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Old 02-16-2013, 06:52 PM   #21
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Originally Posted by jmurrell View Post
I think you are going to have 22 slightly different programs regardless of the official status. Given the Empires stated psychological skills and high-initiative mindset, each training faculty is going to adjust to match the local cultures to best prepare the recruits simply as part of doing their job. Also the travel times involved means there will be a slow diffusion of techniques rather than a centralized repository of knowledge.
Yes, good point.


Imperial Service training is going to have to make recruits just get over a lot of their native culture. Rohanese are going to have to get used to not wearing a mask; Nahalese rebs are going to have to stop bullying people who lack tattoos and shooting anyone who needs killing. That's okay, because people are pretty adaptable about most social customs. Gender identity is extremely hard to alter by psychological means, but presumably Nahalese can re-map their gender identities to new gender roles given time. My concern about suddenly stripping away gender identity symbols during the re-socialisation phase of recruit training would be that it would induce more stress at that point than was necessary for the process or experienced by non-Nahalese comrades.
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Old 02-16-2013, 07:04 PM   #22
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Imperial Service training is going to have to make recruits just get over a lot of their native culture. Rohanese are going to have to get used to not wearing a mask; Nahalese rebs are going to have to stop bullying people who lack tattoos and shooting anyone who needs killing. That's okay, because people are pretty adaptable about most social customs.
Indeed, and the extreme selectivity that the IM's enjoy means they are only going to take the recruits who can adapt.
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Gender identity is extremely hard to alter by psychological means, but presumably Nahalese can re-map their gender identities to new gender roles given time. My concern about suddenly stripping away gender identity symbols during the re-socialisation phase of recruit training would be that it would induce more stress at that point than was necessary for the process or experienced by non-Nahalese comrades.
Right, so the Cetus intake center will find methods to ease the process, perhaps the alternate tattos mentioned above.
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Old 02-17-2013, 01:39 AM   #23
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Gender identity is extremely hard to alter by psychological means, but presumably Nahalese can re-map their gender identities to new gender roles given time. My concern about suddenly stripping away gender identity symbols during the re-socialisation phase of recruit training would be that it would induce more stress at that point than was necessary for the process or experienced by non-Nahalese comrades.
This also creates a case of unintended discrimination against Nahalese, since the service doesn't temporarily remove primary sexual characteristics from representatives of cultures who identify by primary.
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Old 02-17-2013, 06:33 AM   #24
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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This also creates a case of unintended discrimination against Nahalese
There is no Imperial anti-discrimination act, and the Imperial Service is only interested in its own effectiveness and efficiency, not in providing opportunities to potential recruits. It will accommodate Nahalese rebs if that is cost-effective, otherwise not. It's not meant to be an utopian institution.

Meanwhile, some rough-and-ready modelling, taking into account Nahal's tech level and population, and assuming that it produces volunteers at a typical rate, suggests that it provides approximately 13.7 Imperial marines recruits per year — out of a total of 392 recruited and trained in Cetus Sector.
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Old 02-17-2013, 01:42 PM   #25
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Meanwhile, some rough-and-ready modelling, taking into account Nahal's tech level and population, and assuming that it produces volunteers at a typical rate, suggests that it provides approximately 13.7 Imperial marines recruits per year — out of a total of 392 recruited and trained in Cetus Sector.
Right, so Cetus sector may make some provisions to handle the 3.5% of their recruits coming from Nahal. But the whole service making changes to accommodate 0.15% of the total? Don't see it happening. And the Service is only going to take those recruits who can make the needed adjustments anyway. Which argues for a lower than typical recruiting rate from Nahal anyway. Seems like Nahal is the outlier that gets left out.
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Old 02-17-2013, 02:31 PM   #26
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Right, so Cetus sector may make some provisions to handle the 3.5% of their recruits coming from Nahal. But the whole service making changes to accommodate 0.15% of the total? Don't see it happening.
Especially as at 22 out of 23 marines recruit training places the change doesn't accommodate anyone. Almost all Rebs recruited end up at Cetus SHQ; any who don't have signed up a long way from home and must already have adjusted somewhat to life among non-Nahalese.

The issue will arise at the Cetus SHQ Marines Recruit Training Base, and the CO and chief psychoengineer there will solve it on the spot, reporting their solution to the GOC Cetus Division. They certainly won't let they problem fester for three months by waiting for a solution to be devise or approved at the Capital 127 light-years away. GOC Cetus will pass the report on to the Director-General of Recruitment in the Adjutant-General's Office at the Capital. The DG will decide not to implement the solution where it isn't needed and will make no general order. The problem and its solution will be described in some sort of information circular sent to all the recruit training bases, but few COs or chief psychoengineer a will have occasional to emulate it.

