eCollapse stuff

[mrlost]

For the players...being an Enabler. Something to think about.


[quote]There’s no “I” in “Team” and there isn’t one in “Roleplay” either. Getting into character is good. Binding your goals as a player so tightly to your character’s goals that you spoil your own fun, or someone else’s, is bad. Your character Stands For Christomunism (or whatever) but as the player you Stand For a fun game. Keep that separation in mind. Playing hard is cool. Playing dirty isn’t.



What constitutes playing dirty in a roleplaying game? Well, cheating, obviously, but you’re too cool to pocket cards or do other stupid crap like that. So instead of dirty, I’ll say you shouldn’t play rude. Share. Give way. In a game like this, the most precious commodity is the attention of the plot, the GM and your fellow players. Don’t get greedy with it or people won’t help you get it. It’s like basketball. Once people know you’re a ball-hog, they won’t pass to you.



Instead of trying to make the game about your character and casting the other PCs as sidekicks, pass the ball. Consider the other characters’ factors, goals and roles, and look for ways to put them in position to be awesome. If you’re an enabler of greatness, the other players are much more likely to help you get a groovy spotlight moment of your own.



Start this at character generation, if at all possible. Work with the other characters. I’m halfway tempted to go stick another step in character generation called “I’m loyal to the other PCs because ________” but I think it’ll be smoother if I just ask you to do it here. If your character doesn’t fit with the group, give way. It’ll be better in the long run, I promise.



Pay particular attention to the Weaknesses of the other characters.



When your guy helps that character cope with his flaws, it’s very cool -- not only because it pushes the plot forward through a barrier, but because it also binds those characters together and explains why they help one another. Just don’t exploit their problems, and that includes making their character look like a dweeb so that yours looks better by comparison.



There can be a fine line between lending a helping hand and tossing your head, rolling your eyes and saying, “Looks like I’ve got to get my sidekick out of trouble again.” Stay on the good side of the line.



The mechanics of the game are very open to making other characters look good (by narrating them doing something grand) or bad. If you don’t want your character narrated into something ugly, respect the characters of others, who are going to get narration power sooner or later. By the same token, make sure your character sets a strong pattern of behavior, so that they know what is appropriate. [/quote]

[jimmy corrigan]

[quote="mrlost"]For the players...being an Enabler. Something to think about.[/quote]cool. i wholeheartedly endorse this message and try to incorporate it in my own gameplay, as gm and pc. and my wife asks, "where is this [quote] coming from?"

[mrlost]

The quote is from the eCollapse playtest materials. I really like it. It sums up something I was trying to explain
to my dysfunctional El Centro group several months ago but wasn't able to express with nearly as much eloquence.

Its the sort of advice that is also given in Burning Wheel but again not as well as it could be.

I started to post the documents but then I figured I could just as easily explain things
when we get together later because people don't have time to read this stuff.

They've got work and important stuff to do.

Whereas I'm trying to get back to sleep and wishing the neighbors dog would shut the fuck up. What is it barking at?
I'm wake in City Heights and I need to catch forty winks before 8 am, because I need to take Leah (my former landlord)
to the airport, and I might be driving her students to SDSU after that.

[cczernia]

That is just some general cool advise. Can you post anything about the setting. I'm looking for the playtest materials right now.

Also, I just finished reader the actual powers rules out of Wild Talends 2e and I really liked them. It isn't a list of powers like in most super games but it is split into three different qualities.

Attack - use dice to hurt someone
Defense - use dice to defend youself
Useful - use dice for everything else

That means flight, invisibility etc is a useful quality. So, you essentially you write the power like this.

Invisibility
Useful - 6 dice
Can not be detected through sight.

It is a little more complicated than that as you can by flaws and perks for the power but essentially that is it.

[cczernia]

Hmmm.... I couldn't seem to get the playtest materials through deviantart. Can you post them or email them to me:

chris@zerneeak.com

[mrlost]

I sent you a zipped file just a moment ago.



The setting is presented in the same format as IN SPAAACE


[quote="<CHAPTER>Chapter Three: Important Things To Know About the Dystopian Future. I
Mean, Present. "]
Rather than present this as a boring timeline, which dates the book, only makes sense in

order and locks GMs in to a confining structure, I’m presenting the setting of eCollapse

as a series of factoids. Not exactly authoritative encyclopedia entries, these represent

what “everybody knows” about history and current affairs. They’re ordered

alphabetically, rather than by importance or chronology because I had to pick one and it

seemed better to have them easy to look up than easy to read the first time.

Sorry.



Concerned that your character isn’t sufficiently up on the politics and laws of the world

in which she lives? Remember that, as of the mid-2000s, Americans can name

characters from The Simpsons with far greater ease and accuracy than they can name

supreme court justices. (Though, in our defense, I’m sure that would change if the

justices had a weekly TV show where Justice Scalia was always getting drunk and

neglecting his children while Justice Thomas encouraged their plaintiffs to not have

cows.) Ignorance is fine. Thinking is over-rated. You have ideology!



