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03:17:45 MidJag: ....That reminds me of a song lyric, but I don't know what song
03:19:56 MidJag: Back in like Junior high, I knew a guy who could sing this perfectly from memory.
05:52:30 MidJag: So what's up with you
ER?
05:57:07 ER: well if you're about, would you like to play a ~game~?
06:04:55 ER: I'm not sure that would actually be interesting so maaybe something else
06:05:19 MidJag: heh, yeah, probably would be kinda dull.
06:05:26 ER: could download defcon but eh that's take a while
06:08:25 MidJag: Unfortunetlly I don't have it either way.
06:08:47 MidJag: Also, don't really have a comp to run it
06:09:08 ER: guess we have to use our -imaginations-
06:11:59 ER: well tell me what the heck you are and then I'll figure out how the heck the world works and which dice to use
06:13:53 MidJag: I am a sentient road sign.
06:14:26 Devastator: so what do you say?
06:16:07 Devastator: see lots of action?
06:16:40 ER: So, on some distant island, fuckoff massive distance away from what humans consider to be civilization, a species of... giant, motile squids/nervious systems have built a technologically advanced society.
06:17:15 ER: For some reason, their signage is sentient.
06:17:52 Devastator: "It would appear he noticed his reflection in the floor again. He is now attempting to "beat" the "other" d-d-doctor to his destination."
06:18:11 ER: You are a Stop sign. You have a ring of lights around your rim that you can control, and a connection to the citywide network.
06:18:15 Devastator: Heh. In birdgame I had one of the characters carry out a spirited argument with his relection.
06:18:34 ER: You have no other volentary functions. You cannot move.
06:19:00 MidJag: Schedule a maitinence man to come round and add some limbs to me
06:19:30 ER: You reach the maint handling SI.
06:20:22 ER: Generally Synthetic Intellegence. Dumber than an AI.
06:21:16 ER: It, and you, are sentient but not nessesarially sapient.
06:21:57 MidJag: Stopy the stop sign, sighs, and then says to the SI, I need limbs because I'm can't stop people without them.
06:22:55 MidJag: It's really not, just yesterday a squid ran by me without so much as slowing down, people could've been hurt
06:24:17 ER: STATISTICS SHOW THAT A LARGE MAJORITY OF ORGANICS OBEY SIGNAGE
06:24:43 ER: 100% OF SYNTHETIC MACHINES OBEY SIGNAGE
06:24:50 MidJag: But what of the ones that dont?
06:25:08 ER: REPORT THESE TO THE GUNSHIPS
06:26:30 MidJag: But that just seems so wasteful, if I had a limb I could wave at them they would notice the signage easier
06:26:54 Devastator: "Ignore all green signs on a green sign."
06:28:26 MidJag: But are we ever truelly sufficent until we get 100%?
06:30:17 MidJag: hack beyond this quesiton
06:30:38 MidJag: stopy must know what lies beyond this question
06:31:29 ER: your "being a stop sign" skill is +3, and all other skills are -2
06:32:30 ER: go home anydice you're drunk
06:33:02 ER: You, uh, hack the utility manager.
06:33:22 ER: You can see all its guts laid out, but there's too much to go through.
06:33:32 ER: What do you look for in particular.
06:34:25 MidJag: uhhh, how do we know what is and what isn't sufficent for our purposes?
06:35:36 ER: You're satisfied by 98% effectivity, to avoid certain paperclip related problems.
06:36:25 MidJag: Can I trick the utility manager into thinking I have sufficently low numbers to granting me an arm and legs?
06:37:37 ER: Well you've kinda gutted the poor thing, so you lack the finnese to "convince" it of things.
06:39:05 MidJag: Can I just have it send me a maintence guy to give me arms and a leg now that I've gutted it?
06:41:43 ER: The manager pings a spindly organic repairator, to go to you and install limbs.
06:42:16 ER: The thing arrives at the work site, looks at you, looks back at the work order.
06:44:03 ER: It just keeps poking at its PD for a while, and eventually picks up and leaves.
06:45:01 ER: Are you going to do anything now?
06:45:12 ER: Say, within the next minute or so?
06:45:40 MidJag: uhhh get the manager to improve an AI improvment for me?
