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Holmes
Dictator in Absentia



Post Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 6:15 pm      Reply with quote

That post was an awesome read, and yes, the lack of capability to breed is in part due to the hassle of having to map out all potential mixes and provide for them.

I don't really have the biology background to converse at length on the possibility of this, but the most likely IC justification (and one that wouldn't really be known by anyone currently alive IG) is that it was a result of TPF regulations that required genetically engineered humans to only be able to breed with their own.

As to how non-Terrans came to Rust, the Terran Moon served as a major penal colony for pretty much every TPF planet, and Earth itself had non-zero populations of the various other races. The current Martians, Titans, and Calistans are descendants of those criminals, in the same way that the Terrans are.


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Bartleby
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Post Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 6:57 pm      Reply with quote

Holmes wrote:
I don't really have the biology background to converse at length on the possibility of this, but the most likely IC justification (and one that wouldn't really be known by anyone currently alive IG) is that it was a result of TPF regulations that required genetically engineered humans to only be able to breed with their own.


I'm not a biologist, either, by any stretch of the imagination [my background, such as it is, is anthropology -- but I'm not an expert, I'm just interested], so don't take me too seriously when I say that I think that potentially works really well. Cool

The more generations there were that bred, the better it works. I mean, evolution is a slow process, and it might require a little suspension of disbelief depending on how far removed the non-Terrans are meant to be from the Terrans and how much time passed between then and the loss of contact with the colonies, but that's kind of just an issue of scale. If you don't want the process to cover hundreds or thousands of years (or more, again, I'm really not an expert), then one has to be prepared for some holes to be filled with the Magic of Science-y Know-How. Whatever doesn't quite work can just be bolstered with "somebody invented a thing that got around that problem." I think that's to be expected since our purpose is telling a story about genetic engineering, rather than actually doing it. Wink

My asking all sorts of questions about the details should in no way be interpreted as demands for a scientifically accurate or complete basis to all of this. It does help if it's at least going in the right direction, so that extrapolations one might make from, say, the wikipedia article on 'biology' wouldn't be completely off-base for how the world operates, since there's a lot that's left to the player to fill in about crafts and things. But it's more just that it helps to know these things for the purposes of figuring out what Martians or Titans or Calistans might be like, and what sort of relationship they might have to the Terrans they co-exist with.

And it makes sense, logically (to me, anyway), that such regulations would be implemented - why go to all that trouble to engineer people only to let them muddy their genetic gift by breeding it away into the mundane genetic pool? It's much more efficient to engineer a couple of generations and let breeding take care of the rest.


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I would prefer not to.
Onasaki
Registered



Post Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 10:54 pm      Reply with quote

Very well explained, and it helps alot, actually. Another thing to take in mind is the amount of racism between the different races too, I've been playing that my character is an extreme racist against all the other non-Terrans. >.>

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Mannfreid
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 6:19 am      Reply with quote

wilde wrote:


They're shady because they're dangerous and because the expense of them means that desperate people are often forced into performing unsavoury tasks to fund them.


Do It, I wanna start Geneco.

That being said. It's really hard to expand on the lore of the slums, when there's almost nothing there. There should be an npc mugger or three in dark alleys, homeless guys in abandoned buildings. So on.

Indies should be able to rob the coded npc's that the families get too. Is it smart? No. Probably not in the least bit. But starving people get desperate.

Give people reasons to be in those slums, instead of the safe market and the lore will come naturally. When i was first reading this setting over I thought of it kind of like Necromunda. Some gang houses controlling large territories of a city, and fighting. Indy gangs popping up to try and survive, scavenging the more dangerous areas for a chance at riches, or striking out as bounty hunters, mercs, or just thugs for hire. Shit like that.

Yes, the game could go that way, and be something like that. But right now, I'm not seeing a whole lot of trying from any direction. I think that by putting more stuff in the slums, and giving people reasons to be there or fight over shit. Then the lore will come.

Fuck maybe even do some sort of actual gang war system, where the families (or hey, maybe even really fucking ballsy indies) Can expand into others turf more then robbing a couple people. In fact. If you want lore, that's where I would start.


