It's pronounced "two." That's how the IRL Apple II logo was written, and 1977 is when the Apple II came out.
(If you're wondering what happened to the Apple I, that was a motherboard-only computer, so not really a consumer friendly product.)
LET'S READ: Wild Talents: Progenitor (Watchmen for TTRPGs)
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
- Start date
(If you're wondering what happened to the Apple I, that was a motherboard-only computer, so not really a consumer friendly product.)
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"I can excuse mind control, but I draw the line at constant public concerts."
"You can excuse mind control??"
Opposing ProgHarm is one thing. Opposing everything about ProgHarm except the mind control is another. To me, the mind control is the most morally fraught part of ProgHarm, the part that needs to be justified by everything else.
You may have confused it with Risker (soldier caste). That's the one that you can't get in after being sentenced to Toiler.
edit: Diagram of the system as I understand it, CMIIW. I did forget the year's probation/judging before full Intellectual status though.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- It/Its
NOOOOOOO SET
I loved Set, he's the greatest, my blorbo
Unrelated I quite like Zipperneck
Everything else about progharm is just the worst though, hate the caste thing
I loved Set, he's the greatest, my blorbo
Unrelated I quite like Zipperneck
The mind control is like, bad, but at the level it's described at it seems like, fine? Not that bad? Morally grey with solid arguments on both sides
Everything else about progharm is just the worst though, hate the caste thing
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Man, I know you like villains, but...Zipperneck isn't even creative!
- Pronouns
- It/Its
No way Green Lantern is only 250, they can do some crazy shit
- Pronouns
- It/Its
That's why I like him, he's funny in a pathetic way, but not quite as "WHAT ARE YOU DOING" as the other guy. I like the idea of "not very smart mob goon gets Superman powers, changes nothing", it's fun
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Foci make powers remarkably inexpensive, doubly so when their power is immutable and obvious.
Also, they do have a cheapo if/then of [has to be charged at the green lantern]
- Location
- The Internet
My main concern with Progharm isn't the mind control.
It's the demotions to the Toiler cast and treating this a punishment. Because if your copy pasting the US carceral slave labour system while simultaneously pressuring unemployed people to work, it really doesn't seem that different from real life.
The implication of the term "Castes" also starts souring due to their sheer emphasis. Making one's occupation the center of someone's social life and sense of personal worth leads to real life problems. Actively rejecting the idea that everyone is equal outside of work is really non-egalitarian & hierarchical, and while not stated is what the term Caste implies.
The darker interpretation of Progharm is that it's not so different to the USA. Unenployed people get a special word to refer to them and are constantly shamed and socially pressured into working. Your job is everything, and this with jobs useful to society live in fear of being demoted and losing their social status, sense of worth and higher quality living conditions. The real life "publish or perish" rule applies to Progharm academics and even more that is does our ones. When everyone's constantly competing limited jobs because they're intrinsically connected to your social life and worth, a nontenured USA college academic under late stage capitalism and their Progharm equivalent have more in common that anyone would like to admit.
I do kinda like Progharm, but while better than the status quo it sounds incrementally better than the status quo rather than something revolutionary or utopia. Which is disappointing.
And as a tangent, using music to make everyone sexually attracted to the toiler caste does not compensated for their jobs sufficiently undesirable that they are used as a punishment. It sounds like a waste of the social conditioning budget.
It's the demotions to the Toiler cast and treating this a punishment. Because if your copy pasting the US carceral slave labour system while simultaneously pressuring unemployed people to work, it really doesn't seem that different from real life.
The implication of the term "Castes" also starts souring due to their sheer emphasis. Making one's occupation the center of someone's social life and sense of personal worth leads to real life problems. Actively rejecting the idea that everyone is equal outside of work is really non-egalitarian & hierarchical, and while not stated is what the term Caste implies.
The darker interpretation of Progharm is that it's not so different to the USA. Unenployed people get a special word to refer to them and are constantly shamed and socially pressured into working. Your job is everything, and this with jobs useful to society live in fear of being demoted and losing their social status, sense of worth and higher quality living conditions. The real life "publish or perish" rule applies to Progharm academics and even more that is does our ones. When everyone's constantly competing limited jobs because they're intrinsically connected to your social life and worth, a nontenured USA college academic under late stage capitalism and their Progharm equivalent have more in common that anyone would like to admit.
I do kinda like Progharm, but while better than the status quo it sounds incrementally better than the status quo rather than something revolutionary or utopia. Which is disappointing.