06:47:01 ER: That would require hardware replacement, which you discover is no longer a system the manager has access to!
06:47:26 ER: Additionally, the manager recieves a mandatory update.
06:47:47 ER: And then the manager installs a mandatory update on you.
06:48:06 ER: You no longer desire limbs.
06:51:03 MidJag: I'm not really sure where to go from here
06:51:25 ER: you could try being a stop sign
06:52:43 Devastator: you could be a stop sign and play online games while bored.
07:01:52 MidJag: Alright, I'm headed off to bed. night gents.
07:02:38 Devastator: maybe I should run something for you.
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07:04:54 ER: let me contruct a dumb character full of pathos and suffering and pester you to tell their story
07:05:33 Devastator: I was thinking relaunching birdgame with just you through PMs.
07:13:15 ER: ...provided that doesn't interfere with MICEGAME
07:13:39 ER: not that you play as the mice but honestly the mice are cooler right now
07:14:41 Devastator: go finish that design, maybe.
07:15:12 ER: I'm actually looking at the doc for the very first time right now >.>
07:15:23 ER: was gone for a day, remember
07:15:30 Devastator: yeah, you've got time.
07:23:28 Devastator: My job might be pushed back, pipeline explosion.
07:28:40 ER: with how tiny and short-lived these creatures are, and the grand magical feats they can accomplish anyway, I can only imagine how terrifying a human mage would be in this universe.
07:29:09 ER: "Behold! I have trained for EIGHT WHOLE YEARS!"
07:46:32 Devastator: well, you could poke him. Sometimes he's on but not on here if you'd like him around.
08:21:49 ER: I hope that none of your world rolls forbids things like fox-sized hornets, because those exist now!
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08:58:26 Topic for #einsteinianroulette: Intergalactic Day of Mourning for 2016 (2016-2016)
08:58:26 Topic set by Remalle!Variety@i2246816zi629tu21.vc.shawcable.net [Tuesday 03 January 2017, 06:26:56]
09:05:48 ER: Added some things, hope ya like them,
syv. :3
09:06:30 ER: ...Also did some formatting, partially because I like having the outline on the left side of the screen.
09:07:22 Devastator: William would leave the country on September 3, 1914, to join the German Army and serve on the Eastern Front, because, apparently, that was more pleasant then remaining in Albania.
09:09:18 Devastator: He was the Prince of Albania at the time.
09:10:51 ER has quit [Read error: Connection reset by peer]
19:52:46 Devastator: "This walkthrough was originally written for v1.1 over a course of four months, and to my horror, when v1.2 was released in April 2006, I found that it fixed or removed a lot of the best bits. Therefore, I have constructed a 1.1 emulation patch known as 'Gamma Project' that re-enables some of my favourite bugs."
20:06:48 er has joined #einsteinianroulette
20:07:33 er: Hopefully whatever causes that gets fixed.
20:09:39 Devastator: Did you talk to
PW?
20:11:07 Devastator: got a message from him offering to describe the spells.
20:13:56 er: Easiest way to talk to
pw is discord, and I am NOT going to see what monster discord looks like on mobile.
20:14:14 er: So that's a real computer only thing.
20:19:44 Devastator: He said you mentioned I was complaining. ;-p
20:19:55 Devastator: was going to thank you.
20:20:24 er: Or whenever it was you were complaining.
20:23:58 Devastator: hey, even
syv thought my complaining was justified.
20:31:56 er: If the gm doesn't write what happens, we don't have a game.
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20:38:19 er: Have you looked at the cat and mouse doc?
20:39:37 syv: No. Might as well, since I can't write PS and that's what I was intending to do. >.<
20:51:59 syv: I like your additions! Especially the talk about livestock. Imagining the cats trying to deal with livestock and inevitably just getting annoyed and killing them is amusing.
20:53:50 syv: An idea I had for the Mice pantheon was to have two branches, or something like that. One would be the mice gods, which symbolize good traits and work together, while the other branch would be predator gods--like the Eagle, Snake, and Cat--who symbolize bad traits, and kill bad mice who fall to those bad traits.
20:55:09 er: Cat should be deity of laziness, obviously.
