Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Closed Thread
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 01-12-2019, 12:04 PM   #231
Alonsua
Banned
 
Join Date: May 2017
Default Re: Comment my megacorporation

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
The entertainment sector is just not that large.
Please do not take out of context what I write because then you will reach wrong conclusions. These are the origins of the initial capital, we are talking about a few million dollars, then obviously they devoted themselves to more things, imagine that they invented Facebook, or male contraceptives, for example.
Alonsua is offline  
Old 01-12-2019, 12:12 PM   #232
ErhnamDJ
 
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: OK
Default Re: Comment my megacorporation

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Yes! They have countless AIs running at the same time
Was the AI the result of their biological research? Is it a biological creature they created? It sounds like someone succeeded at creating the singularity and is using that to take over the world.

How do you intend to use this entity in the story? Are the player characters acting in opposition to it? Are they its agents? Are they people who just happen to be in the world, and you're exploring the effects it has on the world that way?
__________________
"For the rays, to speak properly, are not colored. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this or that color." —Isaac Newton, Optics

My blog.
ErhnamDJ is offline  
Old 01-12-2019, 12:12 PM   #233
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Comment my megacorporation

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
No, no, you can also raise their personal TL.
In the first place, raising a personal TL gives a character the option to learn skills at the higher TL, but it does not give them knowledge of those skills. They need to study them. Since you are talking about their being the creators of the higher TL innovations, there are no teachers for the skills, and no textbooks they can study on their own; they are going to have to learn at on-the-job rates, 800 hours per character point. And they are going to have to do this while running huge business enterprises and doing scientific research (not to mention carrying on complicated and obsessive personal lives).

In the second place, and more important, a higher personal TL "is most useful if you also have access to high-TL equipment." But every single piece of high-TL equipment is something they are going to have to invent, and build prototypes for, and then debug. And until they do that, they do not have a TL9 laboratory or productive facility where they can work on building TL10 prototypes, and so on.

In our society, if I wanted to work on developing TL9 electronics, or medicine, or crops, I could order all kinds of equipment from catalogs published by scientific and industrial suppliers; I wouldn't have to build everything myself. But there are no suppliers for TL9 equipment to be used in advancing TL a further level. To make such equipment available, I have to raise the society's TL, not just my own. The ability to do such things solely with one's own resources is precisely what the cinematic advantage Gadgeteer confers; it has no place in a realistic campaign.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is online now  
Old 01-12-2019, 12:14 PM   #234
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Comment my megacorporation

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Please do not take out of context what I write because then you will reach wrong conclusions.
If you do not want to be taken out of context you need to provide the context. Your style is one of giving hints, and leaving the context unspecified; there is no way to discuss what you are talking about without taking you out of context.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is online now  
Old 01-12-2019, 12:22 PM   #235
Mark Skarr
Forum Pervert
(If you have to ask . . .)
 
Mark Skarr's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Somewhere high up.
Default Re: Comment my megacorporation

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Sorry but thats not what we agreed upon a few posts ago, and these technologies are not superscience according to GURPS as far as I know it.
The only person who agreed on this was you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Memetics has been discussed here and conclussions are pretty clear.
No conclusions were really reached, and since this is a thread about Transhuman Space, a setting on which Memetics are specifically over-the-top, it has about as much clout as a discussion about mind-control psionics in a realistic setting.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Does anyone come up with a good name for the political party?
The Mary-Sue Party.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Now thats unrealistic since it is unconstitutional. The most they can be asked for are signatures from supporters of the party to reach a certain amount, they could not block them just saying "bwaaah but we dont like them!"
That's the opposite of unrealistic as it's been the reality for 150 years.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
As we previously agreed, I have written the following for the appointment of judges favorable to We Can in the Supreme Court (The names of the characters could change):
Again, we never agreed. You're just making assertions and assuming everyone is going to agree with you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
In this case it seems that a good surprise coup supported by a great campaign of memes with a well-prepared political force thanks to the support of revolutionary technologies has been enough to do it in less than a decade.

By 2018 they control:

• Presidency.
• Vice presidency.
• House of Representatives 418/435.
• Senate 85/100.
• Supreme Court 5/9.

You could basically say that they have assumed control of the United States of America.
So, In 2018 a miracle happens. One which is unrealistic, because if it were realistic it would have happened in the real world already.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
No thanks. Gadgeteer is forbidden.
So, none of your advanced technology exists.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
No, no, you can also raise their personal TL.
But only for that gadgeteer. As Bill just explained (as I was typing this), if they want to mass-produce anything they either need to raise the entire TL of the society, or have gadgetter.
Mark Skarr is offline  
Old 01-12-2019, 12:59 PM   #236
Icelander
 
Icelander's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
Default Re: Comment my megacorporation

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
No, no, you can also raise their personal TL.
Modern scientific research, technological invention, design and, obviously, manufacturing, is not carried out by one genius or even a few people. It's a massive organisational process and everyone involved in this process, in GURPS terms, needs the right TL for the task, or else you're going to have penalties (and if only one person out of the whole group has TL11 and the rest have TL8, the penalties will make the task functionally impossible).

Gadgeteer is specifically the GURPS Advantage that makes inventing function like it does in comic books. Without it, there are no world-changing supergeniuses who can somehow do everything that in real life takes a whole society to accomplish and can't be controlled or predicted.

In order to be able to work on TL10 or TL11 inventions, let alone make anything that is TL10 or TL11, you need a society of millions (at minimum) and probably an entire economy of billions, who have TL10 or TL11. There is effectively no realistic way for an individual or small research team in absolute secrecy to manage to produce any TL10 or TL11 projects on any kind of scale without the economy of a whole TL9 or TL10 world available to them. That requires Gadgeteering.

In real life, experimental R&D projects are, at most, one Tech Level ahead of the world and even then, they need the resources, knowledge and backing of a lot of people who in that very limited field, effectively have science and technology skills of one TL higher. That's normal, as technology is usually in an experimental stage for a long time before it's available to the public, which is what determined what GURPS TL the world is set at. But while blue sky ideas are a dime a dozen, no one is secretly manufacturing TL10 technology in the real world.
__________________
Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela!
Icelander is offline  
Old 01-12-2019, 01:02 PM   #237
Andrew Hackard
Munchkin Line Editor
 
Andrew Hackard's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
Default Re: Comment my megacorporation

OK, this discussion is going nowhere and it's not getting better.

Alonsua, you cannot give a patently unrealistic situation and expect to explain it by waving your hands and saying "the steps I haven't bothered to explain justify everything," particularly when the explanations you DO offer betray a lack of understanding both of the GURPS rules and of the American political and economic systems. You do yourself no favors by refusing to have a good-faith conversation about the flaws in your system and ignoring many of the points that have been brought up by multiple people.

If you had shown a willingness to engage in an open and honest discussion on the weak points of your campaign framework, even if that meant reworking many of its base premises -- or just scrapping the whole thing and starting over, which might be the best answer -- this conversation would be allowed to continue. You haven't come close to doing that, and you don't seem to understand why it's frustrating everyone else. If the choice is between frustrating you by closing your thread and frustrating the rest of the GURPS forum, sorry, but I'm siding with the majority.

Do not PM or email me about this. If you want to appeal, write to forums@sjgames.com.
__________________
Andrew Hackard, Munchkin Line Editor
If you have a question that isn't getting answered, we have a thread for that.

Let people like what they like. Don't be a gamer hater.

#PlayMunchkin on social media: Twitter || Facebook || Instagram || YouTube
Follow us on Kickstarter: Steve Jackson Games and Warehouse 23
Andrew Hackard is offline  
Closed Thread

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 12:40 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.