SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

KlavoHunter wrote:Well, it seems clear that Fin is only here to trumpet his competence over his inferiors, so I guess we'd just better let him get on to doing bigger and better things while us retards flail around in his noble dust, since clearly he participates in the game far much more than we do. Or else his temper tantrum will get worse. :roll:

I used up all my tact last night on Shinn, since he's the only one it would work on. It's entirely obvious that pulling your punches and trying to velvet-glove one's messages to Fin only results in you being bullrushed and stomped all over.
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Unless there is something really serious that I don't know about yet, you are out of line. Stuff like this just provokes further head-banging and antagonizes the people you're theoretically dealing with and, more practically speaking, bitching about.

EDIT: I have now discovered what is motivating Klavo to say this. More later.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

OK.

Basically-

Klavo, don't get all snippy on me, or Fin, this is hard enough to resolve without anyone deliberately antagonizing anyone. Fin, don't get all snippy with Klavo, same thing.

Also, a ruling on the use of psychics for spacecraft communications:

[EDITED SOMEWHAT FROM ORIGINAL- SJ]

-With no more than extremely rare exceptions, esper communication is range-limited to something on the order of 1000-10000 km. All other psychic powers are much shorter-ranged than this, generally by orders of magnitude; telepathic communication between sensitives is much easier than mind control, remote telekinesis, or the like.

-With technological amplification, greater ranges become more feasible. The equipment is large, awkward, and rather expensive, so it’s not something you can really bring along during covert operations. Interplanetary ranges (especially long interplanetary ranges on the order of a billion kilometers) takes very ambitious amplifiers that can only fit in large platforms (such as starships, big ones). Communication bandwidth ain’t all that impressive either- think more in terms of telepaths thinking “X-Ray Alpha Bravo Six Nine Two” at each other, and less in terms of “my mind is your mind I can read your memories.”

-Attempts to communicate at still longer ranges become extremely detectable and still lower bandwidth making them largely useless and non-competitive with normal FTL communication systems for normal purposes.

So basically, if you have big starships with built-in psi amplifiers, I don't mind you using them to communicate over interplanetary distances. But interstellar-range communication (or giant interstellar psychic navigation beacons) will be so large and obvious that everyone can spot them, which creates huge problems if you're trying to avoid trouble.

EDIT: Interstellar psi communications will also necessarily be extremely large, fixed installations that even many starships can't handle, although a large planetside facility might.

Note that these effects do NOT extend to things like "I can force-choke you from the other side of the planet." This is simply not permitted; extended range communication is one thing but extended-range attack powers are another matter entirely.

One reason I'm willing to accept extended range communication is that it's a commonplace in SF; everything from Lensman to the Stainless Steel Rat. Even then, I accept it only with significant technological amplification, and there's a detection risk if you try to do it over any substantial distance.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Fingolfin_Noldor »

How 'interstellar' are we talking about? Across the galaxy or sector wide?
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

Any interstellar, as far as I'm concerned.

Communications across a sector-width would require 'merely huge' amplification systems- still large enough that you're really wasting your time using them in place of more conventional FTL comms, and still large enough that it's impractical to put them on any normal-ish mobile platform.

Communications across galactic distances (say, if you hypothetically want to build a huge psychic beacon for navigating known space) would require a truly absurdly large amplifier, orders of magnitude more powerful even than the already very large installation. And bandwidth is even more limited- you're basically reduced to shouting "HERE I AM!" over and over at the top of your lungs, because about all the transmission you can manage is big honking pulses of psychic effect.

Which is exactly what you had in mind- I'm not really averse to the idea of your having a huge psychic nav beacon that is for all practical purposes a giant-ass mechanical psi generator kicking out tremendous "beeps" across known space. It's superfluous, since everyone else navigates just fine without using such a thing, but I don't see why you can't have it.

But I want to clamp down on is the use of 'easy' ESP communication as a means of sending messages between star systems, and to clamp down with extreme prejudice on the use of psychic power over interplanetary distances.


