Guns in The Outlaw

[Daddy Warpig]

The Design of NYC

Many games have default or archetypal settings. Seattle, for Shadowrun, is a perfect example. GiTO has NYC. In many ways, NYC typifies the entire game, as nearly any type of adventure the setting supports can be found here.

The core is a typical Enclave, high tech, happy, clean. (Well, "happy" if you're a resident. Not so much otherwise.) There are many adventures possible here, from bank jobs to data runs, assassination or bounty hunter missions, body guarding or monster hunting, con jobs and political smear jobs.

The jungle is an urban nightmare. It has very different opportunities: gang warfare (against a gang or for a gang), lawmen-for-hire, raiding a company compound, guarding (or raiding) a convoy. Then there's assassination or bounty hunter jobs, bodyguarding or monster hunting, and so forth.

The wild is largely empty of human life. Still, lone nuts and small settlements can be found here. It's also filled with nests and lairs of strange and monstrous creatures that emerged from the vortexes. Also common are tribes of Beyonders who fled the dark forces consuming their world.

Then there's the tunnels, an entire setting in and of itself, complete with settlers, survivors, and monstrous beasts.

And the vortexes.

Vortexes are not a rare thing. Many Guns find employ fighting the creatures that pour from a newly opened vortex; many find wealth venturing into the Beyond (a very different adventuring opportunity).

So, in the same city you can go from a high tech city, to a crime ridden slum, to a gang-ruled urban hellhole, to abandoned zones where monsters thrive. Nearly any adventure opportunity the game offers can be found somewhere in NYC.

[Daddy Warpig]

The Empty World

This is an empty world. 60% of the population died off in the rotting plague and the aftermath, which means 60% of the buildings stand empty. This is a world of ghost towns. Ghost cities.

Blocks of tenements, with no inhabitants. Libraries, filled with books, abandoned and crumbling, the books slowly rotting away. High rises, office buildings, movie theaters, schools, police stations, hospitals, churches, all stand empty and abandoned, their windows shattered, leaving black gaps like teeth missing from a smile.

The wind blows through empty rooms. Rain pounds down. The sun shines on fading paint.

Trash litters the floors. Posters about the plague, about refugee centers, about rationing and hygiene. Graffiti covers the walls.

Paint peels from the crumbling walls. Furniture lies discarded in corners. Empty boxes, DVD players, television sets, all lie about, useless and unused.

Cars line the streets, their tires collapsed, their windows cracked, their paint fading. Trash, detritus, lies thick on the streets. Weeds and plants grow up, through the pavement, green growth in the urban gray.

This is a world empty of humanity.

I'd like to say I thought all this up, that this world sprang solely from my own, sheer imagination. It'd be a lie.

These images of urban decay and abandoned streets were inspired by a photo book, a photographic record of a real city. A city that is abandoned and crumbling.

Not Pripyat, devastated by Chernobyl, as apt as that'd be, but Detroit. Modern day Detroit, in many ways, embodies the wilds of 2039 America.

Yes, to my everlasting shame, I took inspiration from real life. Here are some of the photos:



A library.



An apartment building.



A church.



Effects of the sun.



A house.



A bank vault.



A hallway.



Michigan Central Station.



A factory.



A street.

Of course, in GiTO, these buildings are not all abandoned. Squatters live here, lone nuts, small gangs, or tiny communities of refugees or Beyonders. Bloodgangs (organized eaters of humanity), feral eaters, random monsters from out a vortex, all live here. These empty city streets are not totally empty, and all the more dangerous thereby.

(See more images here: http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html)

[Daddy Warpig]

Technomagic FAQ

Before I start posting some more background material, these are a few questions that have been asked — or could have been asked — about technomagic. I hope these answers will clarify.

Q1) Why can't technomagic be mass produced?

A1) The rule: most technomagical devisements can be used by anyone (with training), but can only be created by technomages.

Technomagic comes from thaumaturgy, which is the magical talent that imbues magic into items (creating a magic sword, for example). Technomagical devisements require wires, shaped into an electrical circuit, and flowing electricity, from a battery or generator. But creating them requires — you guessed it — imbuing. You have to imbue the circuitry with a tiny amount of magic (far less than necessary to create a magical sword, for example). Only technomages (or thaumaturgists) can imbue, therefore only they can create devisements.

More, they must create the entire devisement themselves, from raw parts (wires and batteries) to a finished case (hence, no assembly line). This process of creation is what links the mage to the devisement temporarily, and allows them to imbue it.

