A case for the anti-establishment faction and their mechanics

[Hari Seldon]

FoE's sufficient reason​

For me zealous faith as an oddly tolerated while openly seditious group was a misstep in giving FoE a game niche and mechanics. While they may or may not in initiation still maintain a mysterious nature and the culture of a cult, for envisioning a gameplay style it’s better to look at them as technologically skilled revolutionaries. Their purpose and goal is to enact political change (to whatever degree) or disrupt the TU system as best they can in a deeply asymmetrical conflict that makes their game play more digital and physical espionage, weighing practicalities of resistance, manipulation and mobility.

MR does have a decent niche for players looking to be against the established order for political*/ideological reasons. There is viable action space for players who feel the desire to be anti-corporate abuses, anti-authoritarian or even just anti-a particular law or anti-leaders of X faction. Let’s still call this play style FoE for short as for the time being it’s as good a name as any and in general quite evocative. Having gameplay for this would cater to an additional interest/motivation of players while adding to the faction balance and game world. If made a broad and tolerant church of anti-current game state groups, linked by patronage with advanced tech skills, it could also give the dissatisfied a place where they can go and work to try and enact a specific change or make their displeasure known rather than just log off or retire to their least hated/the most decentralised faction and act against that faction’s niche in so far as they do anything. This said how wide a diaspora is accepted in the play style needs careful consideration to avoid toxic behaviours.

Let’s use SYN to mean the traditional BoS style criminal group. The SYN motivation is generally in accumulating power through wealth and members, just like corporations, but by using illegal methods. SYN leaders might use power and influence to enact political changes so their lives and business are easier to profit by and thus increase their control, again just like Corporations, but for FoE the changes or degradation of the system would be the point. FoE can’t exist without the TU while SYN exists despite the TU. Without a significant shift in how factions work (and I won’t be posting that spiel again don’t worry) the anti-system group needs differentiation from a general “unlawful behaviour” faction for the same reasons the TDC and CPC aren’t a “government authority” faction. The players want to have different roles in the game world and do different things for different reasons, the faction’s unique mechanics to support and differentiate that are designed and implemented accordingly as separate.

The divergence in goals (and thus what mechanics they might use) is particularly relevant if Bio wasn’t trolling and there is a sincere plan for SYN to be designed no different in faction operation from the corporations. Should the HC have the ability to pull control, access and resources back away from the decentralised departments level (if they so wish) and seize some control over all the gangs the HC aren’t members of, it makes the faction more monolithic and focused on the HC’s goals and thus not applicable as a catch all for differently motivated unlawful play. A mafia boss successful enough to crown themselves king of SYN that wants to sell drugs to corporate players and mercenaries is not going to be overly happy with a subunit that is spending faction resources and time fighting customers so they can disrupt map services for everyone for philosophical reasons and drag the faction into conflicts the HC might not want. The HC shouldn’t have to endure such a group that isn’t very aligned to the play style and goals of the HC or the other faction members that support them.

To summarise, SYN play is ignoring the law and ducking enforcement, FoE would be attacking the system were they can using the means available. It would be no more appropriate to have an persistently anti-government rebel group in the mafia than in the mercenaries or as a corporate department, it is not the faction behaviour.

The best reasons not to include FoE would be if revolutionary agent gameplay is too likely to be too problematic for other factions or if it seems like there won’t be enough player interest in the niche to justify the effort of developing it. Please do say if you think there is other error above and reason the concept above can be housed without a faction to call its own or if there is a niche for FoE better suited to the game and player interest that cyber-rebels.

Mechanics​

Let's assume you are with me so far and move on to what sort of mechanics we can suggest now we are stepping back from faith based terror. The FoE specific mechanics are around sabotage and ideas that support espionage. @Rian Felix and I covered some of this on discord but thought I would put them in a more readable space and invite people to add to and critique them.