Note that my reason for doing this is to avoid "my super-psychics effortlessly crush you!" I don't really mind if Abrielle Magritte teleports a pen at Sidney Hank's eye from some ridiculous range, but I do mind if someone says that she can now do the same thing to the head of state of a rival government (say, Byzon). Communication with psychics on each end is far more innocuous than mind-reading or other offensive powers, so I think it's all right to relax the range limitations on it.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Byzon would snatch the pen and laugh. And then he'd build a series of Spuds made to resemble that exact same pen, but like hundreds of meters in length, and launch these rockets at the Solarians out of spite.

Then he'd laugh. :D
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Siege »

I don't see why we'd limit psionic communication so much. We've established the existence of transmitters that can beam encrypted FTL messages across Known Space in what appears to be real time or something very close to it: whether that message is conveyed by bears feeding punch cards into a contraption that sends teletypes on Bragule chattering, by a CI shooting a datatunnel through the quantum foam, or by a soul-bound Astropath opening his Third Eye to the currents of the Immaterium seems irrelevant to me.

What I would propose instead is that not every bozo with a vague talent for lighting things on fire at a distance can send telegrams into the lumineferous aether and expect them to actually end up somewhere other than a few klicks away. You'd need training or throw weight or talent or some combination of those three to do the interstellar thing, just like with any other psionic ability. So I could see, say, Kierger sending people sectors away a heads-up: perhaps he does not have a lot of training at doing this sort of thing specifically but he's a boss in the juice department so he pulls it off, substituting raw power for finesse. Maybe it doesn't win any prizes, maybe people notice the burst of psychic pressure screaming into the noosphere, but he gets the job done. And on the other end of the spectrum you'd have Astropaths: good for pretty much nothing but sending messages, but they'd have it down to an art, so it becomes just as hard to intercept and break their transmissions as all the other 'encrypted diplomatic communiques' we write over in the diplomacy thread.

In the end it's all just interstellar texting. I really don't think the rules should attempt to force how this is being done, and my proposal I believe would be far more flexible than what was being proposed earlier.

Likewise I feel the killing-at-range angle is overly strict. Whilst I understand and sympathize with the idea that it should be exceedingly rare for psions, espers or psykers to be able to kill someone sectors away with a stray thought, I don't really see what's wrong with having extraordinarily powerful characters manage it every once in a blue moon. Like before, there doesn't really seem to be much of a difference between the Commune dispatching an e-dust assassin to turn someone inside out, Lord Redav force-choking an officer from a couple systems away, a Tianguonese sorcerer summoning nightmares to kill her nemesis in his sleep, or the IBGV using a deniable car-bomb to remove a political opponent. When you boil it down it's guys killing guys in unpleasant ways, and one way or another each method has its limits (and advantages) and can be thwarted (or succeed) depending on the circumstances.

'Course as soon as this is used in the vein of an 'I win!' button of lameness then I wholly support our mods retaliating by inducing lethal cranial bleeding in the brains of every offending esper in the player-nation in question. Those would be the breaks: you get room to use these tools, but handle with care.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Normal person interfaces with a giant antenna to communicate with people on the other side of the sector, okay.

Esper person interfaces with a giant antenna to communicate with people on the other side of the sector, not okay.

It is entirely different thing!

I bet it's because espers are mutants. And they are being anti-mutites! They'll want to pass a registration bill next. :D
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Shinn Langley Soryu »

Slowly yet surely, the Haruhiist involvement in the events of Downfall is revealed. Stay tuned for the ground assault and the formation of the Eye.

Also, for bonus points, try to guess what went into Homura's monologue. Just guess.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Normal person interfaces with a giant antenna to communicate with people on the other side of the sector, okay.

Esper person interfaces with a giant antenna to communicate with people on the other side of the sector, not okay.

It is entirely different thing!

I bet it's because espers are mutants. And they are being anti-mutites! They'll want to pass a registration bill next. :D
Aaargh. For crying out loud...

I have a number of reasons for the way I'm trying to do this.

One is, yes, to avoid setting precedents for someone to get carried away and try to claim an ability that becomes an "I win!" button. We've had a number of cases like that in the game, where someone became convinced that a particular tactic or idea or method was inherently superior. Mostly we've been able to resolve them without trouble, but I'm trying to step carefully here, especially with things like "I force choke people from 200 light years away" which adds a whole new dimension to conflict when compared to, say, "I have to get into the same building to Force choke people."

