Thoughts on MAC

RP-related discussion otherwise not covered in the Character Closet.
User avatar
Kelne
EXTERMINATE!!!!
 
Posts: 3606
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 2:02 am
Location: New Zealand

Thoughts on MAC

Unread postby Kelne » Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:52 am

Okay, so. A few thoughts have been percolating through my head for a while now on the topic of MAC-era Gaera, and a conversation with Zero has prompted me to bring them up. Specifically, the topic of planar travel (or the lack thereof).

Planar and inter-world travel have been pretty well glossed over, so far as I know, but the baseline assumption is that they simply don't occur. After all, what motivation is there to focus on space travel when other worlds are just a sufficiently complicated spell away? In fact, I think it's a strength of the setting, as perils tend to be terrestrial in nature, rather than invading armies from off-plane.

The points I've been giving a bit of thought to are why there is such a dearth of planar travel, given its prevalence in present-day Gaera, and also what loopholes exist when it comes to making use of the different planes in ways other than direct travel. To start with, an excerpt from the conversation.

Kelne2261: And yet, nobody, so far as I can tell, in designing the setting, has assumed that such travel exists in the MAC era. The great frontier is expansion into space, not spreading into the planes or world-hopping. Indeed, I think such activities would essentially undermine the setting.
Kelne2261: So. We are left with three possibilities.
Kelne2261: 1) It has been discovered that plane hopping is hideously dangerous to the very fabric of reality, and has been outlawed on pain of pain.
Kelne2261: 2) Somehow, the knowledge of conventional planar travel has been lost. I favoured everyone able to fleeing offworld during a cataclysmic war, until it was established that MAC was not, in fact, post-apocalyptic.
Kelne2261: 3) Somebody (likely a god or coalition thereof) is actively preventing planar travel.
Brodzky Zero: *I thought #1 had been decided on. Likewise, we can combine #1, with #3.*
Kelne2261: I'm inclined towards #1 myself. With the gods to enforce things in case some morally bankrupt corporation such as Infinity decides that there's money to be made from plane-hopping.
Kelne2261: I imagine a cataclysmic war with Infinity might well break things to the point where planar travel is now hideously dangerous.
Kelne2261: And present-day Kelne is already (reluctantly) engaged in forging some kind of cross-world alliance against them. They've just sprung up and threatened to destroy everything (and kill him personally) too many times for him to wait for them to inevitably come after him yet again.
Brodzky Zero: *I dunno if Infinity should even be in MAC. Because it'd shift MAC away from political struggles to "SHOOT DOWN THE ALIEN ATTACKERS".*
Kelne2261: Oh, I agree, Infinity should have no presence on Gaera in MAC era. The restrictions on planar travel cut both ways, assuming somebody's able to enforce them on Infinity in the first place.
Kelne2261: But I imagine that, beyond MAC era, Infinity installations might be encountered on new worlds by ships plying the void. Sort of the corporate equivalent of the Elder Gods waiting to be discovered by man.
Brodzky Zero: *Hahahaha*
Kelne2261: Because despite Kelne's or anyone else's best efforts, Infinity is not the sort of thing that one can permanently kill.
Brodzky Zero: *Like Daleks they is*
Brodzky Zero: *Or any other Doctor Who villain.*
Kelne2261: Exactly.

Conversation did seem to digress towards the Infinity corporation towards the end there, which runs a bit off topic. Still, if one requires some cataclysmic event to shake up the very rules that underpin reality, Infinity is always going to be a prime suspect.

Anyhow, more on loopholes and potential uses of the planes later.

User avatar
Besyanteo
Would-be GitP Bard
 
Posts: 4612
Joined: Sat Nov 09, 2002 8:56 pm
Location: Virginia

Unread postby Besyanteo » Tue Oct 09, 2007 10:26 am

There is sort of a weird problem with the Infinity thing: End gave it to Enlil. By MAC she's been running them for a few thousand years. :-/

However, if we ignore that for the sake of MAC = AU setting, then my only problem is with idea #1: If Interplanar travel is so hideously bad for space time, considering there are entire races in the setting that do it on a whim just because they can, it introduces a whole other set of problems. I think a better way to do it would be to suggest that people on other planes accessible to Gaerans have been advancing right along with them; It's not so much the Gods threatening to smite you from above as interplanar travel being mired in red tape, and making it hellish to get a Visa to move around. That way, it's still possible if someone wants to use it, but still difficult and/or bearing serious consequences if someone tries to do it on a whim.