Hacking-
Special hacking, not your garden variety of guess the combination in X tries to get access for a time but a more involved gameplay loop. This will need expanding and might incur prohibitive dev costs but some sort of digital space mini-game or coding type puzzles would be nice, they can have a push your luck nature to dive further and further into control of what you are hacking. As you go you can unlock options like changing the rules it runs by, erasing any sign of hacking, making the object need repair to work again, be more vulnerable to you in the future and so on. There is a lot of depth this can go into by specifying what objects can have what actions open at what penetration levels and reach even quasi-meta things like an HQ hack giving FoE temporary read only access to another factions chat.

Messing with a whole map-
A map effecting TU Control/Compliance level that FoE can negatively impact through a campaign of activity like targeting territory objects over periods of time with it getting worse the further their hacking goes without being either detected or effectively countered. There could be a few other actions FoE can take to interact with this system like killing CPC/TDC/Gov/Map owning faction players or releasing Xenos but these are more abstract. This is separate from crime levels as that always has trade off of positives for the owner, a lack of control instead makes things bad for owners and possibly users to. You never want FoE in your space but you want them in your enemies lands.

For the progression of control loss there can be thresholds at which services suffer effects (on a permanent basis beyond targeted hacking, this is sort of planting an autonomous virus) and the FoE agents involved could choose a specific additional negative like a reverse R&D path or have a particular service suffer a higher degree of failure. How exactly this is actioned may need testing, starting with just a few systems glitching (terminals over charging or working for free for a period of time) but it should be capable of effecting all tech/network based services and at the top levels turning services off and frying developments thus demanding reinvestment. Storage, Vortex Gates, crime snapshot interaction, R&D choices that provide info or functionality to implants like Xeno Threat level and location, production terminals, markets, you name it and it can be targeted. As a final step if truly not properly stopped, FoE either gets to just take everything over &/or turn everything off for a map. Recovery from this catastrophic state would involve concerted effort, investment and possibly TDC or private space ships to ferry people.

Countering this, atop just preventing FoE agents doing their actions, would be maintenance and repair actions for vulnerable objects, TDC flying the flag and an R&D path deployable to fortify or hardening objects against interference or something to provide a minimum degradation level.

Implants-
Unique and probably mostly illegal implants, there is a large scope here for creating play patterns. If ground up production is too far a step into Corporate play style maybe this can instead be modifying existing implants to have overridden functionality.

List to add to as ideas crop up:

• This has been brought up several times and would be a good fit for the sneaky faction. Chameleon implant that randomises your appearance, name and apparent faction unless countered with a specific scan. You can combine with others to a build around this, one implant can scan another player to enter the data into a second implant or shared deployable that banks it so the chameleon implant can mimic that player for a period that drains the Chameleon’s resources quicker, very effective but uses a lot of implant slots. An important limitation to prevent unbalancing combat would have to be it can’t hide weapons you couldn’t bury in clothes (so pistols only) or certain energy weapons/combat drugs futz with it somehow as does weapon discharge. Also maybe a temporary deployable can be made to disrupt it in a radius or cone.
• Remote group FoE hacking, linking either to a deployable left in a region or to a physically present FoE agent’s implant. For none routine actions this lets FoE collaborate on a particular target and probably certain top end effects should demand FoE groups working in concert.
• The police scanner, an implant that can provide information on the presence and location of a particular faction on a map. This should probably have to tie into either a none surface level hack of some map object or the use of a deployable and have gradations that provide better quality info the more investment there is.
• Data implant, something that lets you take a snapshot of a certain system's data once you have hacked deep enough. This would be useful for making them information brokers.
• Neural Links, implants that can be grouped in a short range network so members can share mental resources. It might make a single member harder to stun as they share a pool of whatever that damages and might have a mode where they combine regeneration of this pool for a particular period.

Combat-
This being a FoM game there will certainly be shooting for all factions but FoE probably doesn’t need extra channelling into being a paramilitary force. While I am sure there are combat implications for other suggested mechanics, FoE might be best without anything designed from the ground up to give them a direct combat focus. Slightly better psionic weapons (if those are still a thing) is a nice flavour addition for a faction that might have a bit of a technological edge/digital hive mind going on, that isn’t a particularly faction defining play pattern though.

Production-
FoE could be a purveyor of a combat buffing addictive digital narcotic. If there is the entertainment stat system so much the better for this. I would like to see it as a metaverse of sorts, maybe one that has combat simulation aspect as well for people to test things out as much as getting the buff. You know kung fu.

