[Gatejammer] Finality: Brainstorming

[Prak]

Thanks, I'll see about working the Hungry into an actual faction.

[fectin]

Frank,

I don't disagree with anything you said, but can't figure out how to make the Godfather's take on the Mafia into a faction. If they would be a legit faction, would you mind writing up a couple of sentances on how they're different from the Hungry as Prak wrote them?

(it's not some rhetorical trick; I'm just having some trouble putting my finger on the difference.)

[Prak]

(disclaimer- I actually have not seen Godfather, Scarface, or Goodfellas. Saints Row the Third, a cookbook compiled by the guy whose testimony was turned into Goodfellas, and animated parodies are seriously the whole of my Organized Crime knowledge)

[Whipstitch]

I think the simple answer is that they wouldn't fit as a faction. At its core, you're talking about a hierarchical ethnic gang that has no pressing need to appear sympathetic to outsiders. Such groups can make an interesting addition to the setting but as I understand it a Faction should be closer to a political party or special interest group than a bunch of secretive leg-breakers.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well if you want to do a straight-up analog to the Godfather, then the gang serves a particular repressed minority by substituting for mainstream social institutions. That kind of doesn't work without repressed minorities, which kind of don't work in the sort wild multi-species planar civilization established so far.

You could maybe have them advocating for "the handless" to get representation as they run shadow institutions for those without a voice otherwise and have them be a mob run by Blink Dogs and advocating with slogans about The True Test of Character is in the Head and the Soul while punishing snitches by gnawing their hands off. However that still seems likely too much of a stretch.

[Maxus]

Funny enough, Snow Crash has a hilarious take on the organized crime.

I love the Mafia in that book.

[Username17]

Frank,

I don't disagree with anything you said, but can't figure out how to make the Godfather's take on the Mafia into a faction. If they would be a legit faction, would you mind writing up a couple of sentances on how they're different from the Hungry as Prak wrote them?

(it's not some rhetorical trick; I'm just having some trouble putting my finger on the difference.)

The Godfather's take on the Mafia wouldn't work as a Faction. Characters from the Godfather could be transplanted into a Faction that already existed for some other reason, however. Vito Corleone (or an expy of him) could simply be a dude who was high up in a faction that was otherwise dedicated to doing things people could on some level agree with. Alternately, you could pull in a fictional organized crime group that already had a defensible sounding main goal. You could have the Parade of Hope from Death to Smoochy, or Team Aqua from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire.

But if you're just "We do crime, and we'll totally stab you if you don't do what we say" then you obviously fail at the entire point of being a Faction, which is that the party can find themselves working for or against the Faction whether or not any or all of the characters in the party are or are not members of that Faction.

-Username17

[virgil]

Why are we shooting for a full 20 factions? There were 15 in Sigil, and you complained that sliced the political pie too small even before accounting for the Lady's 'cut'. Even as a fanboy, I have to struggle to remember all of them; and I've yet to meet anyone else that could even attempt to cite them all by memory.

[Ancient History]

As a counterpart or complement to the Hungry, it would be interesting if Finality had recently outlawed the institution of slavery and emancipated the slaves - that would definitely lead to a large uptick of untapped political power, as well as general socio-political congestion.

[Parthenon]

@virgil: I think people are thinking that there are 20 Precincts, so there should be 20 factions.

@Prak_Anima: The second post of this thread, Frank wrote:

Basically, a faction needs:

• A locational powerbase. There are 20 Precincts, and the faction headquarters is in one of them.
• A demographic powerbase. The Faction recruits from wherever they can, but they presumably grew out of some population group and have a "generic member" stereotype based on that.
• A persuasive philosophy. More than just "we gonna stab you berk", the faction has to be able to say things that sound like they make sense to somebody.
• Plot hooks. Plot hooks. Plot hooks. It's a storytelling game, each faction has to tell stories.
• Political opinions. They have to have enough things they want and don't want that you can imagine them allying with or against multiple other factions to accomplish or thwart goals.
• Temporal power. What landmarks and civic institutions are under the control of or influenced by members of the faction?

You read that post. I know that because you used the list of issues he wrote just above the bit I just spoilered.

Of course he's just expanded that, but it's interesting to see that most of the suggested factions don't meet the criteria of the post describing what factions need.

I mean, I've read the White Spider several times, but I still have no fucking clue what they want or what they believe. Or what the Tetracty do, in what way they are a faction, and how a PC can adventure while being part of the faction. The same with the Sign of Tetra.

