grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
It offers one: "The Technocracy have lost, they just don't know it yet."
White Wolf's World of Darkness
The thing is. Spheres aren't a suite of freeform magic powers. Spheres are areas of study. They're an abstraction. That they're treated as a suite of free-form magic powers is because an entire area of study is impractical to model in a tabletop RPG. But the in setting reality is that there is no such thing as Time 2. Time 2, as we know it, is just having a Bachelor's degree in Time. Almost literally.
A sphere is the quick and dirty way of saying "everything that is known about X subject." This is important, because spheres aren't separate from Paradigm. Sphere's are subordinate to Paradigm. A paradigm doesn't need to have "an explanation for the limitations of Time 2" because Time 2, as such, doesn't actually exist. If Time 3 can do something and Time 2 can't, that doesn't mean that you need greater esorteric powers to do it, it means that you cover that subject in Time 301 instead of in Time 201.
A sphere is the quick and dirty way of saying "everything that is known about X subject." This is important, because spheres aren't separate from Paradigm. Sphere's are subordinate to Paradigm. A paradigm doesn't need to have "an explanation for the limitations of Time 2" because Time 2, as such, doesn't actually exist. If Time 3 can do something and Time 2 can't, that doesn't mean that you need greater esorteric powers to do it, it means that you cover that subject in Time 301 instead of in Time 201.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
It's surprising how much people hate you. The other day I was on the Exalted General on tg and someone started going after you, despite the fact that you were completely irrelevant to the conversation.
But that's the wrong part to focus on. Instead focus on how the Technocracy lost (that historical type of brain surgery where they cut your brain in half, I forget what it's called), or how homosexuality used to be a mental illness until the Traditions managed to change it, or how the traditions discredited many of the Technocracies treatments for mental illness.
Not if they do it through pop culture.
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That's the whole story of revised, which ES and MJ12 are both incomprehensibly fond of.
And no, it offers a ton of stories. For instance, the technocracy trying to advance a new theory which will make the universe once again completely predictable.
But they can have lost those too?
I have to admit I think "the technocracy wants to lock the universe down into a machine of perfectly predictable cause and effect where nothing moves but as reason has predicted." is a vastly more interesting end game than "the technocracy want the universe we have now where everything is explainable by modern science."
The first thing is obviously less sympathetic, but given the technocracy are a genocidal force of imperialism built on the British empire. . . I don't give a shit
Edit: I get that people don't really like the idea that the theory of reason and enlightenment could be used to be a genocidal conspiracy that controlled the world. . . but that's what they were used for you know?
Ever read Scanners? There's plenty of pop culture about how being psychic is unpleasent and dangerous.
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- Location
- Italy
I resent that. I hate the Technocracy and the Traditions in equal manner
But I can't help but find endless amusemet in the wierd symmetry I see between old and new Mage when it comes to kind of argument.
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Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Because the scientific paradigm is not the consensus. The former is controlled by the Technocracy, the latter is controlled by the Sleepers.
Quantum mechanics and chaos theory aren't blows against the Technocracy paradigm. They are reactions of the Technocracy paradigm to blows against the consensus.
Like, you could say that the Sons of Ether managed to engage in some academic shenanigans (with some help from Hermetics who still have their fingers dipped into a bunch of academic disciplines) and caused the Standard Model and General Relativity to experience some major errors. Thanks to them, the consensus was set back decades.
But the Technocracy adapted to those set backs and is currently deploying their new models in the forms of quantum mechanics and chaos theory to work around these blows to the consensus. The same is true of a lot of things.
7 things Americans think are more plausible than man-made global warming
Here is the thing; in a lot of cases if you're talking about things that the Technocracy lost on you are going to be talking about a lot of unsympathetic stuff. Unless you are the kind of person who believes in angels (like 70% of the consensus) or that America is a Christian Nation (55% of the consensus), or geocenterism (25% of the consensus) and so on and so forth.
As for why the Technocracy supports global warming? Because the alternative is "there is a massive global scale Paradox backlash being caused by all our magickal doodads". Global warming is an in paradigm explanation for what is happening from a purple paradigm level as Paradox. If it was happening to a global Christian consensus the explanation would be old fashioned Wrath of God. The Akashics might claim that the excessive imbalance of chi into Western nations at the expense of Eastern nations is causing a global scale imbalance of energy manifesting as excessive yang. The Etherites just cluck their tongue and say that the modern era is causing etheric disturbances by trying to cram too much power into too small an area and if we just went back to vacuum tubes this would be solved. The Hollow Ones will just say that "shit is terrible and always gets more terrible, ya know?"
