Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Magic and Technology

[Grek]

It's entirely possible that some of the areas in question are radioactive wastelands unfit to pipe oil through. If any of Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Gautemala or Columbia are rendered inpassable for any reason, you're essentially SOL with regards to shipping between North and South America.

[kzt]

It's entirely possible that some of the areas in question are radioactive wastelands unfit to pipe oil through. If any of Mexico, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Gautemala or Columbia are rendered inpassable for any reason, you're essentially SOL with regards to shipping between North and South America.

You'd have to bring in stuff like bulldozers and front loaders to move the radioactive soil. Or hire really desperate people and give them shovels. Luckily, we are well supplied with both construction equipment and shovels. This does kind of beg the question as to both how and why you would end up creating an area that radioactive that is at least 100 km wide.

[T]

This does kind of beg the question as to both how and why you would end up creating an area that radioactive that is at least 100 km wide.

It's still all Frank fiat - it's his game and world to design. If he wants trade passages through Central America, they are there. If he doesn't, they aren't there. It could be as simple as stating the Central American govt(s) are unwilling to facilitate trade between N and S American govts, and they are strong enough to resist said govts. No need to invoke radioactivity unless you want to.

Whether or not those trade routes exist does influence availability of resources.

[Username17]

The water nasties are especially nasty because they have submarines and can attack basically anywhere. But there are still nasties on land that pillage things. Oil pipelines are notoriously vulnerable targets. The projects to put up natural gas and oil pipelines through Afghanistan started in 1995 and they have as of this moment succeeded in shipping zero barrels or cubic meters of oil or gas. That is seventeen years of trying to get a pipeline through that region and it has all been held up because there are some douchebags in the mountains. We aren't even talking about state sponsored bandit armies, dragons, or demonologists here - just some douchebags in the mountains.

The issue is that while this makes stable pipelines essentially impossible in any area of political instability or uncontrolled wildlife, it makes supply chains of anything else merely difficult. You can ship corn or steel or pistachios in armed caravans, and you'll only lose one now and again. So you're going to want tankers of oil rather than pipelines. And that means that even if people find bottomless wells of oil somewhere, the supply chain is going to be precarious enough that they won't have stable access to oil or copper.

---

But right now I think I need to change the name of Trail.

Basically, the word "Trail" implies that having less of it is good. You know, less of a "trail" back to you. But numerically, it has to go the other way - because Heat needs to be compared to Trail. And if a Trail of 0 and a Heat of 0 are both good, then you would need to do some kind of THAC0 bullshit to compare the two in any meaningful way.

So what if instead it was called Obscurity or Murk or something?

-Username17

[T]

The issue is that while this makes stable pipelines essentially impossible in any area of political instability or uncontrolled wildlife, it makes supply chains of anything else merely difficult. You can ship corn or steel or pistachios in armed caravans, and you'll only lose one now and again. So you're going to want tankers of oil rather than pipelines.

So, where are the areas of political instability/uncontrolled wildlife? Also, if shipping via armed caravans is good, just a bit more dicey than present day, one would imagine prices and availability would only change a relatively small amount. And since we don't ship steel/copper through pipelines, then steel/copper availability isn't that much different from now unless vast areas are impenetrable due to uncontrolled wildlife.

An alternate idea - instead of making the Deep Ones pirates, make them (as a result of being wickedly good pirates) in control of all sea trade. Sea trade occurs, just with the heavy tariffs and general dickishness of the Deep Ones.

So what if instead it was called Obscurity or Murk or something?

Obscurity works. Something simple like Stealth would work. Anonymity or Inconspicuousness (too long) might work too. Obviously a word that wouldn't come up in normal usage is nice since it becomes a game keyword - Anonymity or Obscurity win there. Stealth is too common.

[Grek]

Anonymity is a great choice.

[Username17]

Yeah, I like how Anonymity shortens to "Anon" on the character sheet, which is shorter than "Trail" and more comprehensible than anything you could plausibly shorten Trail to ("Trl" or "Tra" for instance).

-Username17

[Endovior]

Yeah, Anonymity is a great word for the concept you're trying to convey here.