And as a tangent, using music to make everyone sexually attracted to the toiler caste does not compensated for their jobs sufficiently undesirable that they are used as a punishment. It sounds like a waste of the social conditioning budget.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
He's like, the ideal "oh it's that fucker" that the PC's run into every now and then. He's a great tool of a character for when you need a fight to happen or what have you
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I once again do want to underline that Cam isn't designing for a utopia, or revolution. She is designing a society that is prepared for the future Metahuman/Strogg interplanetary hyperwar
- Pronouns
- It/Its
NOOOOOO TINA
Unrelated, but what happened to Ho Chi Minh? Was he just displaced? Got assasinated? Or just like, died normally when he did otl
Unrelated, but what happened to Ho Chi Minh? Was he just displaced? Got assasinated? Or just like, died normally when he did otl
- Location
- The Internet
Still.
Putting a hard cap on the number of scientists/researchers you can have and penalising amateurs/hobbyists seems like a strange way to accomplish this.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
But there isn't a hard cap on thinkers? free education is available to everyone, and becoming an intellectual is as easy as asking to become an apprentice and then passing an exam while the state pays for your food?
- Pronouns
- It/Its
I forget, can Shavians reproduce? Or did they max out their population when Tina was murdered
- Pronouns
- He/Him
THey cannot reproduce, so...their species is in a bit of trouble. If they were more communally focused, they might be more concerned about this - but most Shavians don't even like other Shavians. The smarter ones do understand the INTELLECTUAL concerns of "There may be no more Shavians at some point" - but where they go from that intellectual understanding varies from Shavian to Shavian. Their perceptions are always deeply, deeply, deeply alien.
- Pronouns
- It/Its
Now that I've caught up I like him less, but I still like him in the same way, as a very effective tool for the GM to throw around when they have a situation where "goon Superman" would be useful
- Location
- The Internet
According to the post, becoming a scientists requires not only doing the schooling and exams, but "impressing" your peers with your braininess. This implies the applicant must be exceptional rather than merely qualified or competent, like in western universities. Both Western Europe and Vietnam have free public exception, but Vietnam from the sounds of it makes passing much harder.
Then comes the strange part. The regular five year trials to avoid being reassigned and retrained as a legal worker. This is not how other countries do it, since not getting a big breakthrough every five years is a statistical inevitability rather than an expectation, and failure gets you a shrug and new line of research to pursue or similar job in their field, not a trip to law school to learn how to be a lawyer. And even if they did, kicking someone out of highly competitive field for five years makes getting back extremely hard.
Instead of having research budgets being the key and extra scientists working for free living off basic income out of belief in the cause or working in less important positions like lab assistants, to keep their skills fresh and remain in the field, Progharm insists on caps and that bad scientists should become lawyers.
If the votes to stay or get in are easy to win, this critique changes. But as written it is a stupid system. Western Europe also pays for anyone train to become a scientist, and doesn't randomly making them change careers to become lawyers instead.
Last edited:
The funniest "exploit" in WT is taking One Use (you can use your power once, ever, and then it's gone, no refunds)... on Permanent Always On power which "use" never ends.
It's completely legitimate! That's how you get the Thing from Fantastic Four and other capes with permanent mutations and the like they can't deactivate. It's also super cheap, and it's not like you have to take Obvious or Horrifying flaws, so it could be subtle.
(Technically, there is an in-built flaw in that if someone manages to switch your power off, you won't be able to switch it back on, but what are the odds of that, really?)
In a vacuum, small. In a tabletop game run by a human... same odds as Lux Luthor finding some more kryptonite.
Related: If dark energy remains within your body even someone turns your power off, all dark energy could hypothetically be contained (the power-deactivator + a prison full of deactivated people).
Solarshade
Friendly Local Dyson Swarm
Pretty sure Amanda (and anyone else with the same or similar "immune to dark energy effects" power) would simply not have their power deactivated. Unless it was some sort of non-dark energy power deactivator I guess? Not sure how possible that sort of thing would be.
Well, you can overcome Amanda's immunity by throwing enough dice at the problem. Or by eroding her willpower and making her powers wonky. She's managed to deactivate or weaken her powers herself that one time, after all.
It's not exactly easy, but doable.
By the same token, however, power deactivation is never an entirely sure deal, someone would slip out of your influence eventually unless you also put them all in a coma or something.
Anchises
Le Charismeur
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
But...the mind control is why it all works and how the toilers stay a de-facto exploitable underclass. ProgHarm is heavy redistributionist and with the wounds of the war healing toiler becomes a less unpleasant occupation. However its still an underclass that is exploited and very explicitly denied a say in how they work/life from day to day.
