[GAME] Synthesise a Cybercity!

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Would we have much reason for YOU-Topia to have less protection than them? I don't mean that rhetorically- I can't think of any valid reasons for it to be considerably smaller. Unless maybe YOU-Topia's Coast Guard/military has a significantly different regional role than Singapore's would. What kind of external threats are likely against YOU-Topia? They'd be geared up to fight off a robot war, for one thing.

There are some strong differences from Singapore that might indicate its not a good model.

• Singapore has true sovereignty, and YOU-topia does not.
• Singapore has historically been at odds with Malaysia and Indonesia, its closest and largest neighbors, while YOU-topia is as far as I can tell, rather isolated.
• Singapore, as I understand it, is socially an outlier in a great many ways. It had a string of riots in the 50's and 60's, and has only had one since, due to some pretty strong legal reforms. Which means the current military outward rather than inward. I think.

I'd expect the holders of the treaties pertaining to YOU-topia to maintain military force there. Kind of like Hong Kong before the lease expired, but with more interested parties.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Inky

mathematically equivalent to navigating the shortest route through a certain map.

Yeah, I imagine it could be used for tree search, at least.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Maybe this should be name 5, covering different aspects and interesting points of the conflict?

Well, I suppose this works; I was looking for a broad "It was jaw-jaw and not very war-war" or "It was like WW2", etc.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

If we consider the Coast Guard to be YOU-Topia's de facto military, it could be quite sizable.

I was kind of assuming what domestic military YOU-Topia had was an ugly patchwork, with C-Po armored police, NeuroCorp Security, the Coast Guard, various CDCs, mercenaries hired by the Special Representative, Procurators-at-arms, etc.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Question 78
Do the CDC's still exist?

Yes, some CDCs still exist. After the Crisis of '38 most of the more radical and violent ones were taken down in protracted urban warfare. All extant Civil Defense Committees have agreements with C-Po to handle local law enforcement.

The continued existence of CDCs is controversial. Some feel they are little more than semi-legal racketeering operations. Others feel that they guard their communities against C-Po abuses. Some feel that local CDCs have lost touch with their communities, while others feel that communities have too much input in their operation.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

There are some strong differences from Singapore that might indicate its not a good model.

Still a good start, though, especially for thinking about island/city nations with their own militaries. We could probably go an order of magnitude either way with various justifications.

[*]Singapore has true sovereignty, and YOU-topia does not.

If we're leaning into cyberpunk tropes, then NeuroCorp should be as powerful as a sovereign nation, though. And its sovereignty was curtailed in '38, but it had a greater level up until then. I'm thinking those assets may have had control passed over to the City Council but kept at the same level, unless there was some reason to dissolve a lot of them.

[*]Singapore has historically been at odds with Malaysia and Indonesia, its closest and largest neighbors, while YOU-topia is as far as I can tell, rather isolated.

Yeah, this is what I was thinking of in regards to having different roles. Singapore is a regional power, with international obligations, some testy neighbours (prolly China more so than any others), probably some anti-piracy function over the Straits of Malacca, and so on.

Being in the middle of a gyre by definition means YOU-Topia has vast volumes of empty ocean in every direction (unless it isn't there and only imported plastic from the gyre, per your earlier suggestion). The Argalese archipelago, to be nearby, would have to be something like Hawaii or the Azores. I'm not sure what the implications are for that militarily or strategically. Long range patrol capability might be important.

[*]Singapore, as I understand it, is socially an outlier in a great many ways. It had a string of riots in the 50's and 60's, and has only had one since, due to some pretty strong legal reforms. Which means the current military outward rather than inward. I think.

So YOU-Topia might be diverting more of its defence/security budget to internal policing due to social unrest? Might be a factor, but I'm not sure how significant it would be.

I'd expect the holders of the treaties pertaining to YOU-topia to maintain military force there. Kind of like Hong Kong before the lease expired, but with more interested parties.

A question would be who is funding that. NeuroCorp would want to protect its interests there, whereas the international treaty group are mainly intervening on humanitarian grounds, aren't they?

Originally Posted by TGLS

I was kind of assuming what domestic military YOU-Topia had was an ugly patchwork, with C-Po armored police, NeuroCorp Security, the Coast Guard, various CDCs, mercenaries hired by the Special Representative, Procurators-at-arms, etc.

