branford wrote:

I was not implying that the Extropians were conservative in the contemporary political or social context. Rather, "conservative" was used to denote that the Extropians were "old fashioned" capitalists inspired by and extrapolating current western economic and political trends (e.g., lack of regulation) that the authors and many liberal EP players definitely do not favor, unlike the idealized more "progressive" socialists and anarchists in the EP setting.

I wouldn't suggest there's a trend for less regulation in general. Maybe where it favors the corporations. Try suggesting to some current "capitalists" that we're going to abolish intellectual property rights, limited liability and subsidiaries. And we're replacing the complex legal system that is so timeconsuming and expensive to operate in that only those with your kind of deep pockets has a chance with a system that is simple, fast and cheap so the common citizens get on a more equal footing. They'd hate you.

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And third, my parenthetical about the Extropians was simply a friendly nod to Lorsa (note the wink ";)" ), to whom I was responding to in my comment, who noted the debate on whether a state and its monopoly on violence was necessary for capitalism to thrive. The existence of the Extropians in EP certainly offers a particular perspective on that issue.

I don't think it is necessary for capitalism, but the current perversion of capitalism we have is certainly dependant on the state. It's a symbiotic relationship.

The Anarchs? They're not even a coherent faction! Their politics are childish and would never work in real life. They no sense make! That's why I always play Sabbat.

jackgraham wrote:

The Anarchs? They're not even a coherent faction! Their politics are childish and would never work in real life. They no sense make! That's why I always play Sabbat.

Yeah, but they're bugshit crazy, and could never come up with something so awesome as convincing every single Vampire in a five-state radius that an ancient coffin containing a Methuselah was coming to town, whipping them into a frenzy of murdering each other to claim the damn thing, only to fill the coffin with more explosives than God and blow the biggest, baddest schemer in town into next year.

Leodiensian wrote:

It's not that I hate capitalism. Anarchism just gives me greater excuse to scatter weird shit across the cosmos for my players to find.

Capitalism is not at odds with anarchism. There are branches of anarchism that have various degrees of capitalism (from none to full), just as there are various degrees of capitalism in statist societies (from none to some). What we have in most western democracies today is a hybrid of statism and capitalism. For example lobbyism, corporate subsidiaries, regulation that rigs the legal system in favor of corporations, limited liability, etc., that's not capitalism, that's statism.

jKaiser wrote:

It's a bit of a shame, since I can see a rather edgier approach to anarchists, who would, by nature, be less well-equipped and limited, smaller in numbers, and thus make for devilishly tough insurgent enemies. And an aggressive anarchist group opposed to Firewall could be a damn good foe if they stumble across something dangerous and get it in their heads that now's the time to break down the establishments, casualties be damned -- they can always be resleeved, right?

That's certainly one approach to making the Jovians the heroes of EP. :P

On the original topic, escapism and idealism are definitely up there for reasons why. Personally I think the anarchists get off lightly in setting by author fiat. But an alternative. Humans tend towards forming hierarchies, official or unoffical. And in an anarchist hab, that could take some very novel forms indeed. Who has the fanciest morph? Who has logged most hours on communal programming projects? So one reason for their appeal is achieving power without being seen to do so blatantly.

@Branford: I find myself agreeing with the wish fulfillment part almost despite myself, since I so desperately want it to be predictive of the future. But yes, resource limitation is a thing, and a major thing at that. The thing is, like any group, the success or failure of an anarchistic group would largely depend on the people in particular making it up. And while there are plenty of my fellow anarchists who would shoot daggers with their eyes at me for saying this, leadership amongst anarchists isn't uncommon. Ideally, it's short-term, voted on by the group, and based around expertise rather than any assumptions of superiority. This means that an anarchist group that has good group cohesion is exceedingly flexible and adaptable. It means that one with personality clashes is doomed to struggle and splinter. This arguably puts a practical cap on the size of an anarchist group and means that, as is suggested implicitly in the book, the further out into the fringe you go, the more you're going to see groups with very similar mindsets...whether they started that way or were made that way. I digress. Resource limitations are a problem, but not an insurmountable one. It just means that Anarchists in resource-starved locations need to have friends and need to play nice. Which should be in the nature of mutualistic groups, but that's where that pesky set of issues of egos and different beliefs go and screw everything up (and provide plenty of story fodder, which I take as the real crux of this issue rather than debating how accurately depicted one ideology is over another). It's also a campaign axiom in the hands of the GM: we don't even have high-resolution images of Pluto yet, let alone any idea what's in all those thousands upon thousands of rocks, so it could be that in any given GM's game, there are simply more valuable materials than we expected. This is a setting with active, if shadowy, alien presences. Human expansion into the fringe could suit their needs and resulted in high numbers of juicy asteroids; a storytelling sadist like myself sees plenty of opportunities for this to bite people in the ass. Alternatively, not doing so sets up a new Wild West, with conflicts over resources providing many a plot element. Even the most efficient, digital-only or synthmorph-heavy hab out in the fringe may have to make some ugly choices if they have to decide between running out of crucial resources thanks to a disaster or raiding their weird Brinker neighbors.

