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http://nebezial.deviantart.com/art/i-hear-voices-358422232?q=gallery%3Anebezial%2F42514070&qo=23

So I don't know why, or who really. But it's called "Twitchblade", and the large image behind the spoiler makes me giggle.

That prompts reflection I've pondered on occasion.
Will we just author ourselves out of existence?
Assuming the tech to create humanoid life from the dirt up, will be able to resist making people just better then us?
Usually there's some conceit of social oppression or a murder trigger, but if you've got Replicants and they're more psychologically enduring and take more readily to empathy and don't carry around a bazillion (scientific term) years of evolution's worthless baggage like wound shock and freezing up in peril than...what use are we to have around with our moles and cancers and addictions? What will Human mean without randomly sprouting hair and Sickle-cell Anemia?
A rather viciously prosecuted 40k trope is the sacredness of Man as defined by genetics. Much cruelty is done to keep that line of what "human" is mathematically defined...except when exceptions are forced, then the rationale becomes "look close: the filthy mutant's the guy on the pyre, the pure human's the guy holding the torch. That's the difference."

If so, who cares? When we can replace ourselves, what's so special about being last year's model?

Right, right, but in the event of random clone interaction.
Wouldn't want the wrong person answering the video phone.
I was thinking of a way to broadly create an identity that'll hold up to potential shocks but also provide a sense of belonging to a larger community since the family model's nearly useless at this point.

Hmm, interesting. Do they identify themselves by fleet to avoid clone confusion or angst?
Like "Myself? Priss Seventh Fleet, launched out of Ceres 3."

Intergalactic Empire parallel, the Imperium of Man.

The Imperium of Man is WH40K's uber-dystopic tyrannical despotism. The core idea of the IoM is this: it's a place of relentless, unspeakable cruelty and ignorance with a single virtue; it has not fallen. It considers genocide a strategy, not a crime. It has also exterminated entire human cultures. It sentences millions to death out of sometimes not even calculated indifference, but because it forgets about them. It rapes planets, oppresses thought, and instigates thousands of wars in the name of divine right. It is the single most efficient contributor to the setting's four Prime Evils to an extent that shames their own forces.

Orwellian is the perfect adjective. The Imperium will ignore the starving pleas of millions, but if one of those voices blasphemes out of frustration or desperation the Imperium will spend billions to punish that voice specifically with the smallest retribution being the mere annihilation of the speaker and everyone who could have heard them.

And this is proper. The setting is Black on Black, with only the depth of the darkness varying. There are no Good Guys.

But, the fans didn't like that.

Quite what caused the backlash is unknowable, but I blame the factors of the previously weak Imperial Guard (the IoM's resident conscript mega-army) gaining predominance in the 5th edition of 40k, and one of GW's resident authors named Dan Abnett who wrote a very popular series about an infantry regiment called Gaunt's Ghosts -named after their home planet the Imperium destroyed while the Ghosts were being recruited and deployed. Tanith only ever contributed one regiment, hence the Ghosts being the "Tanith First and Only," aka "the Ghosts of Tanith."

Compelling idea, sure. And Abnett's an excellent writer. Maybe he spent the first 2000 pages ripping off Sharpe's Rifles? Who cares, books sold and fans clamored for more.

But here's the synergy. The Ghosts were woodsmen and scouts which translated into them being this mix of Celtic Ninjas; untrackable rangers, master marksmen, and colorful, lovably loyal soldiers led by a unique officer: Colonel-Commissar Gaunt. Gaunt wasn't merely a special snowflake, he was a spherical one. There is no rank of Colonel-Commissar on the conventional IG ToA&E chart, but Gaunt was bestowed it by his mentor and god-father. Who also happened to be a War Master (super-general of a galactic theater).

The Ghosts also boasted a sniper who could see through psychic illusions with his faith in his sight, a heavy weapons trooper capable of hip-firing weapons normally only mounted on vehicles, and a staff-fighter traditionalist who held line the against more than a dozen enemy troops in close combat using his rifle as a quarterstaff. All because they came from Tanith, drank Space Whiskey, and wore blue facial tattoos.

They were the ultimate icon of the newly empowered Imperial Guard: the Unstoppable Underdogs. Mere mortal men guided by their faith in the God-Emperor who stood up to the worst of the hostile galaxy and spit in it's eye. They out-fought Chaos Marines, out-maneuvered Eldar, and persevered against horrific incidents of friendly-fire with nothing more then a manly haymaker by Gaunt in answer for being deliberately shelled by an officer with a grudge who's belligerent, elitist troops eventually came to respect the earthy peasant ways of the Ghosts for their unconventional successes and who later became strong allies.

