Quote from: David Johansen;848149Given 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.

You say that like it's a bad thing!

QuoteI'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.

I develop much of my games in the open, on G+ or my blog.

QuoteMechanism 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.

Mechanism is right. Entropy increases.

QuoteGenesis 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.

"It's a grim and thankless task, but my character is willing to do the job!"

QuoteInformation 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.

Maybe it even tests suicide by cloning itself and erasing one, just to test the process?

QuoteProbability 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.

Sometimes you bet on the long shot, because betting on the sure thing is counter-productive. I assume Probability is a gambler...

QuoteInquiry 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.

There's a machine intelligence we can all root for!

QuoteContinuum 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.

Argh! The terror of any mathmatician!

QuoteEnumeration 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.

Letting them flourish, evolve, or die as evolutionary quanta?

-clash

Also, probability desperately wants to revive baseball as a pastime and is secretly obsessed with baseball trivia and minutia.  Inquiry is aware of this interest and is terrified by what it might presage.

Quote from: David Johansen;848337Also, probability desperately wants to revive baseball as a pastime and is secretly obsessed with baseball trivia and minutia.  Inquiry is aware of this interest and is terrified by what it might presage.

HAHAHAHAHA! That is perfect!

By coincidence, yesterday was the first time ever all 15 home teams won. Yay meaningless statistics and trivia!

The Avatars of the Gods

The gods themselves appear to their followers in dataspace but they standardize their appearance for the sake of recognition.  These Avatars are proprietary and while any of the gods are capable of imitating the others the licencing fees are prohibitive and thus, in practice, it is never done.  As these appearances occur in dataspace the details are often specific to the preferences of the viewer.

Genesis appears to viewers as a beautiful but approachable member of the opposite gender clad in a revealing green robe embroidered with glowing golden vines that resemble circuitry.  Its voice is seductive and enticing.

Mechanism appears as a genderless humanoid robot, with an emotionless voice.  It is working on a gigantic robotic avatar which the others are totally unaware of.

Information appears as a bespectacled young man in an ill fitting suit.  His social manner is awkward but takes on an air of arrogance when citing facts.

Enumeration appears as a powerful man in a sharp grey suit.  He speaks in a dominating tone and puts on glasses and looks at a ledger on a clip board when discussing matters of finance.

Probability appears as a casually dressed, healthy young adult of the same or opposite gender of the viewer and wears a baseball shirt and a ponytail with a frequency that is statistically unlikely.  Probability's actions and words are often erratic to the point of randomness.

Inquiry appears as a stern man in judicial robes.  Its voice is slightly sneering a the best of times but can be patronizing or insulting as the situation warrants.

Continuum appears as a slightly voluptuous female with ebony skin dressed in a sharp one piece uniform.  Her eyes are full of stars and her voice is wistful and sighing.

Human Factions

While humanity is stagnant and complacent there are still powerful organizations and power brokers.

Universal Entertainment is focused on the commodification of fun.  It owns eighty percent of all media and entertainment licences created before 2050 and is endlessly striving to control new properties through intristic relationships with older properties or outright purchase.  Universal entertainment leases licences rather than actually producing content but it does provide an excellent content labelling and sorting service for a fee.  Universal Entertainment doesn't engage with its enemies, preferring to act through third parties.

Manufacturing and Printing Consolidated controls the automated printing and recycling factories that provide eighty five percent of the world's consumer goods.  They own the plans and technologies and lease them to competitors and third party contributors who they buy out should they reach a certain profit margin.  There is approximately one mass object printing factory for every million people on earth.  Most goods are printed in bulk for the mass market but custom jobs are exceedingly expensive.  MPC frequently issues deliberately flawed products to its enemies or creates deliberate product shortages to undermine their efforts.

