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Old 09-14-2019, 05:53 AM   #101
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
OK, there's enough thread drift that I figured this tangent deserved it's own thread. Basically the idea is that the PCs are rebels in the TNG-era Federation. However TNG itself is basically the regime's propaganda, chock full of absurd pronouncements about how they have eliminated all crime, poverty, terrorism, and materialism, statements that are adhered to as the party line even when they are obviously contradicted in specific episodes.

1. Money: They no longer use "money" as we know it. Legally, people no longer exchange goods and services with each other. Everyone in society has a guaranteed minimum ration of energy and living space and free access to the net. People who are considered to be doing things that are socially valuable get "social duty credits" which can be used to get things like use of transporters, off-world travel, holosuite time, personal services, natural food, increased living space (which is at a premium on Earth, still populous and with much of the world turned into environmentally protected preserves). Social duty credits are non-transferable person to person. It is possible to live "off the grid", stealing or bartering for the necessities of life in the grey market, but on developed planets it isn't easy and is considered evidence of mental illness. Many people split the difference, living on their guaranteed lifestyle allotment plus a little extra social duty credit, but dabble a little in grey market transactions.

2. Crime: They proudly boast that they have eliminated crime and so they have, by defining it as mental illness. Therefore there are no longer any lawyers or trials (except in the military where they have retained courts-martial). Once public security has determined that you have engaged acts injurious to society or yourself you are interviewed by a psychiatrist and then a therapeutic committee determines an appropriate course of treatment and their discretion is limitless short of executing you. It could be hour-long talk sessions once a week, a regimen of mood-stabilising drugs, indefinite confinement, hard labour on a colony world, or experimental neurosurgery. There is no presumption of innocence because guilt is not at issue in the first place.




2.
I would watch the heck out of this show.
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Old 09-14-2019, 09:21 AM   #102
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

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I've been known to quote aphorisms about giving inches and taking miles even though distance is measured in centimeters and kilometers in my country. Gold Pressed Latinum is what the Ferenghi use. The Federation sneers at them for being so primitive.
It sounds to me like that old irritating prejudice of warriors against people who have to pay extortion to them.
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Old 09-14-2019, 09:27 AM   #103
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

Except that the Federation is supposedly not a warrior culture. It's more the philosopher's disdain for merchants - which of course goes back a long long way as well.
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Old 09-14-2019, 12:31 PM   #104
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

And good luck getting the Ferengi in any series to pay the Federation anything - the implication was more, I think, that since the Federation were rich and didn't take money as seriously as the Ferengi did, when the Ferengi once started negotiating the boot tended to be on the other foot.
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Old 09-15-2019, 03:40 PM   #105
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

A lot of the "Founding Fathers" of the Fed came from a background of endless war. The Vulcans and Andorians know what that is like.
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Old 09-17-2019, 09:19 AM   #106
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

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It might be interesting to discover in such a world, that the reason for genetic manipulation being illegal might be to hide the fact that humans have in fact already been largely re-engineered so that criminal behavior IS a malfunction of some sort. The front line that humanity shows the universe being a cuddly utopian parody of mankind, to help the process of seducing the other races to join the federation...

Meanwhile there are "True Humans" out there somewhere pulling the strings in their quest for galactic conquest...
The webcomic Genocide Man played around with this a bit, with humans having been subjected unawares to gene therapy (concealed within a man-made plague, which were common at the time) to make them both more resistant (to avoid a man-made extinction event) and much less aggressive. The Genocide Men (and Woman) more-or-less running things are ironically some of the only genetically unmodified humans remaining (ironically because they have been extensively modified from human baseline, just not on a genetic level).

No aliens to woo, however - the modifications were to prevent humanity from wiping itself out, which was pretty much the Genocide Initiative’s whole raison d’etre.
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Old 09-17-2019, 01:14 PM   #107
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
I've been known to quote aphorisms about giving inches and taking miles even though distance is measured in centimeters and kilometers in my country. Gold Pressed Latinum is what the Ferenghi use. The Federation sneers at them for being so primitive.
The Federation does pay the Ferenghi for goods and services in the currency of their economy. But that doesn't mean that Gold Pressed Latinum has any currency value inside of the Federation.
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Old 09-24-2019, 10:47 PM   #108
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Default Re: Star Trek: The Rebel Generation

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Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
Quote:

Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
I've been known to quote aphorisms about giving inches and taking miles even though distance is measured in centimeters and kilometers in my country. Gold Pressed Latinum is what the Ferenghi use. The Federation sneers at them for being so primitive.

It sounds to me like that old irritating prejudice of warriors against people who have to pay extortion to them.
Not in the case of the STTNG-era Federation. In some ways, just the opposite is true of that Federation. They don't have a warrior mindset at all. They're portrayed more as a civilization of spoiled aristocrats, the descendants of warriors but themselves soft verging on decadent. See the first Borg episode for an oddly well-written instance of Q calling them out on this.

They might be said to have a spoiled aristocrat's disdain for commerce.
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