Most of those would seem to be infantry or police units though, with things like helicopter urban air support. Air wings and naval ops would still seem to be Coast Guard, unless we posit some serious NeuroCorp private army assets.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 23 [CTY][3 of 5] Describe some of the criminal groups that operate within the Sluse.

Answer 23c - The Former Maeotia Republican Guard
One of the scarier outfits operating in the Sluse is the Former Maeotia Republican Guard. They've been noticeably active in the area since about late 5302, following their country's coup d'état of '01, and have become more prominent in the last 3 years. They operate under a Colonel Ivan Agazzi, an ally of former President Silvana Olic and a high ranking member of the Guard who'd been put in charge of suppressing counter-republican activities. He escaped to YOU-Topia with a group of loyalist commandos after the Popular Progress Party took control and has established a criminal outfit here, gradually attracting other Guard veterans to him as rumours of his success spread abroad.

The MRG profits from mercenary operations, contract killings, gun-running (mostly small arms, but can get access to heavier gear if needed, such as personal anti-mech weapons), AI trafficking and extortion. Agazzi is making moves to establish the MRG as a major actor in the Sluse underworld by taking over other gangs in the area, already annexing the Gutter Dogs, the 28ers, Millennial Catastrophe and GraVeJuse into his organisation. Rumours that MRG is harbouring the exiled President Olic are unfounded and unlikely, but it is more than likely providing support and sending funds to the underground anti-revolutionary movement.

MRG's growing influence is raising questions about fellow Maeotian national Superintending Procurator Ricci's loyalties to his former president and whether he is secretly lending support to the MRG, or at least turning a blind eye to their activity.

The MRG are easily recognised by their uniform, blue-black camo combat fatigues and white beret with red piping and steel insignia badges, which they make a point of continuing to wear.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

If we're leaning into cyberpunk tropes, then NeuroCorp should be as powerful as a sovereign nation, though. And its sovereignty was curtailed in '38, but it had a greater level up until then. I'm thinking those assets may have had control passed over to the City Council but kept at the same level, unless there was some reason to dissolve a lot of them.

I suppose one solution is that the foreign nations "pay" Neurocorp to maintain a protective military force in the area, since there are several of them and a joint command might be awkward.

A question would be who is funding that. NeuroCorp would want to protect its interests there, whereas the international treaty group are mainly intervening on humanitarian grounds, aren't they?

I mean, humanitarian grounds might be the pretext, but powerful nations have always kept an eye on the territorial integrity of their allied states, buffer states, and puppet states. That's basic real politic.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I mean, humanitarian grounds might be the pretext, but powerful nations have always kept an eye on the territorial integrity of their allied states, buffer states, and puppet states. That's basic real politic.

So it's more Okinawa than Singapore? That could work somehow. I think we might need to hammer out some more of the global setting deets, without which we're being held back a little.

[Daigoro]

Quoting for context:

Originally Posted by (E)

The Grey
One of the more sinister gangs in the Sluse are "The Grey" a group whose principles are an outgrowth of grey man survivalist theory, a reaction to surveillance and asexual fashion trends from around a decade back.
There is nothing that makes this group stand out, blending in to the population at large is what they do.
Encountered in the streets and walkways they will be anonymous figures clad in mundane clothing that hides their identities as much as possible, acid rain ponchos, smog masks, smart shades, hats and hoodies.
More senior members even begin to remove identifying parts of themselves, fingerprints are removed or replaced with varyprint cynthskin. Organic looking Cybernetic eyes or their bioware equivalents are common.
A good way to get a leg up in the gang is to be an unregistered birth (like most Phans.).
Extremely well informed about the surveillance in most areas The Grey are quite a violent gang, often using their hard worked for anonymity for muggings and protection work.

Question 66
Does The Grey have a deeper agenda?

