Skill Lists And Limits For Teenage Characters

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by scc

It's less about what they gain and more about what they lose. It means becoming the junior partner as all their allies merge into a super state around them. It means not having a seat at the table when deals are made and standards set. And most importantly it means ******* off every defense contractor as they won't be able to take part in planetary defense projects, or at least must do so as minor player.

That last on it's own is probably enough outweigh the lobbying power of the NRA and all small arms manufacturers in the country by a country mile.

Again, all this seems utterly unrealistic. We seem to be becoming the junior partner anyway, giving up constitutional and cultural basics and getting nothing in exchange.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Again, all this seems utterly unrealistic. We seem to be becoming the junior partner anyway, giving up constitutional and cultural basics and getting nothing in exchange.

Pretty much. The model that seems far more likely is that the world government would start out as a NATO-like organization, and very gradually become more united, with each step (over a period of decades or longer) just seeming like a logical follow-up to the ones before, and a necessary move due to the changing situation, rather than being a sudden shift that would cause riots and work-stopages even among people who would otherwise be in favor of a lot of the changes.

Originally Posted by malloyd

However. The thing is that by no means does cooperating on defense and interstellar diplomacy require a single government, harmonizing laws or even opening borders. You'll note that neither Australia nor the US have fully harmonized their state laws yet. Louisiana doesn't even use the same basic framework as the rest of the US. On the other hand the European "Union" is even further from having done so, or even fully coordinating its foreign policies, and yet has the open borders and most of the common economy. For that matter this is a substantial part of the Communist [ideal] and it largely didn't happen even between fairly culturally close Communist governed neighbors over half a century of facing off against a West that clearly hated them.

This is something we know comes in a lot of shades, and thinking you are going to get a world government that doesn't stop short of full union without at least centuries at an intermediate stage is a utopian fantasy no matter what you think the impetus is.

So, basically this.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This is something we know comes in a lot of shades, and thinking you are going to get a world government that doesn't stop short of full union without at least centuries at an intermediate stage is a utopian fantasy no matter what you think the impetus is.

Hardly. History over the just the last century shows that people will knuckle under to any regime -- no matter how foreign or alien -- that's ruthless enough. In an intense burst of irony, I'm in the middle of rereading William Shirer's Nightmare Years, reflecting on his decade in Europe and, among other things, being a reporter on the central European beat for the rise of the Nazi regime. Not a half hour ago, I was reading the section where Shirer describes Hitler's systematic suppression of the powerful and ubiquitous trade union movement, which had brought down the monarchy only 15 years earlier, and Shirer's amazement that they took it so meekly.

(Never mind that ... is anyone really going to hold up America right now as an example of a people unwilling to throw long-cherished principles under the bus out of fealty to one person's whims? Seriously?)

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

(Never mind that ... is anyone really going to hold up America right now as an example of a people unwilling to throw long-cherished principles under the bus out of fealty to one person's whims? Seriously?)

That group is not in a majority, and I hadn't recalled a post saying that there was someone highly charismatic in America pushing the 'world government' scenario, nor that there was the decades of build-up that was required for the current situation to exist. As it stands now, America is far less likely to join a world government, so if the PoD is today, it would take even longer to make that happen.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

Not a half hour ago, I was reading the section where Shirer describes Hitler's systematic suppression of the powerful and ubiquitous trade union movement, which had brought down the monarchy only 15 years earlier, and Shirer's amazement that they took it so meekly.

You should look at that more closely. Note that not only did Nazism fail to become a global regime, it didn't even unify those central European territories during the years it occupied them. Never mind the resistances, they all had "puppet" regimes with some differences in laws from Germany and a non-negligible tendency to disagree with the German occupation forces, if admittedly a limited one, even on the pro-Nazi side of things.

It takes a century or two for brutal control to stamp out local particularlism and separatist tendencies too. No matter how you do it, you need a couple generations.

[RGTraynor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

You should look at that more closely. Note that not only did Nazism fail to become a global regime, it didn't even unify those central European territories during the years it occupied them. Never mind the resistances, they all had "puppet" regimes with some differences in laws from Germany and a non-negligible tendency to disagree with the German occupation forces, if admittedly a limited one, even on the pro-Nazi side of things.

