I was watching an episode of Sliders in which tobacco was illegal. They landed right in the middle of an illegal tobacco plantation, armed with land mines and guys with big guns. I was thinking that this kind of parallels the drug trade here.
The thing though is that only people who had been addicted to cigarettes would be customers. Nicotine is the single most addictive substance in the world, after all. I could easily imagine a world like that.
It SHOULD be illegal!!!!!!
Of course, there would be groups calling for its legalization, citing medical benefits of the tobacco plant, etc. I thought that might make an interesting world.
(Doing Therapy)
Maybe a world in which the roles of tobacco and marijuana in society are reversed?
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. I'd love to verse into a world like that....
(Doing Therapy)
Ya know Osevens, that's an interesting idea. I could actually imagine this happening on our world. In order to balance the national budget, someone decides to legalize marijuana, and outlaw tobacco. More taxes collected, and less spent on cancer research. If tobacco was made illegal, you better believe there would be people smuggling it in, at least until the original smokers died off. Whether or not anyone else would get addicted to it would be difficult to tell, but honestly, I would hope not. The current addicts would certainly keep the trade going for a while, anyway.
And ya know what? I think that's EXACTLY what they need to do to balance the national budget.
(Doing Therapy)
The thing is though that, speaking as a cigarette smoker for the past 14 years, I don't think there is a single smoker in the world who would promote starting smoking. However, it is highly addictive, and some people are really stupid, so who knows? My point though is that I cannot imagine a world in which tobacco was illegal, but had never been legal to start with. The addicts would keep it alive, how many more people started after that is anybody's guess.
No, wait, nicotine is a natural anti-psychotic. It's being used medically for that, that keeps things alive in the underworld. It's in my head, but I think I don't want to go on another one of those 20 posts rants, so I'm going to leave it here for the moment.
(Doing Therapy)
Ya know what? Scrap this idea entirely. Speaking as a smoker for the past 14 years, I honestly cannot imagine a world in which tobacco was illegal and was part of an underground drug problem. The only way I could imagine such a world is if the smokers were tricked or forced to start smoking. A world like that, I want nothing to do with the creation of.
Forget this thread ever existed, unless someone else wants to follow my work and make a world out of it.
In order for an illegal drug to spread, its users would have to endorse and promote its use. There's no cigarette smoker alive that would endorse smoking cigarettes. Once the addicts were gone, so would be the tobacco trade.
(Doing Therapy)
More than 9 hours later
If the indigs didn't realize the full addictive properties of nicotine, actually, I could imagine a world where it was part of the drug problem. Yes, it is addictive, but no so badly (at first, anyway) that you would go out of your way to support a $50 a day habit if you were not heavily addicted. I could imagine a world where a pack of cigarettes last most people a month, unless they were heavily addicted to start with. They do give you a really pleasant and relaxing body high, if you're not a heavy user.
(Doing Therapy)
And since it does have anti-psychotic, as well as other medicinal properties, I could imagine a world where cigarettes are part of the drug scene. It isn't like Heroin where you smoke one cigarette, and you're ready to sell your grandmother for them. Takes time. If the addictive properties were not fully understood, or deemed acceptable, I could imagine it.
The only people who are smokers in any real, traditional sense are the psychotic, medical tobacco patients. I could imagine that, actually.
(Doing Therapy)
The propaganda would be that it has anti-psychotic properties as well as natural insecticidal properties. (It does) and in order to become so addicted that you could not stop, you would have to smoke 20 cigarettes a day for 2 years (Which, due to price, and it being illegal would be some insanely high amount in their culture) I could imagine that.
Not gonna post anymore, unless someone else does.
(Doing Therapy)
2 hours later
I'll spare you the details, but the way this world is shaping up inside my head, it would have a very strong anti-smoking message. The people would be exactly the same as they are now, except cigarettes are illegal, and most people can't afford to smoke more than 1 or 2 a day. A smoker's cough would be a status symbol in the tobacco community.
(Doing Therapy)
I'm at the moment trying to quit smoking. To understand how this would work, you would have to be a smoker, or otherwise seriously addicted to something. The way I'm imagining it, it would be at least as common as marijuana, but incredibly expensive. Just like now..... It would also be incredibly addictive, and difficult to quit... Just like now. However, if you could afford to smoke so much that you had a smoker's cough, you were very rich indeed. And yes, people would do this. To understand, you would have to be a smoker. The way I'm seeing it, "Most users of the illicit drug tobacco" smoke 1 or 2 cigarettes a day. In that dosage, you would get a nicotine high every time you lit up, for probably a month. After that, you're sufficiently hooked that it's uncomfortable to stop. One or two cigarettes is all you can afford, and it makes it tolerable (Again, you'd have to be a smoker) but if you can afford 4 or 5, life is so much better. And it would be a status symbol in the tobacco community how many cigarettes you could afford to smoke in a day. That's the way the addiction would work. Exactly as it does here, but illegal, and more obvious.
