Modern World STGOD Concept

[KlavoHunter]

For some reason, I keep imagining that Cascadia has a Klavostani dreadnaught as a prize ship from the war, now as a museum/tourist attraction/irritant to the communists...


As far as the start date and its technology, I'm torn. It is pretty snazzy to write about our world leaders and corporate execs and off-duty supercommandoes palling it up on Facespace with their smartphones in between drinking, signing accords, screwing each other over, screwing each other, worshipping dolphins, etc.

On the other hand with an earlier start, it's possible that the introduction of these technologies a few years into the game would provoke the collapse of some of our nations, and some of us might want to play that drama out instead.

I am leaning more towards wanting roughly the same modern technology of 2014, so we can see Umerian scholar-administrators reading from the Little Blue Book app that comes on their smartypants smartphones...

[Simon_Jester]

Umerians are actually pretty slow adopters of mobile device technology, but yeah.

[Thanas]

I would be willing to compromise up to 2005, but I really liked the idea of a 2000 start period because of those nice, round numbers, and the symbolism of the start of a new century and millennium.

Thanas: I've got no issue with Rheinland grinding down Britonia's fleet, but Nippon's too? I'm not allowed to have a decisive battle where Cascadian naval forces break offensive Nipponese strength in the Oyashima Islands? The war with Klavostan/Komradstan will be mostly a ground and air war, I mean. And it still allows what's left of their fleet to fall against the Rheinlanders when the time comes, as Nippon is assaulted on both sides.

Nah, you're fine - I just don't want every nation to go "We sunk Briton dreadnoughts" especially not when it all was over a few colonies.

Actually, one ironic thing you might have is that the Nipponese might fit very well with Rheinland's hatred of strat bombers, because Cascadia does wage a strategic bombing campaign on them after securing naval supply lanes to Fuso and getting the local airbases built up.

Good.

[Siege]

Tell me - when a San Dorado mercenary corporation talks about its trademark tactics, does it really mean that they're trademarked?

Certainly the names are. No military force in the world can withstand an assault by San Dorado's most expensive lawyers!

Could we just... subtract 15 from the years in which everything happens? So (if we change no dates from their OTL counterparts) the first nuclear reactors appear some time around 1930-40, the first airplane flies in 1888 instead of 1903, and so on?

Sounds like a good compromise to me.

[Steve]

For some reason, I keep imagining that Cascadia has a Klavostani dreadnaught as a prize ship from the war, now as a museum/tourist attraction/irritant to the communists...

It will be kept at harbor in San Diego, where the Nuevo Granadian population will be especially overjoyed at keeping it active. Every time some detente-seeking government has proposed "returning the vessel to the Klavostani nation", the locals go apeshit and write their Congressmen to say "NO!"

As for Jester's concern of not remembering what was available then, we did have PDAs... but I'm cool with saying smartphone tech and some related technologies advanced more swiftly. OTOH, saying tha for every technology means shifting the wars as well, I mean, tthe 1940s-50s conflicts would have 1950s-60s tech now and such. I'd rather just scrunch advances sometime in the last quarter-century.

Oh, and.... thank you Jester for reminding me that I am old. Thirteen in 2000, sheesh, I was thirteen in the mid-90s....

[Simon_Jester]

Maybe we could put the date things up to a vote? It's not a matter of great importance.

Steve: Yes, you had PDAs in 2000, but Wikipedia was a year from being invented, digital cameras were only just now starting to replace film, hybrid cars were just getting introduced on the market... I mean, it's a world very easily recognizable from today, but as I said, it's different enough that if I want to be faithful to the timeline I have to think about it. Which is what I'm trying to avoid doing precisely because the differences are too small to make the effort pay off.

Especially because a lot of what we want is the freedom to imagine a different/cooler world, containing different/cooler stuff. And with a few exceptions like space travel, it's harder to justify that if our baseline for comparison is "real life in 2000" instead of "real life in 2014."

