Lloyd Dupont

This is good relevant info too..

Hi yall.. as some might have noticed.. I seem kind of stuck at trying to come up with a satisfying scifi setting I can believe in and that is a fertile ground for adventures... (the general idea I am aiming for now is adventures somewhere inside one of the Master of Orion empires. A video game where aggressively techno-expansionist-industrialist space empires compete for galactic dominance) First, curiously, even though I quite enjoyed playing the following scifi video games: Mass Effect, Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic or Cyberpunk 2077, none of thee please me as GM. ME or KOTOR have singular super powerful enemies obviously labelled as guy, not my cup of tea. and Cyberpunk has an insane amount of street violence that I can't just believe for a successful space empire aggressively pushing against other equally hungry and successful space empire (the Master of Orion formula). But yea! I got a breakthrough! just sharing here for posterity... And brainstorming / comment? The space empire government need be illegitimate. Hell even our democracy are only about 70% legitimate these days, and declining I reckon (By legitimate I mean the people support the system of government and feel protected by it). Once a government is illegitimate, it's a fertile ground for corruption, secret society, private security forces... Many of those government are dictatorship in MoO, and the few democracy can be old "corpocracy" and no longer supported by the people either. In such situation the state monopoly on violence is shaky, at best. From that, and the ongoing conflict with border empires, so many consequences: - first they might be long never ending war zones, all the private contractor milking the money making war machine - here comes: idle mercenary forces (racketeering), criminal union, smuggling of good - even ordinary ones, yeah! - also, I could easily prevent player from walking in the street in full combat armor (a bit annoying) and force a stealthy game play: if the player are too obvious the state will arrest them and fine them 10,000 credit for "public disturbances" and if they make too big a mess of their missions, the state might investigate and the result might displease both their enemies and their employer... - plus I can always arrest players for whimsical reason (they got served first at a bar, where a dignitary's son was in queue! 😛 ), always good fun! 😄

Nice recap of progress against Covid It's a twitter thread all by himself.. 😮 Anyway I found it Item 8(?) quite funny (and I know just the type as well!), and I quote

Hey D&D can be quite fun, and 5e got the balance and fun mostly better than previous edition! As a player, if my friend really insist on playing D&D, I can totally have fun with it! 🙂 The few things I don't like about D&D are: 1. it really is a (fantasy) super hero game (I am not into super hero myself) 2. level and are inherently frustrating (you seldom do the level 20 stuff for a few reason: it takes too much time to reach 20, and a level 20 party is mostly unmanageable and out of this world) (but in CoC you can, unfortunately, meet the Great Cthulhu anytime!!!) 2. class are inherently frustrating (I don't want to buy 20 supplements to find the right class for me or my mate, which don't make sense to exists in such number, I prefer a simpler skill based approach) To be fair, there things that annoy me with BRP too! 😅

please put it in your time sheet! 😛

Not me, the famous beige one!

Nurse Carefully Weighs Whether She Better Off Getting Vaccine Or Losing Job And Dying (theonion.com)

On that topic....

Mmm.. I procrastinated on reading Traveller many times... might have to dive in.. eventually....

Thanks! 🙂 Oh, and don't forget Ragnalar! 😄

Hi Simon, That a really good point! I want to complain I am following another contentious idea I have.. Just like Master of Orion and unlike Star War (and possibly unlike what will "really happen" if we could explore space and travel it's... 3D space) I only have about 20 solar systems. Because, somewhat like MoO Ship have a range of 2~5 parsec, there might be about 1 star every 1 to 3 parsecs. And the Bulrathis empire is a potato of about 15 by 20 parsecs.... (going outside the empire is difficult, no fuel and other civilisation dont accept much migration in general) That said one planet is already big enough.. A star system has many celestial body and with even as low as 20 star systems for the one empire I focus on, there is certainly a lot of room for adventure... starting my adventure brainstorm idea booklet now ... 🙂

Trying! Might suffer from lack of imagination or excessively pointlessly critical mind ... 😞 Meanwhile I started write down any "acceptable" gig idea down in a word document. when th elist will be long enough, perhaps I'll be satisfied... As I said.. I was loath to have the player be part of government agency. But aware I might have to give in on that front.

At the risk of being political (we shall see if my post get deleted I reckon, haha)(but hey, behold, this whole thread would already qualify as political in some circle, how strange), I think many ill informed people are falling victim to evil propaganda here... But who will waste money on such senseless propaganda I was wondering for a long time.... Recently I started to suspect, I reckon our small government loving elites are sponsoring this chaos causing propaganda. the more chaos the more ineffective the government, the better for them... A classic case of divide and conquer.

