A Holiday

Just a brief note.

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

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

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!

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.

Talinz and Crime 2: Support (Part 2)

Specialist Cybercrime Attachments

Within more well equipped countries, Specialist Cybercrime Attachments (SCAs) are the norm. These are individuals that generally reside within national hubs of police departments and are then assigned out to work as attachments to investigations with extensive technological elements. Within the national departments, individuals might have their own specialisations. Though all are experts in computer science; that alone is such a wide and varied field that one operative is incapable of being suited to all tasks. An SCA worker might be a specialist in cryptography, Talinz programming, electronic warfare, or another related discipline.

The addition of an SCA operative to an investigation is often a source of friction to a working police department. The new operative is often unacquainted with the particular department’s work culture, and frequently these individuals are stereotyped as being unwilling to learn, especially owing to their very temporary residence in each department. In addition, high-profile cybercrime cases have a tendency of granting media overexposure to the specialist operative, leading to ire from some investigators who may do much of the case’s actual legwork.

Nevertheless, these individuals are often invaluable assets to the case at hand. While some cases may merely require the aid of an SCA operative agent remotely from the assigned department, often in longer term or white collar cases, all SCA operatives are given extensive training in order to be capable of being dropped into the field with a firearm response team if the deactivation and extraction of data from Talinz units, rapid data recovery, or entering a protected computer network locally is required. Despite this, it should be noted that in countries which restrict firearms to specialist firearms squads, SCA operatives are not likely to be equipped with any weaponry.

Before an insertion, most SCA operatives are likely to prepare software for the raid. Much of this is bespoke, written using what is known about the target system, exploiting backdoors that are likely to be specific to it. Whilst minor modifications may have to be made in the moment, the actual act of hacking together a useful security program can take hours or even days, and so is almost never done on the spot. When trying to break through a system’s security protocols, these operatives often have their hands full. The squads assigned to work with them sometimes consider these individuals to be ‘dead-weights’, as although they extract necessary data and perform a valuable service, they also do little to support the team in a live-fire situation, with the exception of putting others in danger.

The Mad Hatter Program

Recently, a number of governments have joined an international initiative known as the Mad Hatter Program. Countries without enough Specialist Cybercrime Attachments are loaned individuals convicted of cybercrime offenses, services they provide in exchange for a decrease in their custodial sentence. Typically, this is a decrease of six months for every ten the individual was sentenced, per assignment they perform for the program.

Whilst taking part, individuals are under constant supervision, and are forced to wear a collar that prevents unauthorised interaction with electrical items within a small radius of the wearer. Such a device records the GPS coordinates of the individual, allowing the police to quickly locate and detain a potential escapee. Escapes are rare, though a member of the program having their collar deactivated by an accomplice, and using this as an opportunity to disappear, is not unknown. Well performing members of the program are often offered jobs with their home country’s SCA after they serve their sentence, and when compared to the heavily extended sentences levied against those that escape the program if they are caught, cooperation is heavily incentivised.

Members of the program are generally treated with suspicion and disdain by members of the police force they are pushed towards interacting with, though most members of the program are minor offenders who are likely to be released after the completion of only a few operations. Members of the program tend to be assigned to less dangerous missions than members of the SCA, as this decreases the chances of a betrayal and escape ending badly for the supporting firearms squad. This, if anything, increases the disdain these individuals receive from enforcement authorities, as they are frequently seen as taking the ‘easy’ tasks – when really they are just taking the less lethal. Some countries choose to invert this methodology, instead arguing that such individuals are more ‘expendable’ than their highly trained operatives. This practise is considered distasteful by many of the participant countries in the Mad Hatter program.

  

The Flaws in Fourth

So, with fifth edition D&D on the way, it being the biggest name in our little hobby, I thought it was only fair to wave a fond farewell to fourth with a bit of a retrospective. I’m not normally one to do ‘xyz could have been done better’ opinion posts, especially since I hardly think I am in a position to dole out advice as a critic.

But these things keep on coming up in conversation, so I thought I might as well get it all down on paper.

For a start, I love D&D4. I think it’s an absolutely great RPG. It is and will probably continue to be my favourite iteration of the D&D brand name. It scratches a lot of itches that a lot of other RPGs just don’t manage for me. I love the grid-based tactical combat, I love the party roles, I love the balanced designs of the classes and the way that progressive customisation works in each tier, from theme through to epic destiny. I enjoy the looser, more freeform out of combat options, and I like that in skill challenges they tried to tabulate and reinforce what good GMs have been doing for years. I think the second Dungeon Master’s Guide is one of the best supplements for new GM advice D&D has ever put out.

