|
|
Post by topkekm8s on Jun 3, 2015 13:28:30 GMT -5
MUH COMMUNITY
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516 
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 4, 2015 16:12:53 GMT -5
Japheth has been busy plugging away at the FutureMUD engine for LabMUD. You guys haven't heard from him, but Optional Realities has. Find out more about the mystery that is FutureMUD the codebase and what developing it has been like for our intrepid designer! optionalrealities.com/designing-a-more-customisable-mud-engine/ |
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 4, 2015 23:01:12 GMT -5
Bad timing leads to a double post in 1 day. We have just done our 2nd major information release for Project Redshift. We have released our Draft B cultural documentation to the public for feedback and criticisms! You don't even need to go to Optional Realities to read it: Project Redshift Public Document (Seedship)If you need it to be on Optional Realities to give it the time of day and/or you want to give feedback: optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=124.0 |
|
|
|
Post by BitterFlashback on Jun 4, 2015 23:14:58 GMT -5
If it's not on Optional Realities, how could it be fit to read?
THIS POST SPONSORED BY: Optional Realities
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 4, 2015 23:18:08 GMT -5
Fixed it for you.
|
|
|
|
Post by BitterFlashback on Jun 5, 2015 2:57:36 GMT -5
Bad timing leads to a double post in 1 day. We have just done our 2nd major information release for Project Redshift. We have released our Draft B cultural documentation to the public for feedback and criticisms! You don't even need to go to Optional Realities to read it: Project Redshift Public Document (Seedship)
If you need it to be on Optional Realities to give it the time of day and/or you want to give feedback: optionalrealities.com/forums/index.php?topic=124.0I mostly liked it; there was a good level of detail and I was able to picture the setting fairly well. There were a couple weak points: - The justification for Syndor's wealth is poorly established. PIP has a government monopoly on 3-D printing, which makes pretty much everything except medical and food. ONI deal arms and manufacture drugs. Syndor... entertains people... Okay, I can see them being rich, but how are Syndor members the richest people on the ship? If entertainment is that big a deal, its importance needs more stressing in the doc. There needs to be more emphasis on the demand and frequency of consumption.
- I'm aware "atheism" has been used as a catch-all for variations of nihilism all over the internet, but most people still use the word for either of its actual meanings regarding belief in gods. Not everyone is going to read the references to "atheism" with your connotative meaning; I didn't infer your meaning until it came up later. I'd recommend either using "moral nihilists" or "unspiritual atheists" to avoid confusion.
- Marriage being unpopular because the population is artificially limited makes very little sense. If anything, that should spur the government to push established, monogamous relationships before pregnancy (a.k.a. marriage) and responsible sex in general. Similarly, why would only being able to have 2 kids make people less interested in marriage? This is supposed to be a super-educated population. Statistically, the children of stable marriages are less insane and more successful than all other children.
Even if you throw out psychology, children with two parents dedicated to them will be more likely to thrive (let alone survive) than a child with only one parent looking out for them. Even throwing out the physical needs, if you could only have two kids, wouldn't that make you way more picky so you didn't waste the pregnancies? Even if you throw out the emotional and long-term consequence considerations, this is a culture who I am guessing are obsessed with entertainment since the richest fuckers on the ship work for Space Comcast. I'd think televised weddings would be one more thing to consume.
All of those things should make marriage an extremely big deal and adultery a criminal matter. If you have some strong argument for why a culture with ubiquitous high-quality education would undervalue marriage, let alone monogamy, you really need to make it. - I would strongly recommend ditching all present-day political references; it's just going to lead to people discussing politics (which rapidly devolves into douchebaggery) or coloring their interpretation of the game based on their perception of its staff's political leanings instead of from the setting. Neither is desirable.
- I'd really like to see more focus on the racial make-up of the Comaradas. As Latinos, they would have Caucasian ancestry, so there probably wouldn't be friction to letting someone who looks white joining, but what about Asians? Alternately, if their adoption of ancient Mexican culture is more out of a social or traditional motive, there should be some mention of that and how race doesn't matter but Latinos are generally taken more seriously when they first join (or something to that effect).
