|  | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
 Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 12:43 pm |  |
Plastic surgery would probably not exist at all. It's a low-expertise, poverty-ridden, resource-starved setting where people struggle to survive. Undergoing cosmetic surgery seems like something that wouldn't ever cross anybody's mind, considering the risk and costs and the fact that it doesn't help you survive in any way. It'd be like someone in the slums of one of Russia's abandoned cities deciding to save up for a nosejob. While we're probably not going to bring down the iron first and rule that nobody may ever play a character that has had cosmetic adjustments, I'd personally consider it ridiculous. Tattoos and piercings should be as far as Rusters are willing to go in order to alter their appearance without necessity.
Cybernetics are possible because cybernetic doctors were part of the original prisoners. The quality of the practice has declined since then due to the fact that the science has been passed down through a handful of generations in disorganized and incomplete ways, and the facilities available for it are far from ideal, so current cybernetics are often improvised and half-assed.
Prosthetics would be entirely possible and would follow the same theme: not picture-perfect, and sometimes rather abstract. It would be very expensive and frankly pointless to get a prosthetic that looks lifelike. You can have prosthetics as long as you adequately describe them as being non-cybernetic, but you're expected to prioritize your stats accordingly. Don't put agility first with a peg-legged character, don't make a very dextrous guy with a plastic hand.
There's not a whole lot of mythos because the setting is essentially only a little over a century old. The liberated moon is so young that some people's grandparents could have been part of the original stock of prisoners (although that would be fairly unusual), and there's not a whole lot out there to base myths around anyway since it's all in ruins. Players are welcome to make up stories and legends -- that's a feature of the game, the setting being so much in the hands of the players, and good made-up myths might make it into the written documentation.
All anybody knows about masked bandits is that they're rumoured to roam the wasteland and have not yet been identified. No official contact has been made so far.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 1:33 pm | |
| Throttle wrote: |
| There's not a whole lot of mythos because the setting is essentially only a little over a century old. |
One could say the same for North America! Given, the US and Canada have been constructs for slightly longer than one hundred and twenty years. Their populations were more dispersed geographically, though one might argue that native Ruster ethnicities are potentially more diverse in terms of culture (seeing that our prisoner population consisted of the native populations of four worlds [to my limited understanding]).
What I find interesting in the development of culture is that post-liberation Rust is considerably small and isolated. It's a bubbling pot for unique cultures. It makes sense to me that in a setting where individuals have no secure identity in terms of history or connection to their people, individuals would cling to tribal identifiers... like race, creed, so forth, to create a sense of belonging and identity within their in-groups.
Isolation, density, disconnection from prior identities, a strong need for tribal signifiers which differentiate groups from other groups. To me it just seems a concoction for constructing wild mythos, group-specific slangs, cultural markers.
Which all would be awesome.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 2:42 pm | |
^ I would point out that we have a population of several hundred million and a history of being a nation for over twice that length of time full of immigration and vicious events in the meantime 
actually though, I like your post, I think it presents some fascinating elements that could be introduced into the story.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 3:03 pm | |
The "tribal identifiers" are the Families.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 3:17 pm | |
| Throttle wrote: |
| The "tribal identifiers" are the Families. |
Indeed, the Families are the tribes. I'd argue that the races could serve as cultural groups as well. Tribal signifiers are their unique cultural traits: accent, dress, behaviors, and mythos which have developed over the last 120 years and prior, in regards to the culture of prisoners and race. I'd love to see those fleshed out by players and staff.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 5:18 pm | |
Apologies in advance for length. 
It asks a lot of questions, but also suggests some possible answers.
| Seer wrote: |
| Indeed, the Families are the tribes. I'd argue that the races could serve as cultural groups as well. Tribal signifiers are their unique cultural traits: accent, dress, behaviors, and mythos which have developed over the last 120 years and prior, in regards to the culture of prisoners and race. I'd love to see those fleshed out by players and staff. |
I agree, that there could be a lot more richness here. Part of the problem, though, as I see it, is that there really aren't (at the moment) any specific cultural traits attributed to any of the races. There is also no convenient way for, say, all players of Martians to get together and decide on these things, and it's further complicated by the fact that because of the Family system, Martians are scattered across all "tribes", interacting mainly with terrans in their Family rather than with other Martians.
Additionally, I think the fact that RPP races offer coded benefits has a huge impact on why people choose to play them, in general. I'm not saying everyone who chooses to play, say, a titan does so because they intend to make a combat-oriented character and want to have every possible advantage, but it certainly allows for someone to approach it in that way. Especially at this moment, when there is nothing more cohesive or distinctive about a titan than its coded benefits, I think that that is the motivation for most people to make one. "Titan" would have to mean something beyond "has +2 con and looks cool" for even half of the people choosing to play one to choose them for reasons other than "has +2 con and looks cool."
