PoMo or Post Modernism is the notion that texts (books and such) do not reflect truth, but are wholly propaganda for the point of view of the author. One does not read Shakespeare to understand his insights into human nature, but to decipher how his class, and sex based interests were shown in the plays he wrote.
There is no truth, there is only power.
Now, what about a world based on this idea? Every writer and activist is a magician. They try to get a critical mass of people to agree with them. If they do well (Relative Success roll vs. a Resistance Check) they change what people believe, and they can even change reality (even past reality).
These High Scribes (the writers, and activists) usually have greater defenses for themselves so even if the opponent overwhelms them, and rewrites reality, the Scribe is inviolate in himself.
However, sometimes some of it leaks through,a nd then the Scribe is said to suffer from 'false consciousness' or to 'have grown'. Scribes tend to cast spells to check if they are whole, and to go on retreats to purify themselves if they are not.
The pinnacle of victory is of course when your enemy does not even realize there ever was a war.
Three levels of success:
1. Change what people believe.
2. Change reality.
3. Change past reality.
Each is more difficult than the last. The larger the area affected, and the more massive the change, the more difficult the spell.
Usually, such spells cast take weeks to cast, and require at a minimum several hundred enthusiasts to help power them. Enthusiasts help by some of the following: Putting up flyers, striking up conversations with another person on the topic, and hoping for the success of the spell.
People in this world do not generally consider this to be magic. Reality is mutable in their way of thinking.
(Relative Success roll vs. a Resistance Check)
I'm assuming that the writer is rolling a persuasion check on his side (relative success means both parties are rolling).
I'm curious, though. I'd have thought that the usual counter to persuasion is will power. Making it resistance is clever, because it means it's not a matter of people fighting against the idea, but of people being resistant to the magic of the change.
There's a separate problem, and that is, how is this resistance check determined? That is, who is rolling against the writer? If everyone gets a roll, that takes forever, and it also means that there will be a lot of successes amidst the failures.
The alternative is to work by averages. Looking at the basic dicing curves on page 419 of the Referee's Rules, we have half the work done for us. The other half the work we would have to do, probably include in a chart in the book. See, if I have a 2@1 persuasion and I roll 20, I've rolled as high as I can. Anyone whose resistance is not greater than 1@10 cannot beat my roll, so they all either failed their check or succeeded but did not beat mine. They've been persuaded. We also know that given standard distribution that's 95% of the population. Resistances tend to be high in some worlds, though, so maybe it's not the case in this world under consideration.
The trick then comes with those who have a 2@1 or better resistance--which presumably includes all those other authors. To avoid being persuaded, these must roll at least equal to my roll but not equal to or greater than their own resistance. That means that they have a 3.33% chance of success if their resistance equals my 2@1 persuasion, and an additional 3.33% chance for every intensity of resistance above that. Thus if we can figure the percentage of people at each level/intensity of resistance, we can determine the percentage of them who make the roll, and no how pervasive my change is.
While that sounds like a devastating change, it should be noted that I gave myself the best possible roll for someone with a 2@1 persuasion. If I had a 2@10 persuasion, I could have rolled 29, and taken out everyone who did not have a 2@10 persuasion (those one in a million people like me) and all but three and a third percent of those who do. But that assumes that I got the best possible roll. If I roll 11 (the lowest possible roll on a difficult check), everyone with at least a 1@2 resistance is going to meet or beat me unless they fail their check, and thus we work by figuring out how many people would have made a successful check.
The math would take some time, but the chart would be worth having for applications where you're trying to persuade "everyone in the entire world", which is something that probably arises periodically.
--M. J. Young
It seems to me that the resistance roll should somehow be boosted by the persuasion check of the last guy who succeded in changing the same facet of reality or perception.
Persuasion Check is good.
JTM's idea is a good one. If you have a 2@10 writer push a certain POV, it could stay stable for several generations until another very talented author came along to change that particular facet of reality.
Yeah, Marx would be viewed as 'trying to persuade the whole world.' and the interesting thing about Adam Smith is that supporters of capitalism and detractors of capitalism both tend to use arguements he advanced. Supporters using the positive ones, and detractors the negative ones, natch. Thats when you know you're really influential.
Working by averages is good.
A chart would be good
What happens when a writer is so persuasive that reality changes, but someone doesn't get changed? Perhaps we limit this magic to history, and not to science?
I'd advise that an actual reality change effect everyone once you successfully make a persuasion check. If someone's protected from reality change, you can't directly target them or even indirectly erase them.
So in that world, the people who are claiming that The Holocaust never happened would actually be "undoing" that event.
That, though, raises time travel issues. If you could by propaganda actually change the past, would that not mean that those people who were stripped of their valuables and executed in the death camps would now have lived, retaining their valuables, having descendants who inherited them, and changing both the current population and distribution of wealth?
Might you accidentally undo your own existence--and if so, does that undo your success, or once the change has been made is it stabilized until someone decides to write a different history?
