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Harebrained Schemes General Discussion Thread

Will HBS stay on the path of the incline?

  • Yes, it will always stay on the right side

    Votes: 26 9.7%
  • For some time yes, then it will inevitably fall

    Votes: 45 16.8%
  • It already started becoming a decline

    Votes: 33 12.3%
  • It is alrady a decline

    Votes: 30 11.2%
  • It was never an incline to begin with.

    Votes: 69 25.7%
  • How the fuck could I know?

    Votes: 47 17.5%
  • kingcomrade in order to make well thought answers meaningles

    Votes: 18 6.7%

  • Total voters
    268

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
Just go play Shadows over Riva. It's fantasy, it's set in a single city (fairly big by RPG standards) and the main quest involves parasitic mind-controlling worms, while the side ones - an elven vampire (too scary to have her butt though) and a mad scientist wizard tower.
 

Delterius

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
Messages
15,956
Location
Entre a serra e o mar.
you come to a realm of urban fantasy

and dares to request some more medieval fantasy in yer plate

you are hereby dismissed soldier

There were urban towns in dark medieval time. I'm just saying urban fantasy can be wide construct. Misunderstood dismissed soldier reporting for duty.

disregard the cars
Medieval-villages-and-towns-in-France.jpg
damn

you can fit almost an entire neigborhood in that forgotten realms town
 

gestalt11

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
Messages
629
The only thing in current times that vaguely resembles this are the international banks, however be assured each one has a sovereign nation whose bread they are required to butter.

Amazon. Google. Facebook. You choose it.

Just wait 10-15 years, pal.

Look into what all 3 of those have to do in regards to demands from China. Many things can't even be run by the actual companies inside that country and instead must be farmed out and licensed to in country companies. Just like Blizzard does not really have WoW in China, people say they do, but they just collect a licensing fee or the whole kerfuffle about Overwatch and the HK stuff some of those tweets were not from actual Blizzard.

When a sovereign state wants to fuck you, it can. Now I do not hold with the idea that one should only concentrate on the power of a sovereign state (which is mostly what classical liberals of the hobbs/locke vein do) and at some point the "private" (whatever that means) collection of power essentially does become the sovereign state and history shows a number of cases where this transition has occurred either through force of arms or mercantilist mechanics. Sovereign states are what they are because they are able to control, defend and/or destroy certain tactically important things.

If you think Google can't be replaced by a few different sovereign states in a very quick fashion you are not analyzing things correctly. It would only take a few warrants to take over certain functionality and keep em running. Most likely things would degrade once they did, but keeping google or facebook running as is would be a simple matter. Even more simple for China since they have hooks already in place in any company that is in country and all of the ones you fear are required to farm out to companies the state has hooks into.

This is not meant to minimize their power or impact but merely to show their nature versus that of sovereign states. They may, in fact, have just as much or more power overall, but they are interwoven, can't really stand on their own and have key vulnerabilities

Shadowrun is actually not a stupid setting. They realize this to some degree. All of the corporations in Shadowrun have a military and espionage wing and they are major sections of each corporation. Indeed this whole idea is one of the major corner stones of why there are shadowrunner for the players to portray. This is a smart creation by the original designers. My only contention is that sovereign states would immediately kill or imprison everyone involved with a corporation trying to do such a thing. The designers of Shadowrun would say this didn't happen during the massive chaos and tumult of the emergence of magic and not being an autisitic douchebag I would say "Ok well that has some plausibility then and it makes a cool setting so I'll go with it." The tumult of Shadowrun not only occupied the sovereign states with nuclear level threats like Dragons, but also forced various corporations to develop their own armies just to defend what they had. So it provided a plausible reason for a corporation to rapidly arm and simultaneously explained how the sovereigns were too occupied to kill them all.

Now compare this to the shallow stupidity of The Outer Worlds.
 