Another is that there are people in the game who don't really want psychics to be a major feature of the way they run the game. I don't particularly want to set up a situation where "we cannot allow an esper gap" because of the capabilities psychics grant to their nations.

On top of that, I think there's a lot of internal disagreement about what espers should be capable of. I've mostly deferred to Steve's position; I think he wanted to put some caps on psychic powers to avoid dealing with a balance issue and capability gap for people who don't want to write their countries being masters of them.



I really, really do not mind being flexible about individual bendings of the 'esper range' stuff, as long as those bendings don't raise other issues like "I remote-control assassinate your people from the next solar system over" and "I have routine totally untraceable communications to anywhere I want" do.

...Incidentally, Siege, your submesonics raise that latter issue, but since so far you haven't really used it to give yourself any inordinate advantages in player-on-player interactions, and thus not used it as an "I win" button, this has not become a problem. Please bear this in mind as an example of what I'm talking about- I don't mind being flexible, as long as capabilities aren't being abused and I can trust the player not to abuse them.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by PeZook »

Siege put a limit on submesonics himself: The smallest core is the size of a large room and draws a lot of power. So they'd be useless for undercover agents with no access to embassy facilities, since they'd be easy to locate and impossible to quickly transport. For "legal" agents they're still no more or less useful than today's communications: when encrypted with single-use keys they're nearly uninterceptable, too...unless someone infiltrates the staff and has a guy steal copies of diplomatic cables, that is ;)

And of course they have, on their own, become a common technology that everybody uses :D
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

PeZook wrote:Siege put a limit on submesonics himself: The smallest core is the size of a large room and draws a lot of power. So they'd be useless for undercover agents with no access to embassy facilities, since they'd be easy to locate and impossible to quickly transport.
You know, in all honesty I had never noticed that. Thank you PeZook, and thank you Siege.
And of course they have, on their own, become a common technology that everybody uses :D
True. ;)

I'm trying to get at the idea that I want to be flexible in the name of fun, but long range esper powers have what I regard, and what a number of others playing the game regard, as considerable potential for abuse that does require some limitations. I'm willing to flex on those limits a bit for the sake of making entertaining things happen, like the Sidney Hank and the pen thing. But I want to at least get across the idea that there should be, and is, a limit here that prevents people from using long range psi powers to create a major "capability gap" between themselves and the nations that use psychics less heavily.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Siege »

I don't want a rule that is flexibly interpreted. Rules should aspire to create clarity, not confusion, and being flexible until you're not is the opposite of clear. If a rule isn't universally applicable it shouldn't be a rule; I don't think it should be universally applicable (apparently neither do you) so I oppose it vehemently. It's stifling and obnoxious especially because we already have a perfectly good way of dealing with people who flagrantly abuse the freedom the game offers to them: that method is called the moderators, and you're it.

Your job is to come down like a ton of bricks on those of us who misuse their literary discretion. It is most empathically not to threaten the creative freedom of everybody who isn't with unnecessary and nebulously bendy rules.

I also take umbrage to the idea that because some people don't want espers to be a "major feature of the way they run the game", nobody else should be allowed to have espers be a major feature of the way they run the game either. I don't try to legislate my preferences into the game, I would thank you kindly to do the same.

Here's a novel idea: I don't like to write about giant transforming robots. I don't tear my hair out worrying about a giant transforming robot gap, I just... don't write about giant transforming robots. Similarly if people don't like to write about psykers, they can just not write about psykers. Why does it need to be any more difficult than this?

EDIT:
PeZook wrote:Siege put a limit on submesonics himself: The smallest core is the size of a large room and draws a lot of power.
Indeed. Specifically I've used the terms 'stellar' and 'suprastellar' levels of energy with respect to sub-meson cores being used to facilitate long-distance real-time communication. I never intended the tech to be portable and usable by anything less than a starship; any mentions of personal communicators based on this tech are not mine. I generally know what I'm doing, and I would like to think this much would be obvious by now.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by PeZook »

Simon_Jester wrote:You know, in all honesty I had never noticed that. Thank you PeZook, and thank you Siege.
It was a major problem for the joint CEID-Collector special forces team ; When in orbit around Zubrich, they were worried their communications could be detected ; So they decided to seize a submeson core on the planet - but they had to assault a military base to do that, which was only possible to do in reasonable time (and without massive slaughter) thanks to ultraexotic collector tech.

