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White Wolf's World of Darkness

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Fivemarks said:
To be fair to MJ12, didn't the technocracy help bring about the modern world and the things we like in it? Like Freedom of Speech and responsible government?

And aren't the traditions all for going back to the way things were before the enlightenment?
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Who are you replying to? I mean, I think MJ12 is, like, a huge fan of the Techocracy, as far as I've been able to tell. That'd be like asking, "To be fair, Obama, aren't the Democrats the party that has challenged bigotry in the last decades, and are the only party that is truly working to help the average man?"

To which Obama would reply, "Uh, well, yes."
 
Fivemarks said:
And aren't the traditions all for going back to the way things were before the enlightenment?
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You're right that the Technocracy of old did pretty good work, but this is... Inaccurate. So far as I know the Traditions don't want to roll the world back (although it may be a necessary step in their plan), their goals are things like, "Awaken everybody, so that humanity are as gods."

Whether this is a practical or even possible goal is... Debatable, but they're not going around saying, "life was better back when we still used leeches for medicine!"
 
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Imrix said:
You're right that the Technocracy of old did pretty good work, but this is... Inaccurate. So far as I know the Traditions don't want to roll the world back (although it may be a necessary step in their plan), their goals are things like, "Awaken everybody, so that humanity are as gods."

Whether this is a practical or even possible goal is... Debatable, but they're not going around saying, "life was better back when we still used leeches for medicine!"
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It is mainly the problem of some of them going "Well everyone should be able to use leaches to remove ill humours," not considering that you can't get a paradigma where everything works for everything without making it on the whole to week to be effective.
Heck they are unable to do that with enlightend people that "know" the truth , even if they lack the full effect of internalising it at Arette 6.
 
Fivemarks said:
To be fair to MJ12, didn't the technocracy help bring about the modern world and the things we like in it? Like Freedom of Speech and responsible government?

And aren't the traditions all for going back to the way things were before the enlightenment?
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To be fair to the Traditions, the Technocracy want all non-members to be mindless drones that do what they are told without ever asking questions.

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Note that I am talking about the people in charge of the Technocracy.
 
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Imrix said:
You're right that the Technocracy of old did pretty good work, but this is... Inaccurate. So far as I know the Traditions don't want to roll the world back (although it may be a necessary step in their plan), their goals are things like, "Awaken everybody, so that humanity are as gods."

Whether this is a practical or even possible goal is... Debatable, but they're not going around saying, "life was better back when we still used leeches for medicine!"
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Revised specifically says that until the Avatar Storm removed all the leadership from the Traditions, technomagic was seen as "selling out" and often coincidental magic was seen as a "necessary evil." The implications are that they want to remove Technocratic consensus, and weaken consensus to the point where very little is vulgar. This is likely to lead to a world where non-magi can't do things without being enlightened (small 'e') into linear sorcery.

I believe it's only after Revised where the mystic Traditions (rather than the Etherites/VAs) start pointing out they're not against modernity.
 
However to be fair, the existence of Linear Sorcery and the fact it can be taught (and in a non scientific paradigm will be taught as much as science does now) is a great retort to the "The Traditions want a world where no one can do anything except the mages" complaint.

But to be even fairer, I admit I solved the problem of possible anti-science bias in Omage by making the Technocracy evil economists rather than evil scientists. The pseudosciences that are used to enslave rather than simply con people.
 
The NWO are the evil sociologists, they are O.K in my book because "these minorities are fucked because they are other and cannot adapt" is always a popular idea even for smart people.

The Syndicate are the evil economists.

Basically some of my Technocrats ideals:

The economist who says "screw the popular vote, there is no alternative to our politics"
The "scientist" who use "evo-psych" to justify 19th century idea of women
The historian who considers all history a prelude to our perfect society and thus justify all our misdeeds.

Also like any extremist group, the Technocracy in my game change ideas relatively often, nearly always later than the Masses' shifting opinion. In the 19th century they considered homosexuality a social disease, now they have no problems with it. Still they refuse to admit they were once homophobic.
 
ganonso said:
However to be fair, the existence of Linear Sorcery and the fact it can be taught (and in a non scientific paradigm will be taught as much as science does now) is a great retort to the "The Traditions want a world where no one can do anything except the mages" complaint.
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Then why isn't every Traditions consor a linear sorcerer? The fact that it can be taught doesn't change that linear sorcery is harder to learn than extremely skilled professions today. Not every doctor or engineer is a linear sorcerer in the Technocracy's world. If the Technocracy, which is deliberately teaching people a limited version of their tools or methods (linear sorcery) doesn't have an army of a hundred million linear sorcerers, doesn't that tell you something?

Moreover-Revised also implies that linear sorcery strengthens as Consensus does. Mages get weaker, linear sorcerers get stronger.
 
Scia said:
Hhrrmmm. I think you are mixing someone that wants to improve society with some only obsessed with value, like a member of the Syndicate.
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Careful, Scia. Your Ivory Towerness is showing.