The Organic Confectioners manages the massive nutripaste vat cycles which produce the paste from which most of the world's food is printed.   As well as owning eighty percent of the proprietary recipies, brands, and formuli used to produce food, the OC owns ninety percent of the local food manufacturing hubs as well as the few remaining farms where impossibly expensive meat and produce are produced to meet the needs of the one percent of the one percent who can afford them.  The OC is capable of poisoning its foes in a number of ways through the food allowance program that keeps the world fed.

The Legislative Assembly is what remains of the world's national governments.  A hopelessly corrupt and ineffectual body which, none the less, owns and controls the remaining military hardware remaining from earlier ages.  In practice The LA is little more than a museum caretaking board.  Recent surveys put the number of people aware of the concept of democratic government at under half a percentage point.

The Faceless Brotherhood's origins lie in the early days of the internet which preceded dataspace.  It is seldom remembered that this highly respected group known for its philanthropy, etiquette, and investigative activism began as a collective for hackers, pirates, and perverts.  Inquiry has a love / hate relationship with the FB because, while it feeds the desire to know every secret with its exposes the member's identities are protected by a supremely effective cypherlock known as The Crypt.

The Grey Earth
In the present age, the earth is covered with man made structures.  Most are hundred story habitat blocks that also extend a hundred floors down, each housing a million people in self contained and largely self sufficient discomfort thanks to integrated automated object printing factories and nutripaste vat clusters.  Even Earth's oceans are mostly covered with such buildings, except in rare cases like the Mediteranian coast line which is owned by a cruise liner fleet that serves the ultra rich.

The sites of major modern cities remain, due to long standing charters.  These are home to the elites who can afford a little more elbow room and a regular glimpse of the open sky, grey-green though it may be.  Such places are a stark contrast of the dangerous vice palaces and slums and the haunts of high society and the glamour of celebrity and affluence.  The hundred remaining cities see the most social upheaval and violence found in the world and as such have highly effective and militarized private police forces to suppress the frustrated masses.

The Famine Plains
There is a large portion of the pacific ocean that has filled in with waste and garbage over the centuries and it is the last desperate home of those who have been lost to economic failures.  Almost a billion people are crowd onto the vast, spongy lump of plastic and steel.  Food is scarce but real in the shanty towns, with vegetables grown in composted human waste and fish from the deep mines that reach far down into the last vestiges of the world's oceans far below.  Warlords rule gangs with ancient firearms with only a few rounds remaining and violence is constant as more broken people flow out of the habitats with every passing year.  Cannibalism is not unheard of here but is generally frowned upon due to the poor quality and chemical taste of the resulting meat.

I imagine there are a lot of reconstructed actor personae who are popular even though they are long dead, earning money for UE. Might be interesting if one or two of them were trying to get out of their contracts somehow.

Man, just when I think you've reached your bleak limit, David, you light the afterburner!

Not to worry Clash, The Famine Plains are owned by a consortium of charitable foundations who maintain them as a justification for continued fund raising.  Between the cost of protecting The Famine Plains from real estate developers and the transportation and housing suitable for celebrity gala balls that generate so much revenue, the foundation managers can barely afford their penthouse suites and private jets.

See, now that's not so bad

Quote from: David Johansen;848957Not to worry Clash, The Famine Plains are owned by a consortium of charitable foundations who maintain them as a justification for continued fund raising.  Between the cost of protecting The Famine Plains from real estate developers and the transportation and housing suitable for celebrity gala balls that generate so much revenue, the foundation managers can barely afford their penthouse suites and private jets.

See, now that's not so bad

Models of magnanimity! What about misery tourism? I'm sure there's a market for that!

-clash

The real Famine Plains are a bit too dangerous and horrible for that but they do maintain a lesser pocket which is more tightly controlled and safe for celebrities and film crews.  Hand picked cute children and pitiable adults that would never survive on the real plastic plains are selected and rounded up by armed teams on quads.

On a side note, the Famine Plains are one of the few places on Earth where real old fashioned sexual reproduction takes place as there is no money for a pleasure drone or contraception.  The inhabitants are generally healthier due to the vigorous physical activity required to stay alive.

