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Does Absolute Power Corrupt Absolutely?


Nioca

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So, the recent posts on what the canisters do has me thinking. What if the canisters or Geneforge had no undesirable side-effects; what if it merely boosted the user's power or abilities without causing delusions of grandeur, glowing skin, or any other negative mental or physical problems? Would it become ethical to use the canisters or Geneforge? Or would it still wind up causing more problems than it solves?

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Originally Posted By: Yelbis Eceer Nalyd
No. Power should be earned, not found. Sacrificed for, not stumbled upon.


Ah, but Nalyd, what if the task to get the canister was replacement for the task of learning the skill. Infiltrating a Shaper stronghold for a band of puresteel is no easy task, and even for the Geneforge, which you would most likely say is "stumbled upon" required years of training in advance. According to whatshisface arrogant lifecrafter from the first zone, and the intro.

So, while there is no energy spent on learning the skill, as long as there is an equatable amount of energy spent on something deserving, then the power from canisters should have no restrictions.
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Power itself corrupts. Maybe not everyone, but it will corrupt many, enough for me to say no to the poll, and no to canisters in general. Even no to Shaping in general, as it has only ever led to evil people trying to be gods. You never see a benevolent Shaper, canister user or otherwise. No one has ever created something for the sake of life, only to serve their own desires. No shaper has ever treated a creation like a being with it's own life, its own desires, even the Rebellion has forgotten what it fights for. The world would be better off without the practice, as it only brings new beings into the world as slaves. Conflict is inherent with such a power existing.

 

Sorry for getting a bit off topic half way through there.

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I agree with sleeping dragon very much.

Maybe I'd just like to add, that if all had access to any kind of power, it'd be stupid, for as long as it'd be good for everyone to have basic knowledge in variety of different fields, it's still no fun if all'd be totally equal in knowledge, power etc. I mean, diversity is always good, don't you think?

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I believe that if the canisters had no side affects, they should be allowed, but used sparingly. they should only be given to people who deserved such power and would be able to handle the human urge to blow stuff up when given the chance. lesser canisters would be used more frequently, to speed train people in emergencies, overall the powerfull canisters should only be given to people who wouldn't abuse their powers if they got them the normal way.

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Originally Posted By: Ale193
they should only be given to people who deserved such power
I would agree, but who decides who deserves the power? I agree with Plato in that I think the only people who deserve power are those that don't want it. As far as shaping goes, only those that would take the time to learn it hard way, those who have come to understand its consequences and its costs, they are the only ones who should ever be allowed such power. Even then I would hope they would refuse it.
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But think, no side effects of using power ... is that possible at all? I think that some "side-effects" of gaining power, or knowledge for that matter, is impatience with those who do not posess it to a comparable extent. I don't think this is a side-effect, but a logical consequence of how human brains work. I believe that everyone here had an experience where they blew their top due to someone not understanding something when explained for the third time already.

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The cannister-madness, I think, is one of Jeff's more clever bits of writing. The addictiveness predicts the negative effects... and the negative effects add depth and realism to the cannister-use and help explain one of the reasons why they are so disliked by the Shapers (besides, of course, the main reason that they don't want the Shapers' power to become so easily accessible by just anybody).

 

At any rate: everything should have its price. If you want power and want to stay sane: you sacrifice time and money. If you want power and don't want to spend the time and money: you use the cannisters, and your mind and body disintegrate.

 

If cannisters had no side effects but were given sparingly, they'd be just another treasure. There wouldn't be anything special about them. We wouldn't be devoting quite so much time discussing, as we do again and again, the science behind them.

 

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Originally Posted By: Sleeping Dragon
Originally Posted By: AnarhIztok2511
Just one question - how many of those who answered "no" actually don't use canisters in the games?
Well, it is a game. I certainly do have playthroughs where I don't use canisters. I find them to be the most satisfying.

I play mostly proshaper only play other factions to hear their side of the story. So I usually very selective with what canisters I get.
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Anarhl:

I answered "No", of course, and I always use cannisters. I try to limit my usage to the truly important ones, so my diplomatic capabilities aren't affected too much... but still it's amusing to watch my character slowly dissolve into a strange combination of emotional detachment and an inability to control his/her anger.