So essentially, then, lifestyles are made up of some kind of triangle of Anonymity, Security, and Status: Anonymity makes it harder for people to find out things about you, Security lets you store more things without making yourself a target for robbery, and Status means you're more respectable (you need a certain amount of it to plausibly interact with high-status individuals). You get a certain amount of Anon for free; buying any amount of Security/Status cost more AND lower your Anon... though you can pay extra to lower your Anon as well; the cost you pay for each point of Anon increases based on the higher of your Security/Status. Security and Status are best bought together; if you've got a difference of 2 or more between them, you take an additional Anon penalty (since you either wind up being the rich guy living in the slums, or the hobo squatting in a mansion; either are noteworthy).

[Vebyast]

Oil pipelines suffer from all the same problems that internet cables do, plus one more - you can't replace them with satellites. We already had that conversation and came to the conclusion that Frank listed off above.

Of course, we also established that we needed some wastelands, and those provide a good reason for other major routes to be off-limits.

[Username17]

Yeah, Anonymity is a great word for the concept you're trying to convey here.

So essentially, then, lifestyles are made up of some kind of triangle of Anonymity, Security, and Status: Anonymity makes it harder for people to find out things about you, Security lets you store more things without making yourself a target for robbery, and Status means you're more respectable (you need a certain amount of it to plausibly interact with high-status individuals). You get a certain amount of Anon for free; buying any amount of Security/Status cost more AND lower your Anon... though you can pay extra to lower your Anon as well; the cost you pay for each point of Anon increases based on the higher of your Security/Status. Security and Status are best bought together; if you've got a difference of 2 or more between them, you take an additional Anon penalty (since you either wind up being the rich guy living in the slums, or the hobo squatting in a mansion; either are noteworthy).

Yeah pretty much. Probably the thing to do for the basic book is just to give some finite number of sample lifestyles that give Status, Security, and Anonymity.

Having multiple Lifestyles available gives you the worst Anonymity of those available, but the best Status available. Security is separate for each location, and allows you to stash different caches in each one.

Having people mix-n-match would probably take up too much space since it's hard to make a chart in three dimensions.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

Having multiple Lifestyles available gives you the worst Anonymity of those available, but the best Status available. Security is separate for each location, and allows you to stash different caches in each one.

I'm not so sure about that. IRL, even if you have a huge mansion, you can disappear completely just by abandoning it temporarily, and your having a giant mansion doesn't mean everybody knows where all your boltholes are. I think that a better way to do it would just be for people to make skill checks to find your residences.

Also, how much do Lifestyles cost? The obvious answer is to make them cost stress, because not having a single home is probably somewhat psychologically and physically damaging, and because they provide direct character benefits in a variety of checks (starting with combat and going all the way to chases and information-gathering).

[fectin]

Other way around, I'd say. Having a luxury mansion with servants is very low stress.

[rampaging-poet]

[quote="Vebyast]I'm not so sure about that. IRL, even if you have a huge mansion, you can disappear completely just by abandoning it temporarily, and your having a giant mansion doesn't mean everybody knows where all your boltholes are. I think that a better way to do it would just be for people to make skill checks to find your residences.[/quote]

While you should definitely be able to drop off the radar by abandoning your mansion, you actually have to abandon your mansion to do so. If you've abandoned the place, you can't access its Status or the cool stuff you stored there, but it also stops counting against your Anonymity. You probably don't even need to keep paying for it.

Personally, I would assume that if your Heat is above the Anonymity of one or more of your caches, those caches become compromised after a short but indeterminate time. You can't visit compromised caches without facing dire consequences, but other than that there's no penalty for losing them. You can even move back in once your Heat drops, but you can't be guaranteed all of your gear will still be there.

Having a short grace period before the cops and/or rival lancers find your place gives you to opportunity to drop your Heat or retrieve some key pieces of equipment before you lose everything. Making the grace period random ensures that attempting to do so is always risky.

[DrPraetor]

Let's flip the discussion around then: If only sea shipping is disrupted (massively) by the Deep Ones, and govts are cooperative enough not to derail intra-continental shipping, why the hell haven't all the govts teamed up to wipe out the Deep Ones? Because they can't? The Deep Ones are too powerful? They are inaccessible? Hopefully it's not, 'because they haven't bothered.'

I can brainstorm a reason:
Because it isn't in their interest. The governments of the world are hopelessly corrupt, and they want to 1) maintain their grip on their own populations through fear, and 2) maintain the (land based?) trade status quo that emerged following the Cataclysm.