Packing sixty-five years worth of progress into fifty years is, hm... a better solution than sticking us with 2000-level technology. I don't have a good sense for the total world population or GDP here, and those are fairly important parameters. If it turns out that we have more 'developed' nations than real life, then the rapid technological progress is no surprise.

[madd0ct0r]

Simon, we have more developed nations then in real life. for realsies

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'd prefer it to be 2014-tech in a fictional year 2000, as that better fits my "we're super awesome science-fascists with the best smartphones" citizens.

Incidentally, as anyone worked out cultural/legal details for their nations? Stuff like voting age, Bill of Rights, same-sex marriage, shit like that? Strikes me as it could be very important in dealings with other nations.

Also, Thanas: Is my revised naval combat acceptable now? I made the changes you suggested, making them old second-line dreads sold to the Colonies, and a Nipponeses cruiser/carrier force that linked up with some other colonial forces.

Additionally, what sort of space infrastructure do we have? Is there one nation's GPS/satellite communications system that they let everyone else use, or do we have to build our own network?

If it's the second, would the Kingdoms of Arcadia and Corona be interested in a joint venture?

[Thanas]

No objection to the history. I think your naval forces are way too large but we'll deal with that on PM.

Additionally, what sort of space infrastructure do we have? Is there one nation's GPS/satellite communications system that they let everyone else use, or do we have to build our own network?

If it's the second, would the Kingdoms of Arcadia and Corona be interested in a joint venture?

Just so that we can have a global standard, Rheinland operates a global satellite network which it freely shares with customers. Others of course are more than welcome to build their own.

[Steve]

Okay, since I think we have everyone placed, we should start generating NPCs.

Looking at things, the only person who's not placed is Sorchus, who aside from generally asking to put some countries on the southern continent, has yet to actually say where. I'll place them myself if he wants, but I'dm like an idea on where.

Anyway, map with names so far.

[Eternal_Freedom]

In my history I established that there were at least four NPC-Britonian colonies on the continent next to me, three of which were destroyed in 1944. It would be nice to have at least one similarly-sized nation to Orion on that continent, so I can have a war without pissing off PC nations.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Additionally, what sort of space infrastructure do we have? Is there one nation's GPS/satellite communications system that they let everyone else use, or do we have to build our own network?

If it's the second, would the Kingdoms of Arcadia and Corona be interested in a joint venture?

I'd be up for that.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Excellent

[Siege]

I'd like the middle of our continent to be a crazy plateau of mountain-ringed terra nullius full of jungles and monsters and lost temples and such. Cuts down on the need for lots of NPCs and gives us something to explore.

[Steve]

TJ is making a new map in another, non JPEG format. I think I finally drove him insane due to JPEG compression artifacts making the map look like crap...

[Steve]

I'd like the middle of our continent to be a crazy plateau of mountain-ringed terra nullius full of jungles and monsters and lost temples and such. Cuts down on the need for lots of NPCs and gives us something to explore.

The (Hermit) Kingdom of Muntab, strictly isolationist, and barely recognized by any existing state as it is, with its lands barely mapped. Sometimes explorers go in and find great treasures. Sometimes they don't come back. And usually its both.

[Simon_Jester]

I approve of having a big blob of terra nullius on the larger southern continent (I don't REALLY want everyone to call it Australis, for a number of reasons, among them that it's hard to come up with a good adjective form for the name). Some of it may belong to Muntab. Not all of it, if that's OK?

I'd enjoy the idea of part of that terra nullius being adjacent to my territory for a number of reasons, though I have one idea that may be too outre for the mods. I'll pass it to them privately in good time.

Simon, we have more developed nations then in real life. for realsies

Heh. Seriously, I haven't tried to count population or anything; I might well do exactly that in a few weeks. But I believe you are correct.

