Ah, but who says you would be fed three square meals a day? What if the Secret Service of that world tries to torture and interrogate you?
The point is, John, that the opening does not matter as much as you think, especially to a non-involvement player
Ah, but who says you would be fed three square meals a day? What if the Secret Service of that world might tries to torture and interrogate you?
I hadn't thought of that Brock. I guess I was imagining that since it was supposed to be realistic, it would be in that detail. Full constitutional rights, fair treatment of prisoners, etc. I hadn't considered that possibility.
The point is, John, that the opening does not matter as much as you think, especially to a non-involvement player
Really, I'm more trying to learn than argue at this point. You must admit, a great deal of information about non-involvement has been given. To me, the only thing which would have constituted non-involvement in that situation would have been leaving or dying in the attempt. That's not an argument, just an explanation of my opinion. Again, not arguing, just explaining. In my mind, MJ wanted to see if I would not get involved, then I was never given the chance to not get involved. It was a test of non-involvement, but that was my doing, and completely unexpected.
(Doing Therapy)
A non-involvement player could also bunker down, refuse to talk no matter what is done to him, perhaps attempt suicide, pretend to not understand the language, or any of numerous other possibilities to avoid hurting OR helping the natural progression of events.
In a perfect world Brock. In a perfect world.
(Doing Therapy)
It would depend on the strength of that belief. even a 3@10 could be broken (though the methods would have to be extraordinary).
Good luck breaking ME, though. I spent half my life being broken over and over, and it WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN!
You better be careful. You might end up like my character. Four guns and hand grenades on you at all times.
Good luck breaking ME, though. I spent half my life being broken over and over, and it WON'T HAPPEN AGAIN!
Something I've learned Brock is don't EVER say something like that. As soon as you think you can't be broken, someone will find a way to break you.
Under normal circumstances, I would have had no problem letting that place be destroyed. I didn't think anything could break that. A way was found. Don't say that it can't happen, because it can.
I'm just curious. Of those reading, who among you would warn Pearl Harbor, and why? I think I've made my position and reasoning clear, I was wondering about the rest of you.
I think if I were running that, if the player did warn them, within a matter of years, Germany would be landing beachhead hits on the United States mainland because we didn't enter the war on time as a direct result of their actions.
(Doing Therapy)
I would most likely warn them. Regardless of whether they enter the war it would earn their trust and allow me to both learn what I can from them and teach them what I know. This would allow me to study under the brilliant minds of the time hopefully and I could easily teach higher yield methods of producing high grade steel, as well as advance polymer studies/help make it be it's own legitimate field.
Just the steel processing knowledge that I have alone would cut the material cost of tanks and all other metal items probably by more than 50%, not to mention the fact that it's a higher grade steel.
As to how long that would take, it would be way less than a matter of years. A production facility could be modified to high grade steel production probably in a matter of 6 months.
This doesn't even touch on the idea of idea of body armors incorporating non-newtonian fluids to absorb impacts. Would be fun to be the governments secret weapon in a technology race.
I would not have even recognized where I was without significant referee help, let alone know whether or not I would warn them.
I would help them. I would suspect I was in an alternate reality and act on that belief to a strong degree.
I consider Naziism and Yamato Militarism to be True Horror and Very Nasty. I would likely support also getting rid of Communism while I was at it.
I could offer the Allies a lot of clues and some good advice (Don't Invade Italy...or Iwo Jima.) I would not be able to give them a whole industry advantage like Glantri could.
I do not think the Nazis would have beachheads on American soil.
Hopefully, I would be able to significantly lower the number of Jews murdered.
Glantri, you'd be walking around with more Secret Service agents than guarded FDR, and Churchill would get notified if you got the sniffles. :)
Mike raises a good point, which I think I would at some point have realized in play: the fact that I warned them might give me additional credibility.
"I know that Japan is going to launch an attack on Pearl Harbor mostly by air strike about one week into December. It's difficult to explain how I know this, but if I'm right I know some other stuff that might be valuable."
"I know that Germany is working on an atomic explosive device and a rocket-based delivery system. If they're successful, they will be able to conquer Europe easily, but also will be able to launch attacks against the United States using intercontinental missile systems. They're on a slow track on the explosives, because they're using heavy water and deuterium for their nuclear source, and we can get there faster by using unstable uranium to build atomic bombs. Einstein and Oppenheimer are the leading names in this, and they're here in America and can put together a team that will do the job. Germany is well ahead on rocketry probably already, but their main scientist Werner Von Braun is working from Goddard's published materials so we can catch up easily if we wish. I know that the military has discounted Goddard's work at this point, but within a couple of years Germany is going to be using rockets to deliver conventional bombs from western Europe to eastern Great Britain, and the range will be getting longer with each attempt. Believe it or not, we're less than twenty years from using rockets to escape the atmosphere, and intercontinental delivery systems will be easier than that."