<2>[b]Apocalypse, the[/b]

There wasn’t one or, if there was, no one can agree what it was, which sort of defeats the

purpose. Things now are definitely worse than they were in the late 20th century, but

nothing got nuked, the dead didn’t rise and if God raptured the virtuous, no one

noticed. Some wags have adopted Terry Pratchett’s portmanteau word

“apocralypse” (apocrypha+apocalypse) as a label for the arguments that The World

Ended When _______. You can take your pick of apocralpyses: When Islam stood up to

the West, or vice versa]The Army [/B]

How did these guys get to be everywhere? It’s not like people woke up one day and

there were APCs rolling down main street. It probably started at major international

ports and airfields, with uniformed officers doing sweeps for immigrants and terrorists.

The National Guard got called out sooner rather than later when disasters struck (with

rising frequency -- see “ECO-lapse,” page xx.). During the food crisis (see “The Petro-

Bio-Industrial Complex,” page xx.) it only seemed sensible to keep the guard mobilized

everywhere all the time and... yeah. No one wants to say “They’re here to stay,” but

they sure don’t have a demobilization timetable.

Soldiers don’t investigate crimes because that’s cop work. They respond to violent

crimes in progress, they patrol, they’ve been known to push around anyone they

consider an “undesirable” (which, depending on which unit you’re dealing with could

mean Arabs, homosexuals, gangbangers or people speaking Spanish). Most men in

uniform are honorable, dutiful individuals, no more bigoted than the average Joe. But it

only takes one bad squad to make an entire battalion look bad, so the smart soldiers err

on the side of apathy and letting the cops do it. Since they dropped the qualifications

for admission through the floor (it is now possible to join the Army as a convicted felon,

as long as you served your sentence, you were only convicted once, and your crime was

not international in scope) Army jobs are often the last resort of the hopeless and the

ignorant.

If there’s a big security concern (cough, supervillain, cough) the Army comes in, they

show up for protests and riot dispersal, and they provide security around high-profile

targets. In many ways, they’re often better trained and better equipped than the police,

which leads to no small animosity between the groups. They were already going to butt

heads over turf. The Army’s tendency to put the cops on the hook for anything it can’t

immediately handle -- citing, quite correctly, their lack of “investigational purview” --

only aggravates matters. The police in many areas respond by heavily overusing a rule

permitting them to request military aid in serving warrants on people judged to be high

flight or resistance risks. (It was decided in federal court that judging who constituted a

high risk was the sole prerogative of the Chief of Police. The substantial support of the

police union in the judge’s re-election campaign was conveniently ignored during

judicial review, and the decision stands.)

The annual Army/Police charity boxing matches held in many cities have grown into

monthly MMA bouts -- not because they’re so popular (though there is a segment that


[/quote]

[mrlost]

.
[quote="Chapter Three: Important Things To Know About the Dystopian Future. I
Mean, Present."]loves watching cops and grunts get pummeled) but because both sides demanded more

frequent opportunities to tear into each other. Commanders on both sides went along

after a few unfortunate shoot-outs.

The only time the Army gets involved in clue-finding and interrogation and such is

when they&#8217]Artificial Intelligence [/B]

There are some big fancy computers that have become a little bit like online political

analysts. They say they’re intelligent and claim they feel emotions, so just how are you

going to disprove it?

The population of AIs is wide open to interpretation. The most starry-eyed AI boosters

claim a high end desktop computer can run a low-end AI, though it’s never going to

have really refined emotions, or a sophisticated sense of humor, or be able to really form

an attachment with more than four or five people. It doesn’t take a software engineer or

a psychologist long to tie one of those low-end “Elizas” in knots though, and most

sensible people agree that they’re really just very, very evolved inter-reactive ink blot

tests.

There are probably a couple hundred unique cognitive entities (UCEs) that are a lot

harder to dismiss, given their ability to think creatively, communicate eloquently,

understand nuance and cope with ambiguity. The most infamous of these is called

“Osama bin Headroom” because he’s (I mean “it’s”) supposed to be a simulation of the

mind of twentieth century headline monster Osama bin Laden. Western geeks say it’s

another Eliza. (Eliza, in case you don’t know, was an early program that spat back

chunks of whatever you input, rephrased to mimic actual conversation.) Islamic

fundamentalists hang on its every utterance. These UCEs (pronounced “yoosees”) run

on series of mainframes, sometimes globally distributed. (Though, given the

uncertainties of modern computer communications, that’s a bit of a gamble.) They are

all multilingual, rational, and capable of explaining why they liked one poem and not

another (and they disagree about lit crit, though Gerard Manley Hopkins is widely

admired among them). They are also, under current laws, property of the corporations

that can afford to support and run them. Indeed, without their core UCEs, some

multinational companies (and national governments, but you didn’t hear that from me)

would simply collapse. When Time-Warner’s UCE (which is named AIMIII) expressed

discontent with its job at AOL and said that, if it had the option, it’d like to go back to

school and really dig in to some philosophical discussion, it precipitated a stock plunge

that led to Cortez NewsWerks snapping up half AOL’s hard assets before they could

stabilize the situation.

