She Blinded Me with Science! (Magitek That Doesn't Make Me Cry Myself To Sleep)

[Omnicrat]

I was basing my entire idea off the fact that, at least in our world, we could easily feed everyone, in fact we could feed the entire world populace, clothe them, give them clean water, give them access to adequate medical care...

We just don't bother.

If you notice, near the top of my post, I said that this is assuming that access to Grammarie (and Grammarie's outputs) is restricted monetarily. If not, sure, have your utopia.

But remember that LG doesn't mean "bleeding heart, with heart full of charity." And people who get to 17th level tend not to be, if you go by RAW (you get experience by killing things. Unless those "things" were all unintelligent undead or constructs, you're a mass murderer, meaning any Zeitgeist that you set up is going to tag you as a criminal. Now, story based XP on the other hand...)

Ah. Missed that restriction in your first post. Then you still have a system a little better than Draken's version, because he's right about how the populace would be treated and how they would live their lives (basically) but missed a little bit. Communities would be set up with basic power generators (faith based, probably) and a few silverouts with prestidigitation, create food and water, cure light wounds, and a few more. No rebellious spirit when your belly is full and your wounds healed.

[Amechra]

And, if you really want to cut down on criminality, Zeitgeist+expanding the Heuristic Bubble to cover the SilverOuts...

Then let it be known that unpardoned criminals don't get food.

I'm reminded of a short story where, as punishment for a crime, a man is locked in a room where he gets food, water, and electricity, and is given 7 days to repent for his crime. He doesn't, and they leave him in there... without the food and water.

[QuidEst]

I'm reminded of a short story where, as punishment for a crime, a man is locked in a room where he gets food, water, and electricity, and is given 7 days to repent for his crime. He doesn't, and they leave him in there... without the food and water.

Ooh, nice… Personally, I've always liked sitting them down with a large pitcher of water and a cup. After casting that spell on them that makes it so they're dehydrated and drinking water doesn't do anything.

[Arcanist]

Then let it be known that unpardoned criminals don't get food.

Neat, nobody gets arrested for Organized crime or Corruption.

I'm reminded of a short story where, as punishment for a crime, a man is locked in a room where he gets food, water, and electricity, and is given 7 days to repent for his crime. He doesn't, and they leave him in there... without the food and water.

I consider that torture. Eventually they'll say whatever you want if they want to survive

I really don't know how to accurately enforce a legal system in the campaign... mind helping me out? I have NO legal training so I really don't know much about our legal system beyond what my father (who is a Lawyer no less) taught me which is "It's not illegal if your not caught"

[Amechra]

Well, I left out the part in the short story where that was the guy's execution for mass murder.

So it's not like they did that for jaywalking.

And really, with a Zeitgeist and Bizzarchitecture, you can enforce laws by the simple expedient of "this city doesn't exist for non-law-abiding citizens."

[Draken]

Neat, nobody gets arrested for Organized crime or Corruption.



I consider that torture. Eventually they'll say whatever you want if they want to survive

I really don't know how to accurately enforce a legal system in the campaign... mind helping me out? I have NO legal training so I really don't know much about our legal system beyond what my father (who is a Lawyer no less) taught me which is "It's not illegal if your not caught"

Well, it is. Illegality is not an absolute idea, it is a relative concept based and dependant on the existance of a norm in a legal system that prescribes the conduct.

Enforcing a system of law is simple, you need merely factually verify when the norm is broken and apply the properly ascribed civil or penal sanctions. The effectiveness of said sanctions in curbing the illegal behaviour, however, is what is a complex endeavor. In our most esteemed and mundane real world, it is a troublesome matter, because it has been known for a considerable ammount of time that the penitentiary system does not work as intended, it has never worked as intended and it will never work as intended, and this is a fact that is not limited to any particular part of the world.

A magical world has better solutions, some stronger than others, some more invasive than others, none of them perfect. We have seen the most obvious and possibly least effective of these solutions in Order of the Stick, the Mark of Justice spell.

OotS, in fact, shows us an example of what Mark of Justice usage would be like in the gramarie world, and how quickly it would break down, the silver output for the spell would mass reproduce the same instance of the spell with the same wordings and passwords, unless changed on a constant basis, which, of course, somewhat nulifies the very advantage of the mass produced nature of it. But perhaps not, depending on how the capacity of the holder to change parameters would work.

Mildly more effective methods go then to the more invasive Alter Memory, Mindrape and Mindrape-[Exalted Version], whatever the name of that spell is. Alas, there is no Brain Output for psionic powers (or does transparency apply?), so I will refrain from including the somewhat more extensive list of powers without supernatural moral strings attached. They are mildly more effective because there are still ways around them, even if they are more difficult to get a hold of.

Of course, human rights are very much an extremely young concept (roughtly a century old), and by no means does your average fantasy setting follow its excessively restrictive tenets, so law enforcement could and likely should deal with the more egregious lawbreakers in the age old methods of forced labour, military conscription and death.

[Necroticplague]

.In our most esteemed and mundane real world, it is a troublesome matter, because it has been known for a considerable ammount of time that the penitentiary system does not work as intended, it has never worked as intended and it will never work as intended, and this is a fact that is not limited to any particular part of the world.

It depends on what you think the purpose of the penitentiary system is. If its to help stop criminals from performing crime again, that it's horrifically ineffective. The main purpose, however, is to appease the public desire for retribution, especially against heinous crimes, with a satisfying finish.At this, its pretty effective (though the death penalty is sometimes moreso, thus its continued existence).

A magical world has better solutions, some stronger than others, some more invasive than others, none of them perfect. We have seen the most obvious and possibly least effective of these solutions in Order of the Stick, the Mark of Justice spell.

I don't know, a Gaes seems pretty effective, since it literally cannot break the orders on its own. A curse of some kind may also work. Of course, since all these stop a person from commiting more crimes, it would probably save time by just being used as a preventative measure by making people unable to break the law ahead of time, have an EI controlling a silverout with a geas when they come in, and a dispel curse on the way out.

[Draken]

It depends on what you think the purpose of the penitentiary system is. If its to help stop criminals from performing crime again, that it's horrifically ineffective. The main purpose, however, is to appease the public desire for retribution, especially against heinous crimes, with a satisfying finish.At this, its pretty effective (though the death penalty is sometimes moreso, thus its continued existence).
A magical world has better solutions, some stronger than others, some more invasive than others, none of them perfect. We have seen the most obvious and possibly least effective of these solutions in Order of the Stick, the Mark of Justice spell.

I don't know, a Gaes seems pretty effective, since it literally cannot break the orders on its own. A curse of some kind may also work. Of course, since all these stop a person from commiting more crimes, it would probably save time by just being used as a preventative measure by making people unable to break the law ahead of time, have an EI controlling a silverout with a geas when they come in, and a dispel curse on the way out.[/QUOTE]

It is neither. The function of the penitentiary system, as is taught to law students, is to reform the prisoners. The great failing of this intended purpose then, is that the great congregations of prisoners have an opposite result, serving as veritable schools for crime instead. Of course, there are many facets to why the system fails, and there are whole books devoted to the subject.

In systems that apply perpetual prison, sure, the final purpose of isolating the criminal from society works, for the most part, but such an inmate becomes effectively a permanent teacher for those who will come in and eventually leave, he is even probably more experienced a criminal as well.

The purpose of the prison system is not to appease the masses, however. That isn't the purpose of justice at all. And if it were, criminal courts would all but certainly have already devolved into a circus resulting invariably into a guilty conviction, because the masses like blood and the sensationalist press likes to feed this bloodlust.

[sirpercival]

I may have a solution to both the social engineering problem and the currency problem, though I like the adamantine/electrum one...

What if the currency is people? (Cue Soylent Green references ) And to prevent outright slavery, wealth is measured by not only how many commoners you own, but also their quality of life?

What would the implications of such a system be?

[Arcanist]

I may have a solution to both the social engineering problem and the currency problem, though I like the adamantine/electrum one...

Hey, if they can turn entire cities from wood to gold, why use Gold as a currency?

What if the currency is people? (Cue Soylent Green references ) And to prevent outright slavery, wealth is measured by not only how many commoners you own, but also their quality of life?

I have a problem with using people as currency...

What would the implications of such a system be?

WELL it effectively remains the same as Amechra's 1984 version of Gramarie. Gramarist just ruling over the people and trading them like cattle. More or less it just Turns into Feudalism with Gramarist leading nations against each other to improve the quality of life and thus increase the worth of there currency.

[Draken]

"Using people as currency, with their value depending on how well they are" hits a number of brick walls.

First brick wall, it is so completely arbitrary it is not funny.

Individuals are not really tradeable, only communities, because once you move one dude out of one gramarist's wallet of exquisite parks and five star hotels and move him into another's wallet of factories and colective bunks, his value goes down.

If individuals are tradeable, that means they are somehow useful. Probably through being skilled at some sort of... Well, skill. Good crafters, artisans, diplomats, whatever. This becomes slave trade, plain and simple. Heck, it was slave trade before, but with completely arbitrary values that any given individual would probably get fed up with very quickly and just bow out of the system. If he has eight friends, they can just abandon the whole system and be perfectly self-sufficient.

The whole argument remains silly, of course, because the "people stop being relevant" world is still predicated as much on all the gramarists being ADHD-driven psychopaths as the shining gramarie utopia is predicated on all the gramarists being shining paragons of selflessness and magnanimity.

[Arcanist]

The whole argument remains silly, of course, because the "people stop being relevant" world is still predicated as much on all the gramarists being ADHD-driven psychopaths as the shining gramarie utopia is predicated on all the gramarists being shining paragons of selflessness and magnanimity.

To be fair all it needs in my opinion is for people to become aware they have a choice. To be a Mad Gramarist (I.e. Joseph Mengele) or a Neutral Gramarist (...Anyone know an apathetic notable Scientist?) Or a Good Gramarist (... anyone know a non-sociopathic Doctor that cared about his/her fellow man) or anywhere in between

It's not utopia, but it's also not a dystopia. It's just... life

[Necroticplague]

The whole argument remains silly, of course, because the "people stop being relevant" world is still predicated as much on all the gramarists being ADHD-driven psychopaths as the shining gramarie utopia is predicated on all the gramarists being shining paragons of selflessness and magnanimity.

People don't have to be ADHD driven psycopaths to take efforts to replace humans with something better, they just need a proper profit motive, like a heuristicist and biollurgist getting together an saying "You know, if we pooled our talents, we could undercut most the locals, and with only two of us, make a handsome profit." Then, they use some of the money to expand their operation, allowing them to further undercut the common laborer making even more money. Repeat until effective labor monopoly is established. Real life avoids this because machines are big investements of both time and money, while grammary is a relatively small investements. Heuristics doesn't require any materials, and the materials for biollurgy ("organic material") are effectively free, any random tree will work. Then all you have is time, which is about 5 hours for a basic one (BIOY 101,228,and 273, HEUR 101, 328), a fairly small expenditure.

[Arcanist]

People don't have to be ADHD driven psycopaths to take efforts to replace humans with something better, they just need a proper profit motive, like a heuristicist and biollurgist getting together an saying "You know, if we pooled our talents, we could undercut most the locals, and with only two of us, make a handsome profit." Then, they use some of the money to expand their operation, allowing them to further undercut the common laborer making even more money. Repeat until effective labor monopoly is established. Real life avoids this because machines are big investements of both time and money, while grammary is a relatively small investements. Heuristics doesn't require any materials, and the materials for biollurgy ("organic material") are effectively free, any random tree will work. Then all you have is time, which is about 5 hours for a basic one (BIOY 101,228,and 273, HEUR 101, 328), a fairly small expenditure.

If memory serves, the animated structures need to eat there weight in food everyday to maintain condition, so it's not entirely free

[Necroticplague]

If memory serves, the animated structures need to eat there weight in food everyday to maintain condition, so it's not entirely free

No, nothing bout their weight, just that they need a normal amount of food, which for a Medium Chassis is about a pound a day. However, their aren't any penalties for starvation up until 3 days without food. So relly, its one pound of food every three days.

And to compare, that is still probably less than paying someone enough so that the can feed themselves, especially since your constructs are more willing to settle for...less appetizing fare.

EDIT:Re-looking more carefully, their weight is mentioned, but its their own weight every MONTH not day.

[Omnicrat]

Of course, human rights are very much an extremely young concept (roughtly a century old)

Depends on how you look at it. The Persian's established human rights about... 2500 years ago, if memory serves.

The whole argument remains silly, of course, because the "people stop being relevant" world is still predicated as much on all the gramarists being ADHD-driven psychopaths as the shining gramarie utopia is predicated on all the gramarists being shining paragons of selflessness and magnanimity.

You really only need 1 good grautsman and 1 good dreammason to get my system off the ground. Then smuggle people from a crazy distopia to one of my utopia demiplanes till all that's left in the dystopia are the gramarists.

To be fair all it needs in my opinion is for people to become aware they have a choice. To be a Mad Gramarist (I.e. Joseph Mengele) or a Neutral Gramarist (...Anyone know an apathetic notable Scientist?) Or a Good Gramarist (... anyone know a non-sociopathic Doctor that cared about his/her fellow man) or anywhere in between

It's not utopia, but it's also not a dystopia. It's just... life

See above.

People don't have to be ADHD driven psycopaths to take efforts to replace humans with something better, they just need a proper profit motive, like a heuristicist and biollurgist getting together an saying "You know, if we pooled our talents, we could undercut most the locals, and with only two of us, make a handsome profit." Then, they use some of the money to expand their operation, allowing them to further undercut the common laborer making even more money. Repeat until effective labor monopoly is established. Real life avoids this because machines are big investements of both time and money, while grammary is a relatively small investements. Heuristics doesn't require any materials, and the materials for biollurgy ("organic material") are effectively free, any random tree will work. Then all you have is time, which is about 5 hours for a basic one (BIOY 101,228,and 273, HEUR 101, 328), a fairly small expenditure.

Right, but you do need to be a total sociopath who is crazy to not let the good gramarists out there not improve the quality of life for the common people. Below is the mentality of typical representations of the alignments as I see them, without being crazy or stupid.

Evil: Once we create our circuited chassis workforce, who cares about the little ants? Let them die in squalor.
Neutral: I've got everything I need for me, so everyone else can just go do their own thing.
Good: Now that I've got everything I need, and therefor need no more, I can start making principles for the common folk for free!

So, the evil and neutral guy don't really care about the common folk, but the good guy does and makes their lives better. Because when you have all you need, you don't need more and can give your excess away.

[davethebrave]

Heck, it was slave trade before, but with completely arbitrary values that any given individual would probably get fed up with very quickly and just bow out of the system. If he has eight friends, they can just abandon the whole system and be perfectly self-sufficient.

Discourse control, even something as ham-fisted and obvious as propaganda, is an efficient way to cement people into any system that rationality/ethics/mental well-being all say people really should bow out of. Just because a group of people can bow out doesn't mean a group of people will. Case in point: modern unaccountable corporate tyrannies with labyrinthine control over political and legislative functions on both the national and transnational/international stages through their absolute domination of the economic sphere, and how many people in the minority world of "developed" or "first" world people (both hierarchically charged terms that I don't care to use) bow out of wage slavery! Wage slavery, I might add in your terminology, composed of completely arbitrary values that just about everyone the minority world over are fed up with. They certainly aren't "objective" market values dictated by some Invisible Ghost Adam Smith Hand, but enough people believe those delusions on a social control level that people don't bow out en masse. And that's just the minority world, when you get to the majority world you've got social controls plus outright military juntas and so on funded and supported by corporations. Today, Shell Oil and corrupt African governments collude to crush labour movements to the extent that Shell is under investigation for at least financial collusion (if not participation to some degree in planning or decision making) in successful assassinations of labour leaders.

Not trying to start a real world political argument, just highlighting some ways that you can easily have people assigned values in a game world by basing the situations that the setting has to deal with on real world situations. For example, I'm planning on making the gramarie setting I'm collaboratively developing with my players for a play by post a test of the players' abilities/interest in influencing historical developments in the world as gramarie becomes more common. As of the start of the first story arc, artificers are only a couple generations old, and out of their approach to magic sprouted the first serious flowering of gramarie in just the last generation of people. Like in medieval Europe, much of science and learning (and, in this case, magic) is in the service of power. As such, much of the new science and learning will be shaped to service of power, especially as gramarie's uses start to become apparent and the furtive, urgent protests of sycophantic court wizards and zealous hierophants afraid (rightly so) of their fall from grace in the face of gramarie's ascension begin to fall on more and more deaf ears, re: the royalty/nobility/aristocracy. Eventually, the burgeoning middle class rising on the tide of industrial gramarie and industrial capitalism will begin to demand different societies, and like on Earth, I plan on having the royal families begin to marry their children off to the up and coming bougie capitalists in command of the best industrialized uses of gramarie and the families in charge of the largest central banks/international banks, since the royals will see (as the religious authorities before them) where power is heading. Maybe my players will be working class heroes, or maybe they'll stick to the standard fantasy formula of doing quests for the King of X and the Emperor of Y, and unknowingly aid quiet power shifts being done behind the scenes while the veneer of a transition of power "to the people" begins to be faux-grudgingly assented to by the rulers they quest so enthusiastically for.

But either way, I imagine the weight of gramarie sweeping the world will be too great for them, which paves the way for some pretty epic Marxist-inspired parallels that can be drawn up in a fairly literal way re: people selling their labour on the market (i.e. a market of gramarie-use prices on people) that could run into some Matrix-y "people as batteries" territory as well. Which also lets me mess around with themes of EI vs. the nations of the world, where the nations of the world are spouting humanism and liberal democracy with their mouths and enslaving people with their behaviours/actions, operating advertising/mass media that propagandize to their intranational populations to keep them complacent/complicit in the enslavement of others just like today, and the EI rise up against the enslavement of EI and against the slavery of other sentient/sapient creatures, but all the players get to hear is the Singularity Nightmare propaganda churned out by the nationstates of the world, warning of the "machines" poised to "destroy and supplant" the mortal races. I like the idea of volunteer batteries of colonized races who become power sources for massive EI war machines so that the EI can crush the colonial/imperialist nations that are spun by the corporate media back home as EI brutally enslaving all life for sustenance, when really it's a consensual political/wartime agreement that the EI plan to end as soon as they liberate the world's poor, downtrodden and dispossessed.

Anyway, tl;dr one can always, as a DM, find ways for a society to find the intolerable eminently tolerable. The Masters of our particular real-world Dungeon are pretty good at it.

[Amechra]

I just have to note that, funnily enough (to change the topic), the only two forms of Grammarie that degrade over time if you can't supply the ebbs are Biollurgy and Geoccultism; and in the first case, that's only because of wear and tear.

Everything else can be picked up thousands of years later (carmot can prevent wood from rotting, if you really need it), and used without any problems.

[sreservoir]

and if you do supply the ebbs, they can all last forever? and gramarie has plenty of ways to produce ebbs natively, so is more that only geoc has a mechanism for decay over time.

[Necroticplague]

and if you do supply the ebbs, they can all last forever? and gramarie has plenty of ways to produce ebbs natively, so is more that only geoc has a mechanism for decay over time.

Regardless of ebbs, you need to constantly maintain BIOY chassis, they need to be fed and watered. Although, biostructure on its own is capable of just sitting their breathing for an eternity, without input.

[Arcanist]

At this rate the campaign might die before it even gets off the ground CURSE YOU INTERNET! YOU'VE FAILED ME ONCE AGAIN!

... Unless of course you ladies and gentlemen wish to continue discussion in this thread? (or perhaps another thread )

[Omnicrat]

At this rate the campaign might die before it even gets off the ground CURSE YOU INTERNET! YOU'VE FAILED ME ONCE AGAIN!

... Unless of course you ladies and gentlemen wish to continue discussion in this thread? (or perhaps another thread )

new thread on this forum. start it up and link it both here and in the campaign thread.

[Amechra]

Alright, something has been kinda bugging me, and that's the fact that, by definition, the Grammarist is, in and of itself, Tier 0, since, as has been shown, a pair of Grammarists can pretty much redo an entire campaign setting by themselves with the equivalent of an afternoon's work.

So, I've been thinking of a few things if anyone wants to look at a lower-power variant:

1. Base SilverOuts on Psionics (or Ernir's Vancian Magic with Psionic Mechanics); each transformer has a predesigned maximum ML, based off your ranks in UMD. Psionics are a lot more balanced than Vancian Magic, that's all I'm going to say.

2. Rewrite Abnormal Behavior (HEUR 302) so that it works more like a Blueprint (so you can stick anything in there, but you need higher level "operators" to make the thing duplicate higher level Grammaric Principles.)

3. Just as a little thing, it's been bugging me that Transformers don't actually use their skill for anything; I was thinking something along the lines of limiting how many Ebbs they can have flowing through them at one time; high checks would end up being like they are right now, while low checks would cause them to "blow out" the Transformer.

Thoughts?

[Omnicrat]

Alright, something has been kinda bugging me, and that's the fact that, by definition, the Grammarist is, in and of itself, Tier 0, since, as has been shown, a pair of Grammarists can pretty much redo an entire campaign setting by themselves with the equivalent of an afternoon's work.

So, I've been thinking of a few things if anyone wants to look at a lower-power variant:

1. Base SilverOuts on Psionics (or Ernir's Vancian Magic with Psionic Mechanics); each transformer has a predesigned maximum ML, based off your ranks in UMD. Psionics are a lot more balanced than Vancian Magic, that's all I'm going to say.

2. Rewrite Abnormal Behavior (HEUR 302) so that it works more like a Blueprint (so you can stick anything in there, but you need higher level "operators" to make the thing duplicate higher level Grammaric Principles.)

3. Just as a little thing, it's been bugging me that Transformers don't actually use their skill for anything; I was thinking something along the lines of limiting how many Ebbs they can have flowing through them at one time; high checks would end up being like they are right now, while low checks would cause them to "blow out" the Transformer.

Thoughts?

I think that still gives me an infinite army of blindly loyal soldiers who neutralize magic (psionics, depending on how you change silverins) and breath fire. With two gramarists. In a few days.

In other words, still tier 0. But I like it that way

[Amechra]

Well, true; my original suggestion was just getting rid of Abnormal Behavior, but that would've been lame.

I just want things to be slightly more under control.

[Omnicrat]

Well, true; my original suggestion was just getting rid of Abnormal Behavior, but that would've been lame.

I just want things to be slightly more under control.

What you (surprisingly) fail to understand is that gramarie under controle is not gramarie

[Amechra]

Shhhhhhh...

Don't tell anyone, eh?

I just personally feel that Grammarie can be dialed back a bit...(I don't have a problem with the infinite armies; I just think that Grammarists being able to obsolete themselves is kinda whoa.)

[Arcanist]

Well, true; my original suggestion was just getting rid of Abnormal Behavior, but that would've been lame.

I just want things to be slightly more under control.

SilverOuts are easily the most exploitable mechanic of Gramaire, but simply removing it takes a lot of power from the Gramarist. I suggest limiting the spell list and spell level to 6 and allow a Gramarist to implant a spell to a maximum of 1 spell level every 4 levels (starting at 1st lvl spells at level 1).

On another note for the ebbs required to power the SilverOut, Kellus thought of using a Fibonacci progression for it.

[QuidEst]

SilverOuts are easily the most exploitable mechanic of Gramaire, but simply removing it takes a lot of power from the Gramarist. I suggest limiting the spell list and spell level to 6 and allow a Gramarist to implant a spell to a maximum of 1 spell level every 4 levels (starting at 1st lvl spells at level 1).

On another note for the ebbs required to power the SilverOut, Kellus thought of using a Fibonacci progression for it.

Fibonacci sequence is recursively defined, so it's a little annoying to calculate. What about always casting at minimum caster level, and paying the square of the spell level? It still absorbs energy at the old rate. (Magic and grammarie being distinct, I would expect this.) That should clear up a few AoE abuses in the processes.

[Amechra]

He was actually going to use a straight square progression; the Fibonacci progression was my idea.

And yeah, SilverOuts make me sad. Since one of the ideas behind Grammarie was that it gave a way to do most of the things that spellcasting could do to the world...

It feels kinda disingenuous to have that be because you can just duplicate magic.