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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: ^Graff on February 20, 2011, 09:24:49 PM
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The books say that generally, any technology manufactured after WWII is prone to failure around a wizard's "Murphyonic Field," but what about a low-tech design that was built recently? Would a Colt 1911 manufactured in 2011 be any more prone to malfunction than a Colt 1911 built in 1911? Or other devices that didn't use a lot of moving parts or electronics? One of my players is interested in building a character that uses craftsmanship to make specialized tools, and the warden NPC that I have really seems like a SIG kind of gal than a revolver user. Would the presence of a wizard have an effect on this?
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They meant newer tech that has been developed since then, not just stuff that's been made...NEW stuff only.
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So it would make perfect sense for someone to design a "wizard-resistant" car that doesn't require as much maintenance as a jet, as long as he kept to bells and whistles to a minimum? That actually makes things easier for a character, as long as his resources and craftsmanship is good enough.
I'm still thinking about changing the fluff in my game to rule that wizardry really only shorts out sensitive electronics, and stuff that has been hardened (or isn't electronic in nature) doesn't break.
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Yes, I'm pretty sure you could buy all newly manufactured replacement parts for (say) a classic VW bug (something you can do even today) and build up a full "mage tolerant" car. Its not the date of manufacture that matters, but the technology used. Honestly, anything that doesn't have electronic fuel injection should probably be OK, though it might have other systems that get messed with (say, they used a solid state switch for the fuel pump).
I don't think you'd see a commercial car built that way, but a custom car easily could be. Heck, a lot of race cars actually are mechanical throwbacks with no "luxury" electronics in them. If you want a commercial product, you could probably find a motorcycle that was "mage reistent", and could certainly get one made,
As to electronics, I don't think "hardening" would help; I see the effect as being quantum in nature, which means it can mess up anything that uses even simple semiconductors (eg, transistors, diodes).
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Yes, I'm pretty sure you could buy all newly manufactured replacement parts for (say) a classic VW bug (something you can do even today) and build up a full "mage tolerant" car. Its not the date of manufacture that matters, but the technology used. Honestly, anything that doesn't have electronic fuel injection should probably be OK, though it might have other systems that get messed with (say, they used a solid state switch for the fuel pump).
I don't think you'd see a commercial car built that way, but a custom car easily could be. Heck, a lot of race cars actually are mechanical throwbacks with no "luxury" electronics in them. If you want a commercial product, you could probably find a motorcycle that was "mage reistent", and could certainly get one made,
As to electronics, I don't think "hardening" would help; I see the effect as being quantum in nature, which means it can mess up anything that uses even simple semiconductors (eg, transistors, diodes).
Huh. I never thought about the race car point. Be expensive as anything, though. Any idea for a price tag for a "mage resistant" vehicle? (ballpark for Resource rolls and such)
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As to electronics, I don't think "hardening" would help; I see the effect as being quantum in nature, which means it can mess up anything that uses even simple semiconductors (eg, transistors, diodes).
So no building faraday cages around your entertainment centers, then?
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Price tag is going to depend, in a big way, on labor costs. If the person has the skills, or friends willing to do the work, then he just has to get parts. If not, then he has to pay for the labor to assemble the custom car. Not hard to find (just find your local muscle car garage) but it will be expensive.
You are going to be better off finding a fixer upper to have repaired/worked-up than to have a full custom build. Like Harry with his Beetle.
My friend just bought a Chevy C10 that does not have any of the fancy computerized elements. It has had to have some work done to get it up to 100% (brakes, new tires, and some tubing replaced in the engine). Off the top of my head, he has put in about $4,000 dollars.
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Price tag is going to depend, in a big way, on labor costs. If the person has the skills, or friends willing to do the work, then he just has to get parts. If not, then he has to pay for the labor to assemble the custom car. Not hard to find (just find your local muscle car garage) but it will be expensive.
You are going to be better off finding a fixer upper to have repaired/worked-up than to have a full custom build. Like Harry with his Beetle.
My friend just bought a Chevy C10 that does not have any of the fancy computerized elements. It has had to have some work done to get it up to 100% (brakes, new tires, and some tubing replaced in the engine). Off the top of my head, he has put in about $4,000 dollars.
Excellent. Thanks.
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So the White council could be using an analytical engine then, and potentially could be behind this - Plan28, building Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. (http://plan28.org/)
That would be cool
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so potentially the White council could be using a difference engine then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine)
That would be cool
It wouldn't surprise me if Babbage and Tesla had been wizards in the Dresdenverse...
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and Alan Turing.
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And there are activists building steam engine cars, which are probably as reliable as any car would be. In the TT I'm running we have a Wizard who rides in a Model A.
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It wouldn't surprise me if Babbage and Tesla had been wizards in the Dresdenverse...