Spectacle

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 25, 2006
Messages
8,363
Sovereign megacorporations is a dumb concept because the very thing that makes corporations possible; private property, is enforced by the State. In a sovereign corporation there would be nothing to prevent corrupt corporate management from robbing the company. The stock holders would have no power if there wasn't a government to back their claim to own part of the corporation just because they're holding a stock certificate.
 

Verylittlefishes

Sacro Bosco
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2019
Messages
4,731
Location
Oneoropolis
The only thing in current times that vaguely resembles this are the international banks, however be assured each one has a sovereign nation whose bread they are required to butter.

Amazon. Google. Facebook. You choose it.

Just wait 10-15 years, pal.

Look into what all 3 of those have to do in regards to demands from China. Many things can't even be run by the actual companies inside that country and instead must be farmed out and licensed to in country companies. Just like Blizzard does not really have WoW in China, people say they do, but they just collect a licensing fee or the whole kerfuffle about Overwatch and the HK stuff some of those tweets were not from actual Blizzard.

When a sovereign state wants to fuck you, it can. Now I do not hold with the idea that one should only concentrate on the power of a sovereign state (which is mostly what classical liberals of the hobbs/locke vein do) and at some point the "private" (whatever that means) collection of power essentially does become the sovereign state and history shows a number of cases where this transition has occurred either through force of arms or mercantilist mechanics. Sovereign states are what they are because they are able to control, defend and/or destroy certain tactically important things.

If you think Google can't be replaced by a few different sovereign states in a very quick fashion you are not analyzing things correctly. It would only take a few warrants to take over certain functionality and keep em running. Most likely things would degrade once they did, but keeping google or facebook running as is would be a simple matter. Even more simple for China since they have hooks already in place in any company that is in country and all of the ones you fear are required to farm out to companies the state has hooks into.

This is not meant to minimize their power or impact but merely to show their nature versus that of sovereign states. They may, in fact, have just as much or more power overall, but they are interwoven, can't really stand on their own and have key vulnerabilities

Shadowrun is actually not a stupid setting. They realize this to some degree. All of the corporations in Shadowrun have a military and espionage wing and they are major sections of each corporation. Indeed this whole idea is one of the major corner stones of why there are shadowrunner for the players to portray. This is a smart creation by the original designers. My only contention is that sovereign states would immediately kill or imprison everyone involved with a corporation trying to do such a thing. The designers of Shadowrun would say this didn't happen during the massive chaos and tumult of the emergence of magic and not being an autisitic douchebag I would say "Ok well that has some plausibility then and it makes a cool setting so I'll go with it." The tumult of Shadowrun not only occupied the sovereign states with nuclear level threats like Dragons, but also forced various corporations to develop their own armies just to defend what they had. So it provided a plausible reason for a corporation to rapidly arm and simultaneously explained how the sovereigns were too occupied to kill them all.

Now compare this to the shallow stupidity of The Outer Worlds.

http://www.iradvocates.org/press-re...-case-against-tech-giants-apple-alphabet-dell

Cobalt-Kids.jpg
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
is it the same people who called Arcanum brilliant for the fusion of magic and steampunk?
I wouldn't know.

The way I understand steampunk, it should be an extensive use of steam power. But most often it turns out to be "modern technology in disguise". From that standpoint the fusion of steampunk with magic seems less dramatic is much easier concept to accept as a whole. However, in Arcanum these two (magic and technology) are fighting for primacy, not co-existing and I'd argue that beings living in a fantasy universe and discovering technology (steam power) is more believable premise than the magic bleeding into the "real" world at some point in time. I mean, I get it - it's a fantasy after all, but there are always ways to make it more or less plausible.
 

Verylittlefishes

Sacro Bosco
Patron
Joined
Sep 14, 2019
Messages
4,731
Location
Oneoropolis
is it the same people who called Arcanum brilliant for the fusion of magic and steampunk?
I wouldn't know.

