[Robots & Rapiers] Power 19

[Valamir]

Sorry if you already covered this somewhere, but: How long do you expect it to take a character from total programmatic servitude to total freedom? How does this compare with the time it takes for the world to collapse?

I'm shooting for a default of about 9-12 sessiont to fully transition with the expectation that some, but not all, of the robots will have transitioned when the end hits.  But it should be pretty easy to adjust for shorter or longer runs.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

Heh. I read the playtest/intro thing two years ago, and totally missed the really cool "from rails to empowered goodness" thing. At that time I was not really impressed by the whole swashbuckling thing; now I'm hooked.

Yes, me too. Unfortunately, I am having trouble even getting a final (longer) playtest together for my own game, so...

Frank

[Frank Tarcikowski]

P.S.: Something else. The world outside the park, what is it like? I imagine that there will be more Robots around. I mean, if such technology existed, they would use it for more than theme parks, right? Most probably, you'd order your Big Mac from a Robot and your French housemaid would also be made of Steel and Silicone...

[Valamir]

P.S.: Something else. The world outside the park, what is it like? I imagine that there will be more Robots around. I mean, if such technology existed, they would use it for more than theme parks, right? Most probably, you'd order your Big Mac from a Robot and your French housemaid would also be made of Steel and Silicone...

That's the way it is / was on Earth, yup.  The theme park is actually on another planet that was only for entertainment for the rich and elite.  So outside of the terraformed park areas...are the native flora and fauna of a earth like ("Type M") planet...with a few other parks scattered across the planet.

Why that instead of earth?  Because I wanted the robots to develop their own society in isolation.  I didn't want any "easy outs" for the players in terms of wandering outside of the park and finding lots of human stuff and human lifestyle and human organizations (or the remnants thereof).  I set it up so the robots have nothing to contrast their lives with...its either the fake world of the "Tapestry"...or...what?...

It should be interesting then to see what the players (who, of course, do have access to all that human stuff) bring or don't bring with them.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

Cool!

[Monkeys]

This game could have an interesting philosophical element to it -

for example, if we're not the sons of Adam, does that mean we don't have Original Sin? Or that the crucifixion was not for us?

If, as Plato says, everything is a pale reflection of an ideal form, what does it matter if our lives are an illusion? The lives of those who created us would be illusions as well - we, having awareness of our un-reality, are closer to perceiving reality than they are.

[Monkeys]

or...

what does it mean to say that I'm not really D'Artagnan, a Gascon of poor but noble family? Surely, when I ask myself whether I am really a 'Gascon', I mean 'one who was born in what I call Gascony' - indeed, by 'one who was born' I mean 'one who experienced a thing that I call birth'. When I ask whether I have a poor but noble family, I mean 'a thing that I call a family, which has characteristics that I call poverty and nobility'. In other words, I'm not comparing something in my experience with something in absolute reality, but something in my experience with something else in my experience. It doesn't matter if Gascony exists in absolute reality or not, because my conception of Gascony is, by definition, the only thing I can mean when I ask whether I come from there. Thus, when I ask whether I am really D'Artagnan, I mean 'am I the thing I call D'Artagnan - that is, am I me?'; and the answer is necessarily 'yes'.

[AJ_Flowers]

Playtesting this at Forge I really had a good time with my preview of it! Of course, for me, I guess I wasn't looking at the games theme too deeply and I don't know if we really got the chance to explore the thematic elements of the game in their depth. It wouldn't be too possible to do that in a con play or in one setting and would require more time expenditure.

I guess I just really like robots, and swords.

[Valamir]

Monkeys - absolutely.  I suspect that's a bit more deeply introspective than most groups will get with it, but those questions are there to be answered...even if the answer decided upon is "screw it, I'm a cool dude with a sword". 

AJ - hey, thanks for playing, I hope you design panel was worth missing the rest of the session for ;-).  The playtest at Forge Midwest was indeed a put the mechanics through their paces and see where they still creak sort of playtest so it didn't get to much into thematic elements, but absolutely over a longer campaign those should come more to the fore.