[Madness Dossier] Skill of the Week: Esmology

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I seem to have failed to get over how well this aspect of Esmology works. It isn't restricted to large groups, and it's a great deal more reliable than Asimov's Psychohistory.

For modelling something like psychohistory, I'd suggest imposing a penalty based on how small the group was - an unpenalized roll when dealing with groups of, say, 1 billion or more, -1 for 500 million, -2 for 100 million, -3 for 50 million, and so forth. That should about cover psychohistory's ineffectiveness for small groups.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

For modelling something like psychohistory, I'd suggest imposing a penalty based on how small the group was - an unpenalized roll when dealing with groups of, say, 1 billion or more, -1 for 500 million, -2 for 100 million, -3 for 50 million, and so forth. That should about cover psychohistory's ineffectiveness for small groups.

If you're modelling Asimovian psychohistory, a billion may be too small for a starting point. Remember that Asimov was a chemist by training; psychohistory was inspired by statistical mechanics, which works in quantities of a mole or so (a mole is 6.023 x 10^23 molecules). Asimov probably didn't envision that big a population (with 100,000,000,000 stars in the galaxy and 10,000,000,000 humans per solar system, you'd need 100 galaxies to get a mole of humans!), but there are suggestions that psychohistory worked on a scale larger than a single planetary population. I'd suggest maybe a trillion (10^12) as the baseline. (Besides, it reminds me of one of Asimov's books of science essays, "Only a Trillion.")

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I think Ken Hite coined it. The root is Greek, "esmos", a swarm of bees.

If Mage: the Ascension had a Sphere of Society, Esmology would be the skill that gives bonuses for using it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

If Mage: the Ascension had a Sphere of Society, Esmology would be the skill that gives bonuses for using it.

Heh. I wrote up the Sphere of Society for my Mage campaign, substituting it for the Sphere of Prime in the Technocracy setup. It worked pretty well.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Heh. I wrote up the Sphere of Society for my Mage campaign, substituting it for the Sphere of Prime in the Technocracy setup. It worked pretty well.

I can see that working well for Coincidental workings, but how did Vulgar ones behave?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I can see that working well for Coincidental workings, but how did Vulgar ones behave?

Well, none of the PCs was Technocracy, so they didn't know about Society (though eventually one of them formed an alliance with the Syndicate and was issued a magical credit card that she could use to acquire apparatus for pretty much anything). My view of the matter was that the Technocracy did almost everything through material foci. In fact, the first big event of the campaign, the handover of Hong Kong to China, was essentially a huge Technocratic ritual taking place in plain sight.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Heh. I wrote up the Sphere of Society for my Mage campaign, substituting it for the Sphere of Prime in the Technocracy setup. It worked pretty well.

An overlap with Primal Utility, by any chance?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

An overlap with Primal Utility, by any chance?

"Primal Utility"? If this is a reference to something specific I'm not getting it.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Varyon

*Characters who are resistant or even immune - be it due to training or simply their minds working differently from normal humans - to being predicted or manipulated via esmology could easily be a thing. I'm not certain how much such an Advantage would cost, or if I'd require certain prerequisites (such as Advantages like Unfazeable, or Disadvantages that represent insanity).

That's just Resistant, not a special new advantage; in Madness Dossier it's a Very Common hazard because all of human civilization is contaminated by the Anunnakku. In a Madness Dossier game, you can't really get it without training by the Sandmen (The anti-Anunnakku conspiracy) - there's a provision for a 20 point Unusual Background, but requiring Unfazeable and Indomitable (for example) would make for a good substitute. I'd revolve more around Indomitable though - it's not about being frightened, it's about being manipulated.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

"Primal Utility"? If this is a reference to something specific I'm not getting it.

A variant of Prime found in the Syndicate convention book.

Originally Posted by a review of the book

The book also covers the Syndicate’s unique spin on Prime. Rather than being “the stuff of magic” Prime for the Syndicate takes on the form of Primal Utility, the basic psychological-mathematical junction between reality and human desire… and the very basic unit of hypereconomics. It’s a complex idea, and one that is a little harder to comprehend compared to the “Correspondence as Data” by the N.W.O.

My knowledge about it is very very superficial, but it tends to play with the concept of value of goods/etc. and how that relates to magic.