I don't mean to say that therefore this wouldn't be possible, or even ideal, I'm just pointing out why it isn't already true.
Now, storytime:
Long many years ago on SOI there was a really exceptional player who decided to create an entire culture with traditional beliefs, rituals, language, and styles of dress to flesh out a particular tribe of Gondorian dunlendings. He did this initially by creating one character who expressed his culture and exemplified his tribe. Within four or five months (as some may recall) there was a player-run clan devoted to the tribe, with their own board (FULL of cultural and linguistic discussions), chargen roles, and a series of rooms built for them in the forest that constituted their base camp.
I think something like this could happen on PRPI, and I think beginning it with one character with a really strong sense of his own culture would perhaps be the way to do it. But in that situation there was at least some material on the base race and the world to extrapolate from, where in this situation we don't even really know for sure how much and in what ways the culture on Mars ever differed from the culture on Earth. We don't even really know what Earth culture was like at the time of the prison colony's operation. That, I think, would make it much more difficult for one person to single-handedly flesh out and then draw others into a collaborative storytelling venture in which that culture is continually deepened and expanded upon.
I think perhaps some people (possibly the admins included, I'm not sure) prefer to keep things simple, for practical reasons, and I can understand the urge to do that. But a monocultural world is not a particularly interesting world, especially considering that there's so much fighting going on and so many reasons to fracture and tribalize.
Yes, our prisoner ancestors were "all the same" in that they were all prisoners, but even within prison populations (pick any one you want), tribalism thrives. In real life this tends to be because the people going into any given prison enter with ethnic, religious and cultural identities and maintain them in prison. They tend to stick with others like themselves and play out the rivalries, enmities and alliances that exist among those ethnicities, religions and cultures outside prison.
This is something that's complicated on PRPI because what those divisions were before the prison colony was filled with prisoners are at best unclear, at worst we're actively assuming that the population was more or less homogeneous -- with the ambiguous exception of there being some Martians, some Titans and some Calistans thrown in with the Terrans.
But there is really no reason why having been in prison would cause people to relinquish their cultural identities, and 120 years is not all that long, as Seer pointed out. The only way you could explain the escaped prisoners not having retained those differing identities (imo) is that they didn't have them to begin with -- that pre-prison colony Terra was a culturally homogenous place.
Now, that may not be all she wrote, though. Even if the One World Government of Terra imposed its cultural hegemony on the populace so that superficially everyone conformed to whatever norms were demanded by that government, it would take a very, very long time indeed for people to completely forget and relinquish their traditional cultures.
For all the Romanization that took place all throughout the Roman Empire, nobody really forgot who they had been. And take for example the Pagans, who lost most of the records of their pre-Roman, pre-Christian culture (in fact a lot of what we know about historical Paganism actually comes from Roman and Christian descriptions of the "barbarians" they were dealing with). Even though a lot of their history has been erased, a sense of the value and tradition contained in the idea of Paganism has survived, with "neo-Pagans" just sort of filling in the missing information with ideas gleaned from other sources.
This is all to say that it's absolutely not outside the realm of possibility (and is, in fact, extremely likely [imo]) that a sense of distinct cultural heritages has persisted, even if an unbroken line of cultural tradition does not. I would love to see "Christians" or "serbs" or "Hindus" in game who are more or less making it up as they go along, their actual beliefs and practices a mish-mash of half-forgotten lore and things they've picked up along the way). These cultural identifications may have very little to do with the cultures they claim to be descended from in practice, but are still a strong way of self-identifying and group together with like-minded individuals. One's actual ancestral heritage (unknown to one, as it is) also need not have any bearing on what group one tends to identify with IG, either.
How does all this fit in with the Families?
Well, I think it could, easily. I mean, there's no one to stop the New Guard from tracing their descendence from Gengis Khan, really, since nobody knows anymore who Gengis Khan actually was. They're basically free to make it up, completely, but they can use what they make up to create a cultural identity and to place themselves at odds with other cultural identities that uphold conflicting sets of values. Hell, they could make someone up entirely, but the point is to trace (even fictionally) their heritage back more than 120 years.
It's easy to forget as Americans (which many of us are), that more traditional cultures (ones that have been around for longer than 150 years) tend to try to trace their history back as far they can, essentially to the dawn of man. This is particularly true for individual lineages of note, royal and noble families and so forth. It lends legitimacy to rule, and it's something that the Families already do -- trace their histories back to the break.
But I think it would lend so much richness if we just took that one step further and had them looking farther back into history (even in myth rather than in concrete history [because let's face it, the dawn of time is shrouded in mystery, nobody actually REMEMBERS that far back, and nothing was written down]), and embellishing what it means to be descended from this figure or that figure more.
What values, beliefs, abilities distinguish MY ultimate ancestor from YOUR ultimate ancestor? Why are the two incompatible, or how might they complement one another?