FoE could also produce or modify the suggested droids to make them better in one direction or another that would otherwise be considered illegal.

Riots-
This is a bit left field, potentially as part of the control system or using a linked but discreet “discontent” system** NPC citizen mobs can spawn that are hostile to TU factions, map owning faction members and/or anyone not native (having their primary rental) on the map. If left for more than a short time they start destroying territory developments and businesses belonging to those they view as valid targets, it would be a form of reset for the map for the owner having let discontent spiral. Having players just shoot these mobs or the map in that status that causes them for prolonged periods can cause the potential spread of the riots.

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*It is important to note here that this is not the same as having an opposing government to compete with the TU, certainly not to start with. If the game has a second government with its own army, police system, corporations (or the ability to have corporation flip between them) it moves the “faction” part of the game a step further out to a national identity and a far less interesting Star Wars type dynamic. FoE is also not best as a GoM 2.0 peace and brotherhood activist moment, while PR and subversion sub-units might have a place the faction’s core should be directly confrontational and effective rather than just noisy.

**A white rabbit for an already dubious idea, the discontent level of a map could be an interlacing of values pulled from comparative service pricing for civilians, control and crime levels within a period of time, effects from things along the lines of FoE hacking billboards, and finished with numbers determined by government laws/actions which sit on a scale between authoritarian or liberal. Given some government actions might sit outside pure mechanics and even those that are toggles can have a context, I am not sure this can be properly done without a team of GMs dubiously setting the "popular reaction" values or building out a massive system like the CK3 conditional reactions which is too much work for the return to MR.

 

[Rian Felix]

Based and redpilled

/Signed

 

[Banjo]

I liked the main argument and Hari had some good points. It would be nice to see a reply from Bioxide to the OP.
+1 nice read.

 

[Wilbon]

Necro but was thinking about this recently and wanted to thought dump. A surprisingly based take from Hari here by the way.

However; I do have an alternate suggestion for how to incorporate a 'FoE Faction' that is neither a detriment to SYN by becoming a part of it, nor trying to sustain it as it's own faction. IMO, this sort of group archetype should be handled within the Civ Faction - or rather, replace FoE with the Civ Faction.

Whether it exists within SYN or is a faction of its own, a problem with this archetype is that it suffers from an identity crisis — what are they? Who are they? Why do they do what they do? How do they do what they do? What's their lore?

Which directs you to try to develop answers to these questions. Once you have them, the faction then has to attract people to it and what if they disagree with the character of the faction? If you think it's kooky that a SYN department could be opposing the government and (in)directly hurting the rest of SYN through it; what if that sub-unit was actually peace loving and supporting of the TU?

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Allow civs to create departments and more importantly, allow them to toggle off the display of that department everywhere except for GMs. Incorporate many of the various ideas for FoE in terms of mechanics to that civ faction.

What you'll then have is players able to group up and develop the lore, purpose, and methodology of their political groups on their own. Once created, they can then develop their Notoriety (potential game mechanic) and recruit. This separation into a dare I say player-created-faction structure could help the archetype succeed and provide new gameplay loops.

CPC/TDC — The point of having them as Civs and then allowing them to conceal their department is to make them faceless. Think of any extremist group you know of. There may be some public figureheads, but 90% of the organization doesn't advertise that they're part of the organization. They can blend in within other civilians; politicians, people who just want to run businesses, people who don't have any interest in factions/faction politics, other political groups, etc. It then in turn means that CPC/TDC develops a gameplay loop of actually investigating political groups, particularly extremist groups, and trying to uncover their hierarchy and identities. While their job is to then track, hunt, and either capture/kill them — or alternatively provide security in the name of a more friendly political group.

SYN — Primarily to benefit the more violent and extremist groups, SYN could be a major component in their concealment. Providing access to illegal items and concealment items, SYN and it's gangs get another market to participate in. Again, consider an extremist group with a sinister assassination plot on a Senator. Such an event will surely have CPC/TDC security including scanning, deployables, and other defenses. However; SYN could provide these extremist groups with weapons & armor that can bypass security, identity concealers & manipulators, tools and deployables to counter surveillance — whatever else you can think of.