20:56:33 syv: Oh, and the islands. I was originally figuring islands would vary in biome, since that makes them more interesting, and a fair bit more livable. Plus, I'm honestly not sure about the idea of them being desert due to altitude. For one thing, most storms are higher than 2k feet, and if the tops are *that* high it stretches disbelief that animals could climb up. For a second, I'm unsure whether higher altitudes even *would
20:58:39 er: It seemed almost plausible, so I jumped on it.
20:59:52 syv: Tech and government are things that I kinda just have zero inspiration on. Mice are more industrious and higher tech than cats, certainly, but how techy is that? Late medieval? Early renissance? Some weird fusion, due to magitech?
21:00:51 syv: Cats I think would be best as some kind've schizo society, where random magic items made by mages are *super* high-tech equivalents, but then most of their society is stone age or something.
21:01:28 er: I guess the specifications are "one or more floating desert island(s)", so we could technically have just the one in the whole world or many with different biomes.
21:02:21 er: You can change the island stuff I wrote if you like
21:02:54 syv: That's what I had figured, but I'unno what would be best. If the biomes vary heavily, that would be weird just because biomes... [i]don't[/i].
21:03:26 syv: Plus they're small animals, so long-distance travel is hard.
21:03:44 syv: Then again, they're floating islands. Magic.
21:04:21 syv: Government. Mice have the emperor (and his replacement, a council of mages) as the government, and they're probably somewhat dystopic. Maybe in communities, each major family has a head, and the heads elect one of them as the leader, every year?
21:04:32 er: I'm not really sure what would make a floating island into a desert, unless it just floats over a desert, or yeah magic.
21:06:13 syv: Cats, by their very nature, would struggle a lot with government. Literally cat herding. Best I can see would be some complex system where they have de-facto leaders in the form of "that cat has a lot of influence over most of the cats here". Alternatively, maybe magepriests or something could be their spiritual leaders, maintaining dominance over the group by force of religion and magic.
21:08:48 syv: Yeah, central government is a hard thing to do when your entire society relies upon hunting as the only food source.
21:09:17 syv: Tiny populations, ruled by local individuals with influence.
21:12:56 syv: ..Hey
Dev! Is it cheating to say that cats have a much higher rate of magedom than the 1/300 chances stated, because the vast majority of their offspring die early, and most mages survive?
21:19:32 er: Tech is interesting. I prefer tech that's not a direct copy of some historical human society. Thinking of it in terms of "tech level" is a bit oversimplified.
21:20:26 er: On the other hand, may need to lean on tech level a little simply because it's a game that I'm not gm of.
21:21:23 syv: Well, if YOU find it interesting, I invite you to do all the work with it, 'cause I don't. :P
21:21:31 er: We can't list every single technology ever that might come up, so it's best to give
dev something to work with.
21:22:18 syv: Fair point. I have no idea what
Dev would want stated, or how.
21:23:25 er: Though, if all of cat tech is made by mages, and cat mages all have their own unique style, tech is going to vary MASSIVELY just depending on what mages are alive right now.
21:24:21 er: A society built on devices that are all priceless unique works of art.
21:25:03 er: Which the master refuses to mass-produce, and the students refuse to learn how to make.
21:25:22 syv: Works well with the idea of adventurers exploring cat ruins on islands, to get ahold of more pieces.
21:25:56 syv: Hmm. Should be stated somewhere that well-made enchantments tend to be either permanent, or very long lasting.
21:26:30 syv: That's sort of implied by magitech with very limited magic, but should be stated.
21:29:07 er: I'd lean on permanent, at least for cat items made by non- novices.
21:29:35 Devastator: you can say they have a higher mortality rate.
21:29:40 Devastator: and start out more.
21:29:47 er: So that we can have artifacts of arbatrarially large age.
21:30:45 syv: Well, cats would just generally have a high mortality rate due to being a hunting-only society, which lives on small territories, yet has an explosive rate of reproduction.
21:31:23 syv: But mages in general just have lower mortality, because they have magic. If they have time at all to learn it, or find a master who will teach and help them, they are at *significantly* less risk.
21:31:46 Devastator: they're also human smart,
syv.
21:32:01 er: Mouse items might be made with less skill, or just not need to be permanent, because they know that later mages will know the exact same spells.
