What about Cascadia?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;467851What about Cascadia?

RPGPundit

Thanks. That's perfect. I mean, obviously Seattle joins with Vancouver to form a Canadian successor state, because there isn't any money printed in the American Northwest and people need an economy. And the Cascadia movement already has their own flag. And a handsome flag it is:

[size=16]Cascadia[/size]

Based out of the Royal Canadian Mint in Vancouver (currently just a store front, but in the future history they start making money there at some point), Cascadia is British Columbia, Alberta, and Washington State. It also ambiguously includes Portland, because Oregonians take Cascadian Dollars and California Dollars in exchange for goods and services. The local magics are Tlingit Totemism and Northwestern Forge Magic.

-Frank

I can't claim any meaningful expeience or familiarity with SR but I'm diggning this thread, and I'd love to see how Frank implements all these distinct magical schools/traditions/splats.

As a Texan, why does Texas have to be separate again? Its over done. (No, I don't think many Texans would want us part of any group that included Mexico either.)

Although if you keep it separate, I suspect it would become a "Free State", possibly the the place you send your money to, or a haven from all the corporate/legal issues elsewhere. Oh it would have taxes, and government but they'd be very up front about it. Its the place you drop off the grid at.


As for money what about data? Important (tertiary) back up data randomly assigned across the net. Basically your individual part is useless, unless you know the ten thousand other people carrying bits of the data too. It backs up anytime you "spend" it? It has an assigned corporate value and an assigned "real" value based on the value the information holds across corporate boundaries. Its a bit complex though.

Alternately, gold, especially for circuitry will always be somewhat valuable.

Holy Shit this stuff is awesome.

I just showed it to my rp group, just now, and it derailed the shit out of us. We were talking about what to play next, and it might be this.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;467857Thanks. That's perfect. I mean, obviously Seattle joins with Vancouver to form a Canadian successor state, because there isn't any money printed in the American Northwest and people need an economy. And the Cascadia movement already has their own flag. And a handsome flag it is:

[size=16]Cascadia[/size]

Based out of the Royal Canadian Mint in Vancouver (currently just a store front, but in the future history they start making money there at some point), Cascadia is British Columbia, Alberta, and Washington State. It also ambiguously includes Portland, because Oregonians take Cascadian Dollars and California Dollars in exchange for goods and services. The local magics are Tlingit Totemism and Northwestern Forge Magic.

-Frank

No problem. Cascadia is a real (though pretty marginal) movement/concept, and it just always pisses me off that in futuristic-earth RPGs fucking Quebec is always portrayed as a separate nation, while the west is (as usual) ignored.  

RPGPundit

Just to let you know, I have After Sundown on my hard drive just to read it -- I want this to actually play it.

Quote from: Silverlion;467907As a Texan, why does Texas have to be separate again? Its over done. (No, I don't think many Texans would want us part of any group that included Mexico either.)

That's a good question, considering that the number of Texans who support independence today is only 1 in 4. But consider this: the federal government collapsed, and isn't printing money. Dollars are coming from the regional governments in Colorado and Kentucky and signed by the state treasurers of those places rather than the national government (which essentially doesn't exist). So Texas has the option of recognizing the regional government of Kentucky as the rightful federal government in absentia, recognizing the regional government of Colorado as the same, joining one of the Mexican successor states, or saying "Fuck this, we're printing our own Texas dollars until you fuckers sort this out." You're a Texan, which would you support? Be honest.

QuoteAs for money what about data? Important (tertiary) back up data randomly assigned across the net. Basically your individual part is useless, unless you know the ten thousand other people carrying bits of the data too. It backs up anytime you "spend" it? It has an assigned corporate value and an assigned "real" value based on the value the information holds across corporate boundaries. Its a bit complex though.

