Quote from: Ladybird;746898Yeah. That sort of stuff is fine (In moderation; I'd want a hideous pic of the god of plagues to balance it out, too), because it's telling me something about the setting. Stuff like, say, WoD splat pics, that's illustrating a "typical" member of the splat, cool.

Boobplate, metallic chaps armour and chainmail bikinis I just don't like in general, because they're stupid concepts (You want to funnel attacks to those extraneous organs like your heart or your lungs, or to wear armor that leaves those precious cartoid arteries unprotected? That won't go well...), but sometimes it works - for example, in our MSH team we've got a former female luchador with superstrength who has since adopted the persona of a barbarian princess after the time we went to - and won! - Eurovision, so now she wears a chainmail bikini stage prop as her superhero costume; but it works because she's not really relying on it as armour anyway (She's hard enough that she could just take most hits from the villains we go up against).

Different strokes. I can buy into the concepts if they're consistently presented. Allot of the stuff in fantasy wouldn't work in a realistic universe like a single warrior (or a handful) with mostly slightly hyped up HTH weapons in metal armor fighting a magical sentient flying creature ranging from T-rex sized up to Godzilla with a built in napalm (or electricity or chemical weapon, etc etc) launcher and magical spells. But its fantasy and its awesome and fun, so sure Lets do it. I just like some consistency about it.

Quote from: Ladybird;746898Boobplate, metallic chaps armour and chainmail bikinis I just don't like in general, because they're stupid concepts

But surely "stupid" is exactly the point. Sometime silly, glamorous fluff is more fun than serious minded speculation. I mean if you wanted realism and serious alternate reality speculation isn't magic, dragons and elven princess a bad start? Is chain mail bikini really where we draw the line?

Take the spy genre just to show that I am not just bashing fantasy for the sake of bashing fantasy. Sometimes you want the realism of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy other times you might go for James Bond with the cool gadgets, hot Bond girls and theatrically evil masterminds.

In terms both of box office and general gaming appeal I think stupid has a special appeal you perhaps underestimate.

Quote from: Soylent Green;746904But surely "stupid" is exactly the point. Sometime silly, glamorous fluff is more fun than serious minded speculation. I mean if you wanted realism and serious alternate reality speculation isn't magic, dragons and elven princess a bad start? Is chain mail bikini really where we draw the line?

Take the spy genre just to show that I am not just bashing fantasy for the sake of bashing fantasy. Sometimes you want the realism of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy other times you might go for James Bond with the cool gadgets, hot Bond girls and theatrically evil masterminds.

In terms both of box office and general gaming appeal I think stupid has a special appeal you perhaps underestimate.

Yeah, I admit it. I like "stupid" when its also cool looking and awesome. I have very good SOD suspenders and with must genres you're already swallowing allot of bull for the sake of entertainment probably allot of you're not aware of. Which isn't say people cant have different tolerance levels than mine, just voicing my own preference. I like the fanciful aspects of setting to follow its own internal logic as much as possible. Don't show me loincloths and chainmail bikinis primarily in a system where its suicide without a reason or have it coexisting with more realistic versions of armor for no reason whatsoever.

Quote from: Soylent Green;746904But surely "stupid" is exactly the point. Sometime silly, glamorous fluff is more fun than serious minded speculation. I mean if you wanted realism and serious alternate reality speculation isn't magic, dragons and elven princess a bad start? Is chain mail bikini really where we draw the line?

Sure, why not. Some parts of a setting, you just have to suspend disbelief for. Dragons, I can deal with. Bond's hyperglam superspy world, hell yeah. But if you only want to put in stupid glam fluff, okay, I'm not going to buy your thing. Other people can make their own decisions, and the advantage of being grownups is, we all know that our decisions have no bearing or relevance on those of other people!

If I want to see pictures of pretty people, I'm not exactly short of options, and that's fine. If I want to learn about your RPG setting, there's not that many other places I can go, so every picture of someone dressed up as "sexy mighty warrior", "sexy lab engineer", "sexy third apprentice to the vizier's deputy", "sexy storm drain cleaner" or whatever (I mean, what the fuck, is it halloween or something?) is space that is telling me "people can be pretty!" rather than anything about your game world. I don't need to be told "people can be pretty"! I know that already. I don't know what the uniform of the Dragon Corps of Som'rset looks like. Show me that. That's what I bought your book for.

What if the Dragon Corp's uniforms are sexy?

I'm still wracking my brain for an example. It'd have to be something like, "this dish would be delicious if it wasn't for that surprise chunk of bitter melon." Usually I have more than one issue by then.

I'll keep trying to find that ice cram sundae with the "lutefisk cherry" on top.

Quote from: J Arcane;746895It makes fundamental assumptions about philosophy of the mind and neuroscience that have zero rational or scientific support as true, solely for the sake of a selfish and nihilistic fantasy, while still dressing up that fantasy as real possible utopian future.

It takes everything about bad science, technofetishism, libertarianism, and utopianism, and mashes them into one big ball of pure fucking stupid, and I hate everything about it, and its supporters even more.

I think if I thought about it more, this is how I'd feel, too.

AIR it hit me one day "Upload your mind to a computer, and live forever? But that's just a copy - your actual body - with your actual mind in it - is still right there! That's you! You are still going to die!"  
After that I just found the whole transhumanist fantasy silly/annoying.

