TheDarkness

I'm pretty sure he was stating that there is a difference between identical and the same, in this case. That if you make a hundred identical copies of an original, none of them exist as the original, because only the original is the original, only copy 27 is copy 27, etc.

I tend to agree. I think the issue with the jedi is not their philosophical basis, but their execution of that basis. This relates to the current discussion on sith and jedi and what distinguishes them. Of course, most of the source material does not give a full accounting of jedi philosophy, so there is room for different views. However, a lot of it does agree with one aspect. The jedi seek to follow the force, the sith use emotion to attain power in using the force. This actually ties in with Lucas' Zen/Taoist influence in what the jedi is, and the concept of wuwei, or, translated literally, non-action. The jedi and the sith, if we may risk the no true scot fallacy a bit here, are not, in fact two groups whose main feature is that they use the force for what they feel is most important. The true sith certainly is, but the true jedi is not, the true jedi practices selflessness, and therefure, should be untrusting of their own feelings on what should happen. This is largely wuwei, which, in fact, is actually not a dictum saying don't do anything, but that action should not come from human preferences, but from observing and understanding and seeing what is the will of the Tao, for lack of a better term. Taoism has a huge amount of practices all related to doing this, and preventing a confusion between seeing what is the Tao and what is mere ego. In the movies, the greatest sith do not actually show greater power than the greatest jedi. It is, in fact, Yoda and Kenobi who, in the end, prove more powerful than the Emperor and Vader, because through their actions, they destroy the other two. They pursued the will of the force, whereas the other two pursued power. Vader was clearly not talking about force chokes and pushes and lightsabres when he claimed the power of the force was far greater than the Death Star. By the end of the movie, we see that he was right, not because Luke used the force, but because Luke was able to be there because of all these things. The Will of the Force. Now, the prequel trilogy has the jedi completely unable to view their situation outside of their preference that the situation not exist. They don't want Annakin, and guarantee he will be trained. They don't engage his training except by doing what they've always done, and so discovered that this case was different. Their surliness was almost constant, and pretty much always over things not being how they wanted them. They took almost nothing as being a lesson from the force, and learned almost nothing from it until the end. Philosophically, Qui-Gon was undoubtedly the closest to being a true jedi in this, and he even took his death as a lesson. This is the problem with grey jedi, imo. The problem with selflessness is not in the philosophy, but in its execution. The solution to that problem is more experience and knowledge and calm, not more ego. The issue with the jedi order has parallels with monastic orders in China; by the time foreign powers moved in, there soon became a sense that they had removed themselves from life. Too many buddhists monastics were seen as not actually practicing compassion as much as practicing empty ritual. Reformers in the twentieth century, especially those connected to Taixu, laid out what would become an influential response, which was to reassert the old core of Chinese Buddhism, that to attain true compassion, one had to practice compassion as an act, not a feeling, and see how in each case it is practiced, it has flaws in the application that tie back to the self's idea of what compassion is or how it can be expressed, and this should be pursued until one sees all one's own artifice, and still continued, lest the compassionate one then create new flaws. The grey jedi, as a philosophy, are likewise not philosophically compelling as soon as one goes beyond them just not buying the jedi's dogmatic way they relate to people as being outside of the jedi's own claimed philosophy(which is true). This is a universe in which there is no distinction between people, they are all as connected as the heart is to the brain, by the force. The rules of this universe are that there is never a distinct self because all are literally connected at all times. Even the sith, if we are to use the movie depictions(and not just Palpatine's words, as he lies several times about the extent of his force powers), do not become more individual, but lose track of all parts of their selves that do not seem to directly fuel their force use. In that light, jedi, the competent ones, seem to become more what they are, sith almost completely cease to be anything but hate. It doesn't help that a lot of the words used to reference the jedi as a monastic order are more often than not misunderstandings of eastern concepts, and we don't know whether the misunderstanding is the right definition in Star Wars, or whether it's just word soup. In Eastern traditions, selflessness, the extinguishing of self, is not what most western readers think it to be. It is the ending of what we erroneously think to be our selves, but which is really just knee jerk responses based off of little real observation and contemplation based on that observation. The traditions do not, then contend, that there is no nature to what is left, but that its true nature is laid bare. Grey jedi would be to assume half way is somehow virtuous and has merit. If I understand grey jedi well enough, which I probably don't. However, if one wants a force user who has identity, yet is good, and is unwilling to bend to the dogmatism of the jedi order, that would be Qui-Gon.

