It seems like the limits on Conjurations make mid-battle summoning next to impossible. Even if you have a summoning stone you're ready to set on fire you have to ignite it and then let it burn to just the right point to equalize mass/volume properly before you can get your creature out.
The obvious solution is to carry around a summoning stone with some sort of manner of expanding rapidly, potentially a C4 center, and trip it at the climax of the spell. At least, that's the least constraining but probably most expensive/dangerous solution. Other solutions are to simply have carefully-calibrated summoning objects that take a known length of time to burn and are color-coded, then spend a while waiting for them to finish, or you could content yourself with summoning tiny things by carrying around an exact model that weighs precisely the same.
If anything, the primary constraint of combat summoning is probably that the only way of being able to summon more than 1 90 kg demon per person is to have them carry around a summoning stone for the mage to use and then murder them and summon something with their corpse.
Also, some bases might have prepped summoning models sitting around so their mages can summon giant things in a hurry without having to worry about whatever it is that means people ever use human security instead of Seraphim. Even given that mages are relatively rare and more powerful things need more powerful mages to summon, there should probably be some constraint on keeping around endless hordes of whatever the easiest thing to summon is.
Raw material might seem tempting as a constraint, but if it's just a matter of having enough mass/volume, people will shove dirt into molds and add lead until it's the right mass. Whatever the constraint is, it should probably be something that can be alleviated by money so that the system supports Megacorps assembling enough spirits that they're a noticeable portion of security forces while discouraging the players from spending half a year assembling a massive horde of attack spirits and zerging a target to death.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
There was a server error that led me to believe the post had gotten lost in the ether, okay?
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
fectin wrote:
On 3d printing: that's a good explanation. It doesn't work for guns though, because those need much, much better material characteristics. That means guns can be always expensive (as in "not free"), because it's still cheapest to make them out of metal.
You can make magazines, though it's harder then it looks. It would also work for a lot of the components that don't take too much stress. The components that take a lot of stress are the barrel, bolt, gas system, recoil mechanism and hammer/sear. Handguards, magazine, stock, sights etc are under fairly low stress. Springs would probably have to stay metal too.
I would expect that you could make disposable one-shot guns out of plastic, but not the plastic that most cheap printers use now. They might occasionally blow up, but they would mostly work.
Printing ammo is possible; printing the gun to fire them is not. If you tried to print out a gun, the barrel would explode like in an Elmur Fudd cartoon the first time you tried to fire it.
Instead of printing guns, how about printing gyrojet bullets? No need for a solid barrel because the barrel isn't taking the stresses of firing, and by this time you can build MEMS guidance devices into the bullet to deal with the terrible nozzle precision.
Last edited by Vebyast on Sat Sep 10, 2011 6:02 am, edited 2 times in total.
DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
1) Good design practices.
2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.
Grek wrote:Printing ammo is possible; printing the gun to fire them is not. If you tried to print out a gun, the barrel would explode like in an Elmur Fudd cartoon the first time you tried to fire it.
Not necessarily. You don't have to make everything out of low melting point plastics. You could insert a carbon fiber hollow tube as the barrel. You can get away with a lot if you are willing to let the gun be a one-shot-ever device. It's even easier if you don't insist on rifling. Shotguns traditionally were made out of rifles that had , as they were worn and re-rifled, had worn down the barrels so they were too thin to be safe to be re-rifled and were instead used for the much lower pressure loads of shotguns.
kzt wrote:Not necessarily. You don't have to make everything out of low melting point plastics. You could insert a carbon fiber hollow tube as the barrel.
Motherboxes of the future could even run "hot", where the thing they sprayed out was tiny droplets of liquid metal rather than metal dust mixed with adhesive.
An object that is manufactured in bulk from dedicated industrial infrastructure is always going to have substantial advantages. At the very least, it will always take less energy to cast whole pieces in a mold than it will to build them up in a printer. It'll be faster too. For anything that enough units are supposed to be made that it makes economic sense to build an actual production center for them, popping out of the motherbox will be a more expensive option.