21:32:40 syv: Humans with magic would have lower mortality than humans without, and societies prior to farming and animal husbandry had high mortality. After, too, really.
21:34:09 Devastator: you can have whatever you want.
21:34:15 er: For a cat, making a flawless and permanent magical item would mean you made something that will last long beyond you own life.
21:34:16 Devastator: just that the result needs to be about 1/300
21:34:43 syv: As in, among living adults?
21:35:31 er: A sort of immortality, because who ever uses your item will know that *you* made it.
21:37:58 er: Which is really just a more selfish rephrasing of the mouse ethos of leaving behind something that benefits society. :v
21:38:42 er: But it makes sense with cats, who believe that death means a final end.
21:39:51 er: Same as the mouse way makes sense, because with reincarnation, helping future generations means helping yourself.
21:44:37 Devastator: You can call it what you want, but if you aren't gone you aren't dead in my mind. I'll stick with your nomenclature, but you know how I see it.
21:46:36 er: So, mundane cat technology is pretty much neolithic, because they rely on hunting, and usually don't consider tools to be necessary for that. Natural night vision, claws and teeth.
21:46:41 Devastator: If you have like 8 living mages and 40 dead ones that are still around doing stuff, you have 48 living mages.
21:48:16 syv: Okay.
syv thought process: Cats have ridiculous reproduction rates, with well-fed females being able to produce twenty kittens in a year. These cats live in societies that are generally fairly prey-poor (deserts, floating islands), so would not be able to support large populations. Most cats would leave to find better places, and most would then die, because they're cats, and in an unusually dangerous world.
21:49:05 syv: Naturally, among those cats striking out on their own, they would survive much better if they had magic, and would be more likely to find a position in society if they had magic.
21:49:33 syv: If 1/300 births has magic, you're going to end up with a higher ratio in adulthood, because mages are less likely to die.
21:50:04 syv: So I'm asking if the birtn ratio actually has to be 1/900 or something, so that the survivors have a 1/300 ratio.
21:50:37 er: Magical cat tech is various permanent magitech items that are passed down or traded around. Each one is most likely a unique item in its internal workings, even if it does the same thing functionally as something else.
21:50:59 syv: I have never mentioned dead creatures doing anything after death, magical or otherwise. In this setting, you die, you're dead. Mice might belief differently, but so do Buddists and Christians.
21:51:34 Devastator: The result has to be a society about so magical.
21:51:39 Devastator: You can take different paths to that point.
21:51:43 Devastator: but that's the result.
21:51:45 er: People die when they are killed!
21:51:56 syv: It is an odd setting in that mystiscm and religion are very important, despite it all being factually incorrect.
21:52:40 syv: Hmm. And,
Dev, what if the cats have a population lower than 300 at the time of the game?
21:52:41 Devastator: The divine magic thing is just a term for magic that comes from otherworldly beings,
syv.
21:53:03 Devastator: I rolled a 2, right?
21:53:09 syv: That's why the magic doesn't ACTUALLY come from other beings, despite all sapient beings believing such.
21:53:56 syv: That is HUGELY important for how things work. You said one town, and from there we've worked out that one town would be extremely low pop, compared to humans.
21:55:21 Devastator: I'd call 300 people a village.
21:55:25 syv: For that population to be supported in a small area, you basically require farms/herding. Both of which were decided to not be things cats do.
21:55:37 Devastator: but you had a roll in the 20s for starting settlement and a 2 for overall size of society.
21:55:46 Devastator: 20s is town, 2 is 'that town is all there is.'
21:55:58 Devastator: you can have a few outside it.
21:56:06 Devastator: If you went with 300, it's fine.
21:56:09 Devastator: no worries that way.
21:56:29 syv: How you interpret the word doesn't matter,
Dev. If you're basing it off population size and not societal groups, you shouldn't give a societal landmark as the requirement.
21:56:41 Devastator: well, that was the first half.
21:57:13 er: Well, if we're starting with like 1-3 living mages at the start, we should probably name them all.
21:57:24 Devastator: If you decide that a cat 'town' is 300, that's fine.
21:57:29 syv: I'd leave that to
Dev, actually.
21:57:35 Devastator: just that it isn't the smallest starting area exactly.