Answer 66 [GANGS] - The Grey's Agenda
There are some sociologists who draw parallels between grey man survivalists and apocalyptic cults. True believers who live the life and follow the doctrine will be rewarded in the post-apocalypse world, and for The Grey it's not an inappropriate description. They constantly train for the day when the muck hits the blender. Part of this training is knowing how to correctly respond to MHB emergency situations, like terror attacks, natural disasters, fires, riots, wartime conditions or famines, let alone actual nuclear apocalypse, without drawing unwanted attention from the mob as a skilled and prepared survivalist. Proper training needs experience, so The Grey like to orchestrate realistic simulations, Events, for them to observe crowd behaviour and official response and in which to practise their skills of blending in, avoiding notice and making safe egress. Although they consider these Events to be training runs, in actual fact they are the equivalent of major terror actions. Currently still in the planning stages, some Events they have lined up are attacks on infrastructure, such as collapsing a building, flooding a residential sector with a cold-pipe rupture, bombing a fuel depot, bombing a subway station, causing a major fire in a retail mall, bombing a bridge… bombing things features largely in their repertoire. Otherwise they plan to instigate riots or inflame protests into violent clashes, stage mass shootings or incite gangland firefights and turf wars. Anything which could cause mob panic, and all of this merely for them to exploit as a training exercise or social experiment.

And of course any of these would need some serious funding, whether to acquire the necessary arsenal for an Event, to bribe or extort officials or gang leaders, or to pay for the cycle-time on a black market expert system for the thorough planning many Events would need. In the longer term, they also need cash to fund their stockpiling, of food, weapons and ammo, and safe-house and bunker building in unnoticed and out-of-the-way places around the city.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Answer 81 [SET] Multiple Lifetime Individuals (MuLTIs)
In Century Magazine's annual Top 300 List of Oldest People in 5310, Blake Musa ver IX (6/340) comes in at number 8.

To be able to make it to this list, one would have to have been at the forefront of artificial organic intelligence just as the multiple lifetime revolution was kicking off, or be stupidly rich enough to buy into it, and then over the three centuries since not have one's lifepath interrupted by war, backup loss, transfer failure, bankruptcy, ennui, mem corruption or any of a hundred other calamities that Fate has in store for those tempting her. The oldest is 369, with a caveat that almost four decades of that were on ice, and the list rounds out with two dozen individuals tied for equal 276th at age 295. Century estimates there are another twelve hundred or so who are over 200.

Blake Musa, and his erstwhile partner, Izchak Vandale (48/289), were at the cutting edge at the right time. Vandale mysteriously disappeared from Century's Top 300 List some 50 years ago, declared missing.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 94 [SET]
Are all MuLTIs ultra-rich? Are all the world's ultra-rich MuLTIs?

No and No.

Prices for MuLTI processes have been dropping steadily over the last century, so much so that even the upper middle class can plausibly afford to get a second lifetime, if they save their pennies. A non-insignificant number of AOI are technically MuLTIS, but some would argue that they don't really count.

On the other side of the coin, there are a surprising number of ultra-rich who have no interest in MuLTI processes. Some feel the process doesn't preserve the consciousness with fidelity, while others feel the process goes too far and ends up creating someone who does little but repeat themselves. The stereotype (epitomized by the Grand Princes of Moblus) of old-fashioned aristocrats who refuse to change are a decided minority.

Question 101 [GURPS]
What does cost of living get you?

Question 102 [SET]
What's happened to the aristocracy? Just the ultra-rich with fancy titles or feudal realms gone corporate?


Question 103 [Name 5][SET]
What to have for dessert?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by TGLS

5238 was not just an eventful year in YOU-Topia, no, it was the first year the Congress of Kampalu met, primarily to discuss various incidents involving RepliSophonts. It was some surprise that a delegation for YOU-Topia arrived, seeking a resolution between the CDCs and NeuroCorp.

Question 76 [SET] What is the composition of the Congress of Kampalu?

This one might need a bit of workshopping as I don't quite see how it would work, at least without being too hope-punky.

Answer 76 - The Congress of Kampalu
The Congress of Kampalu is in a weird position. It's effectively the world's most powerful NGO, or, more accurately, most powerful post-national government. It's composed of non-nation actors yet can leverage power against nations, without being a rich-as-god megacorp, to get them to follow its will. And it's maintained this power for 72 years.