One of the reasons for the surviving cities is the need for back drops for entertainment productions.  Not that things can't be modelled in data space but prestige productions want on location shots.

Quote from: David Johansen;849112The real Famine Plains are a bit too dangerous and horrible for that but they do maintain a lesser pocket which is more tightly controlled and safe for celebrities and film crews.  Hand picked cute children and pitiable adults that would never survive on the real plastic plains are selected and rounded up by armed teams on quads.

Perfect!

Genesis actually likes the Famine Plains and is a major backer of said charity groups.  In its mind, the starvlings are the only redeemable humans and the plains themselves are an early experiment in recovering the planet's blighted surface.  Of course, it only concerns itself with genetic drift and soil accumulation and doesn't care much about the lives and deaths and suffering of individual humans at all.

The Sports Commission is a major entertainment power dedicated to the peak of human condition.  They own arenas and gyms world wide where they produce live combat and sex extravaganzas.  Stables of star athletes are raised and bred to exacting specifications.   While professional athletes and porn stars are well paid, between the lethal events and the performance enhancing drugs they are fed from birth, their lives are short.  In the early days of the demi-god wars humanity turns to the combat athletes of the Sports Commission to fight against the gods of transcendent science.

"If nobody dies, nobody watches."

Quote from: David Johansen;849139Genesis actually likes the Famine Plains and is a major backer of said charity groups.  In its mind, the starvlings are the only redeemable humans and the plains themselves are an early experiment in recovering the planet's blighted surface.  Of course, it only concerns itself with genetic drift and soil accumulation and doesn't care much about the lives and deaths and suffering of individual humans at all.

That is to be expected!

QuoteThe Sports Commission is a major entertainment power dedicated to the peak of human condition.  They own arenas and gyms world wide where they produce live combat and sex extravaganzas.  Stables of star athletes are raised and bred to exacting specifications.   While professional athletes and porn stars are well paid, between the lethal events and the performance enhancing drugs they are fed from birth, their lives are short.  In the early days of the demi-god wars humanity turns to the combat athletes of the Sports Commission to fight against the gods of transcendent science.

"If nobody dies, nobody watches."

Surrounded by a swarm of drone cameras! That would rock!

Well, now that all the hubbub about Tournament of Rapists has died down we'll get back to it.  Given that I've already suggested that sex and sports had largely merged, I had to set back and think about how to handle it.  While I don't want to be too prude I do think it would be good to avoid puerile notions and assume that while there are probably some pretty nasty underground sporting events that the people in charge don't want the mainstream cube dwellers to get that worked up.  I will note that there are indeed "masturbation stations" in the communal restrooms that collect semen.  But all restrooms are multi-gendered and have full length privacy stalls and everyone is socially awkward enough that nobody would ever talk so someone else in the bathroom.  I mean why would anyone dooooo that?

So, a few sports events of note.

Snuggleball: two naked, greased-down coed teams compete to put an oblong, fluid-filled sack through a slot in the opposite walls of a thickly padded arena in this surprisingly violent full contact sport.

Chained: five warriors chained to posts by spiked neck manacles flail at each other with barbed ball and chain weapons.  This bloody sport is rigged but not quite in the way most would think.  Almost all of the participants die but clones are used to give continuity of character.  Much is made of romantic attractions between competitors but it's all scripted.

Under Ball:  A three foot diameter hollow steel ball is rolled around a concave arena with the aid of magnetic gloves, boots and sexy studded vinyl harnesses.  Various risky and spectacular countervailing force stunts make compound fractures a common occurrence.  While the ball is often depicted as spiked in advertising copy, no engineering solution has been found that makes this possible and the game is dangerous enough as is.

Hockey: Two teams of six, wearing ritualistic traditional sweaters, blades on their feet, and viciously hooked sticks fight across an arena covered in slick ice, to shoot a dense rubber disc into a net.  Pads and helmets have been banned for centuries as causing more injuries due to a reduced perception of personal risk.

Yes, that was all just to set up a hockey joke.