Due to the relatively short lifespan of D&D fourth edition (2008-2012, taking Menzobarranzan to be the last hardcover 4^th edition release, compared to the 5 year lifespan of 3.5 alone), the fierce competition from Pathfinder, and the noticeably ‘retro’ design aesthetic of the coming 5^th edition, it has come under some attack as an edition that ‘failed’. Whilst it should be noted that fourth edition still made a very large amount of money compared to most RPG systems out there, it has certainly lost its dominant position in the market. So I wanted to spend a short time covering some of the bits and bobs that appeared to me to be missteps during the edition’s lifespan.

1. The OGL and the GSL

Well…. This isn’t 4^th edition’s fault, as it happened during its predecessor, 3.5. The OGL – the Open Gaming License – made it easy for third party publishers to work with and publish for the system. It added a great deal of vitality and variation to 3.5. Ultimately, however, it ended up in Pathfinder, effectively a slightly rebalanced 3.5, which severed the prospective customer base. I have little doubt that had Pathfinder never launched, some that switched to it would have moved on to the ‘New D&D’ in time, with the split being more similar to the 2^nd/3^rd release.

But there was one other licensing problem. The 4^th edition Game System License was notably quite restrictive. Clearly the intention here was to prevent a 4^th edition Pathfinder equivalent from occurring, splitting the player base again come the inevitable 5^th edition. The GSL is remarkably restrictive, and made the production of 4^th edition content quite difficult. The otherwise wonderful character builder software that Wizards provided also refused to support modification, meaning third party content could never be added to an individual’s system. With this, a lot of third party content makers made the move to Pathfinder, whereas they may have been more inclined to support an edition that was, in turn, more willing to support them.

2. Adventure Support

Towards the end of its lifespan, 4^th edition got some brilliant adventure books. Undermountain is great, and the Shadowfell and Menzobarrenzen books do some wonderful things with helping DMs create really evocative environments for players to adventure in. These are most notably location books, not adventures, however.

4^th edition had pretty poor adventure support. Keep on the Shadowfell, as an introductory adventure to D&D, lacked both Dungeons AND Dragons. Flippancy aside, a lot of effort was placed on the combat side of those early adventures, which led to a lot of them feeling like a bit of a slog from meatsack to meatsack, with few interesting NPC interactions and non-combat opportunities written in. This probably contributed fairly heavily to the often-perceived notion that 4^th ed “isn’t an RPG”, which I hear quite regularly. Combat is great in 4^th, but the focus placed on it in those early adventures makes it feel like it can be little else.

D&D editions are often defined by their iconic adventures. Every player remembers their first delve into the Tomb of Horrors, or when they found the Temple of Elemental Evil, or the Keep on the Borderlands. In third edition we returned to the Temple, and we found the Forges of Fury. I think fourth, sadly, lacked any modules of that kind of calibre throughout its lifespan. 

3. Presentation

Fourth got a lot of stick for being ‘video-gamey’. Powers are the oft-ridiculed part of the core experience of the edition. The concept of a fighter possessing once every encounter or once every day resources, however, is not actually a new one. Stunning Fist, for example, is a 3.5 Fighter core feat that gives the fighter a 1/day move for every 4 fighter levels. As a progression of the Tome of Battle classes of 3.5, the Fighter, to me, felt like a natural progression of some of the best elements of 3.5 design.

The real problem with powers, I feel, was in their presentation. The codified power boxes can often easily be expressed in a sentence format, and whilst this might make them slightly less clear to read, it makes them feel less ‘gamey’. I once ran a game for a group of die hard 3.5 fans and, in changing the formatting of 4^th edition powers - and not telling them they were playing 4^th edition - managed to resolve a number of their grievances with the system (At will Manoeuvres were changed to ‘Fighter’s Manoeuvres’, with the wording of say, the ‘Tide of Iron’ power changed to ‘On your turn, you may make a special combat manoeuvre against your target’s AC. On a hit…’ etc.).

The other criticism powers get is that it is almost always preferable to use your powers rather than a dumb cool thing with the environment of the fight. It was a problem I experienced, and one I remedied by including hidden terrain ‘powers’, roughly equivalent to an encounter power, to reward the inventive player. This was later codified in the DMG2, but I think a trick was missed in not including them from the start. They would certainly have helped to alleviate a lot of concerns with the system, and it surely must have been flagged in playtesting.

4. Essentials and the core brand change

When I start this section, I want to make clear: Essentials wasn’t the problem, but rather the marketing. D&D Essentials came out roughly half way through 4^th edition’s lifespan, in late 2010. Within it, it presented a number of simpler classes, and a different format for class features and character growth. While not all these classes are to my taste, they aren’t the problem.

Calling the brand Essentials, and presenting a lot of the new ideas as the ‘new core fighter’, ‘new core wizard’, and so on left a sour taste in the mouth of a number of players, who were worried that Essentials would be D&D 4.5. The presentation of the new Essentials classes as ‘introductory’ or ‘alternative’ builds would have probably garnered more support for the line from the existing player base. Heck, harkening back to the old division of D&D would have been preferable, by calling it ‘Basic 4th’.

