OK, here's part of something I'm working on. It'll probably use the SAME system, and of course it was inspired by Dresden Kodak.
Dungeons and Discourse
The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy.
Dungeons and Discourse is a role playing game where the players each assume the role of a powerful magician who has adventures in a fictional world.
Path and Alignment
Alignments
Empirical " All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses."
Those of an Empirical alignment believe that knowledge comes from experience. Holding that the initial state of the mind is a white piece of paper, the Empiricist relies upon sensory data to fill that paper and draw conclusions about the world.
Empirical characters are vulnerable to Causal damage, and have their Causal resistance reduced by 4. Empirical characters are resistant to Psychological damage, and have their Psychological resistance increased by 4.
Empiricists are the traditional enemies of Rationalists.
Evangelical " All human evil comes from a single cause: man's inability to sit still in a room."
Belief in axioms is endemic amongst magicians, but to those of an Evangelical alignment all one's knowledge is axiomatic in nature. With the core of one's being ascribed to faith, certainty can be had without outward investigation. Indeed, because of this, outward investigation is considered highly suspect.
Evangelical characters are vulnerable to Factual damage, and have their Factual resistance reduced by 4. Evangelical characters are resistant to Traditional damage, and have their Traditional resistance increased by 4.
Evangelicals are the traditional enemies of Realists
Existential " Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. "
Those of an Existential alignment believe that they have full responsibility for the creation of meaning for their own lives, just as you have that same responsibility for your life. Existentialism demands the acceptance of the world that one is born into and further demands that control is taken of one's own future in the face of this world.
Existential characters are vulnerable to Traditional damage, and have their Traditional resistance reduced by 4. Existential characters are resistant to Indescribable damage, and have their Indescribable resistance increased by 4.
Existentialists are the traditional enemies of Evangelicals
Pragmatic " Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. "
Those of Pragmatic alignment hold that the truth or importance of an idea or course of action is held only in its observable practical consequences. The Pragmatist rejects epistemic virtues of all kinds, not on the grounds that he feels that one is right or wrong, but simply that epistemic investigations are inherently worthless regardless of the outcome. Truth can be selected by the utility an idea presents, not with correlation with mathematical principles or an external world.
Pragmatic characters are vulnerable to Emotional damage, and have their Emotional resistance reduced by 4. Pragmatic characters are resistant to Factual damage, and have their Factual resistance increased by 4.
Pragmatists are the traditional enemies of Skeptics
Rational " There is nothing higher than reason."
Rationalists appeal to Reason as a source, even the primary source of knowledge. Relying upon a minimal number of axioms, those of Rational alignment seek knowledge deductively. Reliance upon sensory data is viewed by the Rationalist to be at best sub-optimal and possibly actively harmful.
Rational characters are vulnerable to Psychological damage, and have their Psychological resistance reduced by 4. Rational characters are resistant to Progressive damage, and have their Progressive resistance increased by 4.
Rationalists are the traditional enemies of Existentialists
Realistic " Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. "
Those of a Realistic alignment believe in and adhere to a reality that exists independently of the minds or opinions of others. Realists tend to embrace what they believe is actually real, despite how unattractive reality itself may be. Realists believe that their own beliefs are merely approximations of an externally verifiable Truth and are willing to adapt or abandon those beliefs given evidence.
Realistic characters are vulnerable to Indescribable damage, and have their Indescribable resistance reduced by 4. Realistic characters are resistant to Emotional damage, and have their Emotional resistance increased by 4.
Realists are the traditional enemies of Pragmatists.
Skeptical "You cannot know anything."
Everyone of Skeptical alignment doubts things. Ever mindful of epistemic limitations, the Skeptic doubts things. The Skeptical alignment to some degree or another rejects not just the truths that others lay claim to, but also the ability to know truth in general. Skeptics do not take things for granted, clinging only to a core tenet of Doubt.
Skeptical characters are vulnerable to Progressive damage, and have their Progressive resistance reduced by 4. Skeptical characters are resistant to Causal damage, and have their Causal resistance increased by 4.
Skeptics are traditional enemies of Empiricists.
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Anyway, all attacks are Rhetorical or Analytic - this equates roughly to Bludgeoning or Slashing. Damage is of course Factual, Causal, Indescribable, Psychological, Emotional, Traditional, or Progressive.
