Germany Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 17:44:21 +0100 From: ua7o@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de To: Masterbook Mailing List Subject: Germany: A New Cosm I have two much free time. Well, here goes . . . GERMANY --- a pocket cosm of Core Earth ======================================= I know what you are all saying right about now---``Germany, a cosm? He must be crazy!'' Well, the latter may be right, but that's irrelevant. After living here for five months, and studying at a German univerity for three of those months, I have identified enough things which lead me to conclude that Germany is a reality unto itself. The easiest was to prove this is to present the stats, which I shall now do. AXIOMS ====== TECH : 22 This may be a surprise to many of you who are used to thinking that Germany is a somewhat advanced place, with numerous technical related firms and all that. However, it was actually this Tech axiom that first clued me in. Here is my major proof---the computer system here is a pretty standard HP-UX machine, similar to any number of systems carrying user accounts at similarly sized universities in the States. However, the crash rate, the frequency of disk problems, the screw-ups coming down from the supposed sysadmins/operators are inconsistent with a properly connected (all puns intended) Tech 23 computer system. I give one specific example which I think cements that the Tech axiom here is lower than in the US. I had two terminal windows opened on a Mac (that's a pretty low Tech axiom to start with :), one local (machine rzstud1) and one with an rlogin to my American account (machine unity). I must have disconnected while trying to think about World Peace or something, because I did: rzstud1% ftp unity.math.wlu.edu ftp: host not found ftp> This took me by surprise, and I stared blankly at the screen for a few moments (apparently I used this time to reconnect). I thereupon switched to the other window, did unity% ftp rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de and got a normal connection. I think that says it all. SOCIAL : 21 This is the same as CE, only to cover the fact that Germany is a functioning member (or, at least, no more dysfunctional than other members) of the UN, the EU, NATO, and a more or less global society. However, at the level of personal interactions, Social 21 is rarely realised. See the World Law of Exclusion for additional information. MAGIC : 8 Note that actual ``magic'' in the sense of spells is no more prevalent in Germany than it is elsewhere in CE. However, the occurence of ``coincidences'' and other halmarks of a non-0 magic reality are more frequent. I attribute this to a self-correcting feature of the reality trying to make up for the deficiency (with respect to the rest of CE) in the Tech axiom. For example, while doing something stupid like turning the computer off, whapping the side of it, and then actually getting the beast to boot *correctly* is not a regular occurence, such methods do work more frequently than they do in, for example, the U.S. Such effects, I believe, fall under the magic axiom. (``Juerg, how the hell did you get the computer to work again?'' ``I don't know. I just whapped the thing. F*cking magic . . .'') Game mechanics do not seem to lend themselves easily. I can suggest the following---the Stupid Action. A Stupid Action is a game term referring to any action which can essentially be described as, ``Of course it's stupid; I know it won't work. But I'm gonna do it anyway.'' Like fixing the computer by kicking it. I also refer the reader to the historical record which demonstrates a fair amount of success had by Germany in the past by following a stupid, stubborn or bone-headed course of action. Stupid Actions have a *minimum* difficulty of 25 (``Never Tell Me the Odds'') because they are, well, Stupid. This will cover most Household Stupid Actions. Truly, *truly* stupid things, like disarming the atomic bomb by throwing more uranium into it, should use 25 as a base, and then the DN Modifiers on the DN chart. For example, Never Tell Me the Odds is listed as either DN 25, or DN+20 (I think---I don't have the book). Therefore, a really bone-headed action would have a difficulty of 25+20=45. Nigh on impossible, as it should be. The player generates a reality total (Ords can use base Spirit) against the DN. As an alternative, instead of basing the Stupid Actions off of Spirit/Reality, they could be considered a form of alteration magic, in which case the Mind based (Alt. is Mind, right?) Stupidity skill would be used for the rolls. The advantage here is that out-of-cosm SKs could learn to do Stupid Actions in other cosms. The skill seems particularly appropriate for the Nile. SPIRIT : 9 Same as Core Earth. No real differences here, although I suppose one might argue that the Stupid Actions mechanic could be assigned to Divine influence instead of a rudimentary magic ability. One could still use Spirit/Reality, or simply make Stupidity a Spirit based skill. WORLD LAWS ========== LAW OF INCONVENIENCE This is probably the most powerful World Law affecting the cosm of Germany. It affects all aspects of life. Generally put, no product or service will be available in a maximally efficient or convenient manner. For the individual SK, this means copious amounts of paperwork to get anything remotely official done. It means that when you find out that you need something, the stores will already be closed. When you decide you absolutely need to get something down *tomorrow*, someone will inform you that tomorrow is a state holiday that you've never heard of, and that everything will be closed. When you need to call your AT&T access number, you will get static (maybe loud and obnoxious enough to do a couple result points of damage, too) for three or four attempts before getting a connection. After the AT&T operator puts you through, you will