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Old 11-03-2017, 09:26 PM   #1
Whitelaughter
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Default 20 years on

IN was first published by SJG in 1997 - before mobile phones, 9/11, facebook, bitcoin, the GFC, Napster, the human genome project, Walmart, Uber.
The world's population has increased by half largely because infant mortality, maternal mortality and abortion have all dropped dramatically.
Other things have been and gone (remember dotcon?) or disappeared seemingly forever, only to return: such as looking forward to the next star wars film.

I realised just how much time and passed - and how RPGs haven't kept up - when watching Wonder Woman, and wondering what system I'd run it in. Scarily, I ran a Boot Hill campaign when the system first came out, and realised that if I'd kept running that campaign, progressing at the same rate as the real world the game date would be 1917! The PCs would have seen the end of the wild west, taken part in the wars with the Spanish, helped establish Hollywood and be grumbling with Teddy Roosevelt about being too old to fight in France.

Within IN, even some Attunements are obsolete - the Balseraph and Lilim of Technology attunements should now run off mobile phones, while the existing band attunements be join the other Archaic attunements.

So - IN for a different world, a different worldview. What has changed?

Celestials are comparitively rare. With the population increasing by half in 20 years, and the Celestials not coping with it doubling every century, they are completely swamped. Everything that can be delegated to Servants etc will be. When angels and demons do come into play, they will be backed by Familiars etc to crush the problem swiftly.

Mortals even the odds with Enchantment Mortals can buy and use Artifacts - but the kicker is when they get an Enchantment Talisman with Use Features: usable by mortals lets them double their skills, while first Use must be to copy this Artifact results in a self-replicating Artifact that will swiftly be available to everyone. Mortals would mostly Enchant Talismans in their Dreamscapes while asleep, so effectively lose no time doing so. Access to Dancing, Meditation and Singing Talismans will mean that Soldiers are getting the most out of their Songs, so handling supernatural backup for their Mundane troops.

Constructs are a thing.
Thanks to Fall of the Malakim, the existence of Constructs is now widely known; while most will be 1 Force assistants for Enchantment, Heaven will be churning out symphonically aware Constructs to balance the odds against the waves of Undead and Ethereals available to Hell.

Constructs, Ethereals and Undead even the odds with Songs.
Wiping out a flock of songbirds and zombifying them creates a swarm of minions capable of researching Corporeal Songs that give Undead an affinity bonus; and in a crisis they can perform Choruses with their creator.
Meanwhile 3 Force Ethereal Figments can be ordered to Initiate and acquire Affinities, researching Ethereal Songs that grant a bonus to their Affinity. These two groups could then trade their Songs, and research the linked versions for each other. Celestial Songs would remain rare, although the completion of some Song sets would be commissioned by Beleth and Saminga respectively.

technology spirits can easily enter the Corporeal
With Celestials overstretched, and AI improving, these Ethereals are waxing strong. Once self-driving cars are normal, Car Vessels be effectively invisible, allowing technology spirits to go where ever they want.

Rites and Attunements from Lesser Word Bound become the norm
With Superiors overstretched and out of commission, and large numbers of new concepts appearing and disappearing overnight, for a Word to survive it will need to spread fast. Handed out to Free and Allied Lilim into return for a Geases for demons, or to Malakim of Trade in return for an oath for angels, will be standard - but insufficient. To succeed, a WordBound needs to be able to safely hand out their goodies to anybody.

Ethereal Discord will be normal The slaughter of Angels of Dream in Final Trumpet means that Blandine, and so Dominic, is going to have to accept Discord from ethereal 'death' as a mark of pride not shame. Some Discord will be actively encouraged! Bound makes it harder for Dream to get dissonance, Aura strengthens the Mercurian of Flowers attunement. Because Odin's One Eye attunement is actually Discord in Celestials, it can be duplicated with a Discord Bracer and made permanent by spending dissonance, allowing Servitors to keep tabs on their underlings: and can be given to Familiars with a Will roll, allowing them to do the same. Carefully chosen Vulnerabilities allow the detection of rare, valued things while a Need(Oxygen)/6 avoids needing to roll against other Celestial Discords for daily essence.


what have I missed?
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Old 11-05-2017, 07:13 AM   #2
robkelk
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Default Re: 20 years on

Everything I can think of that you missed involves how real-world politics affects the setting. Sorry.
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Old 11-14-2017, 06:58 AM   #3
Whitelaughter
 
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Default Re: 20 years on

Quote:
Originally Posted by robkelk View Post
Everything I can think of that you missed involves how real-world politics affects the setting. Sorry.
Yeah, had to delete stuff when writing to avoid at best flame wars, at worst being banned. Political maturity, never high, has gone down the gurgler - which implies that Malphas and Nybbas are even more powerful.
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Old 11-19-2017, 08:44 AM   #4
Anaraxes
 
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Default Re: 20 years on

Just to pick a couple of nits to fix in the intro, since I can't usefully comment on the IN setting itself:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Whitelaughter View Post
1997 - before... Walmart,
Sam Walton opened his first department store in 1950. His second store, the first "Wal-mart" by that name, opened in 1962. The company had two dozen stores in 1967, and went public in 1970. By 1995, the company had almost 2000 stores (plus 240 "Supercenters", 433 Sam's Clubs, and 276 international stores), was pushing $100 billion in annual sales, and it had been five years since Sam Walton had received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his success. Hard to be more of a thing than Wal-mart already was by 1997. I didn't pick up anything from the OP about how the appearance of Wal-mart was to influence development of the IN setting, but I don't think there's anything there in 2017 that Mammon and Marc haven't already had to deal with in the previous generation.