Does the phrase "Unstoppable Underdogs" seem perhaps oxymoronic?
I read somewhere that Americans and Satire don't mix. That we're too literal-minded or maybe we lack a common enough cultural perspective to really pick up on subtle institutional criticism. Gaunt's Ghosts is a picture-perfect embodiment of this observation. It's propaganda, and combined with the 5th edition Mechanized IG becoming nearly unstoppable in actual table-top play led to the flowering of, and this is by no means an universally recognized descriptor but I like it, HFY -"Humanity, Fuck Yeah!"

As the central protagonist force of the setting the Imperium started to shed it's Orwellian sheen. Sure millions were sacrificed so billions could live, and those billions were toiling away in agonizing deprivation. But they did so with hands linked and hearts turned to the Emperor! They understood that they were making a Grand Sacrifice for the collective security of the species, praise be! HFY!

From lowliest indentured hive-worker to most pious Cardinal and the wily Rogue Trader Humanity was now genuinely, willingly striving by the best manageable means to keep itself alive in the face of treacherous xenos and heretical ingratitude fomented by Chaos in the hearts of the weak. Even the much-vaunted Space Marines were ultimately untrustworthy for being so far removed from the true beneficiaries of the Emperor's Benevolence as they lacked the purity of the Common Man's belief. No man died in vain, no sacrifice was meaningless, no Imperial servant went unrewarded, and even the callousness of the untouchable High Lords of Terra was done with sorrow and secret heartache that they must bear the cost of choosing the unchoosable.

In some sad, toxic way the Everyman Hero had finally come back. And he'd brought 10,000 of his buddies and their mediocre tanks and pathetically underpowered rifles were actually the pinnacle of marrying lethality to reliability. They were amped up, doctrinare, undistracted by any contrary information, and 110% certain only traitors and heretics were sent to the death camps or spontaneously executed for "Conspiracy to Sabotage Imperial Morale."

Ultimately complicit in this mass-delusion was Games Workshop itself. With official canon contributions coming from four interlocked companies GW's unofficial but uncontested line on lore was this, "it's all myth and legend and propaganda distorted by distance and time. Everything and nothing is true."
With "everything and nothing is true" as it's banner, HFY bullied the idea of the necessarily harsh but benevolent Imperium of Man out of it's dystopian roots and into the light of Divine Sanction.

The God-Emperor was right. The Imperium was the best possible, not merely probable but possible, form of Humanity's survival as forseen by it's patron God-King and anything to the contrary was shouted down as "meaningless propaganda" -oh the irony, it burns.

Sure the many alien-race playing fans felt increasingly marginalized and disrespected. Most of them had for years, but they'd held on to their few meager triumphs and small corners of the lore. Now they were actively told to "like it or GTFO." If they couldn't accept the deserved prominence of Mankind (almost 100% hetero middle-class-or-better white males, incidentally) then they would be smart to E-Bay their armies and get a new hobby. The Age of Man had come out of the grim darkness of the far future, and into the gaming store.

The Imperial Guard's fanbase had radicalized itself. And in response the setting was shifting. 5th edition was causing rulebooks and models to fly off the shelves, and the company that settled on the milquetoast "everything and nothing is true" approach to it's own lore wasn't in a hurry to start issuing rules corrections any more then they'd be offering refunds. So the lore followed suit.

Led by Dan Abnett and the Ghosts the common Imperial Soldier became braver, hardier, deadlier and truer to the cause. It wasn't enough that they had to win, and did, it had to be made clear they were triumphing from a position of dangerous weakness inflicted by dire external treachery over enemies both terribly threatening and consistently incompetent.

They were the Unstoppable Underdogs, the Good Guys, dammit! And they had the omnicidal arsenal to prove it, and would unleash it in a heartbeat to make the point.

The point of all that, besides being something I clearly had building up inside myself for some time, was "everything and nothing is true" is a terrible way to govern fluff that only really encourages mob mentality. The same lack of imagination and perspective that puts players in the sandbox instead of outside building or designing it limits their contributions to whatever they personally approve of. Give them time and cause, and the lowest common denominator will give you reason to take seriously their creepy fascist male-centric power fantasies*.