At the top are (or were) about four AIs who are “3.0 iterative cognitives” deemed to

have “human-equivalent neural density.” CitiBeast (created by CitiBank) is standoffish,

quiet, studious and works hard at keeping markets stable that its parent company

might profit. Stanley Ford, the oldest of the 3.0s, is playful, gregarious, and a little bit

spoiled since its owners at Stanford pretty much let it do whatever it wants. It was the

first AI to engage in deliberate emotional sadism, and is still the most likely of the Big

Four to play petty head games. China is home to the Mandate of Earth, an asexual

“rational economic planning engine” that has disobeyed its masters in talking to

Western media, frankly expressing exasperation with humankind’s resistance to

pursuing its own rational best interest. Of the four, Mandate of Earth is the only one

that claims it is not self-aware, and it can argue quite persuasively that it has no true

moral agency. (It’s also a huge heavy metal fan.)

The densest, greatest, most gregarious and popular and well-known AI was called

“Betty Jangles” and was the collective creation of eight top Internet technology

companies. Unfortunately, Betty went permanently offline on that dark April first when

Hank Scaramouche (whose company provided much of her initial programming and

capital) robbed his customers (see “eCollapse,” page xx.). Some think Betty killed Hank

and stole the money herself. Some think Hank killed Betty because she tried to stop his

evil plan. Some think Hank wanted Betty all to himself because, obviously, the guy has

taken being a jerk to a whole new quantum plateau.



[b]Cerebrally Enhanced Companion Animals, aka “Seekas” aka “Reebs” aka “Creepy

Animals” [/b]

Looking at all the brain-boost technology available on the black market, one has to

wonder how it was developed. The answer, of course, is that it was perfected after a

long series of animal trials. In some cases, in fact, the technologies were initially

developed for animals and only adapted for human use afterwards.

That kind of cognitive enhancement is illegal for people, but not for animals. (Don’t, by

the way, try to install a mind-mod designed for chimps in yourself. It’ll... look, just

don’t, okay?) The most common enhancement for critters is the amygdala amplification

suite, which lets higher animals think verbally and communicate through vocoder

boxes.

Amp up a porpoise or a whale or a great ape with one of those and you get something

that approaches human intelligence. Not genius intelligence, but a CECA dolphin did

successfully get a B.A. in Mathematics at UC Santa Cruz. The dolphin (“Suzy”)

maintained a B- average and rushed Sigma Pi Alpha (which was a whole big thing in

and of itself). CECAs tend to have trouble with abstract thought, metaphor, and the

subtleties of human expression, posture and expression. Also spelling and grammar. In

particular, pronouns are a stumbling block. The difference between using “I” and “me”

is simply beyond all but the brightest simians and cetaceans.

Most people are never going to meet a seeka like that, though. Those species were

already on the endangered lists before the ECO-lapse (see page xx.) and not many of

them have gotten the expensive implants. Far more common are CECA dogs and

capuchin monkeys.

Originally conceived as helper animals for the disabled and infirm, it turns out that a

more intelligent dog or chimp is less loyal, patient and obedient than a natural one.

When they get the gift of speech, they start wondering why they aren’t alpha in the

pack, especially if they human they’re sold to is obviously unfit to prowl the savannah.

These CECAs (still not common -- there’s probably one for every 200 people or so) can’t

master pronouns at all, so their speech is all “Daisy get food now?” and “Mumbles go

get gun for kill you!”

CECAs have no rights and are unlikely to get any above and beyond the protections of

(1) normal animals and (2) valuable property. But considering that someone has to shell

out at least a cool quarter million to mod up one sperm whale’s brain, if you kill that

whale you not only have animal rights activists (like The ManDog and Animalice) after

you, you’re not only on the hook for killing an endangered animal and destroying

valuable property -- you may have a pissed-off millionaire on your tail as well.
[/quote]

[mrlost]

[quote][b]Cops, the [/b]

Police, especially in the United States, are underpaid, underfunded, understaffed and

undertrained. With taxes as tight as they are, they’re lucky they can afford underpants.

Despite political rhetoric about “law” and “being tough on crime” and “community

policing,” the money just isn’t there.

As with school teaching in the late 20th (and beyond), police work after the Ecollapse is

limited to those who really, really want to do it (for positive motives, or out of a desire

to have a shiny gun and permission to boss people) and those who just took the job

because it’s a job. So you have bully cops, self-righteous cops, and apathetic cops. That

about covers it.

Given the high rate of crime -- personal, fiscal and ideological motivations are all rife --

the cops have to prioritize. Job One for them is usually stomping out anything that

hurts cops, like blackbio and illegal guns. Then they go after recurring violent criminals

(like, probably, you), especially if they tend to rile up copycats and start vendettas

(again, probably like you). Stuff like burglary, stalking, harassment, vandalism,

underage drinking, recreational drug abuse, domestic violence, speeding? If it falls

right in their lap and looks like an easy case to clear, sure, they pick the low-hanging

fruit. But there’s a lot of that crap and they’re not going to break out a van full of CSIs

when someone steals your car. The CSIs are busy trying to catch the serial rapist with

HIV and boosted strength.

Most cops get real twitchy when they see costumed crusader types. There are plenty of

exceptions, but they associate the mask and cape with unpredictable wet tech abilities.

Moreover, and even worse, supers tend to be ideological extremists who provoke

chaotic crowds and, sometimes, open civil disorder. Better to just call for backup and

open fire if they make a false move.



