Tuesday 19 August 2014

A Holiday

Just a brief note.

I will be on holiday for a few weeks. Your regular Talinz service will resume mid-September.

Thursday 14 August 2014

Talinz project Timeline

Something a few people have suggested is a more concrete timeline for the Talinz project. I originally wanted to keep things a bit looser, but eventually just decided to take the leap, especially if it will make running games easier for folks. Remember though, games can work at any time before 'present' in the Talinz Project timeline, so I will probably add bits and pieces on to either end and inbetween as I go.

2020: TexLima forms

2044: The Talos Project begins. Originally intended for disaster relief purposes, research unintentionally advanced AI processing capabilities and complexity onehundredfold. This allowed them to self-pilot in disaster areas, as opposed to the piloted brief.

2073: First successful deployment of a Talos unit, at an earthquake zone in Turkey. The project is deemed a resounding success.

2074: Talos units are rebranded as 'Talinz'. The patents and blueprints for construction are released as open access files.

2076: First military Talinz unit. The Australian government reveals a new defence unit.
          Texlima is rebranded as Texlinz

2077: China, the United States, United Kingdom. Russia, Japan, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Egypt, South Africa and the UAE reveal similar military units.
          With the Chilean Government's contract, Texlinz is now the largest producer of Talinz products on the planet.

2080: First deployment of a Talinz unit. Pilots control a squad of units from over a thousand miles away and utilise non-lethal suppression in response to a group of ecological activists occupying a private oil rig in Antarctica. 

2084: Resource disputes are now considered to be the most common cause of war. The UN research council desperately attempts to intervene by pushing funding into alternative energy sources. Critics claim too little is being done too late.

2087: Avogadro Industries is formed.

2090: Hana Electrics forms

2107: Texlinz creates the Vanguard Protocol
          A number of countries in the far south of the Southern Hemisphere enact escalating border skirmishes over ownership of Antarctic drilling rigs, now the last plentiful source of oil remaining.

2109: Antarctic oil drilling facilities are declared international property and granted independence as a UN protectorate. Those that invested greatly in the creation of the provinces are almost unanimously annoyed by these events. Critics suggest this was a political move to lower fossil fuel prices in the Northern Hemisphere by fixing costs through the UN, rather than an attempt to prevent further conflict.

2112: A number of countries in the Southern Hemisphere withdraw from the UN, forming a trade and diplomacy organisation referred to as the 'Southern Ocean League' (Or SOL).

2114: The Grey Hand forms

2122: The Talinz War begins. The poorly defended UN protectorate of Antarctica is assaulted by an alliance of the Southern Ocean League seeking to reclaim lost ground. Talinz units are used almost solely by the aggressor, but this does little to prevent real loss of human civilian life, as the Antarctic state had little infrastructure and few Talinz units to deploy in defence. When UN member states respond, the war is fought on multiple fronts. Conflict spills over into all continents.

2124: Thanks to wartime funding, an efficient cold fusion reactor is constructed in New South Wales. Work begins on a miniaturised version for Talinz deployment, and avenues of potential weapons research are explored.




2125: The Baku Treaty is signed after mutual exhaustion. The Talinz War ends. The Southern Ocean League is dissolved under the conditions of the treaty, though few demands are made regarding reparations. The SOL is forced to share design plans for the cold fusion reactor with UN member states.

2126: The Geneva convention is updated, prohibiting the military use of Talinz units and the development of cold fusion weaponry.

2130: The Talinz Fighting League is unveiled, fronted by Texlinz and Landon Corp. The project gains little support in its early days.

2132: Kulgarv Heavy Industries is formed.

2145: First destruction of a Talinz production facility by The Grey Hand, on the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Baku Treaty.

2152: The Avogadro Incident

2157: The Talinz Corruption and Misuse Bureau forms.

2163: The Centre for Humanity forms.


2170: Wakahisa Jun becomes CEO of Hana Electrics.

2176: Hana Electrics begins production of the Kagemusha.

2179: The Mad Hatter Program is established.

2184: Landon Corp releases the Talinz matchmaker software package.

2186: Landon Corp begins producing Talinz units.

2188: Aswege and Modise begin producing units after three years of selling custom components.

2192: The Kookware Heists, Sonia Bah disappears

2193: Tobias Moore kills his partner, who is replaced with a synthskinned Talinz copy. Tobias Moore is not arrested for eighteen months.
         The Nutcracker is performed by a cast of Talinz units, to mixed reviews.

2195: Present Day

Friday 8 August 2014

My Other Projects

I thought I'd take a bit of a time out to tell everyone what I've been working on asides from the Talinz Project. Currently, I have been going through a bit of a GMing dry spot. Though I am a player in two - soon to be three - regular campaigns, I haven't run or facilitated a game myself since early November 2013, almost a year ago, with the exception of some convention one shots.

There have been a few reasons for this. Prime among them has been time. I've been bogged down with real life work, and because I never know when I'll be snowed under or not, it is difficult to commit to a time slot, and the few hours beforehand to prepare.
Second has been energy. Although I have a load of fun frameworks for campaigns in my head, turning them into fun gaming experiences is another matter. Truth be told, I felt the last game I ran was distinctly sub par.
Third among them is medium. Growing into real people adult life has necessitated a move from tabletop to more frequent skype or google hangouts sessions if I want to stay with some of the people I regularly game with. Though we aren't necessarily scattered far and wide (though some are), work commitments often means that getting back from a job, having a wash, something to eat and then heading over to a friend's house doesn't always give time for a great session, especially if you have to wake up at early o'clock the morning after.

