Chapter Four: Protocols
This is an important chapter - it's the one that describes what the Technocratic Union is, how it works, and what it does. This is probably the most important chapter in terms of differentiating the Technocracy from the other oWoD games.
This chapter begins by stating that the Union has protocols. simply put, there are rules regarding what you are allowed to do. This isn't exactly new, the Camarilla has rules too, but it's much more hard-coded.
Structure
The big difference regarding the Technocratic Union and other oWoD groups is that it is well, a Union. In pretty much all other organizations the parts predominate. The Council of Traditions is defined by the traditions, the camarilla and sabbat by their clans, the various fera breeds by their clans and tribes. The Technocracy has sub-conventions, but they all work as part of the Union and this is stressed. In particular, when this chapter outlines the hierarchy it applies to all the conventions. Contrast this with the traditions which have either vastly varied hierarchies or no hierarchy at all.
bland, but reasonably efficient
When playing as the Technocracy you are not at the bottom of the heap. Now this is largely true of all the oWod games - vampires have ghouls, werwwolves have kinfolk, and so on, but organizational role of the ordinary people in the Union is better defined. Basically, they are all the office weenies and support staff (and occasionally the muscle) you might happen to need. And rather than being the minions or relatives of a specific character or small group of characters, they are part of the Union too. That's important in reinforcing the idea of one organization rather than countless little fiefdoms.
Now, this book is self-aware enough to recognize that the enlightened portion of the Union - as people with actual superpowers - tend to look down on those who can't quite make the cut, especially given the meritocratic emphasis of the technocracy. So the 'citizens' tend to get referred to as 'Proles.' This is actually referenced a lot, to the point that there's both the official policy of treating the unenlightened as sub-humans is not to be tolerated, and remarks on the unofficial policy of absolutely treating the Proles like shit whenever its convenient.
in the context of this game, the meaning is rather different
PCs start at the third level, above the lowly proles and the unenlightened people who count as 'extraordinary citizens' which means they can use the super-science toys even if they can't build them. This is the front lines character who serves as a principal cast member in any police procedural you've ever seen.
It's at the next level that we see the big change: the supervisor. A party of technocrats (called an Amalgam because all the good names were taken by this point), reports directly to a boss. Again, like pretty much any group of agents in an assemble police procedural. This is seismically different from most other games. In vampire your coterie isn't responsible to anyone - the Prince is a distant figure who has rather limited control over what you're allowed to do. A werewolf pack is nominally responsible to higher-renown elders but they can't exactly order you to go on missions. A mage cabal isn't obligated to listen to anyone. The existence of a supervisor - a character who can assign missions and debrief the party after missions and do a bunch of other managerial stuff is huge. It provides a vehicle for the intrigue through which WW games are supposed to operate to move without needing dozens of people for a LARP cast. It offers the GM a figure to chastise the characters in-game if the party screws up, and so on. When you're fighting crime you need a boss. In this game you have one.
I am a horrible leader and person, but the story needs me
Above the supervisor in the Symposium - which are regional oversight groups. Above them are the horizon Constructs, which are in space and operate at a national or higher oversight level. They deal in abstractions and provide fuel for the schism. Even above that there is the Inner Circle and the manifestation referred to as Control. Control is basically written as an all-seeing ghost in the machine that can be anywhere, see all, and intervene wherever. It is admittedly an instrument for the GM to throw their dick around whenever they want (not that Mage, as a game, had those in short supply, cough, Paradox, cough). Still, in a game ostensibly about a super-science conspiracy, it is not surprising that such a thing would be written in.
this is the top result in a google image search for CONTROL, we are fully within the trope zone
All of this is followed by a listing of rank terms for the different conventions, conveniently organized so people know what to call each other. This is largely an exercise in unnecessary term bloat, but it is organized term bloat that keeps everyone literally on the same page.
Next up, the Precepts of Damian. This bizarre bit of terminology is actually hugely important. he Precepts of Damian is the mission statement of the Technocratic Union - the higher-order goals and intentions. This is what you do in the game - you advance one or more of the precepts. That's your purpose, a six point, itemized list. Bam, you have just outpaced all the other oWoD games. Pick a single precept as a focus, identity an interesting idea that falls under the umbrella, and you have a campaign.