I don't know a lot of detail about World War II, but I think I know enough to keep my credibility high--such as that at some point Germany is going to turn against Russia, and it's going to be badly timed because it's going to give them a war on two fronts and a fight against the Russian winter when Stalin treats Hitler to the same defense the Czar used against Napoleon.
I've also got a passable knowledge of semiconductors and might be able to jumpstart the use of transistors and point us in the direction of integrated circuits.
Even if the U.S. doesn't join the war effort "on time", my influence might have them more than ready when the enemy comes looking.
So put me down as yes, I'd warn them.
--M. J. Young
I'm kind of surprised how many of you would warn them. I saw a movie once where a guy went back in time and killed Hitler as a child. So, the Holocaust never happens, and the world is a better place, right? Wrong. One of the Jews formerly killed in the Holocaust grew up to become a dictator far worse than Hitler. The guy had to go back again and stop himself, and restore the original timeline, as it was (believe it or not) clearly the lesser of the two evils. Better to deal with the one known danger than to create two new dangers. I guess it just spooked me.
(Doing Therapy)
That in my view is unrealistic.
What happened at the turning of the Millenium? We gained an enemy, AQ. OK, they are a very serious problem. I've written sixteen thousand words on how AQ could destroy Western Civ. And our helping the Afghanistan rebels against the Soviets may have paved the way in part to their later misdeeds against us.
But I remember as a kid looking toward my hometown and seeing a weird light effect after sundown. I kinda believed my hometown, as I've said on this forum before, had been nuked.
We traded Global Thermonuclear War for a Persistent Terrorist Threat. AQ is seriously bad news. But even the worst case scenario for AQ is not as bad as the worst case for the Cold War, and the AQ worst case is less likely.
This is what happens if you bravely go forth to fight the threats facing you, in general. You provoke the bad guy to rage, but in the end, you win. And then some lesser threat rises up.
Realistically, or more accurately, most likely, something bad was going to come out of Germany. But it nots likely it would have been as bad as the Nazis. Most likely that other form of Socialism, International Communism, would have taken over. Stalin was a very cautious and slow moving man. He would have been the lead element in International Communism. Europe goes dark, death camps aka gulags are formed. Death rate is I think less than...
Well actually, the Commies killed more than the Nazis by a long shot.
Y'know, maybe you're right. The West was insulated from Naziism in large part because Stalin gave orders to his minions and lackeys to blast Hitler after Hitler betrayed him.
Imagine a Hollywood in love with Comrade Joe and few Americans with teh stomach for a total war. Imagine a slower, but more merciless (and focused less on race than on the middle class extermination) murder. Imagine that Russia does not lose thirty million soldiers in the Great Patriotic War. Germany, Russia, China, and Japan...all wolf states in alliance.
OK, that would be worse. America would probably have gone under.
Well, it was one of those B movie late late late shows that no one has ever heard of. I thought it was kind of interesting to think about, that even the worst situation the world has faced could be made even worse.
(Doing Therapy)
This "made worse" theory was raised by someone in comments on my Examiner articles, and I addressed his questions in Temporal Theory Questions from Jeff.
The critical point really is to what degree we expect chance and to what degree we expect providence. If we believe that the world as it is is as it is simply because it is the product of our choices, and it might have been better but it might have been worse, then there is a statistical factor invoked, that when it is worse than average any random change is likely to cause it to be better. So the Holocaust is one of the great horrors of the twentieth century, and thus one of those passages in time that were much worse than average. We can imagine that a random change would bring something worse, but the roll of the dice suggests that it is most likely to bring something better.
That's probably a good way to illustrate it. Given a 3d10 general effects roll where 3 is the one in a thousand best outcome and 30 is the one in a thousand worst, and you roll a 21, if you had the chance to pick up those dice and throw them again, would you do so? 78% of the rolls you might get next would be better than that; 16.5% would be worse. (The missing 5.5% is that you would get the same roll.) You might not trust your luck in that situation--a bit better than three out of four that you'll do better, but about one in six that you'll do worse. What, though, if the roll is 25? 27? 29? At 25, the chance of doing better is 94.4%, of doing worse 3.5%; at 27 the numbers are 98 to 1. At 29, it's 99.6 to 0.1. That means the worse things are, the more likely it is that a random change will make them better. (It conversely means that the better things are, the more likely it is that a random chance will make them worse.)