Yeah, I have to agree, a three-way war between the fascists, the big corporations, and the anarchist insurgents, all with Firewall stuck in the middle would be a pretty awesome setup for a campaign.

jackgraham wrote:

Just to be clear, we never said the anarchists need the Commonwealth for defense.

No, you guys have never [i]explicitly[/i] said that, but it's a common fan extrapolation given your setting's somewhat deliberate "fluidity". Given that the Consortium actually attempted to interdict Locus, it's not a stretch to say that without a major military power like the Commonwealth at their back, things would be a bit more grim for the "pure" Anarchists. To answer the other question, personally, from a meta perspective, I primarily enjoy watching a narrative play out, and watching how the individual characters interact with it. And my personal feelings about science fiction is that how tech/the "future" in general affects the social structure is a part of it, so the different political systems that have sprung up by AF 10 are an important aspect to explore (especially since, unlike some other people I know, I don't like to question or challenge the setting as written, but rather blur perspectives to kind of read between the lines a little). So I try not to let the dynamics of the politics fall to the wayside. That said, none of the material I've yet prepped/written for running EP has directly concerned the Anarchists in of themselves, or their locations. I've used other autonomists, such as Scum or Barsoomians, but don't usually deal with Anarchists direct. This probably stems from, for me, picturing that most conflicts involving Anarchists "in their homes" as it were, are primarily social, or would be with characters not used to their style of life being thrust into that situation. As you say, EP has a lot to do with "conspiracy and horror" and the wild panicked firing of guns and lasers into those situations as your sanity crumbles around you (and the lead up to that big payoff). Chasing down chains of favors, figuring out why someone isn't pulling their habtech shift, or pulling political support for the community to shut down someone's dangerous nanofab project isn't always as dynamic to me. I find it much more interesting to place the Anarchists and their sympathizers outside their elements and how they interact with other political strains. That being said, I've run Glory like, 4-5 times, and I always find it interesting to start on Locus and see how player characters handle being thrust into a major hub of Anarchism. Especially if, like my last run, they have minimal networking and no @-rep.

jackgraham wrote:

I'm curious how people approach this in their own EP campaigns. I mean, mainly, EP is about investigating, casing out, and then probably blasting the hell out of alien-infected agents of the apocalypse and other fuckers who want to watch the cosmos burn. But yeah, we also just won't shut up about politics. Do you guys really play with this, or do you keep it in the background -- or something in between?

I play with (as in, engage with on a roleplaying level) the politics of much of the Inner System on a fairly big basis. The Planetary Consortium's internal conflicts, politics, and bickering are a great source of drama and plots. Even in games primarily about hunting down X-threats, the way Sunward is set up means that it's nearly impossible to [i]not[/i] feature politics; Martian enclaves bashing antlers against the PC, morph scarcity causes and effects, goods and software control laws and enforcement, potential police brutality, terrorism, crime and the response to crime, the socioeconomic background for organized crime, how laws are written to keep forking and resleeving in mind, AGI and uplift rights - all of these are things that I as a GM constantly have to think about, because I want to present as believable and rich a world as I can, and that means being able to believably present how NPCs react to neo-Avian morphs, and answer questions of how easy it would be to get a Plasma Rifle in a given habitat. (Of course, there's a significant sampling-bias here; I [i]like[/i] the way the Inner System is described, so I run games there so I can play with the elements I like. Were I, by some malign spirit, forced to run a game set in the Outer System, I'd probably try to feature the politics as little as possible, because it's bad form form the GM to roll her eyes and cringe visibly when describing a location to her players...)

jackgraham wrote:

Just to be clear, we never said the anarchists need the Commonwealth for defense.