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Matt
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Builder

Post Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:32 am      Reply with quote

The issue atm is we have two maybe three people as RPAs and one builder for a game that's had on average 45 people online at a time at night.

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Onasaki
Registered



Post Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:15 am      Reply with quote

In ARPI there was a functioning gang-code, where you could expand turf and stuff. Not sure exactly what version this code is, so it might still be there but just inactve for the time being.

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Matt
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Builder

Post Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:24 am      Reply with quote

Gang code was never functioning. It limped along and never really did much.

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HAL
Administrator



Senior RPA

Post Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 12:15 pm      Reply with quote

Indeed. It was a true pain. An Interesting pain, but a pain.

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grandpa
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Entrenched Oldbie

Post Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 1:51 pm      Reply with quote

Mannfreid wrote:
That being said. It's really hard to expand on the lore of the slums, when there's almost nothing there. There should be an npc mugger or three in dark alleys, homeless guys in abandoned buildings. So on.

What you're describing is literally in the descriptions of various buildings in the slums, if only virtually.
Mannfreid wrote:

Indies should be able to rob the coded npc's that the families get too. Is it smart? No. Probably not in the least bit. But starving people get desperate.

There's a virtual power behind the Families which Indies lack. They're Individuals as well as Independents, and lack any of the true force the Families can bring to bear codedly, economically, and virtually, and that's the reason any joe schmoe, no matter how many PC friends he has, is nothing in a town of 10,000-some odd people.
Mannfreid wrote:

expand into others turf more then robbing a couple people.

This, again, literally exists in the concept of the 'core' turf quests that each Family has one of inside their turf.


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It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.
Bartleby
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:19 pm      Reply with quote

grandpa wrote:

Mannfreid wrote:

Indies should be able to rob the coded npc's that the families get too. Is it smart? No. Probably not in the least bit. But starving people get desperate.

There's a virtual power behind the Families which Indies lack. They're Individuals as well as Independents, and lack any of the true force the Families can bring to bear codedly, economically, and virtually, and that's the reason any joe schmoe, no matter how many PC friends he has, is nothing in a town of 10,000-some odd people.


I'm not completely clear on what point is being made here. I mean, it's obvious that the goal is to maintain a certain economic relationship between the Families and any independents, that relationship being one of having great economic power vs. having little economic power, and in order to achieve that, naturally, there has to be a low ceiling on what independents can achieve economically. But since that's a matter of a ratio, it can certainly be tweaked without disrupting the relativity of the values.

It seems that people are generally afraid that independents will gain too much power and disrupt that relationship. This is understandable because so much of the Families' power is virtual and therefore isn't represented in a concrete way among the PCs.

But I think there is a danger in taking this attitude so far that it makes it too difficult for indies to interact through RP with the Families. I'm not saying it should be easy(er) for them to survive or make money, but more that if they did have the option of interacting with Family turf nodes they would have another option for interacting with the Family who owned the nub.

And, sure, given the generally anti-indy climate many Family leaders would probably feel completely justified in merely executing such an indy or group of indies if they were caught, and would be within his or her "rights" to do so ICly. But to me that all seems like a waste of the opportunity to RP and enrich the world with a political situation that exists between Families and independents. And if you close off avenues for RP between indies and Families, to me, you might as well not have the option of being an indy at all, in a way.

Plus, to me, it's not all that plausible, at least according to any historical models (which, yes, don't actually depict what has happened here because this is not anything that's actually happened, but which DO depict tendencies of human nature and collective human behavior, which this is most certainly a depiction of), that the majority of people are in the power structure and a minority of people are out of it. The people in power have always struggled with being outnumbered by the people they mean to impose that power on, that's what makes politics interesting.

To clarify, I completely support the virtual economic monopoly enjoyed by the Families, and turf nodes may not be the best avenue for exploring what I'm proposing, but I strongly believe that if the indies have no option for struggling politically against that monopoly, we're missing out hugely on an opportunity for intrigue and roleplay -- an opportunity which itself could go a long way toward ameliorating the problem of "zomg where's the big plot that gave us all something to do?"


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I would prefer not to.
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Featured artwork used on Parallel RPI given permission for use by original artists macrebisz and merl1ncz.