The alternative is to believe in some kind of providence that has brought the world to what we have. We need to be careful in discussing this, though, because we must not assume a "good" providence, and we also have issues concerning whether that providence is omniscient and omnipotent. That is, does our providence know what the best and worst of all possible worlds are, is it capable of bringing about what it wants, and what does it want? If we believe that the providence is beneficent, reasonably close to omniscient, and at least capable, then we conclude that the Holocaust, one of the worst events of modern history, was the best of all possible worlds, and that to prevent it is to make the world worse; we also believe that that providence was not capable of preventing us from derailing its intentions. We might believe, however, that the "providence" was trying to give us the worst of all possible worlds, and that it is incapable of preventing us from fixing matters to improve them. It is even possible to suppose (as Quantum Leap perhaps suggests) that the providence was not quite omnipotent but is willing to use a time traveler to correct the little glitches that arose in the unfolding history. Or if our providence is bigger than that, it was always intended that the time traveler would change the past, and thus the evils were intended in order to give opportunity to someone to do good.
I personally believe in a providence that works to make this the best of all possible worlds for its intended purpose. Where we go wrong is in supposing that that intended purpose is a pain-free pleasant existence for all its people. That would not be the purpose as I understand it; but at this point I am straying from the point of the thread. For game purposes, whatever providence is involved is the product of the dice, the invocations of characters, and the pre-written scenario, to the degrees that these involve positive and negative outcomes and a sense of the purpose of each given world.
--M. J. Young
Yeah, but MJ, you have no idea what defines "good" and what defines "bad" to this mythical "providence" you speak of. It's entirely possible that the Holocaust was the 3 roll, and that any roll made would be worse.
Two
You keep telling me that I am the exception. Everyone else would warn them, no one else would antagonize the MP, etc. My doctor said that I'm not even normal for a psychotic. So, I'm just the exception all the way around.
...You DID warn them. They thought you were mad, and locked you away, remember?
I probably wouldn't warn them. There is no telling how different the world is from my own. stopping the attack may have long reaching repercussions that are actually worse than the repercussions of the attack itself. I'm leery of interfering with established history, even if it is another world.
Then again, I wouldn't want to stand by as people are slaughtered. I'm not even in the situation, and I'm already torn.
It was supposed to be more of a funny wisecrack than anything. "I'm not even normal for a psychotic....."
And it's nice to see someone agrees with me about not warning them. MJ was right. I saw them as already dead. I'm just not committed to non-involvement.
(Doing Therapy)
Yeah, but MJ, you have no idea what defines "good" and what defines "bad" to this mythical "providence" you speak of. It's entirely possible that the Holocaust was the 3 roll, and that any roll made would be worse.
No, the point wasn't what "providence" would consider good or bad; the point was whether whatever "providence" did would be good or bad by our standards.
--M. J. Young
Still though, define "good" and define "evil". Suppose that movie was right. That there was a child killed in The Holocaust who would have become a dictator worse than Hitler. The Holocaust wiped out him, all of his lieutenants, and anyone else with whom he could have started his dictatorship. Effectively removing the threat before it's ever created. It's entirely possible that we would considered The Holocaust a 3 if we knew what would have happened if he had lived. The Holocaust removed his threat, otherwise, he would have come to power. I really enjoy thinking hypothetically. Maybe The Holocaust was the fastest, most effective way for Providence to remove this threat, and teach us a lesson at the same time. If you knew the threat level this imagined dictator could bring, who is to say that taking him out in one fell swoop wouldn't be considered a 3?
(Doing Therapy)
"Good and Evil" are subjective, John. Their definition is dependent on our own point of view. This means that any action that is GENERALLY viewed as good or evil (such as the evil action of killing innocents just for the fun of it) is it's definition.
Also, you didn't seem to understand what MJ said. He was saying "Providence" acts, and WE judge whether it's repercussions are "good" or "evil".
Also, you didn't seem to understand what MJ said. He was saying "Providence" acts, and WE judge whether it's repercussions are "good" or "evil".
No, I got that completely. Something I learned in Pearl Harbor was the answer to the question "Why does God allow bad things to happen to people?" Because, in The Big Picture, allowing their suffering is the only way to be fair to everyone, even to them. We can't see The Big Picture. In our view The Holocaust was an evil act. However, in The Big Picture, it could have been the safest way to eliminate an even greater threat.
Two angels are traveling in human form, inspecting the world. They come across the house of a rich man, and ask to be given a place to stay and some food. The rich man puts them down in the cold, dark basement with no dinner, and is extremely rude to them. Whilst in the basement, the older angels sees a crack in the wall, and seals it magically. His companion asks "He's treated us so badly, why do you help him?" The older angels says "Not everything is as it seems."