Even then, it had crappy bandwith and range because of power concerns, so we do try to keep it within bounds :D
Siege wrote:I never intended the tech to be portable and usable by anything less than a starship; any mentions of personal communicators based on this tech are not mine. I generally know what I'm doing, and I would like to think this much would be obvious by now.
You could make it semi-portable by using it like history's most expensive cell phone network :D

As in: portable device sends data to the core using regular means, the core retransmits it to wherever you want the information to go. Expensive as all hell and not exactly untraceable and of course it still needs a core with all its drawbacks to be somewhere within range of your comms device, but I don't see any obvious problems precluding it from working.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Siege »

Yes, pretty much exactly that was what I had in mind in my fanfic when Sidney called up the Duke on another planet. Phone connects with starship, starship relays signal in real time to Somewhere Else.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by DarthShady »

I believe ESP counter measures exist for a reason, and I really don't see the need to further complicate the rules, because somebody might use ESP abilities as an "I win" button. I think us moderators are more than capable of recognizing and punishing abuse, and not just in the case of ESP powers.

Also, Karlack reaction to recent events should be quite interesting... :P
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Shady, I swear to Jesus I will get back to you on Alyxia in Bragspace meeting the Pfhor.

Things just got a little complicated on the other side of the galaxy though, and I had to balance a lot of things while writing all sorts of terrible things. :)
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Force Lord »

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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by White Haven »

I admit I'm more than a little surprised to see the resistance to some vague, loose guidelines to esper abilities. I'm one of the ones who was specifically requesting that Simon lay some down, not because I wanted to crimp people running esper-heavy setups, but because it helps my writing to know in very loose terms what is and isn't possible in the universe. It's the same reason I asked 'vaguely where in a system would a hyper limit probably be,' and 'assuming non-stealth conditions, how far would ships be from the average border posts when they were picked up.' It helps give enough rough structure to the underlying mechanics of the universe and technologies that we can all write in frames of reference that possess relevance to each other.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

White Haven wrote:I admit I'm more than a little surprised to see the resistance to some vague, loose guidelines to esper abilities. I'm one of the ones who was specifically requesting that Simon lay some down, not because I wanted to crimp people running esper-heavy setups, but because it helps my writing to know in very loose terms what is and isn't possible in the universe. It's the same reason I asked 'vaguely where in a system would a hyper limit probably be,' and 'assuming non-stealth conditions, how far would ships be from the average border posts when they were picked up.' It helps give enough rough structure to the underlying mechanics of the universe and technologies that we can all write in frames of reference that possess relevance to each other.
White Haven, let me clarify:

When I give you answers to questions like that, I'm usually giving them from the "Simonverse" version of SDNW4. Which is based on a rough grab bag of approximate numbers and estimates and rules of thumb I've thrown together for my own purposes as a player, not as a mod. By and large, "Simonverse" estimates aren't enforceable on anyone, but I use them for my own purposes to create a self-consistent milieu in which I know what the hell is going on when I talk about "the battleship opens fire."

For instance, in the Simonverse, the average firepower per point of ship is... [redacted]. Now, obviously a lot of people would object to that figure, either because they want the numbers to be higher (Siege) or lower (I don't know who, but I'm sure there's someone). Likewise, the average tonnage per point of ship is [redacted]. Again, people will disagree about this- Fin's 400 point warships will be a lot bigger and more voluminous than my 400 point warships.

So none of this is, or should be, enforceable.

However, the Simonverse at least provides a common frame of reference, which is what you, White Haven, would appear to want. But there are other frames of reference. To take an obvious example, the Elysians don't actually fit in the Simonverse, because seriously what the fuck triremes. And that's just me being schizophrenic and having two mutually exclusive 'milieus' in my own head at the same time. There are other milieus created by other people, too.

To prevent clashes where milieus collide... well, that's mostly a job that the players have to settle between themselves on an ad hoc basis. I am trying not to impose my 'Simonverse' expectations on anyone else. In this case, I'm not sure it's possible to have a rule about what psychics can do that fits with 'Simonverse' standards (where ESP is relatively weak) without clipping the wings of, call them 'Siegeverse' standards (where it's glouriously powerful).