People get a number of powers, which are all Declarations which work kind of like "strikes", Stances which work kind of like "stances", and Invocations which work kind of like "counters". You can grab these powers off of your alignment, class, or racial lists. Races are ethnicities, and being Greek makes you vulnerable to Pederasty. What are you going to do?
I can easily expand the system of course, but I'm looking to limit things at least initially to about 3 classes per Alignment (and yes, every class has an alignment restriction).
So for example, an Evangelical or French character can make "Pascal's Wager" which costs absolutely nothing and gives a small chance of a large reward. On the flip side, some spells are very restricted - it's not enough to be a Rationalist to throw Monads around you actually have to be a Liebnitzian.
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But while it's actually really easy to throw in additional spells like "The Invocation of the Man of Straw" (it conjures a scarecrow that comes in to change your opponent's stances) or of course "Declaration of Zeno's Paradox" (it prevents ranged attacks from reaching their target); I'm actually kind of scrambling for basic mechanics. Here are some possibilities:
Multiple Damage Tracts. Here's a weird idea: four damage tracts. One is Factual or Causal, one is Psychological or Emotional, one is Traditional or Progressive, and the fourth is Indescribable. In this model, if you take Progressive Damage while you already have Traditional damage, the Progressive Damage heals the Traditional Damage before it does any damage at all. Indescribable is thus harder to heal but also the least useful because it can't be used to heal people. Not sure if that flies.
Mana as Damage The idea here is that you just have a tract of damage that doesn't actually do anything to you until it fills up. Once it does that though, it starts spilling in as normal damage. When you use your magic, you resist damage on this track and hopefully go about your business. I'm not sure if this works with the other idea though.
So also, who's everyone's favorite Existentialist? There's way more than 3, but do people really want to be a Camouian? Nihilist is spoken for, of course, but Sartrian? I don't know - the goal here is actually to reduce things to starting classes in each of the seven alignments such that they all play differently and have a bit of name recognition.
I'd put forward Objectivism for one of the Rationalist classes.
Objectivists, much as I despise them and everything they stand for, are quite likely to come in as one of the classes. But remember, Objectivism is not a Rationalist philosophy, it is a Realist philosophy.
Rationalism holds that truth can be found by reason alone. Rand believed that truth came from measurement. It's similar to Empiricism, but in typical Randian fashion she also denounces Empiricists on the grounds that experience and perception are contextually defined and insufficiently perfect (as opposed to "measurement" which is fine).
Rationalism is not the same as "Rational". The second is a virtue that all schools claim to ascribe to, the former is a specific school that has specific epistemic conceits.
This looks amazing. Quite possibly the best RPG concept I've seen.
FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1181087101[/unixtime]] So also, who's everyone's favorite Existentialist? There's way more than 3, but do people really want to be a Camouian? Nihilist is spoken for, of course, but Sartrian? I don't know - the goal here is actually to reduce things to starting classes in each of the seven alignments such that they all play differently and have a bit of name recognition.
October 6 -- I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.
I'd also like to see a "Futurist" class (Itallian pro-technology evangelist absurdist fascist).
I don't have a clue about the damage tracks, I'll have to give that some thought...
I'll agree that it is a Realist philosophy, but wouldn't the insistance that Reason (and the scientific method applied to measurement) is absolute in being the only viable way to learn about reality supersede it's Realist classification? Actually, wouldn't Rationalism fall apart if reality was in any way mystical and unknowable? I don't see how it could work without a coherant universe.
MrWaeseL at [unixtime wrote:1181143556[/unixtime]]At a fundamental level, our world is governed by totally random processes. See brownian motion for example.
Brownian motion is stochastic model of a process, but the uncertainty involved is probably epistemological rather than fundamental.
The difficulty of deterministically modeling and predicting the behavior of a system of particles increases rapidly as the number of particles increase, but as far as I know (more epistemological uncertainty!) it is always a matter of difficulty rather than [im]possiblility. This is assuming that the particles interact in a deterministic way, which was considered a safe assumption until people started looking into quantum mechanics.
The great thing about fundamental uncertainty is that it is (as far as I know) impossible to prove that something which you have epistemological uncertainty about is, in fact, fundamentally uncertain. There could always be some predictive factor which you simply don't know about.
Of course, the Quantum model is looking pretty good right now, so it's seemingly pretty likely that Planck's Constant really does represent an absolute threshold of what can be known - at which point models that claim random events below that threshold are essentially correct.
Of course, my having to ask points enough to my not-so-great familiarity with physics (and related things), but, with the Greek having thought the atom was indivisible, what gives the impression that now the absolute minimum limit was found?
