In which setting do you play?

[antares]

I would be really curious to know in which geographies people prefer their campaigns to take place. Unfortunately I do not know how to create a poll.

I suggest the following options (multiple choices allowed):

• Earth - Advanced nations (4.+5. wave)
• Earth - Struggling nations (3. wave)
• Earth - Underwater
• Earth Orbit / Venus / Mercury
• Moon
• Mars
• Outer planets + asteroid belt

[antares]

oh, and I would actually also like to start a second poll.Maybe an admin can also help me to setup this one.

the question: What sort of entity are you playing?
2 answers should be selected. One for the "hardware", one for the "software"

• Plain vanilla human
• Enhanced human
• Uplifted animal
• Bioshell (Bioroid/Clone)
• Cybershell (Antropomorph)
• Cybershell (functional)
• Biological spirit / brain
• Uploaded Ghost
• SAI

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by antares

[*]Earth - Advanced nations (4.+5. wave)

Both of my campaigns have been based there. The mystery campaign was based on Montréal, though there were trips as far as Japan and Singapore (and one of the characters took another to Vienna for the opera). The cosmic horror campaign is based in San Francisco, but it's seen trips to the UK and Trinidad and, just ended, the Jovian moons.

Bill Stoddard

[antares]

Thanks for the quick answer :) maybe of the moderators can help to set up the polls properly. I assume that such a functionality is provided by the forum software.

@ whswhs: Maybe there are a lot of people who have an explicit preference for city-states like Montréal, Kaliningrad, or Singapore. If yes, we could include this as a separate option.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by antares

• Earth Orbit / Venus / Mercury

I've played in a Vacuum Cleaner campaign set in Earth Orbit, with excursions to L4, L5 and Luna. The PCs were three humans, none of them heavily enhanced, an SAI and a ghost.

Originally Posted by antares

• Mars

The other campaign I've played was set on Mars, with the PCs being an enhanced human, an SAI, and a bioroid. Both the biosapients had the biomods for Martian atmosphere.

I doubt you are going to find an overwhelming preference for a particular environment or character type; one of the attractions of THS is its variety.

[antares]

@johndallman: Probably you are right. However I could imagine that there are some options, like playing uplifted animals, being definitely less popular.
Seriously: Who wants to play an uplifted Octopus?

Well ok, maybe some Cthulu guys. I always wondered how somebody who is fascinated by transhumanism might at the same time be enthusiastic about some bogus demonology trash like Cthulu.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I've played in a Vacuum Cleaner campaign set in Earth Orbit, with excursions to L4, L5 and Luna. The PCs were three humans, none of them heavily enhanced, an SAI and a ghost.

The other campaign I've played was set on Mars, with the PCs being an enhanced human, an SAI, and a bioroid. Both the biosapients had the biomods for Martian atmosphere.

The latter also briefly featured a ghost in a bioshell.

I played in the former and run the latter. I've also run convention demo games using characters from all of the Personnel Files books.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by antares

Well ok, maybe some Cthulu guys. I always wondered how somebody who is fascinated by transhumanism might at the same time be enthusiastic about some bogus demonology trash like Cthulu.

You aren't reading the Cthulhu material very carefully. Here are Lovecraft's exact words about what happens when the stars are right and Cthulhu rises:

The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

I think that can be read as a portrayal of transhuman existence—as seen by someone who dreads it, to be sure.

Lovecraft's underlying idea is not that superstition as such is true. It's that exact, accurate scientific knowledge of the world reveals horror and despair; that beings who could live and function with that knowledge would not be what we regard as "human" and would not care about anything that human beings value. The ancient tomes and necromantic spells are meant only as early glimpses of the true world, badly misunderstood by the people who saw them—as was inevitable, because of SAN loss.

I've been having good luck with a THS cosmic horror campaign, in which I've faced the PCs with everything from a genetically engineering memetics genius to a living metal cyberentity from another solar system.

Bill Stoddard

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by antares

I could imagine that there are some options, like playing uplifted animals, being definitely less popular.
Seriously: Who wants to play an uplifted Octopus?

The idea has some amusement value, but limited viability in most campaigns. Uplifts really don't have the smarts or social acceptance to make decent PCs, to be sure. Interesting NPCs sometimes, though, and I really ought to look at using them as Allies in more games.

(And heck, I've run a demo scenario in which all the PCs were Sentient Snacks. Sort of.)

Originally Posted by antares

Well ok, maybe some Cthulu guys. I always wondered how somebody who is fascinated by transhumanism might at the same time be enthusiastic about some bogus demonology trash like Cthulu.

When his brain was fizzing in the right direction, Lovecraft was quite a sophisticated hard SF/technothriller writer by the standards of his time, and some of his ideas verge on transhumanism. (Someone will wheel out at least one of his lines about a vision of the future sooner or later on this thread, I'm sure.) However, he frightened himself rather badly with the radicalism of his own vision, and he over-wrote too much to be taken entirely seriously.

[antares]

True, I only know it through a friend who has mild satanic leanings and treats the Necronomicon as some kind of serious sorcerer book. well, what should I say ... In any case, I have to admit that I am not a fan of horror settings and that I do not understand them.

Either the entities are really horrible, then you cannot fight them and you get killed or worse. Game over. Or they are ordinary opponents. Then there is no horror.