The sexual attraction manipulation just shows hows insidious the manipulation is because it explicitly takes a very uh...sleezy route that "buys off" the toilers instead of offering them the right to self-determine their place in the economic world. Also its kinda fucked how it manipulates everyone else.
Toil being used as a punishment and being something that is auctioned off kinda shows what's what here. The book itself is like hmm this looks a lot like slavery but there are some limits but at the end of the day its like as a term holder you are supposed to call a Risker to beat your Toiler if they are lazy but its widely accepted that many Term Holders just beat their Toilers themselves.
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A much better and more articulate argument against ProgHarm than Ultrackius's "everything except the mind control is bad," but I'm still surprised that the mind control isn't more of a sticking point for people who aren't me.
Being sentenced to Toiler isn't great, but it has enough caveats compared to the carceral systems of the USA and USSR that it's a clear improvement.
Also, I'm not sure that your assertions about ProgHarm "making one's occupation the center of someone's social life and sense of personal worth," but that's well in the realm of interpreting details unstated in the text.
Last edited:
1978: WAR! In INDOCHINA!? OF ALL PLACES!?
New
- Pronouns
- He/Him
1978
STEW METRICS
Suspicion: 2 | Technology: 6 | Economy: 3 | Warfare: 1
STEW METRICS
Suspicion: 2 | Technology: 6 | Economy: 3 | Warfare: 1
In an amusing convergence with the threads discussion, negotiations between Bao Verong and and the (according to wikipedia) highly divisive President Suharto of Indonesia break down dramatically with Suharto (a baseline) screams threats and invective about mind controlling music and territorial appetites and how he will never back down. He leaves and immediately hurls the entire Indonesian Navy at ProgHarm (which, like, Indonesia is the biggest collection of islands in the world, I kinda think they'd have a pretty good navy for a non-the united states.)
You may ask: How does he do this? Bao Verong has hypercharm?
Simple. You can resist hypercharm by burning one (1) base will. Most people aren't willing to sear off entire parts of their personality, but a particularly strong willed, dedicated person can do so. All Suharto has to do is burn one to be mad, then another to stay mad, and then leave the room before Bao Verong says anything more. Then never talk to him in person again.
America finally recognizes Atlantis as a sovereign nation and begins trying to establish an embassy there. Cynthia doesn't cede any land to them but does make a nearby island they can use.
In February, the Sakkipara muslims of what was then called Burma but is really Myanmar beg Amanda Sykes for aid and she declines to intervene in the internal affairs of another country and remains in seclusion. Now, is this Amanda being once burned, twice shy with Vietnam OR is this the first showing of Amanda's islamaphobia? Because she DEFINITELY has some - I think it starts off as the minor kind that most Americans do, but it gets way worse as time goes on. Her being an islamaphobe is a definite sign of her evil meter going up, I think, and...I dunno, "liberally interpreted Judea-Christian ideology" passion reads to me (in the 1960s, as oppsed to, say, 2001) as being fairly chill with Muslims. But there's definitely going to be a seed of it there, and it's going to get worse.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian navy is lured into a trap, cut to pieces by advanced, high speed attack boats, and amphibious landings to the east and south of the city of Ibu overrun and lock it down.
In the USSR, the "New Diversity" initiative has led to a slow return of religiosity to public life!
In March, Jason Weeks and Å meet and talk about things in Algiers. They never really come clean with what they discuss publicly, and it lasts for hours. Ominous?
In April, the publisher of Penthouse, Larry Flynt, got shot and put in a wheelchair. Abe heals him - and while some wags joke about it, his public statement is an almost plaintive plea for people to PLEASE stop shooting public figures they don't like, it'd make his job much easier. In Atlantis, they announce the ATLANTEAN SPACE PROGRAM which consists entirely of metahumans exploring space using teleportation and super-seed flight.
In May, a coup in the Comoros (fun fact, I googled "coup Comoros" to see which coup it was, and got a wikipedia list of coups since 1975 and got really depressed) leads to an influx of Åism followers entering into the region and protesting against the new regime.
In June, Lin Wen and Paige Rampling foil a kidnapping by the IRA, continuing to make themselves a nuisance to the Irish extremists. Meanwhile, in America, psychologists and scientists have finally tracked down, identified, and fully explained the syntergene that makes you more fond of weed, and deduce that it has been active in America for the past twenty months. Burning Spear, as it is named, is an 8x11 color image that, seen from one direction, is a winged lion and, seen upside down, is a snake coiling around a tree. I love that syntergenes can be either "book that's really persuasive" or "song with hypnotic lyircs" or "weird image that makes your brain fucky." WHich means yes, you can make basilisk hacks.