Oh, I getcha, from that perspective, they are the identical. The same poor unfortunate people with identical consciousness surrounded by insane murderers. Congitively, it makes no difference that the me I think I was before, I never actually was, as far as my consciousness in my day in the sun, as it were. Actually, this would make for an insane game. Like a reverse of the movie Memento. I have found out they are killing me. Every day. Except I am not losing my memory, my memory isn't really mine. And I have no memory of dying. The one thing is, the actuality of the situation is not that the consciousness continues, a copy of it does in another person. The actuality is still that the others are dead and insensate, and the one has their day. They are identical, but they are not one. For example, if I copy word onto two computers, yes, we would know that the code is identical, but we would also know that they are different copies. Even if we only wrote the same documents on them on the same days and times on identical computers, we would not really consider that if, on Computer A, a malicious virus destroyed word utterly, that we had lost nothing. The copy is an addition, not a continuation, in that sense. You are correct, in that each version of word is identical to the last, but it is also true that they are not the same copy. As an aside, like reality, I suspect that things would begin to fray a bit in the system if I installed and uninstalled word every day. I might begin to fray. Days might get missed. In the clone's case, of course, he could never know the difference between whether he was a replacement or not, saving some slip on the part of the experimenters. I'm not trying to argue feverishly with you, just an interesting topic that goes fun places.

How do you know it's not old Dances with Wolves habits?

As to the question 'how would my life be any different now', two different answers: If we are discussing my life as in mine in particular as observed by me, I would be dead. I would NOT be thinking or conscious. The presence of someone else doing the exact same things and thinking in the exact same way would not add a single one of those thoughts into my dead brain. If we are discussing my life as in a life observed by others, it would only differ for those who were killing me nightly, but, for them, it would differ vastly from a life in which one me did all the same things, versus many lives that did them, but were then killed after a day. And you were correct on me applying a deterministic approach to it, because, if we are doing this experiment, we would have to observe whether differences were, as you said, tied to natural chaos and other factors, or were hitherto unmeasured differences in the two consciousses that we somehow missed. Now, if we can perfectly measure these things already, I think we are no longer doing an experiment, but actually just like killing this one guy. Which, as a GM, I can respect.

I think the force powers are waaaay simpler to do from the movies than from the EU. In the movies, we can only speculate that there is but one power that might be a sith power, lightning, and that is merely based on the fact that only the sith ever use it. Every other power is used by both in the movies. As for switching to the dark side, I really think that is way simpler from the movies as well. It is, literally, from negative emotion, even desperation, using this negative emotion to boost one's powers. I really think the easiest build for this is giving a boost power that could be used to boost most of the jedi combat powers, to be a jedi, you seek never to use, one that, as a disadvantage, gives you points in a complication progressively(first use, one point, second, two, third, four), Temptation of the Dark Side(X or less). If you really want, allow that complication to also add points to the build with the rule that they cannot be used to increase whatever stat works against Temptation of the Dark Side checks, I'd assume EGO. This models both the effect, and the result fairly exactly. More power in the short term, but a loss of agency to one's negative emotions until they subsume you. I would imagine in most games, that would spell NPC land for that character. If running a group of evils, I'm not sure the non-sith jedi would be in the game to begin with. One could certainly run a sith game that was a political intrigue game of cutthroat.

