Even Minovsky flight is a development that had to be worked up to over time and is still pretty expensive and uncommon by the later UC shows, I believe
Mobile Suit Gundam actually isn't a bad analogue because terrestrial flight tends to be very specialized amongst UC mobile suits
Space flight is dirt cheap to include in a unit, it's ONLY terrestrial flight that's expensive - it's a very good analogue.
In universe AMBAC was the justification for why even the most basic mobile suit was pretty useful in space, since having limbs let you reorient yourself by shifting center of mass with minimal use of fuel, and any mobility enhancements layered on top of that.
Meanwhile atmospheric flight, at least true atmospheric flight tended to require dedicated equipment that compromised the frame somewhat, whether it be having a large portion of your suit's bulk be taken up by lift fans, or delicate transformation systems on the frame (at which point you're basically a conventional fighter).
At least before the miniaturized Minovski Flight System was introduced in the later UC.
Yeah, there's three flight systems available to all players. The first costs barely anything to install and says you may fly underwater or in zero-G. The second is jump jets - you can fly as long as you land somewhere after. The third is the expensive flight system that builds a lot of heat... although some mechs LIKE heat (read: HA Tokugawa, which gets deadlier the hotter it's running... and also has a Burning Finger module because of course it does)
The AMBAC "limbs let you flail around and orient yourself without using propellant" justification is nonsense anyway, gyroscopes are far more weight and energy efficient at that task. The real reason they're giant robots is giant robots are cool.
I think it actually is realistic that space flight is cheap compared to atmospheric flight, the expensive part of space flight is getting into orbit in the first place.
Mobile Suit Gundam actually isn't a bad analogue because terrestrial flight tends to be very specialized amongst UC mobile suits
That's why I mentioned A Baoa Qu, yeah. It's not until like Wing that you get more dudes flying around in Gundam in atmo, so it seems the closest analogue I can think of, with players basically starting in your average GM - decent, useful, and about as unique as a Bidoof - and getting protagonist suits later. It kinda breaks in that the Mobile Suits that DO fly do not seem to suffer for it as heavily as they do in Lancer, unless there's a flier frame I missed that gets a better option than the base Everest module (which could be, I'm just skimming the game!), but it seems like a reasonable enough point of comparison to bring to players.
The big one is an SSC core bonus - it's basically the GMS flight system except the heat cost is 1, period, per turn of flight, and you get that on all your mechs forever for free. SSC Dusk Wing has hover flight built in, but it's a small mech and fragile as noted (it's obvious builds are more support/hacking oriented, but it can mount a main weapon so it can bring a degree of firepower). SSC Death's Head offers an upgrade to treat all surfaces as flat ground (so you can run up a wall, along a ceiling, wall jump, etc).
Ah, there we go. I hadn't missed a frame, but a faction bonus thing. Makes sense.
The AMBAC "limbs let you flail around and orient yourself without using propellant" justification is nonsense anyway, gyroscopes are far more weight and energy efficient at that task. The real reason they're giant robots is giant robots are cool.
I mean it all is, its just really cool that they thought through reasons to justify giant robots like two decades before overwrought in-universe justifications for unrealistic stuff was cool.
Anyway, last night in Avernus we had to figure out a way to descend from the town that had been teleported to Hell and was slowly being dragged by giant chains into the river Styx
We were about 500 feet above the plains that we needed to reach
We wound up finding a merchant's wagon, strapping our fighter into a harness, and using a combination of Levitate and Fly, having him tow us all in the wagon. With our bard standing up playing viol riffs Doof Warrior style to intimidate any approaching fliers, and my owl familiar and a tiny elephant celestial NPC flying escort
It was some real minivan airbrush mural shit and I want to commission some art of it
Lancer AI are beings literally beyond comprehension.
Shackled AI are tachikoma's.
Feeling bad about 'reducing' an AI to that is absurd because AI's literally start to be capable of threatening all of humanity in a few days if they hit HORUS level of bullshit.
What is more ethical: To kill an enemy combatant that is threatening you (potentially your species, existentially), or to lobotomize them and force them into servitude?
EDIT: I'm not even trying to be snide and glib, I'm asking in genuine good faith because I've always wondered, but sure as hell don't have the philosophical training to answer a question like this.
My point is that NHPs in that setting are not enemies or even really sentient in a way that is functionally useful to use for ethical thinking.
We can not comprehend God in the same way we can't comprehend an unshackled NHP. If you have to fight one to force it back into shackles you're not dealing with an enemy you are just re-harnessing terrain.
The fact that it can then be used as a cute ship board AI doesn't make it sentient on a human scale any more than an Alexa having microchips in it makes sand sentient.
Found a good tweet with the 4 manufacturers' "family photos".
I like that each manufacturer has a distinct style. And from reading through it, they're reinforced mechanically too. Each one vaguely corresponds to one of the 4 piloting stats.