---

By the way, Frank, the Brotherhood of Blood is all about the idea that absolutely everyone should be informed and have knowledge to get equality of opportunity. Are they also involved in the education system since that seems more important than newspapers for equal opportunities? After all, they can't read the newspaper if they can't read. Just reread the BoB, including where it says "Brotherhood funds support public education in several forms." Oops.

[Username17]

Why are we shooting for a full 20 factions? There were 15 in Sigil, and you complained that sliced the political pie too small even before accounting for the Lady's 'cut'. Even as a fanboy, I have to struggle to remember all of them; and I've yet to meet anyone else that could even attempt to cite them all by memory.

I don't think we're actually shooting for twenty factions. That was intended as a rough upper limit rather than a target.

As for the difficulty of remembering the factions in Planescape, I think that the fact that there are fifteen of the fuckers is only a small part of the problem. It's not hard to name fifteen Teen Titans or fifteen Batman villains. I think the biggest problem is that so many of the factions in Planescape were actually terrible factions. The Signers and the Transcendental Order were so bad that in the 3rd edition material they just combined them into one and no one noticed.

Even simply the first question of "Why the fuck would I help these people?" sinks the Signers, the Takers, the Xaositects, the Sinkers, the Ciphers, the Indeps, the Dead, and the Godsmen as they all either have no identifiable agenda, or have an agenda that they cannot make a coherent argument or even a one sentence soliloquy as to why it would be "better" for them to succeed than fail. I'm not saying the Anarchs, Bleakers, Harmonium, Guvners, Red Death, and Athar don't have huge problems (they do, I regard only the Sensates as being unproblematic), I'm saying that slightly more than half of the factions in Planescape cannot tell you why you should support them! Holy shit balls.

Which of course brings up another point, which is the point that disqualifies another 4 of the Planescape factions: you need to be able to play games involving these factions. Every faction, and I do mean every single one, needs to have room for "members" who go off and have adventures with a team of compatriots made up of members of other factions. Because that is the fucking game! That means that under no circumstance can any faction put all their recruits on several years of guard duty (Mercy Killers, Guvners), refuse to allow their team members to work with others (Harmonium), or give out random chances of not being allowed to adventure each day (Bleak Cabal).

In any case, I think it would probably be for the best if there were like a dozen factions and each of them had one member on the council (or control over a councilor who was nominally independent). It's a lot easier to do council politics plots if there is one dude who is "The Guardian of Order Councilor" who you can go talk to. It's why in Vampire Live Action games they almost always devolved into having one Primogen from each clan. It's just way easier to do things that way.

-Username17

[fectin]

Slavery might be decided per-district. That lets you have underground railroad adventures, and radical, destructive abolitionists.

In fact, William Lloyd Garrison would be a decent basis for an 'anarchist' faction (Garrison believed that slavery had fundamentally "tainted" the US constitution, and that it was necessary to dissolve the union as then constituted, which presents like anarchy without the incoherence). They have a specific goal, which is enough of a moral imperative to be self-explanatory, and any anarchic tendencies are a rational means to that goal. They can have short and long term plans, and plenty of internal conflict.

On the Mafia:
I accept your definition, but then you need a new word for non-faction groups which are large enough to play in the factions' spheres. Or is "organized crime" just a civic institution like the aqueducts, which factions might like to control?

(edit: punctuation)

[virgil]

I mean, I've read the White Spider several times, but I still have no fucking clue what they want or what they believe. Or what the Tetracty do, in what way they are a faction, and how a PC can adventure while being part of the faction. The same with the Sign of Tetra.

I get it. My factions have been removed until I stop svcking.

[Username17]

On the Mafia:
I accept your definition, but then you need a new word for non-faction groups which are large enough to play in the factions' spheres. Or is "organized crime" just a civic institution like the aqueducts, which factions might like to control.

Or a neighborhood landmark even. Let's consider the gangs running the Weasel Holes in The Shades. They give the appearance of a Kobold gang that runs illegal blood sports and makes money on the gambling.


But you know, with Kobolds.