(Maguses claim this is an effect of the Law of Contagion. Thaumaturgists say the Magical Laws of spells have no effect on imbuing, and suggest the maguses mind their own damn business. Maguses suggest that thaumaturgy could do with a little bit of codification, if only the thaumaturgists would develop a minimal capacity to reason. Thaumaturgists say that maguses are arrogant, stuffy know-it-alls, more intent on book learning than working magic... and the arguments continue.)

For the foreseeable future, crafting devisements is a personal, small-scale enterprise.

Q2) Why does imbuing work with computers? Don't you know that computer chips are silicon and other non-metallic substances, not metal?

A2) Let's start with the basics: electrical current causes magical energies in the shadow world to flow, as energy (the electricity) affects ephemera (the magic). The concentrated, overlapping currents of electricity in a computer chip (or integrated circuit) creates a thick bundle of flowing energies, called a "node". All this just happens, because of the innate relationship between energy and ephemera.

People with the shadow walking talent can project their mind into the shadow world. This allows them to enter a node, and read all the information on the computer. (Such individuals are called "crackers".) This is an easy process, relatively speaking.

In order to protect computers, technomages created a devisement called a shroud. The shroud wrapped the node in magical energies, so a cracker couldn't just read it at will. In order to read the node, the shadow walker has to penetrate the security in the shroud.

Shrouds create miniature worlds called constructs. The larger and more elaborate the construct, the more expensive the shroud.

(While in the construct, the cracker is vulnerable to damage or death, making cracking a serious endeavor. I'll talk more about cracking in a future update.)

Some go even further, and use a technoshaman to summon spirits into the construct. These appear as sentries, guardian creatures, or whatever else the shaman desires. There are more dangerous, and hence more secure.

The upshot: only the shroud has to be imbued, not the computer. The node just happens.

I have a few more questions, which I'll answer in later posts.

[Daddy Warpig]

Cracking, Pt. 1: Magic in the Beyond

Well, the last update was about technomagic, and I promised some more about cracking. So here it is.

Magic emanates from the shadow world, an unearthly and quicksilver plane of gray mists and deep shadows. Imagine a sandstorm, at night, dimly lit by a full moon, and you will get the idea.

When the vortexes opened up between the Beyond and Earth, they allowed magic to flood our planet (an event called the Emergence). Energies from the shadow world inundated Earth, spirits from the shadow world could enter our plane of existence, and magicians could work magic, anywhere on the surface of the planet. So long as a single vortex remains open, this remains the case.

There are five different methods of working magic: augmentation, imbuing, shadow walking, sorcery, and spellcasting. These are called "the five talents", and each manipulates the energies of the shadow world in a different way. Most races can develop at least one of the talents, but only a few have the capacity to develop all five: the "mage" races, being alfars, faes, humans, trolls, and wisps.

For the mage races, developing a talent requires significant devotion and focus. Few develop even one talent (save among the fae), rarer still they who develop two. Those who develop all five are known as archmages, and they are personages of legendary power. There have been no archmages among the Beyonders for well over five centuries.

The talents have been known for millennia among the Beyonders, and their limits were well understood. Most believed these limits to be intrinsic to the magic itself. The Emergence proved them wrong.

[Daddy Warpig]

A World In Flux (pt. 2)

The world is changing. This is obvious, as the plague shattered the old order and the Emergence dumped a bunch of new stuff from the Beyond. What may not be obvious is this: it isn't just our world that is changing.

Magic is a stable thing. Known for over 10,000 years, since the dominion of Atlantis, its nature, processes, and limits have been tried, tested, mapped, and mastered. Magic is a stable thing.

Until the Emergence changed all of that.

Our world is a new place, with new technologies. And these technologies, like electronics, interact with magic in ways that are unforeseen and unforeseeable. More, the Emergence happened just 14 years ago, and we are only now beginning to understand its effects and take advantage of the new opportunities magic affords us.

The first commercial technomage set up shop 11 years ago, but breadboard kits for technomages (suitable for quick-and-dirty devisements) are less than eight years old. Shadow walkers could read information from computers from the very first time they crossed over, but shrouds to protect that data weren't developed for four years (about a decade ago). And shadowjacks, which revolutionized computer use and cracking, are just three years old.

This is a time of flux, of great discoveries and revolutions in magic, technology, and technomagic, and cracking is a large part of that.

[Daddy Warpig]

What Is Cracking? (pt. 3)

Cracking is a bit of cyberpunk virtual reality hacking added to the GiTO mix. It's a way for mages to steal data from computers (or add data to, or take control of) solely through magical means.