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And the Service is only going to take those recruits who can make the needed adjustments anyway. Which argues for a lower than typical recruiting rate from Nahal anyway. Seems like Nahal is the outlier that gets left out.
Yep. A colony's culture can make its people as keen to volunteer as you like, but if it doesn't also make them psychologically suitable to serve and function in the Imperial Marines they aren't going to end up there.
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Old 02-17-2013, 05:05 PM   #27
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Yep. A colony's culture can make its people as keen to volunteer as you like, but if it doesn't also make them psychologically suitable to serve and function in the Imperial Marines they aren't going to end up there.
Though not to waste Manpower though might develop a specialized Unit/Branch that can take advantage of the cultural traits that while might make the bade Imperial Marines, but might make the good Imperial Scouts for example. Which of course lots of inter-service riveraly except in the faces of non-imperials
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Old 02-17-2013, 06:07 PM   #28
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

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Though not to waste Manpower though might develop a specialized Unit/Branch that can take advantage of the cultural traits that while might make the bade Imperial Marines, but might make the good Imperial Scouts for example. Which of course lots of inter-service riveraly except in the faces of non-imperials
That's right: the different branches of the Imperial Service doubtless have very different patterns of recruitment, depending on the level of economic and technical development, population density, relative size of the spaces industry, and cultural factors. The Marines doubtless recruit at the highest rate from colonies with middling tech levels, where there is open space for and a tradition kids playing games that develop fieldcraft, aiming skills, initiative, teamwork, and toughness; also, where the cultural matrix develops discipline without blunting aggression. But the Navy doubtless recruits where the tech level is high, the local space industry fosters basic technical skills that are useful to ships' personnel, and the local culture includes technical hobbies. The Economic Advisory Service probably recruits most heavily where either most of the population is intimately familiar with a particular economic disease, or places with a very high tech level indeed in which playing with complex intellectual models is common. and so forth through the Public Health Service, the Technology Transfer Assistance Service, the Public Information Service, the Education Service, the Agricultural Assistance Service, the Ecological Advisory Service, the Imperial Civil Engineering Service, the Terraformation Service, and even the Home Office. Everything except the Secret Service, in short.
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Old 02-18-2013, 09:41 AM   #29
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

Perhaps the IM on Nahal recruits from the young who haven't "gone reb" yet but plan to. Marine tattooing after basic would be their reb marks, and then they would make a point of carrying a sidearm whenever authorized.

I used Nahal in my League of Tarregon Traveller-esque campaign a few years ago, where the planet had much more limited contact with the universe than in Brett's campaign. The PCs were in the process of allying with a Nahalese family for commercial purposes, and took on two promising teenage streys as apprentices on their ship. The female strey planned to go reb, but in honor of her captain (who she considered an honorary reb) decided that she would get tattooed in Tarregonese style when she got there to show off her distinctive (for Nahal) status as starship crew.

(There was supposed to be a funny/embarrassing scene where she threw herself at the much-older captain, saying she couldn't later because "reb an' reb together ain't right" -- sadly, the campaign ended before I could get to that scene. Also, the Nahalese talked like Down Easters from rural Maine.)
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Old 02-20-2013, 02:12 AM   #30
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Default Re: Resocialisation in interstellar marines' basic training

My view is that only exceptional individuals from the various exotic worlds will make it through screening and one of the exceptional things about them is their ability to adjust to a radically different culture and abandon the more crippling of their native prejudices and idiosyncrasies.

Characters who qualify for Imperial Service would thus be incredibly broad-minded when contrasted against their fellow colonials, even if they appeared parochial and strange to Imperials and citizens of more cosmopolitan colonies.

While it's possible to rationalise that people from the more exotic cultures would simply not make the cut into Imperial Service, or at least not unless they are willing to give up everything that makes them different, that takes away at least half the fun of having so many different and interesting colonial cultures in the fist place. A much more fun solution is to say that recruits retain vestiges of their cultural memeplex that serve as characterisation tools, but shed everything that would make them impossible to get along with in a mixed party.

In realistic setting terms, I don't have much of a problem believing that the wider pool of recruits and the beneficial elements of some cultural memeplexes outhweigh the cost of designing a training program that can accomodate even recruits from strange cultures. The Imperial Service might even have a conscious policy to avoid too much homogenity among recruits because that would encourage group-think and stasis, depriving them of individuals capable of innovation and bridging cultural divides.

Anyone from a parochial and 'weird' culture who applies to Imperial Service at all will have a mindset and goals that differ from mainstream society on his colony. The brightest and most adaptable of them might become valuable Imperial Servants if accepted, but if they are not, they might instead become leaders of anti-Imperial factions within the colony. How many of the most impressive people within the Swaraj movement in India would have been stalwarts of the Colonial Office instead if that route had been open to them?
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