Have a vision of what the reality your creation strives to establish truly is, and no matter how you deviate from it in exceptions and examples, always return to "this is what the Authority/Union means to build when it can, this is the ideal expression of their identity."


*it was also during this time there was a massive blossoming of pornographic material centered around the Male Imperial Soldier unintentionally seducing alien women with his pure-heartedness of spirit and relatively massive endowment. These assignations routinely ended with the woman, not a true woman but a female facsimile it would be commonly imparted, dying grateful for the momentary taste of the truly flavorful forbidden fruit and the hardened but wiser soldier moving on better for that tragic lesson in why sticking to his own kind was ultimately best.
Also common were "I raped her and she like it because I was big/passionate like her people never could be," and "she gave up the battlefield for the kitchen/nursery once she met me" and combinations and variations thereof.
Actual 3rd Reich-produced pornography couldn't have been much worse.

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Or maybe that should be Into Whitness.

Well, that certainly explains John Cho's deservedly passive aggressive comment during his recent interview. Wow, in this day and age, that's an unforgivably massive dodgy piece of casting. 

Seriously, fuck Abrams.

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Since when is Spanish non-white?

Spain is in Europe, right?
Not being snide, but Spanish is pretty white. Hispanic is more what you might be thinking; blood from Mexico and south from the indigenous populations.

[Challenge]

Y'know, much as I like the word, if Beatific is too weird how about Challenge: Sculpted instead.

[Fun-Lovin']

Fun-Lovin'

• Attributes: +2 to lower of Grace or Guile, -2 Precision [-.5]
• Charisma: Once per scene, you may increase the disposition of any 1 ally or bystander by 10. [3]
• Gullet: You benefit from the first 3 food and 3 drink items you consume per day [2]
• Undaunted: Any morale penalties to your attributes, attack checks, skill checks, or saves, are reduced by 2. [1.5]

Challenge: Smokin' Hot

Smokin' Hot'

• Attributes: +2 to Grace. [1.5]
• Untouchable: Your base defense increases by 2. [2]
• Encouragement: Once per scene, you may speak to 1 of your teammates for a full action
  to grant them a +2 morale bonus with all saving throws until the end of the current scene. [2]
• Lean Season: You require only one-quarter the normal amount of food for a character your size to survive. [.5]

Challenge: Beatific

A Crafty event in Portland?
What and when?

It's not an event. It's a summit, where Alex and I talk design and deep-think big topics. Not something we invite outsiders to, and honestly something that keeps us so busy we rarely see other folks in and amongst (in four summits up in Portland now, I've visited my local friends... not at all, actually. Hoping to remedy that with the next trip, but this one's too short, too focused, and too high-priority.)

Ah, no worries. I thought it was a panel event, I was wondering if I'd missed a con or a gameday somewhere.

A Crafty event in Portland?
What and when?

Basically like FC Trophies?
Permanent possession-based enhancements taking up a limited number of slots?
Also a good idea for things like Cyborgs or anything else who's nature is modular.

[publisher]

On the upside (such as it is), they own Relic entirely.  So if Relic is at the helm there's still some hope, since their efforts were actually pretty good.

Yeah, works for me.
I still play Space Marine; I just finished a session a few minutes ago.
Actually, good point. Relic is the developer, Sega is the publisher.
Most of what I gripe about involves Sonic Team. I still put a measurable amount of blood, sweat, and rage into Virtua Fighter, so respect is given for that. Just that trying to think up the last thing Sega did that wasn't either pouring money into Sonic (seriously how much frackin' money has this near-dead and increasingly loathed series eaten in the last decade?!) or excellent but underselling comes up with...Valkyria Chronicles. Not quite a recent achievement.
Regardless, you serve your points evenly o'Man of Sletch.

"Duly noted. Ready to be about the actual business, Leftenant."

Wildly speculative and poorly sourced Internet news holds that Bioware bought up the rights to the Space Marine IP, and may be developing SM2.

My digits are crossed and my body is ready. I can handle this.


T'was but a pretty lie.
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/330680,confirmed-sega-now-owns-all-the-warhammer-licenses.aspx

Sega.
Great.
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."

Forgetting you possess a mechanical quality isn't the fault of the origin, it's the fault of the player (and potentially, the GM).

However, I agree that Specialty choice is the harder choice of the two as a direct result of the importance of the feat it grants. That could be alleviated somewhat by going through them and deciding if any absolutely need that specific feat or if they can work by simply offering access to a feat category instead.

+1.
Category, yeah.
We approve.