I've never played it up this way, but that it's a mutually beneficial arrangement. The Alliance [i]would[/i] work without the Titanians, but it would be [i]much[/i] rougher going. They'd have to make a few more examples like Hydrogen's Promise before the inner system stopped trying to conquer their habitats, but with the proliferation of super-empowering technology, conquering a place by military force is basically obsolete. You can [i]destroy[/i] a place, but if the locals aren't willing to let you in, you can't [i]take[/i] it, unless you get them when they don't have enough materials to unleash a scorched earth policy. Atomic weapons aren't the only viable form of scorched earth, mind you, unleashing enough gray goo at once will make the place basically unsalvable, and there's a much lower entry bar for hostile nanotech than for nukes.

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Along a totally different line of thought, I want to pull on your coats a little about what @branford had to say regarding escapism and wish fulfillment in our portrayal of the game world's politics. I'm curious how people approach this in their own EP campaigns. I mean, mainly, EP is about investigating, casing out, and then probably blasting the hell out of alien-infected agents of the apocalypse and other fuckers who want to watch the cosmos burn. But yeah, we also just won't shut up about politics. Do you guys really play with this, or do you keep it in the background -- or something in between?

I play with the politics and the "civilized" setting more than the X-Risks. My players started off as mostly new to the EP setting, and the initial crop of players wanted to play on Mars. They decided to start out as Firewall Sentinels rather than not, so I made it clear that they were all (except the one newbie to the game,) newbies to Firewall, and as such Firewall wasn't interested in sending them straight into a mess. They were assigned to Firewall second-line operations - not directly engaging X-Risks, supporting Firewall operations. They started off searching for Violet Perdido, who had gone missing in Elysium, and discovered that she'd been captured by the local Shui Fong because she was investigating an ego smuggling ring which was conspiring to put indentured children in Neotenics for prostitution. There were implications that the Lotus Club was involved, and/or Zevi Oaxaca-Maartens, but no proof came up. Firewall, naturally, had a vested interest in [i]not[/i] seeing one of its operatives interrogated by a criminal faction who would likely put her ego up for sale to the highest bidder, so they were told to follow through and rescue her from the Triad's hotel in the heart of Elysium. They determined that the best way to do this, rather than, say, making an offer to the Dragon Head, or breaking into his home and putting the fear of powers in the dark into him in exchange for Violet's release, was to recruit a bunch of violent Scum from the Get Your Ass to Mars fleet, then-currently swinging by Mars on its way out, to launch an all-out assault on the hotel for the purposes of liberating indentures, shooting capitalists and criminals and criminal capitalists, looting anything worth looting, and burning the motherfucker to the ground. (That last part wasn't a stated mission goal, it just kind of happened because one of the Scum they recruited was a pyromaniac and they encouraged him to turn up the heat rather than asking him to cut it out.) Well, there was a [i]slight[/i] hitch to that. See, I'd already established that the hotel they were using was a front for a number of Shui Fong-in-Elysium operations, including a combined black kettle/darkcaster which Firewall was known to use for its operations. (For this reason, Firewall already had schematics for the place and intel on its security systems.) See, the idea (for me) was that after they got Violet out, they were going to be told that another Firewall team was coming in to Elysium via that body bank, and they'd need to scramble to support that team - getting them weapons, vehicles, etc. Unfortunately, they were in the process of burning the body bank to the ground, rather than hacking the mainframe to get Violet's ego off of it, and so that other team (consisting of the pre-made team from [i]Mind the WMD[/i]) wound up in cold storage, and my players wound up having to track down another black kettle to get them instantiated, and then opted to go with them. It was a good thing they did, and called in a heavily-armed mercenary (in a Reaper!) to join them, because I (*cough*) beefed up both the Night Cartel guys at the site (with a fucking Wrecker - think 'Titan from Titanfall' and you're approximately exactly on target,) and I beefed up the unknown enemies to match (they all had rocket launchers, which they brought because they'd already reccie'd the wrecked dome and knew about the Wrecker.) In the end, my players managed to kill or drive off the Night Cartel and the incoming scavengers, and found a sizable cache of Fall-era military surplus and lost souls killed in the fighting but not evidently claimed by headhunters. They took the antimatter bomb (antiuranium atoms stabilized in a matrix of carbon buckyballs), set off an FAE to sterilize the nanoswarms, and got a shitload of Barsoomians to loot the site/rescue the lost souls before the authorities arrived, then they were ordered to get their asses the hell off Mars before Oversight came down on them like a ton of nukes. They wound up on the [i]GYAtM[/i] Swarm, Titan-bound, and have been dealing with an infuriating series of cases wherein people are being ego-napped for what is apparently criminal gain. That's not the worst of it, though; the Swarm is due to pass by a tiny little habitat called C-Squat on their swing past the Jovian Trojans... Right around the time a warship launched from Extropia is going to show up to evict, kill, and/or capture and indenture the squatters. Since the first ego-hunter victim on the Swarm was hunted based on an obvious contract set up by Gorgon, who just so happen to be the guys owning the warship, the Swarm is even angrier at them than they would otherwise be - it's not a matter of "if" the Swarm engages, it's a matter of "how much" of the Swarm breaks off to engage them. My players are trying to drum up Titanian support, hoping to push the amount of pressure on the Extropians to cut this shit out into the levels where it would become less unprofitable to break contracts and pay penalties and just cede the asteroid to its current inhabitants than to have a fight, or to convince Titan to step in and buy the asteroid from the Hypercorp that claims ownership of it. They recruited Momo von Satan to come to the Swarm and do an expose on how the Scum are gearing up for war (by having an orgy, natch,) in order to do so, though admittedly they don't actually know what spin she's going to put on things. I played her up as an unpredictable wild-card when it comes to what political view she's going to espouse, which also makes her able to reach the widest audience first. (They are taking a breather from that storyline to have been called upon to egocast to Venus on an emergency status, though. People are turning up with funny bumps on their foreheads, and the whole Venusian system is about to get lit on fire if they can't stop this from exploding in everybody's faces.)