So the governments of the world like having deep ones, because they keep your citizens where you put them and maintain your cartel's stranglehold on trade. Hell, maybe the deep ones have been largely driven off, or the deep ones are actually privateers working in cohoots with different megacorps. Fear is the best way to keep the population in line - but it actually works better if it's fear-of-them-and-you-need-me-to-protect-you than if it's fear-of-this-battlestation. Deep Ones are a perfect combination of Sharp Week and Serial Rapist such that Joe Consumer wants Universal-General ElectricSoft to protect him.

This also enables a lot of space for the player characters (and other anarchist types) to have the oceans pretty much to themselves, except of course for the monsters and pirates which are also abundant .

[name_here]

The reason they haven't wiped out the Deep Ones is probably some combination of "They are a magically powerful nation-state" and "You want to wipe out a deep-ocean race? Have you looked at a globe at some point in your life?"

Seriously, there is just too much fucking ocean on this planet.

[T]

I can brainstorm a reason:
Because it isn't in their interest. The governments of the world are hopelessly corrupt, and they want to 1) maintain their grip on their own populations through fear, and 2) maintain the (land based?) trade status quo that emerged following the Cataclysm.

I agree with you if things aren't *too* resource limited. Once they get too limited, it starts getting in the way of the govts doing much of anything. And then I think govts would join up and wipe out the deep ones. I think once it starts affecting everyday decisions by normal people, and not just slightly increased prices, it's too limited.

Example: Gas. Gas at $2/gallon is nice. Gas at $4/gallon hurts, but we get by. Gas at $80/gallon would cripple normal people so much that the economy would grind to a halt, affecting govts as well.

The other stuff you wrote are neat ideas. I like them.

[Grek]

The reason you can't get rid of the Deep Ones is because they're like al-Qaeda (who the entire USA army has been unable to stomp out for going on 12 years now) except they're underwater and have submarines.

[Username17]

While you should definitely be able to drop off the radar by abandoning your mansion, you actually have to abandon your mansion to do so. If you've abandoned the place, you can't access its Status or the cool stuff you stored there, but it also stops counting against your Anonymity. You probably don't even need to keep paying for it.

Even that won't really work. Yes, you can simply not go back to the Mansion and write off everything there. But the mere fact that you had it means that there are images of you in home owners' association meetings, a credit trail, tax records, and for at least a while after you depart: a mansion full of your DNA and finger prints.

Simply dropping your Mansion doesn't just make you lose all the stuff in it (although it does do that), it also makes you a missing person in police databases and has creditors send your rent heating bills to collections agents. Probably the easiest way to handle that sort of thing is to have dropping out of a lifestyle produce Heat (you can take actions to reduce that Heat by establishing fake change of address forms or paying off and closing your accounts and such), and have Anonymity take some amount of time to drop.

Having a short grace period before the cops and/or rival lancers find your place gives you to opportunity to drop your Heat or retrieve some key pieces of equipment before you lose everything. Making the grace period random ensures that attempting to do so is always risky.

Definitely.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

Simply dropping your Mansion doesn't just make you lose all the stuff in it (although it does do that), it also makes you a missing person in police databases and has creditors send your rent heating bills to collections agents. Probably the easiest way to handle that sort of thing is to have dropping out of a lifestyle produce Heat (you can take actions to reduce that Heat by establishing fake change of address forms or paying off and closing your accounts and such), and have Anonymity take some amount of time to drop.

Having a short grace period before the cops and/or rival lancers find your place gives you to opportunity to drop your Heat or retrieve some key pieces of equipment before you lose everything. Making the grace period random ensures that attempting to do so is always risky.

Definitely.

I think that establishes a pretty solid mechanic.

As a side note, there might be two kinds of anonymous dwelling. There's one that's obvious but easy to drop (low base anonymity, but produces very little heat when dropped or your anonymity rises quickly once it's dropped), and one that's hard to find but hard to drop (high base anonymity, but produces a lot of heat or takes a while for your anonymity to rise).

[kzt]

The reason you can't get rid of the Deep Ones is because they're like al-Qaeda (who the entire USA army has been unable to stomp out for going on 12 years now) except they're underwater and have submarines.