Umeria has not contributed much to scientific progress except a steady stream of graduate students in everyone else's universities. They're working on it, but are only just now getting close enough to the forefront in technical infrastructure that they can produce meaningful results.

I'd prefer it to be 2014-tech in a fictional year 2000, as that better fits my "we're super awesome science-fascists with the best smartphones" citizens.

Incidentally, as anyone worked out cultural/legal details for their nations? Stuff like voting age...

The last theoretically meaningful election was around 1913 and you had to be 21, so... if you're a hundred and eight you got to vote once?

Bill of Rights,

What's that? We don't have a bill of rights, we have best practices.

same-sex marriage,

Umerian technocrats are too legalistic to allow same sex marriage easily. They would be relatively quick, however, to create an entirely different category of civil union relationship... once they got round to deciding it was necessary and proper.

shit like that?

Treat it in the wastewater facility and ship it out as fertilizer.

Additionally, what sort of space infrastructure do we have? Is there one nation's GPS/satellite communications system that they let everyone else use, or do we have to build our own network?

It's functionally impossible to make GPS that proprietary unless you deliberately make it harder for your own citizens to use with encryption and such. Umeria does not have its own satellite navigation constellation but does have the blueprints to launch one, and they launched three testbed satellites for such a network.

Umeria has been launching small satellites since, oh, probably the early to mid-sixties or so*. Commercial launch has been available from Umeria since about 1975*, and they put their first man into orbit using a native-built and designed capsule some time around 1993*. They are working on a lunar orbiter probe-bot.

They are probably happy participants in some international space station program, but are working on native capability both in an attempt to get a position on the commercial market and so that they have that capability if the international program goes south (always a major concern in Umerian minds; they're rather nationalist and protectionist, and a capability their state does not directly control isn't really theirs).

*This assumes the "subtract fifteen years" timeline. Add 12 to 15 years to everything otherwise.

[Steve]

My only big concern with "2014 tech in 2000" is that we'll more quickly run into the problem SDNW2 had; when we hit the frontiers of what we can reasonably estimate for technology and shift into speculative tech. SDNW2 saw fighting over fusion reactor concepts, for instance.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, to be honest I'd rather have that problem than the problem of "all we can do technologically is invent everything that's already been invented in the past ten years IRL." I don't have that much urge to relive the "OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE NEW KILLER APP" moments of my twenties.

I mean, do we really want to play in a world where people are going to be seriously impressed by whoever invents the iPod?

If we were playing farther back in history, say 1950, that would be more interesting because it would be an educational experience to do the research and figure out what was done technologically, and why. But 2000 is too recent. It's just far enough back that we have to stop and remember what year it is, far enough for 'that's anachronistic' to be a serious complaint... but not far enough back to be its own distinct historical time period.

Although I also have ulterior motives, because I'm modeling after a nation whose economic growth curve was quite high throughout the 2000-2014 timeframe, and it's more fun to play a miniaturized, slightly wealthier version of 2014 China than a miniaturized, slightly wealthier version of 2000 China.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I agree with Simon.

As for what was said about SDNW2 regarding arguing about fusion reactors, we could draw up a list of technology that is declared "50 years off" or whatever. So no fusion reactors, no space elevators, no quantum computing, etc.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, there's a real prototype fusion reactor out there- but it's not economical technology.

Frankly, this is one area where I think we should welcome some engagement. Removing too many of the things players argue about in an STGOD means removing too many of the things they care about, and technological achievement is one of the less harmful areas.

I mean, take things to the extreme, imagine an STGOD where the players can't do anything that might provoke argument, such as:

-Be unambiguously first to accomplish something
-Fight a war
-Win a war
-Criticize or attack foreign figures
-Develop novel technologies or ideas that someone else pooh-poohs.

At some point, you've removed so much that the game stops being fun.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Good point. How about we agree that new tech ideas have to be run past th mods in private before being announced? So we can get a check on feasibility.

[Esquire]

Makes sense to me.