I've covered the metaphysics of this in depth, but a quick recap: computers create nodes in the shadow world. Shadow walkers can enter these nodes and "use" the computer, as if they were sitting at it. Magical access grants them super-user privileges. (To the uninitiated, that means they can do the hell they want.) They don't need to know passwords, they don't need to know programming, they don't need to know the specifics of the interface, they don't need to hack anything.

Magical access just works — the walker can just sense the information, the way you can sense your hands. They just know it, without having to think about it. (Not all of it at once, you have to focus on specific bits.) It's pretty trippy, it's like the data is part of you.

This is a problem. Especially for people who, you know, own and use computers. So technomancers created shrouds. A shroud blocks access to the node: in order to access the node, you have to penetrate the shroud's security.

For reasons specific to the shadow world (linked to shadow realms, which I'll talk about some other time), shrouds create artificial realities. An estate villa, in Meiji-era Japan. A section of beach at Normandy, circa 1944. A weird technicolor domain of fragrances and swirling lights, something like living in a lava lamp. Anything the shroud's controller can imagine can be implemented. These artificial realities are called constructs.

Constructs have their own laws of physics, unique to themselves. Every single "entity" entering the construct must follow the physical laws of the construct. In some constructs, gravity is relative to every surface, meaning you can stand on walls and ceilings, in addition to the floor. (This is known as Escher physics, to construct architects.) If Escher physics apply, they apply to all entities — people and spirits — in the construct, even the controller himself. Once the laws are set, they cannot be changed.

(Technically you can change them, but this requires rebooting the construct, which dumps all entities inside, meaning any spirits there are unbound and have to be re-summoned. A reboot also hard dumps any user entities, which is... less than pleasant. Reboots are saved for entirely replacing a construct or if a data penetration is close to the node.)

In addition to the unliving structures of the construct, technoshamans (and just plain sorcerers) can also summon spirits into the construct, to serve as additional security — roving sentries, guard dogs (or the equivalent), and so forth. For aesthetic reasons, these are typically structured to fit with the construct: Japanese swordsmen for the Meiji estate, Nazis for the Normandy bunker complex, coherent blobs of light for the living lava lamp.

More, the recent invention of shadowjacks — technomagical devisements which allow non-walkers to enter constructs and nodes — means real people can work in the construct, either as security or just office workers. Work in, or break into. Shadowjacks allow non-shadow walkers to crack. (But shadow walkers are much, much better at it.)

(Yeah, shadowjacks are a real boon for employers. You don't have to teach people about how to click, double click, or right-click. Give them a shadowjack, send them into the construct, and they can enter data without needing to know jack about the UI. As long as they can use the construct correctly, you're golden.)

Cracking is, at its most basic, breaking into the node by penetrating the security of the construct. I'll discuss some more specifics next post.

[Daddy Warpig]

Cracking A Construct (pt. 4)

So, let's break into a building. There's a chain link fence, walls, doors, locks, elevators, offices, card scanners, cameras, and guards. All the normal security one would expect in a building.

You're a group of thieves. You steal cards from guards, make copies of the keys, cut the power, sneak in. You use all your mundane skills: con, burglary, stealth, etc. If the patrolling guards catch you, you might have to fight. You shoot guns or tasers, or punch them out. All of this is normal.

Now, let's crack a construct. ("Constructs" are the artificial reality worlds surrounding a node.) Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that this construct looks like... an office building.

It has... exactly the same things as a mundane office building. The same locks, cameras, guards, and on and on. (Except the guards in a construct are usually bound spirits.) And each of them works exactly like their mundane counterpart. You can pick the locks, unhook cameras, sneak past the guards. You use the same mundane skills in a construct that you'd use in the real world. That's how you crack.

But shadow walkers have an edge. The laws of physics in a construct are inviolable and unchangeable. All entities (spirits and people) must follow them.

Except shadow walkers. Crackers can bend or break the laws of physics in a construct. They can see through walls, unlock the door with a wave of their hand, disrupt a keypad lock by willing it.

Crackers don't have to follow the rules. They can change the rules, simply by willing it.

Crackers are Gods in the construct.

[LD]

Adding the pictures was a good touch.

[Daddy Warpig]

Adding the pictures was a good touch.

Thanks. :)

I wanted a more visceral depiction than just my descriptions. I'm glad it worked.

[Daddy Warpig]

Guns in The Construct (Cracking, pt. 5)

First, some clarification.

Crackers can bend or break the laws of physics in a construct. In a specific way, in a small space, for a short period of time. They can unlock one door without picking the lock, they can't unlock all doors. But doing so isn't without cost.

