Pleiades thematic notes
From AdamWiki
Brainstorming about my Pleiades RPG with SarahScott:
[16:41] TheKasi: Technology as mythology?
[16:41] Adam Dray: I have had this idea brewing in my head for Verge for a long time about
[16:41] Adam Dray: about AIs taking on mythological roles, like gods of sorts.
[16:42] TheKasi: nodnod
[16:42] Adam Dray: What if the spaceships had AIs that ran them, and they were a sort of god character.
[16:42] TheKasi: like the Wizard of Oz gone nuts.
[16:42] Adam Dray: Shiva, the Six-Armed Spaceship. :)
[16:42] TheKasi: giggle
[16:43] TheKasi: power to the priesthood being the mythic secrets of... the intarweb?
[16:43] Adam Dray: Um.
[16:43] TheKasi: giggle
[16:45] TheKasi: but I think about controlling information via controlling who can read, a la the middle ages
[16:48] Adam Dray: I'm not sure how to use that with all the spaceship / smugger / star-traders stuff, though.
[16:49] TheKasi: How are you reconciling star trader with forgotten technology?
[16:51] Adam Dray: So far, only vaguely. Ships are hard to come by. People only vaguely know how they work. They're still tech, not magic, but there's a certain amount of wonder by most folks who use them. I imagine trading lanes and pilgrimage routes like in the middle ages.
[16:51] Adam Dray: So a trip between systems might take weeks or months, but not years, but not hours or days either.
[16:54] TheKasi: So if you have technological guilds (like pilots) tied into the mythological/religious establishment?
[16:56] Adam Dray: That's a cool idea. Unlike a lot of medieval guilds, the various representatives of several guilds (Pilots', Navigators', Mechanics', Gunners') would have to work together as a team to succeed.
[16:56] Adam Dray: And each person would have her own agenda, separate from that of the captain.
[16:56] TheKasi: nodnod
[16:56] TheKasi: they might all have 'trade secrets' that let them do things which the others wouldn't know.
[16:57] Adam Dray: I think things get interesting if no one owns the ship. The ship is sentient. The ship owns the ship. It just lets people use it, if their goals intersect.
[16:57] TheKasi: or would know about, but not how to do it, and therefore either have to enlist their help or go around it.
[16:57] TheKasi: right
[16:57] TheKasi: so you'd have to avoid upsetting the ship. :P
[16:58] Adam Dray: Totally. And the ship is a great character for the GM to railroad plot around in interesting ways, but the players could affect it through game mechanics.
[16:58] TheKasi: or... convince the ship you were on its side but everyone else hated it. ;P
[16:59] Adam Dray: I imagine, "Okay, we need to figure out how to get to the Antares system and pick up the explosives while convincing Shiva that we're actually going there on a peace mission."
[16:59] TheKasi: hee, yeah.
[16:59] Adam Dray: This game is going in a direction that I totally didn't imagine, thanks to you.
[16:59] TheKasi: sorry?
[17:00] Adam Dray: Ultimately cooler.
[17:00] TheKasi: oh, good :)
[17:00] Adam Dray: Good thing I talked to you before I wrote a lot of pages. ;)
[17:00] Adam Dray: I would have ended up making just a normal smuggler space game without the cool stuff.
[17:00] TheKasi: :)
[17:00] Adam Dray: The guilds thing was the big influence.
[17:02] TheKasi: yay :)
[17:02] Adam Dray: I think we had a nice feedback loop of ideas there. Ship-gods -> Power of the Priesthood (as a joke?) -> Information Control -> Middle Age caravans -> Middle Age guilds ->
[17:02] Adam Dray: very cool
[17:02] TheKasi: only partially a joke. :)
[17:03] TheKasi: yay feedback loops!
[17:03] Adam Dray: I figure that starship travel is faster than the interstellar intarwebs, since data can't travel FTL but ships can.
[17:04] TheKasi: true
[17:04] Adam Dray: Wow, imagine if your ship wanted to sexually dominate other ships in a way that only really made sense to AIs. And you had to deal with this while trying to accomplish your own, fairly mundane goals, like getting parts for the Mechanics' Guild, or getting smuggling jobs so you could feed yourself.
[17:05] TheKasi: or if your ship decided it did not care to take on hazardous cargo.
[17:05] TheKasi: does "pilot" become more like "shiphandle"
[17:05] TheKasi: handler
[17:05] Adam Dray: Meanwhile, other ships (and their crews) are getting pissed off at you.
[17:05] TheKasi: since it's the ship that is piloting itself, I would assume
[17:05] Adam Dray: But it's not like you can just get another ship.