The way I understand steampunk, it should be an extensive use of steam power. But most often it turns out to be "modern technology in disguise". From that standpoint the fusion of steampunk with magic seems less dramatic is much easier concept to accept as a whole. However, in Arcanum these two (magic and technology) are fighting for primacy, not co-existing and I'd argue that beings living in a fantasy universe and discovering technology (steam power) is more believable premise than the magic bleeding into the "real" world at some point in time. I mean, I get it - it's a fantasy after all, but there are always ways to make it more or less plausible.

I mean, this is just ficking weird when you remove fantasy roots away from the roots (and Tolkien's elves and orcs very much had their roots, yes, sir) and put them into the steampunk/cyberpunk setting. Well, okay, you did it. What now?
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
It's less weird than you think. Classic fantasy is pretty much the medieval era plus magic. All you really need to do is look at how the humanity has transitioned from that period and went into the industrial revolution. The real question is: what do you do with the whole magic and magical creatures? How hard is magic to learn and use, compared to everything else? How hard will it be for races armed with industrial weaponry to wipe up ecosystems of magical creatures? Do gods exist and if they do, do they intervene? If the answer is yes; in what form and what scale? Etc.
 
Last edited:
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Oct 8, 2018
Messages
1,121
Oh this is so cool I don't know the studio but a vampire rpg made like Pillars of Eternity or whatever in that style could be really fun!
 

Nano

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2016
Messages
4,647
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
This is NOT going to be a Vampire game, people. Ffs. Paradox is not shortsighted enough to not see the value of using non-Vampire WoD settings. (and yes WoD has more settings than just Vampire, have you even tried just reading Wikipedia?)
 

GhostCow

Balanced Gamer
Patron
Joined
Jan 2, 2020
Messages
3,994
Vampire and Werewolf games are already coming soon so I wonder what this could be. A game based on Mage, Wraith, or Changeling would be cool
 
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Oct 8, 2018
Messages
1,121
This is NOT going to be a Vampire game, people. Ffs. Paradox is not shortsighted enough to not see the value of using non-Vampire WoD settings. (and yes WoD has more settings than just Vampire, have you even tried just reading Wikipedia?)

Maybe it'll be like a medieval dark ages vampire game? (I saw that setting on wikipedia)
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Dark Ages Vampire is one of the few fantasy medieval settings that I actually fully enjoy with no compromises, so I'd be down for that. Not to mention that there has only ever been 1 such game - VtM: Redemption. I'd say the medieval portion was actually better and more atmospheric than the modern nights. Either way, I'm ok with every setting besides Werewolf. Changeling is also kinda eeehh.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
This is NOT going to be a Vampire game, people. Ffs. Paradox is not shortsighted enough to not see the value of using non-Vampire WoD settings. (and yes WoD has more settings than just Vampire, have you even tried just reading Wikipedia?)

Pity, I was already envisioning Shadowrun The Masquerade: Bloodlines.
:happytrollboy:
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Well Delterius bumped this thread because of this: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...rebrained-schemes.121538/page-86#post-6537161

Now, with our season pass at an end, HBS is going to focus on two brand new non-BattleTech projects.

So the horror game is just one of their projects.

From recent job ad for AI Engineer: https://hbsstudios.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=49

Design, implement, and maintain strategic, efficient, and realistic path finding and path following algorithms as well as formation and grouping algorithms.

Sounds like party/squad mechanics.

So maybe it's two games, a horror game and another squad/party-based game like Shadowrun/BattleTech? Seems like it's all in Unity though.
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,759
Because HBS’s Shadowruns were so crunchy and number heavy? The gear progression was linear and skill advancement the same..
 

Yosharian

Arcane
Joined
May 28, 2018
Messages
9,420
Location
Grand Chien
I'm trying, for the second time, to finish Dragonfall and it's painfully bad. I really don't know why this game is so highly rated. And I found Battletech very underwhelming, too. I think I'm done with this studio.
 

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