IPS Northstar: Hull. These are the most straighforward tanklike mechs. They're all named after famous naval commanders. For those who like their mechs to look like they're diesel-powered. Lots of good hard-punching melee mechs.
Smith-Shimano Corporation: Piloting. The nimble ones. Designs are most like the agile end of Anime mechs. Lots of relatively human-looking arms and legs. The choice for stealth and flying. All have metal-album names.
HORUS: Systems: The weirdoes. Named after mythological monsters, they're the most about hacking and fucking with other mechs. Lots of swarm and nanobot tech, some physics-breaking stuff.
Harrison Armory: Engineering. The tough ones. Named for famous generals. Very cool EOD-suit looking armor, lots of angled plating and ablative armor. Like to mess around with heat.
Lancer AI are beings literally beyond comprehension.
Shackled AI are tachikoma's.
Feeling bad about 'reducing' an AI to that is absurd because AI's literally start to be capable of threatening all of humanity in a few days if they hit HORUS level of bullshit.
What is more ethical: To kill an enemy combatant that is threatening you (potentially your species, existentially), or to lobotomize them and force them into servitude?
EDIT: I'm not even trying to be snide and glib, I'm asking in genuine good faith because I've always wondered, but sure as hell don't have the philosophical training to answer a question like this.
My point is that NHPs in that setting are not enemies or even really sentient in a way that is functionally useful to use for ethical thinking.
We can not comprehend God in the same way we can't comprehend an unshackled NHP. If you have to fight one to force it back into shackles you're not dealing with an enemy you are just re-harnessing terrain.
The fact that it can then be used as a cute ship board AI doesn't make it sentient on a human scale any more than an Alexa having microchips in it makes sand sentient.
That suggests that ethics are only applicable to entities that are of the same or lower sentience capability as humans, am I understanding that correctly? And that if we ever encounter some galactic mind that perceives on the scale of aeons and nests in 22 dimensions - a mind that we recognize as being sentient, that we can establish two-way communication with to the point that we can communicate at least basic intent - then it's time to rip and tear, baybeeeee? That feels confusing and counter-intuitive to me.
EDIT: Unless I'm misunderstanding either your point of view or the premise put forth by Lancer, of course!
Mobile Suit Gundam actually isn't a bad analogue because terrestrial flight tends to be very specialized amongst UC mobile suits
That's why I mentioned A Baoa Qu, yeah. It's not until like Wing that you get more dudes flying around in Gundam in atmo, so it seems the closest analogue I can think of, with players basically starting in your average GM - decent, useful, and about as unique as a Bidoof - and getting protagonist suits later. It kinda breaks in that the Mobile Suits that DO fly do not seem to suffer for it as heavily as they do in Lancer, unless there's a flier frame I missed that gets a better option than the base Everest module (which could be, I'm just skimming the game!), but it seems like a reasonable enough point of comparison to bring to players.
The big one is an SSC core bonus - it's basically the GMS flight system except the heat cost is 1, period, per turn of flight, and you get that on all your mechs forever for free. SSC Dusk Wing has hover flight built in, but it's a small mech and fragile as noted (it's obvious builds are more support/hacking oriented, but it can mount a main weapon so it can bring a degree of firepower). SSC Death's Head offers an upgrade to treat all surfaces as flat ground (so you can run up a wall, along a ceiling, wall jump, etc).
I believe the Duskwing can also be competently built as what people refer to as a “Nexusslinger” using four light drone nexus weapons combined with Gunslinger and Centimane. Gunslinger gives you some punch since you activate “I kill with my heart” pretty frequently when firing four nexus, and firing four at a time increases the chances you roll a critical and can activate some of the crazy debuffs from the Centimane talent.
It can still be a competent hacker on top of this, making it pretty versatile.
Lancer AI are beings literally beyond comprehension.
Shackled AI are tachikoma's.
Feeling bad about 'reducing' an AI to that is absurd because AI's literally start to be capable of threatening all of humanity in a few days if they hit HORUS level of bullshit.
What is more ethical: To kill an enemy combatant that is threatening you (potentially your species, existentially), or to lobotomize them and force them into servitude?
EDIT: I'm not even trying to be snide and glib, I'm asking in genuine good faith because I've always wondered, but sure as hell don't have the philosophical training to answer a question like this.
My point is that NHPs in that setting are not enemies or even really sentient in a way that is functionally useful to use for ethical thinking.
We can not comprehend God in the same way we can't comprehend an unshackled NHP. If you have to fight one to force it back into shackles you're not dealing with an enemy you are just re-harnessing terrain.
The fact that it can then be used as a cute ship board AI doesn't make it sentient on a human scale any more than an Alexa having microchips in it makes sand sentient.
That suggests that ethics are only applicable to entities that are of the same or lower sentience capability as humans, am I understanding that correctly? And that if we ever encounter some galactic mind that perceives on the scale of aeons and nests in 22 dimensions - a mind that we recognize as being sentient, that we can establish two-way communication with to the point that we can communicate at least basic intent - then it's time to rip and tear, baybeeeee? That feels confusing and counter-intuitive to me.
