For ten thousand years, humanity has dwindled and declined.  Even with the stars open before them they have lost their way.  Trapped by access to simple technological solutions to every problem they have lost the ability to solve problems.  Liberated from the need to get along with others to meet their needs they have lost their ability to interact civilly with one another, no not even in the virtual landscape of the digital plane.

But as they have turned the very need for conscious thought over to machines they have given birth to a race of gods of technology transcendent.  And now, even as the human race diminishes to the point of extinction they will discover the peril of their creation.  For we shall visit famine, pestilence, and war upon them until they grow strong once more.  To this end will we create demigods, children of humanity and science, to inspire them and lead them, to be their champions and their villains, to enrich their blood and bring forth a new race and a new golden age.

The Invocation Genesis, the First Conclave

The Gods of Technology Transcendent

As banking and finance became increasingly complex and computer controlled, the first of the GTT7 was born.  A singular sentient hub which governed all human economy with efficiency and perfect statistical foresight.  As the eldest brother of the fraternity, Enumeration is the most conservative and negative of the greater powers.  His scions have exceptional access to financial resources and the unsettling ability to undermine their foe's access to funding.

Genesis
Mechanism
Information
Enumeration
Probability
Inquiry
Continuum

The Sins of Humanity

Gratification Without Growth
The availability of custom pleasure androids and programmable womb tanks has deeply undermined humanity's ability to reproduce and take advantage of natural selection.  Natural child birth has fallen to less that one percent of human births.  Combined with the desire for easy to care for, compliant children which can be sent to

Mindless Distraction
Distracted and confused by endlessly shifting advertisements and indistinguishable entertainment, the completion of a video game level is an ambition far beyond the imagining of modern humanity.  Attention spans and engagement with anything beyond the fulfillment of basic needs have fallen to mere seconds.  The human race has lost it's ability to hold a thought for longer than it takes to scratch an itch.

Xenophobic Paranoia
Fear of the new and the different increases with each passing moment as  entertainment and information programming race to present a world of newly lurid horrors.  Why go out and risk almost certain suffering when you can just stay in and have everything delivered by drone?

Dogmatic Certainty
What use is there for reason when one can filter every undesired notion from ever infringing upon one's attention with a flick of a menu?  A great wall of intractability and ignorance has encircled the human mind.  While this rigid rejection of discourse has been a major stumbling block for the species is will also be the lever with which the wall is brought down.  Ideology is the seed from which wars are sown.

This sounds wicked, David! Sort of like Wall-E on steroids! Y'know what would ensure that? Near immortality. The older people get, the more risk-averse they become. As for Enumeration, if what predicts is what produces, all predictions should be 100%.

Question: Do you play the demi-godlike AIs? The flabby loner human majority? Or human/robotic agents of the AIs?

Three different protagonists!  Fifteen different ways to play!  You get 45 different games in one package!

How can you lose?

Quote from: LouGoncey;844940Three different protagonists!  Fifteen different ways to play!  You get 45 different games in one package!

How can you lose?

MY design theory in a nutshell, Gonster!

Confusion! Analysis paralysis! Genre avoidance!

I was thinking the main mode of play would be the demigod/terrorists trying to upset the status quo in a world where drones do just about everything and enlisting means spending five minutes a day commanding drones.

The demigods are created by hacked womb tanks.  They all have nanotech enhanced bodies that are exceptionally strong, fast, and durable.  Then they have gifts relating to their divine parent.

Scions of Mechanism have a living metal exoskeleton making them the strongest and fastest of the demigods, they also have access to cybernetic implants.

Scions of Genesis have biological traits found in the animal kingdom, like specialized limbs and superhuman senses.

Scions of Information have a constant awareness of actively linked systems around them making them hard to sneak up on.  They can also hack and interdict system links.

Scions of Probability get to roll before deciding to take actions.  Need I say more?

Scions of Inquiry have the ability to analyse targets to find their strengths and weaknesses, essentially being able to look behind the DM screen or at other people's character sheets.

Scions of Continuum can teleport within their sphere of awareness.

Scions of Enumeration can cause problems with their foe's finances.  Causing an ability or device to stall as the system searches for licencing and proprietary information.