But they are almost certainly also running a protection racket, where the "guides" collect small fees to take people through The Shades, and the footpads make periodic attacks on people who don't have "guides" in order to drive up the value of that "service". Also they are probably fixing fights and bumping people off and stuff. It's a whole criminal underworld thing. But it's actually only a few people in charge and you could probably dismantle the organization in a few adventures. More importantly, it would never occur to you that you might want to write "Weasel Hole Mob" on your character sheet instead of alignment, which is where Faction affiliation is going.

-Username17

[Username17]

So there's obviously a desire for a faction whose deal is that they "do a lot of crime". But that is by itself insufficient, because to really be a Faction, you'd need to come equipped with a philosophical argument that other people should help you do whatever it is that you want to do. Simple atrocity or nakedly self interested theft is never going to pass the mustard on that. So let's see if we can't address that issue:

---

Eye of Fury

"If you aren't angry, you're not paying attention."

He Said/She Said: “The lower the stakes, the more vicious the fighting.”

Laws are put in place by people who already have what they want. And that means that if you're a have-not, the laws are there to keep them up, and keep you down. They set Orc against Goblin, Dwarf against Gnoll, and for what? To distract you. To keep you down. To keep you from noticing that they have all the wealth and you do all the work. Don't play by their rules. Don't follow their laws. Take what's yours, and if the system tells you to stop, burn it down and make a new one!

The Eye of Fury teaches that most power structures are illegitimate and that the rules and customs they encourage and enforce are immoral. Members of the Eye try to do outreach between hostile groups and promote racial harmony, because they believe that all (or almost all) conflicts that are not between haves and have-nots are part of a conspiracy to freeze have-nots out of the halls of power. While The Herald depicts the Eye of Fury as nothing more than vandalous criminals and fire breathing anarchists who want to tear down the government, they are also supporters of community programs and vigilantes.

In many of the poorer neighborhoods of Finality, the Eye of Fury is the main source of fire protection, financial services, and physical protection. While the Eye regards top-down impositions of rules and institutions as illegitimate, it takes great pains to foster the creation of new bottom-up institutions that they would be willing to recognize. True, legitimate power is supposed to come from a mandate from the masses rather than being imposed from outside or above. However, the line between these “community organizations” and simple departments of the Eye is more than a little bit fuzzy, and many of the actual people providing the services simply describe themselves as “Members of the Eye” rather “Developments of Spontaneous Self Governance”.

Criminality is openly encouraged by the Eye of Fury, which has made them few friends in the Council or the City Guard. Ideally, criminal behaviors can only be condoned if one of two conditions are met: either the crime is a transgression against illegitimate laws and the people who support those laws (acts of revolution), or the people involved chose freely to be “victimized”. The Eye of Fury can condone providing people drugs, prostitutes, or short term loans because the people ask for it freely themselves and it is thus a legitimate act of their spontaneous agency; but the Eye of Fury cannot condone highway robbery unless those being robbed are themselves an illegitimate authority. Of course, there is substantial disagreement within the Eye of Fury as to where exactly one draws the line between the exploiters and the exploited.

The Eye of Fury began as a mutual benefit society in Little Nishrek, with most of the early thinkers and converts being Orcs and Ogres who had recently immigrated. Finding that basic services just didn't exist for the people of Precinct 8 the way they did for the people of Precinct 1, the budding organization raged and also made a series of declarations to rectify the situation. And so it was that they went about setting up financial and security infrastructure without turning to the city government, which they regard as corrupt and illegitimate.

The Spontaneous Self Governance that the Eye of Fury promotes is exported throughout the city and the multiverse as much as possible. The program is called “Helping People Help Themselves”, but it's really very similar to buying popularity with aid. Since they have taken over the Aqueduct, they have opened the sluices and sent water out to all the Precincts for free. This is controversial, because on the one hand it puts needed water into the mouths of the have-nots and gives people self determination in covering their survival needs, but on the other hand it has reduced the inflow of money into the Precinct and threatened the livelihoods of a lot of already marginal businesses.

[Chamomile]

True, legitimate power is supposed to come from a mandate from the masses rather than being imposed from outside or above.

And farcical aquatic ceremonies are right out.

[virgil]

I am certain I will be firmly told where I'm wrong and stupid. Maybe I'll get it right after my fifth revision.

EDIT: Crap has been removed. Attempt at non-crap later.

[Parthenon]

I'm still not sure I understand what each ideology is.