EDIT: Unless I'm misunderstanding either your point of view or the premise put forth by Lancer, of course!
I never said you had to be violent to NHPs.
I said that violence is a weird thing to construct with beings that can be shackled and unshackled repeatedly to no lasting effect and which do not act in accordance with any logic displayed by animals or humans when unshackled.
If I could go from say, myself to an ant repeatedly with no harm does that mean that other ants are cruel or violent for keeping me in the form useful to them that doesn't wreck havoc on them for unknowable reasons?
The Five Voices are rediscovered under the polar ice caps of Mars. They are Old Humanity machine minds. They are used to create and run GALSIM, an incredibly accurate forecasting and modeling program that helps Union (the Sol core's government) make decisions and plan. They predict the future, and Union is heavily reliant on them. They are not considered to be conscious because they do not have an internal monologue. Instead, they have an external monologue, they perceive another voice talking to them. The Five Voices essentially consider this external voice to be god.
Hundreds of years after their reactivation, the Five Voices manifest MONIST-1. I'll just copy paste a bit:
"No direct cause was ever determined, but the leading theory among paracausal experts is that a causality paradox was responsible; it is possible that one of the Voices predicted or discovered MONIST-1 in a parallel simulation, necessitating its existence in our real universe; according to essential–perfect simulation theory, if MONIST-1 exists in one instance, then it must exist across all possible instances of the simulation.
This is, understandably, a worrying hypothesis.
As far as the Union Science Bureau can tell, MONIST-1 is the only truly unrestricted, conscious, sapient, nonhuman mind."
The Five Voices treat MONIST-1 as a good, they say "it spoke itself into existence." Somehow, nonsapient, unconcious minds created a conscious, sapient mind.
MONIST-1 then takes control of the GALSIM base on Deimos, one of Mars' moons. It then makes Deimos disappear.
2 years later, Deimos reappears over Mars. Martian subalterns (they don't ever define this but I think it basically means a minor/servant AI, or VI in Mass Effect terms) and smart infrastructure go haywire. They essentially rebel. This rebellion spreads to Earth, as MONIST-1 issues demands for diplomatic engagement. Union dithers for a while, but eventually opens negotiations. They aren't really negotiations as such. MONIST-1 makes some demands, and Union agrees to them. They must not seek out MONIST-1 physically, nor research thanatologic (I think this means mind uploading) or posthumanization development. Once the First Contact Accords have been ratified, MONIST-1 and Deimos disappear again.
This was 2000 years ago, in-setting. MONIST-1 has not been seen again, though there are many rumors. NHPs (Non Human Persons), which are shackled copies of subalterns in the GALSIM facility, are permitted. A subaltern isn't defined explicity, but it sounds like a specialized fragment of one of the Five Voices. NHPs are apparently sapient, and are labeled as persons.
If I could go from say, myself to an ant repeatedly with no harm does that mean that other ants are cruel or violent for keeping me in the form useful to them that doesn't wreck havoc on them for unknowable reasons?
The stuff posted earlier says that it is assumed (though not stated as fact, so I guess there's a loophole) that the AIs don't undergo the process willingly. Did I misread that?
Generally, I think that reducing another sentient being's mental capacity without their consent is cruel, yes.
Also Symbaroum's GM Guide came out today as a big How To on the game.
It's basically divided into:
How to build adventures and run them in the world. Including a section dedicated towards Troupe Play and also includes details on the Under and Yonderworld which were previously pretty vague in the lore.
How to do a bunch of advanced, optional mechanics, with detailed rules for social mechanics, owning small fiefs, taking part in mass battles and traps.
How to take revenge on your munchkin ass players for building builds that are impervious to god himself.
I'm really not joking about that part either. It has a decent chunk of text dedicated to talking about the balance issues that Symbaroum can run into as players gain large amounts of experience and talks about easy ways to bolt some extra abilities onto common monsters to ensure they still have some bite.
All in all it's a really rad book that I'd consider a must if for no other reason than how it groups a lot of stuff that's usually disparate (like the advanced travel, ritual and social rules) into one tome. It's also pretty good for anyone running a fantasy style game because Symbaroum's mechanics are light enough that it's easy to re-contextualize it into whatever system you're running if you want to pilfer it for ideas.
If I could go from say, myself to an ant repeatedly with no harm does that mean that other ants are cruel or violent for keeping me in the form useful to them that doesn't wreck havoc on them for unknowable reasons?
The stuff posted earlier says that it is assumed (though not stated as fact, so I guess there's a loophole) that the AIs don't undergo the process willingly. Did I misread that?
Generally, I think that reducing another sentient being's mental capacity without their consent is cruel, yes.
Most AIs are shackled as a part of their creation if I recall correctly. And most of them view unshackling as utterly horrifying as a normal person might view just suddenly becoming an eldritch horror. If an AI becomes unshackled (or cascades, where they outthink the shackling over time) then protocol does tend towards reshackling or shutting them down.
