12-18-2013, 02:30 AM | #191 | |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
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Re: Flat Black
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Now, when I read a book or watch a film with ludicrous science or silly economics I can usually flow with that if the characters are compelling, the story is engaging, and so on. But when sitting down to talk specificity about it there is nothing to distract me, so maybe I shouldn't. |
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12-18-2013, 03:26 AM | #192 | ||||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
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And then there is the fundamental impossibility of FTL, of course. If I assume it's possible, assuming that it's not terribly expensive is no worse. Quote:
High freight costs produce low trade volumes, high fares and slow passage produce low passenger volumes. I have small trade volumes and low passenger volumes in FLAT BLACK. Quote:
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 12-18-2013 at 04:17 AM. |
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12-18-2013, 04:53 AM | #193 | |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
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Re: Flat Black
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As for actually playing in a game like this what I said about books and films goes except that group chemistry is by far the most important element of my RPG enjoyment. If that is good I could even play in a zombie apocalypse game! |
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12-18-2013, 05:24 AM | #194 | |||
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Re: Flat Black
With the caveat that the hated group probably won't be a 'race' given the background, why aren't there hated minorities? They seem to be pretty common on Earth. Communists went from 'not yet made up' to 'ubiquitous hidden vermin that should be exposed and exterminated' in many peoples' eyes in less than a century. (NOTE: I am not advocating exterminating anyone, just observing that this is a common historical occurrence.)
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I think you are arguing that killing off the peasants is a clearly counterproductive course of action for the aristos in question. I am arguing that the historical record of aristos reliably acting productively, or even sanely is ... poor. What keeps a TL10 god-king in check when he goes loopy and decides that this year it's the peasants will burn? Quote:
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12-18-2013, 10:58 AM | #195 | |||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
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If I asked the relevant rhetorical question, you probably would be able to tell me who the hated minority were in ancient Egypt, heroic age Ireland, or the Antebellum South, or Iceland in 1960. Nevertheless, descriptions of those societies at the level of detail at which I describe societies for Flat Black don't enumerate them. Why not? Because they need the time and space to talk about other things. Such descriptions don't mention Auschwitz-like atrocity centres for those societies either. Why not? Because that behaviour actually isn't a human universal. Your suggestion that one Hitlerian holocaust per thousand petty states per century is a plausible minimum really doesn't gybe with history. Perhaps Roman senators, mediaeval seigneurs, and Southern gentlemen did maintain extermination camps in which they conducted Holocaust-type mass murders of their servi, their serfs, and their slaves respectively. If so, these must have been small-scale enough and rare enough that I have never heard of them (though I have heard of savage reprisals for uprisings). Therefore I feel reasonably confident in describing the society of Navabharata (which is similar to those examples) as not having enough such mass murders that the Empire feels a pressing need to alter it to end them. Mediaeval France indeed produced Gilles du Rais, but post-Revolutionary France had serial killers too, so the French Revolution seems like a poor cure for that problem. Quote:
Navabharata is a hell of a mess. There are over a billion ignorant and impoverished serfs whose blankly deferential smiles conceal the inability to read, the lack of any useful critical thinking skills, and the superstitious belief that transient agricultural and financial problems are best addressed by eating the landlord. Depending on how you classify things it is either comminuted into tens of thousands of petty despotisms, or else a ghastly anarchy in which land-owners exercise tyrannical powers over their miserable tenants; either way there are no significant global institutions to act as a point of application for simple corrective measures. Them with the plutocratic wealth and power have every incentive to oppose change, and they are suspicious as hell of any social meddling. If I posited that social engineering in FLAT BLACK were cheap, effective, and reliable enough that the Empire ought to have fixed Navabharata by now, then the entire setting would have to be an optimistic utopia. Instead, I prefer to suppose that this sort of problem is very hard to fix: maybe a social engineer could gussy up one state of the nature of a Navabharatan kingdom in a lifetime with suitable tools, but only if he didn't mind uncontrolled side-effects in the neighbours. Quote:
FLAT BLACK adventures in which the PCs are Imperials on the job are supposed to be "If we don't do something, rabbits will eat the vegetable marrows with which we intend to win the gardening prize at the grade-school fair. But if we tell Daddy, he will get out his nets and ferrets and kill all the fluffy bunnies. Oh noes! What are we going to do?" Not "Rabbits? Introduce myxomatosis and calcivirus, rip the warrens, dynamite any kopjes, and lay baits." Do you remember 9,401? Icelander insisted that the only possible thing to do with the list was to hand it over to Judge-Brigadier Gudunov, because it was evidence. Every other group that played that scenario was torn by the fear that if they let the Resident, the SNO, or that charmingly dissipated Secret Service agent get it the mink would simply kill everyone on it, just like Gudunov. Every other party was searching frantically for a third option.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 12-18-2013 at 05:11 PM. |
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12-18-2013, 02:31 PM | #196 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Flat Black
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12-18-2013, 04:39 PM | #197 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Flat Black
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Bill Stoddard |
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12-18-2013, 05:05 PM | #198 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
Quote:
You are not moved by my attempts at persuasion, which makes my first option futile. You balk at the very features of the setting that I built it for, which makes my second option self-defeating. I am left only with the option or ignoring your concerns. That's all.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
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12-18-2013, 05:09 PM | #199 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Flat Black
Did I ever show you the video of the fellow who was hunting rabbits by netting the exits from their warrens and then putting wild-caught black snakes and brown snakes down the holes?
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
12-18-2013, 05:45 PM | #200 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Flat Black
No. That does seem like a) a very clever way to deal with an invasive species and b) the perfect metaphor for the Imperial Marines.
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flat black, planetary romance, sci-fi |
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