In the background, though, I have two projects I am really excited about, so I wanted to tell everyone. The first is very much a fan made thing, a bit of a labour of love that I've been toiling on with a friend of mine for a few months. In 1999, a very big event happened in our childhood, along with that, I expect, of many kids around the world at that time. Pokemon was released. The whole thing was a bit of a craze for a while, and basically dominated popular culture for kids at the time. We were talking toys, video games, tv, spaghetti hoops, the whole caboodle.
But there was never a tabletop translation.
There have been a few attempts of note over the years though, some with their serial numbers filed off, and some that have been very much fan translations. But we felt like giving our own game a shot, and trying to make something that reflected what we wanted from a Pokemon game. I'm pretty pleased with how the results are shaping up, and chances are it might be the next campaign I run. It is built to capture the innocent feeling of heading out on a journey with your friends and encountering marvelous beasts that can perform wonderful feats, and I really think it succeeds in that respect. The system is simple, but deep, much like the videogame, and an 'Aspects and Tag' system, inspired by games like Ubiquity, Fate and *World, but with a very deeply Pokemon-ny feel to it, allows strategy and field manipulation to change a fight in interesting ways.

The second is my baby, Humours. Humours is a playing card-based urban fantasy investigation RPG. The players are all individuals that perceive time in a different way to the average human. Precognitives see the future a few second away, constantly living ahead in time. Postcognitives can access the history of objects and places. Farsighters can look far ahead to obtain glimpses of possible futures, while Clairvoyants see space without the restrictions of time, allowing them to perceive regions miles away from their person.
Groups of these individuals are frequently forced to band together to protect or prevent the future they see occuring, putting them into conflict from others that share the same abilities, but desire to push the timeline in a different direction. On the sidelines, mysterious creatures plot to stop time altogether, to grant them freedom to move where they wish, by creating an eternal tween. The people of this world do not perceive them, but they know of them. Fey folk.

There will be more Talinz Project content coming this weekend though, dont worry!

Friday 1 August 2014

Talinz: Growing up in the future



Although they are a highly advanced technology, to many, Talinz units are now just a fixture of everyday life, rather than something to be excited about. In this respect, a generational gap is coming into being. The oldest generation still living saw the Talinz as weapons of war in their youth, their children have grown to adulthood after the treaty, and seen their induction into the workforce. In turn, their children, the youngest generation, are now used to the sight of a unit on the street doing groceries, chaperoning a child to school, or even teaching them in class. Their experience with the units in their formative years will often greatly affect their politics and perceptions of them.
Current teenagers and young adults have never known a life where Talinz have not been an integral part of society. There is certainly an age skew towards younger participants where involvement in Talinz rights and the Talinz liberation movement is concerned. Some put this down to the typically more ‘revolutionary’ stance of younger generations, and expect that many will grow out of it. Others claim this is a growing movement from individuals that understand the significance of the technology on a culturally deeper level than those before them.
Almost all Young people have been in extensive contact with at least one Talinz unit at some point in their life. Although not every family can afford one, many school curriculums include some form of education about the creation and maintenance of Talinz units as standard. More remote schools often utilise Talinz teachers, allowing teachers to be in multiple classrooms at once through piloting technology. After-school robotics clubs are common and Talinz fighting leagues between schools have become remarkably popular of late. When a child comes home from school, they will be bombarded with advertisements featuring their favourite Talinz fighters, dramas featuring Talinz as plot points, sport with Talinz competitors, and the news reporting recent demonstrations and political strife caused by the ubiquity of these robots. Whilst their parent’s generation may work with Talinz units every day, they are not as integrated or immersed with the culture as their children, and know a world without it.  
There are a number of other, more subtle influences that perhaps even the Talinz generation are not aware of. The Centre for Humanity, an international anti-Talinz think-tank and political pressure group, recently published startling survey figures suggesting that many of the youth of the Talinz generation could not cook, clean or operate basic electrical appliances. These individuals, the study claimed, had grown up with Talinz house assistance, and had never seen any need to learn how to perform basic household chores. There is an assumption among these individuals, the think-tank suggests, that they will always have a Talinz unit to work for them that, they conclude, leads to unhealthy levels of dependency. They have been quizzed on their sampling techniques for this survey since, but many will agree that it potentially raises a valid point.
These pressure groups often suggest that the overwhelming presence of Talinz units in the lives of the youth of today has normalised them to their existence, and clouded their judgement of what is real and what is not. Most consider Talinz to be tools, and stress that forming friendships with such beings is bizarre and unnatural, just as one does not become friends with a car, or a toaster. Whilst some groups argue for a continuation of the status quo, some anti-Talinz groups argue that the robots should be decommissioned completely, their jobs redistributed to “honest human workers”.
Recent developments in designing Talinz units to be perfectly compatible with their owners have raised a number of concerns from more conservative groups, also. Many anti-Talinz pressure groups suggest that the youth could be lead astray by the prospect of building a romantic partner, falling into a ‘fake’ love with a being created to care about them. Some have claimed this is the beginning of the moral decay of society as we know it. Most Talinz rights groups consider this argument to be a straw man, however. The practise is uncommon, and Talinz-human romantic relationships are considered to be the purview of a marginalised niche and are derided even within Talinz rights circles. In more liberal groups, this opinion tends to change based on whether the Talinz unit was created for the purpose of becoming a partner to the human, or whether the relationship evolved naturally, with the latter understandably being considered less taboo.