User avatar
Spleen
I put a BOMB inside EVERY BAD GUY!
 
Posts: 2625
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 5:07 pm
Location: Demon Realms of Niu-Jiurzi

Unread postby Spleen » Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:06 am

I'm not involved in MAC, but I heartily support the concept of an interplanar visa. I would also like the hear about the technology being developed by a technologically-advanced civilization living on the Plane of Fire.
"Tell you what, Leto, I won't fight with you. Zeus' wives are pretty tough customers. You have my permission to boast openly that you have beaten the daylights out of me."
-Hermes, the Iliad (Stanley Lombardo, translator) Book 21

User avatar
Archmage
REAL DOCTOR. FROM AMERICA.
 
Posts: 442
Joined: Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:43 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Unread postby Archmage » Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:10 am

Interplanar travel is already a complicated and difficult process; PCs do it fairly frequently as plot requires, but it's challenging enough that the only people who can manage it are mages who have specifically studied planar travel. Pre-existing artifacts or devices like gates make things considerably easier, but only to a point.

I'd say that planar travel hasn't disappeared in MAC; people can still do it if they have sufficient resources. Magic has continued to flourish, but I think the power of individual mages has decreased somewhat, or at least shifted in direction. By 3092, most mages aren't holed up in towers building gates to the Far Realms; society just isn't conducive to that anymore. And the loners or cults that do probably don't share their work with the world at large.

A proposition that I have is that part of the reason planar travel with big mecha doesn't work out is that transporting objects with that much mass is too hard to be practical. Sure, you can theoretically send aircraft carriers and armored suits to the plane of water, but why? It'd probably take more arcane energy than all the mages on the Igalan continent could muster together under ordinary circumstances, and there's no real impetus to do it. Planeswalkers in Gaera Main, I've always imagined, travel light because it's already straining enough to transport themselves.

Another idea to consider, at least for teks, the proverbial elite of the mecha forces, is that astral symbiotes cannot survive planar travel; the abrupt planeshifting rips their essences apart.

As I frequently suggest, I don't think we should say "absolutely no planar travel is possible," I just think we should make it clear that it's so rare that it shouldn't be used as a plot device without serious consideration.
Image

User avatar
Kelne
EXTERMINATE!!!!
 
Posts: 3606
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 2:02 am
Location: New Zealand

Unread postby Kelne » Tue Oct 09, 2007 7:47 pm

I don't know. Plane-hopping I'll grant you, but it's the world-hopping that stands out for me. One doesn't need to be able to send giant mecha back and forth for it to be incredibly disruptive. Ideas, after all, weigh nothing. Science, art, magic... any one of them can be imported from offworld, with potentially far-reaching consequences. As to its profitability, I think that's practically a given. After all, if one can patent even so simple a thing as the stapler on Gaera, that's an awful lot of money coming in. Distinct parallels to the MiB patenting alien technologies here.

NamagomiMk0
 
Posts: 1223
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 1:47 am

Unread postby NamagomiMk0 » Wed Oct 10, 2007 8:00 am

Could you please elaborate on what you mean insofar as the difference between plane-hopping and world-hopping goes?

However, in the meantime, I would desire to point out that not only would governments have a reason not to focus on it (Given that the CFIN's cold war with the DCF would apply massive pressure regardless of whatnot, and would probably be first and foremost in their minds), but given that world-hopping and interplanar travel would still be less used than in normal Gaera--which route would a corporation take? The one that requires extensive research before being even attempted, and then may pay off in a currency that, no matter how much, has never been encountered before--thus resulting in an unknown--if existent at all--exchange rate? Or the one where you get easy money off of the more than likely arms race or other such easily exploitable things?

