jameson (ST) Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameson (ST) Posted June 20, 2011 Author Share Posted June 20, 2011 This was meant to go live with today's date but I messed up somewhere. Anyways, enjoy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SalmonMax Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 This is great stuff, and I just wanted to throw in a couple of related ideas.1) Social byproducts: It's thought that the Black Plague was a contributing factor (if not necessarily THE contributing factor) in the decay and eventual fall of the feudal system in Europe. The top-heavy feudal system requires large amounts of peasants and serf workers to supply the nobility and keep them propped up. There has to be so many, in fact, that their lives are cheap, so they can endure hardship and harsh punishment without reducing productivity. By practically wiping out the peasantry, the Plague "added value" to the survivors by simple market formula. Supply went down, demand stayed high, value increased. Suddenly lords couldn't afford to just savagely put down revolutions...they had to try to avoid them in the first place, or they'd be starving. The reduction in the power of the lords created an opening that was neatly filled by craft and trade guilds...which in the past the feudal nobility would never have allowed to take shape.This is true not only of disease, but any major shift in population. Things are rarely even. Plagues hit poor and underprivelaged worse than rich and isolated. But what do the rich do when all the people who make their beds ad cook their food are gone? 2) Mutation: Not in the victims of the plague, but in the plague itself. One of the things that keeps pathologists up at nights is the terrifying speed at which microbes evolve. Subjected to what is to them the environmental pressure of antibiotics, strains of disease are appearing after less than a hundred years that most antibiotics can't touch. Compare that to the thousand-year plus evolutionary cycle of most larger organisms, and the problem is clear. And that's not the whole of it either. A disease that requires physical contact to spread might suddenly become airborne. In Andromeda Strain, this tendency of microbes to mutate was actually used as a kind of Deus Ex Machina to give the story a happy ending...after the fast-shifting virus had given everyone a massive scare.In a fantasy or supers setting, this mutation factor could combine with magical or super physics, resulting in true terrors! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stargaizer Posted June 20, 2011 Share Posted June 20, 2011 In EarthDawn, magic is a part of everything (from spells to Adepts swinging sword), and they've taken a variation of this. Magic comes from the Astral Plane, but that's is also where the settings big baddies (Horrors) come from. The Horrors have 'tainted' or 'polluted' Astral Space to the extent that casting 'Raw' (unfiltered/unmatrixed) magic can kill you or worse.In the Wheel of Time, the male half of all magic was tainted to the point that any male that used it would eventually go mad.Not exactly what you were talking about, but in a similar vein at least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dawn OOC Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Dead Rising, bitches! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave ST Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Is this the part where all the DR players are supposed to flash gang signs and shout "Dead Rising bitches!"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 *flashes a gang sign*DR fo' life, yo! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Fox Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 DR OG in the hizzouse! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Sagebrush Posted June 21, 2011 Share Posted June 21, 2011 Dead Rising, Baby. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dawn OOC Posted June 22, 2011 Share Posted June 22, 2011 Aww, you guys are the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.