ThatWhichNeverWas wrote:

jKaiser wrote:

Frankly, we don't know what sorts of problems a post-scarcity anarchist group would run into beyond some assumptions and extrapolation

…and this is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested in. Anarchists have an unprecedented level of personal freedom, and I get to explore the consequences of that freedom; Is absolute freedom desirable? [...] Similarly, the problems with providing a sufficient supply of material to support the post-scarcity existence Anarchism requires is a tremendous source of Plot and characters.

A little comic relevant to that (AnCols are red/black and AnCaps are yellow/black) [img]https://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/l/t1.0-9/p228x119/106... Freedom is not always so clear cut

For me, the biggest real-world influences for anarchist habs (as opposed to individuals) have been things like Burning Man and various communes. And a lot of people I've introduced to these have been surprised by the almost-hostile attitudes despite inclusiveness because, especially in communes, freeloaders and egotists are rarely suffered for long. Likewise at Burning Man. It's a gift economy and very much a functional anarchy, and one that has ironclad rules, but people have only so much tolerance for anyone who drains others' resources and gives little back. Come to think of it, that could easily be a personal story campaign, which admittedly is my favored approach. Just being admitted could be a process for some inner system protagonists. Entry to an anarchist group likely requires, in addition to being vetted, a setup not unlike Burning Man: space is even less merciful than the playa, so bring either your own essentials and a plan to add to the whole or bring skills we need, or find somewhere else. (The latter is probably part of why freeing indentures isn't a major drain on hab resources, on reflection. Lots of hab construction workers and maintenance training.) Related to the comic, how things are broken down labor-wise depends on the specific strain of anarchism, though given the extreme decentralization of manufacturing, at this point means of production has come to mean something else - thus, needing trained personnel, such as post-corp indentures.

jKaiser wrote:

For me, the biggest real-world influences for anarchist habs (as opposed to individuals) have been things like Burning Man and various communes. And a lot of people I've introduced to these have been surprised by the almost-hostile attitudes despite inclusiveness because, especially in communes, freeloaders and egotists are rarely suffered for long. Likewise at Burning Man. It's a gift economy and very much a functional anarchy, and one that has ironclad rules, but people have only so much tolerance for anyone who drains others' resources and gives little back. Come to think of it, that could easily be a personal story campaign, which admittedly is my favored approach. Just being admitted could be a process for some inner system protagonists. Entry to an anarchist group likely requires, in addition to being vetted, a setup not unlike Burning Man: space is even less merciful than the playa, so bring either your own essentials and a plan to add to the whole or bring skills we need, or find somewhere else. (The latter is probably part of why freeing indentures isn't a major drain on hab resources, on reflection. Lots of hab construction workers and maintenance training.)

That seems like a lot of foundational, organizational and behavioral rules and procedures for a purportedly anarchist community. Who makes these rules? How are they enforced? Is it "democratic?" What if someone doesn't agree? Do you seek to ensure even a semblance fairness and avoid favoritism, and if so, how? Do you really suggest restrictions on who can come and go? It appears that you would really prefer a more socialist or communist community, just with more liberal social attitudes and hope the people in charge are nice, honest and fair. I think you implicitly acknowledge that without some clear structure and hierarchy, it's far too easy for things to go very bad real fast.

branford wrote:

That seems like a lot of foundational, organizational and behavioral rules and procedures for a purportedly anarchist community. Who makes these rules? How are they enforced? Is it "democratic?" What if someone doesn't agree? Do you seek to ensure even a semblance fairness and avoid favoritism, and if so, how? Do you really suggest restrictions on who can come and go? It appears that you would really prefer a more socialist or communist community, just with more liberal social attitudes and hope the people in charge are nice, honest and fair. I think you implicitly acknowledge that without some clear structure and hierarchy, it's far too easy for things to go very bad real fast.

Anarchism means "no leaders", not "no rules". All the problems you mention are very present when you have a clear structure and hierarchy; then the leaders play favoritism, make the rules and enforce them with their police force that has a monopoly on violence, and because of the monopoly on violence all you have is hope that the people in charge are nice, honest and fair (though the requirements for getting to a leadership position are pretty much the opposite). It just doesn't work that way in anarchy. Sure, some informal leader can play favoritism, but only with his own resources and those who voluntarily go along - but there's no legitimate way to force anyone through laws or taxes to play along. There's no police force with a monopoly on violence - the informal leader is reliant on the population backing him up for his "power". If the leader doesn't play fair, people can just follow someone else. Heck, most people might not even care about who the leader is supposed to be and just do their own thing. And sure, things can go wrong and be unfair in an anarchy, but it is just much harder for it to turn out that way, and the consequences will tend to be far less.

[color=red]I would like to do a quick general reminder to keep this thread on the topic of why the anarchists are great, or to answer Jack's question. Deep, indepth discussions about politics is best left for the off-topic forum (as with the gun debate). You can supply a link to such a thread here, if it is in reply to something a specific poster said.[/color] [color=red]Yes, this is a reminder for me as well.[/color]

I don't trust the average person with a gun, let alone a nanofabricator full of open source blueprints and nothing beyond mob rule to keep them in line. Life in a habitat that didn't have a pretty recognizable social structure would be profoundly uncomfortable; give me Mars (Valles-New Shanghai, please!) or Titan over a scum ship or anarchist hab any day.

kindalas wrote:

[Anarchists] can and do have a very complex social structure that would include investigative, punitive and judicial structures at a minimum.

I hope I'm not rekindling a flame war (hesitant to even post), but I've been interested in the idea of anarchist cops. Which sounds like an oxymoron, but nevertheless I think would be a thing--well, part of the complication is that cops play multiple roles in society, but I've been thinking most about anarchist detectives in particular. Like a person with good investigative and forensic skills. Because disputes will still happen in places like Locus, disputes which present ambiguous/difficult-to-parse information to people attempting to mediate. Trying to coalesce my thoughts better, will share if I develop them more. *Anyway*... I was playing "Glory" on a PBP a few years ago. Thinking about cops on Locus, I got to wondering how the converse (criminals on Locus) would work. Here's my thoughts, which I think are relevant:

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Regarding more Eclipse Phase inspiration, I have to point out two non-science fiction inspirations: "[i]The Wire[/i]" and "[i]Boardwalk Empire[/i]". Why these two? Because these two shows have so much insight on the culture, framing, and economics of criminal enterprise. Well, part of it is that my character was/is a gangster, so knowing the mindset of gangsters is useful. I've also been trying to wrap my mind around "how would criminals operate if they lived in an area with no state?" Like, a lot of criminal enterprise is driven by drug laws, whether alcohol in the 1920s or cocaine in the present day. I guess part of it is my confusion over how anarchism would be implemented. Not an anarchist myself, but it seems like there are a lot of contrasting philosophies within the label of "anarchism". I guess the scenario that comes to mind would be that you are running your society like an open-source software development group. So, anyway... I imagine criminal enterprise on Locus to be something like: [list=1] [*][b]Some Triad gangsters set up shop on Locus[/b], start testing new drugs. Said gangsters will then send drug design to compatriots on Mars, to manufacture and market. Mars having laws and a big population, allowing for big profit margins. Most Locus people are okay with drugs being designed on their habitat: nobody's being forced to consume them, everyone who is involved is involved of their own free will. Maybe a few Locus people really disapprove of hard drugs (have a loved one who lost their mind to them), so the gangsters lose a bit of @-rep, but are still able to operate. [*][b]a rival Triad gang sets up shop on Locus[/b]. There is some violence between the two gangs. It is confined mostly to knifings. No firearms, no explosives: nothing to harm the habitat overall, nothing to hit bystanders. But people do get a bit worried that the violence may escalate. They lose a bit more @-rep, some Locus people offer to mediate. [*][b]at this point, the two rival gangs either move their squabble off-Locus, or de-escalate. Or, they escalate[/b]. They [i]do[/i] start using firearms. A bystander is hit. Some idiot tosses a grenade at the other gang's headquarters. At this point, the two gang's @-rep starts getting trashed. Several local neighborhood councils order them all to leave Locus. Most of them do not. A spontaneous posse forms, a "[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Mobs:_The_Next_Social_Revolution]smart mob[/url]" with guns, perhaps with a bit of organization from the Locus militia. They kill any remaining gangsters who refuse to leave. [/list] I guess the other big question is "why would they start being violent in the first place?" Like, why don't two different, say, barbecue joints start knifing each other? In the scenario I just layed out, a few different reasons I can think of would be: 1. limited supply of petal-addicts on Locus: they are competing over test subjects 2. Their culture already tends to attract violent people: since they are doing illegal things on, e.g., Mars, they are used to only having "might makes right" settle differences: if a rival gang shoots up their petal-making factory on Mars, they can't go to the cops about it. 3. There is big money involved in their enterprise. So big stakes = people really don't want to lose.

Kavlrya wrote:

I am Scandinavian. Janteloven is like second nature to me.

I get the impression that foreigner and asshats are the ones that get themselves highstrong about said "law". The locals simply go "don't be a massive self-aggrandizing ass" and get on with their day. And most of the time it seems that those that go gaga about anarchists dream themselves top dog of the pile...

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

750 wrote:

And most of the time it seems that those that go gaga about anarchists dream themselves top dog of the pile...

I doubt that. For myself, at least, I can't imagine myself top dog of any pile. I'd just like a pile where there is no bottom dog and every dog gets a good, comfortable share.

I would say that that is just an ideally working society, not one that is working under a particular system.

jackgraham wrote:

So you have to be a little willing, as a player, to not be that one guy at the magic show whispering, "Dude, that's totally fake" to his friends who are into the show.* That misses the point. I'd never claim that EP is totally realistic. What I do hope that it does, is make people think about what living under the various political factions in EP would be like (and what other things, like changing social mores, would be like). In doing so, maybe for some people we challenge, and for others we reaffirm, their aspirations as to the type of real world they'd like to actually live in. _______ * Or you have to just give up on EP and play a game where you find the economies sufficiently believable. I recommend Harn. They have, like, charts with the population & industries of every fucking thorp & hamlet in their game world. Somebody could data mine that shit for a medieval socioeconomics sim.