likely get arbitrarily disconnected. (The astute reader will notice that these last examples are also by-products of the Tech axiom.) The government passes laws to encourage Inconvenience. There is the infamous ``Ladenschlussgesetz'' or Store-Closing Law which strictly limits the opening hours of just about every business. There is the mandatory garbage separation. There is the fact that you can't get a damned glass of water in a restaurant without being charged 3 Marks and getting bubbles in it. And so on. One particular game-mechanics effect of the Law of Inconvenience concerns crowds. Germans in a crowd (i.e., pedestrians, other customers in a store, and so forth) follow some sort of macroscopic Brownian motion which makes it impossible to move efficiently through the group. Walking down a street is not a trivial task in Germany. If you actually do see an opening and go for it, you are either about to trip over somebody's dog or get hit by a street-car. Germans themselves seem largely immune to this effect, however. I postulate the existence of a DEX based Crowd Navigation Skill (useable unskilled). In fact, a starting three adds in this skill is probably a 0-pt Adventure cost for native Germans. I say 0-pt since obviously Ords have it, too. The DN of moving though a crowd should be a base of 12, with modifiers for number of people with respect to the space involved (i.e., forty people standing for no reason outside of the one door by which you may exit your lecture is a bigger penalty than only forty people on the whole street). Negative success levels should determine consequences. For example, riding a bike along a street near a crowd of people disembarking from a busy street-car: the gm assigns a +5 penalty to the Crowd Nav. DN, due to the number of people going in completely separate directions plus the vehicle traffic on the street. On a minimal failure, the rider is forced to stop and lose one round of action. On an average failure, the rider bumps into a streetsign, doing minor damage. On a good failure, the rider misjudges the curb, the front of the bicycle goes out from under him, and he skids on the sidewalk. For superior, he collides with another bicyclist, both falling down and taking damage. On a spectacular failure, he didn't see the other streetcar coming from the opposite direction, and the last thing he remembers is the annoying warning bell before he gets creamed. It is important to note that the presence of other people is *not* a prerequisite for a Crowd Nav. check (one reason why Crowd Nav. is DEX, and not PER, based). See examples (2) and (4). EXAMPLES of the Law of Inc.: 1) This morning I needed to use Maple on one of the computer-centre's machines. The Maple directory had mysteriously disappeared off of the network disk. 2) I just left to get a cup of coffee. On the way there, I rode my bike through a perfectly empty part of the campus. Somebody stepped out of nowhere and I almost plowed into him---DN 12 Crowd Nav. Check. 3) The coffee automat was out of order. 4) Walking out of the building onto an empty sidewalk, a bike appeared out of nowhere and almost plowed into me---DN 12 Crowd Nav. Check. 5) I got back to the computer centre and all of the terminals were occupied. Now, at this point, I succeeded with a Stupid Action---``Of course walking back and forth between the two terminal rooms isn't going to free up a computer any faster, but I'm gonna do it anyway!'' Two minutes later, there was a machine available. 6) Unfortunately, the free machine was in the PC room, where the machines inexplicably refuse to remap the backspace key to delete, and where the machines at random choose to ignore certain typed capital letters . . . LAW OF EXCLUSION This is kind of a hard one to describe. To simplify, ``If you aren't already in a group, you can't get in.'' By way of example---as a normal, starting first year university student in Germany, you are part of a ``group'' as it forms. Come in later (with, say, a bachelors under your belt and a one-year scholarship) and you can't make those connections. There are cases where you cannot avoid becoming part of a group, for example, moving onto a hall of a dormitory. You're there and the locals can't do much to change the fact. The LoExclusion still functions, though. While in an American Dorm you would be slamming beer cans over your neighbor's head after a 3am session of Hall Ball the first weekend after moving in, in Germany it'll be three weeks before conversation more detailed than ``Guten Tag'' and ``Auf Wiedersehen'' take place in the common kitchen for the floor. One of the public signs of the Law of Exclusion is Hoeflichkeit (the German word for politeness). You see, I have a personal theory that there are two types of societal politeness. The first you will find in Akasha, which think is good enough explanation. The second is a survival mechanism, a trained response that takes the place of hitting somebody over the head with an antelope femur. You see, in a country with too many people in too little space (Germany's average population density is ten times that of America, but I think there are even more elbows per sidewalk in German cities than that number alone would suggest), politeness is a way of paying attention to the proper forms for interaction, and not to the actual person. Thus, the exclusion ``group'' is the individual person for most public transactions, like shopping. Of course, the larger groups are the employee groups, and so forth. The Law of Exclusion also seems to make it easier for Germans to identify foreigners and act in an appropriately patronising manner. Of course, they aren't being patronising on purpose; it just seems that way. The most usual form of this is that the Germans will start speaking to you in English, even if they know less English than you know German. Language is affected by the Law of Exclusion. Non-Germans must make language