You'd have to be a smoker to understand, but this would mimic our world, except be totally different, and have a huge anti-smoking message to boot.
Only someone like Bill Gates could afford to be a 2 pack a day smoker, but he would be so envied in the tobacco community for it. You'd have to be a smoker.
(Doing Therapy)
I've a couple of comments.
There is evidence that smoking marijuana also causes cancer. It is not tobacco specifically, but the process of inhaling smoke that does it. Lung and other respiratory tract cancers are more common in regions with high levels of smoke and other air pollutants, and in professions that are exposed to smoke.
I certainly agree that it would have to be a substance that had been legal and was now illegal, but that's hardly saying anything--everything was once legal. One of the problems in drug enforcement in some states is that their system requires them to define the chemical equations of all drugs that are not legal, so all an enterprising chemist need do is invent a formula that will have desired effects that does not match any on the list. Tobacco may have been illegal for a long time and still have adherents and advocates.
Cigarettes are probably relatively unlikely. Pipes are most likely, and rolling papers to make your own cigarettes also common. Cigars would be the tobacco treasure.
As far as getting others started, a friend who has long consumed entirely too much alcohol for as long as I have known him recently suggested to me that no one likes the taste of alcohol, but everyone forces himself to acclimate to it because of the buzz. Nicotine does have something of a buzz, and it might be possible for that to be the driving force.
Note, too, that since you're talking about another universe, the biology of those indigs might be just different enough that the nicotine gives a stronger reaction and the THC a significantly lesser one.
--M. J. Young
I got it, Eric was talking about a low body bias world. I was thinking a flatline martial arts candy store. This was shot down for several reasons, but I was just thinking that on this world, nicotine is incredibly addictive, and that's one of the methods used to control the versers. Difficult willpower check to even consider running away.
Ya know, for a guy that doesn't like to get forced, this does seem like it forces the players quite a bit.... Probably better scrap it.
Ya know what though, this does remind me of something that I wanted to ask. Can SAL be powerblocked? Suppose someone is a 3@4 in Karate, can it be powerblocked so that he is only a 1@10?
I still think that idea could work, it just needs some serious tinkering.
Do frequent made willpower checks increase willpower? In a flatline body bias, you would probably have to make quite a few of them. That could also be part of the candy.
Yeah, the world forces you, but it forces you to get into shape, increase your willpower, and learn at least the @1 basics of a lot of fighting styles. Tell me that isn't a candy store world.
(Doing Therapy)
Because botches would happens so frequently, all body botches are given the bonused, 3-21 GE roll. Also, their medical team is incredibly skilled, and you can learn quite a bit about human anatomy and whatnot while you're at it.
(Doing Therapy) Gonna try not to post anymore.
Said I'd try not to post anymore.....
Ya know what else though? This could also be the start of Verserland. Somewhere out there, there is a world where almost the entire population is versers. Once you land, because of the huge number of scriff senses, if it isn't on-person, most versers never find their gear again. This is OK though, because there is gear to be had all over the place. Everything from Flea markets that sell gear, to just walking along and having someone's gear materialize right in front of you. In Verserland, it is an acceptable practice to do this, however, if a verser can identify or otherwise prove ownership of something, it is customary to return it to them.
How does that flatline body world fit in? Simple, lots of versers means lots of botches. In some 2 square mile areas, someone botched and the biases are different. Some enterprising folks have turned these into training grounds. The flatline body bias area is owned by a gentleman who offers "The toughest martial arts school you will ever find anywhere." Once entering, you must sign a 1 year contract. One year in a flatline world, you would be incredibly buff when you came out.
In other sections, the psi and mag biases are flatlined. Some enterprising chap took to teaching the @1 skills in these areas. "You never know what world you will land in, better to be ready. If it works here, it works almost everywhere."
I could imagine this.
(Doing Therapy)
No. If you're better than someone else at something, you are better than that other person at that thing in every universe in which that thing is possible.Can SAL be powerblocked? Suppose someone is a 3@4 in Karate, can it be powerblocked so that he is only a 1@10?