One problem with it is the assumption that identical consciousnesses will remain identical. Killing Day One's clone and initiating Day Two Clone does not guarantee that Day Two will act the same way under all the same circumstances as Day Two. It's also murdering Day One. So, to know that at least identical consciousness still exists, even if it is not continuous, we decide to not kill C1 at the end of day 1, we just have day 2 occur to both clones exactly the same. If C1 diverges from C2, then we don't have identical consciousness. If they don't diverge, then we plan on killing C1 and continuiing tests on C2. Until... ...it occurs to us that C1 and C2 might actually be more likely to diverge on day three. So, we keep C1 and C2 alive and we make C1m1 and C2m2. The death of any of them ends that particular consciousness. The continuation of the others does nothing to alter that there are less beings with that consciousness as before, and though they do not know that the experiences they have are identical but not the same, merely false articulations of one experience, the reality is, they are, at best, identical consciousnesses with totally different experiences that they don't know are totally different, assuming they still have identical consciousnesses. Yes, to any one non-dead clone, there is no difference(if there is no divergence). BUT, to the one killed, there is one experience, death, and then the inconvenience of being a dead person, which includes lethargy, stiffness, a foul rotting odor, and occasional bloating.

Because they'd be dead. Assuming they were absolutely insensate upon death. The point is, though, that consciousness would definitely be dead.

Do I have to pull over?

The point is, if that were the case, from my perspective, no change, but from the perspective of the original(s), big change.

Using some of the thoughts from that thread, shields are a tricky build. I don't think I'd go the route that thread did for the slow knife penetrating the shield, some form of lowered OCV, because the most memorable shield scene for me in the first book was in Paul's training, and the fact that he didn't see the knife being the reason it penetrated. I might lean toward a special attack using INT vs. PER for the attack roll, something like that, I'd have to think about it. Mentats: they are more than human computers. Many are assassins, and the key examples from the books are Masters of Assassins. They tend to be tacticians. Bene Gesserit- Body control, either mind control or strong PRE attacks, weirding way, some other things, contacts Swordmasters Royal Family Members- often some mentat training or bene gesserit training, contacts I can't remember all the details, with age I fear my memories Feyd.

I should know better than to use forum searches. Couldn't find a thread earlier, just did a google search, here's one*: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/1059-dune-hero/ *Baron mind it's a bit short.

Any, or even a melange of the three. For my own game, I'd probably not focus on the game being closely tied in with the plots of the book series(especially since I really prefer just the first book), but this thread can be more general purpose for anyone wanting to run dune games.

Any thoughts on what might be some guidelines or ideas for Dune Hero; figure on non-Atreides-seeing-into-the-future characters and NPCs to avoid that can of worms. Mentats would be fun to make, methinks.

Wraps Cybernetic Enhancement Foil around head. Challenge accepted!

If he's fine with doing them later, which is what I also think is the message here, does this mean he's now going to think before he speaks, or would that let down the "he says what everyone thinks" crowd? For the record, I've looked everywhere for my inner Hair Furor, and can't seem to find him anywhere.

Given his cabinet, the best hope would be that he's an ineffectual president.

Agreed. The difference is for the dead one. He's dead. His consciousness ended. They would have identical consciousnesses, but not the same consciousness, the end of one is its end. The sleep issue is an interesting one. One could even make the case that, even awake, there are periods in which not much is happening. Back to Buddhism and Taoism, which both make the case that there is conscious thought, and then there are thoughts as senses, mere responses to stimuli that are not conscious at all. In essence, the eastern answer to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am," is “Thought occurs, therefore something is." After which they would follow it through to the point of determining that that thought is inseperable from a host of other causes and effects, and thus, everything is, but no one thing is of itself.