So the more I think about this, the more I think that yes I will, as Siege wants, retract my attempt to make a formal ruling. I think I will restrict myself to the following:

[modhat on]

Telepathic communication over interstellar distances is pretty darn hard. That is all.

[modhat off]

Now, if I actually see anyone doing anything bluntly abusive with psychic abilities, I will by golly come down on them like a ton of rectangular building things.

If you want the Simonverse version of what SDNW4 espers are capable of, I'll tell you (it looks a lot like the pseudo-ruling I just made), but don't consider that enforceable on anyone.

Siege wrote:I don't want a rule that is flexibly interpreted. Rules should aspire to create clarity, not confusion, and being flexible until you're not is the opposite of clear. If a rule isn't universally applicable it shouldn't be a rule; I don't think it should be universally applicable (apparently neither do you) so I oppose it vehemently. It's stifling and obnoxious especially because we already have a perfectly good way of dealing with people who flagrantly abuse the freedom the game offers to them: that method is called the moderators, and you're it.

Your job is to come down like a ton of bricks on those of us who misuse their literary discretion. It is most empathically not to threaten the creative freedom of everybody who isn't with unnecessary and nebulously bendy rules.
I can work with this, as long as I have freedom to come down like a ton of bricks without people bitching or ragequitting. Or the freedom to come down like a ton of bricks and have the fact that the target will bitch of even ragequit be accepted.

This is something that concerns me, because I remember the last time I came down like a hundred kilos of bricks (the other 900 kg being held in reserve) on someone for bending the rules: Pollux. And I remember hearing some bitching about that, although to be fair it was coming from an expected direction, and not from you. So far, if I make an arbitrary ruling not supported by some specific written rule, I expect to hear complaints, whether I actually will or not. Which makes me kind of paranoid, and probably distorts my mod-behavior.

But if I am supposed to simply have discretionary power to say "this is abusive and will be punished, this is not and will not, even though both people are nominally taking the same capability and using them in different ways..."

I can actually work with that- it's a very... Umerian way to run things. It doesn't come naturally to me, which is why I was trying to set rules instead of just making a one-off declaration.

So yeah. I can do rule by decree, if that's what people want to see, and if they will accept the basic legitimacy of my doing so as long as I don't do anything that the bulk of the player-base considers unreasonable.

Am I understanding you correctly? Because I think that may be my problem- I'm thinking in a legalistic sense instead of a 'rule by ad hoc decree' sense.
I also take umbrage to the idea that because some people don't want espers to be a "major feature of the way they run the game", nobody else should be allowed to have espers be a major feature of the way they run the game either. I don't try to legislate my preferences into the game, I would thank you kindly to do the same.

Here's a novel idea: I don't like to write about giant transforming robots. I don't tear my hair out worrying about a giant transforming robot gap, I just... don't write about giant transforming robots. Similarly if people don't like to write about psykers, they can just not write about psykers. Why does it need to be any more difficult than this?
I think part of the problem is that the "esper gap" causes problems for character-driven storylines. In particular, long-range psychic abilities raise the specter of things like easy stealing of national secrets... Which started this whole mess in the first place, because Shinn strongly implied that the Haruhiists had used psychic abilities to somehow sniff out the Klavostani plan to chase the Byzantines far enough in advance to tip the Byzantines off.

You can see how this sets troubling precedents, and how it could reasonably demand the aforementioned ton of bricks tactics. For player-on-player interactions, "I has psychics" cannot become a free pass for the question "how the hell did your guys find out my guys' secret plans fast enough to react?" Otherwise they will also become a free pass for allowing OOC knowledge of the secret plan to bleed into IC actions. Not good.

If I have a gap in giant robots or number of gigawatts generated or physical ship size, I can handwave it without having to worry too much about its effect on things like character interactions, my ability to keep plot-relevant plans secret from the enemy until the time to reveal them, and so on. With psychics, that's threatened, unless we have modhammers landing on anyone who tries to abuse the technique.

I can do that.

My natural reflex was to write a rule that would stop people from abusing it at all rather than just wait for the abuse to be tried and then hammer it. That doesn't mean I was right to do so.
EDIT:
PeZook wrote:Siege put a limit on submesonics himself: The smallest core is the size of a large room and draws a lot of power.
Indeed. Specifically I've used the terms 'stellar' and 'suprastellar' levels of energy with respect to sub-meson cores being used to facilitate long-distance real-time communication. I never intended the tech to be portable and usable by anything less than a starship; any mentions of personal communicators based on this tech are not mine. I generally know what I'm doing, and I would like to think this much would be obvious by now.
Siege?