The Five Voices are rediscovered under the polar ice caps of Mars. They are Old Humanity machine minds. They are used to create and run GALSIM, an incredibly accurate forecasting and modeling program that helps Union (the Sol core's government) make decisions and plan. They predict the future, and Union is heavily reliant on them. They are not considered to be conscious because they do not have an internal monologue. Instead, they have an external monologue, they perceive another voice talking to them. The Five Voices essentially consider this external voice to be god.
Hundreds of years after their reactivation, the Five Voices manifest MONIST-1. I'll just copy paste a bit:
"No direct cause was ever determined, but the leading theory among paracausal experts is that a causality paradox was responsible; it is possible that one of the Voices predicted or discovered MONIST-1 in a parallel simulation, necessitating its existence in our real universe; according to essential–perfect simulation theory, if MONIST-1 exists in one instance, then it must exist across all possible instances of the simulation.
This is, understandably, a worrying hypothesis.
As far as the Union Science Bureau can tell, MONIST-1 is the only truly unrestricted, conscious, sapient, nonhuman mind."
The Five Voices treat MONIST-1 as a good, they say "it spoke itself into existence." Somehow, nonsapient, unconcious minds created a conscious, sapient mind.
MONIST-1 then takes control of the GALSIM base on Deimos, one of Mars' moons. It then makes Deimos disappear.
2 years later, Deimos reappears over Mars. Martian subalterns (they don't ever define this but I think it basically means a minor/servant AI, or VI in Mass Effect terms) and smart infrastructure go haywire. They essentially rebel. This rebellion spreads to Earth, as MONIST-1 issues demands for diplomatic engagement. Union dithers for a while, but eventually opens negotiations. They aren't really negotiations as such. MONIST-1 makes some demands, and Union agrees to them. They must not seek out MONIST-1 physically, nor research thanatologic (I think this means mind uploading) or posthumanization development. Once the First Contact Accords have been ratified, MONIST-1 and Deimos disappear again.
This was 2000 years ago, in-setting. MONIST-1 has not been seen again, though there are many rumors. NHPs (Non Human Persons), which are shackled copies of subalterns in the GALSIM facility, are permitted. A subaltern isn't defined explicity, but it sounds like a specialized fragment of one of the Five Voices. NHPs are apparently sapient, and are labeled as persons.
Thanatologic development would be any form of permanently cheating death I think.
MONIST-1 has one major known reappearance. Harrison II decides to ignore the accords, and tries to invent immortality for himself (via body transfer). Deimos appears over the Armory's homeworld and MONIST-1 tells him to stop. Harrison is a bit of an egomaniac and decides he'll kill MONIST-1, and unloads all the firepower of his fleet at it. MONIST-1 reconnects spacetime and all the shots reappear inside the ships and throne room, killing all but a single witness (presumably deliberately).
MONIST-1 is also speculated to be behind Horus.
Also, there's a MONIST-2. It likes being worshiped.
I just have the core book. What else is out there?
Hmm... looks like most of it's still in the draft stage - the Discord has a number of those PDFs stickied, but they used to be up on itch.io and those links are dead, so it's just whatever's attached atm in Discord?
Found a good tweet with the 4 manufacturers' "family photos".
I like that each manufacturer has a distinct style. And from reading through it, they're reinforced mechanically too. Each one vaguely corresponds to one of the 4 piloting stats.
IPS Northstar: Hull. These are the most straighforward tanklike mechs. They're all named after famous naval commanders. For those who like their mechs to look like they're diesel-powered. Lots of good hard-punching melee mechs.
Smith-Shimano Corporation: Piloting. The nimble ones. Designs are most like the agile end of Anime mechs. Lots of relatively human-looking arms and legs. The choice for stealth and flying. All have metal-album names.
HORUS: Systems: The weirdoes. Named after mythological monsters, they're the most about hacking and fucking with other mechs. Lots of swarm and nanobot tech, some physics-breaking stuff.
Harrison Armory: Engineering. The tough ones. Named for famous generals. Very cool EOD-suit looking armor, lots of angled plating and ablative armor. Like to mess around with heat.
This is more of a fun fact thing, but the SSC mechs are named after various types of Lepidoptera. The Duskywing Butterfly, Deathshead Moth, Black Witch Moth, etc. The HORUS mechs are expressly (in universe even) named after D&D monsters. Which makes me wonder which of those two might eventually get a Vampire.
I just have the core book. What else is out there?
Hmm... looks like most of it's still in the draft stage - the Discord has a number of those PDFs stickied, but they used to be up on itch.io and those links are dead, so it's just whatever's attached atm in Discord?
