Quote from: Daddy Warpig;634018I call that the Bullshit Tax.

Interesting article, but any law is a social contract.  We agree to be bound by the law in exchange for the freedom the law provides.  In the case of terminating those with outlawed powers, it's being bound by a unfair law in exchange for protecting the rest of humanity.  It's the Patriot Act turned up to 11.  I haven't read that book in question, but if a human suddenly manifested the ability to nuke cities, city blocks, or even just buildings and was unable to control that, wouldn't NOT killing him be a direct threat to everyone around him?  Don't mean to derail the gonzo, but just wondering why an unjust law would be too much bullshit.  Isn't unjust law really the majority of human law if you go back to the beginning?

Like the term though.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;634388In the case of terminating those with outlawed powers, it's being bound by a unfair law in exchange for protecting the rest of humanity.

My main problem with it isn't the morality, it's the lack of worldbuilding. Honestly, I don't think the author even began to think through his social or political changes. It seems like he began with X-Men 2 (the movie), assumed a "hunted mutant" background for all Probes and Selfers, then tacked on Dances with Wolves.

It's a mess.

He's former military, and a former contractor (PMC, I think), so those aspects of the book drip with verisimilitude. The rest, not so much.

(For example, at one point he suggests the Geneva Convention now includes the Death Penalty for manifesting prohibited schools. This makes utterly no sense, for so many reasons.)

In any case, the main character's sympathy for a school shooter was a far bigger moral problem for me than the implied police state of the (fictional) America.

Quote from: CRKrueger;634388if a human suddenly manifested the ability to nuke cities, city blocks, or even just buildings and was unable to control that, wouldn't NOT killing him be a direct threat to everyone around him?

In that case, a person becoming a uncontrollable human nuke, simple self defense justifies killing them. No law required.

But the powers Probes manifest are (at most) on the devastating personal scale, not WMD-scale. Grenades, not nukes. And those scales are (as far as I can tell) manifested only by people who have some measure of control.

Bad, but not enough to not only morally justify "manifest and die", much less make it more or less universal across the entire planet. And, if that were the case, the book should have illustrated it and supported it, even if only implicitly.

(Lazy or incomplete worldbuilding irritates me.)

Quote from: CRKrueger;634388Like the term though.  

Thanks.

Huh.  Same board that mostly poo-pooed the idea of dwarven wizards, mostly embraces the idea of gonzo adventures.  I find that interesting.

Quote from: Mistwell;634604Huh.  Same board that mostly poo-pooed the idea of dwarven wizards, mostly embraces the idea of gonzo adventures.  I find that interesting.

I support dwarven wizards (especially rune magic) but I think gonzo should be very limited in a campaign.

Quote from: Mistwell;634604Huh.  Same board that mostly poo-pooed the idea of dwarven wizards, mostly embraces the idea of gonzo adventures.  I find that interesting.

Hobgoblin of small minds and all that.

Quote from: Mistwell;634604Huh.  Same board that mostly poo-pooed the idea of dwarven wizards, mostly embraces the idea of gonzo adventures.  I find that interesting.

There's gonzo and then there's just hippy nonsense I tell you!

Quote from: Opaopajr;633648Just like in the chronicles of Corum, in the plane dominated by Xiombarg, eventually chaos unchecked exhausts itself into a desert of endless, shifting banality...

Brilliant reference to make the point!

Quote from: Mistwell;634604Huh.  Same board that mostly poo-pooed the idea of dwarven wizards, mostly embraces the idea of gonzo adventures.  I find that interesting.

I don't like either.

Too Many Gonzos!

Quote from: TristramEvans;634705Too Many Gonzos!

There's always room for Gonz-O.

You know another funny thing? Reality itself tends to be more gonzo than people are willing to accept, and more than once I've had to argue a known fact because it wasn't 'realistic'. Realism is not believable enough, and that in itself is pretty gonzo.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;634722You know another funny thing? Reality itself tends to be more gonzo than people are willing to accept, and more than once I've had to argue a known fact because it wasn't 'realistic'. Realism is not believable enough, and that in itself is pretty gonzo.

Absolutely. Remember that in its original meaning, "gonzo" was firmly grounded on the absurdity of reality (albeit slightly exaggerated reality).

RPGPundit

I've thought about this a bit more and I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm okay with gonzo.  I think my problem is with arbitrary gonzo.

ASE1 doesn't feel like arbitrary gonzo.  As we wander around meeting robots and stuff, there's a sense that it all hangs together----that there's some level on which this IMEC corporation fits into the world and is comprehensible.  It's foreshadowed by all the business with the radioactive rock, and then I got to read the futuristic signs and meet the robots and talk to them, and then we meet this crawling heap of junk that wants to kill us and take our limbs.  I'm okay with that (and enjoyed it).

If a crawling heap of robotic junk completely unexpectedly tried to kill us and take our limbs without foreshadowing of any kind, then I'd be less cool with that.  I expect dungeons to be mostly full of humanoids, undead, and vermin with the occasional elder horror, so I'm okay with rounding a corner and meeting those things.  But if I round a dungeon corner and find myself face to face with a 75mm Sturmgeschutz self-propelled gun supported by a bunch of orcs with SS-armbands and panzerfausts, then I had better have had some foreshadowing before it happens and the chance to make sense of it afterwards.

Gonzo but not arbitrary gonzo, see?

Also, no dwarven wizards ever.  The word for magic dwarf is gnome.

Quote from: P&P;635236Also, no dwarven wizards ever.  The word for magic dwarf is gnome.

You just made me laugh out loud:)

Quote from: P&P;635236But if I round a dungeon corner and find myself face to face with a 75mm Sturmgeschutz self-propelled gun supported by a bunch of orcs with SS-armbands and panzerfausts, then I had better have had some foreshadowing before it happens and the chance to make sense of it afterwards.

Gonzo but not arbitrary gonzo, see?

And what if the Bakshi/Star Trek-esque Nazi Orcs had no foreshadowing, but there was a coherent backstory that the character was unaware of?