 

Was there a character in G4 who helped you control the "cannister madness"? There should be some way to increase your ability to maintain mental control, so the anger doesn't overcome you. The game does mention, whenever you run into "situations", that you are able, with some effort, to control your anger... but from what I've been able to see, this seems to be only a skill that you can manage before you reach a certain point of cannister usage. There's no real indication in the game that your character seeks, at any point, to increase his or her ability to control the anger that the cannisters instill.

 

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Originally Posted By: Evnissyen
Was there a character in G4 who helped you control the "cannister madness"?


There's someone in Shaper Camp Gamma who can attempt to repair your mind, but it doesn't actually reduce your canister usage count: it just gives you a free point of Spellcraft.
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That does have the interesting implication that canisters could be improved somehow, to give you a bit more power at no more cost. That then suggests that perhaps the same power could be had with a bit less damage.

 

After all, canisters have heretofore (yee-ha!) all been made by canister-made wackos of one sort or another. They wouldn't be optimising for sanity.

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i voted yes due to power always having a way to corrupt the unstable. As Student said "After all, canisters have heretofore (yee-ha!) all been made by canister-made wackos of one sort or another. They wouldn't be optimising for sanity." Soooo in GF4 the guy who explains about canisters is a whacko. Makes sense right?

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Evni:

I agree with you about the canister madness control. I think it should depend on some of your skills (int, end, luck, ???).

What if, for example, every level of "mental stability" skill, which would be a sum of intelligence, endurance and shear luck, or something else, would give your character a, let's say, 3 % chance of escaping the negative effect of a used canister.

Furthermore, said, or any other, skill could give you a very small chance of getting extra point(s) of a skill out of a canister.

And I also agree that there should be some way to, at least partially, decrease the effects of canisters. Maybe some (Trakovite??) healer, or special encounter, friendly spirit etc. could offer you to decrease the negative side-effects (to decrease the SDF by one) for, let's say, 5 skill points or 2000 experience points.

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I don't think having the ability to reduce the effect canisters have on you by paying money or training a skill makes sense. We've seen that even learned shaping can have disastrous effects on people, and canisters are far worse on sanity. There's only been a few canister users who could overcome it and they've had to give up canisters first. Making the PC capable of using canisters without suffering any real ill effects from them kind of violates the message of the game.

 

Dikiyoba.

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Originally Posted By: Goldenking
Originally Posted By: Yelbis Eceer Nalyd
No. Power should be earned, not found. Sacrificed for, not stumbled upon.


So, while there is no energy spent on learning the skill, as long as there is an equatable amount of energy spent on something deserving, then the power from canisters should have no restrictions.


That would only work to a degree. Even though you could spend lots of time preparing and training and working, when you actually get the canister you won't be able to fully understand what you've just "learned". NPC's in the game say that canister trained people/serviles can't teach their magic because they don't actually know what they are doing, and this leads to loss of control. That's why Litalia is the most powerfull human, because she has formal training in the subject.

Besides, it makes no sense to spend ten years getting a PhD in chemistry, then going off and becoming a architect.
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First of all, I also agree that money shouldn't buy you "forgiveness" for canister use. It should be something you really have to sacrifice - 5 skill points or a lot of experience, or maybe even a point or two of strenghth, could in my opinion be a fair price.

And second, for a skill to reduce the chances of becoming mad, I think it should work to some extent, since throughout the games there are people who suffer a lot less side-effects. Maybe it'd also be connected with which skill you learn - I think it could be explained so, that when a canister teaches you a skill you know quite well, it would "harm" your mind less, since it wouldn't have to rewrite you that much as if you'd've learned a totally new skill.

But still, I think that the idea of "resistance" is not too bad, especially since some people seem to have more of it and some less. And maybe it should also only be effective when being improved in only certain skills - for example luck.

I don't know.

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Originally Posted By: AnarhIztok2511
It should be something you really have to sacrifice - 5 skill points or a lot of experience, or maybe even a point or two of strenghth, could in my opinion be a fair price.