- Being atheistic, agnostic... really, let's just turn it up to 11 and go with being a full-blown nihilism with existential despair and belief everything is futile and we're piles of atoms... doesn't prevent superstitions. I think you're really missing a chance to expose your culture here in limiting superstitions to 1) sayings when something bad happens and 2) existing phrases with word replacements. Superstitions are often born from mistakes in pattern recognition.
- Here's a tedious, real-world example. Most of the experienced programmers I know (myself included) become extremely uncomfortable when, having worked for hours without testing the work or having worked on something challenging, go to test it and find it runs without errors. It's a bad omen. It usually means the mistake you (well, me, not you) made was in the logic rather than in writing the code, which is harder to spot and decidedly more dangerous. Where does this superstition come from? Well, becoming good at programming doesn't happen without correcting a lot of your own mistakes. It also means you learn to accept mistakes as inevitable because that's what they are: inevitable.
So if you don't see any errors when your experience tells you that you should, out of habit you begin looking for logic errors (which are invisible to computers! Hooray!  ). Maybe it would help to picture things differently. Imagine you're running in a hurdles competition, except some of the hurdles are made of plexiglass, pop up without warning anywhere on the track, you've got 10 yards left to go, and it feels like it's been too long since you last had to jump. Wouldn't you feel relieved to finally see another hurdle? Wouldn't you start to feel terrified in the last few feet if you hadn't? It's not necessarily rational, but it's also not supernatural.
Seeing no errors is a very bad omen foretelling some mistake that will do horrible damage if you don't find it in time (or just make you look lazy or stupid). It doesn't matter how frequently it turns out to be an accurate omen. There is no easy way to ignore a feeling founded in countless years of past experiences that your brain doesn't care are becoming out-of-date. It is a superstition from conditioned response founded in statistics. - Going back to your examples, there are only two I really like. "Never let your family check your suit" which requires no explanation, and "Whistling at the dark" I feel the need to comment on. I can easily picture that one forming in a long-running space mission. Maybe it got started because a power outage would be terrifying on a space ship. Maybe it came from the limited expeditions; the superstition only has to be proven right once for the people who weren't torn to shreds vehemently hating whistlers.
- "Walk the short, bright path" needs way more work, even though it's decent. The problem is it's totally anachronistic. I'm not getting why a ship full of nihilists would give two shits about how or where an empty body gets incinerated. I was pretty surprised to read metal was being wasted on caskets by unspiritual people while they chose to pass up an opportunity to recycle the dead at the same time. What's up with that?
- With the exception of "Second star to the right!" the rest aren't superstitions and should be in a different culture section on common sayings/slang. This one is more like a saying inverted into a superstition and I can't picture it really being used seriously. You should make a variation that is founded in something someone might do based on creating a false or conditioned association.
- So, how about some actual suggestions for superstitions? Fine! Stop twisting my arm. Feel free to use these to come up with your own things if you don't like mine. It's important to consider that even the most reasonable people can believe incredibly wrong things as a result of confirmation bias or slanted perception. (Incidentally, as a couple people can attest, I put a tremendous amount of emphasis in my MUD design on superstitions, which is why this aspect of your doc got so much attention.)
- "Salting" - As anti-bacterial medications became less effective and more restricted, society shifted back towards to preventative measures. At first salting was limited to reasonable uses. Salt returned to popularity as a preservative. Swishing with salt water due to oral antiseptic shortages so frequently that it became habit. Then things started to slide. Some began throwing salt onto surfaces or spills to purify them. Others treated the insides of their space suits with salt for protection from alien spores. The presence of natural rock salt formations on a planet's surface often comforts explorers, sometimes causing them to be less cautious with their anti-contamination measures. Some salters will blow finely ground salt into the air to "purify" it. In rare instances, people have developed psychological dependence upon salt, leading to lines of wearable salt lick for naturalists and germophobes to always keep some on-hand.