The motherbox excels in things that have to be personalized in some way, things that are supposed to be made in very small numbers, and things that are so new that there isn't time to set up a real production line. Basically it's exactly the same logic as laser versus offset printing. If you're going to make a couple thousand books, you do offset printing because it is cheaper. If you're going to print up three copies of your thesis for the committee to review, you use a laser printer because there is less overhead and it's really fast for short print runs.
If people motherbox a gun it is because they want something that is unique and disposable, not because they want something that is cheap or good.
name_here wrote:
Also, some bases might have prepped summoning models sitting around so their mages can summon giant things in a hurry without having to worry about whatever it is that means people ever use human security instead of Seraphim. Even given that mages are relatively rare and more powerful things need more powerful mages to summon, there should probably be some constraint on keeping around endless hordes of whatever the easiest thing to summon is.
I consider it a plus that secure installations will often look like this:
For entirely understandable reasons. Halls full of creepy statuary is a hallmark of evil lairs, and having a plausible reason for doing that besides Ozymandiasesque ego stroking is totally a plus.
Vebyast wrote:I don't think it was ever mentioned what human magic stress looks like. Since it's from summoning, I'll suggest empty eyes and a general descent into the uncanny valley.
Magic stress should depend on your tradition, not your species. Cthulhu mages go bugfuck crazy. Shamans have a tendency to react to things nobody else can see. Hippies seem stoned, even if they're not.
For some reason, I feel like over-Stressing on tech should make you sick, because technology gives people cancer, pollutes, causes rejection syndrome, overdoses, etc. Over-Stressing on magic should drive you crazy. Dealing with otherworldly beings and confronting the fact that causality and determinism aren't exactly 100% things eventually unhinges people.
I wish in the past I had tried more things 'cause now I know that being in trouble is a fake idea
With metal there are a few really important processes that a motherbox is simply incapable of doing. Most importantly, the motherbox can't do any sort of forging or heat treatment. Even worse, your part has basically been built up by successive layers of bad welds, so there's residual stress everywhere.
Besides, even if you can build a gun barrel in a motherbox, you'd have to have a lathe laying around to smooth the bore out and rifle it.
A better option would probably be to fab yourself the bits you need for a small forge operation. Use the motherbox to build up ceramic or clay casts, an electric furnace, and some tools. You can't build a gun barrel, but you can build the tools to build a gun barrel.
Last edited by Vebyast on Sat Sep 10, 2011 8:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
1) Good design practices.
2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.
Vebyast wrote:A better option would probably be to fab yourself the bits you need for a small forge operation. Use the motherbox to build up ceramic or clay casts, an electric furnace, and some tools. You can't build gun barrel, but you can build the tools to build a gun barrel.
So guns end up working just like bots. You've got the barrel and the action, which need to be (at least partially) forged metal, and the rest, which can be made of whatever with a motherbox, including the ammo.
I wish in the past I had tried more things 'cause now I know that being in trouble is a fake idea
2011 prototypers print with a resolution of 100 micrometers, and there are ones today that are six times better than that coming out right now. I can't find the tolerances for a smith and wesson, but for muzzle-loading rifles the tolerances are apparently sixty times that, so there wouldn't be any reason you couldn't print a barrel with a 2075 Motherbox.
It'll still be shittier and more expensive than a Burmese saturday night special. But if you need something with no history at all, motherboxing a gun is totally an option.
Vebyast wrote:With metal there are a few really important processes that a motherbox is simply incapable of doing. Most importantly, the motherbox can't do any sort of forging or heat treatment. Even worse, your part has basically been built up by successive layers of bad welds, so there's residual stress everywhere.
Indeed. And that a critical difference between an actual nano-forge, where you are interacting with the materials at an atomic or molecular level, and a 3d printer of whatever capability.
In theory, if you can control the actual layout of a substance at the atomic layout, a nano-forge could build a part that was functionally identical or better than a properly forged, machined and heat treated chunk of whatever super-alloy would be ideal for the part.
For the 3d printer this is clearly not going to be the case.
FrankTrollman wrote:2011 prototypers print with a resolution of 100 micrometers, and there are ones today that are six times better than that coming out right now. I can't find the tolerances for a smith and wesson, but for muzzle-loading rifles the tolerances are apparently sixty times that, so there wouldn't be any reason you couldn't print a barrel with a 2075 Motherbox.
