Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

[Killer Shrike]

Trolling for ideas on how a Neo-Victorian society might function in an advanced tech StarHERO setting placed around 4000 to 6000 AD.

 

What might be important to them, why might they subscribe to Victorian era revivalism? How much would be an affectation and how much would be real? How might Victorian mores mutate to be more relevant in an advanced tech environment?

 

 

 

 

And yes, I have read the Diamond Age and I like some of its ideas, but Im looking for a bigger picture here.

 

Look forward to input....

[Clonus]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Trolling for ideas on how a Neo-Victorian society might function in an advanced tech StarHERO setting placed around 4000 to 6000 AD.

 

What might be important to them, why might they subscribe to Victorian era revivalism? How much would be an affectation and how much would be real? How might Victorian mores mutate to be more relevant in an advanced tech environment?

 

 

 

 

And yes, I have read the Diamond Age and I like some of its ideas, but Im looking for a bigger picture here.

 

Look forward to input....

 

Well, odds are good for any game set millenia in the future that not only have the people in it gone through some kind of horrible collapse but that they have set up some kind of madly conservative social order which eschews innovation. Which of course makes them nothing like the real Victorians who were madly inventive and adored nothing so much as the idea of "progress" but something like a widespread picture that many people have of the era looking back on it.

So what traits of Victorian Britain (and Europe) might the ersatz version have? One is a clearly stratified social order with nobility, a "middle class" consisting of business men and highly educated professions, and a "working class" consisting of servants, factory workers, shop clerks and the like, and a truly astounding population of prostitutes. I'd suggest that the nobility might be defined by their exclusive access to the best life-extension technology with the often wealthier middle class constantly angling for marriage or elevation for service into the nobility so they can move up from their second-class life-extension to the good stuff. Meanwhile the working class normally live a short and comparitively brutal existence.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Pursuant to the nobility, expansion to other worlds may have been government supervised, with the rights to exploit the new territories granted to specific individuals, as was often the case during the colonial period, they becoming the new landowning class. Speaking of colonialism, if there are other sentient races on these worlds they'd be exploited as labor under the pretext of "civilizing" them. Expect humanocentric racist policies, albeit with plenty of jingoist rationalization.

 

Victorians saw nature as something that needed intelligent guidance to be made truly beautiful and "useful" -- witness the precisely-sculpted gardens and topiaries on the estates of the wealthy. None of this "pristine wilderness" business. Colonized worlds would likely be extensively terraformed to conform to orthodox patterns, perhaps with native life pushed to the fringes.

[Gadodel]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

 

What might be important to them, why might they subscribe to Victorian era revivalism?

 

 

 

 

 

 

....

 

More people would have more wealth. Advanced technologies no longer require the effort and resources of a nation/socieity to build, maintain and use. Individuals have access to amazing technology. Call it 'Individual Industrialism'.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Victorians also subscribed to economic liberalism (what the term "liberal" originally referred to), meaning that capitalists should have the right to accumulate as much capital as they can, with minimal government interference. That would be a more practical policy on an interstellar stage with lots of virgin territory to exploit, and difficulties for government to supervise all of it over vast distances.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Played the first session w/ my NeoVic character, G. Darius Allerby, Esq (discussed in Thread 55556)

 

Most of the session I was just working on projecting the character's personality, but I did manage to suggest that the NeoVics had risen to power at least partially by developing advanced and proprietary software to take advantage of markets and arrive at greater profits, which allowed them to accumulate enough wealth to make themselves viable as an elite phyle.

 

 

Of course, other groups could do the same thing in theory, so I also hinted that their proprietary software is radically different than mainstream and let it go unsaid but very likely that it is a very rigorously guarded secret. And what lengths might they be willing to go to in order to protect it? Ill leave that as fodder for another sessions role-playing.

[Gadodel]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Of course, other groups could do the same thing in theory, so I also hinted that their proprietary software is radically different than mainstream and let it go unsaid but very likely that it is a very rigorously guarded secret. And what lengths might they be willing to go to in order to protect it?.

 

The software is not only sentient, but also able to reproduce on its own. The software can design a new personality for each of its offspring. These offspring seek to be dominant. They actually join with and reproduce with other software. That 'halfbreed' generation seeks to replace other software, while remaining 'loyal' to the original software. In short: the software attempts to make other software extinct simply by being the 'most fit'. True to form for Darwinism.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

AI is too advanced for the setting we are in, but otherwise thats a cool idea.

