Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
In my Infinite Cabal campaign, the Cabalist PCs, who are mostly from the early 18th century, didn't have much trouble understanding Centrum. They simply regarded them as empire builders, and that view worked fairly well.
Centrum didn't want to wipe out or enslave native populations, which makes them less evil than Reich-5; there are plenty of worlds with no population to use for resources. They did want every populated world to move towards their style of government, but they were smart enough not to try to do that by war; they took a fairly long view.
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Hence why I said there's a difference between Centrum Neutral and Centrum Dark (in response to somebody else saying that Centrum Dark is the actual the default when the Infinite Worlds book states multiple times that isn't the case), with Centrum Dark being a lot more open with warfare (at least on easy targets, i.e. bringing tanks and blaster rifles onto pre-industrial/non-Mana worlds to prevent the locals from putting up an effective defense), while Centrum Neutral sticks closer to the "man behind the curtain" manipulation of other worlds, with only rare cases of military intervention.
The Infinite World book actually explains that there's multiple motivations that Centrum is branching out to Alternates (presumably held by different people within Centrum) - a direct quote states: "Some wanted to spread the benefits of their civilization, bringing superior technology and organization to less-developed timelines and saving the advanced ones from suffering their own Last War. Others believed continued expansion was needed for Centrum’s own health, or were simply ambitious for new fields of action."
It could be said that Centrum Light and the more beneficial side of Centrum Neutral seeks the previous reason of helping lesser timelines, while the later motivation of "getting resources for Centrum and flexing their ambitions" leans on the darker elements of Centrum Neutral, with Centrum Dark throwing out the "enlightening lesser timelines" out to simply go for the land-grabs and glory-hounding.
I'll give a breakdown of the new Centrum characters when I have time to think of a replacement for Bakunin's name (probably not tonight, what with work tomorrow), and give some more detailed descriptions of their personalities and "policy plans" based on the FR!Soviet leaders Focus Trees, along with how they would rise to power when the power vacuum is first made, as well as how an ambitious GM can use them to form an adventure around the PCs influencing the outcome of the power struggle, either as an Interworld team trying to preserve their nation from complete collapse, or as Infinity or other non-Centrum PCs seeking to either reform Centrum into an ally, or decapitate it to ensure its defeat (although not to spoil too much, but the later has a pretty sizable chance of backfiring completely, so whoever you are, choose wisely...).