I really need to stop informing myself. So, a short list of things that us liberals are conspiring, undoubtedly with the Jewish Banking Elite(the ever present JBE, or Jews Behaving Evilly) and, of course, the Marxists. I'm not sure where the Rockefellers fall in all this, there's apparently a chart. It's important to note that this is all possible, the entire cultural marxist conspiracy theory, because of the near absolute power of liberals, despite, you know, almost always not actually controlling all of anything, including the media. Destruction of the family Decline of small towns Destruction of Christian Values Multiculturalism Feminism Anything they might see as sexual depravity in culture, see destruction of the family The main problem is, first, the Frankfurt school, who did talk a lot about this sort of 'cultural marxism', were viewed as largely ineffectual, and were. Yes, ideas of theirs had some traction, but not their cultural marxism, as in, deconstruction of the culture as a plot to execute. The whole theory depends on their supposed strangle hold on academia, something they didn't even have in their own time, and certainly don't now. Hell, my degree is related to China, I had a lot of Chinese professors, and the number of avowed marxists in my field is not many at all, and for the few I can think of there is strong reason to doubt were actually communists in any real sense of the word, but more Chinese nationals or Chinese immigrants who, for practical purposes related to family back home, expressed some nationalism. Outside of my department, the marxist presence is negligible. Seriously negligible. In seven years, I never once had the much claimed professor who demands some brand of political thought(of course, it must be leftist thought, because you know, we control the world) and punishes other brands. In fact, every professor, which included numerous political science professors, international business and finance professors, history professors, philosophy, every one went far out of their way to encourage debate of different views and went far out of their way to not make their view even part of the class, only presenting the information that could be relied upon and arguments and counter-arguments of all sides. The problem with the idea of cultural marxism, any claim of a movement of political correctness(and it's worth noting that after the Civil War, politicians were rather upset that they couldn't run campaigns based in part on the n word because it became socially unacceptable), is that they ascribe the cause to social changes to a conspiracy and ignore all other potential causes. So, affirmative action is a cultural marxist conspiracy to enslave minorities on welfare and destroy white culture, instead of being a counter to the Jim Crow era and conditions in the North for blacks that meant that they had historically had education and property routinely denied them or taken away through a variety of means, and so a mere affirmation of their rights would mean abject poverty for many and a continuation of their exploitation on a grand scale. There is no room in the mythology of cultural marxism for the idea that such a result could have come from people believing in the rights of all Americans and seeking to implement those rights in a way that was actually effective. There is likewise no room in that mythology to realize that the opposition to affirmative action, it's very mores and arguments, came almost wholesale from the pro-segregationists. And that school of thought is never treated the same way as the Frankfurt school, any shared idea with the Frankfurt school, according to the idea of there being a cultural marxist conspiracy, is proof of the conspiracy, but any shared idea with pro-segregationists IS NOT proof of a pro-segregationist conspiracy. This inconsistency is throughout the whole conspiracy theory. The cultural marxist conspiracy must be pushing gay marriage, because there is clearly no foundational political document that states that everyone has the same rights. On this end, they are further stuck with their static interpretation of some traditional culture that was uniform, consistent, and largely unchanging, in short, a culture that never existed anywhere, ever* when they attempt to enforce a definition of marriage that is not the same as any era, and that omits important imbalances within many previous forms of marriage that were acceptable to many during those times, but totally at odds with the Constitution. It is not possible that it is not a conspiracy, but a predictable pressure between having a Constitution that says all have the same rights, and moving from a culture that disagreed. It is not possible that there are economic advantages to different groups having those same rights. Other, reality based answers are thrown to the side in order to accept a conspiracy. The death of small towns. This one is especially annoying. Globalism, not meaning some conspiracy, but the simple fact that technology has made it so that economic relations with other countries as producers and consumers drives much economic competition, means that a developed country is not going to be the manufacturing center of the world. Further, the move to corporate farms, and their dominance, which is most certainly not populated by leftist marxists, meant a drying up of opportunities, loss of farm land to economically powerful entities, etc. It saddens me, to be honest, because what these people are offered politically and economically is little from the democrats, and nothing more salient than culture wars and conspiracy theories by the Republicans, neither of which solves their issues, because both parties, and the tea party, and the alt-right, have absolutely nothing to offer, but the Dems avoid the issue and offer pork spending, while the others offer pork spending and 'they're trying to destroy your culture'. Trump and his ilk are unwise to seek to exploit them further. There will come a time where culture wars do nothing for them. My time in China has taught me that propaganda has a diminishing return. Tiananmen Square is something many Chinese can tell most Americans more about than the Americans know. They just pretend not to know. The idea of cultural marxism, an idea espoused by an ineffectual group whose ideas were accepted by very few wholesale, requires ignoring all other factors having any role in those changes in culture, in flagrant disregard that such changes have always happened. They ignore that long before the Frankfurt school, politicians and public speakers had to parse their words, and so, magically, political correctness is somehow different than post Civil War leaders not being able to run campaigns on "black people are coming for the women!" (And, post reconstruction, returning right back to doing so). They omit any economic causes for multiculturalism, instead and again putting on a conspiracy theory. (It's important to note here, Slavery and the Jim Crow era hurt the South economically, the first by trapping the region in a cycle of buy land, buy slaves, buy more land and slaves that dropped wages for non-slaves, which made the North more attractive for workers wishing to build a life, which led in part to the industrial superiority of the non-slave states, the second by making the region unattractive for industry so that it could not attract a lot of investment, and again, the pitiful wages offered black southerners drove down wages, which again made moving there unattractive). *For an example of culture always changing, Confucian China is considered by many to be the longest running, most stable conservative culture in history. Any examination of the culture itself, however, shows constant change throughout.

