On Wed, 4 Dec 2013, Onno Meyer wrote:
Pacifism could be a learned or inborn behaviour of the majority culture,
without the need for psi. If the majority is strongly non-violent, they
would have a hard time to stop equipment thefts by the violent minority,
but they would ultimately act if the minority takes their worst crimes
to the homeworld. As long as it happens a couple of gates away, the
pacifism wins over the outrage.
You could do something like that too. It would invite the question, why
there is no middleground faction, that is not quite that pacifist, so they
could act, and not as violent as the majority.
The psi variant also allows, that when the pcs meet the mainstream
society, they might get full agreement, that the situation with the
overlords is an outrage and should be rectified. It's just circumstances
that make it hard to come up with a viable plan to do so.
If people abuse loopholes on grand scale for centuries, creating evil
pocket empires based on it, then you really need to think about changing
the rules eventually.
Well, it puts a bad light at the mainstream society. Sanctimonious prigs.
Personally i don't like it, if everyone who is more powerfull then
humanity, has a darker hat then humanity, so i guess thats why i did not
come up with that version myself.
It would be an other viable variant though.
You wrote that the psi power enforces a compromise solution in the
interests of everyone. This minority is part of the community, so
their interest would be part of the solution ...
If they are plain greedy, then yes. But if their interest is to hurt
others (and not willing masochists either) or exercise power over
unwilling subjects, then there simply is no compomise solution. The best
they can get is a sort of simulation, where they can roleplay their
villiany, but if they know that, it will still be a very unsatisfactory
compromise for them.
The psi power would force the mainstream to accommodate the sadists
if it works as advertised. Either it does affect such small groups,
or it doesn't.
I suppose it works by summing up, how many people get how happy, if an
action is taken or isn't taken.
If you compete for a scare resource, it should work fine. If someone
people want to own something unique, it can also work.
But people, who only are happy, if they make someone else unhappy, not
because something they want to do incidently has collateral damage, but
because they get their joy from the fact, that they make others unhappy,
then there can't exist a viable compromise. Thus it would revert to a
majority decision, weighted by how much happyness or unhappyness outcomes
would bring.
It also is a complex what if question, how hunting technology would have
developed without military weapons development. Would you start developing
weapons to hunt for food or pelts, if it is more efficient to get thoose
resources via animal husbandry. And if you start with primitive weapons,
hunting will not be all that efficient.
Hunting could be a defense against dangerous animals. Hikers in
bear-infested woods need a compact weapon to stop a bear cold.
Think Zat.
Other hunters would offensively go after problem animals. They
need a ranged weapon, but probably not a high RoF. No autofire
for suppression since animals don't shoot back. Like the staff
weapon, except for the weird lack of grips.
I am far from a wildlife expert, but i would suppose without military
weapons as templates, things like pepper spays for defence and traps for
offence would play a larger role.
Though it also might be that the Jaffa-spear is a hunting weapon, modified
to look like a spear, becasue the overlords don't want it to look like a
weapon from civilized times.
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