New Faction:: Any feedback or ideas appreciated [Testers Welcome!]

[TheMurderUnicorn]

Cannibal prostitutes wearing full body fur suits would be nice.

Mostly just what Mark said. Make some contributions. Many hands make light work.

Maybe don’t add cannibal prostitute furries, though.

[faefux]

Well, i was thinking of adding an ex-prostitute, If you wanted to name her.

Github gives me a headache so i very much doubt i’ll be adding this to mainline, gonna package as a mod though and should have an early playable version by tomorow. Am happy to let anyone else do the fiddly pull stuff if they like.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

o_o Resisting my urge to make more jokes (because I’m a grown up), I’ll assume Marge Simpson won’t fly.

Kyna is my favorite girl name, since you pressed. Do what you will.

[faefux]

Need testers if anyone wants to help with new content.

[mlangsdorf]

PRs are easy, and you get better feedback on them, but whatever.

If you don’t think people should be able to recognize a marshal by sight, then check "u_is_wearing": "badge_marshal" instead of "u_has_trait": "PROF_FED". The first checks if someone is wearing the badge, whether or not they’re a Marshal; the second checks whether someone is a Marshal, whether or not they’re wearing a badge.

As a note, the Old Guard Rep checks whether you’re a Marshal - because he would know - and everyone else checks if you’re wearing the badge.

[damalsk]

Interesting premise, really.

If I got everything right, I think that reading through the books by Lewis Mumford, John Zerzan, Jacques Ellul and Ted Kaczynski would be essential in order to gather as much as information as possible for the faction’s ideas and NPC lines in order to make them interesting. Personally I would also replay Deus Ex and take some hints on how they write their characters, etc.

Missions like “assassinate a free merchant representative” should be some mid/end-game kind of stuff, I don’t see why they would have such a hatred for these factions so early in the game or why they would risk themselves at killing someone important without a good (and developed) reason.

[faefux]

Yep. You have exactly what i’m thinking, In part, at least!! They’re not so much a homogeneous group but definitely a part of the group that will break away to a hunting camp will be Zerzan-like primitivists and i was really interested in adding a Kaczinksi-esque character living in a cabin in the woods, maybe who hadn’t even noticed the Cataclysm has happened yet. Not sure how i can implement that to this faction though, aside from a ‘Hey, i have a buddy that lives in a shack in the woods, could you go and check on him’ kind of deal.

Well, the rationale for wanting to kill off the Old Guard people is that they wish to rebuild The US State, something a large part of the group would violently oppose, as some did even in the Old World. You’re right though, survival is the priority to begin with, it should be later game. (was even thinking of making it an assassination through package-bomb, a la Ted.) I’d like the feud with the Free Merchants to develop as time goes on though, yea.

I’ve read most everything Ted K wrote and a fair bit of Zerzan, I’ll check out Mumford and Ellul, thanks for the info.

If there are any other ideas you have for anything else, please feel free to shoot them my way. I’d love for this to be a more communal effort rather than just me.

[crazykiddeath]

Blaming the Old Guard for what happened would be very reasonable to some people, those were govenment agencies (or agencies contracted by the govenment) that were performing all the wacky experiments that led to the world being in the state that it is.
On top of that I’d assume they are also at least partly responsible for the robotic forces going haywire, maybe not pushing the button pre se, but sactioning their use in the first place and presumably being the deciding factor in which company/companies it got delegated to.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable, even in the dire circumstances, for a group of people to decide “Yeah, how about no. You can’t be trusted with that level of power again” and choose to be proactive about it.

[mlangsdorf]

I think the unreasonable part is where people trust the Old Guard at all.

[crazykiddeath]

There will always be people that gravitate to order and authority, especially during times of crisis, it’s well within human nature. From an outside perspective, with all information availible on the table, the Old guard are utterly untrustworthy but most survivors will lack the knowledge of what actually happened and I imagine a large amount of them will just want some hope and potential for safety regardless of its source.

[faefux]

Heh, this exactly. one of the reasons i started making this was when i was thinking of what exactly could be a counter-balance for basically working for the remnants of the state and capital which seems just entirely unreasonable after what has happened within the game world

.