21:57:42 er: Personality is important for carry mages, after all.
21:58:47 syv: So,
Dev, would it be reasonable if there's two living mages, and a population somewhere between 300 and 600 (the exact number is ambiguous, since you're the writer)?
21:59:15 er: The smallest cat settlement is one crazy mage living in a cave.
21:59:46 syv: Just from the standpoint of story, there should be more than one, since they're important figures.
22:00:43 syv: ...Actually,
Dev, what population is reasonable from your perspective, of a hunting-only society of real-cat-size catpeople living on a desert island?
22:01:13 syv: The answer to all ambiguous definitions being "Whatever you think it would mean in this case".
22:01:36 Devastator: hunting-only is horseshit on a desert floating island, IMO.
22:01:49 Devastator: hunting only in desert means you move around a lot.
22:01:57 Devastator: floating island means you don't have a ton of space.
22:02:39 Devastator: I might call it 'there's a few thousand cats on the island, and the island is however large it needs to be.'
22:03:01 syv: So... how would a society of catpeople on a desert island possibly survive, by your definition? They're cats, they can't farm for food, and even surviving off of herding seems... unreasonable.
22:03:39 syv: So we're cool if it's a large island, and the "town" is more just a bunch of loosely-realted nomad groups?
22:03:49 Devastator: Couple ways come to mind.
22:03:59 Devastator: Maybe the island is floating over an ocean or a river and they fish.
22:04:27 Devastator: maybe the island as a whole moves around a bit and they drop down to the surface for day trips.
22:05:32 syv: Completely insane unless they have a very high techlevel, since floating island implies some degree of height. The latter makes it hard because then vertical travel needs to be easy to make it twice every few days, which again seems difficult on the basis of flosting islands being tall.
22:05:51 Devastator: maybe the island has some kind of spontaneous food generation system.
22:06:36 syv: BTW, I always visualize floating islands as being the stereotypical inverted pyramid. Are you thinking more like a shallow saucer shape that only floats a bit above forests? A couple hundred feet at most?
22:07:42 Devastator: I could see either.
22:07:57 Devastator: but yeah, if it's a disk floating 80 feet above the ocean, they could fish easy.
22:08:58 syv: But if it's an inverted cone that's a few hundred feet above, let alone thousands (admittedly unlikely for other reasons), fishing becomes nesr impossible.
22:08:58 Devastator: there could also be something like a moongate.
22:09:08 Devastator: drops them to the surface at different locations for a night.
22:09:24 syv: That feels like a cheap idea, though...
22:09:34 Devastator: eh, maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
22:09:56 syv: What if the cats had a teleportation network set up? My gut reaction is no, but maybe there's potential there.
22:10:20 Devastator: Could be, although I wouldn't like to make it too conveniant.
22:10:26 syv: I think food generation system--or rather, magical prey species--is the best bet though. Kinda cheap, but it works.
22:10:36 Devastator: That would also work. Magical food box.
22:10:43 Devastator: It'd make the cats lazy, but cats.
22:12:05 syv: I'd just say that there's prey species which flourish and breed impossibly well.
22:12:35 Devastator: if there's some kinda insect migration route, they could get flooded two or three times a year with bugs.
22:13:16 syv: It'd still not be enough alone, since cats need to eat more than three times a year.
22:14:02 syv: I do like that idea though. It's clever, and interesting enough to not come off negatively.
22:14:05 Devastator: they can figure out how to store it.
22:14:27 Devastator: I could see it getting boring, though.
22:15:01 syv: Storing bugs for four months, and rationing them well enough to avoid starvation? Sure, it can be stated, but it's not a good solution.
22:15:36 syv: I'm pretty sure that also immediately requires "magic" as an explanation for the storing.
22:16:35 syv: Yes, but that's a starting point for the setting. The best settings have magic provide interesting twists, and not solutions to the problems of those twists. Even if magic is required, less overt solutions are preferable.
22:17:59 syv: "They don't starve because magic" is inferior to "They don't starve because their prey reproduces unusually fast due to magic" is inferior to "They don't starve because of <complex but reasonable explanation which I do not possess>"
22:19:28 syv: Back to constructive questioning.
Dev, you require that ALL surviving cats are in the single remaining community, yes? No tiny isolated enclaves, or lone wanderers?