Quote:
mobile phones...
This one depends on your definition, I suppose. 1997 is too early for what we now call "3G" -- third generation cellular tech, which term of course implies two earlier generations. In 1997, the analog brick phones had largely disappeared. "2G" digital technology (GSM and CDMA) was in use, including SMS text messaging, and the latest cool phones looked like this. "Smartphones" technically existed (PDAs with added cellphone features), but weren't very popular or common, especially outside of business use, and weren't much like the current smartphone culture. So you might focus attention on the changes due to relatively open third-party app development and possibilities enabled by higher data rates, more than just mobility and constant communication connectivity, which were (or should have been) already present in the '97 version of the setting.
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Old 11-19-2017, 08:54 AM   #5
robkelk
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Default Re: 20 years on

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
Just to pick a couple of nits to fix in the intro, since I can't usefully comment on the IN setting itself:
Sam Walton opened his first department store in 1950. His second store, the first "Wal-mart" by that name, opened in 1962. The company had two dozen stores in 1967, and went public in 1970. By 1995, the company had almost 2000 stores (plus 240 "Supercenters", 433 Sam's Clubs, and 276 international stores), was pushing $100 billion in annual sales, and it had been five years since Sam Walton had received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his success. Hard to be more of a thing than Wal-mart already was by 1997. I didn't pick up anything from the OP about how the appearance of Wal-mart was to influence development of the IN setting, but I don't think there's anything there in 2017 that Mammon and Marc haven't already had to deal with in the previous generation.
I wouldn't call "276 international stores" particularly ubiquitous. That's, what, one or two per country on average? Wal*Mart only really became a thing when its international footprint became as large as its footprint in its home country.

When a game deals with the entire world, plus dreamscapes, plus Heaven and Hell, what happens in a single country has a rather small effect.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
This one depends on your definition, I suppose. 1997 is too early for what we now call "3G" -- third generation cellular tech, which term of course implies two earlier generations. In 1997, the analog brick phones had largely disappeared. "2G" digital technology (GSM and CDMA) was in use, including SMS text messaging, and the latest cool phones looked like this. "Smartphones" technically existed (PDAs with added cellphone features), but weren't very popular or common, especially outside of business use, and weren't much like the current smartphone culture. So you might focus attention on the changes due to relatively open third-party app development and possibilities enabled by higher data rates, more than just mobility and constant communication connectivity, which were (or should have been) already present in the '97 version of the setting.
Sure, the "candybar" phones were out there - but was anybody using them?

In 1997, you had to ask whether anybody in a crowd had a phone. Nowadays, it's rare that somebody in a crowd doesn't.
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Old 11-20-2017, 05:57 AM   #6
Whitelaughter
 
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Default Re: 20 years on

the mobile phone revolution struck home in a game I was in at the turn of the century: a player announced that they would use their phone to record a crime we were observing, and when the GM said 'phones can't do that', proceeded to show her that function on his RW phone.
Keeping the war hidden would have been very tricky for a couple of years, until celestials were updated on the threats. The photoshopping genuine images to ensure that they were picked as fake would be an ongoing task for servitors of Lightning and Technology.

Thanks for the info on Wal-mart: they would be one of many cases of something that has been around for a while suddenly exploding across the globe. I would imagine that they would be a move by either Marc or Mammon, taking an existing working model and giving it the push it needs to destroy enemy holdings.
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Old 11-20-2017, 05:36 PM   #7
robkelk
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Default Re: 20 years on

Quote:
Originally Posted by Whitelaughter View Post
...
Thanks for the info on Wal-mart: they would be one of many cases of something that has been around for a while suddenly exploding across the globe. I would imagine that they would be a move by either Marc or Mammon, taking an existing working model and giving it the push it needs to destroy enemy holdings.
Considering the numerous news reports about mom-and-pop stores going out of business in towns where W*M moved in, I'd be tempted to give that one to Mammon being anti-competitive. IMHO.
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Old 11-21-2017, 01:35 AM   #8
johndallman
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Default Re: 20 years on

Quote:
Originally Posted by robkelk View Post
When a game deals with the entire world, plus dreamscapes, plus Heaven and Hell, what happens in a single country has a rather small effect.

Sure, the "candybar" phones were out there - but was anybody using them?

In 1997, you had to ask whether anybody in a crowd had a phone. Nowadays, it's rare that somebody in a crowd doesn't.
Outside North America, mobile phones were extremely common by 1997. As far as I know, they were uncommon in NA because the numbering scheme didn't support them, and thus the phone owner had to pay charges for incoming calls.
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Old 11-27-2017, 01:32 PM   #9
Cooper
 
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Default Re: 20 years on

I have not taken it as given that the events of the Revelation Cycle have already occurred (I might still want to run the cycle some day) - but I have tried to make some updates to Nybbas, Jean, and Vapula to reflect advances in mortal technology.

https://liberneglecta.wordpress.com/...2/10/upgrades/
https://liberneglecta.wordpress.com/...-social-media/
https://liberneglecta.wordpress.com/...on-of-doxxing/
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Old 12-01-2017, 09:41 PM   #10
Whitelaughter
 
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Default Re: 20 years on

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Originally Posted by Cooper View Post
I have not taken it as given that the events of the Revelation Cycle have already occurred (I might still want to run the cycle some day) - but I have tried to make some updates to Nybbas, Jean, and Vapula to reflect advances in mortal technology.

https://liberneglecta.wordpress.com/...2/10/upgrades/
https://liberneglecta.wordpress.com/...-social-media/
https://liberneglecta.wordpress.com/...on-of-doxxing/
Hmm, not bad! All sorts of interesting things in there.

I particularly like the idea of Followers - anything that make the humans in IN less irrelevant is a good thing.
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