It'll still be shittier and more expensive than a Burmese saturday night special. But if you need something with no history at all, motherboxing a gun is totally an option.
-Username17
I'm starting to lose track of what motherboxes do. Originally, they were resin-adhesive 3d Printers. Now they're doing circuitry and metal?
For convenience, I suggest that 'boxing and buying have the same cost. 'Boxing costs ~2x as much for production, but half the cost of bought items is shipping, storage, and shelf space.
Occult Economics
“Every year, there are recurring changes in the energy flow patterns that often affect our environment. In order to continue and enjoys beneficial energy around us, an Annual Check-up and Follow-up is recommended. Existing customers may contact us directly with your invoice numbers at an annual review rates.”
It is not entirely clear what it is that the occult forces of the world actually want. This is a problem for people, because these occult forces have the potential to be immensely dangerous, especially when they don't get their way. There may be hidden forces that want nothing from and nothing to do with humanity; but these beings are plot devices, not agents with whom the adventurers can bargain. Spirits who interact with humans often have their own agenda, and bargaining with these spirits is fairly straightforward (e.g. we'll rebuild your shrine if you stop attacking the village). Other spirits seem to like, or be drawn to, individual people, and aid these people willingly. Different spirits may have different reasons for doing this, but the people whom they serve have a certain magnetism, or pull, which seems to diminish when spirits are called on for favors, but which grows as a result of certain occult acts. People noticed this very quickly when magic returned, and the fact that some people have a "certain something" which spirits want is well-known, if not well-understood, to the general public. In the popular discourse of 2075, this special-something mojo zazz is referred to as "Élan", a term popularized by the Reverend Darren Richards, whose many sermons on how to stay safe from spirits are regarded by all professionals at 90% bunk, but whose delivery was so entertaining, reassuring and accessible that much of the general public believes his teachings in favor of the observable facts.
Spiritual Currency
"And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost." Acts 8:18-19, KJV
To simplify things from a game-mechanical perspective, we will measure the value of spiritual services in Élan (abbreviated É), a hidden currency which will be used to price barter and favors from spirits. For character generation purposes, É1 = $1000, and this is also a reasonable rule of thumb during the game, so for example if it costs É20 to appease a particular spirit, that service ought to cost $20,000 at a minimum to get from a shaman. In materially rich but spiritually impoverished places like the headquarters of major corporations, the value of É1 will be significantly higher. Furthermore, mundanes are generally ill-equipped to evaluate the real value of such occult transactions, so dealing with the occult can get you very rich very quickly (even more so than in the real world, where people pay a lot of money for something with a marginal value of exactly zero.)
However, Élan differs from the dross of the material universe in several key respects. First, it is not easy to give it away, and prices in Élan cannot be negotiated per se. The cosmos is somehow handling this accounting, although rates seem to be more favorable for some people than for others. Second, spirits can smell it on you. So, if you free the Djinn from his prison, you get a heap of É, and if for some reason you refuse to accept your wishes, other spirits will show up and offer to do you various favors. Third, it is not exactly possible to owe debts in É. Curses are the closest thing; a curse is associated with a particular faction of spirits, who may do something to you, or who may just hate you and hunt you down, and has some value in É which could lift the curse. Some people accept curses willingly - such a curse is called a Geas, and if you willingly accept such a curse you get É equal to roughly half the cost to lift such a curse. Thus, in the world of 2075, it is entirely possible to sell your soul, accepting a curse that turns you into a sociopath, in exchange for the services of actual demons.
Making Hell Money
"I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me honey, rich is better."
Aside from accepting curses, there are a number of ways to get Élan. First, some people get É "for free" just while they are walking around. These people are "Natural" conjurers and can expect favors from spirits, whatever spirits happen to be around, most of the time. During character generation, getting free É every day from the cosmos is just the same as getting free money every day from a trust fund, and is priced accordingly. Restrictions on your É (like, you may only get it if you stay vegetarian, or if you go to church every Sunday) reduce the cost-at-character-generation accordingly.