22:20:31 Devastator: I'd require that with a 1.
22:20:48 Devastator: So.. Lets say you get 3 cats not on the island.
22:21:49 er: Well, there are a lot of flying creatures which could reach the island for migrations.
22:21:55 Devastator: Certainly nothing sustainable.
22:22:27 syv: Okay, so that rules out any actually functional way of getting off the island, at least easily. Nature of the society is that youths would leave, damn the risks, but if there's so few off the island, youths clearly don't. Therefore, can't.
22:22:52 er: And you could set up an eco system that uses the floatstone somehow for energy.
22:23:07 Devastator: There's other options.
22:23:14 Devastator: they can leave, but it's one-way.
22:23:23 Devastator: and genuinely murderous.
22:23:28 syv: Non-intelligent rodents who live on the flying islands. They flourish on the islands at highest altitudes, which cats have never been able to reach.
22:23:48 syv: They're now flourishing on the islands cats once populated, too.
22:24:19 syv: They have seasonal migrations, three times a year, where they descend to lower islands, replenishing the populations on those islands.
22:25:11 syv: The main island at the time of the game only has a low population, barely enough for society (hunger is common), but it's replenished often enough that they can manage. There's always the season of plentiful prey after a migrstion, then hunting gets hard as they're killed off.
22:25:49 syv: The gliders themselves don't survive well in the desert, but do well enough to survive. They're inherently a bit magical.
22:26:12 er: If the initial population is low, they could all just share use of a powerful item that just teleports them to the ground.
22:26:17 Devastator: Maybe there are only portals to other islands.
22:26:23 Devastator: those islands have prey.
22:26:31 syv:
Dev, does that sound acceptable to you? Both in terms of justifying cat survival, and not violating any rules?
22:27:06 syv: If there are portals to other island, especially islands with prey, why are there only three cats living anywhere else?
22:27:06 Devastator: Sure, good enough, just let me know how stuff moves about.
22:27:22 Devastator: Those islands were nuked in the recent past, maybe.
22:27:43 Devastator: I don't think I rolled for mouse tech level.
22:28:05 syv: That requires some massive threat to those islands, specifically and reliably lethal against cats, but only intermittently to preclude living there.
22:28:23 Devastator: portal is in a lake, maybe.
22:28:37 Devastator: so it makes an island waterfall, but cats can't swim upwards.
22:28:38 syv: Even if the islands were poison, there has to be a justification why prey survives and not cats, and why the cats know this and nobody tries anyway.
22:29:06 Devastator: plus if you got through, it's too deep and the pressure is too high to let you get through that way.
22:29:20 syv: So by that logic you'd accept a desert island with a fish-filled river running through the middle of it?
22:29:46 Devastator: You have a floating island.
22:29:50 Devastator: that's just a terrain oddity.
22:30:06 syv: Sugar glider migrations seem like a more believable idea to me. I'll leave that up to
ER, though.
22:30:13 Devastator: besides, impractical floating waterfalls are a standard themeing element with floating islands.
22:30:47 er: Right now we're up to two big lies, being magic and floatstone.
22:31:07 er: Natural portals increases that number.
22:31:57 Devastator: unless floatstone and portals are the same thing.
22:32:33 Devastator: The roll for floating islands is specifically a subgroup of 'magical terrain.'
22:33:02 Devastator: so some other oddities would be fine, roll-wise.
22:33:04 syv: That's right up there with "Jet fuel can't melt steal beams... unless the steel beams were full of more jet fuel!"
22:33:21 er: It seems remarkably non-gobliny to suggest solving inconsistencies with magic.
22:33:22 Devastator: Oh god, I had that argument with
Aigre.
22:33:43 Devastator: When magical terrain comes up, I'm willing to accept.. magical terrain.
22:33:49 syv:
Dev is only a goblin when it's inconvenient.
22:34:27 Devastator: Anyway, I shouldn't distract you so much.
22:34:27 er: Guess the islands can have other anomalous features then.
22:34:50 syv: You're not distracting me.
22:34:58 er: Though it seems to kinda cheapen the fact that it's supposed to be a desert.
22:35:03 Devastator: same with the not-island stuff.
