Let's just say that 99%+ of what people say about PanOceania and its society is false based on the published material and I look forward to discussing the reality of what is actually described in the Infinity setting.
Oh, I wouldn't want to live on either Bakunin or Tunguska. Might do OK on Corregidor, submarine crewman skills are probably generally transferable. Plus, I do a pretty decent approximation of 'badass'. It's mostly a local-culture thing, but it is what most human populations read as 'alpha predator'. Though ironically, most out-of-towners read it as 'friendly'. It's really simple: just keep your eyes wandering around and nod at someone as soon as they make eye contact, then look elsewhere. 99% of thugs read that as "much bigger fish than me", even though all you are doing is acknowledging someone else's presence around you. But for most of the lowest class of goons, that means you are *alert* to what is around you, which by definition makes you not-prey. But PanO strikes me as rather frighteningly robber-baron capitalist, and there's a reason we broke up those monopolies about 100 years ago. I'd need a custom translation-soft for my comlog to live in Yu Jing, though. Much too American in how I present "I am having a problem", when the better starting point would translate from, "I have a concern about X. Who should I address that concern to?" Haqq... Well, I think I'm also too American to deal very well with a state church. Though the weather is probably pretty close to what I deal with in the summer, it gets below freezing in the winter here. Might be survivable. Ariadna? I like my Indian (excuse me, Antipode) attacks on TV on the old westerns. Not happening live, thankyewverymuch.
I vaguely remember someone posting something like this, so it was you :D This is really weird in a big city imo, where people are cramped together, so everyone's trying to give each other space and ignore each other's presence even though they are packed tight in your personal space.
It does speak of great confidence when you can look strangers in the eye and say hello. I have a neighbor here who does that, he also happens to be the richest man in the area, having built the development I live in. So, I suppose his confidence is well placed. lol
That's how you end up with a girlfriend. Just why would you do that to all the whatever million people also happening to living in your city?
I can reverse the question, why wouldn't you say hello to everyone? As far as I can tell there has been no adverse effects. Only positive ones.
Mostly because there are too many people in a city, and I just don't have the resources to care about each. Like there's a limited amount of time and social energy and whatever. Big point of a big city is there are lot's of people there, so you can choose the ones you want to be around. And ignore the rest.
As a Londoner, the prospect of smiling at a stranger in the city gives me heart palpitations. God invented free newspapers for a reason: so you can block out and ignore all other people on the Tube, pretending they aren't actually there as you get pushed into their delightfully sweaty armpit... Back to the topic at hand, I was quite sorry to see the author of the Lonely Artichoke blog had decided to quit infinity, as I had enjoyed reading through a lot of the stuff on there. Batreps would be great, I follow WiseKensai's blog pretty religiously (I play Nomads, primarily Corregidor and Bakunin alongside my MO), as would stuff on different unit types, especially if you are able to canvas other's opinions on stuff. End of the day though, I suspect that a fair chunk of it will come out of stuff you want to talk about. If something seems like it would be interesting to you as a Pano player, it almost certainly will be to other people. If you want to then put some structure in where you have certain "sets" of articles (e.g. batreps, unit breakdowns, fluff, etc), then that would guide some of the other content. I will certainly devour anything you produce!
I said nothing about smiling at some random stranger. Just nod at them. That habit produced a surprising result on the various teenage toughs around Shinjuku after sunset. Several groups of them would actually cross the street away from me as I was walking along!
That must be the section I'm remembering most. I remember mention of the church accepting money in exchange for resurrection, as well as government-sponsored resurrection insurance. Regardless: I don't think it was ever a guarantee, and with mines, E/M, hacking, and various other extremely destructive weapons available to regular militaries (our skirmish/black ops game only touches on hand-held and light anti-vehicle weapons) in the game's universe, plus the ordinary human behavior of not wanting to be dead regardless of front-brain awareness of low probability of "real" death, I can't imagine PanO people just meat-grindering themselves over and over again to get the job done. Using C:P, even WITH a cube, combat doesn't seem to present a high probability of successful Cube Extraction. It doesn't look good in the media to see the Fusiliers getting chopped to pieces and the government coffers dropping so quickly, either. I'm excited to see what JCJF cooks up. It's apparent to me that he and I probably have pretty different approaches to the game. it's fun to see other people's thoughts on it.
Worse, I just did the math on how much money it takes to Resurrect someone. It's stated that it takes about 100 years for your various investments to pay for the process, if you don't have Resurrection Insurance paying for it. Assuming that's starting from a life's savings, what would be a million dollars today (sounds like a lot, but isn't that much to save up over 20 years of constant full-time employment), 100 years at 20% (ie, playing the stock market, and the NYSE has consistently averaged 20% annual rate of return since it was founded) ends up being Sixteen and three quarter Trillion dollars. I didn't back-crunch that for inflation. That's in today's dollars. Holy fucking shit. You're talking damn near the entire US Gross Domestic Product in today's dollars to Resurrect someone. I may be off by an order of magnitude in the starting point (initial investment of $100,000 instead of $1mil), to make it more affordable for people at the start, but that still only drops things to 1.67 Trillion dollars, and that's the cost of a new nuclear Submarine. And if the Real Death payout was more than that?!? No wonder things got fugly during Paradiso!
Likely both your and CB's math are wrong on the topic. This is a made up thing. Like "hey writer, write three sentences so resurrection feels common but not too common, while it's also a thing in some exaggerated capitalist setting, ok?".
I think the error is assuming that all of a persons entire life savings in investments is necessary as the starting point. That's certainly not the case in the RPG. Millionaires (or the equivalent) can afford resurrection easily, not just billionaires. Which makes it achievable but hard for middle class people.
Even if the initial investment is only $10,000 (in today's dollars), the kicker is from the fact that it takes an average of 100 years to afford your Resurrection. 24 doublings is a really damn long lever! Multiply whatever your chosen starting investment is by 16,777,216. Though I should admit that 20% is starting to appear really high. The S&P500 index has only managed 7% annually, but my accounting and finance profs all said that 20% was the average return on investment for the NYSE as a whole. That's why businesses usually need a minimum of a 20% return on investment, just to beat the market.