Basically BitCoin, only hopefully issued by someone with more clout than "some random dude who made an algorithm". Distributed currencies can certainly exist. The Spider gets past the limits of fiat money by forcing every government that wants to issue fiat currency that will be respected in the world to allow Spiders to buy their currency at whatever rate the IMF says it's worth today. This keeps the value of a Spider fairly stable, since every fiat currency would have to collapse at once to make your Spiders stop having value (or so the theory goes).

Actual BitCoin has the problem that the only claim it has to being legitimate at all is that it is impossible to have a monetary policy in BitCoins - a fact which ultimately dooms the enterprise as soon as they have any price shocks in Bit Coin beyond the capacity of an unregulated market to right itself. But something that was similar but differed in that it had an actual central bank and was backed by some authority somewhere that provided some defense of civilization such that people thought they could rely on them more than hordes of shotgun shells and cans of beans - could certainly be done. I could see Gazprom issuing electronic currency of virtual ownership of oil (redeemable for actual oil), or a country having an actual paperless monetary system.

QuoteAlternately, gold, especially for circuitry will always be somewhat valuable.

Commodities will indeed always have value. Gold is somewhat overvalued today, and a Dollar Bill's worth is currently a bit over $42. That's inconvenient as a currency, because it's too small to make really large purchases, but too large to buy a meal. But I can definitely see some government putting real gold thread into their bills such that the "intrinsic" value of the bill itself was some noticeable percentage of the printed value of the bill. If it was essentially impossible for inflation or lack of confidence to degrade a bill's real purchasing power by more than 50%, I imagine that would have a powerful effect in forestalling inflation altogether. Who do you think would be doing that?

-Frank

Quote from: RPGPundit;467964No problem. Cascadia is a real (though pretty marginal) movement/concept, and it just always pisses me off that in futuristic-earth RPGs fucking Quebec is always portrayed as a separate nation, while the west is (as usual) ignored.  

RPGPundit

It is my intention not to completely ignore any part o the world. Vijayanagar and Nag Kampuchea won't be completely fleshed out or anything (space concerns), but the complete document should let you see their flags and locations at least. And yeah, by the way the flag of Nag Kampuchea looks like this:


And Quebec is getting their own country. With Iroquois Totemism and Catholic Black Magic. Because it's Quebec, and well, obviously. And also the other breakaway country of Canada and the Northern US:

[size=16]Caledonia[/size]

A vast region in Central Canada and parts of the fly over states like Montana. They have their currency minted in Winnipeg, and they cover vast areas that they cannot possibly control. They have a really low population, but they export food and oil, so they are rich as fuck. They do Lakota Shamanism and Manitoban Geomancy.


But in addition to laying out the world space, the physics space has to be laid out too. Specifically, the things you do with tech and magic should be blocked out. When players see a problem they should be able to say "We should use Magic to solve that" or "We should use Technology to solve that".

In general, I think that tech should be better at moving large amounts large distances. So magic shouldn't replace tankers or railroads with giant magic gates or omni-rivers. Magic should be better at sending small things small distances, so short-range teleportation or short duration time dilation is totally possible.

Similarly, Magic should not replace the need for sending data electronically, so it should never exceed tech's ability to send large amounts of data at the speed of light or less. It's OK if magic can send short messages instantly, such that magic becomes the way to communicate with the Mars colonies. Or stuff like that.

In specific, I think that Magic should be better at making things invisible than technology is. But Tech should be better at faking things realistically than magic is. That is, with Tech you can put on camouflage or even camera/display camo that shows a literal picture of what is behind you, but you're still not invisible. People can still see you if they know what to look for. Even with the most badass thermoptic stealthsuit in the world, you still have a predator effect going on. With Magic, you can just vanish. On the flip side, a hologram made with Tech can display an apparently real retina pattern to a lock, while a magical illusion is always going to look like a painting. Magical illusions can only be as perfect as your memory and imagination, but technological illusions can be based on photographs and thus be literally photographically real.

-Frank

In a hypothetical Europe:

Will the Basque be a separate state?

Will the Kaliningrad Oblast be an independent state, or a part of Russia or Germany?

