Doc Steve

//I take it as “there are not the good guys, but they could be”

Leaving the players room to be the genuine heroes of the tale, despite the baggage in the system they are a part of.

//Yeah, it’s especially true in Mage, where on one hand they set up a hero/villain dynamic in 1st edition and then spend three more editions subverting that dynamic.

a man in a suit and tie is holding a fireball and says fireball ALT: a man in a suit and tie is holding a fireball and says fireball

Though, in all due respect, in light of the specialties of House Flambeau, their headgear is the last thing I associate them with.

No new pictures. Where are you at mentally?

Ultimately the promise of knowledge and technology only work when the populace see the benefits. People are getting poorer and shit like AI is more likely to make the wealth gap even worse.

When they happens people lay blame, and guess who is at the top of that list…

I have had a chilling thought for awhile: Maybe the Syndicate and Nephandi aren’t truly to blame. I wonder if the Masses on an instinctive level don’t trust you.

Maybe the Ascension War was truly lost in 1999 and it never re-started. We are just fighting over the ashes…

So I guess we are limiting the discussion to “trust me bro, we’re trying…”

What, because of the “Dimensional Anomaly” all the big bad evil leadership got smoked and now you are reforming and doing the grand social media apology tour?

Reform requires results. Till you get past the rhetoric and put that Consensus to humanity’s benefit, you are still Queen Vic’s Technocracy

The Budget cuts to fund your “Corporate Prime Flows” affect real people and are part of the reason why metrics like this exist.

Again, stop abrogating responsibility when you literally have two Conventions with their thumbs on the scales.

Just remember there are two Technocracies.

The first seem to genuinely believe they are doing good via knowledge and technology.

The NWO and Syndicate take all of that, and use it for the worst ends imaginable.

Guess who is in control?

Who is the paradigm benefiting? You’ve locked the benefits behind paywalls, limited access to the wonders to the richest and most connected.

Sure, there are benefits to this malformed Consensus, but let’s not pretend you are any more magnanimous than the feudal lords of yesteryear.

The Chorus???!!! The Technocrats invoke the Chorus every time the Church is to be blamed for something, acting like the Cabal of Pure Thought doesn’t even exist.

I am sure there are things the Chorus has to answer for, but I daresay the Gabrielites are at the front of that same line.

Enlightenment to a paradigm that benefits you and you alone. Again this is not discovering universal truths but marketing your version of the Consensus.

Which makes me wonder if this Robber Baron mentality of the Syndicate is a feature of your world order and not a bug…

Maybe, but I still find it fascinating that you lot have become the very thing you rebelled against.

You talk a great game, sure. But the Syndicate and NWO are no different than the Hermetics at Mistridge that spawned your crusade.

Ah, yes, this safer world you made.

Too bad you hobbled your arsenal in a vain attempt to gain advantage. There are a few Rotes that might have been useful if Paradox wasn’t an issue.

But you lot don’t do magick, so never mind…

No, I do bemoan the utter wasteland a century of Technocratic dominance has left us.

You promised much with your control but we still have poverty and sickness, with doom still looming over us.

But again, one-fifth of your Order milks that shit for all your Primal needs.

Isn’t that what you are selling with pigeonholing certain numina into the Consensus?

I would be more interested in molecular disintegration or the old-fashioned fireball - you’ll be surprised what threats that can take out…

With everything going on, I need to reiterate that just because I don’t discuss politics here, doesn’t mean I don’t care.

First, I cannot for my mental health, but also you don’t need the opinions of a middle-aged straight white dude. There are important marginalized voices that should be heard.

We’ve had this conversation before. All you did was push the supernatural into the shadows and make the dangers harder to detect.

All while taking our tools to fight it away, except for your brand and told us it was for our safety when it was to just because you wanted control.

Yeah, it’s nice to know that for all your posturing over making the universe safer from the supernatural can just be tossed away so you lot can have “cool mind powers”

There is no hypocrisy like Technocracy hypocrisy

The only thing the the Vienna chantry fell to was the AGM-114 Hellfire. A hell of a test to be sure…

I have no problem with most of the visual resigns in early Discovery and Strange New Worlds.

My only (minor) issue is with scale. I feel the sets are too spacious for the era.

I would have preferred sets a bit more cramped, more on the TOS end of the spectrum than TNG.

"Not sure I should have paid extra for a room with a balcony"

Oh hell yeah! The awesomeness continues…

I applaud @modiphius.bsky.social for releasing these 2e updates to 1e Star Trek Adventures books.

So far we have the character packs, the Department books and the Klingon book.

Allows me to make full use of all those old edition supplements I bought.

Thanks!

Then you better up your game, with those reforms…

The Syndicate and NWO are ramping up the techno-feudalism and police state programs, and the Nephandi definitely have stopped turning your “achievements” into poisons and toxins…

Nothing “equal” in their agendas

Never thought I’d agree with a Vampire, let alone a Tremere *hermetic*. This is truly the Final Nights…

Why do we think we use Hermetic terms (sorry, threw up a bit in my mouth).

I just think it’s funny that you made up all these terms to obfuscate that you do magick…when you do magick.

This shared delusion you have is adorable…

Perhaps people instinctively know that the rigid paradigm you are pushing on them is inherently wrong and seek their own worldview.

Or that some of your order are active using the Consensus for their own benefit, at the cost of your goals and our lives.