I'm going to quickly summarize the Precepts to talk about them in a bit more detail:
1. Bring Order
2. Promote Science and Enlightenment ideals.
3. Keep in the Spirit World in the Spirit World and off 5th Avenue
4. Advance Science
5. Destroy all other supernaturals
6. Protect the masses from themselves and others.
Precept #5, more or less
So, it's a pretty broad list, especially article one, but you can easily line up campaigns under the others. Article 2 lends itself to media manipulation, wars of public opinion, and all that. Article 3 is about being Ghostbusters or the Men in Black, Article 4 goes for research based campaigns or exploration based ones. Article 5 is for getting violent and fighting crime. Article 6 is the rationalization that justifies it all. This is a vast narrowing of core assumptions compared to one oWoD games. Those could theoretically be about anything under the sun, which provided a massive lack of focus and led to various splatbooks fapping to character concepts and interests that were pretty much useless for collaborative storytelling at a table. In a technocracy game you are pursuing one or more of these six goals. Broad as they may be that is a significant improvement over not having any goals at all.
The bit immediately following this outlines what each of the five conventions is presently doing to pursue said goals and some conflicts about them. For example, Iteration X interprets 'destroy' with rather extreme prejudice, while the NWO would prefer to convert their victims (albeit possibly with even greater prejudice). Some of this is a bit dated now - like the reference to the Human Genome Project. The is a problem with the Technocracy as a game - it was constantly fighting to keep up with technological developments (Mage had this problem too, but it hurt less).
And, because the White Wolf pendulum must inevitably swing, we get to the part about social conditioning and psych ops. This starts with the principle that your bosses are monitoring and evaluating your performance and can, and will, call the party to account from time to time. That's all good, but then it gets weird. Someone, having read 1984 a few times too many, came up with a whole new and poorly defined sub-system of rules for 'social conditioning.' This is basically a form of limited but long term mind control that can be inflicted upon people - potentially including the PCs - without anyone necessarily knowing (because Control can do it to you, among others). It's a huge mess, not well designed at all, and in almost any sense not necessary, since use of the Mind sphere pretty much overrides conventional brainwashing and manipulation techniques anyway.
The sidebar about use of social conditioning shows how far the writers had their heads up their own asses here. It includes the following line:
“indulge in the sort of angst that only a White Wolf gamer can understand fully.” I wish I was kidding. I swear, if I ever find out who was responsible for that particular declaration and happen to meet them I will face a very strong urge to throw something at their head. It is a travesty.
Moving on, thankfully, there is a set of sample operational protocols for actual fieldwork. This is mostly common sense stuff: don't talk about the occult to the newbs, don't do flashy things that accumulate paradox, don't talk to the psycho mages, don't randomly jump across dimensions, don't poach other people's Proles. Simple, sensible guidelines that honestly provide a nice fig leaf for GMs to advise the party not to do something ridiculously stupid. These are far more useful than similar guidelines for Vampire, because the Union is a functional organization and there are real consequences for violating these things and it is made clear that the Symposiums actually enforce these rules. Also, because characters are assigned to an amalgam, and not just a random association of mages, there’s a reasonable expectation that everyone would actually be familiar with these rules and agreed to follow them at some point.
The Union, as you might expect by this point, has rules for dealing with the various other things slithering about the oWoD. These range from the simple: kill all the Marauders and Nephandi, do it right now! To the complex: a list of five specific protocols for dealing with Mages, special ghostbuster units for exorcising wraiths. To the hilarious: walk around an watch fairies die horribly from the hideous levels of banality you naturally possess. As for vampires, the Technocrats regard them as largely irrelevant because they are almost trivially easy for their agents to murder (true). They mostly avoid werewolves, and in some ways there's actually a tacit alliance between the two factions, since werewolves spend a lot of time murdering hostile spirits or fomori the technocracy considers to be troublesome.
however, when other approaches fail, this is basically the back-up plan
Several pages of additional relatively generalized fluff follows about how the Technocracy operates at various scales, including business fronts, influence, just how far you can potentially bend the rules, and what it takes to bring out the big guns. This sort of thing is mostly generic and familiar and will be old hat to anyone who’s ever read any Tom Clancy (meaning most of the US), but there’s nothing glaringly bad.
The chapter ends with a bit about the Technocracy in Space. This is mostly useless material. Mage has long had a tradition of extradimensional otherworlds and the kind of crazy dimension-hopping shenanigans that people like Dr. Strange get up too. Mostly any expedition into this zone descends into MTP in a frightening hurry and the material to support it was never there, if it could ever be. Mage Revised dramatically dialed down excursions to other worlds in a rare case of WW learning a lesson. This essentially means that anything that talks about using the Technocracy for larger science fiction purposes is a waste of space. Essentially there are theoretical rues for playing at something other than the street level. In practice everyone admits they are awful and you really, really shouldn't do that and they specifically put up a wall of aggravated damage to make the point.
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