I actually have been working on a highly gritty campaign for another game with a few special rules that could certainly be applied to any game. Everyone makes three characters, so they have a quick replacement. Good roleplaying does not prevent death, but a player who played their character well gets a 'good death marker'. If they go down, instead of going unconscious, they continue on, once that fight is over, they have a four hour window in which they can continue on, wandering the city bleeding and finishing their business before they die at the time and place of their choosing, but they get a roll, succeed at that roll, and they are found and end up surviving, but that character is out of the game for a good long time. If a character gets permanent injury that prevents combat, they become an NPC. In the latter two cases, that character's name becomes street legend, and all characters from the city would know their name. In the last case, that character will likely be training new fighters/detectives/what have you, and might even be one of the mentors or contacts of a new player. /digression

I like their points on there. Although one thing I tend to disagree with. If you accept that there is a genetic component to force sensitivity, then midichlorians are a perfectly sensible thing. However, there is another interpretation one could make. That the force, for a time, clusters around certain lines for its own reasons, and at other times, does not, and thus has no genetic component. I prefer the latter interpretation. It dodges all sorts of dodgy stuff, and prevents making really too many damn Skywalker stories. As far as that threads view on the jedi order as a much looser order, I totally like that. The fact that the jedi are repeatedly trying to rebuild the same thing that seemed to cause them problems in the past seems a little insane. Oh, taking Annakin away from his mother at a formative age didn't work out well for you? Well, best try again with this Solo kid. We'll get this parenting thing down until we're way better than regular parents, we're jedi after...oops, dead younglings again. Ooooookay, back to formula.

A little cross pollination never hurt: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/94037-star-wars-hero/page-5

Soooooo, decided to read up on 'cultural marxism' last night since it is the go-to snarl word for a lot of people right now. First off, it's conspiracy theory, of that it is plain. Without a shadowy group of people enacting it, it becomes just "people changing culture", which is what every person alive has always done every generation one might care to research. Second off, don't do a google search on it, for your own sanity's state. The first page that came up for me had one interesting article written by some guy who clearly is a marxist that apparently would not have shown up anywhere near the top except that rational wiki and another site sourced off his article, which drew the crazies to the comments section to argue poorly against this person. However, the first page had, if memory serves correctly, something like four clearly white nationalist frequented pages, though not overtly so in the sense that they were labelled as such, but clearly so the moment one read the comments and the author's responses to those comments. And, the first page had stormfront. Additionally, urban dictionary also had their page on the first page of the google search, it surprised me how many downvotes any definition got that mocked the conspiracy theory basis of most usage of cultural marxism. So, a sizable proportion of the first results for a search on 'cultural marxism' is closely tied to white nationalism, and yet this phrase is being used everywhere now. I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone, and, like a man in the Rod Serling classics, I need a scotch.

Oh, I know, I wasn't disagreeing with you, just building in my head out loud like a crazy person.

Actually, I could see it being fun to make a character whose defenses run a gamut. PD, ED, MD, immaterial, figure some others. Then, in the scenario above, he could go immaterial. Maybe give him an attack power that is powered off of incoming attacks, so he needs to get attacked. The Passive Aggressor