No Tradition cackled and rubbed their hands and said "I will cause the global temperature to trend upward 1° in less than fifty years! Suffer hubris Technocrats!"
- Location
- Spain
And yet angel-related magic is still vulgar.
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Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
...The irony in this statement is hilarious.
Right, of course.
Which is why people have gone out of their way to vilify the Traditions and say the Technocracy is better whenever they get brought up.
Given the number of people who do the exact opposite.
I'm pretty sure that was his point. That the Technocracy can use pop culture to say 'being a psychic sucks' or whatever.
Like, they'd try to say that psychics don't exist in the first place, but the above is something they could do.
I don't hate Earthscorpion, I actually really like him.
I just find him to be as acerbic/condescending as I am, and that pisses me off.
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The technocracy controls its own technocratic paradigm, not some notional scientific paradigm that exists within the sleeper scientific community.
There is no, none, zero reason why they need to be exactly the same.
Okay and mine is, why would you say they're not doing this?
I must admit, I find the fact that people are like "It's such a strawman to make the Enlightenment project to make the world believe Western scientific ontology/epistemology evil." to be kind of sad and absurd.
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Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
...No one has? You said that the Technocracy would have to admit psychic powers exist to make them cause brain hemorrhages, he said they can use pop culture, you then agreed.
Unless I'm missing something here?
Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
Conversly, it can be said that you're just making your arguments because of a very noticeable trend of yours to demonize anything and everything related to the modern west. Tossing out accusations about hidden motives isn't really a useful argument here. I really suggest keeping it to things that actually can be discussed (i.e. the fictional Technocracy and MTAs setting) and avoiding personal arguments.
How exactly do you propose to have an argument about what the Technocracy is and does if you're not interested in getting into an argument about White Wolf canon? The only common ground that exists for discussing the Technocracy is White Wolf's canon.
Anyway, you've made some statements about the Technocracy over the last few pages. Here, for example, you claim they desire a predictable and ultimately Newtonian universe. You make similar statements here. Would you be so kind as to provide a book reference for this?
@MJ12 Commando: if you could also adopt the practice of backing up your arguments with book/page references (to a greater degree than you have done so far), that'd also be great.
They're a very silly addition that takes a lot of interesting non-aligned Crafts and tosses them together into a Traditions 2 so that Brucato can talk about how they're so much better than the Traditions and also the only people who happen to be fighting the real fight, because they have unique insight, are apparently immune to Nephandi infiltration. They're an author favourite with obvious author favourite flaws, they're a strange addition to an established setting, and they're largely superfluous when the Traditions already exist.
None of the reasons I have for not liking it are related to the Disparates "not sucking Technocracy cock". It comes down to being a dumb addition that takes away more from the setting than it provides, which they do irrespective of the Technocracy.
Only if its flashy. The angel and devil sitting on your shoulders, whispering in your ears, are perfectly in Consensus. Likewise, the guardian angel who curves the bullet so it just misses your heart. Or the guardian angel who tells the insane serial killer to leave you alive. And the one who shoves your soul back into your body after your heart stops, so the doctors can revive you.
Lots of angel stuff is coincidental.
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We can try to convince one another that it makes the best game fluff of course. That's the most important thing, and actually, the most supported thing in white wolf's cannon. I believe it's flat out rule zero.
Edit: I'm not particularly interested in having a discussion based on copy pasting large parts of White Wolf stuff, because a lot of the specifics of white wolf stuff are extremely stupid.
I certainly don't demonize everything associated with the technocracy, but I do find it a little strange how much people around here like them. Like, you guys do know what Europe did with the enlightenment right?
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- Location
- Spain
Fixed.
All of those are coincidental because the scientific consensus can explain them, not because people believe in angels.
Yes, the Technocracy have never lost a battle for the world scientific consensus, just like the Hermetics have never lost a battle for the world Hermetic magic consensus, and the Verbena have never lost a battle for the witchery consensus, and the Euthanatos have never lost a battle for karmic death-mage consensus. Because the 'world scientific consensus' is the Technocratic core paradigm. I don't see how this is unreasonable, given that other people's paradigms don't have huge alien intrusions sticking out of them like chestbursters as features. If they shift, it's because the new form of their paradigm is tolerable to them. The Technocracy doesn't have to 'lose' in the way you insist for the Etherites to 'win,' i.e. a bunch of their things become vulgar because they reject quantum mechanics and hates it haaates the ones who took their precious, by having quantum mechanics be a thing.
