[What's O.L.D Is N.E.W] Iain M Banks-inspired sci-fi campaign!

[Shayuri]

It also gives us leeway to learn stuff in-character.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games arrived today via interlibrary loan. I skimmed Consider Phlebas and elected to return it unread. I'll start reading with The Player of Games.

This'll be the first book I will have read since the bar exam last July. Yes, you heard that right. I haven't read a book in damn near a year. Given that I read every day of my life and HAD to read in bed for 15+ minutes every night in order to fall asleep (even during three years of law school), I can hardly believe that I haven't touched a book in almost a year. Because bar exam. Teh suck.

Here's hoping The Player of Games doesn't disappoint.

 

[Unsung]

Here's hoping indeed.

If you don't like it, um... Well, I really like Excession and Look To Windward the best, but I don't get a lot of agreement in that quarter.

I used to have terrible insomnia as a kid, but reading books tended to keep me up rather than put me to sleep. I used to have eight or nine library books on the go at a time, just for the sake of having something to do.

By the way, if the three of you were all from the same civilization, that would be one messed-up place to live. Shackling AIs, farming people for their organs, extensive ongoing debates over dead rights...

...Sounds kind of awesome in a way. But the cosmopolitan nature of the Culture's universe is one of the things I like about it, too, so I don't know.

Let me know if you have any questions, @Rubberneck.

 

[Shayuri]

It's possible the AI in question was an accidentally emergent one, and the lack of rights therof extending more from the normal fear/ignorance period of the population in question rather than an institutional bias. It's also possible that the AI in question was intentionally designed for something dangerous, and the 'shackling' of it was a precautionary measure.

The rest...hehe, yeah, that sounds kind of bad.

I'm still not 100% on the AI thing, by the way. Mulling it over.

 

[Unsung]

Anybody have any questions, concerns, ideas? I'm not in a rush to get to playing, but I would like to keep the conversation going.

 

[GlassEye]

I finished 'Player of Games' a few days ago. I liked it but some of it was disconcerting. I think that was the intention, though. I'll not say anything else since CB is/was reading it, also. Edit: The ambassador was, perhaps, my favorite character.

Also, I did a quick sketch-up of the character idea I had using NEW rules. I didn't like the finished PC. It was extremely Logic focused and below normal physically, and despite having a broader selection of skills (due to multiple instances of the 'College' career) it still felt restricted though that is likely a personal perception issue due to how skills have been handled in other games I've played recently and not an issue with the system. I also wasn't sure how to handle the technology inherent to the concept and after finishing PoG the concept just didn't seem to quite fit in my limited understanding of the setting. So, I'll likely revise the concept or change it up entirely.

 

[Unsung]

The ambassador character is probably the most indicative of the Culture as a whole.

I would say your concept fits the setting quite well, actually, but it's up to you whether or not you like the mechanics you've got. You can always skew the other way, and let the mechanics you want shape the character. You don't necessarily have to be a scholar to be invested in 'dead rights' in your society. There could well be others who've had their consciousnesses uploaded digitally, who are now finding themselves being treated as property rather than intelligent beings.

Look To Windward and Surface Detail both deal with the idea of a digital afterlife-- it's an important background element of the former and a major part of the plot in the latter. If you were interested in reading more of the Culture, those would be my recommendations for you, based on your current direction.

If all three characters were from the same corrupt society and trying to escape it, that would be a pretty cool starting point-- a more contemporary earth-like civ, maybe a dystopian near-future society still limited to a single solar system. The Culture could linger on the fringes, subtly manipulating events as they often do. Given all that's apparently going wrong, perhaps even at this low technological level there's reason to intervene even if there's no real danger to the greater galaxy at this point.

 

[Shayuri]

So I had this idea that my character is/was an artificial intelligence originally designed for the purpose of warfare...which may be inferring more into this hypothetical society we're coming from than is warranted? But I kind of liked the idea that I have a sort of knee-jerk military mindset, a set of programmed 'instincts' that are violent, that I am attempting to transcend...both to better suit the Culture, as well as a personal way to mark myself as more than a non-sentient 'expert system' or some such.

Alternatively, I could be an emergent intelligence...perhaps a sort of 'botnet' designed to coordinate autonomous drones, gradually increased in complexity and autonomy until it crossed that invisible threshold...

Or...if the world is fairly low tech, I could simply be a first attempt at creating such a thing, with no specific program or design save to serve as a testbed; destined to be replaced with a new iteration when my development cycle was complete...

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I finished 'Player of Games' a few days ago. I liked it but some of it was disconcerting. I think that was the intention, though. I'll not say anything else since CB is/was reading it, also. Edit: The ambassador was, perhaps, my favorite character.

I'm touched to find that you read PoG the same time as me. I didn't know you were going to do that. There's something about sharing discovery that makes the thing discovered that much sweeter.

 

[Morrus]

What you might find useful is something that hasn't quite snuck into that playtest document is the "elective attribute". For timing reasons. Basically, you get to choose one attribute and one skill which have nothing to do with your careers. Every time you take a career, you can increase either by 1 point, but only if they are not included in the career advancement. They represent an outside elective or hobby, or a natural advantage, which is not career-dependent.