[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Sithis

It's hard to make a game of something that is generally considered to be moving in the "right" direction, and the problems of SAIs in the EU are pretty minor compared to the rest of the world. If you're going to run a campaign focused on such things, wouldn't you set it somewhere with a more fragile situation?

What makes you think there aren't plenty of people and organizations who want to turn the situation in Germany (and the EU as a whole) into a fragile situation?

In Transhuman Space, there is an entire class of beings which are treated as animals or property in most regions. The EU is the only major faction which doesn't do that and in fact gives them the rights of citizens. This is a clear and direct challenge to the very foundations of other societies elsewhere. In other times and places, such a situation has led to war between different factions. In this era, this might very well lead to the most vicious memetic warfare imaginable. The other factions need to prove to their societies that the European path is wrong, or else they will have trouble justifying their own approaches in the long run. Even the societies with strong media filters (i.e. China) will have trouble keeping the success stories of Europe out, and the societies without them will have even greater problems, as information moves around the globe at an ever faster pace.

Think of the American Culture Wars, only magnified by more than one order of magnitude and played out on a global scale. Such a campaign might be based in Germany and be focused on Germany - but it will have to think about issues on a global scale.

And high-stakes geopolitics and global memetic warfare should be interesting subjects for a campaign, shouldn't they?

A point of conflict that jumped out at me for the EU is the issue of immigrants, specifically bioroids. They're a population that dramatically stick out, likely have a much improved life from where they're from, and yet still aren't treated like everyone else. Seems like there should be some easy parallels to modern day beliefs and conflicts there.

Certainly, and I do plan to give this ample treatment - though ultimately, the future of SAIs is likely to be the larger issue. Personally, I see bioroids as something of an evolutionary dead end - sooner or later, they will likely be largely replaced by cyber- and bioshells with the right AIs.

Other than that suggestion, since the EU (and specifically Germany) is noted as being so progressive and stable, you'll have problems generating plots where the PCs are fighting the power (unless your players really REALLY think pan-sapient rights are wrong), so antagonism will largely come from elements outside of the mainstream.

If the PCs are in favor of SAI rights - especially if a citizen SAI is among their number - they might end up fighting the whole rest of the world, or at least a very powerful organization which is against giving SAIs rights.

Think about it: PCs tend to be involved in extraordinary and often spectacular situations. And given the ubiquitous surveillance of the setting, it is very likely that they will attract significant media attention at some point.

Now, how easy do you think would it be to portray the PCs involved badly in the media? Skilled memeticists with an agenda are just waiting for an opportunity like this, and if there is any opportunity to show that a prominent citizen SAIs are dangerous and out-of-control, they will. Thus, the PCs might get involved in the global memetic war over pansapient rights whether they want it or not.

With that in mind, it'd be most helpful to create antagonists like terrorists and radical ideologies, and provide information about the rules and regulations for working with German law enforcement.

I'm not sure that's the best approach to take. In fact, my main aim is to show how campaigns can work if they don't involve lots of violence, since that's the kind of campaign many gamers seem to have the most difficulty with.