checks at +2 to the DN to understand Germans (note the many dialects also, a shared function with the Law of Inconvenience), no matter what language is being used for interaction (their accented English can sometimes be more confusing than the rapid-fire Bavarian they normally use). This penalty does *not* apply to exchanges between non-Germans in the German cosm. This is because the two foreigners, though they may be from different countries, are still part of a non-German group. In fact, any interaction with a group imposes a +2 penalty on a non-member. A side effect of this Law is a bonus for hierarchical groups. If a group is organised in a hierarchical, bureaucratic manner around a specific goal (for example, the Deutsche Bundespost is a bureaucratic organisation organised around the goal of losing people's mail), members receive a +2 bonus for actions which are directly related to that goal. Not that, as per the Law of Inconvenience, since most managers and supervisors are only *indirectly* related to the overall goal, they don't get bonuses. Therefore, usually the person with whom you must talk to straighten out a problem won't really be able to help. There are two exceptions to the Law of Exclusion. The first is Sports. It is easy to become part of a Sport club (if the Law of Inconvenience doesn't prevent you from registering). Such an organisation is, typically, non-hierarchical, and actually encourages interaction with new people. The Law still poses limitations, though. There are only specific times when one may join (start of a semester for student type groups), and it is almost impossible to be in more than one such group. Reportedly some people participate in two; there are myths about people in three such groups. More than that is pure fairy tale . . . The second exception is drinking. First, depending upon the situation, you may become part of a new group of ``people drinking'' in a given bar or pub. More importantly, though, drinking negates language penalties and can, indeed, even provide bonuses. The value of the number of drinks (a drink is alcohol equal to one beer, but in Germany a beer is 0.5 litre and 7--12% alcohol) is subtracted from language DN, no matter who is talking (German or non-German). ote that this does *not* negate any penalties associated with being drunk, which may *also* hinder language skills. However, as a general rule, the +2 can be gotten rid of with a few drinks before other ill effects start setting in. Someone with the Drinkin' skill could, conceivably, go from tourist-book German to Hegelian philosophy in a good night. LAW OF PARADOX This Law applies mostly as a limitation to the Tech axiom. While individual devices may exist up to the full Tech axiom, no procedure may be, overall, more efficent than it was in 1940 (that would be about Tech 21, right?). The Law of Inconvenience is usually very good at providing the mechanisms. Some examples: 1) Health insurance. Most folks these days have an insurance card with a microchip containing their insurance information thereon. However, all insurance payments for a three-month period must be made through the first doctor you visit in a quarter. Thus, if you visit the dentist for your checkup, and then have to bring your kids to the doctor six times because they get chicken pox, payments for the doctor get paid to the dentist, and you the insured have to get it all straightened out. 2) Computers. The TU-Karlsruhe student machine has TeX loaded. It has no student-available method for previewing. Also, 3) while the machine is attached to a laser printer, the printer is hidden and the printouts are *hand* collated by the computer-centre staffers at the *most* every hour. More likely you should expect to send the print command one day and pick up the output the following day. 4) Banking. They have ATMs. The ATMs don't print receipts. You can easily make direct transfers to somebody else's bank account. However, if you *don't* have an ATM card and you try to withdraw money from a branch other than the one where you opened your account, they have to call the issuing bank for confirmation. Don't ask me what the computers on the desks are for . . . 5) Bureaucracy. The residency office in Karlsruhe has a computer. The residency office in Kiel has files that make the DMV or an Alexander's department store look modern. Therefore in moving from Kiel to Karlsruhe, the computers here weren't able to access the old data. Oh, and after I filled out the computer form for residency in Karlsruhe, and *before* the civil servant typed anything into the computer, he wrote all the necessary information out on a sheet of paper. While I waited. Then I looked over the counter and saw that *all* of the workers had scads of little bittie notes covering their desks. They also had computers. Go figure. NOTES ===== That about covers the important parts of the Germany cosm. One thing does need to be mentioned, though. Doener Kebabs. What the hell, you may ask, is a Doener? Well, roughly described it is the Turkish equivalent of a Gyro. There is much variation from place to place. The one constant, though, is existence. There are Doener shops *everywhere*. In a small city like Karlsruhe, they are spaced roughly every 400--500ft. along the main pedestrian zone. What does this have to do with the reality? I think the Turkey cosm is planning on invading, and that the deployed stelae are hidden in Doener shops. Just speculation, though . . . CJW ********************************************************************** /\ Colin J. Wynne Washington and Lee University (()) Lexington, Virginia /____\ ``Lunatic-at-Large'' E-Mail: cwynne@sage.wlu.edu /______\ /________\ ``I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.'' ---Lord Henry Wotton, from Oscar Wilde's _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. **********************************************************************