What would you change?, Making the most of your reality Options

[hobgoblin]

hmm, tristat maybe? guardians of order recently released a tristat cyberpunk style rpg named ex machina or something like that. and they have a hellsing sourcebook (mainly for use with besm but still). only problem is lovecraft but then most of his stuff should not have stats at all ;)

[John Campbell]

Setting-wise:

I hate NAN. Given the premise that magic has returned to the world, I can suspend disbelief for elves and trolls and dragons and mages, but being asked to believe that a couple million Native Americans can face down the U.S. military and force the U.S. government and people to hand over a third of the continent breaks my suspension of disbelief. Yeah, Great Ghost Dance, whatever. As a part-Abenaki, I find the, "Oh, of course the Natives are more in touch with their spiritual traditions," attitude more than a little offensive (and all gay guys have good fashion sense, and all Asians are good at math, right?), and even disregarding that, the U.S. had enough years between the facts of the Awakening becoming obvious and the Treaty of Denver that they should've had mages of their own to counter the Ghost Dance's, and they had a vastly larger pool to recruit from (the U.S. should have had more mages than the Natives had people). That makes the GGD not just powerful magic, but a continuity-breaking deus ex magica. And I can't imagine being able to force-relocate the non-Native population of the West without a serious fight, even if the U.S. government had been fully cooperative with the idea. It wouldn't be just the wingnuts with the basement full of assault rifles shooting back at them.

I like the balkanized U.S., though. Borders can be fun, though I think the canon history overdid it. My America is broken up, too, into Eastamerica (everything east of the Mississippi and north of Charlotte), Westamerica (most of the rest), California, Oregon, and Washington (I haven't decided yet what I'm doing with the latter two). There were big changes to the causes, though... it was primarily cultural differences kicked into the forefront by the Awakening and the assassination by magic of a newly inaugurated far-right President, after an election... well, pretty similar to the 2004 one. The ultimate result was a nasty civil war. Both major portions call themselves the United States of America, and insist that the other side is the rebels. Eastamerica's run by corporate whores, and Westamerica's run by cryptofascist zealots. They're not actively at war by 2060, but there are occasional border "incidents".

The U.S. collapsing into internal violence in the 2020s had some far-reaching effects on the rest of the world, too... the Middle East exploded, China grabbed Taiwan, North Korea went for South Korea, Japan got involved in Korea and Taiwan, North Korea tried to nuke Tokyo (fortunately, their missile sucked), and so on. A fair number of U.S. troops on deployment decided they were better off not going home, too, and many of them ended up as mercs in Africa and Asia.

Without NAN grabbing the vast majority of their territory, Canada is still a separate country (and they kind of got short end of the stick in the canon history... they hardly get more than an, "oh, and Canada too," in the Ghost Dance thing until it comes time for NAN to yoink 90% of the country). Quebec, as in the canon history, finally voted "oui". That may have triggered further Canadian secessions (I'm thinking the plains provinces might've told Ontario where to get off, resulting in Canada being broken up along pretty much the same lines as the U.S.), but I haven't really decided yet.

I dislike VITAS, though it's not the suspension of disbelief-breaking lunacy that the GGD is. I like the idea of strange and deadly new plagues, but I don't like reduction of population that came with it. It's hard to get the sprawl feel when the population is actually just about the same as it is today (especially when you've destroyed practically every major city on the planet), and it's difficult to swallow the "normal people seldom get real food" thing when there aren't actually any more of them than there are now, and the American breadbasket was pretty much untouched.

My solution to that was to keep VITAS - I've theorized in the past that it was actually an Awakened form of a normally benign virus, and have made that theory official reality in my history - but say that while the body count was terrible, and it's still not entirely contained, the reproductive abilities of metahumanity more than made up for it... population of my world is something like eight billion and growing - it'd be more without the VITAS deaths. I don't quite have the full-on BAMA sprawl, but Boston to Richmond is a continuous urbanized area; then there's a break between Richmond and the Raleigh-Atlanta sprawl.

Given the totally different starting position, talking much about things to change farther down the road is kind of pointless. For more general themes, though...

I hate the immortal elves. I haven't decided if there are any in my world or not (I may actually make all elves immortal... it's not like PCs ever die of old age anyway) but if there are, they're keeping their fragging heads down like smart little immortals, not trying to take over the world or showing up as major mortal historical figures. Any of them with those sorts of tendencies got ganked during the downtime for drawing attention to themselves and their peculiarities. Immortal dragons, on the other hand, are good, but I like them a little more low-key. A-corp powerlevel, perhaps, not singlehandedly capable of taking control of a major AAA.