The Corporations will continue to benefit as they do with every player in the game who requires the resources they provide. GoTC will benefit from contracts either to support these groups operations (security, assault forces, etc) or to oppose them (hunting them for the TU).

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I think the biggest issue with this kind of faction has been that the idea has always been to treat it as another faction type and develop it with the same kind of framework when in reality - it needs to be drafted outside of the box. That's where it'll stand to create new gameplay loops.

You could argue the very same approach for SYN, but I believe that SYN's benefit is that it plays a necessary role in the introduction of a lot of illegal materials to the game and its sub-gang system is designed with the idea of gang warfare and inner-faction conflict; which is probably best reserved into a faction structure than to Civs before you get the catastrophe that was FoM Rebirth or whatever the fuck it was called at the end.

 

[Hari Seldon]

In the interests of in some small way justifying the hosting costs, some comments. If I understand you correctly the crux of what you are saying it is more of less-

We don't need FoE as a faction, people can make Civilian clans and purchase tools for any sabotage gameplay they want to get involved in from SYN (the faction for all criminal production) and aim it who they want, which can be anti-system or not. Equally other existing factions can purchase this same access to have new crime gameplay just as they can buy and use drugs, hacks and shoot people. What is the reason to section off any of the above (lets loosely group them as sabotage) mechanics to a discrete faction?

To answer is basically the same not FotD again argument which I think you already understand. Putting it briefly-

Granting mechanics generically has no particular end point beyond taste. In arguing the case that the sabotage gameplay can be open to everyone in the interests of greater customizing for player faction behavior you could argue that so could drug production or sending people to prison. Granting mechanics as options for groups of custom theme/motivation isn't beneficial. Having a place for "customize your own" promises liberty that the GMs shouldn't be offering in the interests of maintain the sandbox's setting and provably will always be used for social based meta motivation that removes the RP from the game to in the best possible case makes it akin to an esport. Players engagement would last only so long as their enjoyment of the mechanics which is unavoidably limited. Having a consistent and engaging background setting for the sandbox that players want to inhabit is a far better evergreen approach.

Player made/themed factions being mechanically supported to take territory, share storage and anything else at all is deeply questionable. You can't really design to give them a proper place in the faction balance because you have no idea who will choose to theme around what. They are also harder to police as they have no inherent theme they are supposed to work within which is not true of the existing clans.

If not a rename of FoE and supposed to be inclusive of players not just unaligned with the anti-system theme but also quite often in opposition, what would be the grounds of grouping them with specific mechanics? A civilian default faction which is linked based purely on social relations either expressed as a lack of them, the lone civilian, or a group that fits and complies with no other faction theme and has no inherent consistency of purpose or factional niche. It ends in Rats, Ponies and ambivalence.

The same argument you made for SYN applied to FoE. FoE would be best as an faction rather than extra mechanics added to civ groups. A clan structure yes but still themed and demanding something of players before they get the sabotage mechanics, a broad church is still a structure.

Something I think we would agree on is that should the anti-system theme not have a sufficient audience, it's better translating the gameplay to be mechanics open to all factions (either directly or via SYN selling) than just being dumped.

If you think it's kooky that a SYN department could be opposing the government and (in)directly hurting the rest of SYN through it; what if that sub-unit was actually peace loving and supporting of the TU?

My point is that if SYN has a genuine design to be more top down as per a corporation/traditional faction which has been stated at one point, should the SYN leadership make the decision it wont tolerate sabotage gameplay from its members then you are leaving no space for that gameplay unless you design one. Using SYN as catch all for criminal behavior is particularly inappropriate if the faction isn't designed to operate as a decentralized broad church of crime.

In terms of the peace loving and supporting notGD instance there isn't a real equivalency here. If SYN is centralized and decided it didn't want members to support the notGD there exist factions to go to for people who want that gameplay of supporting notGD.

Whether it exists within SYN or is a faction of its own, a problem with this archetype is that it suffers from an identity crisis — what are they? Who are they? Why do they do what they do? How do they do what they do? What's their lore?