Err, isn't working with the latest technology rather against what a wizard can do in Dresden? It makes sense in Mage: The Ascension, but not Dresden where they'd be hexing their own devices all the time.
A theoretical physicist could get away with it though, as long as they didn't go near where the experimentalists worked.
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Err, isn't working with the latest technology rather against what a wizard can do in Dresden? It makes sense in Mage: The Ascension, but not Dresden where they'd be hexing their own devices all the time.
A theoretical physicist could get away with it though, as long as they didn't go near where the experimentalists worked.
So, Werner Heisenberg, then?
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So, Werner Heisenberg, then?
Wolfgang Pauli (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect)
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I have an urge to make a physicist wizard with a hexing-based trouble aspect now.
Maybe I'll use that old idea about scientific fields as magical elements for him.
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If I was the White council I'd want a few carefully placed individuals at the 'cutting edge' just to make sure they were not crossing the line into something more 'magical'. Especially with ritual's ability for any one to follow the recipe. People in the right place to nudge the research away from the danger areas.
Pauli is an excellent example, given the Pauli effect, and Babbage's machines, though theoretically sound never actually worked in his life time (officially because they were too complex and expensive to build)
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Err, isn't working with the latest technology rather against what a wizard can do in Dresden?
No, working with modern technology is against what a wizard can do in Dresden. Nowhere has it been stated that this is a sliding scale. If you were a wizard before WWII, you could well have used the bleeding edge tech of the day without a problem, it's only after things got more complicated than that (for instance: computers) that being a wizard got to be an issue with technology.
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No, working with modern technology is against what a wizard can do in Dresden. Nowhere has it been stated that this is a sliding scale. If you were a wizard before WWII, you could well have used the bleeding edge tech of the day without a problem, it's only after things got more complicated than that (for instance: computers) that being a wizard got to be an issue with technology.
Actually, the rulebook does say that more delicate technology has greater problems in the presence of a wizard, implying SOME degree of a sliding scale, just not a calendar-based one... So I would assume that electronics that have been hardened against interference could have a less rough time of it than, say, the latest iPhone.
Also, something to consider, what does this say for nanomechanics? For example, a clock made with the smallest cogwheels modern metallurgy can allow? It'd be completely mechanical, using designs dating back to at least the Victorian era... but it would most definitely qualify as "delicate", whereas for example one of Babbage's logical machines, built to the scale of an airport hangar to allow for a more rugged construction might not have any problems at all...
Just thinkin' out loud here...
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what does this say for nanomechanics? For example, a clock made with the smallest cogwheels modern metallurgy can allow? It'd be completely mechanical, using designs dating back to at least the Victorian era... but it would most definitely qualify as "delicate", whereas for example one of Babbage's logical machines, built to the scale of an airport hangar to allow for a more rugged construction might not have any problems at all..
I think when it comes to mechanical the rules would work on a "margin of error" to see how delicate it would effect. like your clock above, if one gear paused for a moment would that cause another gear to sheer it's teeth and a chain reaction that would destroy the item or would a simply hiccup just have it paused for a moment but truck on without an issue. So kinda like would this thing survive a little jossle or bump and not have a catastrophic result.
my out loud input
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No, working with modern technology is against what a wizard can do in Dresden. Nowhere has it been stated that this is a sliding scale. If you were a wizard before WWII, you could well have used the bleeding edge tech of the day without a problem, it's only after things got more complicated than that (for instance: computers) that being a wizard got to be an issue with technology.
The rules are actually pretty clear that the older you are, the easier older technology is to hex. The WWII thing is just for Wizards that are 40-ish give or take a decade or so.
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Yes, the older the wizard the easier it is to foul up technology with moving parts, electrically dependent or otherwise complex. YS p.259. The rule of thumb for how easy tech is to hex was if a technology was well established/matured before the wizard was born, then it will be far less likely to be hexed unintentionally and far more difficult to hex intentionally.
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No, working with modern technology is against what a wizard can do in Dresden. Nowhere has it been stated that this is a sliding scale. If you were a wizard before WWII, you could well have used the bleeding edge tech of the day without a problem, it's only after things got more complicated than that (for instance: computers) that being a wizard got to be an issue with technology.
I'm pretty sure that WOJ (or Fred) is that it is a sliding scale. I seem to recall a quote stating that wizards have always had trouble of some kind. Like back in the middle ages they curdled milk and the like. Sorry I can't remember exactly where I saw that, but I'm pretty sure.
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Accidental hexing works off compels so occurs when the GM thinks it should affect the story. Intentional hexing follows the sliding difficulty / complexity scale on YS258.