No Horrors in my game, ever. It's not that I really have a problem with Cthulhoid monstrosities from beyond time, but it's too easy to get into the whole good vs. evil thing with them. I prefer evil vs. maybe slightly less evil, from a certain perspective. It's more interesting. I'll leave the epic fantasy for D&D. (And, actually, I tend to play low fantasy even when I play D&D. Most campaigns I've been in, post-grade school-munchkin phase, haven't lasted past 5th level or so, anyway.)

And one bit of setting that kind of bleeds over into rules... the Matrix makes no fragging sense. It's all very cinematic and Gibsonesque, but thinking about trying to actually use it for anything makes my brain hurt, let alone trying to come up with any sort of rational explanation for why it works the way it does. Matrix made a valiant effort at turning a system ripped from books written before the Web by a guy who'd never used a computer into something that normal people could use for useful things, like the things that real people do with the real Internet here and now, but I think it was doomed to failure from the start. (Specifically, by the Matrix's insane concept of "location".) The whole thing needs to be torn to the ground and rebuilt, both fluff and rules.

[Ved'ma]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[John Campbell]

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I can totally see that. As a Kerry supporter in Ohio, I can vouch for the fact that it definitely feels like one half of the populace here seems as though it's one step from inflicting violence on the other half for being pro-gay, pro-choice, anti-war, pro-social security, and all the other convenient lables, while the second half seems to be totally in fear for their lives and freedoms. I'm actually pretty fond of the canon breakup of the US as presented in the books, but if I were going to rewrite it, I think Ohio syndrome would be the way I would do it.

[Fix-it]

[hobgoblin]

hmm, i wonder how big you can make a illusion. maybe have one shaman trow up a big trid phantasm or something to make it look like there are more attackers then there realy is. when you dont know if the enemy is real or not you start wasteing ammo.

allso, this is a gerrilia war on us soil, and look at how the police action is going in iraq, and dont forget what the outcome was in vietnam. last thing you want is mass civilian losses, even less so when your talking your own people. the nan troops can make it look like it was us troops that was at fault and fade, mostly like what is happening in iraq right now.

and btw, one of those french journalists that just got released claims that all those beheadings and so on where done to keep bush in office as he would keep the us troops present in iraq. makes one wonder...

[Birdy]

[CirclMastr]

Here's some stuff off the top of my head.

No IEs. Or IHs or IDs or IOs or ITs or I-anything-elses-s. All gone. Horrors go with them. Dragons? Not so sure. Maybe if they acted more like dragons (Lofwyr taking over with S-K, Ghostwalker raising hell and landing on Denver) and less like IEs (Loremaster nonsense, Dunkie's Will nonsense). Celedyr and the 'wareness of dragons is a good thing in the current canon, but not in mine. Why would a dragon want to dirty his talons and infest his body with crap when he has peons to do it for him? Metavariants, shifters, sasquaches, gone. Ghouls can stay. Vampires are iffy.

No NAN, for all the reasons stated above. Or maybe something more like Middle Eastern warlord-states, where NAN is in control on paper, but in reality their control extends to their doorsteps and then the countries belong to local gun-nuts or the wilderness. That might be a bit too Mad Max-ish though, so let's say no NAN for now.

More corp, less government. No UCAS, the U.S. government exists to provide utilities to non-corporate housing and to keep people happy with meaningless elections between substantively-identical candidates. Divisions in the country exist, but along corporate lines. Play up things like Ares IS Detroit, Aztechnology IS Aztlan. If you don't work for a corp, you have a mind-numbing government job. Lone Star exists for the in-between areas where the corp compounds aren't, and any meaningful gaps are either police states or Z-zones, numerically leaning toward Z-zones. And someone else mentioned corps as anonymous entities, without named leader-figures. I like that. You don't work for Damien Knight, you work for Ares.

VITAS is contained, as far as the corps and government are concerned. In the streets, it's still around and in some areas prevalent.

Metahumans are second-class citizens at the very best. More like fourth- or fifth-class in practice. Humanis is more the normal perception of people though overt violence in the light is still looked on as a hate crime. Groups like MOM and ORC are a joke.

Canada exists and is fractured, but no one cares. The governments are as weak and ineffectual as the U.S. with the added bonus of meaningless bickering.

No Middle Eastern Jihad. The entire region is wasteland dotted with backward cities with no cyber/magic and little tech that isn't weaponry. Israel is one big cratered battlefield.