And 'theoretical work arounds' means that they accept chaos theory. So yes, there's a problem when your argument is "the Technocracy can disbelieve chaos theory because they believe chaos theory." The Technocracy can't do what the Hermetics do and say 'this thing which is in consensus isn't actually a problem for our paradigm because we have the purple paradigm-it's all the smelly Sleepers' fault.' So if they lose a battle for the 'scientific consensus' you're saying something isn't just in consensus, it's in the Technocratic paradigm. They believe it. By definition. If the Technocracy didn't accept chaos theory, it would be going "chaos theory is actually false, the two-pendulum system is perfectly predictable with a linear equation." Simply because they claim in-paradigm they have tools to mitigate it doesn't make it not-in-paradigm any more than the Technocracy having faster-than-light travel means they don't believe in relativity.
Yes, the Technocracy are just another Tradition. This is why they actually believe their paradigm, which is modern science + super-science. Their paradigm being completely grounded on modern science and the Technocracy recruiting from modern scientists is pointed out in its book, and basically every single other book. You may have noticed this modern science part of that. Your fluff doesn't fit the Technocracy-as-another-Tradition at all. It's the 1E Technocracy which doesn't believe its paradigm and doesn't give a shit because they're a bunch of non-consistent villains. Which is why 2E's Guide to the Technocracy, Sons of Ether Revised, and Guide to the Traditions didn't repeat this. Your statement is that chaos theory struck to the core of Technocratic thought-not exactly something the Technocracy is going to be coming back from, because it's stuck with its paradigm even more than any Tradition, which is a huge strength and a huge weakness.
There are plenty of examples of people who were of a faction and then had a hostile element render a core tenet of their actual paradigm 'wrong' like you demand the Technocracy has. Literally 100% of them either no longer exist or defected to another side which accepted their actual paradigm (Craftmasons, Cabal of Pure Thought, Solificati, Sons of Ether...). If the Etherites had actually disproven a core component of the Technocracy's paradigm, the Technocracy would be one of them.
If we're throwing out all canon and going with rule zero, there's an better solution to the game you want to run than the contortions you put the Technocracy through. It's called "replace the Technocracy with the Seers of the Throne." The Seers slot right into the same position as the Technocracy, but do not actually have to believe the paradigm they espouse, which makes them much more useful for the idea that the Etherites are striking blows against the Seers by convincing the Sleepers that quantum mechanics exists and thus determinism is wrong. Because the Seers can dust themselves off from 'all their shit was rendered vulgar.' "Eh, let's find a new way to oppress the masses" would become a valid option because they can walk away, because they can believe in Consensus and the purple paradigm as a whole.
The Technocracy is only interesting because it's so closely intertwined with modernity, science, and technology. As you divorce the Technocracy from the complex fuzziness of modern science and technology the probability of the Seers being a better fit for your game than the Union approaches 1.
They're coincidental because people believe that angels do these things. And they don't expect angels to just show up out of the blue with flaming swords.
The fact that they're also explainable by the scientific consensus just makes it more coincidental. But if Leprechauns were doing these things instead of Angels, they'd probably still be vulgar.
For that matter, lots of supernatural shit is coincidental. Vampires are coincidental. Werewovles are Coincidental.
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Not particularly. There's no reason why what the technocracy internally believes on the level of theory need be the same as what mortal scientists believe on theory anymore than what the technocracy internally believes about engineering is the same as what the sleeper scientific community believes about engineering. Or that what sleeper martial artists think is possible with martial arts be the same as what the Akashics known to be possible with martial arts etc.
Indeed, you'd really have to have different theories in order to allow the technocracy to pull out a lot of the stuff they pull off. Especially the void engineers.
I actually think the technocracy are just about perfect villains for mage.
In mage there are basically two concepts that are antithetical to a mage's person. First is the crushing weight of stasis, and second is the explosive breath of their own hubris. The technocracy perfectly embodies both of these. They are the force crushing mages down and preventing them from making great works of ego, but at the same time they are also the most hubristic of mages, seeking to control the entire world in their mechanical hands, but unable to quite do so because, for all their power, they do not know their limitations. You can say what you like about how crazy, (and racist) white wolf is, and rightly critique the patronizing way the traditions are structured, and the way they've tried to push a lot of other cultures myths into their weird judo christian framework (IE, the Yama Kings aren't really bad guys as I understand Chinese myth), but in the technocracy, they got things pretty much spot on tonally.