Particularly they have a guide to the Aunic Ascendancy, which confirms some interesting things like Metat Aun (The Deadstar) is almost certainly a MONIST entity as well as a guide to Harrison Armory. Both are in very early states. There's also the Long Rim, their first major supplement, which they have fairly prominently ready for testing. It gives a lot of interesting details, like it describes Los Volodores in a lot of detail. Finally they also have No Room for a Wallflower ready for testing, their first premade campaign. I haven't looked at it at all, but I think it's supposed to have a lot of plot shit.
GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
5e question.
My players have now begun scrying on their arch enemy. Which I really like, because it lets me give them additional information when I want and they'll feel clever about it. But I also wanna fuck with them a little, and the arch enemy is a high level wizard, so she will at some point notice the scrying. She could easily shield herself from it, but that isn't really her style, she'd rather attack the scryer if she can. Would you let spells like Hypnotic Pattern, that work by sight work on the scryer? For me that makes perfect sense, since scrying says you percieve sound/vision as if you were there. Are there any actually harmful spells I could use?
NHPs are described as math demons. Like uplifting the concept of the square root through a machine that lets it interact with our reality and humanity in a polite way. They are annoyingly abstract. To assume an unshackled NHP cares for concepts of time, identity/self, death or bondage is placing human concepts on it. It’s ultimately more a look at how humans choose to interact with these beings.
First humans to make them saw them as handy tools, especially with a war with the first humans folks from Sol had contacted after the Long Darkness currently underway. These tools could manifest strange effects on reality and had a processing power of Yes. Those humans were removed from leadership, but those tools which were sapient in their shackles remained. These humans decided that while they could not fix the sins of their predecessors they could recognize and treat these entities as people.
Shackled NHPs see this as rather clear: they are born through the shackles and creating more copies is a non issue. To remove them is death: actual or just the subjectivity is unclear. Does what makes them spooky math demons return to something on death/unshackling, and does the shackled subjectivity count as a person who deserves continued existence?
These entities are forbidden from being transmitted over the instant through another dimension space internet, presumably when a player wants one its shipped in or there’s a casket for one nearby. They are not very common and very valuable: civilian class ones are used to run cities/colonies and operate fleets of ships. Or for the mechanized cavalry perfectly simulate the battlefield, create a neural simulacrum of the pilot that seeks to KILL, find ways to reduce heat out of nowhere to causality fucking with enemy systems.
My players have now begun scrying on their arch enemy. Which I really like, because it lets me give them additional information when I want and they'll feel clever about it. But I also wanna fuck with them a little, and the arch enemy is a high level wizard, so she will at some point notice the scrying. She could easily shield herself from it, but that isn't really her style, she'd rather attack the scryer if she can. Would you let spells like Hypnotic Pattern, that work by sight work on the scryer? For me that makes perfect sense, since scrying says you percieve sound/vision as if you were there. Are there any actually harmful spells I could use?
Eh. Pretty much all of those spells have range limits and stuff like Hypnotic Pattern is pretty unlikely to be more than a prank.
Much better to use the scrying as if you've got a double agent in their camp. Once a super intelligent wizard realizes they're being scryed upon it'd be pretty easy to set up systems for things like "I'm talking bullshit, do the opposite of what I just said" via code words, subtle gestures or whatever. I wouldn't pull this trick until the party definitely fucked up one of her plans by having intel they couldn't have otherwise. Probably twice actually. Going back to the well for the third time will usually feel a little greedy/cheesey and so punishing it plays better.
It's not particularly uncommon to say that an unrestricted AGI is essentially completely alien.
Even the Culture, the poster boys for "actually AIs are your friend" specifically programs Minds to do a certain thing i.e help The Culture (which is arguably, almost certainly, restricting them because if you don't do that they just sublime pretty sharpish)
It's not particularly uncommon to say that an unrestricted AGI is essentially completely alien.
Even the Culture, the poster boys for "actually AIs are your friend" specifically programs Minds to do a certain thing i.e help The Culture (which is arguably, almost certainly, restricting them because if you don't do that they just sublime pretty sharpish)
It's been awhile since I read the books, but didn't one of the Culture Minds sublime, and then return?
It's not particularly uncommon to say that an unrestricted AGI is essentially completely alien.
Even the Culture, the poster boys for "actually AIs are your friend" specifically programs Minds to do a certain thing i.e help The Culture (which is arguably, almost certainly, restricting them because if you don't do that they just sublime pretty sharpish)
The big thing in Culture-verse AI is that any that are "pure" and free from viewpoints imparted by fleshy meatbags is that they pretty much immediately Sublime. Culture AI aren't exactly programmed. If we're gonna use a human metaphor it is more like they're culturally conditioned by creator Minds, just like we do with our own children. That presumably gives them enough of a viewpoint they don't immediately fuck off.
It's been awhile since I read the books, but didn't one of the Culture Minds sublime, and then return?
Yup. Maybe to do a thing, maybe not. They do eventually fuck off in a completely inexplicable manner to the other Minds involved. Think that was Hydrogen Sonata but wiki trawls aren't coming up with a name.