Quote from: Snowman0147;746628New World of Darkness all the way.  This is what happens when you let freelancers run amok.  You get inconsistency after inconsistency.  Plus none of it makes any sense at all.  Especially Mage: The Awakening.  That game is truly stupid.

Yeah, it's mostly done by freelancers. Isn't it supposed to be toolkit and therefor as inconsistent as you want it to be? I do see your point though.

Quote from: S'mon;746922I think if I thought about it more, this is how I'd feel, too.

AIR it hit me one day "Upload your mind to a computer, and live forever? But that's just a copy - your actual body - with your actual mind in it - is still right there! That's you! You are still going to die!"  
After that I just found the whole transhumanist fantasy silly/annoying.

Even better when you have to kill yourself to make the copy. It's an elaborate and delusional form of suicide.

Quote from: Nexus;746931Even better when you have to kill yourself to make the copy. It's an elaborate and delusional form of suicide.

There are actually people who spend/t significant amounts of money paying into investment funds and savings accounts that will supposedly pay off when the Singularity comes and they'll all be immortal ...

Quote from: S'mon;746922AIR it hit me one day "Upload your mind to a computer, and live forever? But that's just a copy - your actual body - with your actual mind in it - is still right there! That's you! You are still going to die!"  
After that I just found the whole transhumanist fantasy silly/annoying.

My exact thoughts on transhumanism. I can go behind the idea of a setting where people transfer their brains (or souls if a techno-fantasy setting) into mechanical bodies (there could be many advantages in doing that), but just creating a copy of yourself when you actually die doesn't sound very appealing to me.


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Oh, I also agree that I hate books where the authors waste even a single paragraph saying how shitty other games are. If you want me to buy your game, write a good game, don't try to trash other games I like.

Quote from: J Arcane;746933There are actually people who spend/t significant amounts of money paying into investment funds and savings accounts that will supposedly pay off when the Singularity comes and they'll all be immortal ...

I wish I could say I was surprised. Must be nice for the people having their heads frozen after they die to have someone to look at and think "Kooks." Even if it is possible there's no reason to think anyone alive today will be around to see "The Singularity".

The direct brain-uploading I consider to be entirely bunk. The only way I can sort of see computerised brains to give you immortality working is if you had nanotechnological brain cells that acted to support and enhance your organic brain's usual work, and which could dynamically work to replace brain cells which fail to be replaced by the brain's usual regeneration processes. (It's been discovered that, years of neuroscience dogma to the contrary, brain cells do in fact regenerate). So you don't have a sudden "make a mechanical copy, kill the original deal" so much as you have this cell-by-cell transition from all organic to organic with machine enhancement to all machine with no definitive breaking point from one end to the other.

After all, if the "self" is created by the collaboration of all your brain cells working together rather than being contained in any specific cell or subset of those cells - and the regeneration and replacement of brain cells certainly implies that that's the case - then that means that you can't draw a clear line and say "OK, you're no longer your former self if the enhancements have replaced 1% or 10% or 50% or 99% of your old brain." It'd be just like giving your old brain a vastly increased capacity for regeneration.

But that's very different from the abrupt brain uploading that transhumanists go for.

Quote from: Maese MateoMy exact thoughts on transhumanism. I can go behind the idea of a setting where people transfer their brains (or souls if a techno-fantasy setting) into mechanical bodies (there could be many advantages in doing that), but just creating a copy of yourself when you actually die doesn't sound very appealing to me.

Bit of a tangent, here... I'm with you that straight-up mind-copying isn't the same as immortality, but what do you make of the "Theseus Ship" response to this conundrum?

Imagine that instead of just uploading a copy of your brain whole-hog to a computer, a small section of your consciousness - not even a lobe of your brain, like just a small part - was uploaded onto a computer implant that interfaced directly with your brain and continued to serve the identical function as the replaced part.  Wouldn't you say that the consciousness is still fundamentally the same?  You still feel the same, think the same.  A part of your mind is just "running" on a slightly different type of matter than the rest of it.  Over time virtually all of the molecules in our body are replaced at one point or another anyway - you are not made of the same matter as you were when you were born (of course, how could you be?  you've grown!).

Then, let's say, a year after the implant, another tiny bit gets the same treatment.  Same idea: you feel no different, think no differently, because the implant was modeled to simulate the replaced area exactly, to interface with the rest of the living brain seamlessly.  It might not be prone to damage or degeneration to the same degree as the organic components of your brain, but that's about it.  It's arguable that the computer part is now just as legitimately a part of your brain as the organic part; your brain is just a bunch of molecules, after all, and the computer part is just a slightly different set of molecules doing the same job.

Cut to years later when your whole brain has been replaced, bit by bit, slowly, over time.  Isn't the consciousness fundamentally the "same" consciousness as the original?

Edit: Warthur sort of beat me to it while I was writing.  So, what he said.

It's also probably worth pointing out that transhumanists don't necessarily agree on a lot of this stuff, or how it should/will work, and that radical organic life-extension rather than mind-uploading is also an important strain of posthumanism/transhumanism.  Transhumanists are not united by a single creed or dogma about how exactly technology will chage and improve the human condition.

Quote from: Nexus;746911What if the Dragon Corp's uniforms are sexy?

Then I have learned something about the game world. If it also looks vaguely practical for dragon riding, fine. If it looks like the sort of thing that would be worn briefly before some bom-chik-a-wow-wa "riding dragon style" then it's cheesecake and the book stays on the shelf. Simples!