The second problem was that once Essentials came out, older classes were left by the wayside as ‘complete’, only receiving support in Dragon. The first two years of 4^th edition relied heavily on the ‘Power’ books – expanding classes with a new build and some new powers that those already in a campaign could easily bolt into their character. Later Essentials and Players Options kits instead focused on introducing new builds that did not interact as heavily with older builds. It presents a number of cool new concepts to play with, but little for the player already in the campaign, with the exception of a page or so of feats. The two non-Psionic classes in the third Players Handbook, the Seeker and the Runepriest, suffer from a severe lack of support, as they only have one book and a few dragon articles to their name. The former, especially, has a number of problems as a class, such that it really needs additional content to adequately fulfil its combat role as well as other controllers.

So as we wave in 5^th edition, and I carry on playing and running 4^th because I enjoy it, I wanted to look back at some of the things I felt it did wrong, because I love it very dearly. The designers put their heart and soul into a game that was, if nothing else, unique among its kind. And it is fun. And I think that is the highest reward that can be given.

Talinz and Crime 2: Support (Part 1)

Police work in the current situation is a demanding and often thankless task. While petty crime has changed little, and carries with it many of the same struggles as the modern day, cybercrime is on the increase, and organised crime has revolutionised its command structures to make use of robotic personnel. To combat these changes, alterations to existing police structures were required, and two specialist divisions have risen to prominence in many nations. In addition, a new section of Interpol specifically dedicated to Talinz related crime has proven key in combatting international threats in an ever more connected world.

The Talinz Corruption and Misuse Bureau

In the wake of the Avogadro Incident, the two officers that lead the investigation, Gaston Lambert – a French Interpol agent – and Sara Abbasov – a local Azerbaijani expert – put forth a joint proposal to Interpol. To employ a number of new, specialist agents to deal with international incidents of Talinz related crime.  This division would co-opt members from the existing white-collar, computer and smuggling crime divisions, to track all angles of potential disturbance, from corruption at the company level to the distribution of illicit modules.

Aiding in managing this huge amount of data is ARTHUR, an unintelligent supercomputer network. Cyber-crime divisions across the world report to the gigantic database automatically, all related criminal records and files being uploaded and provided to all other terminals. Some claim sharing all this information with other governments is too great an infringement of personal privacy, others regard the decision as necessary to track the global nature of these crimes, when a file on the internet can be as dangerous as a bullet in a gun.

One of the major roles currently of the Talinz Corruption and Misuse Bureau is the issuing and distribution of ‘Grey Notices’, an Interpol Notice informing relevant countries that police have sufficient evidence to assume that an individual that may be crossing borders is robotic in nature, and thereby an illegal Talinz unit. The receiver of the Grey Notice has full control over their response to such a warrant, and the effort that is placed in capturing such a Talinz unit varies remarkably from country to country. In common parlance of liberated Talinz communities, however, the Grey Notice has gained a level of infamy akin to the Black Spot.

Most police officers will rarely meet an agent from the Talinz Corruption and Misuse Bureau in person, as a majority of interactions with regular law-enforcement personnel occurs through a secure network, allowing agents to observe moving data and provide remote assistance from the ARTHUR Institute in Lyon. However, response teams and individual agents are regularly dispatched to deal with crimes of significantly large magnitude to support local law enforcement. In this capacity, they often act as specialists in a law enforcement team that lacks them, or lacks those of a high enough proficiency to tackle to current threat. 

Talinz Heavy Support

When dealing with Talinz units, some police departments have taken the ruling that there is no overkill. As a unit can lose all limbs and still function, provided there is no damage to the central processing unit, armed response teams have taken to using electromagnetic weaponry to deal with these threats. Most criminal syndicates move the hard drive processing unit to an unexpected and frequently random part of the body to prevent incapacitation of the unit by a simple firing drill. In response to public outcry at rising officer fatality rates, many police departments set up specialist Talinz Heavy Support units. Beyond an armed response team, these units are generally only called in under very specific circumstances, and are often unavailable to officers fighting in more urban areas.

The main reason for this is that heavy support is a grav tank. Most police departments share one between districts. Most police departments only need one. Most never use them.

Large and bulky, grav tanks were an innovation early in the Talinz War, using tilt-rotor technology to navigate uneven surfaces and ‘fly’ though they cannot achieve a lift beyond a few cm, due to the weight of the machine. However, these heavily armed units are often equipped with powerful ion cannons. Provided the police department is fine with shutting out all electrical communication in a mile cubed of the incident area for around 2 or 3 hours, and informs all potential aircraft to plot a route above or around the shot-site, such weaponry can prove remarkably effective. To counter such methods, many criminal syndicates have started to supplement Talinz units with humans carrying night vision goggles, to be deployed when the lights go out.