08-03-2016, 11:40 PM | #1 |
Join Date: May 2016
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Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
My reasearch-fu is failing me at the moment and I'd like to know--how would you describe the parachronic-capable factions? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Good things and bad things, that sort of thing.
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08-04-2016, 02:41 AM | #2 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
Centrum has some technological advantage but lacks the numbers, variety, and experience with other cultures and languages the other two have.
Cabal has everything inhuman and magical, but MASSIVE loads of infighting and cross purposes. Centrum rarely cares about the secret, while Infinity will kill to protect it, and Cabalists will do far worse to protect the secret of magic and secondarilly evidence of it like world jumping.
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08-04-2016, 11:44 PM | #3 |
Join Date: May 2016
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
I remember reading that a "Light Centrum" would be a sort of socialist paradise, focusing on equality and perfecting a society that's strong enough to reach other worlds.
Or maybe I'm paraphrasing. I remember it was an interesting alternative got GMs who like an off-white v off-white morality play. |
08-05-2016, 08:24 AM | #4 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
It wasn't so much socialist as it was non-democratic meritocracy.
I generally run centrum light. Or at least run centrum agents as real people. I get the feeling that everyone runs a slightly different infinite worlds. I know my version deviates from cannon in a couple of places.
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
08-05-2016, 09:40 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
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08-05-2016, 11:41 AM | #6 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
I must have missed that part. Where is it?
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
08-05-2016, 11:55 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
It's a non-Capitalist economy centrally run, sounds like a "Command Economy" to me. Remember, market economics is simply superstition to Centrum.
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08-05-2016, 01:27 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
Politics
Centrum is a regimented meritocracy: all citizens enter the Service for which they have most aptitude and inclination, to be promoted strictly by talent and achievement. Each adult citizen belongs to one of seven grades, corresponding to a specific rank within his Service. Everyone starts as a Grade 1 citizen, and nepotism is discouraged by common opinion (as well as being illegal); Given that every single citizen of Centrum is a government employee, how can be it anything other than a command economy? They have abandoned the concept of "private enterprise" entirely. It's true that Centrum is in no way motivated by Marxist ideas or anything analogous to them. They haven't even a theoretical idea that the state could or should "wither away" or that the workers are entitled to anything beyond incentives for those who perform well. Nonetheless they are a culture that has abandoned capitalism and has a centrally planned economy. |
08-05-2016, 07:30 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
Quote:
Having such a thing actually work without extreme ultra-tech levels of data gathering and analysis might say od things about the underpinnings of reality on such a line. I certainly think having Gernsback's (much less intrusively) planned economy work as well as it does implies weird social science. If you need an actual label for Centrum I think it may be more like Corporatism than anything else in our timeline. The semi-mythical "Japan Inc" might be the clearest example of that. Fascism (as a meaningful classification rather than an insult) is a sub-category of Corporatism that adds extreme natonalism and militarism. Centrum is also of course Totalitarian as it permits no other social institutions than itself. Centrum's monolithic combination of political, economic and social power is quite extreme in most ways. Persons in search of "Centrum light" can decide that its' vices are all mitigated by the virtues of honesty and rationality. Having it all work as well as it is supposed to s still werd.
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Fred Brackin |
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08-06-2016, 12:28 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: Question about Infinity, Centrum, the Cabal...
Quote:
I asked about it on sjgames.gurps back in 2004, and Craig Neumeier kindly posted it. I've got a printout of the post, but nothing electronic. Basically a Centrum that relaxed after getting rid of Secundus. Too lazy to look for any Centrum Light stuff in 4E right now. Edit: I'd always assumed the "Technocracy" was a better term for Centrum. Much later edit: Found it and typed it in downthread. Last edited by cptbutton; 11-07-2017 at 06:35 AM. Reason: note typed up version |
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Tags |
cabal, centrum, help me out here, infinite worlds, infinity, parachronics |
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