You'll notice that I have not once tried to mod-sanction any of the technology you've presented. This is because it's fairly clear to me, too, that you know what you're doing and are using the stuff responsibly. You use submesonics responsibly, you use references to "stellar" levels of energy responsibly, so that even though this is way above the energy scales a lot of people envision their hardware working on, it doesn't matter that there's a scale discrepancy. Because, I repeat, yes you are being responsible.

I don't have to worry about you saying "I have suprastellar energies, so I can blow up planets like a Death Star!" If anyone starts complaining now about the power levels you write your civilization slinging around, I'm going to laugh in their face, not try to impose a mod sanction on you over it.

It's when I'm dealing with people who are a risk for abusing a capability, deliberately* or accidentally**, that I have to keep on my toes. And my natural reflex is to set up regulations in advance and preempt the problem, rather than rule by decree to undo it after the fact.

I can suppress the reflex, but I want to hear from other people about this.

*As with CN trying to get away with using warp gates to move some of his supposed-to-be-fixed system defenses around his territory
**It's easy to imagine, say, Force Lord doing this just because he gets carried away sometimes...
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Siege »

Alright. It's late, but I want to get this hashed out as much as I can without forcing everybody to wait another twelve hours, so here goes:

What I want in this game, Simon, is a moderator who'll let me be creative and interesting and engaging right up to the point where the interesting, creative, engaging stuff I'm doing clashes with somebody else's. At that point I expect you to first and foremost facilitate a dialog between offending parties where I fully expect to have to compromise (and where the other guy compromises on his end) and we come to some sort of a conclusion that is palpable for everybody involved.

Now, if for some unfathomable reason this isn't happening, then yes, I want you to cut through the red tape and just say that fuck it, you guys suck and since you can't figure it out for yourself, this is what's happening. I want that to happen only at that point, but yes, in such situations I trust in your ability to make the right call even if Simonverse and Siegeverse are frequently multiple galactic clusters apart from each other in terms of implied capabilities. Before it happens you can fully expect me to be my usual charming argumentative self but if that's not a problem for you then it's not a problem for me; I very much like to believe that as long as all parties involved are honest and reasonable it won't have to come to moderatorial declamations in the first place ('cause I'm a sucker for dialectics like that).

So, ultimate moderatorial sanction: yes. Pointless blanket legalism: no. I could live with occasional Judgements of Solomon that stop me in my tracks once in a blue moon should I get overly enthusiastic. Not so much with pre-emptive rules that hamper enthusiasm period.

Now. Having settled that I want to make one other tangentially related observation, not specifically meant for Simon but for everybody involved in this and other discussions: if ever in the future a rules issue or a player issue or a situation issue or whatever comes up for serious debate can we have please have that issue up for discussion here, in the OOC thread where all players can see it? It seems these days an awful lot of implied consensus is taken away from chats or semi-shared googledocs and other sources that not all players have equal access to, and frankly there's a kind of backchannel old boys wheeling and dealing vibe to that sort of thing that I can't stand. I like the chat, and I use a ton of shared docs to plan joint projects myself, and by all means vent to sympathetic ears if you feel you have to, but if there's serious issues to be raised game-wise I believe this is the place to do it, and not anywhere else.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

Siege wrote:Alright. It's late, but I want to get this hashed out as much as I can without forcing everybody to wait another twelve hours, so here goes:

What I want in this game, Simon, is a moderator who'll let me be creative and interesting and engaging right up to the point where the interesting, creative, engaging stuff I'm doing clashes with somebody else's. At that point I expect you to first and foremost facilitate a dialog between offending parties where I fully expect to have to compromise (and where the other guy compromises on his end) and we come to some sort of a conclusion that is palpable for everybody involved.
I've been trying- ask Shroomy, or Darkevilme, or Shinn, if you want second opinions, though. I haven't spoken with Fin directly during the current crisis.