That describes some 90% of old Pirate movies -- "Captain Blood", anything with Captain Morgan, "Dr. Syn"/"the Scarecrow"/"Captain Clegg" -- (or even less old -- Jack Sparrow, anyone)? Damn.. I didn't realize I was so main stream! 😮😅

I can imagine. My sister is one of those... 😞 Worst I think there is evil propaganda at work. From people who are not particularly crazy....

Sorry long rambling below. But maybe someone has some helpful suggestion to unstuck me? I kept having problem visualizing an adventurer friendly future setting I can believe in, ie. finding the right protagonists... I try to temperate my disbelief meter by remembering I quite enjoyed playing Mass Effect or Cyberpunk... But here is the core of my disbelief problem, when I try to envision a future with gang warfare, corporate warfare, etc... I kept thinking of those political essay which reminds me that one important trait of the state is the monopoly on violence, ultimately not out of good intention but to prevent challenge to its power. It's not a particularly modern trait, as an example when the shogun united japan it destroyed most of Japan forts. Even in the case of a careless state that only protect its few important assets, it won't let random agent damage big tax payers or private army to raise to any level of challenge. So how could a space faring aggressively industrial, expansionist and scientific society have multiple infighting internal agents? I know, who cares, it's a game, right? Where it's a bother though is we get all these cameras, detection tool, certainly used by the players, but when crime happen, as it often does in adventures, how much involved and efficient should state agency be? I have a hard time letting players getting away with stealing vehicles and killing people. But same for NPC, then not much happen. I realize there is a solution, the Cthulhu / New Horizon solution of having a nebulous underground movement of powerful nemesis to provide endless action. But it's not one that take my fancy as a GM. Another possible solution would be for adventurer be part of the military or law enforcement. Which I also would like to avoid - though perhaps I will eventually give in - because I'd like to have revolutionary movement or pirate and I'd like players to be free agent with no particular initial side preference, or perhaps switching allegiances (for example pirates are labelled as bad guy and will definitely give a bad first impression, but might turn out to be the gooder guys sometimes and have a chance to be on the winning side, occasionally, with PCs help).

On a tangent topic walk-in Covid shots are finally available in Brisbane, Australia, so finally got my first shot Saturday, yoohoo! Phew, about time! 😮 🙂 That said I was not too concerned, at worst we had like 10 cases at the same time in the whole state, and more often than not, 0 cases for months! 😄

Those are excellent idea that will make the adventure more lively! 🙂

nailed it!

Wow.. you must have been a Spanish inquisitor in a past life, I certainly didn't expect that! 😮😛

we are not talking absolute here.. but conjecture.. and sharing which conjecture was talked about 😉 i.e. let you understand better what other people probably means.. not whether it's right or wrong or certain or uncertain... 😉

What he was referring to, and what I heard as well... and it's a little confusing, is that dark energy will forever grow to the extent it will eventually distort galaxy clusters, then galaxy, the star system , then planet, then atoms... not only the universe is slowly cooling (by extending) but dark energy is gonna make it extra cool....

true, true. As a side note, I feel compelled to mention, this is the end of time, this civilization is the omega of all civilizations, these people are beyond mere mortality (I mean immune to aging, not invulnerability, of course, although, perhaps a little)... But yea the doom is in a while, and perhaps despair can wait!.... I wanted the players to not despair as well! 😉

Hey Atgxtg, thanks for your lengthy post! Very good for people like me who didn't watch a single Dr Who episode! ^^ As a side note, to nitpick on physics concept if ever there was a need to, falling into a black holy only take an infinite amount of time from the perspective of an outside observer. For whoever is unfortunately falling into it, it happens as fast as one would naively think. Which can be quite long when falling from a few light year away 😉 Other side note, personal thinking on the matter, after watching numerous video on the topic. I believe nothing can go backwards in space once one cross the event horizon, hence I guess all matter should instantly lose cohesion and death will be instantaneous I reckon, despite the assertion that falling into the biggest black holes might go unnoticed for a while due to the size of their event horizon, i.e. no spaghettification at that point - funnily enough though, one can move back and forth through time once the event is crossed, how weird. Other than that I am not really into dark hopeless story, it's just how the idea came to me wholly formed... I had to brainstorm a bit for the hopeful ending when I realized despair was too sensible an option. And will take it, my ideal scenario ending will be either die a fiery radiation death in a whole new universe, or "you are god of this new universe now"....

"a "ringularity" based drive." wow, it's whole new conceptual level! so new and high level that.. please, tell me more! 😄