That's not sacrificing, given that G4 had at least six skill-raising canisters. You could use just those six canisters, negate the negative effects, and still come out ahead.

The skill-related resistance doesn't work, either, because it would make the PC too special. The only two people we've ever seen who were able to fight off the canister-madness are Trajkov and Litalia. Why would the PC be comparable to them?

And, really, compared to many other canister users, the PCs are already escaping many of the negative effects. Sure, you get angry a whole lot and sometimes kill people, but you are still able to function just fine around people most of the time and get things done instead of hiding yourself away muttering about clarity and perfection.

Dikiyoba.
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Well, I didn't mean no side-effects, just less, or, more canisters needed to lose control.

And the skill wouldn't make you invunerable to them. It would just give a small percentage of chance. Maybe one in ten canisters has no effect, or something.

And also in G2 at the barzites, there was one person (Selithra???) who used canisters slowly and with time to adjust and didn't get mad, but anotherone (the one you could challenge) was VERY mad. It just seems to depend on the people who use them. Some get more mad than others. I'm just saying it'd be cool to have some secret skill that would illustrate these individual differences between people.

Maybe it'd even be cool to use the geneforges day counter to decrease the chances of getting "mad" with more time passed after the last canister.

It wiuoldn't be essential for the game, just in my opinion cooler and more individual.

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If you introduce a skill that negates canister madness, then how anyone is affected by using canisters becomes nothing more than what level they have in that skill. Canister use ceases to be an incredibly risky thing because instead of not knowing how canisters will affect you, you just train yourself until you have enough talent in the correct skill, then use them.

 

Dikiyoba.

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Ehhh, I'm not in favour of anything that goes in the direction of making canisters less dangerous: their in-game effects are already pretty minor. At the moment, it's easy to say "okay, I can just plan out what canisters I'm going to use, only use the 5 that I want, and suffer no ill effects." If every single canister had some minor but noticeable penalty, like a permanent 1% reduction in maximum HP, that might make people think harder about using them.

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Thuryl:

Quote:

At the moment, it's easy to say "okay, I can just plan out what canisters I'm going to use, only use the 5 that I want, and suffer no ill effects."

 

You can only do that if you've already played through the game, or are using a walkthrough. Otherwise canister usage is a lot like playing the lotto.

 

I wonder if canisters could be a bit more along the lines of the soul crystals from Avernum, where you have some idea of what they will teach you before using them. Usually I'd resent even the slightest of cross-overs between games, but the 'canister lotto' dilemma is inconvenient for first time players.

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Originally Posted By: Ghaldring
You can only do that if you've already played through the game, or are using a walkthrough. Otherwise canister usage is a lot like playing the lotto.

I wonder if canisters could be a bit more along the lines of the soul crystals from Avernum, where you have some idea of what they will teach you before using them. Usually I'd resent even the slightest of cross-overs between games, but the 'canister lotto' dilemma is inconvenient for first time players.


*cough*Save and reload*cough*
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Originally Posted By: Goldenking
Originally Posted By: Yelbis Eceer Nalyd
No. Power should be earned, not found. Sacrificed for, not stumbled upon.


Ah, but Nalyd, what if the task to get the canister was replacement for the task of learning the skill. Infiltrating a Shaper stronghold for a band of puresteel is no easy task, and even for the Geneforge, which you would most likely say is "stumbled upon" required years of training in advance. According to whatshisface arrogant lifecrafter from the first zone, and the intro.

So, while there is no energy spent on learning the skill, as long as there is an equatable amount of energy spent on something deserving, then the power from canisters should have no restrictions.


Sorry if this has already been answered, but Nalyd was gone for a while and doesn't want to read through all that.

Who says that the person who made the canister will use it? And who says it's so cursedly difficult to make a canister in the first place? Time-consuming, expensive, and the materials are rare, but that's not difficult per se.

Geneforge- Perhaps some few people suffer to make it in the first place, but then anyone can use it! It may require knowledge of how to use it, and make you go through extreme agony, but pain does not equal worthiness.
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Originally Posted By: Khoth
If you think about it clearly, it's obvious that the thing to do is to use every canister you find, and kill anyone who tries to stop you.
Uhg, you sound as if you've used one two many canisters yourself, Khoth.