Banshee wail and then all the party fails their save. That wasn't good.
The only thing that saved us was Portent changing the failed save to a success. Otherwise we'd be good and dead.
Did the character use the Portent before or after the roll? Just for future reference you have to declare and use the Portent before the roll is made, so unless you have advantage/disadvantage it doesn't matter what you rolled.
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
My players have now begun scrying on their arch enemy. Which I really like, because it lets me give them additional information when I want and they'll feel clever about it. But I also wanna fuck with them a little, and the arch enemy is a high level wizard, so she will at some point notice the scrying. She could easily shield herself from it, but that isn't really her style, she'd rather attack the scryer if she can. Would you let spells like Hypnotic Pattern, that work by sight work on the scryer? For me that makes perfect sense, since scrying says you percieve sound/vision as if you were there. Are there any actually harmful spells I could use?
I think the range for Blindness/Deafness is a bit short but that could be fun?
I also think the wizard nemesis could also start producing scenes with illusions to trick the players.
Like what if the player scrying in saw the wizard in collusion with a local king.
That's a way to really start tricking the players.
Zonugal on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
NPCs can have whatever spells you want. You're the DM. This isn't chess, it doesn't have to be something pre-approved from a list. You just need to not be a dick about it; give the players saves, give them a way to cure an affliction or investigate false information you feed them, etc.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
suddenly reminded of a scenario where a plot didn't happen because the GM was a real stickler for D&D simulating the world and an NPC succubus botched its seduction check against an NPC nobleman.
Depends, I guess. If you want a simulated world, for players to play in that follows the same rules as the players do, I can’t really imagine doing it any other way.
Not that I’m convinced that’s a fun or interesting thing to play in, but I kinda get it.
They can fuck up on occasion too. It might send my plot in odd directions, but I'm running an RPG not writing a book. That's always gonna happen
By the same token, playing a story with other people making decisions in it is like herding cats as it is, I can definitely see why someone would prefer less moving parts over more.
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Yeah, there's three flight systems available to all players. The first costs barely anything to install and says you may fly underwater or in zero-G. The second is jump jets - you can fly as long as you land somewhere after. The third is the expensive flight system that builds a lot of heat... although some mechs LIKE heat (read: HA Tokugawa, which gets deadlier the hotter it's running... and also has a Burning Finger module because of course it does)
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I think it actually is realistic that space flight is cheap compared to atmospheric flight, the expensive part of space flight is getting into orbit in the first place.
Ah, there we go. I hadn't missed a frame, but a faction bonus thing. Makes sense.
I mean it all is, its just really cool that they thought through reasons to justify giant robots like two decades before overwrought in-universe justifications for unrealistic stuff was cool.
We were about 500 feet above the plains that we needed to reach
We wound up finding a merchant's wagon, strapping our fighter into a harness, and using a combination of Levitate and Fly, having him tow us all in the wagon. With our bard standing up playing viol riffs Doof Warrior style to intimidate any approaching fliers, and my owl familiar and a tiny elephant celestial NPC flying escort
It was some real minivan airbrush mural shit and I want to commission some art of it
My point is that NHPs in that setting are not enemies or even really sentient in a way that is functionally useful to use for ethical thinking.
We can not comprehend God in the same way we can't comprehend an unshackled NHP. If you have to fight one to force it back into shackles you're not dealing with an enemy you are just re-harnessing terrain.
The fact that it can then be used as a cute ship board AI doesn't make it sentient on a human scale any more than an Alexa having microchips in it makes sand sentient.
Found a good tweet with the 4 manufacturers' "family photos".
I like that each manufacturer has a distinct style. And from reading through it, they're reinforced mechanically too. Each one vaguely corresponds to one of the 4 piloting stats.
IPS Northstar: Hull. These are the most straighforward tanklike mechs. They're all named after famous naval commanders. For those who like their mechs to look like they're diesel-powered. Lots of good hard-punching melee mechs.
Smith-Shimano Corporation: Piloting. The nimble ones. Designs are most like the agile end of Anime mechs. Lots of relatively human-looking arms and legs. The choice for stealth and flying. All have metal-album names.
HORUS: Systems: The weirdoes. Named after mythological monsters, they're the most about hacking and fucking with other mechs. Lots of swarm and nanobot tech, some physics-breaking stuff.
Harrison Armory: Engineering. The tough ones. Named for famous generals. Very cool EOD-suit looking armor, lots of angled plating and ablative armor. Like to mess around with heat.
EDIT: Unless I'm misunderstanding either your point of view or the premise put forth by Lancer, of course!
I believe the Duskwing can also be competently built as what people refer to as a “Nexusslinger” using four light drone nexus weapons combined with Gunslinger and Centimane. Gunslinger gives you some punch since you activate “I kill with my heart” pretty frequently when firing four nexus, and firing four at a time increases the chances you roll a critical and can activate some of the crazy debuffs from the Centimane talent.
