NovaCorp Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 From the point of view of someone playing a Utopian-Why are PCs so anti-Utopia? Maybe it's just the game I'm playing in, but considering what Utopia have done (cured aids, cancer, ozone problems, etc etc) I find it odd that so many people seem to assume it's standard for them to have IC assumptions about Utopia's "dodginess" - without knowing anything whatsoever about Proteus in character.I'm starting to see it as a big blurring of the IC/OOC line, but I was wondering if it's standard elsewhere.Do you have PCs who for no logical reason have IC bias or suspicions of Utopia? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bahamut810 Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 I find that I just make chars that dont like the Utopian ideals. They are too greedy for utopia. Other then that...Teregen sympathies could sour people to Utopia too. Or thinking too much about personal freedoms... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaCorp Posted May 9, 2003 Author Share Posted May 9, 2003 Remember that, at least as I read it, a large portion of the world's nova population will have been helped by Utopia at an M-R facility as they were going through the after effects of eruption. While some people have the excuse of having Teragen sympathies, I don't see Utopia as being an obvious all-pervading prescence which interferes with personal liberties at an individual level for novas.At least, that the novas know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bahamut810 Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 I just dont see how most nova's can see the Null Manifesto and *not* think..."Hey...this is right...I am better then the monkies." Just look at the little TV broadcast they had in the Teregen book (i think...the one that looked like an episode of Montel). Novas do this and that and this some mroe...when baselines can barley make technology which can do that. Thats more then enough a reason to stay away from utopia...they do stuff for the monkies too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Finbar Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 Another consideration is that while Utopia is giving novas a way to learn their powers and do good things, it has also done pretty nasty things to novas in their care (the contraceptives, for example). Also, any intelligent person eventually comes to the realization that either competition is good or you need to eliminate all competition. Utopia has done a pretty good job of stifling competition, so they've chosen the latter route. Eventually any nova not on the payroll will be considered competition, so obviously Utopia will go after them...What has a lot of novas nervous is, how will they accomplish that? And who will they use as guinea pigs?FR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bahamut810 Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 Also...after the entire Slider fiasco...Novas dont really know who to trust. Hell, Pax cant even catch Corbin (something he could do im sure in a few seconds really, if he wanted)...and he is the strongest nova in the world ::rolleyes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProfPotts Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 Obviously personel politics is going to come into it a lot (for example, in the real world, how many people agree on whether the US & UK should have gone into Iraq, & what their reasons for doing so were in the first place). There's also the whole 'conspiracy theory' bit - as long as someone has suggested that Utopia is 'dodgy' then there'll be some people who will be willing to believe that they must be dodgy, no matter the complete lack of evidence (e.g. UFOs, the Kennedy assassination, the 'faked' Lunar landings, etc., etc.).From a more character-specific point of view a lot of the character's reactions to Utopia will result from their own experiences with the Project, especially that all-important first visit to a Rashoud facility when the character is at his most confused & vulnerable. For example: many people swear off religion for life after one bad encounter when they were at a vulnerable time in their lives (such as an insensitive comment by a priest at a funeral), even though they would probably agree with most of what that religion stood for. I guess it'd be similar with PU - if a T2Mer made a nasty comment about you when you were first at a Rashoud facility, you may well decide that PU is a total loss from that point on.Having said that, if PCs start to wax lyrical about 'sterility cocktails' & the like, then yes, that's using 'player-knowledge' & should be discouraged. An effective way for a ST to discourage such 'cheating' is to simply make the PCs' assumptions, in his game, untrue - there is no Proteus, Nova sterility is just a natural occurance, etc. - in the end the PCs will either realise they were wrong to listen to all the gossip, or get reputations as raving-mad conspiracy nuts (which, in fact, they are)! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaCorp Posted May 9, 2003 Author Share Posted May 9, 2003 Finbar - as far as I know, nobody knows about the contraceptives in character. It's one of the things I would have preferred WW to leave out of the rulebook, really - there's so much Proteus information in there that it's not even good enough to merit the term 'world's worst kept secret'.Bahamut - response to the death of Slider does, I suppose, depend on the world which your storyteller chooses to run his tale in. However, I've not seen much to indicate that Utopia was fingered more than the Teragen etc.I've not read anything to indicate that Utopia goes 'after' the Novas employed by other agencies (Argus, DeVries, etc) in any actively hostile manner unless they're going against what Utopia stands for, but I'll freely admit that you've all probably seen a lot more source material than I have (I discovered a lot from reading old threads - Divis Mal, an Aeonite?!?).Profpotts - some good points, especially about first impressions of Utopia at the M-R. Thing is, none of the Novas in our game other than mine actually went to one It's obvious that people can have legit reasons to fear/hate Utopia, but I still believe that balanced against the amount of good they've done (compare the world now to the gameworld, and most of the positive changes have been Utopia-inspired) most of the accusations would be laughed off, ridiculed, or just dismissed.Utopia, the organisation that cured AIDS and cancer, sterilising Novas?Utopia, the organisation which created the Shiny Heroes of T2M, involved in the death of one of their own?It all seems a bit far fetched to be taken as gospel by so many people IC, on the basis of vague rumour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knave Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 People don't like Utopia because they appear too altruistic. People don't trust that.