--M. J. Young
Or maybe everyone lives in their own bubble universes in which their truth exists. This makes it possible for the pomo statement that everyone has their own truth and that they are both true, even if they oppose each other. To make so that it 'takes over' peoples minds etc. The bubble universes have to expand as more people believe in it and at some places merge, intertwine or collide with others. Would that be possible?
MJ,
Para #1: Correct.
Para #2: Now you're being logical and suggesting that truth is more than propaganda. You will have to attend a Diversity Conference for your patriarchial imperialism of your mind.
More seriously, yes, you're right, but in this world logic does not apply. Perhaps a very few people are changed, but the world stays essentially the same. (This also has the gamemaster bene of making things easier for the gm.)
Probably most of the people who got changed would be the writers and their friends who would likely have greater status afterwards.
You can't undo your own existence because that presupposes some greater reality than the will to power.
Nikolaj,
That sounds interesting. I'm not sure what to do with it, but it seems like it could work.
When I say nothing is changed, perhaps I should instead say that most things are the same, but a few surface elements are different.
"FDR Boulevard" is renamed "Avenue of the Victorious People", but its still pretty much the same. This is a world based on a philosophy by shallow minds so tiny, obvious changes rule, but more deepseated changes are unlikely.
I could also see 'magical' things happen if the natural law of the universe can be changed by opinions. People could walk out on a street claiming they don't believe in things like buses and cars. And then, if they really convince themselves, would that be enough to avoid this or does this cause a clash of two 'realities', where dice need to be rolled to see what reality wins?
Nikolaj raises an interesting point. It would seem that your world must be extremely high in the mag bias. (It might be the psi bias, but that's a lot harder row to hoe; imagination being essentially magical, the ability to impose your imagination on the entire world is probably also magical.)
But what happens if the winning reconstruction of the world includes that it is not and never was magical? Can you in essence change the mag bias in a way that prevents it from changing back? I know that over the course of history biases change, and when they fall things that were possible often become impossible.
We'll have to figure out what skill is actually being used to alter reality in this way. The very question points me to a combination of M15@10 Achieve Temporal Effects combined with a M15@4 Combine Magical Abilities with Other Persons (an unusual application, but feasible). I'm less certain how to do it psionically, although 14@1 Deceive Dections and 15@1 Create Psychic Impressions both commend themselves in a peculiar way, that you might without actually altering the past alter history, that is, that anyone using any means of viewing the past other than physically visiting it would see the new version. (This has the odd side effect that the world is still mostly constituted as the original history would demand, because nothing actually changed, but all knowledge of what was has been altered.) It would, however, also require some sort of mass 1@5 suggestion and maybe also an 8@2 block memories to rewrite history in all the minds of everyone who remembers the past. Actually to change the past would seem to require some 14@10 Time Travel variant, or at least that's the best I can figure.
But in any case, these abilities are highly subject to changes in bias. Unless the people making the changes are outsiders who are subject only to the bias curve, and the curve is kept constant, a significant change in the world could prevent any future changes.
Of course, bias is not part of the world which indigs can usually impact easily; it usually changes over centuries. It's technically in the hands of the ruling gods, but influenced by the interaction of the indigs with the gods as the indigs increase or lose knowledge. (Prometheus comes to mind: is technology really "discovered" by men, or do the gods reveal it at their whim? Or is that really two different ways of viewing the same events?)
That's a lot to consider, but hopefully will help. Now, where do I have to go to attend those brainwashi--er, classes?
--M. J. Young
Well, in an earlier suggestion there was the idea that this change might be just limited to history and not actual science. Thus people would have the ability to rewrite the Law of Gravity, but no one thinks to do this.
I was always thinking magic with this (and yes, a very high bias), but the idea of a world in which Reality is Stable, but Everyone's Opinion is Subject to Change is pretty cool too.
They had a Stargate episode where the colony space was shrinking behind a forcefield, but everyone was jacked into a central computer that as the colony ran out of power and exiled people outside the breathable space, the AI rewrote everyone's memories so that that person had never existed and the edge of the world was at Smith Street because Walker Street never existed.
As to where you go for the classes, don't worry, men in black coats and sunglasses will be knocking on your door presently....
And one major advantage for Pomo world is the high mag bias or high psi bias, but practically no one using these skills except for the specific abilities listed....
So Verser Guy arrives and he has his full arsenal of magic which no one else has, but at the same time he's facing a worldwide conspiracy out to crush him like a bulldozer crushes an ant. It could be interesting if he is changed to believe he's always been a resident of 156 Smith Street, and that the strange nightmares he has of other worlds are signs of some problems.
You could go with a good story about a revolutionary, or a man finding courage inside himself to have faith in what he knows to be true even as the outside world disagrees, or some sort of horror story from there, or perhaps something like KPAX where the crazy guy keeps insisting "I'm a space alien" and then really does vanish in a beam of light.