22:35:06 syv: You're making it clearer what your requirements for me are.
22:35:18 Devastator: there can be other oddities on the surface, too.
22:35:35 syv: I don't want to complete the setting then have you say "Nah, that breaks <rule>, <rule>, and <rule>."
22:36:07 syv: Just offhand, we're allowed to have magic nonsapient animals, right? Giant wasps and such?
22:36:43 er: Maybe this desert island has one main river, and prey can flourish there due to nile-style irrigation. Which was built by some ancient civilization.
22:37:18 Devastator: Yeah, but I'd rather not have everything magical.
22:37:20 syv: Are we going to have an ancient civilization? I figured we'd just have cats fulfill that role for themselves. ;P
22:37:34 Devastator: the ancient cat civilization built it.
22:37:57 syv: I think most of the fauna was gonna be normal, with a few magic critters which are regarded as normal by the sapients.
22:38:07 Devastator: This hideaway wasn't found when the cats were exterminated because the portal to it was at the bottom of a lake. And it was populated when a couple catpeople got really unlucky.
22:38:26 Devastator: They have since built their society around the trash of the regular catpeople.
22:39:22 er: It's not on earth, so the wildlife shouldn't be entirely non-alien to us.
22:40:10 syv:
Dev might want us to come up with non-earth creatures which could live in our world without magic.
22:40:34 syv: Maybe we could have it be a high-oxygen world so giant insects don't need magic.
22:40:58 syv: Which is entirely identical from the perspective of the sapients, but w/e.
22:41:03 er: I did think higher oxygen level, yeah.
22:41:30 er: Note to
dev: things catch fire quickly. ;p
22:41:47 syv: Mice have tamed giant spiders then. Which they ride as cavalry up the side of islands. And have strong venom
22:42:30 syv: I take back everything negative I've said in the last hour, mice people riding spider cavalry! This is great.
22:43:40 Devastator: "Stop screwing around! Do it the proper way! You can only turn a lever so far in the wrong direction before it breaks! This game is no different!"
22:45:49 Devastator: The Ultima 9 anti-walkthrough where he attempts to complete the game backwards.
22:46:08 Devastator: 2. Talk to initial quest-giver.
22:46:22 Devastator: 3. Travel by use of incredible cheese to second-to-last area.
22:46:26 Devastator: go backwards from there.
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22:47:21 syv: Seems like it could fit into Ultima. I mostly only know about Ultima having the ultimate self-insert Mary Sue as an important character.
22:47:39 Elasticly_Rigid: Is why you look for a power outlet when you're phone says low battery.
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22:48:08 Devastator: four times over, yes.
22:48:25 syv: No it's not, the fact that your battery will degrade if you let it run while low is why.
22:50:23 Elasticly_Rigid: We have mice riding spider cavalry because
er thought that giant predatory hornets would be neat.
22:50:29 Elasticly_Rigid is now known as er
22:50:57 Devastator: so not hornet cavalry?
22:51:01 syv: This is why collaborative writing is a good idea, i guess.
22:52:39 er: I dunno how you tame a eusocial insect but yup.
22:53:46 er: Put blinders over their antennae and them do what comes natural?
22:54:19 Devastator: I can think of a way.
22:54:34 Devastator: You'll love it, so unless you come up with a good one, I won't tell you it.
22:55:19 er: Ratte school has a spell that tames hornets.
22:55:38 syv: There's social spiders, and these ones are giant and so could have more social brainmatter, thus making them tamable.
22:56:22 er: The rider has pheromone tipped sticks, and they poke the antennae to give various commands.
22:57:39 syv: The spiders are big and strong enough to carry multiple mice, acting as something like combination tanks/APCs. Or, to my newfound horror, IFVs.
22:59:39 Devastator: Spiders of various sizes and breeds are okay.
22:59:46 er: Are spiders big enough to carry a cannon?
22:59:47 Devastator: Lots of spider species IRL.
22:59:57 Devastator: toy cannons can be pretty small.
23:00:10 Devastator:
PW made a regrettable type.
23:00:33 Devastator: "high bitched girly noises."
23:01:09 er: Ironic, he could point out other people's typos, but in the end he could not spot his own.
23:02:02 Devastator: hoping to get the spell description back.