 

 

However...it makes me think....maybe the market analysis software also provides advanced schemas for manipulating markets in very broad, subtle ways, giving NeoVics a real (unfair) advantage over other phyles, corps, and individual investors...which plays into the Darwinistic pattern you speak of.

 

In fact...

 

Data

Analysis &

Recommendation

Wealth

Influencing

Network

[Gadodel]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

 

Data

Analysis &

Recommendation

Wealth

Influencing

Network

 

Nice!

 

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Propriety would obviously be important to Neo Victorians...but what kind of proprieties relevant to a sci-fi setting would they adopt?

[OddHat]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Interesting idea.

 

Victorian Society had very strong strands of racism, nationalism, sexism, and Darwinian explanations for class differences. Some of these ideas even had a superficial basis in fact; A Victorian Gentleman was much better educated than his wife or servants, and had access to better nutrition throughout his life than the urban poor. It was easy for him to tell himself that the filth and poverty in which the lower classes toiled was a sign of their genetic inferiority, and to justify his attempted and actual conquests in India, China and Africa as spreading the light of civilization among the savages.

 

In a Neo-Victorian future, why not make some or all of that true? Genetic modifications have made Neo-Vic Men genuinely more intelligent and hardier than unmodified stock. The men, but not the women, have available to them advanced educational techniques, including VR Immersion to Neuro-Precursor and Enhancer Compounds (NPECs), that the rest of society either can't afford or consider unethical and dangerous to apply. Our Neo-Victorians thus add better educations to their innate intellectual superiority. They've adopted Victorian philosophy and fashions as a sign of their respect for an ideal of civility and responsibility, and a time when those best suited to rule did so for the benefit of all, and with the humble gratitude of the lower orders.

 

Add in Earth Man's Burden and you're set.

[Clonus]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Well genetic engineering fits with the idea of an extended-lifespan ruling class who are backwards-looking and averse to innovation.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Well...I don't see the original Victorians as backwards looking; though they were morally and societally conservative, they were extremely forward looking when it came to science and technology. It was an age of invention and innovation.

 

I think Neo-Vics would definitely need to follow this model as well to work. In fact, their social conservatism might be a natural form of balancing against rampant innovation and technology in a scifi setting, a way of applying the brakes to rapid change -- a way of saying technology is a tool to be mastered, rather than a master that determines the way people live their lives.

[Clonus]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Well...I don't see the original Victorians as backwards looking;

 

Of course they weren't. They weren't copying some social forms from 3000 years in their past. But these guys are the equivalent of some nation in 2006 adopting headresses over their shaved skulls and kohled eyes as they build pyramids to entomb their rulers.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Of course they weren't. They weren't copying some social forms from 3000 years in their past. But these guys are the equivalent of some nation in 2006 adopting headresses over their shaved skulls and kohled eyes as they build pyramids to entomb their rulers.

 

Not necessarily. They are what we collectively decide to make them. And a culture can adopt the mores or ideals of a previous era and still be forward looking. For instance, Greek and Roman ideals of democracy and republic influenced the American revolutionaries, but many of them (not all) were very much forward looking. Though they adapted ideals from long past cultures, they did so in a fashion that was relevant to their times and needs.

 

Mankind has always been a cannibal of the past, after all. Just wait long enough and things usually come back into style.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

Still rough, and the alien races docs havent been cleaned up yet, but the implementation of NeoVics in our current campaign are taking shape:

 

Humans

[Merovign]

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO

 

I would suggest a survey of Victorian society (a brief one) from a variety

of sources, and then pick and choose from it like a buffet.

 

Which is what a society that wants to emulate a past one would tend to

do - use the parts that benefit you.

 

A modern society that wanted to adopt Victorianism would likely pick the

parts most compatible with its own values - not attempt to force old

values on itself.

 

We tend to look back on the times that provided us with the most

progress and success as the worst because they gave us the advantage

of the extra leisure time we needed for self-criticism. No matter how

much worse the lives of medieval peasants were than 19th-century

Americans, anyone can tell you how bad the "Robber Barons" were, and

some of them can name names.... but not too many will dwell on medieval

lords as particular tyrants, even though their "peasantry" were treated.

 

It's totally up to the game designer, you can make the society the evil

twin of its history, or you can pick the best parts to represent it, or you

can try to make it a realistic middle path, or for that matter an equal mix

of good and bad with no particular message.

 

Best of luck with your gameworld!