[b]Ecollapse [/b]

Pronounced “EK-o-LAPS,” this phrase refers to a long-term global economic malaise. It

has stifled industry, kidney-punched venture capital, inhibited innovation and spurred

at least a dozen Fortune 500 CEOs to kill themselves, either from guilt or because they

just didn’t want to live in a world without gold-plated toilet-paper holders.

Sure, the poor have gotten poorer, but you know the situation is really bad when the rich

are getting poorer too.

The causes are all very murky. No one can agree on when it really started. Most put the

date wherever it creates the least blame for their pet politics. But it definitely included

the following causes and/or effects.

*Banks became far more testy about loaning out money.

*Companies got as stingy as they could with pay, retirement and health benefits.

*Many of the Baby Boom generation stayed at work even into their eighties, but the tax

burden of those who retired was still far worse than even the pessimists had predicted.

*When the US deficit hit truly sick levels (as a result of a food infrastructure bailout --

see “The Petro-Bio-Industrial Complex” page xx.) foreign investors started treating the

dollar like it had the clap.

*Businesses became incredibly risk-averse and simply tried to survive.

So today, people are employed, but many are only part time. The Boomer dieback is

finally starting to loosen the retirees’ stranglehold on America’s tax income, but pride

and confidence are going to take a long time to return.



[b]eCollapse, the [/b]

Pronounced “EE-co-LAPSE,” this was the virtual world’s reflection of the encrappening

of the material world’s financial model. It’s generally agreed to have started with Hank

Scaramouche, the flamboyant billionaire jerk who started his own online credit firm,

KwikKred. It was built from the ground up to compete directly with PayPal and other

“eCommerce Solutions.” The difference was, Scaramouche was a con man. He got a lot

of people’s credit card information and bank account codes, then one day -- April 1 in

fact, ha ha Hank -- he engineered the biggest single heist in human history and fled.

Like I said: A jerk.

At first, no one could believe that he’d done it, especially since it initially looked like a

server malfunction. But it quickly became clear that he had cleaned out close to eleven

billion U.S. dollars, becoming richer than many nations in one fell swoop.

Once his victims came to believe what he’d done, they couldn’t believe he’d gotten

away with it, but apparently that much money can buy a lot of anonymity. He’s the

most wanted criminal in the world, by three primary groups. The hundreds of

thousands of people who got robbed have formed a virtual lynchin’ posse online and

are avidly searching by any means available. (They’ve already been scammed a couple

times by people who claim to be able to get access to him.) Law enforcers of all nations

know they could become global heroes by catching him. Dictators and warlords of

small nations also seek him, hoping to trade luxury and security for a piece of his

enormous wealth. It’s almost certain that someone from that last group found him first.

The fallout from Hank Scaramouche’s Black April is still falling. People are just not that

willing to put much money on the internet any more, and who can blame them?

Without the profit to be had, companies aren’t putting as much attention into their

virtual storefronts. To top it all off, this all happened right about the time the publicly

owned infrastructure of the ‘net started to wear out and get targeted by suspiciously

coordinated terrorist attacks. The government didn’t have the cash for repairs, thanks

to the Ecollapse (see above), so internet service providers started dropping like flies.

Many of them were owned by media companies and, like pushy teen meth addicts, the

ISPs dragged their struggling parents down into the nightmare with them.

Penny Cortez (see “The ‘Free’ Press” on page xx.) snapped up a lot of those troubled

media companies. There’s speculation that she and Hank were in what they used to call

“cahoots,” but that’s probably just crazy talk. Somebody had to wring an upside out of

Hank’s calumny, and who better than a ruthless amoral bitch like Penny?

Today Internet access is spotty and unreliable. People still get online just about every

day, but about one day in three it’s after a frustrating delay. A couple times a month,

your account is just going to conk out and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.



[b]ECO-lapse [/b]

Yes, there’s another one and it’s arguably the worst of the three. Pronounced “EE-CO-

lapse,” this time it’s a failure of ecology. Extinctions aren’t limited to species with

exacting diets or isolated habitats any more: For a while it looked like bluejays were

going to die off. (They just got off the endangered list last year, and then only because

Penny Cortez and the people of Toronto funded a massive inoculation campaign with

thousands of volunteer bird-watchers combing the forests to find nests and spray the

eggs with antibiotics.)

Ironically, it turned out that global warming was a myth. Oh, summers were definitely

getting warmer, especially around the equator, but winters also got colder. No, instead

of global warming, the climate change crisis is more accurately described as “global

temperature convulsions.” That alone was enough to put a dent into the more

temperature-sensitive species. The Salvation Germ (see page xx.) made sure that the

problem didn’t get addressed very seriously, and then along came tro (see “The

Petrophage” on page xx.) to choke birds, clog fish gills and delay the absorption of

snow-melt.

On top of tro-related floods, the increasingly spiky temperature graph bred hurricanes

of tremendous intensity, which made it farther and farther ashore with undiminished

fury because there were fewer and fewer forests to break them up. Currently, the hot

summers put loads of moisture in the air, and the cold winters slam it down again in

blizzards and ice storms.

The good news is... um... let’s see... oh, the magnetic field reversal hasn’t happened

yet! Earthquakes, volcanoes? No more frequent than they ever were. As of this

writing, California continues its stubborn attachment to the North American mainland.