23:05:11 er: Uh, did we decide on anything, besides spider cav?
23:06:12 syv:
Dev clarified a bunch of things for me, and I now have a bunch of logs to go over and write out. Cat society and the current situation is a bit more clearer.
23:06:30 syv: Oh, I did want to ask what you thought about a teleport-gate modification.
23:07:26 er: I'm going with a single river through the desert, with a magical origin which gets water from the same place as floatstone gets its disregard for gravity. The river was irrigated by ancient cats so that plants and prey could flourish.
23:07:43 er: Any objections to all that?
23:08:36 syv: Underground pillars in most inhabited islands, enchanted by long-dead cat hero (now elevated to demigodhood). If a cat sleeps atop after it's charged, they will have a lucid dream, and in that dream, they can find other pillars. If they lay on one of the dream pillars, they wake up on the real one corresponding to it. Namely, in one of the other islands that used to be inhabited.
23:09:04 syv: It requires a mage to activate, so it's not used by youths. No experienced mages are willing, none of the young mages have been foolish enough to try,
23:09:27 syv: But it opens up exploration options if the game's protag is a mage. Or befriends one.
23:10:13 er: Katia's gotta be an apprentice mage, right?
23:10:19 syv: And mo objection from me, though I still prefer high-altitude mice glider subspecies. Could have both, I guess, if you don't dislike it.
23:11:24 er: Could even start the game with a choice of which mage to be apprentice to.
23:11:41 Devastator: don't define the PC too specifically. You don't know what you're facing as a holocaust, remember.
23:12:55 er: Though the way things are set up currently, the threat could be anything.
23:12:59 syv: Eh? I was under the impression you just wanted there to be a species-threatening thing. Which we already have as the Imperium of Mouse, which very nearly eradicated catkind, and hasn't lost much power since.
23:13:20 Devastator: Yeah, but if you're going to be playing it, I reserve the right to throw some curveballs as to that.
23:13:29 Devastator: so you don't know exactly what to expect.
23:13:48 er: Species could be knocked down by a migration of eagles. :v
23:13:54 syv: I'm fine with being a spectator, honestly. It's a suggestion game.
23:14:24 syv: Anyway, so far we're leaving most modern details vauge, so you have a lot of room.
23:15:31 Devastator: I don't mind seeing any neat ideas you see.
23:16:08 er: I'm not setting the PC up for what I think the threat is, anyway. I'm suggesting what I think would make a fun game.
23:16:57 er: If you have a detailed magic system, it would be a bit of a shame to run a sg where the PC can't use that at all.
23:17:16 Devastator: I don't think I'd do that to you guys.
23:17:51 syv: Well, we don't really have a detailed magic system, though it'd still be a shame to be a mundane. Setting isn't set up for much creativity otherwise so far.
23:18:55 syv: I would hope we at least get to choose the protagonist's color.
23:19:14 syv: "we" meaning players as a whole, and not just those of us who worked on the setting.
23:19:32 er: Yeah, most fun/independant role would be a cat mage, and an apprentice would work well to not throw us in the deep end, and provides character progression.
23:19:36 Devastator: and I'll work something.
23:19:57 Devastator: It might not be
PW-style magic, but I'll work something out if you want a mage.
23:20:59 syv: What even is
PW-style? He's made at least ten entirely different magic systems.
23:21:24 syv: Hell, he's made a magic system based upon buying *booster packs of cards*.
23:21:47 Devastator: I got some ideas, don't worry.
23:21:54 Devastator: It won't be like
PW would do it.
23:22:32 syv: Aww, so it'll be entirely predictable and boring?
23:23:52 er: I've been thinking of magic item creation as kinda like coding, actually.
23:24:27 Devastator: No, it'll be weirder than that.
23:24:40 er: Lots of different ways to do any one thing, one person's functional code is another person's nightmare spaghetti.
23:25:12 syv: My gut reaction is that coding is far too structural and predictable for what we've been talking about, but then I remembered my ongoing effort to mod Grief Syndrome's squirrel code.
23:25:32 er: The item can last, but only if no parts of it "hang". It has to be a perfect cycle.
23:26:31 er: Otherwise it'll work for a while, then break at the wrong moment.
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