That's absolutely perfect for villains for mage. Far more interesting than the Seers of the Throne, who are just a bunch of jerks serving the evil mage gods who conquered heaven. The lack of the technocracy is actually one of the major reasons I'm not very interested in new mage. The conflict is just not as interesting as the one presented by mage the Ascension.
They're also interestingly emotive precisely because they're not purely evil jerks. They did give the world mass education, cure the sick and so on. They are responsible for the modern world which you and I are both very attached too. They're also genocidal imperialists, but genocidal imperialism is very much a force that was responsible for our modern world, and frankly one that the values of the enlightenment which the technocracy is the in game champions of lead too.
We did go out into the rest of the world, shatter existing cultures, throw down their sacred knowledge and replace it with our own. We did meet cultures who would not accept this with terror and gunfire. We did build an age that is fundamentally atomised and unsatisfying with reason and technology, and may have doomed the world by doing so.
The technocracy are fantastic villains for mage. They're strong, sympathetic, and evil in a very human way. They embody a bunch of concepts which are key to the setting, and fit well into the system the game presents. They're actually one of the best things that white wolf came up with.
And that doesn't change just because they lost a couple of battles over science.
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
The Traditions were also genocidal imperialists. The Celestial Choir and the Order of Hermes in particular.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Because people don't believe in angels showing up openly anymore. They believe they exist... as ineffable beings on higher planes (possibly playing harps on clouds, rather than clouds of horrible wings).
Of course they're the same. The scientific community is the linear sorcerers of the Technocracy. Modern Medicine is literally magic the Technocracy made up and has become so common they train it in colleges.
Because the design of the Traditions does suck. It's legacy code from 1e, and it's the product of "We can map each of these groups to a sphere" with some added "We don't want to make them resemble real world beliefs too much - people might accidentally cast spells when playing games". In later editions, they try to back away from it - making Tradition "factions" that are basically stand-alone magical organisations and so on, but they're stuck with it. M20 would have been the perfect time to rework the Traditions' structure into one which doesn't limit you to one of nine groups that were felt to have resonance for early 90s counterculture sorts
But "faction you dislike"? Hardly. Not only did I have a long-running fun game at uni as a Traditionalist [1], but I'm the one running the Traditionalist quest on SV at the moment, as a PQ side-quest. And not some namby pamby "oh, we're all technomages here" quest, but it's primarily Verbena-centric and with plenty of past life and astral journeying stuff. I like the Traditions [2] - I just prefer the interpretations where they actually believe what they practice and thus they own the flaws and logical consequences of their belief systems, just like the Technocracy should have all the flaws and consequences of modern neoliberalism and the scientific establishment. The Traditions I dislike are the whitewashed version who are useless because they don't get to own their own flaws ("No, that was the Nephandi") and so don't do anything.
The Technocracy is just another Tradition, and the tragedy of oMage is that everyone means the best and has a good point.
(this is different from the tragedy of nMage, which is that all mages are Arcane XP junkies and thus become paranoid bastards)
[1] A Hermetic / VA cross Traditions guy who was very much Hermetic primary - he just also believed that the Virtual Adepts were effectively also right and in truth that they drew from the same roots. And that a machine could do your chanting for you quicker, as long as you properly built the spells. He really did love his As Above So Below spells - model your system, alter your model and so alter the system.
[2] Okay, apart from the Sons of Ether. I don't like them, apart from the Shadow Ministry.
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I'm not quite sure how you can get the OoH as genocidal imperialists actually. The Celestial Chorus are genocidal imperialists. . . but often against one another, and far less so than the technocracy is. When Christianity became a force of imperialism, the order of reason was already using it.
Linear sorcery for the technocracy is hypertech, not normal tech.
Edit: like, most everything the void engineers do (hyperdrive, quantum teleportation, whatever) would require new theoretical work for modern science to do it. Wormholes etc. are also not going to work the way that correspondence does under normal science.
The technocratic paradigm isn't just an advancement of present science. It does several things which present science would suggest were impossible under current theory. Plasma weapons are strictly pseudo scientific according to current theory as far as I recall.
Modern science is consensus linear magic.
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Generalissimo
Generalissimo of SufficientVelocity
- Location
- Tropico, Tropico
Best if hypothetical vampire starfleet officer wasn't taking unnecessary risks with stars??
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
I mean... not today? If you want the Technocracy to reflect the West, then it's a bit of a stretch to claim that the West is still perpetrating genocide in the modern day? And if you don't want it to reflect the West, then pretty much everything you just said is pointless?
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The West isn't genocidal, but the technocracy is still actively hunting mages and the voids are trying to destroy all spiritual phenomena.
Also technocrats are pretty long lived you know?