-Knave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Finbar Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 Contraceptives: I've always found it to be lacking in taste, but after reading up on Director Thetis, I can understand why....Also, by 2010, it becomes in-play knowledge...Too many people know about it (including the Teragen!), and too many can verify them...Not too mention what's happening at Bahrain, and a few other places...FR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harlequin Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 firstly, welcome to EON NovaCorp, hope to see you around, and don't be afraid to drop in any time. ::cool i took it differently actually. after i read up on thetis it made even less sense to me. she's supposed to be a tactical genius on top of being a master at manipulation (infering a great understanding of people and their reactions) and being on of the smartest humans around. to me it doesn't follow that she's try something that obvious for several reasons:1. no secret stays that way.2. novas are too intelligent not to notice pretty quickly3. novas tend to become unstable mantally and emotionally4. they would find the source5. if you make some one angry enough (by taking away their one true unalienable right) they will hunt you to the end of the earth6. thetis is not trying to start a war, she's trying to gain controlhopefully that makes sense. but to me, the sterility thing was possibly the weakest point in the books. the urge to reproduce is too strong in humans to try to repress without making the reciepent mighty mighty angry when they find out they will never have children or grand children. it's possibly the most illogical thing i've heard. it would be a truly stupid thing to try, unless the intent is to start a war. which if i read it correctly it was not. that make sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sprocket Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 What tipped me off about Utopia's untrustworthiness was their having Jimmy Carter effectively give P.U. his blessings at their debut press session! Politics aside, that goober (pun intended) is a jinx! ::laugh ::laugh Seriously, though- In our own world, if anything sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The setting for Aberrant is a funhouse-mirror reflection of our world, but you can bet that truism hasn't changed! Yeah, Utopia managed to recruit large numbers of novas to their cause- and those helpful drugs they received from the kind folks at the Rashoud Labs must've seemed like a life presever would to a drowning man. After seeing how eager the parents of some of my former classmates were to drug their kids insensible at the slightest sign of "psychological problems" (read: independent thought), it's easy to see how Utopian novas are trained to see their drugs as the answer to all one's problems.Somehow, it seems that this policy of enforced drug addiction (even without the sterility-inducing agent) is/was/will be a major root cause of the Aberrant War. Instead of dealing with their powers in a rational and responsible manner, they try to find a "magic potion"-type drug to make it all better when the inevitable power backlash and Taint accumulation gets bothersome. "Hey, we're novas!" they say. "We can take it, and come up smiling- once we've had our pills, of course."Just one more compelling reason for Project: Rewrite... ::devilangel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NovaCorp Posted May 10, 2003 Author Share Posted May 10, 2003 We're up to late 2009 now in our game - no idea if our storyteller plans to let out a few of Proteus' secrets or make up his own timeline and events, to be honest, but it's becoming clear what will happen if anything does come out.Maybe it's just me being a Utopian IC and thinking people should show a little more respect for the organisation after all they've done in the world background Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quasar Posted July 22, 2003 Share Posted July 22, 2003 Why are PCs so anti-Utopia? *I* think It is because of the content in the front of the Abby core rules! all about slider and all those other things that PC's just didn't need to see. White Wolf calls this background/flavour text , I call it Propaganda You are not alone my friend, my players don't want to play Utopia simply because of that crap in the front of the book. I wrote white wolf and asked them why they did it and that I feel that it has wrecked a nice piece of the game.The reply was...A crafty storyteller could work around it. How can I possibly work around it when they won't even give playing a Utopian a chance?!?any ways the text in the front of the book was great info indeed, but not for general consumption.Way to much stuff was revealed in that text. it should have been saved for a storyteller book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayre el KaBeer Posted July 22, 2003 Share Posted July 22, 2003 I'll probably get linched for this but... Why not go a TeenTomorrow game, have them do their good deeds without the consent of Project Utopia. Start it off like all the cartoons you see where the kids save the world. Then start having them discover things, bad things (Queue melodramtic music!), shatter their dreams then have them come back with a chunk of downtime, passed and have them decide if they go millitant or decide to right the wrongs and clean up PU. As for the info at the start, I agree it was too much, but overall I also think that it can be worked around.*Sorry if anything like this has already been posted in this thread, I really can't remember anything from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quasar Posted July 22, 2003 Share Posted July 22, 2003 Why not go a TeenTomorrow game?That's one that I am running for my troupe (<--who came up with that name anyways?) it's the only way they will play Utopia game. So I have thrown them through a lot of senarios and they love playing teens!The TN2M characters in this game includeinig small bios can be seen on my site (outdated but what can you do with no net connection for a while?)Quantum Continuum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metaphysician Posted November 2, 2006 Share Posted November 2, 2006 In the campaign I'm in, the PCs distrust Project Utopia because two of them ran across proof of some really horrific deeds. . . and a third was taken out of Utopia custody and tortured for information.Of course, when your new arrivals via time travel, that sometimes happens. ::cool Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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