It takes a century or two for brutal control to stamp out local particularlism and separatist tendencies too. No matter how you do it, you need a couple generations.

You should look at history more closely, because there are numerous examples of brutal empires thoroughly squashing subject peoples, very quickly into the bargain, and in some cases succeeding for centuries.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In game terms, it isn't "I don't have to train at all . . . I was born this way!", but something closer to, "Each hour for you is like 20 hours for me," meaning the talented youth appears to need little or no training.

Combine a bit of training with Talent and/or outstanding IQ or DX score and you get an instant prodigy. The prodigy might need the same number of hours to improve to their maximum skill level as a normal person, but they start from a much higher baseline.

For example, Picasso & Mozart started off a brilliant child prodigies and got better as they matured.

Originally Posted by Kromm

This is why I'm not a huge fan of X hours = 1 point: The flat rates in the rules aren't just averages, but averages with error bars so huge that they don't really have much value. The learning-time reductions for Talents are probably adequate for groups of skills, but for individual interests, they're still not large enough.

It would be easy to have an enhancement for Talent which boosts learning speed for a specific skill or technique within its scope. Treat faster learning for all the skills in a Talent as a +50% leveled Cosmic enhancement, then pro-rate from there.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by RGTraynor

You should look at history more closely, because there are numerous examples of brutal empires thoroughly squashing subject peoples, very quickly into the bargain, and in some cases succeeding for centuries.

Name one. OK, there are probably a couple here and there, but for the most part it's an early modern obsession (comes along with the concept of the nation-state) and even then didn't apply to most modern colonial empires.

By and large empires didn't even [care] about squashing the local peculiarities of their subject peoples, and were perfectly willing to let them retain their own cultures, faiths and significant parts of their customary laws and local governing traditions, as long as they coughed up the expected tribute, taxes and/or troop levies. Indeed it is one of the [definitional features] of an empire - a collection of nations ruled by a metropol - that the subject peoples [aren't] integrated into the ruling people.

And anyway I think you can forget about the possibility of anybody staging a war of global conquest in the modern world that wouldn't blast the planet into ruins for quite a few generations, which is probably a bad idea if you are trying for unity specifically to resist an expected near term alien threat.

[scc]

Originally Posted by malloyd

However. The thing is that by no means does cooperating on defense and interstellar diplomacy require a single government, harmonizing laws or even opening borders. You'll note that neither Australia nor the US have fully harmonized their state laws yet. Louisiana doesn't even use the same basic framework as the rest of the US. On the other hand the European "Union" is even further from having done so, or even fully coordinating its foreign policies, and yet has the open borders and most of the common economy. For that matter this is a substantial part of the Communist [ideal] and it largely didn't happen even between fairly culturally close Communist governed neighbors over half a century of facing off against a West that clearly hated them.

This is something we know comes in a lot of shades, and thinking you are going to get a world government that doesn't stop short of full union without at least centuries at an intermediate stage is a utopian fantasy no matter what you think the impetus is.

State laws don't need to harmonize, that's actually the point of having states. But I can't imagine any country putting themselves on a path that they know leads to open borders with the US without protections against the gun violence that the US sees.

And I think you under estimate how far along that path we already are. See how the Western world has responded to the Ukraine Invasion. We've basically been on a path like that since WW2 as part of the whole stopping WW3 thing.

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Pretty much. The model that seems far more likely is that the world government would start out as a NATO-like organization, and very gradually become more united, with each step (over a period of decades or longer) just seeming like a logical follow-up to the ones before, and a necessary move due to the changing situation, rather than being a sudden shift that would cause riots and work-stopages even among people who would otherwise be in favor of a lot of the changes.

So, basically this.

So above for how much of this already exist IRL. Beyond that I'm setting this in 2070, with 20 years of pushing. So, while things are technically at the large alliance stage, what does exist is starting to look an awful lot like one. The alliance is a free trade/movement area, it's got it's own army, etc.

[jason taylor]

May I ask what this has to do with teenage characters?