[17:05] TheKasi: right.
[17:06] Adam Dray: Interesting. Does the ship pilot itself? Or is the technology somehow self-limiting? Why would the ship need a crew? I think it's far more interesting if it does need all the crew to do their jobs.
[17:07] TheKasi: well, it can't really do its own maintenance, can it?
[17:07] Adam Dray: Perhaps it has free will and high intelligence, and special ability to handle the difficult calculations required to bounce through hyperspace or whatever, but it can't actually pick a destination, go anywhere by itself, shoot its guns, or repair itself, right.
[17:07] Adam Dray: Otherwise, it'd be a danger to humanity.
[17:08] Adam Dray: I imagine Pilots are flyboys, but the real Priesthood are the people who know how to flatter the ships.
[17:08] TheKasi: Maybe the effort required to maintain the calculations it takes to make the large jumps too much to additionally keep everything else running
[17:09] Adam Dray: Ships can do the complicated stuff in hyperspace, which is mostly straight-line travel, but Pilots do all the subspace stuff.
[17:09] TheKasi: nod
[17:09] Adam Dray: But give the ship the power to Shut Down.
[17:09] Adam Dray: Right of Refusal. :)
[17:09] TheKasi: hee
[17:09] Adam Dray: Which, given enough time, could starve the crew in subspace.
[17:11] TheKasi: Ohoh, what about rogue ships? Atheistic partnerships of ship and pilot.
[17:11] Adam Dray: Isn't that just a situation where the ship and crew get along famously?
[17:12] Adam Dray: Couldn't that revert at any time to a typical ship=god arrangement?
[17:12] TheKasi: Depends, what if they aren't affiliated with a temple/guild?
[17:13] Adam Dray: I think the ships will truly believe they are their mythology. Shiva will think he's Lord Siva the Destroyer.
[17:13] TheKasi: So smaller ships are demigods?
[17:13] Adam Dray: Probably.
[17:13] TheKasi: what about shuttles, are they AI?
[17:13] Adam Dray: Though a small ship with a Napoleonic complex could be cool.
[17:14] TheKasi: Does the AI die if the ship is badly damaged?
[17:14] Adam Dray: "Just because you are named Zeus, doesn't mean we can take on the entire Perseus fleet!"
[17:15] Adam Dray: I think the AI dies when the ship dies. The AI and ship are indistinguishable. There are no backups.
[17:15] Adam Dray: Ships incapable of a jump are probably not AI.
[17:15] TheKasi: But how much of the ship has to be gone? What about salvage operations?
[17:15] Adam Dray: You give each ship something like hit points and when those are gone, the ship is dead.
[17:16] TheKasi: Do the mechanics guild quietly not tell anyone where the parts come from?
[17:16] Adam Dray: And you can salvage the parts, sure.
[17:16] TheKasi: Cannibalism. :P
[17:16] Adam Dray: I think people know you can salvage, but they don't know how to fix things.
[17:16] Adam Dray: And maybe the whole freaking ship is the AI, so if you snap a piece of Inanna into Siva, you're in for a wild ride.
[17:17] TheKasi: hah!
[17:17] TheKasi: so you alter the personality of your ship when you replace part of the engine?
[17:17] Adam Dray: I think so. Either one personality wins but is slightly altered (and probably doesn't know it) or the two fight it out constantly.
[17:18] Adam Dray: So there are guilds organized by function, plus the priesthoods organized by religion. I think AI are programmed to recognize their pantheon and they care about such things. Team spirit.
[17:18] TheKasi: So the mechanic not only has to look for quality goods, but take into consideration personality of the donor.
[17:18] Adam Dray: Though Lucifer and Jesus might not get along.
[17:19] Adam Dray: Right.
[17:19] TheKasi: "This is the finest engine part around. High quality, fine craftsmanship, hardly worn, and I understand it came from the Archangel Gabriel."
[17:19] Adam Dray: Exactly!
[17:20] TheKasi: "I hear Gabriel has a temper..." "Oh no! Honestly, no. Seriously, where did you hear that?" "Well, this buddy of mine said after they installed Gabriel condensers they nearly got spaced just because someone was playing handball in the corridor...."
[17:21] Adam Dray: I love the mythology aspect because it creates this artificial, yet totally unignorable, ready-made conflict for players. It doesn't matter why the legions of Zeus want to fight the legions of Saturn. They Just Do. The AI just hate each other. Good luck changing their minds.
[17:21] TheKasi: heehee
[17:22] Adam Dray: Add on top of that regular interstellar politics, and it's a really dynamic environment for play.
[17:22] TheKasi: nodnod