Each time they warp reality, it sends out a pulse of energy, which construct security can notice. Too many pulses, and they can call for extra spirits, security shadowjackers, an Admin shadow walker, or even boot cycle the construct (which aborts the run).

So crackers need mundane skills as well: stealth, burglary, etc. Which isn't a problem, because it means they are useful outside the Mesh. [Mesh computing is a real-world thing; it's replaced the Internet in the Outlaw. See here.] The best crackers are the best burglars.

But suppose you're not the best burglar. Or you just want more hands to help search the office building. Or suppose you just want some backup, for the times security swarms. In those cases, smart crackers bring along team mates.

Shadowjacks are technomagical devisements that allow mundanes to enter a construct. (There is also a spell which can do the same, and spirits can also effect this.) And, because mundane skills are of use in the construct, they can genuinely help. They can pick locks, blow safes, search vaults, or fight security. Anything they can do in the real world, they can do in the construct. (Assuming the local laws of physics allow.)

(Re: Combat in the construct. For shadowjackers, death means a hard dump, and sometimes the destruction of the shadowjack. For crackers, death means... death. They like bringing backup along.)

A party without a cracker can still crack a construct, just not as easily. And a party with a cracker can help him crack. Either way, computer intrusion is not a solo module.

[Daddy Warpig]

The Chinese Zombie Apocalypse

The plague of 2015 was first reported in the news as "the Chinese Zombie Apocalypse". This was, of course, ridiculously incorrect, but it's easy to see why the mistake was made.

Induced Systemic Necrosis — ISN — came to be known as the rotting plague, for good reason. Once contracted (which 25% of humanity did), your body's tissues began to die and rot. Without a course of treatment, all patients eventually died of multiple organ failure, usually within a month of first symptoms.

ISN patients remained ambulatory for two to three weeks after developing the first symptoms, able to move about, speak, and take care of themselves as their bodies slowly rotted. It isn't hard to see why people thought they were zombies, especially those patients who suffered dementia or psychosis (from brain degradation).

Gangrene is a particularly ugly condition. (Don't google images of it. Trust me.) The sight of rotting flesh, and the smell of rotting meat, is overwhelming and nauseating. And the condition is excruciating in the extreme.

The disease was horrifying. It spread via means unknown. There was no vaccine, no treatment, no cure. It was 100% lethal. And in the summer and fall of 2015 it swept the globe, killing 1 and a quarter billion people.

Society broke down.

People fled each other. Nearly all abandoned their jobs and quarantined themselves. They grabbed what food and water they could, barricaded themselves in their homes, and waited the disease out.

Commerce ceased. Policing halted. Medical services were interrupted. Armies disintegrated. No one was harvesting food, processing the harvest, or bringing it to market.

The power company. The water company. Trash. Sewage. All stopped.

When the foodstuffs in the cities were consumed, millions fled. They spread out into the countryside, finding food where they could and, sometimes, taking food. Famine followed the disease, and violence followed the famine.

[Daddy Warpig]

What is "The Outlaw"?

The Outlaw is every place not under control of the federal government ("the Fed"). It's every person who isn't a citizen, much less a resident. It's about half the population, 66% of the economy, and 75% of the territory.

The Outlaw is the lawless expanse.

How omnipresent is it? The seat of the national government is the former UN building in New York City. Close by is Central Park, the site of the largest open-air Outlaw market in the country. (You can buy and sell nearly anything in the Central Park Bazaar.) You can literally see the Outlaw from the upper floors of the Capitol Building.

But why? Why is so much of the country unorganized territory? Money and manpower.

All governments must have money. Income taxes are impossible to enforce — it's too easy to make undeclared money through the Outlaw economy, even while living in the Fed (see Central Park, above). Fees and tariffs are an alternative, but official corruption means many go uncollected (greasing palms is a survival skill in 2039). Without fees or income taxes, the government is impoverished, meaning it can't perform basic tasks (which corruption would make difficult in any case).

Residence fees are an effective solution, but endemic corruption in service bureaus and firms means most people are paying premium prices for shoddy work. Most people can get better services (cleaner water, better customer service, and so forth) via private companies or neighborhood associations (the "governments" in the jungle). So their fees go to those organizations, not the Fed.

This drives the best candidates (and the most motivated) to leave the Fed and join the hidden economy, where their abilities and efforts benefit Outlaw polities and Outlaw companies. As people leave the system for the Outlaw, their skills, knowledge, and experience travels with them, and the Fed economy shrinks, and the Fed has less money. It's an ongoing brain drain.