Although the Tribunal has tried to eliminate irrational forms of salting through education, no serious effort has been attempted in generations. Salters universally view any anti-salting messages as propaganda; only the interpretation varies. Some interpret it as a sign there is an upcoming shortage and the bigwigs are just trying to make sure they have more to stockpile. Others dismiss the information as H&A disinformation to protect their lucrative pharmaceutical market. Regardless of how it is taken, some combination of paranoia, arrogance, and spite always results in increased wasteful salt use following anti-salting PSAs.
- "Edges and Rounds" / "Edges or Rounds" - There is belief that, curiously, is held almost exclusively by bookish academics and grizzled soldiers. Edges and Rounds is the belief that the only universal form of communication is through shapes. Something sharp or rough-faced should seem dangerous to a fellow human or alien creature of even limited intelligence. Conversely, a rounded surface should seem non-threatening but still stands out enough to be noticed. Despite the fact it is impossible to know every intelligent alien race would evolve under the same circumstance as humanity, the ancient instincts that birthed this superstition are powerful. As such, Edges and Rounds often shows up in design proposals for everything from weapons to ships to uniforms.
Edges and Rounds believers have a stark disparity in which they see as more important: intimidation or inoffensiveness. This polar difference in opinion is the only reason this superstition ever comes up outside of its circles. First time on-lookers are frequently baffled to witness vitriolic shouting matches over absurd topics like how jagged the ID badge on an exo-suit should be to discourage aggression, or if the fins on a new warpship invite attack because they taper too gently. Most Star Marine or TCS believers prefer Edges in designs, to start from a position of projected strength as to discourage things devolving to violence. Most Academic believers, especially those in SLAD, prefer Rounds so that interactions will take on an air of calm, rather than potentially antagonizing aliens or other humans.
There are countless synonyms for the name of this superstition and staggering amounts of redundancy in its vocabulary used to express a very small handful of ideas used in describing designs. This contributes to the overwhelming disinterest non-believers have in the topic.
|
|
|
|
Post by jcarter on Jun 5, 2015 8:11:27 GMT -5
[li]Marriage being unpopular because the population is artificially limited makes very little sense. If anything, that should spur the government to push established, monogamous relationships before pregnancy (a.k.a. marriage) and responsible sex in general. Similarly, why would only being able to have 2 kids make people less interested in marriage? This is supposed to be a super-educated population. Statistically, the children of stable marriages are less insane and more successful than all other children. Heinlein had something similar in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, where there was so few women or something that they had poly relationships. But then again that dude loved himself some free love and open relationships and managed to shoehorn it in everywhere. I'll never forget sitting in the desert, reading Stranger in a Strange Land thinking it'd be some sci-fi tale about the first human Martian and a tale of property rights and legal claims only for it to turn into some weird orgy lovefest. |
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 5, 2015 8:58:31 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by topkekm8s on Jun 5, 2015 12:17:16 GMT -5
"another forum"
you are starting to annoy me
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 5, 2015 12:27:55 GMT -5
There is a reason this thread has the word shameless in it.
|
|
|
|
Post by jcarter on Jun 5, 2015 12:49:11 GMT -5
"another forum" you are starting to annoy me be still my dog of war. i understand your pain. |
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 5, 2015 13:08:45 GMT -5
God Bless you Jcarter. You want a linkback from OR's connection page? And my tanker of gasoline?
|
|
|
|
Post by BitterFlashback on Jun 5, 2015 17:55:58 GMT -5
Give this man as much go juice as he can carry.
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 5, 2015 17:58:33 GMT -5
I'll take mother's milk and some chrome spray please.
|
|
Jeshin
GDB Superstar
Posts: 1,516
|
Post by Jeshin on Jun 11, 2015 16:49:44 GMT -5
|
|
). Maybe it would help to picture things differently. Imagine you're running in a hurdles competition, except some of the hurdles are made of plexiglass, pop up without warning anywhere on the track, you've got 10 yards left to go, and it feels like it's been too long since you last had to jump. Wouldn't you feel relieved to finally see another hurdle? Wouldn't you start to feel terrified in the last few feet if you hadn't? It's not necessarily rational, but it's also not supernatural.
