Suriel

I agree with Chalk Line on this one. My personal prime interest is to see my two US-friends get back home in one piece. And my Iraqi friend, whom I went to school with, to stay alive,too.

As far as politics are concerned, I think the UN's plans for Iraq are too fast. You cannot build a democracy (if that even is the best form of government for Iraq) or even bring back the country to some resemblance of order, if you give power back to the Iraqis and their "government" too fast. They don't have the power yet to uphold order. This is a process that will not take months, but years.

The US plans, on the other hand, seem quite selfish in the eyes of the Iraqis and many fear that Iraq will just turn into a US subsidiary through economic credits and involvement of US corporations. Arabic neighbors fear that Iraq will be the base from which the US will go on to dominate the whole region and thus control the oil resources. (All info I got from people working or living in Syria or Jordania, for example. I think their fears should be taken into account.)

I don't know what I'd do, but I certainly am happy not to be in a position where I'd have to make any decisions in this hotspot.

A job well done, Cernig!  

"I told you to bribe the surgeon... I told you!"  

Yeah, but they should be the exception to the rule. I mean there are a lot of one-minded persons out there... But.

In many cases I think it's the fault of the STs (GMs), too, if characters are one-dimensional or optimized for certain missions.

If there's a lot of skills never used in the campaign, if everything resolves to either shoot out or stealthy evasion...

plus the little Matrix trick...

Sports? Serials? Soaps?

Ok, here's how they catch me:

Twin Peaks (Felt really sorry when I missed one...)

Star Trek

Friends (only in english, translation is awful...)

Sports:

Boxing

Soccer (only major events)

PLUS I could spend days with discovery channel, especially movies on animals/insects.

I post here all the time,too. (*look at my frowning avatar, please!*)

Exactly, Monk. The things on my list are things I would label unsexy or geekish, because I have certain stereotype images in my head. The fat fortyish beer overdrunk Skat player and his politizing stupid friends. The acribic stamp collector. The kids wearing things that don't fit them, cause the label says it's in.

BUT: Who ever said that my hobbies are better or worse? Just another crowd of people deciding.

So why ain't it? Is bowling sexy? Tell you what, if you don't consider sex itself a hobby, there hardly is any hobby you could label sexy.

Worthless: I think RPGs are as good a recreation as is collecting stamps. It's made for a different kind of people, perhaps, or a different aspect of one's personality.

By definition "hobbies" are not "work". So they must be worthless, except for the fact that they allow you to keep sane (as we ain't ants) and - in some cases - help you develope or cope with your own personality.

Just one example perhaps, but I think that RPGs help me to cope with customers or the occasional job interview or to quickly adapt to a given social occasion. They stimulate my imagination. These are good things, just as stamp collecting would make me a more organized person, perhaps.

When I think about those who would label me a geek because I play RPGs, I would first think of people who - only a few month away from my 30th birthday now - strike me as even more odd:

German kids, speaking german with turkish slang dialect (because it's cool), wearing the latest Nike's, jeans, etc. and debating about cell phones (they take out every two minutes, just to make sure everyone sees them), cars (they are not allowed to drive) and what I would like to call FATALities.

It's like the famous Minnesota test: Do you want to measure up against 1000 farmers of 1940 in Minnesota? Are they actually "saner" than you are or even "less geekish"?  

I think "Breakfast Club", the movie and the screenplay, can tell us a lesson about geekdom, too.

10,9,7,3 and a long time ago also 4.

Of course the general geekiness of such hobbies depends on surroundings, your age... and the way you celebrate/perform them.

10 --> I don't buy many, I buy very selective. Most people I know don't think it's geeky. Most of the rest shuts up after flipping through them.

9 --> My family would few it as a waste of time (but then anything not bringing in money is a waste of time), my girl friend perceives my online efforts as an art form, as do many of my non-RPGer friends. Pen and paper isn't something they would/could understand, but at least during my school time you weren't especially geeky because you did it.

7--> Yes, I'm a fan of the old Star Wars. "The Empire strikes back" was the second movie I ever saw in a cinema. It impressed me back then, still does today and it's the movie I measure all the other stuff on. I play in a SW online game as an Imperial Navigator on a Star Destroyer.

5--> Magic, I admit it. Everyone played it and I wanted a deck, too. Now I have an incredible Black/Red/Green deck with many rares (through good luck...) and play about once a year against two of my flatmates. But if we do, the rest of the day can be cancelled.

3--> I'm not a serious trekkie, but I like the optimism the older movies and series breathed. I don't miss out on new movies and if there's a con around the corner.