I do not know that this is true. It isn't surprising FoE seems less engaged with and understood given all other factions are hold overs from FoM and mostly staffed by players with deep connections with the legacy themes. FoE by being not GoM is the only really new faction in MR and thus inherently less popular. It seems to fit less for being new, and it might stay that way but we can't conclude that yet. Not that anyone asked but for my personal taste giving FoE a technological edge is good to explore themes of the futurism of a sci-fi setting vs the frankly quite primordial social dynamics and approach to change we might guess at in the dystopian notGD despite its star spanning nature. It is made even more interesting when you give FoE a philosophical or mystical bent that seems to us antique vs the notGD nominally being a science and objectivism beast that is in our context modern. Brings some yin-yang to the meaning and factional interplay of Mankind Reborn. This however is more specific lore* and while we could write a specific vision of FoE's narrative core I doubt Bio would care, he has his own ideas and the idea can be possibly adapted when players start running things should FoE be a thing.

The useable fundamental of a faction’s identity we are left to articulate is in the gameplay which is to say mechanics that fit a thematic fantasy role that players wish to inhabit. You design factions by giving them a thematically linked toolkit of mechanics distinct from those open for every-player or other factions. The specific background history of the notLED (which is deeply important for the long term health of the game) and exact rank structure is not the important part for if they should be included as a faction to design. They are defined initially just as a police force in the corporate dystopia of the FoMesk world setting, mechanics to support that flow from there. Hopefully that is to be followed with by narratives from the history of the organization to enthrall and inspire players in their own content generation without the full restriction of a theme-park style game that again leans into meta efforts.

In these terms the identity of FoE I have suggested is the theme of technologically backed asymmetrical attack upon the stability of the system other factions represent for political reasons. That and the above mechanics suggestions is the who, what and how. As is appropriate in a player staffed game and a clan faction atop that the exact why is less precisely defined, it just has to fit the theme of being against the IG system.

The point of having them as Civs and then allowing them to conceal their department is to make them faceless. Think of any extremist group you know of. There may be some public figureheads, but 90% of the organization doesn't advertise that they're part of the organization. They can blend in within other civilians; politicians, people who just want to run businesses, people who don't have any interest in factions/faction politics, other political groups, etc. It then in turn means that CPC/TDC develops a gameplay loop of actually investigating political groups, particularly extremist groups, and trying to uncover their hierarchy and identities. While their job is to then track, hunt, and either capture/kill them — or alternatively provide security in the name of a more friendly political group.

This I like very much and think should be expanded to anyone that doesn't have a government backed faction ID/license. As a minimum SYN, FoE and Civs should have this ability (atop Chameleon implant mentioned above) though it can be countered by a notLED being able to tag a member to a known members list (something else to hack) and corps can be given access to for a fee.

It would need careful consideration for how combat would work but all players could have the ability to turn them off and on. There can be laws about if the notLED/notFDC/armed civilians have to walk around with it on or if you just have to visually recognize them or have some scanner implant to pick up an ID tag on weapons or something.

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*Identity base on lore (narrative history) is a none starter. Every faction is up in the air since Chip was brutally dumped. Bio has his ideas unless he is taking an entirely mechanics first approach and planning to bolt on lore later. Unlikely or he would be making a mobile game and we wouldn’t even have factions. For all factions we do get there will necessarily be some dependence on the core notGD lore but similarly the reactionary factions might have characteristics that demand certain aspects of the notGD. To explain presumably you wouldn’t have a sprawling SYN or tolerated independent merc cells if the notGD was a utopia. So the notGD has to be some form of dystopia for the game lore to make sense with what we would expect mechanically from a FoMesk. We will have to see what appeals to Bio’s sensibilities and ChatGTP *ahem* I mean industry professionals from fiver come up with. There is a long rant to be made about developing narrative game setting after the fact. Saying the little everyone already knows: Good sandbox settings in which players see themselves and engage in long term, do not invent lore for mechanics. They put in mechanics that are implementations of well crafted lore people like.

 

[Banjo]

There should be a 2 long didn't read emoji for post reactions

 

[Hari Seldon]

You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.