However, at negative bias, the SAL must exceed ten plus the absolute value of the bias level (level only) of the universe--that is, in a -1@ universe your SAL must be at least 1@2, and in a -15@ universe your SAL must be at least 2@6, or you cannot perform the skill at all. This does not directly impact how well you can perform it (e.g., you still get multiple attacks for 2@ SAL), but of course it also reduces your probability of success (because the bias bonus is now negative).
I should not say that it is a referee's judgment call, because that's not exactly what it is, although it comes to much the same thing. I would not be giving you a bonus because you made a lot of successful will power checks, but because in my assessment the conditions of your activities were such that it could be analogized to a will power training program. To illustrate, I did not increase your strength and stamina because you made a lot of successful strength and stamina attribute checks as a blacksmith, but because working as a blacksmith exercised your strength and stamina. So you might or might not actually roll any will power checks, and they might or might not be successful, but if conditions were such that it was evident you were exercising your will power, I would consider that a training program to increase will power, and would do so--very slowly, mind, perhaps over hundreds of days.Do frequent made willpower checks increase willpower?
--M. J. Young
Ya know, speaking of a world populated by versers, I was thinking that would be an amazing candy store training ground and swap-meet for equipment.
Lots of versers, lots of botches. For some, unexplained reason, botches frequently have the effect of changing the bias of a 1 square mile area. Thus, there are areas with flatline body biases, areas with flatline tech, Psi and Mag biases also. There are also areas where TK pulse is impossible, but psionic teleportation cannot possibly fail. (The botch was teleportation, and in an area of, say 10 square feet, teleportation is bonused by 50,000 automatically) These are all over the place and used to get around the planet quickly, to the different training facilities. Such as the before-mentioned flatline martial arts school "Toughest training academy you will ever attend." In the flatline tech areas, you can find out what gear will work there, and a few folks specialize in supplying it. Of course, there are teachers of every skill you could possibly imagine, and all kinds of things happen. A huge, verser swap meet. I think that could be really cool. Thoughts?
(Doing Therapy)
Might go on a bit of a rant, I'll try to keep it under control though.
Precious metals and gems are the most-common currency in Verserland, however, trades are always welcome. "You got a broken down Civil War era flintlock? Well, come to Crazy Bob's swap meet. Someone WILL trade you for it." (And someone would, although it's a GE roll on how difficult it is to find them.) There's always going to be somebody interested in just about any piece of equipment you have. A guy that had some bad experiences in low-tech worlds might trade you your flintlock for a higher-biased, but much more powerful weapon. There's always someone that wants what you have.
The attitude is rather carefree. There's an air of brotherhood in the surrounding places. Versers swap stories in the local tavern "Largest collection of spirits that can be found anywhere." (Versers bringing in bottles, people that knew how to make alcohol, etc.) Anything you want to learn, just find the guy that knows how to do it, and work out a deal with him. Maybe he has a fondness for 9mm pistols and will give you a year's training for one. Who knows what could happen? Versers of all people know that things valuable in one world might not be in the next. It's all personal preference what the person will trade for. However, lower tech and @1 weapons and equipment are generally favored and have a higher value. Your T15@10 scriff control device won't be nearly as sought after as a T6@1 explosive driven slug thrower, for instance, although there is SOMEONE who will want it. I think this could be a really cool candy store world.
(Doing Therapy)
The problem with candy store worlds is, why wouldn't you just settle there? Barring accident or malevolence, Versers are effectively immortal. That kind of world would boil down into a training montage that ends with "roll skill learning? Did you botch? No? Add it to your sheet at 2@5. Next. Did you botch? Yes? Did it kill you? No. Okay, wait till wears off and..." and basically just declare victory, knowing you basically know everything by the time you leave. If the point of being a Verser is to learn from the worlds as you sample them, that kind of thing is a fun concept that would be kinda bland in reality.
Ok, if there were 'really' Versers, that sort of thing might exist, for the very benevolent reasons you imagine it might.
From a fictional, dramatic standpoint... it's basically giving away the house. Where Versing around learning random things (blacksmithing in a fairy tale world, much?) is the meat-and-potatoes of a Verser's existence, a candy store world would be... exactly that. A steady diet of raw sugar.
There are laws, of course, but only one punishment. Immediate execution, and confiscation of all equipment. Being sent out of this world would be a pretty steep punishment, if you really think about it. If you're executed, depending on the severity of the crime, you might have to willpower check against a 3@10 to get your equipment to verse with you. This is also a source of random equipment, of course.