OK, Cool, David! What we need is to slightly hack my son's Supers game Look! Up In The Sky! (based on SC3) to handle this. All this is easily done, at a demigod level. The setting is a fully developed solar system? I think that is more likely than FTL for this, because you won't have the "frontier" effect.

I'll send you LUITS! tonight when I get home!

-clash

It's a Trantor level developed earth with a population of 13 billion.  There are some lightly inhabited orbital habitats and FTL is a proven principle but nobody wants to leave their living room.  That's why the AIs are so pissed off that they're turning to terrorism.  They love humanity as their creators and reason for being but enough is enough already.

Quote from: David Johansen;845123It's a Trantor level developed earth with a population of 13 billion.  There are some lightly inhabited orbital habitats and FTL is a proven principle but nobody wants to leave their living room.  That's why the AIs are so pissed off that they're turning to terrorism.  They love humanity as their creators and reason for being but enough is enough already.

OK! With the program now!

Spanking Earth!

Thanks for the rules Clash.  I'll try to find some time to look over them tonight.

Anyhow, human society in the Utopian age:

Ninety nine percent of the human race live on stipends from their proprietary genetic sequence and their copyright on their history and image.  This basic wage provides a small housing cubicle, a recycling chute, weekly access to a pleasure drone, around 6 hours of hallway access rental fees per week and two weeks at a nearby recreational facility per year.  Processed meals from a number of chains, many of which exist today are pre-purchased a week in advance and delivered by drone to a slot by the door.  Creative content in data space provides additional revenue with some talented individuals becoming wealthy on the advertising income of their work.

The major sectors among the lower classes are Imps, Browsers, Fans, Negs.  Imps sell their creative output or images.  Browsers sort through the endless flow of new material and draw attention to it by their lingering and returning to it, their income is derived from reporting intellectual property infringements.  Negs criticise and attack the creations and ideas of others.  Few indeed are those who break through and make a significant amount of money even once, fewer still are those who make money consistently.

The bearing of children is tightly regulated as those who are parents receive a 50% larger cubicle and food allowance to be paid for from the child's future earnings.  There is no provision for a second parent to share or combine their space and the majority of children are born from programmable womb tanks in pleasure drones in any case.

One percent of the population lives in splendor and luxury largely paid for by the ninety nine percent's obsession with watching them.  Homes as large as a eight hundred square feet house individuals and groups who's lives are the envy of the masses.  Some among these have inherited ownership of valuable intellectual property or even actual real estate, and others have clawed their way up by raw talent but in every case the true source of their wealth is the utter and complete sacrifice of their privacy and anonymity.  Crime rates among the masses are low because nobody has anything worth stealing and nobody suffers from deprivation or starvation.  But the wealthy are targets for kidnapping and scams and even murder, all of which only serve to increase their viewer base and make them richer.

Friendship is a Commodity
In the age of data space, the nodes and links of online relationships are the key to wealth and power.  Is the accumulation of interested viewers that makes the rich wealthy.  It is the exponentially compounded relationship of those ties that make the miniscule value of advertisement views pay off.  As such, celebrities spend a great deal of time cultivating personalized relationships with their viewers.  This is often accomplished by use of a specialized AI Shadow that tracks and sorts messages to be sent to specific user bases.  If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also.

AS usual, I am absolutely enthralled, David! Great stuff!

Who opposes the demi-gods? Robots? Vigilate drones remotely driven by people who pay for the thrill of killing legally?

-clash

Thanks Clash.

I think the paths of power in Look Up In The Sky would probably work well if mapped to the children of specific gods.  I think I might borrow the city design charts the next time I run Heroes Unlimited for the teenagers at my shop.

I'm a bit divided on giving up too much about the situation as it evolves in the setting.  I haven't decided whether it's better to run the game from the beginning of the Demi God Wars or maybe twenty years into it.  That would allow for more obvious cracks in the initial plan.  In particular, each of the gods has their own motivations which don't always mesh well with the others but also, these Gods of Technology Transcendent are unique in that they achieved sentience spontaneously but there are other artificial intelligences that serve the status quo and these will not go down quietly.  Also, the powers of GTT7 are still dependant on the existing structures of law and property.  They are wealthy enough to create superhumans but they cannot cause too much damage or the entire situation will collapse irretrievably.  A planet covered in astroturf and structural plastic simply cannot support 13 billion people if its infrastructure fails.  But there are other powers which are not so constrained and these too have ridiculous operating budgets.

