Ferrum Impressions OOC 2

[cavalieredraghi]

I am asking if we did do that, I don't remember.

[Artemciy]

No, we haven't got to starting a BG mission.

[cavalieredraghi]

Then I would like to have Anthony have worked on saving David.

[Artemciy]

Good. Care to clarify his approach? Will he try to infiltrate Belmarsh again or will he do something else first?

[cavalieredraghi]

I believe he would try to infiltrate once more, after he had recovered. Using his skill of Stealth and persuasion/deception to get him to walk out the front door if that becomes possible.


Also you knew this is what I wanted, it is a little annoying that you made me get to this point in such a round about way.

[Artemciy]

Okay, I've added the mission and will be working on it.

Please learn not to use informal language when stating an action.
1) If you have used informal language then, before taking an action, GM must clarify whether you meant it.
2) GM might help you and ask you leading questions, like "do you want Anthony to do that?". But GM doesn't have to do that.

[Artemciy]

http://prntscr.com/ae3kju

Now that the challenge of that moment have passed, I'd like to "spoil" a bit.

Thing is, Lars, with his telepathy, felt the Catcher approaching and tried to scare him away. So the cry was intended for Catcher but Joseph had no way except by guessing to know that Lars have shouted at someone else.

In the heat of a tussle it's easy not to know who's yelling at whom.

[Artemciy]

Added some options for Anthony via the choice banner.

[cavalieredraghi]

Will answer when, I get home. Can't do it on my phone.

[Danteric]

Hello! I'd just like to apologize for my lack of posting, school and work have essentially devoured the majority of my free time. However, I start a reading break on Tuesday, and my hours at work are starting to slack off, so I'll have free time to post again!

Sorry again for holding everything up..

[cavalieredraghi]

It is alright i am starting school as well, and I am going to be in a similar boat soon.

[Artemciy]

Danteric and I, we plan to continue this on Storium for a while. See if it'll be a better fit.

Feel free to join.
Drop me a note if you want a pre-made character.

[Danteric]

Joseph's Arete(3) + Prime(2)

(5d10)[1][6][8][9][4](28)

[Artemciy]

Previously I followed my education in thinking that the infinite form of Ferrum Impressions was a kind of a mistake, that a good game should, like a good book, have a finite and clear arc. But looking deeper into some of my ideas of creating a new form of interactive fiction I now realize the value of creating and maintating a second life, a never-ending story where people can experience, indefinitely, a social structure alternative to real life.

One example of such alternative social structure (alternative "network", as I'd like to call them) is maybe the Open Roleplay around Star Trek: Enterprise, http://www.ongoingworlds.com/blog/20...-role-playing/, where Open Roleplay facilitates the survival of the "network" and the spaceship itself provides a clear boundary (spaceship) and framework (shared culture, universe), serves as the bones that expand and structure the alternative reality.

VtM is also convenient with providing such clear boundaries around coterie, clan, political group (such as Camarilla, Sabbat).

The name of the 2019 game "Coteries of New York" suggests to me that coterie is sometimes a stable social structure ("network"), like a mercenary company or a firm. Some firms only survive for a couple of months and years, but some might persist for decades and even hundreds of years, and if they have a good thing going then maybe they should. Then again, a "network" supports and perpetuates a particular culture and lifestyle, in someone's personal development there is often a point where one has to push away from the old "network" if they want to find something new. So there is this precarious balance between the need for stability, for capturing a good way of life in a social structure, and the need for new horizons. "Networks" evolve too, but a particular network might be evolving too slowly for some of its members and too fast for others

[Artemciy]

Talking with ShadowImmor ( https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...y-You-Anything! ) I brushed on the use of rules in group storytelling: Why the majority of RP people feel the need for a system? What memetic code is behind this, and what inherent emotional and evolutionary motivations?

(With Mage, there's the irony of looking for rules in a game that's about breaking all rules.)

Discussing this with others, we have found a couple of things:

a) That roleplaying under a system and GM is easier than writing a story. So in a way, this is a form of abstraction and delegation, reducing reality to simple numbers. Roleplaying systems are thus alike to naive proto-scientific models, the morphic fields of early metaphysics and religion. Modern science and modern religion are kind of too heavy, they have pushed away our childhood and magical models of reality. Game Master, roleplaying system and the associated literary tradition can host and adopt these simpler millenia-old forms of belief and imagination.
(As such the rules and the interactive GM are also the ways to manage the fear of the unknown.)

b) That roleplaying in a group is a way to keep the novelty of the narrative, lifting it towards being a complex system ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory ), and thus a source of an interesting signal ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory ), something that the Predictive Processing of the brain might want to tune on.

c) That a successful group story, aka roleplay, is a marker of social sustainability ( https://medium.com/the-liberators/fi...ue-84807deab1d ) of a team, and thus a good approximation of a fitness function, a natural target of evolution.

[Artemciy]

Some thoughts on the charm magic. Might reflect on the idea on how the Spheres are interconnected in Mage.

---
When Mind Stone is used to charm a person, one of the possibilities is the virus vector: either the new and advanced neurons are introduced into a person, or else some of the existing neurons are configured to bear a new “metaprogram”. The former is often preferable in that the neurons of the Mind Stone would have a better chance at connecting with it, just like neurons of a human fetus migrate to the mother, providing the means for telepathic communication. For the sake of stealth or security the original Mind Stone neurons might later dissolve, once there is a sufficient network of the host neurons providing for further growth and entanglement. The virus vector and subsystem reprogramming has been explored, up to a point, in “Test of Metal” by Stover and in Marvel's Jessica Jones.

What's interesting is that the charm spell can be used as such to effectively resurrect a recently deceased, serving as an emergency backup of the now disfunctional governance of the “soul”. Once the body has regenerated sufficiently, the original “soul” might reconnect to it, although we can not control the exact pace or extent of that process.
Similarly, a charmed person will be harder to kill, showing a zombie-like resilience, and if the charm is configured accordingly, a vampire-like capacity for regeneration. As portrayed with ghouldom in “Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines”.