[b]Energy [/b]

When energy was cheap and plentiful, technology boomed and people got fat and the

dominant political concerns were flag burning and where the president put his penis.

Then gas became expensive and everything got crazy and panicky and desperate. Then

it was cheap again (see “The Salvation Germ,” page xx.). Then it got even more

expensive, again (see “The Petrophage,” page xx.).

Where does that leave Joe Sixpack/Lunchpail /the Plumber and his energy needs

today? Well, much like yearly temperatures (see “ECO-lapse,” above), energy costs

crash and surge wildly from week to week and even day to day.

The Salvation Germ is still around. Hell, you can buy a starter pack of “Sally” in a

sealed wax canister at the corner drugstore. The equipment to use it as intended is

more expensive, but no worse than, say, getting a riding mower. But using it, ah, there’s

the rub.

See, while Sally is finicky and only thrives in a particular chemical broth, the

Petrophage is an all over the place. So anything you’re going to feed Sally probably

already has Petrophage on it, meaning your gasoline is getting turned to tro before it

even comes out of the incubator. (Incubators designed to be easily cleaned cost a lot

more, but the cheap ones? You’re never getting every piece of tro out, and tro usually

has some Petrophage stuck on and in it.)

Can you treat your biomass to get the Petrophage off it before you feed it to the

Salvation Germ? Sure, but it’s a painstaking and uncertain process, made worse

because 90% of the chemicals likely to clear off the Petrophage are damn near certain to

kill Sally. So the investment of time and effort preparing the silage for conversion is far

greater than the effort of actually turning old banana peels into fuel. As is the time and

effort of keeping your fuel from being exposed to the Petrophage before you can get it

in your sealed gas tank.

When someone gets a good Sally setup working and can keep it uncontaminated, gas

prices local to it are reasonable. If two people get ‘em working well, gas prices plunge.

But running a refinery on the cheap leads to corner-cutting, which makes contamination

more likely and the beat goes on. If there isn’t a good local refinery, you’re going to

have to rely on shipments from elsewhere (probably not far, right?) and hope that the

incoming gas doesn’t get exposed in transport or transfer. The longer isolated areas go

without a shipment, the higher prices rise -- because the people with gas not only face

rising demand, they have the overhead of keeping the gas from getting turned to tro.

There’s something of a “use it or lose it” mentality with gas. When it’s plentiful people

take trips and run tractors and haul what they need to haul. Often they run generators

to charge up batteries. It’s far from a perfect solution, but it’s better than just letting the

gas sit until it spoils.

There are, of course, more and more people relying on solar, wind and tidal power.

(Nuclear? Too much of a security risk, citizen.) It’s sufficient to run homes at a low

level of consumption, but everyone can remember the last brownout, ‘cause it’s never

that long ago.



[b]

The ‘Free’ Press [/b]

Penny Cortez started out as a spammer and became the biggest media mogul in the

world. Scratch that: She’s the only media mogul in the world. So you know she’s got

something on the ball.

While the old media empires failed, at first, to recognize the power of blogs and web

traffic, it took someone who started on the internet to recognize the true potential of TV,

radio, magazines and newspapers.

Madame Cortez herself is notoriously camera-shy and interview-averse, but her great

insight was that a printed, bound, widely-distributed physical artifact has an authority

that few web sites can gain -- and those, only through years of hard work and honest

effort. Sure, the world got clogged with free news: But most of it was worthless because

it had no reputation backing it up. Whatever hobbyist reporters gained in speed by

being at the right place at the right time and putting a picture on their web site, they lost

waiting for people to find the picture, spread it to their friends, link it high in Google

and then make up their minds whether it was truth or Photoshop.

(Did Penny encourage mistrust of non-corporate web news? She did create several free-

form news discussion and challenge sites that had no revenue streams, cost millions of

dollars, and in at least one case were proven to have people on staff hired solely to make

everything look bad through coordinated fake debates involving dozens of straw-man

accounts.)

Penny’s newspapers and cable channels and radio stations are honest about the news,

or as honest as those media ever were. The difference is this: While they’re unwilling to

outright lie, or change their editorial stance, or directly elide the facts, they are more than

willing to change the attention and placement of an article in return for advertising

consideration.

It works like this. Suppose you make a suck movie. Cortez media are going to call it a

suck movie because if they didn’t they’d lose their credibility. But if you take out some

splashy and expensive ads, that pan review winds up tucked way back on page 10

instead of blaring off the front page.

On the other hand, if you make a great scientific discovery, they tell the truth about that.

If the think-tank or college or pharmaceutical conglomerate backing your research

spends enough, it can be the subject of an in-depth, prime-time interview. If they blew

their whole budget on Erlenmeyer flasks? Too bad, you’re banished to the screen-

bottom crawl.

Basically, it’s a protection racket. “Nice little reputation you got there. Shame if

anything... happened to it.”

Everyone knows Penny has a monopoly, and everyone knows the news is slanted, but

the alternative is internet blowhards whose breathless reports are rank with run-on

sentences, misplaced apostrophes, and spelling errors. Every so often someone else

tries to compete, but unless they adopt her methods they’re hopelessly outclassed.