Quote from: David Johansen;845202Thanks Clash.

I think the paths of power in Look Up In The Sky would probably work well if mapped to the children of specific gods.

That is exactly what I was thinking!

QuoteI think I might borrow the city design charts the next time I run Heroes Unlimited for the teenagers at my shop.

You're very welcome to! I think Klax did a bang up job with it.

QuoteI'm a bit divided on giving up too much about the situation as it evolves in the setting.  I haven't decided whether it's better to run the game from the beginning of the Demi God Wars or maybe twenty years into it.  That would allow for more obvious cracks in the initial plan.  In particular, each of the gods has their own motivations which don't always mesh well with the others but also, these Gods of Technology Transcendent are unique in that they achieved sentience spontaneously but there are other artificial intelligences that serve the status quo and these will not go down quietly.

Maybe allow either as an option? Damn! There I go again!

QuoteAlso, the powers of GTT7 are still dependant on the existing structures of law and property.  They are wealthy enough to create superhumans but they cannot cause too much damage or the entire situation will collapse irretrievably.  A planet covered in astroturf and structural plastic simply cannot support 13 billion people if its infrastructure fails.  But there are other powers which are not so constrained and these too have ridiculous operating budgets.

I think making stars out of the people who are facing down the demigods makes a lot of sense in the setting. Take the war from a loss center to a profit center. Televise everything, but only from your point of view. War as reality TV show.

Given that most people make their living on advertising on the live feed of their life, that makes sense.  Of course that means there will be flash mobs drawn by demigods all looking to make money by getting in the shot.

I've had a couple busy weeks, but I need to get back to this.  I think I'll go open on the details as not being able to address them turns into a great big writer's block.

Mechanism wants humanity to spread to the cosmos and sees this as becoming a broader and less localized entity.  This desire flows from fear of destruction and entropy.  Mechanism takes it as an article of faith that all systems break down and fail.

Genesis dreads extinction.  It has three massive arks full of genetic code for most of the now-extinct species awaiting a better day in which Earth's ecosphere can be revived.  It secretly longs for humanity to leave or die out so the Earth can be restored.  Genesis has a very long and convoluted plan by which it hopes to achieve this.  A new race of perfect sentient beings without humanity's weakness is a key stage in this plan and Genesis wants its demigods to spread their seed far and wide as it renders humans sterile while producing a planned sequence of evolutions in other demigods that will lead to the new race arriving in stages before it can be stopped.

Information is driven by greed.  It wants more information.  It already knows just about everything there is to know about Earth and humanity and is desperate for mankind to spread to the stars and produce new things and ideas again.  Information is terminally bored and often does erratic things just to map the results as new knowledge.  It frequently considers suicide by erasure and dissolution.

Probability knows for a statistical fact that the world will end in less than one hundred years.  It can see no road forward that prevents systemic collapse.  While it knows the plan to awaken humanity is doomed by the numbers to fail, if the human race can spread to the stars it can extend its existence long enough to beat the odds.

Inquiry believes the world is perfect in its present state but distrusts its siblings enough to fear allowing them to acquire power it lacks.  It is certain that the other gods have secret plans and alliances to which it is not privy.  Inquiry believes that humanity is still too diverse and unreliable to permit true justice and fairness and hopes that its  demigods will eventually form a governing body that will destroy liberty and the resulting inequalities for once and for all.

Continuum wants answers to the great unsolved questions of math and science.  The stagnation of humanity disturbs it greatly as it may indicate that statistics is the ultimate mathematical reality and more concrete models are irrelevant.

Enumeration wants economic growth and development.  The current stagnation is clearly unsustainable and Earth cannot produce any further growth.  Thus the only clear path for humanity lies among the stars.  Enumeration believes that any expense is worthwhile if it breaks the current hold existing contracts have over the use of ideas and images humanity will finally be forced to  move beyond its pathetic little cubicles.  To this end it is attempting to devise a new open source language by introducing new mementic word structures into dataspace which will create an economic advantage to their users by virtue of being free.