(Doing Therapy)
I totally get your point Osevens, it was just a strange idea I had. Eric was talking about a low body world, and I think every verser dreams of a world like this at some point. A world populated by his kind. It just seemed like a really cool concept to me.
(Doing Therapy)
And if someone doesn't want to trade your gear, there's always people who would take it as scrap for parts. I would likely open a blacksmithing shop. I'll make you a knife out of your broken, Civil War flintlock, in exchange for keeping the rest of the metal for myself. I imagine bladed weapons would be in high demand. (Can't be biased out, after all) Someone else who was seriously into electronics would take your broken laser blaster, cannibalize it for parts, and make some really interesting electronic gadgets.
The universe bias is 15@10 all around, except for the "Botch Zones" where biases are different, and often quite screwy.
(Doing Therapy)
Oh yeah, MJ, just so you know, no need to put much thought into the reply. (In other words, don't take all day on it) It was just an idea that I had.
(Doing Therapy)
More than 20 hours later
Here's one, a world where versers are the world's Bigfoot. Everyone is looking for proof of the existence of versers. There have been some reported eyewitness accounts of seeing versers arrive, an occasional filmed event, and of course, numerous, elaborate hoaxes. Can the existence of the mythical verser ever be proven conclusively????
And, of course, people came forward claiming to be versers, some had very convincing evidence, but none of them were willing to be killed and verse out to prove their story. This of course doesn't prove that they're NOT versers, ask any conspiracy theorist on the subject......
And of course, if it's that deep in their culture, there would be exploded mythology surrounding it. "Then, the verser appeared in the middle of the battlefield. And when he saw our enemies approaching, in a flash of blue-green fire that blotted out the sun itself, the mighty verser destroyed our enemies in one fell swoop."
(Mythological (And mostly true) account of a trigger happy verser who landed right in the middle of the battlefield, and on seeing armed men on horseback coming at him, opened fire with a huge laser cannon)
(Doing Therapy)
I think I might be the only person with any experience at all in this notion of worlds with lots of experienced versers.
I was in one once. It was my first visit to NagaWorld--where Paul and Annie were my hosts, and then there was an unexpected influx of Michael di Vars, Dan O'Malley, Peter Adams, Mary Fitzgerald, and Whisp. (Bob Thomas was also there, but I did not know it--he was in Pete Adam's dimensionally modified briefcase.) Dylan Stevens was still there with me, too, as I recall. Of those, Dylan was the only other player character--the rest were run by the referee. Problem with that kind of scenario is, you really have to know all your NPCs to make it work even moderately well. Mr. Jones did--those were all friends of his who had played in the game before, except Annie who was a lost girlfriend he envisioned as a verser. Even so, I never got a sense of the individuality of the characters, really. They devolved into props, a mass of versers with whom I could adventure.
The other problem with the scenario, really, is that when you have a situation in which the player character is surrounded by a lot of NPCs, you need to have a good reason why the player character makes the decisions. That was really tough in that situation, because of course all of those giants of the verse were far more knowledgeable and experienced than I. I had made some amazing discoveries in my researches in NagaWorld, and they were very impressed with me, but it never really felt right to me for me to be taking the lead in what we were going to do. So it didn't really work with a lot of NPC versers.
But I also ran a gather world in which I brought together, at the table, four of my then five players in the same universe. It took quite a bit of manipulation to get them all there--and as far as gathers go, it was not that much to note. One of the group isolated himself from all the others, using resources available in that world to improve himself but never doing anything with the others. One, the youngest, tagged along with the most reckle--er, adventurous--of the group, and let him make all the decisions. One hung around doing nothing, that I recall. The guy who isolated himself managed on his maybe third or fourth botch to blow himself out of that world. The guy who was most adventurous managed on his third or fourth botch to destroy the entire world.
That really is the problem with a "thousands of versers" scenario. When the biases are low, every verser is going to test them, push the limits, to see what can be done, and every one of them is going to botch multiple times. When the biases are high, every verser is going to exploit them, experiment with what they can do, try to learn skills they've hitherto only imagined, and every one of them is going to botch multiple times. Sure, the chance of an explosion being multiple obliterative throughout the entire universe is one in one million, but give it enough high mag and high psi botches it is going to happen--and you don't need anything larger than planetary or more powerful than annihilating to finish the world pretty solidly, and you can have a lot of other world-ending botches without an explosion. Low biases make all skills risky; high biases encourage risky behavior. The world could not last, merely as a matter of probabilities.