So, none of the above make me a geek or even strange in the eyes of society. BUT:

I collect knives. Lots of them. When I was younger, I even named them. And shuriken, which I can actually throw with some accuracy. Good balanced knives, too. I started training when I was six. This is something that concerned many a former girl friend of mine.

I'm into martial arts.

I believe in shaving once each week only and with an old fashioned straight razor.

I like to translate latin or old greek texts.

I used to like painting miniatures and would likely do it again, if I had the money and the time.

These are the things people find strange or macho or even geeky.

My personal list of geekish hobbies/geekish actions would be:

1. Collecting stamps

2. Following soap operas

3. Collecting love novels

4. Bootlicking

5. Waltzer dancing

6. Playing skat (wheras Poker is cool!)

7. Going to foreign countries, but staying at beach hotels

8. Going to museums "just to have seen it" (Anyone who spends less than four hours in the Pergamon Museum or can't stand to look at a single piece he likes for more than twenty minutes or decides on what to look at and what to shoot a glance by worth or public opinion is a real geek!)

9. Anyone trying to belong to the in-scene always

10. The rest of people I don't like.

And a whole new kind of family bonds:

"Hey, Tex, who did your birth opts?"

"Cerebro International. My parents are still paying off the credit they took, so they could pay for VX754 optimization."

"You kiddin'? I've VX754, too! Hey, you realize we have more in common than me and my brother?"

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True cloning and longevity could make for some funny scenes, too. For example if some scientist clones himself as a lab assistant and future replacement.

O tempora o mores!

Qui nescit mutare, nescit vivere.

Yes. And of course he knows that there are other baseball players, bred just as good as him... And those of later birth, with an even higher advantage, as science progresses.

The ultimate slap in the face to such beings would be some normal human who scores better than they do. Folk heroes of the common people.

And it would be hard to derivate from your set course (set through BIRTH and GENETICS). This is what will come easy to you, but it needn't be the thing you enjoy to do.

Wheras of course it remains to be seen if the "activist" will now really achieve any change. While the black block already showed us they could (at least in germany): Harsher police laws, better anti-riot-equipment, police allowed to bug flats and phones on short notice... But also positive things: Breaking the spirit of the boring fifities mentality, fighting against nuclear power (resulting in stricter control), etc..

All issues that had to be brought to the street, for all to see. (I'm not a "black block" type of person, btw. Just wanna be fair.)

But back to the thread:

Aside from immortality, there could be various other improvements to the unborn child. A friend of mine one ran a CP game, using his own game world. The basic recipe was a mixture of Brave New World, Akira and a High Corporate spy scenario, with a touch of Neuromancer.

There were four classes of childs, and later adults:

Alpha Humans: Optimized in intelligence, looks, etc... Born to be scientists and leaders.

Beta Humans: Optimized Physicals. Strong, good instincts...

Gammas: Completely artificial creations. Made from a set of ideal combined gene sequences, bred for a specific purpose, born with all the knowledge they would need. Extremly expensive and no civil rights.

Normal Humans: For those who couldn't afford...

Your designation wouldn't restrict you to just one mod, of course. If your family was extremly rich and didn't care about there something remaining of their own gene-code, they would give you both Alpha and Beta optimization, but that was very uncommon.

The interesting part was to play out the characters moving beyond their expected functions, after they had to flee the corporation they were working for.

Something like your parents tell you through all your youth, that you have two left hands. Suddenly you have to take care of your own flat and see, you can do all the stuff!

(A Beta could be told, he could never face a career as a lawyer, as there are so many smart alphas out there... An Alpha, that there's no way he could join the army as a field officer... Well, my own Gamma had to learn mostly everything of course, for he used to spend his off- work hours in a cryotank.)

Just remembered something redeeming about the church, though. The last Con in Berlin I can remember was organized by the church and several RPG shops.

The entry fees for the three day event went to charitable organizations. They didn't in any way restrict the games played, it was just a normal Con. And they have a second one planned already. So it's not all of them, after all.

Two months ago I was at a general roleplaying Con in Berlin, more a spontaneous meeting of several groups.

Of course there were many groups playing Cyberpunk style games there. One of the things I noticed was that, aside from the Cyberware their characters were wearing, with most groups the fact they were playing a dark future setting was barely noticeable. They could as well have been playing "Body Count" or "Violence" or "Special Forces". It was "gun down this, move to the next target. Assault some security post or other...". After all the bloodshed had been over, they packed their stuff and moved to the next bar in full assault gear.

The next thing that struck me strange was description of these locations or the cities. There was almost no description in most of them that would hint at any kind of future set scenario. The bars sounded just like my favorite Irish Pub, money from the bank was drawn like we'd do today... To make a long story short: Anything outside the mission was a typical setting of our days.

