Not to mention Expedition to Zhodane and how that arguably interacts with the notion of wafer-tech... Hints of this sort of thing have been around since the game barely left Proto-Traveller.
D.
OTU Only: Whither Death?
- Thread starter LeperColony
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Not to mention Expedition to Zhodane and how that arguably interacts with the notion of wafer-tech... Hints of this sort of thing have been around since the game barely left Proto-Traveller.
D.
Okay you got me there, but are there a polo player, his girl and a crotchety rocket scientist running (wait! flying) around interfering with the Duke's schemes?
Probably
12-15 BEs seems like a small number for an army of Hawkmen though :smirk:
Okay you got me there, but are there a polo player, his girl and a crotchety rocket scientist running (wait! flying) around interfering with the Duke's schemes?
Probably
12-15 BEs seems like a small number for an army of Hawkmen though :smirk:
It hosts a Knight, Baron, and minor duke...
I'm not certain whether that's Brigade or Battalion equivalents. Assuming it follows MT Tradition, it's Battalions.
A regiment is 2-5 Bn.
A Brigade is 2-4 Rgt
A Division is 2-4 Bde
A Corps is 2-5 Divisions
A field army is 2-5 Corps.
An Army Group is 2-5 Armies.
Now, looking at 5FW, 15 Bn.
The strengths:
Symbol Unit Size Combat Factor
II Battalion 1 or2
III Regiment 5
X Brigade 10
XX Division 20
XXX Corps 50-1 C
XXXX Field Army 5C
So a 2-3 Regiment Brigade. about 3000 troops. About 1:2000 troop rate.
BEs are battalion equivalents and several sources give the conversion 1 BE = 500 troops so 12-15 BEs = 6000 - 7500 combat troops.
MT gives a total troop strength of 2000; 500 combat, 500 combat support, and 1000 miscellaneous including CSS. So 24,000 - 30,000 a reinforced division maybe.
Enough to turn the sky black with Hawkmen?
But we're getting off topic
MT gives a total troop strength of 2000; 500 combat, 500 combat support, and 1000 miscellaneous including CSS. So 24,000 - 30,000 a reinforced division maybe.
Enough to turn the sky black with Hawkmen?
But we're getting off topic
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
If I recall correctly, battalion equivalents are used since they tend to be the largest single arm military units, and for elite or equipment heavy varieties, you need more for less.
Regiments tend to be single type, but often are not a field unit.
The UK regiment, for example, is not a fielded unit; individual battalions are sent to various Brigades.
The US regiment has had regiments as fielded units of single-type.
the USSR regiment was also usually single-type, and fielded.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Sort of the difference between traditions, especially one that emphasizes the regimental system, and the regiment has more of a recruiting pool, depot and administrative function.
As for our Russian friends, they seem to be undergoing a reorganization into faster reacting brigade forces.
As for our Russian friends, they seem to be undergoing a reorganization into faster reacting brigade forces.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
No. Cyberpunk emphasises the punk, the breakdown of society, the struggle to adapt to a changing world etc.
Soft to hard transhuman is how I would describe the T5 setting now. On some worlds there will be little evidence of augmentation, bioengineering, wafer tech etc.
On others you can't get moved for chimeras, synthetics and clones, not to mention alien races not derived from human or earth based animal stock.
Hmm - I wonder what the other races in charted space do with synthetic, chimera, guest, relict, augmentation and wafer tech?
Two reasons
1 the game system is not very good, although I have heard the next edition will solve some of the issues - it plays much better as a setting for a different rules engine.
2 the game is really a CoC variant, the slow slide to insanity; it's a horror story.
I should say I have all the EP books and I love the setting, but when I run it from time to time it has been with BRP rules. May give it a try with Genesys...
(and I did steal bits for my Traveller Culture game - but with the revelations about the OTU from AotI and T5 perhaps a lot more will make it into my other Traveller games now}
To me the OTU third Imperium is set in the 57th century, any similarities to any current or near current human culture are purely coincidental and a way for us in the real world to make sense of it.
Everyone doesn't, only those that can afford them. Makes quite a character hook to gain enough money to afford a wafer back up, and then enough to pay for a clone body.
All you have to do is find a TL13+ world that offers the services, and have a few million credits to spare.
Also remember roleplaying - remind the player that if their character dies they are dead. relicts are not immortality in the sense of continued existence, there is just someone else out there that thinks they are you and look like you.
Depends on how your players approach the themes.
Paranoia was fun with its clone bodies and ridiculous death traps.
Eclipse Phase is a horror story of the slow slide to insanity as you realise you are not 'you'
The OTU is a vast tapestry where just about any sci-fi theme you wish to include or explore can be found.
Out on the frontier in the Spinward Marches much of this transhumanist stuff will not come up too often, but Imperial core sector worlds are going to be a much wilder ride than I previously imagined.
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Most interesting.
On the whole would Humanati embrace all these things most easily? Although Soli and Zhos might have the greatest aversion but for different reasons.
I'd be interested in what the other Major races would do.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Remember, on that last point the core worlds are those highpop high government high LL environments.
Perhaps some worlds ban wafers and/or clones-and so just getting transferred and staying alive is a criminal offense.
The more interesting option is that wafers are embraced as a control mechanism, an opportunity to literally control citizens, or perhaps their most important ones?
I'm thinking editing wafers to put in safeties, controls, command words etc.
1984 control, or Manchurian Candidate trigger phrases, identity issues, etc.
Or how about everyone from SOC-6 up gets 'wafered', and the government can use the wafer in unexpected ways.
Warrants can be issued requiring the wafer to be 'searched' for evidence of the potential criminal acts a character may have done, finding crimes the character did do but wasn't in the warrant, and reprogrammed in a computerized version of Zhodani societal control.
The wafer can be considered the person, and it is punished instead of the meat body. Part of the punishment could be sticking the convicted into other bodies and do slave labor, or punishment virtual environments, all while the wafer intellect knows someone else is chipped into their original body and doing who knows what.
Another option is that Vilani may be VERY big on using wafer/clones as a way to maintain tradition, and so you have the literally dead hand of centuries or millennia providing consistency previously unknown to technological civilization due to revered personalities being forced to serve as tribal knowledge.
Bravo, yes. The CT look/feel of the far future from a 70's perspective was simply limited by what was presented, which when considering the minutae of daily life, was limited. So the image that was transmitted was something that could be understood.
We're still limited by that problem - we can't imagine what we can't imagine - now, though the boundaries have been pushed back considerably by lots of individuals painting more and more pictures of what is possible. From that we can derive plenty about what it might all look like, but we still need a reference point, a touchstone. So Mike's point is, IMO, spot on.
CT's image suggest a plateau of civilization, of governance, human nature, and how technology does or does not affect those.
I am not a historian or a sociologist, but clearly despite our gains, man took it's sweet time to develop the infrastructure upon which we build our societies today, especially by today's standards.
Despite all the tech and what not, the true disruptor of the modern age are a combination of ubiquitous energy combined with instant communications.
As they say, Washington and Napoleon moved their armies the same way the Romans did a 1000 years earlier. Cheap energy fueled industrialization, but only recently ("recently") has the world had to deal with the disruption of instant, visual communication from anywhere, to anywhere.
And today, that power is in everyone pockets. Not just those willing to invest in the technology.
But clearly, society and man moved much more slowly, and, at one point, pretty much plateaued. Status quo lasted for several hundred years.
CT projects that "the way we do things now is how we'll do them in the future" for much of it. And there's sense to it. Invent something, adapt it, adopt it, entrench it.
In CT, you have the dichotomy of unlimited energy and mass abundance crippled with the slow boats full of mail. Those boats extend the reach of societies, but at the same time limit them. And that's the balance that CT has to reckon with.