[faefux]

Whilst I agree that many would still gravitate towards authority and order (though i’d posit this is due to social conditioning, not human nature, per se.), I would say with the very little knowledge the average person has there would still be a ton of blame and resentment towards this group and likely a lot of the theories about what happened will revolve around the main powers at the time of the collapse of the old world.

[crazykiddeath]

Society is a result of order and authority, you don’t get the former without the latter
I don’t personally disagree in regards to them getting a lot of the blame but I’m a suspicious and mistrustful person by nature. I’d say history shows people are willing to put up with and accept a lot, depending on the circumstances and the Old Guard (as far as we know) are the most organised, numerous and well equipped group around. That would be a powerful draw for for quite a few people, regardless of what people think of them.

[faefux]

And regimented/stratified society as we understand it has existed for far less time than it hasn’t. We could go for pages and pages on this point and philosophers often do, maybe you would find some of the writers that were mentioned above by @damalsk interesting on this point, though i will not link any as i do not think it’s the place to be linking political and philosophical texts.

t’s really not here nor there because on a micro level, as in the amounts of people we’re dealing with wrt people within the game, will diverge massively from general rules that could or could not be applied to humanity as a whole.

I agree though, there would still be a lot of people behind them, especially the better off or comfortable middle classes who have lost alot, as well as just the opertunities that see safety in the resources they can (or at least claim to be able to) provide.

With this faction i am attempting to deal with those who might have been critical of the Old World before it’s fall and those who might have found themselves in a far better position and gained massively since.

I would love to see someone expand the Old Guard past a couple of guys in the Evac Shelter, but i don’t think it’s for me as i’m personally far to far away from that point of view to write it even close to well and i have no idea what it would begin to look like.

[crazykiddeath]

I would argue that your point doesn’t invalidate my own but I guess you are right about this not being the place for such discussions so I’ll it at that.

[BlueKanary]

I like reading civil arguments about what would realistically happen in fictional worlds.
It’s quite interesting to see the different philosophies at work.

Also as to your faction, would there also possibly be ex-lab / ex-militia there who are remorseful for playing a part in bringing about the Cataclysm?

[faefux]

Also as to your faction, would there also possibly be ex-lab / ex-militia there who are remorseful for playing a part in bringing about the Cataclysm?

I think the creators have ruled there there isn’t really anyone left alive who ‘caused’ the cataclysm. And in any case it was the work of so many people working in so many locations (probably all over the world, not just limited to 'merikkka.) on the things that cause the blob and others to breakthrough and even if those were to have survived and get together i don’t even think they could really piece together what happened to the point of really being able to assign blame. It’s woth reading the stuff from the God’s Eye view in the the Development Docs, if you havn’t already! Buuut having said all that, if you think you could add or write up some backstory/dialogue for anyone that fits i’d be happy to add!

I like reading civil arguments about what would realistically happen in fictional worlds.
It’s quite interesting to see the different philosophies at work.

Same! I’m a little bit of a philosophy nerd, it gives you a great framework for understanding the world and the power dynamics that control it, from this perspective i love to take these frameworks and apply them to fictional worlds that interest me and see how they apply, philosophies and ideologies change, etc.

For example ui’ve been thinking a bit about religion in the C:DDA world, i have been wondering if with the fall of the Old World will it’s gods die, too? and if so, what comes next? Like we can certainly say the moral paradigms that come with judao-christian religions are out the window in a world where the dead walk and violence is very much a part of life.

[BlueKanary]

Hmm… Seeing as though you, the player, are able to put together the lore from objects ingame alone, it would stand to reason others might be able to put it together as well.
Something like that would most likely happen in the mid to late game, perhaps that would even be the reason they want you to assassinate members of the old guard.

[crazykiddeath]

One look at the “chimera” book or even a couple of the computer records should be enough to give a sane person pause but that assumes enough people are breaking into labs, hacking computer terminals/finding the correct reports, making it out alive and then taking the risk of sharing what they’ve found.

There is also evidence in the game about people continuing with the research and appling it to people, one of the bandit camps I found had mutagen, books, ingredients and groups of caged CHUDs (unless that’s part of a mod I guess)

[BlueKanary]

Yeah, I kind of meant like a quest to enter a lab from them and bring back some documents like said book.

Maybe even splitting the quest path to make some of those mutagens as well.