Quote from: ggroy;468020In a hypothetical Europe:

Will the Basque be a separate state?

Will the Kaliningrad Oblast be an independent state, or a part of Russia or Germany?

Those are good questions. A successful Basque separation from Spain is not necessary, because Spain is under 50 million people even with Navarre included. Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy probably want to break up, because they are too big and powerful as single units. Czech Republic and Slovakia might as well reform Czechoslovakia, because the world doesn't need two countries of beer drinking Western Slavs that aren't Poles (except for the South Silesians, who basically are Poles). Belgium might as well join the United Provinces of the Netherlands, because even combined the low countries aren't big enough to destablize things.

But having some genuine bullshit microstates in Europe lends credence to the future history. We know that there are going to be some bullshit microstates in Europe, because there has never been a time when there weren't. Some of that involves grabbing the Balkans and drawing names out of a hat filled with all the bullshit tiny microstates that have existed or been demanded in that area and throwing them down. Dalmatia, Sarmatia, Ragusa, Hum. It's not even hard. I'm on the fence about Navarre. On the one hand, it's a credible bullshit micro-state for Europe to have, and on the other hand it's predictable and boring and essentially eliminates Basque separatist terror cells from the setting.

As for Kaliningrad Oblast, I think it should probably go to a resurgent Lithuania. Apparently Belorussians also want to be conquered by Lithuania (or rather, they want to be called Lithuania and be part of the 15th century Lithuanian Empire that went all the way to modern day Ukraine, but I'm not sure how they think this will happen without getting conquered by Lithuania).

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;468005That's a good question, considering that the number of Texans who support independence today is only 1 in 4. But consider this: the federal government collapsed, and isn't printing money. Dollars are coming from the regional governments in Colorado and Kentucky and signed by the state treasurers of those places rather than the national government (which essentially doesn't exist). So Texas has the option of recognizing the regional government of Kentucky as the rightful federal government in absentia, recognizing the regional government of Colorado as the same, joining one of the Mexican successor states, or saying "Fuck this, we're printing our own Texas dollars until you fuckers sort this out." You're a Texan, which would you support? Be honest.

-Frank

 Texas as its own nation, but likely with regional "states." Since some border areas will be different in population and laws, than Northern/Western and Eastern pieces of the state.

Hell, if you're going to use Cascadia, why not the "state" of Jefferson?

Quote from: kythri;468090Hell, if you're going to use Cascadia, why not the "state" of Jefferson?

The Jefferson plan would definitely be in effect, and even get support from Sacramento because it involves spreading the California Currency Zone into Southern Oregon.

Portland itself is a free city where Californian and Cascadian dollars are both used and they have their own local Chaos Magic (see the Church of Elvis and the Church of Fun). Jefferson is a region where people are ideologically conservative except that they support gay rights, drug use, and the environment. The local politics there really do make my brain hurt sometimes. But basically it's a "state" of the "country" of California.

Quote from: SilverlionTexas as its own nation, but likely with regional "states." Since some border areas will be different in population and laws, than Northern/Western and Eastern pieces of the state.

Pretty much. I figure it would chop itself into five administrative units. Which would basically be Panhandle, Rio Grande, ArkLaTex, and the Federal Districts of Dallas and Houston. Each with about five or six million people. ArkLaTex is basically East Texas out to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, and includes chunks of Arkansas and Louisiana such as Shreveport and Texarkana. Because while Shreveport would demand to be able to continue running its casinos for Texans, it can't survive without using Texan money.

So the Texan "state capitals" are San Antonio (Rio Grande), Amarillo (Panhandle), and Shreveport (ArkLaTex), with Dallas and Houston being federal districts that are in essence both states and capitals.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;468019And Quebec is getting their own country. With Iroquois Totemism and Catholic Black Magic. Because it's Quebec, and well, obviously. :

Well, I just hope you go for accuracy and make the Third World Shithole Quebec would be if it didn't have the rest of Canada to prop it up.

RPGPundit