Speaking of making sense, what do people think a reasonable population for Apelia would be? It's smaller than Japan - sorry, Nippon - but much less mountainous and has been basically the same country for the past two millenia, more or less. I was thinking something on the order of 95-105 million people, just a bit less than modern Japan.

Vaguely related; would anybody mind the cyan region between Omnia and I being sort of a joint protectorate of the both of us? The way I figured, it could be a cultural melting pot that was fought over once every fifteen years or so up until the late Renaissance, at which point the Omnians and the Apelians decided to make sure that since they couldn't decide who got it, they'd at least keep other powers out. Relatively sparsely populated and mostly left to its own devices except for foreign policy, which Omnia and Apelia control through a mix of influence and outright force when needed. San Dorado could get in on it too, I suppose, acting to protect its business interests, which wouldn't be served by a strong central government in the region.

[TimothyC]

Having tired of the artifact'd versions of the map, I've produced one with no artifacts. I'm happy to make edits for people, but I won't take JPEG's .

[Siege]

Incidentally, as anyone worked out cultural/legal details for their nations? Stuff like voting age, Bill of Rights, same-sex marriage, shit like that? Strikes me as it could be very important in dealings with other nations.

Own a share and you can vote in board meetings at age five for all we care. Don't own a share? You're shit out of luck.

You don't have rights. You have whatever privileges the corporations extend to you. The amount of privilege you have is directly tied to the amount of money and influence you command.

In San Dorado there's no state recognized marriage, because there's no state. You can enter into a contract with whoever you like, and with as many people as you like.

Additionally, what sort of space infrastructure do we have? Is there one nation's GPS/satellite communications system that they let everyone else use, or do we have to build our own network?

The largest corporations have their own private satellite networks. You can rent bandwith though, if you have the money.

The (Hermit) Kingdom of Muntab, strictly isolationist, and barely recognized by any existing state as it is, with its lands barely mapped. Sometimes explorers go in and find great treasures.

If this is a reference I'm not sure to what.

I approve of having a big blob of terra nullius on the larger southern continent (I don't REALLY want everyone to call it Australis, for a number of reasons, among them that it's hard to come up with a good adjective form for the name). Some of it may belong to Muntab. Not all of it, if that's OK?

It wouldn't really be terra nullius if it belonged to someone, would it? I'm open to hearing suggestions for the name of our continent. Corazal? Utatlan? Maybe I'm thinking too Maya.

As for what was said about SDNW2 regarding arguing about fusion reactors, we could draw up a list of technology that is declared "50 years off" or whatever. So no fusion reactors, no space elevators, no quantum computing, etc.

That's way to restrictive for my liking. First, in the last few SDNW games time progressed so slowly that the tech you had at game start was basically what you were stuck with unless the game would last for literally years. Second, I feel that we'd be cutting off too many potentially interesting stories by saying 'nope can't build XYZ potential plot point' right off the bat.

If people can build a cool interactive story around the introduction of biotics and the subsequent rise of a bionic supersoldier cadre that threatens to take over their nation then by all means go wild. I don't want that sort of thing killed off by arguments like 'well that's clearly not realistic with 20XX tech'. Likewise I genuinely don't care if it's technically impossible to build a flying aircraft carrier or an army of robot drones or a sentient AI. As a moderator I really only care about the way you deploy that sort of thing: be a munchkin and I'll make it blow up in your face so fast it'll make your head spin, but do cool stuff with it and as far as I'm concerned you're good to go.

Just assume that at game start the tech level is roughly analogous to our world today. You could have one or two crazy projects waiting in the wings, but try to develop them as the game progresses. That way they serve as another plot hook, and are therefore more than just a piece of whizbang tech.

Good point. How about we agree that new tech ideas have to be run past th mods in private before being announced? So we can get a check on feasibility.

This is probably a good thing to do every time you wonder if something you're about to do is off limits or not