I know that Eric likes to imagine these verser-filled worlds, but they've always bothered me. I think that's probably why--that many versers are guaranteed to destroy themselves pretty quickly. Youz guys are just that unstable. I see it all the time. Even careful players like Shawn and Graeme are more likely to go out on a botch than anything else. Botches are deadly.
--M. J. Young
Even careful players like Shawn and Graeme are more likely to go out on a botch than anything else. Botches are deadly.
But do they HAVE to be deadly? Why do botches HAVE to be dangerous? You've told me several times that botches are unexpected and unwanted results, not that they HAVE to be dangerous.
Couldn't the botch be something that the player wouldn't even know that they botched? Make one that says "Kill random person on the other side of the world." So, suddenly, some guy in China dies of a heart attack, and the character doesn't even know it happened. Could the referee do that? Or what about "Psionically grow flowers" So, I'm sitting in the back of the jeep TK pulsing the MP, and suddenly rose bushes start growing on both sides of the road. Harmless, funny, and gets the point across. It's totally the referee's discretion, right? So, why not just make the botches things that are just fun, and not dangerous?
It would be a way to railroad the player, and they would never complain about it. If the referee already decided that I would get to the base in one piece, and I was doing something stupid like that, make the botch list things that are harmless and funny that won't even slow the jeep down. I'm not knocking Adam's style (or lack thereof) it was just an idea that I had.
I think that on some level the answer to that is that it would be unfair.
Not that it is unfair for good things to happen when you botch--The Kid says that whenever you make a botch list there has to be one thing on it that the player will perceive as good, even if it's only good in the sense that they determine that they want to figure out how to do that when they want to sometime.
What is unfair is for "Boy, you really messed that up in a big way" always to have good results, or at least non-bad results. Botches are interesting in part because they are dangerous; were they never dangerous, they would be considerably less interesting for everyone--the referee, the other observers, even the player himself.
Most of the time when I make a botch list, there's a relatively low chance that whatever happens will so much as kill the one who botched; but the chance is there. Sometimes the chance is that it will kill someone else. Sometimes you you don't know whether it killed anyone. Sometimes, once in a great while, it kills everybody, destroys an entire world. These botches are statistically rare. The point is, though, that when you have a hundred thousand versers (a conservative estimate for the world you've described) all performing dozens of skills every day and trying to learn new ones, you've got thousands of botches every day, and if the chance of a botch that destroys the entire world is only one in a million, at a conservative two thousand botches per day, in five hundred days--about seventeen months, less than a year and a half--those million botches have happened, and one of them statistically was the botch that destroyed the world.
--M. J. Young
Also, for what it's worth, botches are generally supposed to "make sense"; that is, there should be some reasonable relationship between the skill attempted, the situation, and the outcome. Contrary to one reviewer's misunderstanding of the rules, if you fired a standard Colt .45 Revolver and botched, it would not shoot flowers from the barrel. It might misfire. It might jam. It might explode, within the reasonable parameters of the amount of explosive it could contain. The only way it could spew flowers would be if it were also a magic weapon, and the botch affected the dweomer of the expected magic.
That's why lower level psionic and magic skills do not usually result in explosions, but higher level ones frequently do. If you release a little magic into the world, you get little botches; if you release big magic into the world you get big botches. If you bat things around with thought or touch the minds of others, you get little botches; if you tamper with the molecular structure of objects around you or attempt to dematerialize and rematerialize matter, you get big ones.
--M. J. Young
That makes sense. I still say though that you should have harmless, funny botches every now and then. As you said, statistically, it would be bound to happen.
Something else I was thinking about. I know you say that you don't botch when you practice, but I think you do. However, the botches are so minor that you wouldn't think anything of them. So, I'm walking around practicing psionically lifting skirts, and I botch, brain burn. However, it's so minor that I would just write it off as a migraine headache and not think much of it. Or, throw psionic shock waves, but again, they're so minor that they only kill all of the insects in a 10 foot radius around me, and I don't even notice. Not botching at all during practice doesn't really make much sense.
Two Posts, 23 hours later
What you were saying about the thousands of versers and millions of botches. I still think that could work. It's just that this world has something really unusual about it, so that 99% of all botches are completely harmless. I mean if ANYTHING is possible, then there is a world like that. The worst botch you could possibly do would be brain burn, and that would be a 30 GE roll. Just a thought.
Not sure, John. After all, when you verse into a world, you're in the world but not of the world. At least some of the limits placed on a universe don't apply to you. So maybe the indigs can't botch like that, but the outsiders might.I mean if ANYTHING is possible, then there is a world like that.
--M. J. Young