Of course, my having to ask points enough to my not-so-great familiarity with physics (and related things), but, with the Greek having thought the atom was indivisible, what gives the impression that now the absolute minimum limit was found?
Basically, until we have experimental evidence that we're wrong, it's safe enough for a layman to claim that the current body of knowledge is correct. Also, Plank's constant has to do with precision of information, not indivisibility of objects. The error in any momentum/position measurement has to obey Δp * Δx >= ħ
Of course, there's that big gaping hole between quantum and (general) relativity (aka gravity) that a lot of people are hoping to win a Nobel prize in ... err working on.
Ah, sorry (and thanks), that I knew; I mentioned the atom just in the sense of "people always thinking there's nowhere else to go"; I could've mentioned other things instead, but that was the idea. And, as for "safe enough for a layman" I agree (else, no two people would be able to have a conversation, since not even the existance of both is really certain). But I guess that to understand the actual reason, I'll have to look at Wikipedia (unless you recommend another source), since that equation didn't tell me much.
The limit of the change in p times the change in x approaches h or something like that. I have no idea what p, x, or h stand for.
CHICKENS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO COCAINE, SILKY HEN
Josh_Kablack wrote:You are not a unique and precious snowflake, you are just one more fucking asshole on the internet who presumes themselves to be better than the unwashed masses.
Here's a pretty decent conversion of the Heisenbergian mess into layman's terms:
Dr. Math wrote:The Uncertainty Principle is confusing for even for trained physicists, so you're in good company. But a lot of the confusion comes when you try to think about particles; for waves it's comparatively clear (and, of course, one message of QM is that all particles are also waves).
Think about trying to tune an orchestra. The oboe offers a long 440-A, and people listen for several seconds to make sure they have the pitch accurately in mind. The longer you listen, the better you can define the pitch. You might even imagine using a sensitive air pressure meter to count the individual pulses; if you count 1320 of them in 3 seconds, you can divide to get the frequency to about 1 part in 1320; but if you just had a blast of sound, say 1/100 of a second, you'd have only 4 or 5 pulses to count, so you'd have ~20% uncertainty in the pitch.
This is the essence of the Uncertainty Principle: If you have a long sample of a wave, it's spread out over time but its frequency (energy) is defined well. If you have a short burst of a wave, you can define its occurrence well in time, but then the frequency is very uncertain.
Similarly in space: if you can observe a water wave that is smooth and even, spread out over a large surface with many evenly-spaced ripples, then you can define its wavelength very accurately. (In QM, inverse wavelength corresponds to momentum.) But a wave that is localized at one place doesn't contain enough ripples to accurately define its wavelength.
Basically, to get a sufficient sample of a particle to know its frequency you definitionally have taken a large enough sample that you no longer know where it is. And there's an actual number that correlates how closely you can define these things. It's a very small number, but when you're talking about very small things it becomes important.
Heh, I'm sure that could've come off as confusing.
h = Planck's constant (technically half of the constant, but you get the idea) p = momentum (mass * velocity) x = position
The change in momentum & position can't be measured so precisely, that their product (Δx * Δp) is less than h. Basically, there's a requisite level of 'fuzziness' that you can't ever overcome. Frank's musical example is actually quite good, there's a level of uncertainty that you cannot ignore.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
I'm less good with the Pragmatists, and as always if someone can think of a much better idea for what one of the starting factions should be - I'm all ears.
I find this a very cool idea, and will continue to observe.
I could start throwing out ideas at random, but I'd prefer to have some sort of framework to work within, mechanics-wise.
FrankTrollman wrote:We had a history and maps and fucking civilization, and there were countries and cities and kingdoms. But then the spell plague came and fucked up the landscape and now there are mountains where there didn't used to be and dragons with boobs and no one has the slightest idea of what's going on. And now there are like monsters everywhere and shit.
Every spell belongs to one or more subschools, which effect which invocations other characters can use and often interact with other character's stances or class abilities. There are many subschools of the Philosophy of Magic, and more are being created and discussed all the time. Here is a list of the ones being used in the Western World:
For that matter, aren't Marxists also pragmatists?
FrankTrollman wrote:We had a history and maps and fucking civilization, and there were countries and cities and kingdoms. But then the spell plague came and fucked up the landscape and now there are mountains where there didn't used to be and dragons with boobs and no one has the slightest idea of what's going on. And now there are like monsters everywhere and shit.