Anyone with the Conjuring skill can get Élan by finding spiritually significant work, and doing it. Game mechanically, this is just like any form of skilled employment but you get a few É every month instead of a few thousand dollars. Adventurers are unlikely to want to do this, but presumably many will have done so at some point in the past, and it is acceptable to have an Occult Day Job. Most conjurers, however, need to make a material living, and the best way to do so is by accepting money from people, and then spending É on their behalf.
Adventurers will likely get most of their É by being paid for their adventures. "Spiritual Employers" will pay adventurers in É, although such spirits can likely arrange good fortune that will give their employees money, in lieu of É. You can hand out É for doing great deeds, and you can even let players donate their money to one or another cause, and get É for doing that - it's more fun to have people engage in specific robin hooding for the benefit of recurring characters, but you can just let them donate money to Oxfam if you like. It's important to note that É is attracted to greatness as-well-as-to goodness, so the villains can have big heaps of Élan.
Spiritual Investments
“The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.”
It is possible to "bank" or "invest" Élan, and the ROI on such Élan is the same as a permanent lifestyle purchase or the like, at the beginning of play. Unlike such material investments, however, these great pacts with the higher and more remote spirits cannot generally be sold back. It is assumed that player character conjurers will purchase permanent services from particular factions of spirits. Transactions of this kind cannot generally be made in the material world, but require spirit-journeys of some kind in order to find the great spirit lords from whom a permanent grant of service can be purchased; the availability of each pact corresponds to the difficulty and danger in such a quest, in the same way that the availability of expensive military hardware corresponds to the type of adventure needed to acquire it, once you have the money to spend.
In the world of 2075, the process by which someone becomes a conjurer is somewhat-understood, even by the general public. First, you spend several years in meditation, training, making offerings, doing spiritual work (see above) and otherwise building up Élan. During this time, you must refuse the promises and blandishments of spirits, who will try to tempt you to accept favors from them. Finally, when you have proven yourself worthy, you go on a spirit journey and gain, from some Amesha Spenta, Orisha or Saint, the permanent power to cast out demons. Most people (including a majority of practitioners!) think that this whole rigamarole has something to do with worth or purity or the like, but it's really just economics. Nonetheless, keep these expectations in mind for characters who have been trained or sanctified as shamans, spiritualists, conjurers or mediums.
Spirits can can turn E into money. Can PCs? Can anyone turn money into E?
Spirits can apparently shuffle E around. Can anyone else? What is the hard rule on that? (If there is no hard rule, someone will print a splatbook with a spell that transfers E )
Your spiritual investments seem like they would prevent characters from becoming Conjurers during play; i.e. no-one gets to suddenly discover that they are John Constantine.
Speaking of, how (loosely) was character advancement going to work for this? Stress-limited point buy? Increasing cost point buy (global increase or per-skill increase)? Straight up point buy? Cthulhu-style? Traveler-style (ouch)?
Are you going to leave this as touchy-feely "you can even let players donate their money to one or another cause, and get É for doing that", or develop an actual system for that?
DrPraetor, is there any particular reason that your other currency has an exchange rater other than 1? Also, did we ever decide on the purchasing power of one SPdR?
Concerning summoning, when you summon things, can you or do you get the same entity every time you try to summon something? Can you even target a particular entity or type of entity, or are you just throwing 100kg of meat into the air and asking for something not of this earth?
Last edited by Vebyast on Sat Sep 10, 2011 5:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
1) Good design practices.
2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.
DrPraetor, is there any particular reason that your other currency has an exchange rater other than 1? Also, did we ever decide on the purchasing power of one SPdR?
$1,000 is meant as a placeholder. I'd say, for pricing things in F'sCFH, it's like kilograms. A gram would be a good unit if we were cockroaches. Anything less than $1,000 isn't worth keeping track of specifically. So, to answer your question, the exchange rate *is* 1:1 because $1,000 is 1. So:
Weapon
Cost
Glock 19C
1
Browning Citori 525 Field
2
AK47, Kenyan Manufacture
0
M16 A/2
3
Concerning summoning, when you summon things, can you or do you get the same entity every time you try to summon something? Can you even target a particular entity or type of entity, or are you just throwing 100kg of meat into the air and asking for something not of this earth?
I assume that we're maintaining the Shadowrun conceit, where it's not clear, or varies from person to person.
fectin wrote:Spirits can can turn E into money. Can PCs? Can anyone turn money into E?