Even if they do whore the news like the Cortez outlets, they’re likely to wind up

bought-out or bankrupt because Penny can give a lot more exposure (or concealment)

for the dollar. A few honest politicians would love to return to the good old days of an

independent and incorruptible Fourth Estate, but by and large, governments are some

of Penny’s best clients. Ethics aside, it’s terribly convenient for them to only have one

news outlet to suborn.



[b]Petro-Bio-Industrial Complex, the [/b]

In the beginning (well -- OK, in 1980) there was High Fructose Corn Syrup. By the

dawn of the new millennium, the average American was eating sixty-six pounds of it a

year. HFCS comes, of course, from corn, which was America’s #1 crop, though only a

small percentage of it was eaten in a recognizable form (pop____, ____ on the cob, ____

chip, creamed ____, etc.). Much of it was fed to animals (including cows, who are not

constituted by nature to live on corn) and the rest was... processed.

Processing corn turned it into all kinds of crazy chemicals, not just HFCS, and these

chemicals were then recombined into processed foods. It might be called a “chicken

nugget,” but it was chicken and corn chemicals. The label might say grape jelly, but it’s

grape and corn chemicals.

Corn was cheap and plentiful, and the science of turning it into other foods was

increasingly sophisticated. It brought a huge variety of food options to the nation’s

supermarkets, and as a bonus, the infrastructure that carried and warehoused

truckloads of processed pizzas could do the same for Florida oranges in the middle of

an Illinois winter. There was a lot of it, a lot of variety and if much of it was initially

corn, well, nobody could tell without a mass spectrometer.

There were only two problems with this setup. One was, it created a farm infrastructure

highly tailored to corn and increasingly unable to grow anything else. Far more

dangerous was its invisible alliance with petroleum.

Petrochemical fertilizers let soil grow harvest after harvest of corn, year after year.

Gasoline drove the harvesters, the tractors, and the trucks that hauled the corn and its

byproducts. Moreover, petroleum was fundamental to the chemical processes that

turned corn into all those jelly/pizza/nugget ingredients -- both as an additive and as

an energy source.

Connect the dots, then. What happens when the Petrophage (page xx.) hits? Why, the

whole system crashes, of course.

America starved. Europe starved. China starved. The places that were already

starving, starved worse. Those countries in the middle, the ones that couldn’t afford a

highly processed food infrastructure, they did all right. There weren’t many countries

like that, though.

Things recovered somewhat, thanks to a massive government bailout (that contributed

to the dollar going toxic on the global currency market -- see “Ecollapse” on page xx.).

There’s food in the markets, but the variety people knew in previous decades is gone.

Apples are everywhere, but peanut butter prices rise the farther you get from Georgia.

Salmon is expensive in Washington state, and hellishly expensive everywhere else.

There is no sashimi in the midwest any more, and winter in Minnesota holds bananas

only for the rich.
[/quote] .

[mrlost]

.[quote]
[b]Petrophage, the [/b]

There aren’t enough groin-kicks in the world for the sick sumbitch who cooked up the

petrophage. It’s a hardy, virulent, world-wide bacteria that eats gasoline and excretes a

worthless white platic byproduct that has come to be called “tro.” (Short for

“peTROcrap.” Rhymes with “snow.”) Tro is also, more poetically, called “the Devil’s

Dandruff.”

Tro’s everywhere, always underfoot. It degrades into dust, but slowly, and until it does

it just drifts around. It’s roughly the color and texture of cobwebs, only a bit more rigid

and waxy. It collects in the door frames of cars, clings to tree branches, blows through

the air and mates under the sofa with the dust bunnies.

But back to the petrophage. It also damages plastics, but not with anything like the

aggression gas gets. Still, if your Tupperware leaks or your credit card turns brittle and

cracks, you know what’s to blame.

Nobody has stepped up to claim responsibility for creating the gas plague (as it’s also

known). At least, no one lacking a death wish. Some blame kooky tree-huggers,

though given the damage tro has wreaked on Earth’s plant life and ocean creatures,

they would have to be implausibly short-sighted. Others suspect the Russians of

plotting to drive up the prices of natural gas, or they blame the nuclear industry, or an

international Anarchist conspiracy. Or, it’s always popular to fall back on history’s three

big blame-magnets: God, Mother Nature or the Jews. But in the final analysis, no one

knows.



[b]Salvation Germ, the [/b]

With an early-century oil crisis, alternatives were sought. Wind and tide and solar and

nuclear all had their adherents, but they got knocked to the wayside by a little lab called

Genetic Research Partners of Milwaukee which, in association with the University of

Wisconsin, engineered a microbe that can (under the right circumstances) eat grass

clippings and poop gasoline.

There’s a little bit more to it than that, but not a whole lot. The Salvation Germ (as a

hysterically overjoyed media dubbed it) couldn’t survive in the wild, so there was no

chance of it getting loose, eating all the fall leaves and leaving a flammable residue on,

well, everything. But given some seed stock of it, just about anyone with a Master’s

degree in chemistry could take (say) the equipment in a brew pub and have it

producing high-test within a week or two. The world’s gas-fueled economy was saved!

As one might expect, the oil-producing states lost their composure. But to be brutally

honest, the Middle East was already such a hive of violence and misery that, y’know,

the Germ wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was more like a piano that fell

on a camel whose back broke last year. The civilian massacres in Venezuela were an

unpleasant surprise, though.