The next day, they come across the house of a poor farmer and his wife. Their cow's milk was their only source of income. The poor farmer takes them in, feeds them a simple, yet hot and delicious meal, and invites them to sleep in his own bed, whilst he and his wife sleep on the floor. The next morning, the angels are awakened by the sound of the wife crying. Their cow, their only source of income, was dead.
The younger angel is furious with the older angel. "That rich man treated us poorly, and you fixed a crack in his wall. These people treated us so well, and you let their cow die. How can you do this?" The older angel replies. "Not everything is as it seems. When we were in the rich man's basement, I saw that there was a gold vein in the earth behind the wall, so I sealed the crack, so that he would never find it. And last night while we slept in the poor farmer's bed, the Angel of Death came for his wife, and I gave him the cow instead."
So I say again, what is good, what is evil?
(Doing Therapy)
Suppose that movie was right. That there was a child killed in The Holocaust who would have become a dictator worse than Hitler. The Holocaust wiped out him, all of his lieutenants, and anyone else with whom he could have started his dictatorship. Effectively removing the threat before it's ever created. It's entirely possible that we would considered The Holocaust a 3 if we knew what would have happened if he had lived.
But this, you see, is already assuming that the choice is between a bad thing and a worse thing. That's not the way things generally are with a GE roll.
Let's roll it back a step.
It's the mid 1920s. The economy is booming in America and England, but struggling in post-war Germany. Then in 1929 the Stock Market crashes in America; this is not really a localized event, but part of a world-wide economic downturn. Germany is still saddled with an overblown war debt, and so it is failing faster than its Western European neighbors.
But this is not our world. We are from a world in which these countries do not exist, these names are meaningless, this war and this boom and depression never happened. The only way we can decide what the tides of time will do is by rolling a general effects roll.
What you're saying is that there is a possible outcome that is Beyond Worst Fears or Nightmares--a 29. Compared to that, the Holocaust is very much better. What I'm saying is, having absolutely no factual knowledge that any of these people or movements exist, there is Beyond Best Hopes or Dreams result in which Western Europe recognizes the danger of a faltering German economy, cancels the war debt, and works toward the unified economic and political reality Woodrow Wilson proposed. The League of Nations is successful, and Germany stabilizes into a positive democratic and economic force in the world. The Holocaust we had, then, is probably a 26, worse than anticipated. It's really bad, but we can still imagine something worse.
Your assumption is that if the holocaust does not happen this worse thing does by default; but that assumes that the worse thing would have been the natural progression of events, and we have no basis for believing that.
We could argue that given that we have an established world history, the Holocaust is the 16/17 result, that which happens if nothing interferes. That means that there are worse possible histories, but there are also better possible histories.
But what you're saying is that you know as a fact that the holocaust was the best of all possible worlds at that time, because you know as a fact that had it not happened this other disaster would have occurred. Thus the Holocaust becomes the 3 because the worse story is the 17, that which happens if nothing prevents it from happening, if nothing makes it better or worse. You could certainly design a world in which that was the baseline history, and the holocaust was the good outcome; but that means premeditated design, that is, that you have decided in advance that this is what happens if no one prevents it.
In one of the books I'm reading, the author writes in an afterword about how she creates her plots. She says that whenever she's a bit short on ideas, she asks herself, "What's the worst possible thing I could do to these people that won't necessarily kill them?" Then she does that.
That's what the GE roll is like. It's like, it's 1929 and we just got a really bad GE roll, so we crashed the economy and brought on a world-wide depression. But then it's 1932, and we roll another GE roll, and what happens? If it's good, the Western European countries take steps to relieve the weight on Germany and to attempt to bring everyone out of the depression together. If it's bad, pressure from the Western countries brings Hitler to power. If it's really bad, that thing that is worse than Hitler begins. So if the roll is bad, the referee is thinking, "What bad thing can I do to this character, something that he really won't like?", and if it's good he's asking himself "How can I make the character's situation better, what can happen that he will like?" If we have no baseline at all, then we have to work from the baseline of "nothing happens either positive or negative; the present status quo is maintained," and our positives and negatives are from that center point. If we have an established history or chain of story, that becomes the baseline and the GE rolls tell us whether the history of this world is better or worse than that because of what the character has done.
So the Holocaust can be "good", even "very good", in a world in which the baseline is really bad--a far worse holocaust--and the "bad" and "very bad" outcomes are things like "chemical warfare agents create spreading infection of flesh-eating zombies nearly impervious to all known conventional weapons" and "all sides of conflict develop low-grade nuclear weapons and moderately accurate long-range delivery systems and start attempting to blow each other off the map with poorly-targeted nuclear missiles."