A lot of that's been going on behind the scenes because, yes, a lot of the conversation is going on behind the scenes.
Now, if for some unfathomable reason this isn't happening, then yes, I want you to cut through the red tape and just say that fuck it, you guys suck and since you can't figure it out for yourself, this is what's happening. I want that to happen only at that point, but yes, in such situations I trust in your ability to make the right call even if Simonverse and Siegeverse are frequently multiple galactic clusters apart from each other in terms of implied capabilities. Before it happens you can fully expect me to be my usual charming argumentative self but if that's not a problem for you then it's not a problem for me; I very much like to believe that as long as all parties involved are honest and reasonable it won't have to come to moderatorial declamations in the first place ('cause I'm a sucker for dialectics like that).

So, ultimate moderatorial sanction: yes. Pointless blanket legalism: no. I could live with occasional Judgements of Solomon that stop me in my tracks once in a blue moon should I get overly enthusiastic. Not so much with pre-emptive rules that hamper enthusiasm period.
Gotcha. I'm naturally more inclined towards rule-by-legislation than rule-by-decree, but that's just a personality quirk. I can do rule-by-decree and quit trying to legislate if that's the moderatorial style people would prefer to see.
Now. Having settled that I want to make one other tangentially related observation, not specifically meant for Simon but for everybody involved in this and other discussions: if ever in the future a rules issue or a player issue or a situation issue or whatever comes up for serious debate can we have please have that issue up for discussion here, in the OOC thread where all players can see it? It seems these days an awful lot of implied consensus is taken away from chats or semi-shared googledocs and other sources that not all players have equal access to, and frankly there's a kind of backchannel old boys wheeling and dealing vibe to that sort of thing that I can't stand. I like the chat, and I use a ton of shared docs to plan joint projects myself, and by all means vent to sympathetic ears if you feel you have to, but if there's serious issues to be raised game-wise I believe this is the place to do it, and not anywhere else.
For my own part, I'll try to be more conscious of "bring it up in the OOC thread" if we move from (for example) me and White Haven shooting the breeze about how things work in the Simonverse version of SDNW4, and more towards actual hard and fast rule judgments.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by White Haven »

You misunderstand me a bit, Simon. I'm not looking to impose the Simon frame of reference on myself or others. What I do want is for things that are common across most/everyone to actually be defined. Almost everyone uses hyperdrives, for example, so what hyperdrives can and can't do should be defined because they ARE part of a common frame of reference, for example. I practically had to beg to get a vague idea of where hyper limits were, for example. Not everyone uses sub-mesonic cores, so nobody cares what they do outside of Siege or people interacting with Siege.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Simon_Jester »

True to a point- but we could make the same argument for firepower per point of ship value. That might vary from nation to nation, but it logically wouldn't vary by more than, say, a factor of 10. Everyone uses weapons, so don't we need some kind of common frame of reference for what they can or can't do?

Siege's 60-point ships generate "stellar" power output. Mine generate, um... "very not stellar" power output. If we proceed on that basis, it's damned hard to explain why his wouldn't wipe the floor with mine. And yet, they wouldn't; 60 points is 60 points is 60 points.

I'm much happier with "60 points is 60 points" than I am with arguments about reactor output. So, I suspect, is Siege.

So we Just Do Not Talk about weapon yields. That way, spherical masses of iron lie.

Arguing about what espers are capable of runs us smack into a lot of the same problems. Hyperdrives are less problematic, but to go into any more detail about their capabilities would take a lot more work than I care to do.

I'm quite capable of generating a table of hyper limit radii as a function of stellar spectral class, and functions to describe how other astrophysical parameters affect the limit. I just don't get paid enough to do it.
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Fingolfin_Noldor »

I have a question. If we are going to be so uppity over what is essentially a technological device and what it can do and what it can't do, never mind what an Esper can do, does that imply we are totally against any notion of technological development in this version of SDNW?
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Re: SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VII

Post by Dark Hellion »

I would also like to support the idea that the OoC thread be used more often for questions, story coordination, suggestions, working out ideas and for bringing up legitimate problems with rules, continuity or mischaracterization. However, I would really like to avoid having it become the OoC Court of Approval were any post someone simply dislikes is brought up for nitpicking, which it has been used for in the past.

I would hope that we could all be mature enough that we can work stories in the open without fear of metagaming or escalation.
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