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In addition to the age part mentioned above, I tend to go by a wizards ability to hex (willing or not) technology being directly proportional to the effects of Murphy's Law on said tech. The more things/parts that any given piece of tech has that can break or go wrong the more likely it is that it will do so around a wizard. Face it, fancy phones like the Iphone break and go south with just us mortals playing with them! But, a good old Ma Bell wall mounted rotary phone... those things still work today if it has been kept out of the back yard. A wizard could hex it... but as there is less in one that can break, it's tougher.
Same holds true for weaponry. There is a lot more moving parts and complexity in a P90 SMG than there is in, say, a MP-40 issued to "Zee Germans" in WWII. Even less in a good, solid bolt action rifle. Or, even simpler, a breach loading shotgun.
Don't try to over think this issue to much guys. It's magic and does not have to work to any hard logical defining rules like, say, gravity. Then again... gravity gets a bit wonky if you start getting real particular and look at it close enough. ;D
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Don't try to over think this issue to much guys. It's magic and does not have to work to any hard logical defining rules like, say, gravity. Then again... gravity gets a bit wonky if you start getting real particular and look at it close enough. ;D
Also, it is turtles all the way down.
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I'm pretty sure that WOJ (or Fred) is that it is a sliding scale. I seem to recall a quote stating that wizards have always had trouble of some kind. Like back in the middle ages they curdled milk and the like. Sorry I can't remember exactly where I saw that, but I'm pretty sure.
Hmm, might be an explanation for why certain cultures never used the wheel to any useful degree, despite evidence they knew how to make them...
Aztec priest comes up to oversee construction of temple. Wheels stop working. Fore-man of work crew is sacrificed for using unreliable new construction methods and failing to complete job on time.
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I think of it like this. There are two components at work here:
1. The age of the technology. This is the bit where an old car using old tech is more reliable than a new car using new tech.
2. The fragility of the item in question. Let's face it, a cell phone has pretty fragile parts when compared to a steam engine.
So you need to reference those two things to see what shakes apart.
Something totally cutting edge that had relatively few moving parts and is constructed of exclusively strong materials offers a lot less that can go wrong. There aren't many things that could go wrong, so the likelihood of anything actually going wrong -- even in the presence of a wizard -- is much lower than if a wizard decides to play with your iPod.
Think of the first thing as controlling how often and hard someone kicks something. Think of the second as the intrinsic resistance to being kicked into bits.
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I think of it like this. There are two components at work here:
1. The age of the technology. This is the bit where an old car using old tech is more reliable than a new car using new tech.
2. The fragility of the item in question. Let's face it, a cell phone has pretty fragile parts when compared to a steam engine.
So you need to reference those two things to see what shakes apart.
Something totally cutting edge that had relatively few moving parts and is constructed of exclusively strong materials offers a lot less that can go wrong. There aren't many things that could go wrong, so the likelihood of anything actually going wrong -- even in the presence of a wizard -- is much lower than if a wizard decides to play with your iPod.
Think of the first thing as controlling how often and hard someone kicks something. Think of the second as the intrinsic resistance to being kicked into bits.
(1) is more the Age of the Technology relative to the wizard. Hmm, a Lawbreaker timetraveler from 2200 could probably use all current technology just fine, which would make non-time traveling wizards think they aren't human.
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(1) is more the Age of the Technology relative to the wizard. Hmm, a Lawbreaker timetraveler from 2200 could probably use all current technology just fine, which would make non-time traveling wizards think they aren't human.
Well, yeah. I thought that part was obvious from the context in this thread, so I didn't bother saying it.
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Hmm, a Lawbreaker timetraveler from 2200 could probably use all current technology just fine, which would make non-time traveling wizards think they aren't human.
They'd probably think he was an agent of pure chaos as milk curdles, axles fall out of wheels, and stitches rot in leather around him. :)
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They'd probably think he was an agent of pure chaos as milk curdles, axles fall out of wheels, and stitches rot in leather around him. :)
You have a very negative view on the future, it seems.
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Doh! No, just a strange ability to read characters which aren't there. :-[ Somehow I read that as 2200 BC...
Excuse me, I need to bang my head on the wall for a few minutes.
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Doh! No, just a strange ability to read characters which aren't there. :-[ Somehow I read that as 2200 BC...
Excuse me, I need to bang my head on the wall for a few minutes.
I can assist you if desired. We have a wide assortment of walls that are both decorative and ideal for banging one's head against.
Anyhow, a time traveler from the future would be pretty interesting in the game, I think.
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I can assist you if desired. We have a wide assortment of walls that are both decorative and ideal for banging one's head against.
Anyhow, a time traveler from the future would be pretty interesting in the game, I think.
Indeed.
He or she would be really fun to play too since they would probably be so paranoid about the Gatekeeper showing up.
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Indeed.
He or she would be really fun to play too since they would probably be so paranoid about the Gatekeeper showing up.
Or you could stat up the Doctor as some sort of artificer.