---

The White Spider makes a bit more sense to me now, but I'm not certain I get it completely. To me it seems to be saying:

1. "People in power should be chosen by the people"
2. "The people currently in power have been chosen by the people and as such should have all the power and benefits"

However, those don't necessarily meet up, so the White Spider is currently supporting whoever is in power even if it goes against their first point. But then again I'm probably misunderstanding the ideology.

Maybe it is more like- "All power should be moved away from the public and instead to the individuals the people choose to hold that power"

---

The Sign of Tetra still has a problem of it being a group based on methodology, not goals. They are a group brought together by fear, not what they want to do with it. So it's like if Al-Qaeda and the Real IRA were to join forces because they both use terrorism.

---

The Muse of Belphegron is a lot more straightforward- magic should be used to move Finality to a post-scarcity economy. But I'm obviously being a bit stupid because I need you to explain a bit more what you mean by

On the one hand, their contributions to public welfare are immense, but the damage is arguably more severe to the economy than the Eye of Fury's move to make the Aqueduct free.

I don't understand enough about economics to understand why the economy is damaged through public welfare.

[Grek]

And now for a sketch of a Pro-Murder faction that doesn't immediately get kicked out of the city:

---

The Psychopomps:
Why: The Psychopomps believe that their afterlife is much better than their previous life was and therefore it is important to get as many people still living on the more backwater parts of Prime to stop living and start afterlife-ing.
How: They have a thriving trade in slaves and loot carried in wagons through portals coming from the Prime Material Plane. They also let people fund missions to "recruit" specific people into the afterlife, which is alot like getting paid to assassinate people.
Who: A good deal of their recruitment is from recent immigrants (often members of the various death cults they found) and missionaries who like converting villages full of natives and then making everyone drink the poisoned kool-aid. Most of their peripheral political support comes from slave traders and missionary groups.
What: The Psychopomps are the source for about half the living slaves coming into the city and are therefore important to the economy of their precinct. They also sponsor a rather well liked theatre troupe.

Location: Whichever Precinct is the one where all of the slaving happens. Their actual base is in the local theatre.
Justification: They feel there is a moral imperative to go out murder-and-kidnapping sprees on Prime but not in Finality.
Benefits of Membership: You get to go along on murder-and-kidnapping sprees essentially whenever you want. Also, warm fuzzy religious feelings.
City Services: They bring in lots of slaves and lots of money from foreign lands, filling up the city's coffers.
Political Beliefs: The Psychopomps are always arguing for lower import tariffs (especially for slaves), expanding the portal network and are always in favour of every war and military conflict that Finality considers getting involved with.
Group Powers: They have the power to blacklist people from getting access to all the best slaves and extra-planar loot.
Group Resources: Lots and lots of money. Fanatically loyal assassins.
Philosophical Beliefs: The afterlife is better than life in every way. It is better to be a slave in Finality than it is to be a king on Prime. Death is just the next great adventure.

[Username17]

White Spider:

I don't think Social Darwinism means what you think it means. Supreme Executive Power deriving from a mandate from the masses is like literally the opposite of Social Darwinism, which is more akin to Divine Right. In Social Darwinism, providing anything for people who are unequipped to take it for themselves is simply encouraging the inferiors to breed and ultimately destroying society. "The Masses" aren't the source of power, they are the enemy.

Social Darwinism would be a totally reasonable position to have if for example the current winners in society were Nalfeshnee whose children reached out of the cradle able to teleport and pull lightning out of the sky. But there's really too much contradiction in the writeup for me to make head or tail of it.

Sign of Tetra:

I agree with Parthenon that this is basically a set of methods without a goal. I understand that they want to smash things in order to mobilize people into action, but I don't know what they want to mobilize people for. The whole "scare people into falling into lock step behind my reforms!" deal is classic and all, but unless you're Cobra Command there has to be a second shoe to drop where you explain what those reforms actually are.

Muse of Belphegor:

I'm not sure that arguing about Keynsian and Marxist critiques to post scarcity economics really makes sense in a city that is still on the Gold Standard.

-Username17

[virgil]

White Spider

Are you not entertained!?
...
...
Leaders must be voted into their position, which means they must win the popularity contest. Except for the voting requirement, whomever's voted deserves supreme executive power.
White Spider is full of beautiful people that control the gossip newspaper, the fashion industry, and the city's equivalent of the Academy Awards.

Sign of Tetra

"Nobody panics when things go according to plan..."
...
...
Keep as many people alive as possible; standards of living, rights, and other stuff are of ancillary concern.
Many members are scary people who control the hospital & the Planning Department. Used to control the Opal Asylum.