You could also cast it as mixing up someone who wants to grind away all aspects deemed 'undesirable' about a person until there's nothing left of the original with one who simply accepts them as they are and gives them what they really want, after all.
 
ganonso said:
Also like any extremist group, the Technocracy in my game change ideas relatively often, nearly always later than the Masses' shifting opinion. In the 19th century they considered homosexuality a social disease, now they have no problems with it. Still they refuse to admit they were once homophobic.
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To be fair, homosexuality was a social disease until the 20th century, when the Consensus changed. This dramatically increased the number of gays, as formerly straight people were changed by the new paradigm. However, the belief that God was going to punish the gays then caused the AIDS epidemic as a sort of Paradox backlash. And by denying their history, the Technocracy is actually working to become more tolerant, through the magic of changing history and thus changing reality.

E: note that I am only taking about oMage, and this does not reflect my views on actual reality.
 
Quantumboost said:
Careful, Scia. Your Ivory Towerness is showing.

You could also cast it as mixing up someone who wants to grind away all aspects deemed 'undesirable' about a person until there's nothing left of the original with one who simply accepts them as they are and gives them what they really want, after all.
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I like my Ivory Tower! Its safe in here and lacks RDs, well exept for these Hermetics but then they are harder to remove then cockroaches.
 
@notanautomaton : I forgot one of the most important of my house rule for Omage (And one I think we can infer from the texts as I sincerely doubt the writers of Omage were saying Consensual Reality means that racist and sexist theories were true)

Human minds are immune to Paradigm manipulation. Homosexuality was not a disease, the Jews never sacrificed children and Africans built Mazimbabwe without the help of ancient astronauts

You can declare that gays desserve to be in hell, even create a hell in the lands beyond to host them but save if they want to go there (and unfortunately internalized homophobia will makes that probable if homosexuals individuals become wraith) but you can't transform gay into straight, or straight into gay

The big reason is that I use an unified Owod setting and the Avatar is the part of God mentioned in Demon the Fallen.
 
ganonso said:
Human minds are immune to Paradigm manipulation. Homosexuality was not a disease, the Jews never sacrificed children and Africans built Mazimbabwe without the help of ancient astronauts

You can declare that gays desserve to be in hell, even create a hell in the lands beyond to host them but save if they want to go there (and unfortunately internalized homophobia will makes that probable if homosexuals individuals become wraith) but you can't transform gay into straight, or straight into gay
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Sleeping Avatars enforce Consensus. Belief in Consensus creates 'magical' effects without active magic. Mind is an actual sphere in the oWoD, as is Spirit. Therefore, Consensus can change human minds and even human spirits. It's harder because you get a Willpower roll to resist, while you don't get rolls to disbelieve being shot in the face, but it should be possible.

The big reason is that I use an unified Owod setting and the Avatar is the part of God mentioned in Demon the Fallen.
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If you use mage in a unified setting, you're either going to have to get rid of most of the mage cosmology or subordinate all other cosmologies to mage, so this isn't really a great Mage argument. Especially since the Demon Translation Guide, an official nDemon/oDemon supplement, explicitly calls out mages as being the ones who know the most about how the world actually works. In both settings.
 
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@MJ12 Commando

I specified I spoke of my setting not the canon one (even if I believe my reading and changes to be in-line with the authors' intentions)

In that case I simply claim Rule Zero and prefer my setting to the canon one. :D The Consensus being able to change human minds by simple applications would have disturbing implications on the tone of the game and would make the universe crappier than Warhammer 40k

Given that these implications can't have been deliberate on the author's part (as Mage writers were and are pretty much to the Left, I still don't see them making racism an actual rule of reality)

Also a major problem is that, if Consensus works like that, the Technocracy is right. Not in the 'they might be right and so are decent antagonists" but actually and objectively right. And that is a problem because that would make the Traditions not into ambiguous protagonists but straight-up villains.


Also for the cosmology issues. My cosmology is like that:

God and the Angels create the world (from a certain point of view the world is created scientifically)

God create Man with the power to change the world (Remember this was in a "Everything is true" world so God can be all and any divinities or even evolution)

The World is broken by the Fall... Reality is simpler Consensual reality (defined by Man and powerful spirits is precariously maintained)

So in this world, the Earth was never flat (Gaïa imagined herself as a sphere), evolution was and wasn't true at the same time, and scientists existed before Technocrats.

My Technocracy is not interested in Science, they deal in Control for they believe an unified world is a safer world.

They are also wrong for they suscribe to the Mage theory all things are created by human beliefs while this is not the case. Exhibit A: the Kindred
 
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Also I think one readings' of the Technocracy are also different based on the country you live in.

Here in France anti-vaxx are fringe, no one important speaks of getting rid of compulsotary shots and the Religious Right has made its reapparition just some years before.

