context of such things - like the ties of the High Guild (which becomes the Syndicate) to the Knights Templar. But the Order of Reason at the start is going to be Abrahamic - and mostly Christian at that, with some Jews and Muslims in various groups.

The natural tendencies of the Order of Reason led it towards deism rather than outright theism - that God had made the world perfect in the beginning, that the divine watchmaker had put all the cogs in place and wound it up and all things were proceeding as God willed. That's not a belief system that works well with a personal god - a God that can change his mind when people plead with him is, to this school of thought, a less perfect god than one who made the best possible world from the start. Paradigmatically, it means that the Christian deist is going to use more technological focuses, while the Christian theist is smiting people with angels. Slowly, we see divergence between the branches of European Christian mages - where the ones who believe in a personal god wind up in small, personal, intimate sects (and not all of them will be Choristers - the Hermetics are also going to be very Christian in this era) while the deists tend to be better able to synchronise with state power (again, not all Order of Reason - deistic Hermetics are totally a thing).

Now, yes, quite a few of the Puritans are going to be extremists fleeing England and its relative religious liberty - it's hard to say whether they're extremists with the Order of Reason or members of pure Christian sects. It probably won't even be the same from group to group. But the fact remains - most of the Order of Reason is going to be Christian at this point. They're just going to be deist mages (mostly), so when God helps them it's subtle. God won't smite their foes with holy fire, but witches will find that their dark rituals dancing around a fire just result in them getting burned because the Devil has no power to protect them from flame [1]. America has just not experienced much of the same pressures towards secularisation as Europe - for example, the idea of "No state churches" seems to have rather backfired when one compares US churches to the condition of state churches like the CoE and the Scandinavian ones.

[1] Troll casting has a long and glorious history among the Order of Reason. It's even more effective than just throwing balls of flame since it's coincidental

 

[vicky_molokh]

...Why would the Choristers need to be involved? This is the 1770s, the Cabal of Pure Thought are still around, and heavily Christian. They'd be actively encouraging that sort of thing, not trying to prevent it.

They wouldn't be removed and the Order wouldn't be really heading for a secular direction until more than half a century afterward.

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Speaking of which, it has recently been pointed out that the Order/Technocracy can see the future. Perhaps not the fine details, but at least the more obvious things like "I pick up a newspaper in 2015, and whoa . . ." and the overall shape their organization takes as time goes by. I wonder what that tells us about the attitudes and goals of the Order and Technocracy back in the day if they let it go along the road it did, even though they knew of at least the broad-strokes of drastic differences between their present/past and future/present.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

So, what about religion taking deep roots in America? Chorister counterplot?

Click to shrink...

Something established by the Cabal of Pure Thought and left there.

The great thing about the Technocracy is that its canon structure makes it very easy for small groups to create yellow brick roads a la Alpha Protocol. Same with the Traditions.

there probably should be debris from the Ascension War left everywhere-groups and organizations created by Great Men then left abandoned when their purpose was at an end. Mutating, surviving.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Speaking of which, it has recently been pointed out that the Order/Technocracy can see the future. Perhaps not the fine details, but at least the more obvious things like "I pick up a newspaper in 2015, and whoa . . ." and the overall shape their organization takes as time goes by. I wonder what that tells us about the attitudes and goals of the Order and Technocracy back in the day if they let it go along the road it did, even though they knew of at least the broad-strokes of drastic differences between their present/past and future/present.

Click to shrink...

It tells us that... uh, you're forgetting that Time 2 gives people temporal jamming and any major conflict is going to have both sides throwing up thick Time jamming spells to stop the other side seeing what they're doing before they do it. Hell, even minor conflicts do that - case in point, what PCs do when they have Time 2 and Correspondence 2 (and Entropy 2, etc), which is cover all their meetings in as thick warding as they can manage to stop people spying on them.

The Ascension War was no doubt fought through a thick fog of everyone and their grandmother [1] throwing out jamming spells. And that's why Technocracy PCs find they have 24 hours to find the rogue nuclear weapons and it's the same day as their planned audit rather than it being seen months in advance and handily dealt with by people less unreliable, quirky, and prone to non-doctrinaire actions than your standard PC party.

[1] Fear the little wrinkly old Akashic master.

 

[vicky_molokh]

It tells us that... uh, you're forgetting that Time 2 gives people temporal jamming and any major conflict is going to have both sides throwing up thick Time jamming spells to stop the other side seeing what they're doing before they do it. Hell, even minor conflicts do that - case in point, what PCs do when they have Time 2 and Correspondence 2 (and Entropy 2, etc), which is cover all their meetings in as thick warding as they can manage to stop people spying on them.

The Ascension War was no doubt fought through a thick fog of everyone and their grandmother [1] throwing out jamming spells. And that's why Technocracy PCs find they have 24 hours to find the rogue nuclear weapons and it's the same day as their planned audit rather than it being seen months in advance and handily dealt with by people less unreliable, quirky, and prone to non-doctrinaire actions than your standard PC party.

[1] Fear the little wrinkly old Akashic master.

Click to shrink...

Oh, I am expecting jamming, which is why I mentioned lack of fine nuances. The issue is that it's probably to hard to cover the whole world with jamming 24/7. One way or another, it should be possible to scan the future and find that, say, the USSR broke down under its own weight and socioeconomic unfeasibility. Or that most of the wilder tesla-technologies aren't a thing while microchips are awesomely useful and practical. (Otherwise, if even such obvious things are impossible to timescan for, then timescans are kinda useless.)
I mean, if Time-scanning is cited as a failsafe against Technocrats failing to see the long-term impacts of stuff they do, then surely it had to be used in the same manner in the middle ages, predicting at least the overall shape of things to come, even if without any details on specific PC-scale conflicts.

 

[veekie]

Theres also butterfly effects from masked areas to scramble everything else the further the futurecast goes

 

[13th Bee]

Man, "futurecast" is such a made up to sound fancy word. It's just there so you can use more mystical sounding than forecast.

On the topic of Time Rotes: Weather Forecast. It can be completely Consensual.

 

[Aaron Peori]

Eh. Technocrats have been using prophecy for a long time and managed to mostly be right despite opposition.

They just call these Rotes, "economic forecasts", "weather reports", "disaster preparedness plans" and "technological development cycles."

Every time you see a weather report on your local news affiliate recall that this is part of a grand technocratic working to make attempts by Tradionalists to cast 'lightning bolt' on demand harder. If you are investing in a fortune 500 company understand that you are taking advantage of a rote that, less than a century or two ago, was vulgar as fuck being cast by a skilled linear mage called an 'financial advisor' trained in Syndicate Indoctrination Camps (like the famous and reviled 'Yale' or 'Harvard') to draw raw power from the world's most powerful Node (located at 11 Wall St, New York, NY 10005, United States).

Yes, prophecy is not only one of the most powerful weapons in the Technocracy's playbook it is one so powerful and common most people don't even realize that it exists. Being three steps ahead in prophectic warfare is a big part of how the Technocracy has been winning the Ascension War for the last four hundred years.