Also, this is totally disregarding the concept that other worlds may have had their own evolutions and revolutions--which would lessen the impact of bringing outside tech or whatnot in, as well as the very LIKELY possibility that such worlds would be less than welcoming to some group of people just up and appearing on their beloved homeworld.

Also, disease scares would be another rather simple reason why people wouldn't try; after all, gods forbid you bring something back with you that wipes out all life in the city you live in.

User avatar
Kelne
EXTERMINATE!!!!
 
Posts: 3606
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 2:02 am
Location: New Zealand

Unread postby Kelne » Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:58 am

World-hopping and plane-hopping is essentially the difference between 'porting to Ayenee and the plane of fire. The one is another world on the material plane, full of a myriad of different races and civilisations, while the other is, well, the plane of fire. Seriously inhospitable, and not really populated by life as we know it.

Of course, technically, the various circles of hell and the celestial realms qualify as planes rather than worlds. And those places would certainly have thriving civilisations, even if the one wouldn't give out advanced technologies or magics willy-nilly, and the other would demand horrible prices for such things.

NamagomiMk0
 
Posts: 1223
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 1:47 am

Unread postby NamagomiMk0 » Sun Oct 14, 2007 3:34 pm

The concept of world-hopping sounds like, just like planehopping, something equally difficult to do, given that it would require a degree of spatial junctioning that I figure; while some may have bothered with the knowledge in Gaera Main (and they, as Brian said, had the ability to without society objecting so much to their lack of other contributions), more than a millenium of time passing, in addition to focuses changing from that of Gaera Main's era, to industrialization, multiple wars breaking out, and the current cold war between the CFIN and the DCF, It is very easy to imagine that the knowledge about it has been lost; with those knowing having left in either the interest of safety, or with disgust for their own world/government/whatnot, and the governments disinterested in a pursuit that would be a large gamble in regards to risk and reward given the current situation.

Of course, another concern which may not have been so big of a consideration back in Gaera Main, but would be a huge one by MAC era, would be that of precision; the last thing you'd want would be to end up in the middle of nowhere on an alien world. Especially on foot, without any vehicle to note. (There goes the idea of "going on foot.") To boot, unless they've managed to get precision to something VERY good (beacons, I could see as a viable method, but that'd require someone to be placed there to begin with)...I just can't see it being focused on as much.

Lastly, there is, again, the idea that these other worlds may not take too kindly to outsiders suddenly warping in--just like any group on Gaera might not take too kindly to the same thing.

...yeah, I don't see world-jumping to be a focus at all.

User avatar
Zemyla
 
Posts: 1500
Joined: Tue Apr 23, 2002 11:01 am

Unread postby Zemyla » Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:48 am

Teleportation to other worlds (at least through magical means, and perhaps technological ones) is, I would say, more difficult than teleportation on one world because the presence of life on the surface of the world produces a kind of aura around the world that can be used for teleportation.

A mage trying to teleport to another world would have to forge his own link, which would be exceedingly difficult, dangerous, and costly. So if there is travel to other worlds, it would probably be done the old-fashioned way, by spaceships.

I imagine that pre-war Gaerans sent out probes to the various other planets, found little to nothing that's exploitable out there easier and cheaper than similar things on Gaera, and promptly ignored the rest of the solar system. Though there may be an automated defense system in low Gaera orbit, just in case.
I think boobs are the lesser of two evils. - Inverse (Pervy)
Dammit, Dan, I'm not dating a damn NPC! - OOC Will (Will Baseton)
Of course! Anything worth doing is worth doing completely wrong! - Travis English
Ultimately, wizards and clerics don't say, "Gee, I want to become a lich because weapons hurt less and I don't have to worry about being backstabbed; that whole 'eternal life' thing is just a fringe benefit."-Darklion
But this one time I killed a walrus with my bare hands, and I suddenly understood spherical coordinates. - KnightsofSquare
Also, when you've worked a 36-hour shift as an intern you too just might pour yourself a catful of coffee and sit down to cuddle with your travel mug. -eirehound


Return to OOC RP Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 22 guests

cron

Yalogank