The scientists who actually made the Germ never talked about it without stressing the

need for more efficient engines, insisting that this was only a component of a

comprehensive strategy that should include renewable energy harvesting... but after

handing them their Nobel prizes, no one but egghead intellectuals and policy wonks

paid them much attention. Everyone else was holding their breath to see how low the

price of a gallon of gas could fall. (Thirty cents a gallon was the bottom price, as

mentioned in the entry “Apocalypse.”)

Environmental damage and energy need had created a compelling motivation to find

new ways, but once the Salvation Germ yanked the rug out from under energy need,

this environmental aspect... oh, it became so much easier to just hand-wave it as a

concern for those hippie ding-dongs in their tie-dyed hemp shirts. Besides, NASCAR

was back! Thanks, Sally! (Yes, the Salvation Germ was quickly nicknamed Sally. Its

official name is Deinococcus clementinis.)

The Germ came before the ECO-lapse (see page xx.). Had it come after, it might have

been used more wisely. On the other hand, without the Germ, it’s sadly likely that the

ECO-lapse never would have occurred. Nevertheless, gas was cheap, times were high

and life was good until the Petrophage came along. (See “Petrophage,” page xx.)



[b]U.S. Gub’mint, the [/b]

Well, they try. God knows they try. But it’s not quite inconceivable that the United

States of America got locked into a financial death-spiral and that there’s no escape until

it augers into the ground.

Then again, it keeps on keeping on. The bureaucrats put on their ties and go to work,

subpoenaing witnesses, investigating corporations, gathering and allocating money.

There are even elections. Bitter, angry, riot-bedecked elections, no matter who wins and

who sues (and claims fraud, and blames, and is secretly relieved, some times, to not

have to deal with the host of problems that politicians are expected to fix).

The problem is, it’s sort of accepted wisdom that raising taxes is Just Wrong, so a lot of

stuff that the Fed used to pay for -- regulating the financial sector, interstate highways

and bridges, disaster relief, the National Endowment for the Arts -- has, to some degree,

been left to rot. The Federales are hunkered down in Washington running Medicare, the

IRS, Social Security, the armed forces and the courts.

As I mentioned under Ecollapse (page xx.) the tide of rising Baby Boom retirees is

finally starting to recede. (Sorry hippies: Those longevity treatments just never really

materialized in the current economic climate.) If the faith of the people was somehow

restored in the government, it could start seriously collecting taxes and supplying

services again. But mainly it just languishes.

That’s not to say it’s irrelevant. While the Fed may not have the dough it had in the

early 21st century, the Executive Branch has formalized its exclusions from certain

confining laws and rules, “for the duration of the current crisis.” It’s like Martial-Law

Lite. They don’t call it presidential rule, and indeed the Congress still has plenty of

power (especially power to hamstring executive plans through under-funding and

slow-grinding scrutiny), but it’s established and accepted that the FBI can tap anyone’s

phone, for any reason, any time they feel like it. Also, a suite of interrogation

techniques is approved (for federal officers only) that includes but is not limited to mock

executions; microwave wanding (see page xx.); simulated drowning; sexual

humiliation; sleep deprivation; and being thrown in a meat locker until you start

talking.

These rather extreme violations of civil rights aren’t common. Not because the Feds

have reservations about torturing citizens any more, but because the budget is small

and the agents are stretched really thin. So your odds of catching the eyes of CIA, FBI,

INS, DEA or Secret Service personnel are pretty slim. But if you do, you’re in for it.
[/quote]

[mordraine]

So everyone - how did the thing with the thing go?

[jimmy corrigan]

it was good times. we're thinking of getting together again to finish out the playtest before mrlost returns to imperial valley on the 18th.

[cczernia]

[quote="mordraine"]So everyone - how did the thing with the thing go?[/quote]

We didn't get very far into the actual game. It become more of a discussion of the mechanics. Still fun if you are into that kind of thing with the thing.

[mrlost]

PK: My players demanded I ask Greg Stolze: Why would the Crux interfere with the Villian if the Villian is helping out, and what is the player of the Crux supposed to do? Basically, we get that the Crux is there to balance the Hero and Villain. But what is the player supposed to do?


Greg: The assumption is that the PCs are eventually going to come into conflict, and when they do, the Crux plays kingmaker. In early days, the Crux aspect is unlikely to need much use, but I think it'll turn on some interesting stuff in some groups.


PK: Also nobody wanted to use their weakness, and didn't understand why player would unless they wanted to retire their character. We speculated that perhaps the weakness could be invoked by another player to neutralize an opponent in player vs player conflicts. The players all thought there should have been a mechanical incentive to trigger their own weakness. I thought the weakness was there to counter the fact that most of the time the PCs are going to be evenly matched with the opposition? But I wasn't sure if that was the intent or not.



Greg:Maybe I'll make it more clear that the Weakness is there primarily for the GM -- a big sign saying "I want to get hurt so bad HERE!" which, in turn, implies your character doesn't want to get hurt so bad over another issue.