You'll notice that al-Qaeda leaders tend to suddenly explode these days. As do their bases. It's not a career path that gets favorable life insurance rates.

People with submarines are running an industrial civilization, not an urban terrorist organization hiding out in heavily populated cities and isolated tribal areas. Western militaries are pretty good at smashing other people's industrial civilizations. And some non-Western militaries, like Russia and Sri Lanka, have demonstrated a talent for dealing with terrorist organizations that become a serious annoyance, possibly because they lack the "we must maintain the moral high ground" attitude and lawyers that the West has developed since Eisenhower's Werewolf orders.

[name_here]

70% of the earth is covered in ocean. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find something on the ocean floor? Finding the Titanic took an extensive search, even though people knew about where and when it went down and it was huge. Technology has improved, but it's still extremely difficult to find things that are just sitting there even when no effort has been made to hide it.

[Username17]

As a side note, there might be two kinds of anonymous dwelling. There's one that's obvious but easy to drop (low base anonymity, but produces very little heat when dropped or your anonymity rises quickly once it's dropped), and one that's hard to find but hard to drop (high base anonymity, but produces a lot of heat or takes a while for your anonymity to rise).

Would people object to a first approximation where dropping a Lifestyle produced heat proportionate to the Status of the dropped lifestyle? I mean, I know that you can have Jame Bond Aliases that are easy to drop but still easy to get into exclusive parties, but I'm not sure if there's enough demand for that for it to be a stat on its own.

-Username17

[T]

70% of the earth is covered in ocean. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find something on the ocean floor? Finding the Titanic took an extensive search, even though people knew about where and when it went down and it was huge. Technology has improved, but it's still extremely difficult to find things that are just sitting there even when no effort has been made to hide it.

The Titanic (or al-Qaeda) didn't *permanently* disrupt all global trade via sea lanes either.

Unless they can travel at Mach 10, and be everywhere at once, they must have a pretty large presence in the sea to be able to do that. That doesn't have to be a Deep One civilization, sure - it could just be a crap ton of feral Deep Ones which *would* be hard to eradicate. And that would be an answer to my question then. The world govts aren't going to gang up on the Deep Ones because they are like Asian Carp or any other invasive species that are hard to get rid of.

But if it's a Deep One civilization, world powers would be able to eventually track them down...

I'm unclear on the extent and capabilities of the Deep Ones. All I know is that there are more than two and they live in the ocean and they don't like big ships.

[Grek]

Every single deep one is born with the following:
-The ability to breathe in water, both salty and fresh.
-Constant knowledge of where they are relative to the five magical phased-in cities under the ocean.
-An affinity towards Astral (ie. short range teleportation/clairvoyance/dispelling/spell resistance)
-Thumbs.

And the three deep one states together have:
-Control of about 70% of the world's oceans, with the remaining 30% being contested by them.
-Essentially exclusive access to the phased-in city-states of R'lyeh, Y'ha-nthlei and Ker-Ys.
-All of the cached magical goods and equipment stored in those cities before they vanished.
-The world's largest number of astral mages, both per capita and probably in absolute terms.
-Summoned Yuggoloths of unknown capabilities.
-Territory that is naturally dangerous and essentially uninhabitable by occupying forces.
-Underwater agriculture sufficent to maintain a population of 630 million deep ones.
-Underwater industrial facilities sufficent to maintain a large fleet of ships and submarines.
-Good access to oil, natural gas, and rare earth metals.
-Somewhat worse access to copper, steal and other resources.
-Essentially free access to geothermal power.
-Limited to no access to wood, any sort of surface animal or 3D printing powders.
-A constant trickle of deep one immigrants that have given in to the call of the sea.

All in all, it's easy to justify why they've not been wiped out. There's probably people trying and lots more people who've tried and given up, but no real successes.

[Vebyast]

Would people object to a first approximation where dropping a Lifestyle produced heat proportionate to the Status of the dropped lifestyle? I mean, I know that you can have Jame Bond Aliases that are easy to drop but still easy to get into exclusive parties, but I'm not sure if there's enough demand for that for it to be a stat on its own.

That works. I think that Bond's aliases aren't lifestyles anyway. They don't come with gun racks, houses, gadgets, money, or anything else, so they sound more like a character feature or even a gadget. Lifestyles are more like Q's lab or the Disco Volante.