The manpower problem is simple: the plague, the collapse, and the Emergence killed off 2/3rds of the country. The population has grown slightly since then, but not enough to allow the Fed to colonize the vast lands outside their purview, especially given the ongoing losses to Outlaw polities. There are few people for the Fed to use as police and soldiers.

Civil order cannot be imposed by a token police force. It can only exist when people voluntarily obey the law, or there is sufficient force to impose it. In 2039 America, most people don't voluntarily obey Fed laws (even the rich and powerful subvert the law when they see fit) and the Fed cannot field enough soldiers or cops to impose them.

Without sufficient forces and materiel, the Fed can't protect its borders, not comprehensively, and in many cases Outlaw settlements thrive inside the Fed borders (as in New York City). In this situation, Outlaw settlements are parasitical: they are kept safe by the Fed, but leach away money and manpower.

Corruption leads to incompetence, and incompetence leads to people opting out. It is a vicious cycle that undermines the Fed's efforts to normalize governance and restore American prestige and power. The Outlaw is bigger, in every measurable way, and becoming more-so every day.

[Daddy Warpig]

Life in the Two Americas

The great plague shattered the former social, political, and economic order, worldwide. The mass deaths of a quarter of humanity, and the ensuing chaos, disrupted all industries, and brought economic activity to a halt. Post-plague violence — riots, banditry, and outright warfare — killed anywhere from a third to half of the population. Then there was the Emergence, a whole 'nother series of problems in and of itself.

No nation emerged unscathed, and most have ceased to exist at all. China broke apart into six separate countries, India into nearly a dozen, and the Green Eruption has killed off all civilization in Europe outside of a score of heavily armed city-states, most under the thumb of their own patron dragon. The US likewise suffered.

The United States — comprising an estimated 110 million people — is split roughly 50/50 between the Outlaw and the Fed. The Outlaw is the frontier, largely a place of anarchy and violence, with scattered pockets of civilization.

Most Outlaw polities are city-states, typically small settlements that stand on their own. (The three main exceptions being Alaska, Texas, and Utah.) Governments range from democratically elected town councils (of greater or lesser effectiveness), to absolute dictatorships (benign or cruel), to near-anarchy.

Life in the Outlaw is dangerous. You can literally be eaten alive by ghouls, robbed or murdered by bezerkergangs, or fall victim to any number of other horrors. When faced with these threats, citizens and local governments are on their own. (Hence the thriving market for Guns.)

Life in the Fed is safer, so long as you live in the Enclaves. You have police protection, functional infrastructure, and municipal necessaries. In consideration of this, you pay your annual residency fee for you and your family. (The replacement for the annual income tax.)

But your life is not your own. Your physical security requires residency, and that can be revoked at any time, by a corrupt policemen, an officious or offended bureaucrat, or your employer. Revocation of residency means exile, and people fear exile, for good reason.

Exile means being stripped of your job, your nice house, your secure neighborhood. It means you and your family being ejected from the core, to live without police protection or municipal services. Exile means life in the jungle.

[Daddy Warpig]

Life in the Jungle

Outside the enclaves, but part of the Fed, is the jungle, urban twilight zones that are half-Fed, half-Outlaw. Those who live in the jungle are entirely on their own. There are no municipal-supplied necessaries (water, power, etc.), no policing, and few outside opportunities for employment.

These conditions are alien to pre-plague Westerners, and lead to very odd adaptations. Like dirt vendors, who sell soil for rooftop gardeners and nightsoil disposal. Or honeywagons, who buy and compost human waste, to sell as fertilizer. (The safest of these use a pocket reactor to sterilize the soil. The least safest... don't. Sometimes, this kills people.) Even in these circumstances, people adapted.

Without government, people were forced to fend for themselves, providing their own water, power, and other necessaries. The level of self-organization is strongly correlated with how prosperous and secure the neighborhood is.

There are two jungles in most of the Fed. One where people have self-organized effectively, one where they (for various reasons) have not. Life in the first is harsh, but not horrific. Life in the second is ugly and (to the eyes of a pre-plague American) unthinkable.

The pre-plague US standard of living was an aberration, both in historical terms and in comparison to the rest of the planet. Though the suffering from poverty in pre-plague America was very real, there were billions of people whose standard of living was far, far worse.

Life in the jungles has regressed to the poorest areas of the pre-plague Third World: the economy of post-War Europe, the politics of 1990's Mogadishu, and the infrastructure of a Brazilian favela. Poverty is endemic and crushing. There are few jobs, few opportunities, and no social safety net.

[More next post.]

[Fortunato]

I am enjoying what you are doing here.

About vortexes, do they open anywhere at random or are they confined in some way?

Can one open or close a vortex?

Thanks