But if what happens next is "undetermined", then the question is whether it gets better or worse than it is before whatever it is that happens. The Holocaust is almost always a bad roll, because unless the baseline is "follows normal history except as influenced by character", the GE roll is asking whether the world gets better or worse in 1932 than it was in 1930.
--M. J. Young
Would Kyler tell anyone that there was an imminent sneak attack? Kyler probably wouldn't even know. Even if he did, he wouldn't willingly go seek out the law enforcement and tell them anything. He would fight if there were a fight, but he doesn't have the same respect for indigs that most other versers do.
Me, personally?... If I versed out today and ended up there, I don't think I'd say anything. I'd rather let events play out so that I could join the army and gain some much-needed attribute bonuses, combat skills, and weapons.
Ky
When I knocked the guy out with the TK pulse, Adam refereed something like "Normally you would grab the wheel, but with your hands pinned behind you, you sit and watch." Actually no, I wouldn't have moved even if I wasn't in handcuffs. I was in stunned bewilderment at what just happened. It occurs to me though that if I took any action at all, it would be to put my feet against the seat in front of me and try to hold myself where I was so I didn't get thrown out. I was just wondering how that would have played out mechanics wise. What would that be? A strength check to hold myself in the seat? If I make the check, I don't get thrown out, if I don't make the check, I break my legs too? That wouldn't have changed my situation too much, in the grand scheme of things. I'd just be in a full body cast instead of a half body cast. I was just wondering.
Hmm. I would say a difficult strength and a difficult flexibility check at least, the failure of either to be seen as being thrown from the vehicle, topped off by a penalized GE roll to see how bad the crash is.
Ky
Ah good times, good times :)
If it was such a good time for you, then perhaps you would be willing to let me run your next world? No? Didn't think so......
I have a feeling that was Adam's sarcastic smile.
--M. J. Young
I was speaking seriously, yet sarcastically as well. I would like to run a player. I would prefer it to be an experienced referee who could kind of talk me through it, and Adam certainly qualifies in that regard. So seriously sarcastic, because I doubt he would allow me to.
(Doing Therapy)
Two
Ya know what? I had a thought. Eric isn't playing at all. Eric, how would you like to run through that zombie apocalypse world, as I see it in my head? I'd love to run Eric.
(Doing Therapy)
Three
I'm gonna say it again. No hard feelings. I probably would have sent me there too.
And ya know what? For some reason, and I can't get it, it all seems to me like it was "supposed" to happen like that. Like the longest-running Deja-Vu I've ever seen.
(Doing Therapy)
I am not a very good player. I've dumped out of games run by the Summer Queen, and the Mighty Oak, and got another very smart guy seriously agitated with me, and I took the first excuse I could find to derail one of MJ's games.
I'm WAAAAY better as a gamemaster than I am as a player.
That said, I'm willing to give it a try.
I have to get some dice. Just out of curiosity, who would you like to meet first? The Survivalists, The Amish Farmer, The Mormon Missionary, The Garbageman, or The Fishing Boat Captain?
(Doing Therapy)
I will leave it up to you.
Eric dropped out for lack of time; he had been in a Why Spy gather with Kyler and Kelley, each of whom versed out in separate incidents. He had just boarded the plane in an Executive Decision scenario, but I don't remember who was with him or even whether that was on this forum or in the archives--probably in the archives, but you could find it by using the trackback links in Kyler's game threads.
--M. J. Young
I'm not interested in picking him up the way you're thinking. This would be more informal. Kind of more to train me as a referee. I wouldn't necessarily be picking up his game where he left it off. It's more of a fun pick up game that you would do to pass the time with people you just met.
Two
Eric, I wasn't asking who you first wanted to meet because it had anything to do with who I was going to introduce you to. I've already decided that you're first going to meet one of two characters, in one of two opening sequences. I'll probably flip a coin when the time comes. I was just curious what your thoughts were on the subject. Trying to get to know you. I'll need a character sheet from you. Perhaps not the one you were playing with. This IS my first time ever running a game, after all. Let's keep it a little more simple, ya know? You've gone through a couple of worlds, and you've got these stats and this equipment. Make up a new sheet for yourself, if you would like. Like I said, I kind of wanted it to be more informal.
I need to get some dice. Probably do that tomorrow. That D&D store is on the way for an errand I need to run. Where in the rulebook should I look to see what kind of get? Don't tell me, tell me where to find it in Da Rulezzz!! This is going to be cool.
(Doing Therapy)