The true feeling of a CP game, as far as I am concerned, is conveyed through the background, though. The "normal" people's day and their surroundings, that would strike the characters as the ninety-nine percent. And the technological wonders associated and daily strangeness with that.

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So, here's the start of Dr Ernest Wilde's (syndicus lawyer at Avacon (Energy) and head of their law department) and Mr Timothy Shepherds (General Steel factory worker/overseeing production and stuff. A kind of minor tech.) and  working day. Feel free to continue and don't restrict yourself to the CP2020 rules and equipment:

06:30

The luxury apartments pseudo-AI did it's best to make the transition from REM sleep phase to waking as nice as possible for Dr Wilde. Light meditative music was fed into his earphones, corresponding to the brain waves of the good doctor, slowly stimulating them to half sleep.

In the kitchen, the ordered news service packages had been downloaded from the net and were ready for display on the holographic wallpaper of the bedroom, or any other of a multitude of hidden three-d capable screens. When Wilde stretched, the bed shifted to accomodate his new position. It had shortly been re-programmed on advice of Wilde's medical doctor. Removing the earphones, Wilde told the house computer what kind of clothes he wanted to wear today.

"Skip the yellow tie. There is another board meeting today and I don't want to seem to aggressive.", he said, looking at the display.

"A light vegetarian breakfast, please. And orange juice."

The food was delivered from the apartment building's stocks and automatically added to Wilde's bill.

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06:30

Shepherd woke up to the sounds of the siren-like squeaking of the working complex's shift-change. He groaned as he stood up from his temperfoam bed. Just two more weeks and he could return to the city apartment he shared with three other workers for their free time in the city proper.

He quickly dressed in his working overall, pushed a wall button and checked the tasks they had made up for him while he had slept. He was half-out the door, when the sight of the sensor on the ceiling stopped him.

"Nearly fell for that again...", he thought, opened his locker and first removed a can of spray. He sprayed the bed with it. In a few minutes another worker from the third shift would stumble in here. If he didn't find the bed properly desinfected, he would perhaps tell his supervisor and that would mean at least a one point negative feedback added to his record. As he was at six already again, another one would mean a talk with the psychologists of human resources. A lot of gibberish about possible trouble in his life and the downtime from work wouldn't be paid for.

Lastly, he attached the security button to his coverall. Another negative feedback point evaded.

But he had to hurry now...

Now that's what I call a fitting comparison.

The only ones to ever buy Fatal will be our fundamentalist christian friends. And a copy for the vatican's library, perhaps.

That website's preacher guy knows so much about D&D, he must have tested it sometime. I imagine him sitting in a shack close to his church with a few 'believers', whips at the ready to atone for their sins later...

He is doing the DM...

"Ok, we must really know the way's of the devil to fight them. Remember we do it for the good of all the young souls threatened by this work of the anti-christ."

[A lot of "Yeahs..." and prayers.]

"Hm, my dearest sheep, would anyone of you volunteer to play something ASIDE from a PALADIN, please?"

[silence... Two hours later.]

"I kill him! Yeah, I slash him with my Holy Avenger 'Saulus'!"

"I weed through the rest of the infidels with my pure aura of god, eh, good!"

Yes, the poor/rich gap will be the new order. I see that coming, too. In a way it's already there.

A few weeks back I decided I'd need some real food for a change, so I went to LaFayette. They sell the best foodstuffs of all kinds there, from all over the world, but they also have their price.

I could afford to go shopping there perhaps twice a month. Now, what I consider a luxury, people with more money can take for granted. Every day.

Good food's important for a long and healthy life... And it tastes sooo good.

Same with medical treatments. Poorer people today can't afford to go see a specialist in another country. They are stuck with the hospitals and docs at hand.

I would agree if we were talking about Homer's Ilias here, but with Fatal...

I rather use my imagination as randomizer and let it be inspired by first hand reports, scientific texts or novels,... Or even the newspapers. Not a real bad RPG... Bah, it's like chewing some used chewing gum.

And overcomplication never made for a good RPG.

It's the plot that makes a story memorable. And long after all have forgotten about her B-cup seize and her butt, your (fellow) players will remember some witty remark or cool reaction of said female character. Or forget her altogether as just another bad-mannered stereotype. (ir m sar)

It's like in good novels: The author just gives you some sketches, your mind draws the rest.

I love Mars triology and read almost all the other books of K.S. Robinson. (Currently readin Years of Rice and Salt)...

