Schlock Mercenary VIII: insAIne in the mAInfrAIme

[HandofShadows]

Or Team Fortress 2.

[Kornaki]

Or.... Dungeons and dragons?

I think it's very likely he has played an mmo, because he's obviously played tabletop RPGs and those types of people usually play MMOs also. This is just not new information.

[Willie the Duck]

Or.... Dungeons and dragons?

It sounds to me like a turn of phrase more in tune with how things are discussed in discussions about computer games than table-top roleplaying games. 'Tanking' certainly has crept over and is pretty ubiquitous in TTRPG discussions. Targeting the healer, otoh, would be a strange strategy in D&D.

I think it's very likely he has played an mmo, because he's obviously played tabletop RPGs and those types of people usually play MMOs also. This is just not new information.

And I wasn't being serious about 'we're finding out.' He's made 'Warhammer 40K' jokes over a decade ago.

[Max_Killjoy]

HT most definitely plays video games and TT RPGs.

He's even in a weekly RPG twitch stream right now.

[HouseRules]

Pretty sure that D&D is "Kill the Wizard First" and MMORPG is "Kill the Healer First".

Also, Disarming by removing their arms and their arms.

[PhantomFox]

First instance of it that I personally ran across was this:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2.../21/the-protip

[factotum]

First instance of it that I personally ran across was this:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2.../21/the-protip

It definitely predates that. There's a dungeon called Upper Blackrock Spire in World of Warcraft that was there right from the launch of the game in 2004, and one of the bosses in it has a line "Fools! Kill the one in the dress!"--meaning, "Kill the healer, not the warrior!". I recall that being a pretty old trope even then when I heard that line.

[HouseRules]

Are you guys sure it did not exist in Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) in the 90's?

[factotum]

OK, so these lumpy cables with annie plants in them allow Pa'anuri to interface with baryonic matter. Problem is, don't annie plants actually physically hurt Pa'anuri? I'm sure I remember that being a thing at one point.

[HorizonWalker]

OK, so these lumpy cables with annie plants in them allow Pa'anuri to interface with baryonic matter. Problem is, don't annie plants actually physically hurt Pa'anuri? I'm sure I remember that being a thing at one point.

No, Annie Plants are just really, really heavy, meaning they've got some gravity of their own for the Pa'anuri to manipulate.

Now, Teraporting, that's what kills them.

[HouseRules]

OK, so these lumpy cables with annie plants in them allow Pa'anuri to interface with baryonic matter. Problem is, don't annie plants actually physically hurt Pa'anuri? I'm sure I remember that being a thing at one point.

When Kevyn reinvent teraport, 100% of teraport technology requires annie plants.
It took several generations of development to change that.

[Toptomcat]

Aren't baryonic creatures working with Pa'anuri a priceless intelligence source?

The F'Sherl-Ganni are supposed to have communicated with them in the backstory, but I don't think anyone in the modern era has ever managed. To date communication has been limited to 'if you use teraports we will do our damnedest to kill you', which has its faults as a means of negotiating an end to an intergalactic conflict.

[Kornaki]

Apparently not.

[HorizonWalker]

You forget- this company is run by Captain Kaff "Ew, diplomacy. Don't get any of that on me" Tagon.

He's grown more thoughtful since then, but diplomacy still isn't his favorite tool in his toolbox.

[The Glyphstone]

And 'food that talks is not food, but if you eat it before it can talk it's still food' Sergeant Schlock. Introspection is not his strong point in most situations.

[memnarch]

Aren't baryonic creatures working with Pa'anuri a priceless intelligence source?

The F'Sherl-Ganni are supposed to have communicated with them in the backstory, but I don't think anyone in the modern era has ever managed. To date communication has been limited to 'if you use teraports we will do our damnedest to kill you', which has its faults as a means of negotiating an end to an intergalactic conflict.

It'd also work better if they didn't need to reconstruct the language these things use.

[Toptomcat]

When 'mindrip' technology exists to destructively get the total output of someone's mind and memories across a wide variety of independently evolved sentient species- including those with Schlockishly bizarre neurology- as well as a science of linguistics built around a corpus of an enormous variety of independently-developed languages and a means of simulating the minds of your linguists at many times normal speed, that's not the barrier it seems at first.

[memnarch]

Well sure, but this looks to be the first time that not being able to communicate with something has come up, with the exception of the primitives that only had spears.