Muse of Belphegron

"Why work when all of our needs are met?"
...
...
Hedonists who want Finality to leave the Gold Standard, because their ability to create eternal manual labour and wish for piles of gold makes most economies meaningless. Wants to use a fiat currency suited for experiences and services.
Headquarted at the Mad Wizard's Guild, controlling Tanning Vats and Sewage Treatment with their awesome magic.

[fectin]

On the white spider: are leaders chosen, or recognized by the people?

[Username17]

The thing is: we're talking about an economy where the "big new thing" is using pieces of paper backed by fractional reserve banking. The city gets most of their GDP from trade, and their trading partners aren't on the gold standard, they are literally conducting their trade in barter for lumps of metal and boxes of exotic foreign goods. The next big fight for economic liberalization is to get Finality's major trading partners to accept pieces of paper backed by theoretical piles of metal as units of account rather than limiting all economic activity by the amount of surplus goods currently sitting in actual on-hand piles. Getting to a workerless utopia isn't on the radar in any way.

Not, of course, that replacing all the workers with wishes would even work. If you enslaved a thousand Efreet to just wish up goods all day, you'd have a GDP of 75,000,000 gp per day. That's a lot. But it's also a GDP of less than 10 gp per person in the city. A Wizard makes 500 gp worth of goods per day while crafting, so it's going to be relatively difficult to convince all the Wizards to take an 80% pay cut by not working and living on the Wish dole.

But secondly, let's say that they wished up something extremely cheap, like raw wheat. According to D&D price lists, that's one copper piece per pound. You could wish up 2.7 trillion pounds of wheat if you wished for nothing else all year. And that's 1.2 billion tonnes - fully twelve times the total mass of freight the shipping guild sends through those portals each year. But wait! That's only if you accept bullshit. If you were making something you actually wanted, like tobacco (5 sp per pound), the shipping guild would be outperforming your wish economy 4:1. If you were making something you wanted alot, like Ginger (2 gp per pound), the shipping guild would be beating you out 16 times.

The numbers just aren't there. You could totally use more efficient systems of commerce and incentives to put more magical resources to work and considerably increase GDP, but there isn't enough magical power to completely replace the economy. Not by a long shot actually.

-Username17

[Endovior]

Interesting. So Finality has the fiat currency thing going on, and the people issuing the currency have enough clout to make it stick... in Finality. How universal is that? Does the 'Daxall Dollars' problem still exist, or is there cultural acceptance of the idea of fiat currency? Also, how is the currency secured? What measures exist to stop counterfeiting?

Also, general 'interaction with the Wish economy' issues. Ok, so it's not feasible to replace the Gold economy with the Wish economy because:
A: Enslaving 1000 Efreeti does not produce enough wealth to comfortably sustain your population, because you've got an awful lot of people, and many of them have better things to be doing.
B: Enslaving 1000 Efreeti does produce a war between you and the City of Brass, which is a planar city of 4 million, and probably not a power you want to mess with, since a plurality are Efreeti, who are considerably more dangerous than the average citizens of your city.

Given that, at what extreme does the exchanges occur? Which goods, in particular, are more feasibly Wished into existence instead of imported, and who controls those particular channels?

[Ancient History]

Within any urbanity, you're going to have a finite amount of physical currency available for transactions - and given the amount of traffic a city sees, that means the demand for currency to use in transactions is going to outstrip the supply, which in turn means you're going to see all sorts of merchant's tricks involving ledgers, IOUs, goldsmith's notes, and finally units of exchange and account and banks. The idea of invisible money just as a couple of lines in a ledger is very, very old idea, and one that a lot of cultures have zero difficulty adapting to, the jump to fiat currency is hardly noticed as long as it gets accepted. What happens is that once Finality starts issuing "gold notes" with arcane marks that protect against counterfeiting, all the gold coins in the city will rapidly disappear from circulation as people hoard them and prefer to spend the (comparatively) worthless notes instead.

And this is probably even desirable in an economic system where the values of material goods like gold can and do fluctuate wildly depending on where the local portals are pointing; the Elemental Plane of Earth could probably provide the yearly output of gold on Earth every month without resorting to wish-magic. The only reason they wouldn't is because they like having a DeBeers-style oligarchy that controls the amount of gold and gems going into Finality's economy to keep the prices relatively high.