[Songs/rule question] Celestial Tongues and phone numbers

[William]

You could say that the limit is the limit that's guaranteed to get through. Perhaps it's known that you can try squeezing more through, but the transmission gets noisy, and you can't tell automatically which parts got through -- lousy if you're transmitting numbers or crucial details!

And the odds? Purely the GM's whim and the level of background noise in the Symphony today.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by William

You could say that the limit is the limit that's guaranteed to get through. Perhaps it's known that you can try squeezing more through, but the transmission gets noisy, and you can't tell automatically which parts got through -- lousy if you're transmitting numbers or crucial details!

And the odds? Purely the GM's whim and the level of background noise in the Symphony today.

Thanks for writing my new house rule!

[fwcain]

Originally Posted by Orlin

...my objective at the time was to use the Celestial Song of Tongues to contact Tamar...

"Tamar, I made it. Please call me. [Area Code] [3-digits] [4-digits]"

(emphasis mine)

The recipient of the message knows their own name, so I would suggest dropping that first word from your message.

Maybe because of my military past or maybe for my passion for military history and the importance played by codes and encryption in such, but I would have parsed such a message this way:

"(Sender's ID), success!! Callback (Country Code) (Area Code) (Exchange Prefix) (Specific Number Suffix)."

The exchange prefix is the three-digit part, and the specific number suffix is the four-digit part, if we are talking about phone numbers in North America. (At least, that's what I''m calling them, for the purpose of this thread; I'm sure there's an actual official term for these, but I don't recall those terms at the moment...)

Using just seven "words" (word-units), this leaves us space for one or two more. I would suggest an "op code" for the name of the specific mission, plus a possible "duress code" for signaling whether or not the sender is OK.

Just my two centi-Essence's worth. ;-)

Franklin

[Jason]

Originally Posted by fwcain

Using just seven "words" (word-units), this leaves us space for one or two more. I would suggest an "op code" for the name of the specific mission, plus a possible "duress code" for signaling whether or not the sender is OK.

Halfway through a session where I realized my PCs and NPCs were trading messages back and forth without specifying who they were from (Celestial Tongues is anonymous!), I mentioned that I assumed they were all using the standard codes for noting who messages were from and such. :) Other one-word codes seem entirely reasonable and likely to be known by practically all angels (at least of a given Superior).

[JCD]

Originally Posted by Jason

Halfway through a session where I realized my PCs and NPCs were trading messages back and forth without specifying who they were from (Celestial Tongues is anonymous!), I mentioned that I assumed they were all using the standard codes for noting who messages were from and such. :) Other one-word codes seem entirely reasonable and likely to be known by practically all angels (at least of a given Superior).

Now, that's one thing that I would argue doesn't need to be added to the message: who it is going to (obviously) and who it is from. You could rule that the message has the senders 'voice'.

This is a blessing and a curse. Good if you want to contact a friend. Bad if you want to contact an enemy anonymously. The question a GM has to answer is is the identification (if he goes that route) switchable?

[Jason]

Originally Posted by JCD

Now, that's one thing that I would argue doesn't need to be added to the message: who it is going to (obviously) and who it is from. You could rule that the message has the senders 'voice'.

This is a blessing and a curse. Good if you want to contact a friend. Bad if you want to contact an enemy anonymously. The question a GM has to answer is is the identification (if he goes that route) switchable?

Ah, but in my campaign*(based on rules as written), it had already been established as a major plot point that the source is completely anonymous. Very handy for plots involving tips about Renegades who are looking for redemption: Is it a trap, or just someone looking to help out a buddy without getting in trouble with their own boss?

[JCD]

I don't see where it suggests one way or another that it is anonymous, but as I mentioned, that is a GM specific thing.


While we are on the subject of the Song:

1) It has a Disturbance of Zero and it costs one Essence...which is then wafted out into the ether to find whomever (i.e. is not technically spent, but gifted) This inclines me to think it really makes no noise at all.

2) It mentions that Djinn and Cherubs add Celestial Forces as a bonus. One assumes that this is to the target number, not the CD, which seems irrelevant.

3) Do the rest of you assume that it goes immediately to the receiver, or does the 'message in the bottle' similie make it seem to take a bit of time?

[Jason]

Originally Posted by JCD

I don't see where it suggests one way or another that it is anonymous, but as I mentioned, that is a GM specific thing.

I suppose that is open to interpretation. When I read that there is "no way to track down" who sent it, I assumed that automatically getting the name of the sender counted as a way you could track that person down.

1) It has a Disturbance of Zero and it costs one Essence...which is then wafted out into the ether to find whomever (i.e. is not technically spent, but gifted) This inclines me to think it really makes no noise at all.

This I can respond to more confidently. Page 55 of core rules: Degree of Disturbance is in addition to the Essence spent powering the Song. It costs an Essence, so it's quiet, but not noiseless.

2) It mentions that Djinn and Cherubs add Celestial Forces as a bonus. One assumes that this is to the target number, not the CD, which seems irrelevant.

3) Do the rest of you assume that it goes immediately to the receiver, or does the 'message in the bottle' similie make it seem to take a bit of time?

I always assumed it went immediately, but if you want the check digit to mean anything at all, that's a good effect (time to receiver = 6 –*CD minutes).

[William]

One other thing to mention: different languages may have different names for numbers. How would you differentiate "sixteen," "16," and "diez-y-seis"? There's also the existence of helper words which do little to add to meaning (and why characters in my game tended to drop frequently). Jargon and code phrases are interesting ways to compress meaning, though they have to be established beforehand. I wonder if Vassals of War may be able to apply their 5x multiplier to Celestial Tongues!

Check the August 27, 2003 mailing list archives for some celestial communications gadgetry I wrote up; one of the relics is a CelTongues modem. It's self-powered with the Song at level 6, so it always works, and the receiver modem sends the Essence back with an acknowledgement packet, so you can rapidly send chunks of information back and forth. The relic is built to mute all of its Disturbance, so that multiple uses don't start clanging up the Symphony. (It's a pretty expensive device, from Jean's labs.) It's assumed that on average Interventions on all those rolls are minor and mostly cancel out; you maybe roll once when using it.

Anyway, the relevance to this discussion is that it measures CelTongues information in bytes. In that case, your average English word is a few bytes long: 4.5 letters. So a telephone number with 7-10 digits would take up about 2 "words."

(You could be even more precise. Unicode Latin-based characters average 1.1 bytes per character, so the average English word plus a space would take up about 6 bytes, meaning one use of CelTongues translates to 90 bytes, and it would take 12 uses of CelTongues to send a kilobyte. Which, hey, could be numeric or even image data, as far as a computer is concerned. ^_^ Naturally, this doesn't count the possibility of letting CelTongues transmit 15 Japanese words (which are more Unicode-expensive and say more with fewer helper words), or information that might be encoded in tone of voice or even telepathic emotional overtones that might get transmitted.)

[ISNorden]

For what it's worth, Rinnah's player and I were knocking around this topic again as I composed Tamar's response. (Thankfully, she lived in the same city--Gothenburg--as the other PCs; no country/city codes were necessary in Rinnah's call-me message. His name was, though, if she wanted to know who'd sent it!)

Since the game was being played in English, I assume 15 words = 15 English words. A worst-case scenario, with Rinnah's recipient living outside Sweden and needing the full number, comes to 14 words:

"Rinnah here--I made it. Call me in Sweden: forty-six, thirty-one, twelve thirty-four fifty-six." (The compound numbers are technically one word each, at the risk of sounding like a rules lawyer!)