[Rockphed]

Also, you need to have somebody who can do all the talky-talk. The people on the Synthetic Certainty who might be able to are about Kevyn, and he is more of a "build death rays" kind of mad scientist.

[guttering flame]

Are we sure these creatures are baryonic quislings and not lab grown pets/remotely controlled bary-arms the Pa'anuri made?

[Wayson]

Are we sure these creatures are baryonic quislings and not lab grown pets/remotely controlled bary-arms the Pa'anuri made?

The Pa'anuri would still need some way to interact with baryonic matter in order to have a lab capable of creating baryonic sapients. Not to mention that they'd need to have an elaborate apparatus in order to communicate with / control those sapients. Occam's Razor indicates that these are quislings.

[JavaScribe]

The Pa'anuri would still need some way to interact with baryonic matter in order to have a lab capable of creating baryonic sapients. Not to mention that they'd need to have an elaborate apparatus in order to communicate with / control those sapients. Occam's Razor indicates that these are quislings.

Their word for baryonic life is "annoying", they wipe out any civilization that reaches the radio, and literally annihilated an entire galaxy in an alternate timeline. They don't seem to be interested in conquest. There must be some special reason they are willing to tolerate these guys.

From what we know, the Pa'anuri were originally control mechanisms for world forges, so its entirely possible that they do in fact have a method to create artificial baryonics.

[HorizonWalker]

Their word for baryonic life is "annoying", they wipe out any civilization that reaches the radio, and literally annihilated an entire galaxy in an alternate timeline. They don't seem to be interested in conquest. There must be some special reason they are willing to tolerate these guys.

From what we know, the Pa'anuri were originally control mechanisms for world forges, so its entirely possible that they do in fact have a method to create artificial baryonics.

The Pa'anuri weren't control mechanisms for the world forges. They were power sources. That implies far less finesse.

Anyhow, we also know that they were willing to work with and tolerate the Gatekeepers- that's how we found out about them in the first place. I reckon they're also willing to work with and tolerate a few species who are willing to keep teraporting to the barest of minimums.

[The Glyphstone]

Were they working with the Gatekeepers, or running a multi-millennia con game on them? The plans for the core generator that would have sterilized the galaxy if it fired up originally came from the Pa'anuri, IIRC.

[HandofShadows]

Were they working with the Gatekeepers, or running a multi-millennia con game on them? The plans for the core generator that would have sterilized the galaxy if it fired up originally came from the Pa'anuri, IIRC.

The DMB only "worked" with the Gatekeepers because they couldn't win the war they were fighting with them. So they had a peace treaty which the Gatekeepers followed and the DMB violated by attempting to destroy the entire Milky Way Galaxy with the core generator.

[JavaScribe]

For these guys at least, question answered.

[Radar]

For these guys at least, question answered.

And we see an everalsting problem with people not reading the documents they are given. Trying to make them is a difficult and often futile task.

[Ibrinar]

Btw I can't remember did schlock have some cannon reason to have flesh and blood mercenaries? The far superior thought speed should make robot soldiers just better than most and comics that allude to non AIs slowing things down tend to remind me of that.

[Grim Portent]

Btw I can't remember did schlock have some cannon reason to have flesh and blood mercenaries? The far superior thought speed should make robot soldiers just better than most and comics that allude to non AIs slowing things down tend to remind me of that.

As I recall we've been given no particular reason beyond some kind of abstract idea that organics can come up with ideas AIs usually wouldn't. Which makes little sense when an organic can become an AI and an AI can become organic.

At this point a lot of people who make a living off of creative works, scientific research and so on would have good reason to migrate into AI form and rapidly enhance the speed at which their minds work. Even a cheap AI chassis can think much faster than a meat brain can, and Petey set a precedent for meat bodies serving as nodes for an AI, so you don't even need to give up the material world to do so.

[Max_Killjoy]

As I recall we've been given no particular reason beyond some kind of abstract idea that organics can come up with ideas AIs usually wouldn't. Which makes little sense when an organic can become an AI and an AI can become organic.

At this point a lot of people who make a living off of creative works, scientific research and so on would have good reason to migrate into AI form and rapidly enhance the speed at which their minds work. Even a cheap AI chassis can think much faster than a meat brain can, and Petey set a precedent for meat bodies serving as nodes for an AI, so you don't even need to give up the material world to do so.

The concept of what an AI is and can do has morphed a bit since the start of the comic, I think.

But within the comic's setting, I think there's some social inertia.