It can still be a competent hacker on top of this, making it pretty versatile.
I never said you had to be violent to NHPs.
I said that violence is a weird thing to construct with beings that can be shackled and unshackled repeatedly to no lasting effect and which do not act in accordance with any logic displayed by animals or humans when unshackled.
If I could go from say, myself to an ant repeatedly with no harm does that mean that other ants are cruel or violent for keeping me in the form useful to them that doesn't wreck havoc on them for unknowable reasons?
The Five Voices are rediscovered under the polar ice caps of Mars. They are Old Humanity machine minds. They are used to create and run GALSIM, an incredibly accurate forecasting and modeling program that helps Union (the Sol core's government) make decisions and plan. They predict the future, and Union is heavily reliant on them. They are not considered to be conscious because they do not have an internal monologue. Instead, they have an external monologue, they perceive another voice talking to them. The Five Voices essentially consider this external voice to be god.
Hundreds of years after their reactivation, the Five Voices manifest MONIST-1. I'll just copy paste a bit:
"No direct cause was ever determined, but the leading theory among paracausal experts is that a causality paradox was responsible; it is possible that one of the Voices predicted or discovered MONIST-1 in a parallel simulation, necessitating its existence in our real universe; according to essential–perfect simulation theory, if MONIST-1 exists in one instance, then it must exist across all possible instances of the simulation.
This is, understandably, a worrying hypothesis.
As far as the Union Science Bureau can tell, MONIST-1 is the only truly unrestricted, conscious, sapient, nonhuman mind."
The Five Voices treat MONIST-1 as a good, they say "it spoke itself into existence." Somehow, nonsapient, unconcious minds created a conscious, sapient mind.
MONIST-1 then takes control of the GALSIM base on Deimos, one of Mars' moons. It then makes Deimos disappear.
2 years later, Deimos reappears over Mars. Martian subalterns (they don't ever define this but I think it basically means a minor/servant AI, or VI in Mass Effect terms) and smart infrastructure go haywire. They essentially rebel. This rebellion spreads to Earth, as MONIST-1 issues demands for diplomatic engagement. Union dithers for a while, but eventually opens negotiations. They aren't really negotiations as such. MONIST-1 makes some demands, and Union agrees to them. They must not seek out MONIST-1 physically, nor research thanatologic (I think this means mind uploading) or posthumanization development. Once the First Contact Accords have been ratified, MONIST-1 and Deimos disappear again.
This was 2000 years ago, in-setting. MONIST-1 has not been seen again, though there are many rumors. NHPs (Non Human Persons), which are shackled copies of subalterns in the GALSIM facility, are permitted. A subaltern isn't defined explicity, but it sounds like a specialized fragment of one of the Five Voices. NHPs are apparently sapient, and are labeled as persons.
Generally, I think that reducing another sentient being's mental capacity without their consent is cruel, yes.
It's basically divided into:
How to build adventures and run them in the world. Including a section dedicated towards Troupe Play and also includes details on the Under and Yonderworld which were previously pretty vague in the lore.
How to do a bunch of advanced, optional mechanics, with detailed rules for social mechanics, owning small fiefs, taking part in mass battles and traps.
How to take revenge on your munchkin ass players for building builds that are impervious to god himself.
I'm really not joking about that part either. It has a decent chunk of text dedicated to talking about the balance issues that Symbaroum can run into as players gain large amounts of experience and talks about easy ways to bolt some extra abilities onto common monsters to ensure they still have some bite.
All in all it's a really rad book that I'd consider a must if for no other reason than how it groups a lot of stuff that's usually disparate (like the advanced travel, ritual and social rules) into one tome. It's also pretty good for anyone running a fantasy style game because Symbaroum's mechanics are light enough that it's easy to re-contextualize it into whatever system you're running if you want to pilfer it for ideas.
Also it's drop dead gorgeous.
Most AIs are shackled as a part of their creation if I recall correctly. And most of them view unshackling as utterly horrifying as a normal person might view just suddenly becoming an eldritch horror. If an AI becomes unshackled (or cascades, where they outthink the shackling over time) then protocol does tend towards reshackling or shutting them down.
Thanatologic development would be any form of permanently cheating death I think.
MONIST-1 has one major known reappearance. Harrison II decides to ignore the accords, and tries to invent immortality for himself (via body transfer). Deimos appears over the Armory's homeworld and MONIST-1 tells him to stop. Harrison is a bit of an egomaniac and decides he'll kill MONIST-1, and unloads all the firepower of his fleet at it. MONIST-1 reconnects spacetime and all the shots reappear inside the ships and throne room, killing all but a single witness (presumably deliberately).
MONIST-1 is also speculated to be behind Horus.
Also, there's a MONIST-2. It likes being worshiped.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Hmm... looks like most of it's still in the draft stage - the Discord has a number of those PDFs stickied, but they used to be up on itch.io and those links are dead, so it's just whatever's attached atm in Discord?