The players are heroic, and earn there $ doing great deeds, so they can convert $ into É at a 1:1 exchange rate.
For other people, you get É by sacrificing material things to advance some external purpose, higher cause or transcendent goal. So the É to $ exchange rate varies, but being rich and crass gets you less É, so suits have very little of it. On the other hand, Dr. Evil spends a fortune on his plan for world domination, and gets É for doing that.
Spirits can apparently shuffle E around. Can anyone else? What is the hard rule on that? (If there is no hard rule, someone will print a splatbook with a spell that transfers E )
Spirits can't "transfer É around". This needs to be fleshed out, but:
- If you do a favor for a spirit, you get É. Whether the spirit loses É is not clear. Big important spirits can tell you "if you do this, you will reap spiritual rewards" and that means É.
- If spirits do favors for you, you lose É. Whether the spirit gets the É you lose, or eats it or what is not clear. Big important spirits can spend the É you just got by arranging to have you do well in the stockmarket or something. Again, this needs to be fleshed out.
Your spiritual investments seem like they would prevent characters from becoming Conjurers during play; i.e. no-one gets to suddenly discover that they are John Constantine.
I agree that having characters suddenly upgrade into whole new spheres of power is cool, but this is a big problem from a game balance standpoint. So, likewise, given the $ costs involved, a character will seldom be upgraded all the way to a 5th tier cyberzombie during play. Is this a problem? Well, if you want the characters to upgrade in this way during play, you can set things up to allow it, by giving each character a secret bank account with one million $ and/or 1000 É that they can pop out during play or somethng.
Speaking of, how (loosely) was character advancement going to work for this? Stress-limited point buy? Increasing cost point buy (global increase or per-skill increase)? Straight up point buy? Cthulhu-style? Traveler-style (ouch)?
I was assuming that you'd get a pile of money and/or É for each session, and then use the Tarot deck to advance skills, attributes and powers ala After Sundown.
Are you going to leave this as touchy-feely "you can even let players donate their money to one or another cause, and get É for doing that", or develop an actual system for that?
Well, see above. A more complicated system could involve a floating exchange rate where you lose some % of your spirit lucre every time you change it back and forth.
I like the idea of É, we should probably do that. A couple of caveats though:
Vebyast wrote:DrPraetor, is there any particular reason that your other currency has an exchange rater other than 1?
Since there aren't literal units of É floating around for people to exchange, there's no compelling reason to have the É on a player's character sheet to have radically different spending power than a SpDR. So É == $ seems pretty obvious.
fectin wrote:Your spiritual investments seem like they would prevent characters from becoming Conjurers during play; i.e. no-one gets to suddenly discover that they are John Constantine.
The big issue I think is that players are going to have to be able to trade the hell money around in the party. I mean, if one of the players is a Voodoo Houngan with a zombie army to feed and another is an Asura Cuisinart with a cyberware addiction, they are going to want to pool all the É they pick up on the Houngan and all the material cash they pick up on the Cuisinart.
As for buying spiritual allies in play: you can totally do that by Lancing for demon factions. Take Lancer missions for a demon house and they'll pay you in É rather than SpDRs, and then you can use that É to barter for spiritual services and magical goods.
How does conjuration interact with the É economy? When you cast Summon Thing That Man Was Not Meant To Know, are you:
[*] Forcing an unwilling spirit into this world, losing É because you're pissing it off?
[*] Demanding a service from a spirit, losing É because you're paying it for its work?
[*] Creating a spirit out of thin air for the duration of the spell, not doing anything to your É balance?
[*] Summonings are between the caster and the spirit and only open the door for negotiations that probably involve É?
[*] Slapping a spirit around and gaining É for being a badass?
[*] Gaining and losing random amounts of É because the spirit you summoned has allies and enemies that now like or dislike you?
I'm not even sure we should settle on one of those; perhaps different summoning traditions interact differently? A houngan invites friendly spirits into his body and gains É with every summoning, a northwestern forge mage enslaves angry spirits to make his flaming hammers and loses É with every casting, etc?
Last edited by Vebyast on Sat Sep 10, 2011 7:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
1) Good design practices.
2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.
)