That immortality thing struck me as an artificial plot device though. The whole trip to Mars was researched so eloquently... Then he comes up with immortality and I thought: "Oh, yeah. Two more books to cover and too lazy to introduce new main characters..."

Still, absolutely the SciFi books I liked best so far. And I read a lot of them.

Sadly, it's reality:

There is a lot of tapes in one of my favorite video stores (favorite because they have just about EVERYTHING... Not porn, but old movies, new movies. They have it or can order it within a day...) in Berlin, who feature just that: Pre-teen bondage sex. There will be a small sticker on the cover, explaining that all the "actors" in the movies are at least eighteen years old.

If you've ever been to a porn videostore in the red light district of Amsterdam, you will consider such stuff harmless.

Fatal: I honestly couldn't find a single good thing about that game. It's too complicated, it reminds me of RPGs of the early nineties, with all their extra rules and tables for everything. The character creation program is just laughable.

And it dictates what should be left to the player, and I'm not talking such dumb sh*t (ha, evaded!) as "vaginal depth" or "penis length" here.

The background is badly researched and one-dimensional.

It might be useful if you get lost in the woods at night, it's wintertime and you have a box of matches with you.

I'm not sure the system you use will make any difference at all. They don't forbid to read greek classics, where gods abound at every corner or movies about knights. And what else is modern D&D?

They will either be open-minded enough to see it's just a game or they won't. D&D might even be better: Not as close to reality as Cyberpunk. They will have swashbuckler movies of the sixties in their mind.

Another argument would be of course, that RPGs are a bit like a videostore. One can get almost any movie one wants, from Bambi to Hardcore Bondage Pre-teen porn.

Now, only those who get a kick out of that kind of #### to begin with would rent and watch that kind of porn. And their friends will walk away, if they don't like it and will be disgusted. The same goes for RPGs. Of course one could create a game world with rape and violence at every corner. But who would want to play that? The normal gaming group is still valiant knights and goodly mages. The normal scenario is based on solving problems and to avoid conflict, in a normal group.

(Which is why we have all these         smilies here, but it's what you should tell them...)

No, I didn't intend to limit this thread to 2020 (only 17 years...) or even the CP2020 rules.

Well, "Immortal" could be seen as an euphemism for "incredibly long" to begin with. If your normal lifespan would be 100 years and aging effects are slowed down by factor 10 and you could get a 1000 years old, that's pretty much being "immortal", I guess.

If the necessary therapy was started when you're a teenager, you'd look like 20 at age 100, 30 at 200, etc...

(If they start it at birth, there'd be a nasty 50 years old out there... With the looks of a five year old child...)

Enough time to sense the constant circle history moves in? enough time to get bored?

Imagine social clubs of the old hailing from the same century. Not like-minded, perhaps, but bound together by their common heritage. Could be some dusty dialogue:

"Did you hear Santiago died? Struck by lightning..."

"The old fart! When was that?"

"Shortly after our last meeting... 50 years?"

"Ah..."

(Look around the table that's getting more and more empty with each meeting.)

I'm so awfully glad I own a copy of the "Boomer Bible"...

One could put some nasty regulations up, too.

Perhaps 1:1000000 would fit a genetic scheme that would allow for, what genetic experts call, immortality.

Slightly derivating genes could allow for a very long lifespan, (250+), etc.

All treatments are very expensive.

Pre-birth treatments are only possible in a certain range, but genetic engineers could predict good results, if people with certain gene matrices would mate.

(Imagine the day you sit at the coffee table, your wife white like chalk. She tells you she's secretely been to a genetic comparison test and found a mate she wants a baby with. Or vice versa: You want to tell her...   )

What else? Oh, yes: Second class citizens could develope! If you have someone who can potentially life forever and someone who has a life expectancy of about 60 years, with standard signs of age setting in at age 35 or 45... If both were equally smart, the quasi-immortal one would be a greater benefit to the society, if educated as an... nano-scientist... Nuclear Expert...

Of course no-one can be discriminated, but education for 100% immortals could be cheaper. They will pay back more later.

He is against martial arts but for the occasional war! Because when you meditate, you of course invite demons to possess you... Ayyy...

Let's pick a theme absolutely not connected to roleplaying, wiccas, martial arts or anything else we actually care about then.

I actually don't like women to be too submissive. I like them with their claws all intact.

Yes, of course! Immortality should be damned expensive... You have the potential, but you need the shots.

Not actually where I saw this thread heading, but interesting too. Bit masquerad-esque, perhaps... They might sue us...

("In the WOD you need blood to sustain your immortality. In CP you suck money [read: economical blood] from the veins of  society and...")