It's not that everyone needs a full-scale economy description along with charts about mining titanium, it's just that the faction description a bit fails when comes to supplying plot hooks. Just by gleaning on the Mars description, there is plenty of juicy conflict: indentures, poor people forced to spend their life as infomorphs or crappy synths, bigotry against non-biomorphs, unethical hypercorps and plenty of other things that not only could go wrong, but actually did. When reading about Locus, I have to think hard what would the players actually do there. Yeah, they can hunt x-risks, but they can do the same in Extropia, Mars, Venus or a brinker station. What is unique to these places that could bring the GM to run an adventure there? The problem with the Locus is that reading its description pretty much suggests that they are doing well, thank you very much. It just doesn't offer enough of things that could be used to build a story. This is less a problem with anarchists and more with Rimward, because many places described there have the same problem. For example, why would anyone except an Ultimate come to Xiphos? If a bunch of singularity-seekers threatened to wipe out Xiphos, why would anyone care? For me, the problem lies not in realism and lack of thereof, but with not enough of conflict. The Jovian Junta description may make them look a bit overly evil, but they are good antagonists. Anarchists in the Inner System are interesting, because they have to make a living in a hostile territory where the establishment hates them and actively looks to snuff them out. Anarchists in Locus... well, they just live there.

I'll be an outster. Do what I want. Answer to nobody.

LatwPIAT wrote:

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Gantolandon, that's like complaining about the existence of Topeka, Kansas, in any game set in the modern day. There's no huge conflict going on, there's no simmering pressure-cooker about to explode, folks just live there.

And consequently that means nobody writes a Topeka, Kanasas location sourcebook. Nor do they spend a lot of time describing Topeko in the Kansas sourcebook, nor devote 20 pages of the Kansas sourcebook to talk about how peaceful and cool Topekans are.

Yes, but that's because they can always go [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topeka,_Kansas]here[/url] for that. Fun fact: It was in a case against the Board of Education of Topeka that racist segregation of education was declared to be unconstitutional. Fact is, that is literally everywhere that gets any wordcount dedicated to it is some kind of abominable shithole, pressure cooker of racism, classism, or biochauvanism, overwhelmed with violence and gangs, etc, frankly, your players are going to ask "why, exactly, do we want to save this setting?" You need the Locuses and Aarhuses and Scum Swarms where nobody much is being slaughtered or oppressed (unless they're into that sort of thing,) to offset the Xiphoses and Elysiums and Lunas, to make there someplace in your setting [i]worth[/i] wanting to preserve. And Locus is really cool. Also, the hypercorps [b]hate[/b] it, to the point of having sent two war-fleets to murder it and everyone living in it, so, you know, there is that. It's not like nothing interesting ever happens there.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

LatwPIAT wrote:

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Gantolandon, that's like complaining about the existence of Topeka, Kansas, in any game set in the modern day. There's no huge conflict going on, there's no simmering pressure-cooker about to explode, folks just live there.

And consequently that means nobody writes a Topeka, Kanasas location sourcebook. Nor do they spend a lot of time describing Topeko in the Kansas sourcebook, nor devote 20 pages of the Kansas sourcebook to talk about how peaceful and cool Topekans are.

Yes, but that's because they can always go [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topeka,_Kansas]here[/url] for that. Fun fact: It was in a case against the Board of Education of Topeka that racist segregation of education was declared to be unconstitutional. Fact is, that is literally everywhere that gets any wordcount dedicated to it is some kind of abominable shithole, pressure cooker of racism, classism, or biochauvanism, overwhelmed with violence and gangs, etc, frankly, your players are going to ask "why, exactly, do we want to save this setting?" You need the Locuses and Aarhuses and Scum Swarms where nobody much is being slaughtered or oppressed (unless they're into that sort of thing,) to offset the Xiphoses and Elysiums and Lunas, to make there someplace in your setting [i]worth[/i] wanting to preserve. And Locus is really cool. Also, the hypercorps [b]hate[/b] it, to the point of having sent two war-fleets to murder it and everyone living in it, so, you know, there is that. It's not like nothing interesting ever happens there.

Eh? I never got the impression in the books that the inner system was a whole was bad enough where any player would have to question why they're saving the human race. I'd be a bit concerned if my players felt a much larger drive to save the minority of humanity over the majority of them, ie the inner system.