Originally Posted By: Yelbis Eceer Nalyd
Who says that the person who made the canister will use it?
I was under the impression that if you made the canister, you put your own genetic code into it. So using a canister you made would have no effect, right?
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Actually, now that I think about it, it was kinda cheap plotwise to make madness a natural side effect of canisters, given that the canisters are supposed to be more than technology gone wrong and be somewhat along the lines of humanity gone wrong. It would have been much more daring to have the canisters not directly cause madness, but cause it indirectly, with the force of elevation to superiority leading by itself to contempt for the inferior. (Then again, get too daring and people quit playing in disgust. I would have quit playing something that assumed people were so easy to convert into monsters. But the popular success of quite a lot of nihilist books would seem to put me in the minority there.)

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Hmm... I think I know what you're saying, Feo, but... and this is coming ironically from the person who's been arguing so frequently for more involved narrative (generally with the NPC's, though)... I think you're asking for a little too much. Personally, I think the cannister madness is perfect. Maybe a "bad cannister" here or there might be interesting... but then again, one always saves the game before trying a new cannister, so a bad cannister wouldn't make any difference in gameplay, except, I suppose, for bringing in a little bit more 'realism'.

 

...Unless the negative effects of that cannister weren't noticed until a little while later... but then again that would just annoy the hell out of the player.

 

EDIT: Hooray! I'm no longer an "Infiltrator"! No more of that "dirty" feeling.

 

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I don't mean to get off topic( well, I guess I do ) but I been thinking. Wouldn't it make more sense if the canister angry effect was spread out?

 

For instance, if someome uses 7 canisters, he/she's just as frequint to outbursts as someone who's used 50 canisters. I think it would be better if its spread out. Like say you've used 5 canisters. You start to get angry at little things like Dinitia saying you look different. At 7 canisters you attack creations who insult you, like that rune thahd outside Turibia Gate. At 10 you get angry at creations or normal people who tell you to do things or stop you, like that gazer outside Northforge who asked you to go away. At 15 you get mad at everything, even people who can shape.

 

And I think it would be more entertaining to see your character slowly dive to Madness.

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Originally Posted By: Dragonlorddrakon
I don't mean to get off topic( well, I guess I do ) but I been thinking. Wouldn't it make more sense if the canister angry effect was spread out?

For instance, if someome uses 7 canisters, he/she's just as frequint to outbursts as someone who's used 50 canisters. I think it would be better if its spread out.


This actually happens already to some degree. The number of canisters you can take before you have adverse effects increases somewhat as you go further on in the game.
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  • 4 weeks later...
Originally Posted By: AnarhIztok2511
Evni:
I agree with you about the canister madness control. I think it should depend on some of your skills (int, end, luck, ???).
What if, for example, every level of "mental stability" skill, which would be a sum of intelligence, endurance and shear luck, or something else, would give your character a, let's say, 3 % chance of escaping the negative effect of a used canister.


The only reason you would want to take out some of the negetive effects of a canister is so you can use more of them. Like the theme this topic started out with, "all power has a cost".

Well, it seems that Nebulan has learned that everyone here would use canisters in the game just for the fact that the canisters would help you win.
Indeed, who cares if all those useless npc's think your going to kill them at a moments notice, why not? To you their just a few lines of code, at most a personality.

But what would YOU really do if this was real?
Actually there was a nice poll a while ago on just this topic, the whole, would you/how many canisters would you use thing. Perhaps we need to run it again.
In reality Neb doesn't think anyone would use a canister fearing they would go crazy or get a canister with somthing wrong with it, use it, and die.
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what if, for the canisters, instead of having all the madness from using the canister once, what if using the canister spells drove you slowly closer to insanity if you used it? If there was special spells that were uber-destructive, and only available from canisters, and every time you used it you do mental damage to yourself by hurting your essence, health, and lowering your intelligence? And eventually if you relied on the spell you would be more insane Shaila and use the spell on yourself?

 

Oh, and ya, i would totally use every canister available. But i'd be a nice magical and powerful Dictator... tongue

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