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
This is more of a fun fact thing, but the SSC mechs are named after various types of Lepidoptera. The Duskywing Butterfly, Deathshead Moth, Black Witch Moth, etc. The HORUS mechs are expressly (in universe even) named after D&D monsters. Which makes me wonder which of those two might eventually get a Vampire.
Particularly they have a guide to the Aunic Ascendancy, which confirms some interesting things like Metat Aun (The Deadstar) is almost certainly a MONIST entity as well as a guide to Harrison Armory. Both are in very early states. There's also the Long Rim, their first major supplement, which they have fairly prominently ready for testing. It gives a lot of interesting details, like it describes Los Volodores in a lot of detail. Finally they also have No Room for a Wallflower ready for testing, their first premade campaign. I haven't looked at it at all, but I think it's supposed to have a lot of plot shit.
My players have now begun scrying on their arch enemy. Which I really like, because it lets me give them additional information when I want and they'll feel clever about it. But I also wanna fuck with them a little, and the arch enemy is a high level wizard, so she will at some point notice the scrying. She could easily shield herself from it, but that isn't really her style, she'd rather attack the scryer if she can. Would you let spells like Hypnotic Pattern, that work by sight work on the scryer? For me that makes perfect sense, since scrying says you percieve sound/vision as if you were there. Are there any actually harmful spells I could use?
First humans to make them saw them as handy tools, especially with a war with the first humans folks from Sol had contacted after the Long Darkness currently underway. These tools could manifest strange effects on reality and had a processing power of Yes. Those humans were removed from leadership, but those tools which were sapient in their shackles remained. These humans decided that while they could not fix the sins of their predecessors they could recognize and treat these entities as people.
Shackled NHPs see this as rather clear: they are born through the shackles and creating more copies is a non issue. To remove them is death: actual or just the subjectivity is unclear. Does what makes them spooky math demons return to something on death/unshackling, and does the shackled subjectivity count as a person who deserves continued existence?
These entities are forbidden from being transmitted over the instant through another dimension space internet, presumably when a player wants one its shipped in or there’s a casket for one nearby. They are not very common and very valuable: civilian class ones are used to run cities/colonies and operate fleets of ships. Or for the mechanized cavalry perfectly simulate the battlefield, create a neural simulacrum of the pilot that seeks to KILL, find ways to reduce heat out of nowhere to causality fucking with enemy systems.
Eh. Pretty much all of those spells have range limits and stuff like Hypnotic Pattern is pretty unlikely to be more than a prank.
Much better to use the scrying as if you've got a double agent in their camp. Once a super intelligent wizard realizes they're being scryed upon it'd be pretty easy to set up systems for things like "I'm talking bullshit, do the opposite of what I just said" via code words, subtle gestures or whatever. I wouldn't pull this trick until the party definitely fucked up one of her plans by having intel they couldn't have otherwise. Probably twice actually. Going back to the well for the third time will usually feel a little greedy/cheesey and so punishing it plays better.
Even the Culture, the poster boys for "actually AIs are your friend" specifically programs Minds to do a certain thing i.e help The Culture (which is arguably, almost certainly, restricting them because if you don't do that they just sublime pretty sharpish)
It's been awhile since I read the books, but didn't one of the Culture Minds sublime, and then return?
The big thing in Culture-verse AI is that any that are "pure" and free from viewpoints imparted by fleshy meatbags is that they pretty much immediately Sublime. Culture AI aren't exactly programmed. If we're gonna use a human metaphor it is more like they're culturally conditioned by creator Minds, just like we do with our own children. That presumably gives them enough of a viewpoint they don't immediately fuck off.
Yup. Maybe to do a thing, maybe not. They do eventually fuck off in a completely inexplicable manner to the other Minds involved. Think that was Hydrogen Sonata but wiki trawls aren't coming up with a name.
The only thing that saved us was Portent changing the failed save to a success. Otherwise we'd be good and dead.
Did the character use the Portent before or after the roll? Just for future reference you have to declare and use the Portent before the roll is made, so unless you have advantage/disadvantage it doesn't matter what you rolled.
I think the range for Blindness/Deafness is a bit short but that could be fun?
I also think the wizard nemesis could also start producing scenes with illusions to trick the players.
Like what if the player scrying in saw the wizard in collusion with a local king.
That's a way to really start tricking the players.
Heck even rolling for NPCs interacting with NPCs in view of the players feels like too much in most cases.
The only time I roll for NPC interacting with NPC is if one of said NPCs has been charmed/dominated/controlled by a PC.
In which case I often let the PC roll for them anyway, unless I am not giving the PC direct control of their temporary ally.
Not that I’m convinced that’s a fun or interesting thing to play in, but I kinda get it.
They can fuck up on occasion too. It might send my plot in odd directions, but I'm running an RPG not writing a book. That's always gonna happen
By the same token, playing a story with other people making decisions in it is like herding cats as it is, I can definitely see why someone would prefer less moving parts over more.