And to a lesser extent I think it would be totally reasonable for people who weren't part of the Family elite to potentially maintain (and develop, elaborate on, etc) similar senses of having come from something before "one of the first prisoners." This way it gives everyone license to make up a culture, or a religion, or a mythos and to group themselves according to these types of things, without having to alter the already-agreed-upon One World Government idea, and without having to challenge the tribal supremacy of Family lineages.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
| | |
| I would prefer not to. | |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 5:45 pm | |
I think the problem of this is the reverse: rather than the culture being dissolved because there are no players repping them, I think players aren't representing the EXISTING cultures hard enough: the Reds, Guard, and Niners.
These institutions have lasted for a long time, but it seems to me players are vaguely using them like they existed on board the Salvation or in late beta.
For instance, a guardsman, esp. one with an RPP role, should be so enmeshed within that culture that he is isntantly recognizable for it. It's more than just wearing a top hat. Whether that comes about with phrases, dress, mannerisms, response to things, I don't know, but I'm of the opinion you should be family first and some other background second.
Those are the strongest ties people living in rust would have at the moment.
So instead of making a fighter who's going to be a Niner, or a medic who's going to work with the Red company, make a technological genius raised and fostered by the Guard, make a 9er who is so fantastically removed from actual real world he's in his own hedonistic makebelieveland.
Other than that- it's just about filling in the blanks. Where was your family from? What areas of Rust do you identify with? What did your prison ancestors end up from ? Etc, etc.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 5:46 pm | |
I like your post, Bartleby.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 7:03 pm | |
| Bogre wrote: |
| For instance, a guardsman, esp. one with an RPP role, should be so enmeshed within that culture that he is isntantly recognizable for it. It's more than just wearing a top hat. Whether that comes about with phrases, dress, mannerisms, response to things, I don't know, but I'm of the opinion you should be family first and some other background second. |
This would certainly be appropriate for a lot of characters, but it's really the same problem -- people only have the lore that's already been written (which is about three lines long and very vague) with which to define themselves in terms of their Family. Unless everyone who makes a Guard gets together and decides what those phrases are, what the dress is, what the mannerisms are, what the cultural precepts, deeply held beliefs, traditional rituals and values are, then my interpretation is different from your interpretation and no actual clear, cohesive culture exists.
And even if that weren't true, or we did all get together and agree on these things beforehand (which I'm certainly not against), it would really only apply to those who had been raised very much within the Family structure -- the Family elite.
It was agreed a long time ago (without my input  ) that PCs are fundamentally different from the multitudes of vNPCs, and are therefore better off in various ways and for various reasons. But to further assume that every PC must necessarily have been raised in a vat as a golden child of one Family or another, exemplifying the family culture in every respect, is to force very tight restrictions on the types of concepts a player can make. It disallows people to play PCs who have joined (or scaled) the ranks of a Family out of necessity rather than being groomed for it, and it disallows people from playing "black sheep" who were groomed for it, but rebelled for some reason or another.
Culture doesn't exist because literally every single person raised within it exemplifies its virtues in every conceivable way. It is perhaps defined as much by who is outcast and why. It might be thought of as a set of "rules" which are both agreed to and bent by the majority, and even broken by a sizable minority. But culture has an impact on even those who break the rules, meaning that if you are aware of what is expected, then your feelings about people (potentially including yourself) who don't meet those criteria are deeply affected.
For instance: if it is culturally expected that a Guard must speak well, know how to dress well, or refrain from rubbing elbows with commoners, it is still completely in bounds to play a Guard character who speaks poorly, dresses poorly and rubs elbows with commoners. However, in general other Guards should treat that PC disapprovingly, and that PC should have a well-thought-out response to his or her resulting low social position among Guards.
Imo, it's unnecessarily (perhaps harmfully) simplistic to say that all PC concepts from one Family or another should be built around and limited to the very brief Family's description, with all other concerns being distantly secondary. It also doesn't reflect the complexity of human nature or society.
I absolutely agree that it's terribly vital that a sense of Family culture be clear and present in game, and certainly if that Family culture is not exemplified by its leaders then there should be a clear reason why, and an acknowledgment of what would be exemplary, since that isn't it. This is more or less up to the playerbase to think up and decide on, and to exemplify.
In my opinion, it doesn't at all conflict with -- or explain away -- a mix of Terran (and non-Terran) cultural identities. In fact I actually think that the problem of Family cultures needing to be fleshed out could be well solved by taking as inspiration some of the remnants of cultural memory the prisoners retained from before they were prisoners.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
| | |
| I would prefer not to. | |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
| | |
|
|
|
| | |
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 7:08 pm | |
Bartleby, very well spoken and explored! I'm with you.
| |
|
|
| |
| | |
|
| |
| | |
|