The Congress accepts membership for any political, social activist, ethnic or religious group that can strictly define its identity or ideology. The member group must submit a charter of clearly defined beliefs and principles that it swears to adhere to. The member group must be able to pay its annual fees of $1 billion. And the Congress does not accept membership from groups that directly represent national or sub-national (i.e. state, provincial, metropolitan) governments, although it allows ambassadors representing such governments to lobby councillors.

[Member groups might need to have a minimal person-member threshold, such as 1 million certified followers, and perhaps exhibit some transnational characteristic, such as presence in 2 or more countries. And there might need to be some form of hate-group prohibition.]

Thus we have different factions, the Cykeans, Integrals, Neo-Mutaulists, Securities, Humanitarians and what have you, who have declared an interest in the affairs of the City of YOU-Topia, and hence have representatives installed on the city's International Commission.

[This raises two questions.
A) How did such an entity come about? Is it a conglomerate of humanitarian and environmental charities? The product of an individual visionary mega-rich philanthropist? A union of nations who have ceded some amount of sovereign authority to the Congress? An anonymous distributed collective of hackers who accidentally found themselves with great power but didn't trust themselves to use it, so turned over the keys to someone more responsible?

B) How does it apply power against nations and megacorps to get them to comply to its rulings? Is it an orbital WMD? Does it have some ability to hack the economy? Is it just super rich? Why would otherwise powerful nations accede to it, or is it only acting against less powerful nations and corporations, such as the UAI and NeuroCorp?]

----
New tag:
[CPAC] - Characters, Plot Hooks, Adventure Seeds and Campaign Frameworks
Now that we have a lot of pieces arranged on the playing board, let's change tack with the questions and see what we can do with the board and its pieces. That is, let's focus on some game-centred questions.

Question 104 [CPAC][Open] - Plots, Adventures and Campaigns
Based on what we have of the setting so far, outline an adventure or campaign or a plot that could be mixed into a game.

Question 105 [CPAC][Open] - PC Groups
Describe a group of PCs, or an individual patron or organisation that would support a group of PCs, taking on the mean streets and dank waters of the N.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

This one might need a bit of workshopping as I don't quite see how it would work, at least without being too hope-punky.

Answer 76 - The Congress of Kampalu

I'm going to be doing two things: reviewing everything said about the YOU-Topia's situation post-38 and the "international" scene, and critiquing your version of the Congress of Kampalu. The first answer relating to an international commission is:

Originally Posted by ericthered

Youtopia is technically a territory of the Union of Argalese Islands, but as the Argalese don't grant citizenship to immigrants, rule is generally through international treaties the "home nations" of the multi-generational immigrants make with the UAI. Day to day rule is by an appointed council worked out internationally.

So as originally written, the "home nations" have agreements with the UAI to ensure XYZ. Day-to-day governance is handled through an international council. I expand upon this in part 1/3 of Q51:

Originally Posted by TGLS

The International Commission
The international commission is the font of all authority in YOU-Topia. They establish the courts, ensure the government abides by international treaties (such as the PARADIGM Treaty), handles impeachment proceedings and can veto laws. The interested parties can appoint and remove representatives freely but interested parties can only be added through unanimous decision.

At this point, I hadn't decided whether this was created by a particular body or not, so it has a self-selecting mechanism to expand or contract its membership. One thing I added here was an "interested party", which was to reflect that this is cyberpunk, surely a megacorporation (NeuroCorp, or just another company with a large presence in UT) would have official influence. Governments weren't meant to be excluded, half of the examples under Q53 are governments. Then we get around to when the International Commission was created:

Originally Posted by TGLS

5238 was not just an eventful year in YOU-Topia, no, it was the first year the Congress of Kampalu met, primarily to discuss various incidents involving RepliSophonts. It was some surprise that a delegation for YOU-Topia arrived, seeking a resolution between the CDCs and NeuroCorp.

The Congress of Kampalu I had in my head was basically, here's an organization that was formed temporarily to deal with a crisis (AI rebellion), it deals with a totally unrelated problem reasonably well (the Crisis of 38) and it sort of morphs into a generalized problem-solving organization that meets regularly.

--

Admittedly, I don't have much of a problem with Kampalu having non-state or state-like organizations as members. However, given the circumstances when the first Congress met, surely Governments, Securities, and smaller Megacorps would have at least some influence, probably lots of influence in the Congress of Kampalu.