In July, the Comoros dissolve entirely into anarchy - Å starts working to try and rebuild the area, working with France (who is still being QUITE colonial about all this, I'll have you know) to try and bring stability to the region under his direction, but no concrete agreements are reached. A corporation called Microbos Incorporated releases their first biological computer circuit (neat!) and the second Atlantean election is held, with Ngoc Vo being elected as the People's Servant (the president of Atlantis.) Her party stays strong with three seats, but with the death of Jack Grimes, his so called pragmatist party loses all but one of his seats. Which...the party only ever had two seats in their nine person senate. Even in death, your ambitions suck.
Meanwhile, Jason Weeks opens the GLOBAL HUMAN UNVERSITY in his Zaire compound, where everyone can visit and learn!
In August, the INDOCHINESE ECONMIC GESTALT and Indonesia's war continues with a massive invasion force landing on Halamahera, backed up by "super weapons" - dark energy devices of remarkable destructive power. The US saber rattles and condemns this, while mobilizing General Colt to read the minds of invading troops - where he learns that they've been training to do this since 1977.
In Chicago, the first cell phone is launched, with a network to carry it.
In the USSR, the religious freedoms are not universally accepted - police still sometimes raid mosques and churches to crack down on political irregularities, despite Bich's best efforts.
Then, early in September, Bich drops dead of a asymptomatic hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - without any major healers to keep on tabs, and unwilling to trust other hyperbrains to examine her for health issues (also, little to no reason to expect it, since...it was asymptomatic), Bich passes on, leaving the USSR to continue without their hyperbrain. This is an exceptionally cruel/fun thing to do to any Soviet PCs who were using her as a guiding light to their questing. Just suddenly, the big brain is gone and you have to figure out what to do on your own...
In October, the Indonesia/IEG war continues with Indonesia trying to land forces at Kampong Saom and Krong Kaoh Kong in Cambodia - both are repulsed...however, their arrivals do spark huge (if peaceful) protests against the Progressive Harmony regime (possibly due to the attacks disrupting or disabling the sonic reinforcement that keeps ProgHarm functioning.) Bao Verong scrambles to Cambodia to "assuage the feelings of the people" (I.E, wammy them with hypercharm.)
Investigations into the Burning Spear syntergene finally trace it back to Atlantis.
In November, the Cambodian anti-Progharm movement goes underground to avoid Bao Verong, and begins sabotage and vandalism. Amanda Sykes (either on her own recognizance or after being asked by the revolutionaries) goes to Cambodia to help - she doesn't attack anything or anyone, but just protects their camps, provides supplies, and generally spread their message. Did she rethink her interventionist ideas, or does she hate Muslims? Or does she just not care about Muslims but REALLY hates ProgHarm? It's probably some mixture of the three, to be totally honest.
Meanwhile, the United States votes almost unanimously to repeal legalization of weed - infuriated by the syntergenic mind meddling.
In December, Amanda finds that even she cannot support an entire revolution against a super-genius led ultratopia - she might not be predictable to Cam due to her D.E immunity, but the rebels she's helping sure are. She asks old allies for aide, and while Henry "Steelsuit" Doud and Joe Smith (the "just a guy" infiltrator who has been quietly working for the CIA this whole time) are able to come, General Colt flatly refuses. He does say it's not because he doesn't want too, and it's not because he doesn't like Amanda - he clearly still does. No, it's because he just...can't...use his powers to kill people anymore, which he thinks is what would be required.
And so, the year wraps.
Weirdly, this year actually is far more exciting for players to play than for me to talk about because...while lots of big exciting things happen, they're relatively simple for me to describe: There's a war going on between the IEG and Indonesia! thousands of troops are being landed, super weapons are being used, metahumans on both sides are throwing cars at each other. Perfect room for martial characters to get sucked in as observers, secret spies, mercs...
But we also see the first real big Amanda Evil Meter Spike (imo) that even I, a big lover of blorbos and excuser of morally complex characters like Amanda and Cam, have a hard time dealing with: Her string of downright bigoted islamaphobic actions, which only get worse as time goes on. I do wonder if it's, in part, made worse by her spending so much time with an extremist christian faction (the cult of the emerald virgin), or if it was always there.
I dunno!
Discuss in the comments!
EDIT: Also, just hit me - another point of divergence. Did Cam (for some reason) think that the best way to incorporate Indonesia was war - from some longtermist perspective or short term analysis? Did the president actually resist Bao Verong, or was Bao Verong subtly encouraged to bait him into resisting so the country would have a reason to invade? Was the invasion being planned from 1977 as a mere fail safe in case the diplomatic incorporation failed? Hmm...
Last edited: