Ornithopter – 天网媒体 (Sky Net News)

At about this time last year, Greg and I ran the first Ornithopter session, establishing a few basic facts about the setting, and introducing some organisation, location and character information. One of the strongest findings was the shadowy Great Tom, the media magnate who heads up the mega corporation Sky Net News.

Who is Great Tom? From Mythic:

Is Great Tom an artificial intelligence? Emphatic yes. So Great Tom is one of those few ‘young’ higher life forms that still interacts with humanity. Moreover, he is a celebrity in his own right – we know this, I guess, but it’s nice to see the system confirm it.

Does Great Tom have any government influence/contact? Emphatic no (00%!) Great Tom not only does not interact with governments of any stripe, ‘he’ treats them as if they do not exist. Any government legislation or interference in the running of Sky Net News he sweeps aside by whatever means are available to him. He treats his organisation as if it were a national body in and of itself.

Are the interests of Great Tom in some way connected to the interests of the Navigator’s Guild? No. Since the Navigators are a now a separate species, their bodies infused with computronic substances and breathing an atmosphere infused with Glaucus (a further computronic substance), they have a close implied connection to the higher life forms. Great Tom’s lack of connection to these people suggests a disassociation from other artificial intelligences. What does this mean? In the immediate situation, we can say that the discovery of a new Glaucus source is not something that Great Tom himself is likely to want to exploit, except for news purposes, or in order to fuel other plots.

Further questions present themselves, but I am limited to my self imposed rule of only asking three in a row. The rest must be found in play.

Quintet – from Wikipedia

Quintet is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film by Robert Altman produced in 1979. It features among others Paul Newman, Brigitte Fossey, Bibi Andersson, Fernando Rey and Vittorio Gassman.

The story takes place in a future where the world is covered by a new ice age. When the film begins, Altman’s camera tracks along a blank, frozen tundra which is seemingly deserted- that is, until two blurry figures in the distance can be just barely made out. They are the seal hunter Essex (Paul Newman); and his pregnant young wife, Vivia (Brigitte Fossey), the daughter of one of Essex’s late hunting partners. Having returned from the South, they are venturing further up North, where Essex hopes to reunite with his brother, Francha (Thomas Hill).

Essex and Vivia eventually meet up with Francha at his apartment, but the reunion is short-lived. While Essex is in the neighbourhood buying firewood, a gambler by the name of Redstone (Craig Richard Nelson) sneaks into Francha’s apartment and bombs it with a vial of alcohol, killing Francha, Vivia and the apartment’s other inhabitants in the process. Essex, who sees Redstone fleeing from the scene of the explosion, chases him to the sector’s “Information Room”; it is here that Essex then witnesses the subsequent murder of Redstone by a Latin-speaking gambler named St. Christopher (Vittorio Gassman). When St. Christopher leaves the scene, Essex finds a piece of paper in Redstone’s coat pocket. On the paper is a list of names: Francha, Redstone, Goldstar, Deuca, St. Christopher, and Ambrosia.

Puzzled by the mystery of this tragic chain of events, Essex discovers that Redstone had previously checked into the Hotel Electra, a gambling resort in another sector. Taking matters into his own hands, Essex visits the Hotel Electra and assumes Redstone’s identity. Immediately after checking in, Essex is given an unexpected welcome by Grigor (Fernando Rey), who is the dealer in the casino downstairs. Insisting that he means no harm, Grigor invites Essex (who is going by the name of “Redstone”) to the casino, where gamblers are now heavily involved in a “Quintet” tournament. It is here that Essex first makes acquaintance with Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson), who always plays the “sixth man” in the game.

Essex is unaware that those who are taking part in the current Quintet tournament have been pitted against each other in a survival of the fittest. Those who are “killed” when playing the board game are to literally be slain in real life. Because Grigor and St. Christopher are aware that Essex is not the real Redstone, they ignore him and instead focus on the other victims in the tournament. First the clumsy Goldstar (David Langton) is killed, and then Deuca (Nina Van Pallandt), until the only two official players left in the game are St. Christopher and Ambrosia. Ambrosia, however, insists that because Essex has dared to assume Redstone’s identity, he should be counted as a player in the game. Grigor agrees, and informs St. Christopher that he will not be allowed to face off against Ambrosia until he eliminates Essex first.

Essex and St. Christopher have a showdown out in the tundra, where St. Christopher eventually meets his own demise- not by Essex, but by a falling avalanche. Essex then returns to Francha’s apartment, wondering if Francha possessed the same list that Redstone had. Ambrosia follows Essex to the apartment in a presumably well-meaning manner, but then Essex slits her throat just before she is about to stab him with a hidden knife. Returning to the Hotel Electra to cremate Ambrosia’s body, Essex confronts Grigor to demand what “prize” he has won, since he has come out on top as the winner of Quintet. Grigor reveals that there is no prize at all- except for the fact that Essex has survived the game all in one piece. Although Grigor insists that Essex must stay and participate in the tournaments to come, a disgusted Essex condemns the entire practice of Quintet and leaves the Hotel Electra for good. The film ends with another lengthy camera shot, this one showing Essex walking further out into the barren Northern distance until he can be seen no more.

Kyosai – from the Imperial Gazetteer

Kyosai is a province biome classified in the Imperial Gazetteer as Brushland. It gives way from the coastal flatlands to undulating plains characterised by water preserving plants that lead up to mountainous ranges. There is very little free flowing water due to the efficient plant life, and the land is generally considered to be harsh and of less fertile quality.

The people of Kyosai organise themselves around the family tribe or clan. Simplistically there are lowland and highland Kyosai, who prefer the coastal or mountain regions, respectively. All Kyosai, however, are semi-nomadic, rotating at roughly six month intervals between a number of established ‘city’ sites.

Architecture is impermanent, based around portable and easily constructed natural material such as cured hides and dried brush.

All Kyosai are fiercely family orientated, and are generally considered superior trackers, hunters, horsemen and herders. Kyosai goat and sheep products are valued in the Imperial capital.

Kyosai clans have a leader, variously called the Chief, King (or Queen) or Wise One, amongst others. All tribes are submissive to the King of Kings who is termed the Provincial Governor in the Imperial hierarchy. Competition for society advancement is between the tribes to acquire this status and is intense.

At seasonal intervals, the tribes interact in order to: continue, start or settle vendettas; conduct trade between the lowland and highland crafts; revere the old gods in ceremony and festival; reunite distributed families; and for new alliances to be formed through inter marriage – the last of which puts a cynical tone on the passionate love-affairs that arise during these times.

It is said that a relationship with a Kyosai, either one of love or hate, is a lifetime commitment.

Terrible rules mischief

I have an urge to tinker, already. Even though I know it is unnecessary I have the urge to add more things to the ROAD&D system. Things like narrative mechanisms. Here’s an example of what I am thinking:

• Character word portraits are Aspects
• Aspects are narrative hooks
• You can evoke something about your Aspect to introduce story elements over and above what the DM is describing
• You can have Luck (or Fate) tokens, equal in number to your class level, and use these to invoke powers such as the above, or to get a bonus on a roll (say: equal to your level)
• Luck tokens regenerate on some schedule – but not too quickly
• DM can inflict the unexpected on the character by pointing to something in their personal Aspect, If they take this on board they can receive a compensatory Luck token to use later.

This is pretty much FATE/ Spirit of the Age/StarBlazer Adventures. I like it. But does it have legs here? I don’t know. I wait to get any feedback from the rest of the crew.

Details, after discussion with Greg:

1. Start adventure with Luck tokens equal to Level (4)
2. Insert something into the current action that is in some meaningful way implied by the character’s Aspect(s) – must be approved by the DM as relevant – at a cost of 1 Luck
3. Get a +5 bonus on any single roll – at a cost of 1 Luck
4. Receive 1 Luck when the DM invokes something about a character’s Aspect, typically an impediment – player may accept the impediment and role play it out to gain the Luck benefit, or reject the impediment.

On to Kyosai

There are rumblings in the force that we will be playing some Hân soon, so I need to get back into that mode of thinking. Characters have to be made (since we just played with blanks last time to get the feel if this was anything of interest), motivations have to be considered. I need to design the coming adventure though, as usual, I will develop only a plot and story framework and allow ad-libbing moderated by Mythic to do the grunt work.

Kyosai is 6 months farther on from Parangaricutiro. Still coastal, it is classified as Brushland. The model for the geography, fauna and flora will be based on the Californian Chaparral – not because I’ve been there or even have an affinity for it. After all, Australia has stands of this stuff that makes anything in the US look like a garden. However, we have all seen Westerns and not all of us have actually been to the ‘big red centre’, and a good story telling session should be about feelings.

So base your prejudices on the kind of people you will find in Kyosai, and the kinds of problems that they might have, on that model.

These are the instructions I handed out in preparation:

1) We are playing with ’static’ characters. No XP counting. If we want to progress levels we’ll do it another way. All of your characters are Level 4 (after negotiation with Simon )

2) Please use the list of available character classes found here to decide: http://shichitenhakki.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/classes-and-cliches-in-han/

3) For the absolute last, definitive word on the rules set, refer here, if you do not already have a copy: http://shichitenhakki.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/add3.pdf

Oriental Adventures describes the details of some characters.

4) Give yourself whatever equipment and material you think fair and appropriate.

5) Greg, I know you are not familiar with AD&D and probably choose not to be. At least decide what character Class you want to be and think about the peripherals. Stats we can work out on the fly.

6) I want to try something to help with characterisation. I want you to think of two short ‘word portraits’ for your characters. These should be pithy little descriptors that describe something important about the character (Simon – like our Important things list in Mythic). It can be personal, emotional, historical, it can even be bits of equipment, but they must be something that gives a feel for the character and gives us something tantalising to incorporate into the story.

For example:

* Sucker for a pretty face

* You’ll never take me alive!

* First man on the scene

* Won’t take no for an answer

* It wasn’t my fault

* Survivor of the Wang Shi riverboat disaster

* Stickler for the facts

* the sword of Kantar Knoll

Once we are together we will lay out all these character ‘Aspects’ and see what connections are suggested between the characters to explain why you are all together. Remember you are definitely all on the same side, officers of some Government agency or other.

StarBlazer Adventures arrives!

Technically, I do not need any more role-playing game rules. I use Mythic for most applications, and have some old standbys in ROAD&D (Revised Original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons), Traveller, and CoC (Call of Cthulhu). However, the truth is that those last three, representing years of divesting myself of game systems, truly only remain on my shelf because of nostalgia. I have wonderful memories of being young with no cares or responsibilities, playing for long weekends eating and drinking and smoking with no thought (or care) of going to work on Monday. The rules themselves, in any objective analysis, are pretty ordinary. Mythic is different. Mythic is the pinnacle of freeform story telling. But that’s not what is on my mind now.

I was always a fan of FUDGE. I recall running several sessions with various gaming groups and friends as they came and went over the years. None seemed to bite on the hook that had me. Most thought it interesting but wanted to play with a ‘real’ set of rules. This was ignorance on their part, of course. Rules are just a vehicle – not an absolute measure of truth elevated to respectability once a flashy cover has been thrown at it.

So far, for role-playing, Ornithopter has used Mythic, and I see no reason to change. However, my games extend into miniature wargaming as well, and I want to be able to play with toy soldiers in the same ’setting’. Drawing these threads together I believe that StarBlazer Adventures will give me the vehicle to create a usable set of wargaming rules that retain strong story-telling aspects.

It will require the melding of several mechanisms:

• the turn sequencing from SBH (Song of Blades and Heroes), rolling 1 to 3 d6 to give a variable number of actions per unit and a built in variable turn length by the dice result. This is reminiscent of Warmaster, and that will need to be tested as well. I choose this over a card draw system (such as that used in Picquet and Sword and the Flame) because the card draw feels like a trite intrusion. It does not feel ‘random’ enough to me – possibly because the possible outcomes are hidden (in the deck) rather than always visible (on the dice).
• possibly the squared board of PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry), but certainly a zoned board to control movement and ranges, and measuring on a wargame table feels like an intrusion into the imaginary scene.
• and finally the Skills (general abilities), Stunts (guaranteed specific situational benefits) and Aspects (word portraits that evoke and suggest story telling events) from StarBlazer Adventures.

StarBlazer Adventures does not specifically have a section on military vehicles (tanks, armoured troopers) and this is strange for a book over 600 pages long that seems to cover everything else. I am simultaneously disappointed and chuffed – anything ‘off the rack’ would probably disappoint me as well. Anyway, the section on Robots is a good place to start as these share a great number of characteristics with the vehicles I have in mind.

Some Ornithopter tech

Actually, this is a real-world PC with liquid cooling. BUt this is the kind of thing I visualise.

C&I (computronics and informatics) in Ornithopter

C&I (computronics and informatics) are the central components and fields of study in modern Ornithopter hyper-technology. It describes a multitude of organic substances that have room temperature super-conducting characteristics, along with the internal capacity to form neuron-like connections, and the capacity to be grown as if they were living tissue.

C&I in general facilitated the rapid rise of post singularity life, allowing these consciousnesses to transcend to the second (SI:2), third (SI:3) and even higher singularities. It is unclear whether the first C&I distillation (neuropeptidine) facilitated the first singularity, or whether the first transcendents discovered the substance and gifted it to mankind – at the same time moving into large scale production the medium for their own growth and future evolution. In any case, the field is now mature and pervasive, and without it, none of the technological advances taken for granted would be possible.

Depending on the application, C&I substances can be in liquid (for example, discernomol, rapidideine, cogitan, or the famous ringers’ solution used in military vehicles), gaseous (for example, intercedimine, facilitans and impalpimol) or solid forms (for example, circuidan and transtattin). There are several thousand such substances, and the list is growing.

At their simplest, C&I substances are used in place of what in pre-singularity times would have been wires, transistors and microprocessors. The advantage they have is in their plasticity, near perfect conductance, and ability to self-organise and evolve in-situ. Rather than have discrete components in a complex system connected by wires, systems of C&I are used throughout that are then organised to perform the tasks required, and alter themselves as needed once operational. In many cases this makes a piece of Ornithopter technology externally difficult to understand as it may have few moving parts and have chambers filled with gooey gel. When placed in context, the component ‘grows’ connections to its neighbours.

The organic/biological nature of C&I substances allows for many interesting effects, such as man-machine interfacing and uniquely genetically keyed devices, and so on. The most obvious and pervasive use of C&I in humans is the case of the Navigators. These beings are born with C&I tissue throughout their nervous system, and it is this enhanced processing power which allows them to navigate the myriad potential futures of instantaneous star travel, interface with the ship’s system, and select the possible future that corresponds to the desired destination. Whether the ancestors of the Navigators gengineered the species to take advantage of C&I substances and so become more like the hyper-intelligences, or whether the hyper-intelligences influenced the gengineers in order to create an intermediary species that could receive the discoveries they had made, is unknown.

At the practical level, human engineers have the ability to almost ‘plug and play’ with C&I machinery. They can select and assemble the components and then instruct the semi-intelligent material to make the relevant connections and bring itself to operational status through any number of simple, often hand-held, screen interfaces. Internally, and unless the device is specifically kept in information-sterile conditions, the machine soon finds either direct or wireless connections to the rest of the infosphere, and is available for hyper-intelligent interrogation, modification, and even habitation.

To casual observation a machine still looks much like a machine, but its ‘wiring’ may be infused with circuidan, and a number of gel packs of sensedine and sentiomol perform the tasks of control and coordination.

After the Singularity in Ornithopter

The lack of post-singularity life in Ornithopter had been worrying me for some time. I’m OK with science fantasy and space opera, but ignoring this inevitable development, or pretending it will not happen, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The trouble I have always had is the well-argued Unabomber case that the event of the singularity – that moment when ‘artificial intelligence’ becomes more intelligent than man – pretty much marks the moment from which we become extinct. However, the fine work being done over at Orion’s Arm (follow the links in the Interesting Trivial) has shown me that there is another possibility. And here it is.

Artificial intelligence, or post singularity hyper-intelligences, evolved long ago, and continue to do so today of the Ornithopter setting.

All that concerns us now is how these intelligences interact with humanity. The politics of the Infosphere, as the totality of transcendent life is called, is beyond the scope of this discussion. However, we can say that whatever the hyper-intelligences get up to, whatever plots they are scheming, whatever discoveries they are making, they are NOT apparently the default rulers of the galaxy (either openly or in secret), nor are they engaged in some Battlestar Galactica or Terminator crusade to exterminate humanity.

• Some early/young/simple hyper-intelligences, though still far more intelligent than humans, do continue to communicate and interact with humans. They may be counsellors to governments, corporations or great houses. They may in their own right be leaders of corporations or other organisations. However, they are the minority. For the most part hyper-intelligences are so many orders of magnitude above the level of human comprehension that communication, let alone understanding, is meaningless.

• Hyper-intelligence thoroughly permeates all technology used by man. This does not mean that every piece of equipment is self-aware, quite the contrary. However, the information matrix that binds together the infosphere of man’s communication and production machinery is the very same Infosphere which is the home of literally trillions of hyper-intelligences.

• Almost every item of sophisticated technology is home to one or more hyper-intelligences. For very complex machines such as starships this hyper-intelligence may be extremely powerful and remote, but this does not mean that they are controlling the ship in the way Banks describes his Minds. A useful analogy may be the human living in a house. He may go from one room to another and interact with things. He may perform maintenance because he takes pride in his home. He may beautify it. But unless he is psychopathic or simply juvenile he will not trash the place. Similarly an hyper-intelligence makes a home of such a device, enhancing its effectiveness, repairing and improving it as it sees fit. What that hyper-intelligence does in its hyper-intelligent ‘spare time’ is incomprehensible. And as for controlling the destination of the ship – what’s the point, when communications are almost instantaneous? It can talk to its friends, even travel about the Infosphere at will. Those that want to travel to the edges of space simply hitch a ride on a ship doing that, in much the same way as you would buy a house by the beach if you wanted to live there, rather than trying to make the house you live in go to the beach. Hyper-intelligences in ships, for example, are more like the heart than the brain, and seldom if ever stoop to control the ship or interact with the crew. The ship always is under the command of a human.

• Even simple technology is infused with the Infosphere, but these intelligences are much simpler. Nowadays we would call them robotic helpers. They are subsentient, or not self-conscious. A good example of this technology is the AT (armoured Trooper). A subsentient artificial intelligence interprets the clumsy movements of the human operator and manifests a beautiful array of naturalistic behaviour through the sophisticated machine body. These ‘creatures’ are about as intelligent as a dog and must undergo a similar lengthy training period to enable them to intuit the unique characteristics of their operator. This technology developed directly from the robotic helpers for the crippled and infirmed.

• It is this infusing of human-amenable technology with post-singularity life that has allowed technology to reach its current level of effectiveness and stability. Humans still fix things with spanners and screwdrivers, but the information matrix that underlies it all is pervasive, advanced, and often beyond human comprehension. A comparison might be with a plumber: he can work with pipes and water flow, build a complex system to do a job, but this does not mean that he has a PhD in hydrodynamics.

• The Infosphere connects seamlessly across planets and into space, and through the transition of space travel, across the galaxy. Factional politics and even wars probably do exist in this realm. But who knows what they are about, or who is winning or losing? Little of it affects mankind.

• One final analogy: think of hyper-intelligences within technology in a similar way to mitochondria in the organic cell. They are alien. Their whole ‘genetic’ makeup is different to the host cell. They are parasitic in that they cannot live outside the cell. Yet at the same time they provide the energy for the cell and donate their own material to the health of the cell. But they do not ‘run’ either the cell or the entire body in which they reside. Mitochondria are the genuine marvellous mystery of terrestrial biology. Hyper-intelligences are the exact analogue in the Ornithopter Infosphere.

There are other, important, implications. But that’s enough for now.

Military model in Ornithopter

It had to happen sooner or later. Eventually I had to create an entry that defined how people cause harm to each other in the Ornithopter setting.

Since it is a Space Opera setting, the technologies are typically retro in effect. Man (regardless of physical characteristics) is still the measure of all things, and the hand (or tentacle) on the trigger is what we see: not cold machines thinking in hyperspacial dimensions hurling exotic matter and ontological viruses in engagements lasting nanoseconds. This is Herbert, not Banks.

A common criticsm of science fiction wargame rules is that they ignore or brush over reasonably anticipated technologies and their implications for the tactical battlefield and instead simulate a sort of updated WWII environment. This is easy to understand. After all, the future is unwritten. Any particular model of future tech and tactics can only be based on the author’s own futurological prejudices. Or they are based on a particular artist’s vision (Star Trek, for example). But if you do not want to be tied to a particular brand, it’s easier to fall back on the known.

For Ornithopter, the vision sources are fairly clear, and the intention is clearly to represent a modest advancement on 20th century technology, with the inclusion of only a very few bits of sceince fantasy chrome. But what does that mean in concrete terms?

Technology described in StarGrunt (with the specific exception of gravity tech) is expressible in Ornithopter. The one addition to this framework is the AT, or Armored Trooper: the VOTOMs, or Vertical One Man Tank for Offensive Maneuvers. For this, anything described in Heavy Gear is expressible in Ornithopter. This cross over will make for some interesting battlefield problems, but hopefully it is still comprehensible and not a major paradigm shift.

Main technology features of the AT

The AT is an anthropomorphic armoured vehicle piloted by a single man and armed with a variety of what could be called medium weapons. It is effectively a single person IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle ) characterised by greater mobility than a MBT (Main Battle Tank ), and greater protection than regular infantry. However, they are not powerful behemoths in the mould of Gundam, nor are they idealised power armour invisioned by Heinlein. Instead, they are cheaply mass produced machines performing the role of cavalry in a combined arms military structure. Their default armament is a 20mm or 30mm autocannon. They stand around 4 to 5 metres tall.

Given their comparative cheapness and operational flexibility they are frequently used in the kind of ‘gunboat’ diplomacy that is common in the Ornithopter setting.