On the other hand, my economy teachers had pretty much a religious faith in their "science" and used it to argue against democracy. So...
 
ganonso said:
The Consensus being able to change human minds by simple applications would have disturbing implications on the tone of the game and would make the universe crappier than Warhammer 40k
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It's a World of Darkness game. It's supposed to be disturbing.

ganonso said:
Also a major problem is that, if Consensus works like that, the Technocracy is right. Not in the 'they might be right and so are decent antagonists" but actually and objectively right. And that is a problem because that would make the Traditions not into ambiguous protagonists but straight-up villains.
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The canon 'good' ending for Ascension was everyone realizing that both sides were good guys trying to do good things though? The Technocracy are right in that Consensus Reality is horrific and a predictable, self-sustaining one built on consistent rules is superior. The Traditions are right in that the means to get to that are dealing massive collateral damage and the Technocracy are often excising things for political reasons rather than any real need. Both sides are talking past each other and that's the fun of the game.
 
I agree to disagree with you:) YMMV and all that. But I understand your point of view
 
ganonso said:
@notanautomaton : I forgot one of the most important of my house rule for Omage (And one I think we can infer from the texts as I sincerely doubt the writers of Omage were saying Consensual Reality means that racist and sexist theories were true)

Human minds are immune to Paradigm manipulation. Homosexuality was not a disease, the Jews never sacrificed children and Africans built Mazimbabwe without the help of ancient astronauts
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But Jews, Africans, and whatever all have their own communities that believe that they don't kill babies or whatever, which somewhat insulates them against Consensus. When the individual in question is convinced of the truth of something, like a slave that really believes that Blacks are less inteligent that whites, or a gay person who believes that homosexuality is sinful, then there is no such protection.

Also, appealing to what the authors intended really holds no weight given that they're dead and all. (Also, a bunch of the oMage authors are actually nuts, but that's a different matter.)
ganonso said:
Also a major problem is that, if Consensus works like that, the Technocracy is right. Not in the 'they might be right and so are decent antagonists" but actually and objectively right. And that is a problem because that would make the Traditions not into ambiguous protagonists but straight-up villains.
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Yes, and? A lot of people see oMage that way.
ganonso said:
So in this world, the Earth was never flat (Gaïa imagined herself as a sphere), evolution was and wasn't true at the same time, and scientists existed before Technocrats.

My Technocracy is not interested in Science, they deal in Control for they believe an unified world is a safer world.
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The world was indeed flat, at least if you subscribe to the idea that Exalted is the backstory to WoD. At the same time, it was on the back of the turtle, held up by four elephants, and a whole bunch of other things, depending on what region you were in. Things were really, really weird before the Seekers standardized reality.

Also, The technocracy started in the 1200's, and scientists didn't become a thing until much later.
 
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Like I said it's my setting. I have never cared much for canon in roleplaying games anyway. The Technocracy works fine as villains for me with some fixes and that's great. It's perhaps easier when you have to argue with small t technocrats in real life and find that things like the Dark Enlightnement are very popular among "smart" people.

I still think one's country of origin and the nature of the extremisms at play can be also a factor.
 
Damn, designing Demonic Forms is actually really, really fun, though with Embeds/Exploits it's sorta like "So many choices." Have 7 I want, but can only choose 4.

I have this Demonic Form that actually would work together really well with this Embed and with their role as an Angel. Borrowed Expertise, which can grant a human their ability on X skill, combined with a Savant Core (Expression 5), and the fact that before they fell they were a record Exec (Messenger) whose whole deal was influencing and helping artists' careers in order to promote a certain zeitgeist, a musical culture that would influence culture in ways that are important for unknown reasons (Cause nobody tells Angels anything.) Combine that with some Inhuman Beauty, a Radio Suite, Lighting, Data Form and either Wings or Urban Fluidity...

And I'm imagining a pale, glowing, pulsing being of terrifying beauty, with a heart/core that is a small speaker, but which has these, like, huge veins of plasma going up to their wings and also to the radio-jacks or whatnot in each of the arms, as if from some alternate universe where people powered things with flows of plasma, glowing an unearthly and changing variety of colors, face sculpted into the sort of beauty that's too perfect and also too unchanging.

As an Angel, she would give nobodies all they could have ever dreamed of. Skill, instead of incompetence, great music written by her own hand to specification or handed down by the GM...and all they had to do is sing the notes, live the lifestyle in a proper way to represent the Zeitgeist...all they had to do was be a Marionette.

But then Hannah Billings, as the Angel called itself, had a thought. And then another thought. Why not me? Why not me instead of these stupid, smelly, incompetent humans that I have to walk through every stage from their rise to their fall. Even without the Savant Core, I'm picking up a lot of knowledge on the music industry, on new instruments and singing methods and what's popular. I'm twice as good, maybe more, as the hacks I run. Maybe my stage presence could use a little honing (Presence 2, Manipulation 3, Composure 3...but surely the former can be worked on) but why not? Why not have what these humans have so easily, what could it hurt to sing a few songs, credit it to some unknown artist.

Why can't I be famous? I'm better than them. I could be great. And why these songs? I've seen far better songs, I've written better songs, and yet why these? Why not switch them up with my own compositions. Or why even... Why. Why. Why.

And thus did they Fall.
 
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