Between AIDS, VITAS, and every disease in between, Africa is a twisted polluted mess. Toxics and blood spirits abound, as do twisted versions of Awakened animals and plants. As far as a livable, cultured civilization is concerned, Africa is dead.

India and Pakistan are wiped out, thanks to mutual nuclear exchange. SE and East Asia saw it and realized nukes are bad, so they blew each other to smithereens with conventional weapons. China as a government exists; China as a country is divided much as it is in current canon. SE Asia is riddled with tiny dictatorships vying for consolidated power. Taiwan is Iwo Jima on a larger scale; no natural resources left, but everyone's fighting over it simply to possess the real estate. No Japanacorps, rather Japan is the last united country in the region, thanks to incredible xenophobia and pre-emptively eliminating any threat that even looks at it cross-eyed.

Syndicates exist but without political power. Instead, they control shipping lanes across the empty spaces where the corps aren't, and subjugating backwater towns that don't have a strong enough gun-nut collection to fend them off.

No Corporate Court. No corps that aren't triple-A; they look like mom-and-pop places, but they're just holdings of the megas. Corps regulate themselves out of economic need; business is done more easily with one agreed-upon currency, and overt war really cuts into the bottom line.

Play up the media, which is of course controlled by the corps. Ever notice the difference between Fox News and NBC News? It's even more disparate, and it's all for distracting the wageslaves and keeping them inert. There are going to be reporters trying to look into the shadows, but don't even think about treating it like what's-her-name from SSG, that was nonsense. More like "People like explosions and violence on TV." Look at all the attention Bum Fights got.

Okay, that's probably plenty of setting changes that no one would like. How about the rules then.

Make higher rated 'ware and gear harder to get (higher Availability). PCs should not be able to start play with Wired 3 and ATGM missile launchers.

Make drones rarer. Most riggers would have one vehicle or one drone (which they jump into much like the vehicle rigger jumps into a vehicle). Networks of drones are VERY rare on the streets. Neighborhood surveillance is just as feasible with traditional cameras. And streamline vehicle rigging with actors who aren't riggers.

Make sure metahuman PCs have the appropriate social penalties. Even elves. So they can sing better, put them in a cage and train them to sing on command.

Make Matrix activity actually care about your skill level. Right now all it takes to be a decker is money, and even that's not feasible with pirating (and yes, pirating would still exist. Of course no wageslave would dream of pirating software made by his own company, but there's no way you'd get him to pay money for the bad guy's programs). More hackers, fewer script kiddies. And of course, make it workable alongside the activities of the non-deckers. No more 30-minute side runs.

This may be more of a setting thing, but if a player says his PC is a street samurai, make him play the samurai part too. Shadow denizens should treat him differently depending on if he's a street samurai or just some wired punk saying he's a sammy.

Combat drugs, and drugs in general, should be more prevalent. Crashing should be less painful but addiction moreso. And make some BTLs that PCs have a reason to use, with the same changes to crashes and addictions. Rules for diseases, physical and mental, would be nice.

That's all I can think of right now.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

[Voran]

Wow ressurected thread.

[Crimson Jack]

[CanvasBack]

I have a whole host of problems with the setting.

NAN and VITAS don't make sense. They simply don't, at all. There is literally no way to reconcile either of these components with a realistic understanding of cultural geography or any sort of demographic study. I accept them in a canon campaign (along with the UCAS vs. CAS split) as a reminder that the game isn't based in reality. The reality is, less than 1/2 of 1 percent of the current U.S. population is considered a Native American by the government. Reality is, populations don't recover from a disease like Vitas in mere decades. Again, not realistic and if I took up the GM screen and decided it was worth it, I would change the setting around by not having them take place.

One of the trends I see lately is a "middle-class ethic" pervading the current crop of literature. This is wrong. If you accept that Mega-corporations have weakened state polities by assuming roles that only governments and nations had taken on before, you have to believe that the 6th World is largely what we now see as "Third World". Citizens are faced with a grim choice, sell out to the corps, be a corporator. Your basic needs will be met, you'll have a chance to excel and succeed, maybe even become and executive and earn privleges. But you'll give up a good deal of personal freedom in the bargain. People on the outside of the corporate structure are either leading lives of quiet desperation, raging in the streets, or clinging to the teat of the failing governmental structure. In general I would make things more bleak.

If the choice of mood for a campaign is between hope and despair. I'm shading my grim future with despair, and only enough hope to be quickly quashed again to be replaced with... More despair.