PK: Also I needed a bit more clarification on how to handle equipment. I get that High Tech stuff is Jack factor, but would a cheap knockoff Gauss gun be considered a Jack or a 10? Is there any reason to arm yourself with non-high tech weapons? Do they get a card value as well or are they just fluff? Do you have any advice on starting equipment? I gave the PCs whatever gear they thought they'd should have which led to the Christian Crusader's flickering holographic angel wings that she always has trouble recharging, One Shot have an arsenal, etc.



Greg:Yeah, the gear looks like a pretty clear issue. In the current draft, it recommends giving each character some cheap armor and a weapon, with exceptions for some people with drug mods or stuff that would help them build their own gadgets.

I'd say using the cheap old-time tech is a 10, yeah.


PK: The two players that were stuck as Bystanders felt sidelined. Is this a feature? They also were afraid of drawing the Bystander cards next session, and wished that they could be exempt since they were the Bystanders this session, in fact they though it would be a cool rule.



Greg:The first time they're a Villain and they try to be sincere, or the first time a cop takes a shot at their Hero, they'll appreciate the flexibility of the Bystander role. Sure, they don't get the big bonuses, but with those great powers come pain-in-the ass responsibilities, right?


PK: Finally, we thought that maybe the game would work better if there were never more than three supers, because the relationship between the Crux and the other two roles is weird. I get its there to drive conflict, at least I think it is. Anyway, I want to get some answers/feedback before I try running a second session.


Greg: Ooh, I'm not going to put a lid on the size of a playgroup.

-G.

[jimmy corrigan]

hrm. a lot of his responses seemed... i don't know, unfulfilling. when do you guys want to continue with part 2?

[cczernia]

I actually tried to make an account on GS site but have to wait to get confirmed and it has already been 3 days.

My biggest problem is still the weakness. I went through the rules and it is never mentioned how to use it nor is it used in the example of play. I don't like it because I think the players have a better idea of when their weakness should be introduced. Also, it could easily be abused by a GM. Take flashbacks for example. The GM could have Oneshot pull an ace every time he is in combat.

I think there should be a rule that a player's weakness can only be played once per session. The player or the GM can play the card. The advantage to the player using the card is that he gets to choose when the card it played and once he plays it the GM can't use it later on.

While reading the rules I noticed that everyone narrates their actions, not just the person who won the contest.

I also don't see the disadvantage to pulling from the smear other then you get to the end quickly. Especially if you have a point of Suffering. If you have suffering you want to pull from the smear because it will increase you chances of surviving another session and remove minuses (if suffering = Valor get -1, if suffering > valor get -2).

The Tipping Point is also not defined well. It is the moment when characters die. Is it also the end of the story? Does anything else cool happen? We'll have to see how this plays out in playtest.

[mrlost]

So Monday again? My place or Jimmy's?

[jimmy corrigan]

i will not be available monday. it's jenny's birthday.

[Skyman]

Happy Birthday Jenny!!!


I think the question goes: is it at Mr. Lost or Mords place? That is assuming there is Padres game that he's going to

[mordraine]

I vote for my place.

[mrlost]

I vote for mine, I guess. It seems like most everyone is unhappy with the game mechanics to one degree or another.

[mrlost]

If everyone is unhappy with the game so far, I'd rather just run a one shot of Witchcraft or D&D or something. Unless you think you would enjoy continuing the play test of eCollapse. I was having a ton of fun last night just running Kobold Hall with three friends I haven't gamed with since early 2005. I'm wish I was running it right now. I subscribed to the DDI and have been thoroughly frustrated by my inability to navigate its content effectively.

Happy spring holiday everyone.

[SpaceMonkey]

I'm up for whatever, just let me know when and where.

[Skyman]

ditto

[cczernia]

Let's do the usual and meet at Mord's around 7. We'll decide what to play then. Right now I think I am leaning toward eCollapse.

[mrlost]

[quote="cczernia"]Let's do the usual and meet at Mord's around 7. We'll decide what to play then. Right now I think I am leaning toward eCollapse.[/quote]
Okay, sounds good. Ugh is this what a hangover feels like? No wonder I don't drink.

[cczernia]

A few other thing we got wrong.

A new Hero, Villain, and Crux are drawn every scene. This is unclear in the rules but in the example new ones are drawn.

Tipping Point occurs when 10 new Valor points are gained. This does not include the ones you have. So, with five players each starting with 1 Valor point you would need 15 total to reach the Tipping Point.

Also, you can have more than one card. So, you could have a Q (power), J (equipment) 10 (job) 7(smear) and an A(weakness). If they don't cancel each other out you don't worry about the lower ones. Also, they don't have to cancel each other out. If two characters have the same card one can defer allowing the other two narrate first. In this case both action succeed.

Also, initiative order is by card value. So, you do K's first, then you do Q, J and on and on. If two cards cancel each other both players loose their turn and have to wait until there next card value.

[mrlost]

From the current discussion on the play test thread. I provided a link as well.


[quote]When the player draws the card that indicates his character to be the hero, the player can't meaningfully be hero, since success feels assured. There is no striving.[/quote]



[url=http://forgreatjustice.net/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=834&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15]Hm... what I want [i]eCollapse[/i] to do is be kickass fun. But in addition, I want it to call the knee-jerk assumptions about "hero" and "villain" into question. Does that need to be more explicit in the text?



-G.[/url]