Some games are just "painfully 90's". Or 80's, or sometimes even 70's. Cyberpunk 2020, Werewolf: The Apocalypse...

The point is that on some days now it's almost hard to imagine a world without smartphones. Everyone and their dog (often literally) has one, and the internet's full of videos of babies who try to slide their fingers across book pages and get frustrated they don't react (speaking of which, YouTube's another fairly new thing it's almost hard to imagine life without now).

But just a decade ago, none of that existed.

Holy shit are you serious on the babies sliding their fingers on books? That's the saddest thing I've ever heard.

I fully agree that WoD is painfully, painfully 90s, and not in a good way.

...

It's actually a common enough phenomenon it's got an official name now. Forgot what it is, but there are studies about it and all.

I remember back in uni I worked on a commercial for our school's communications department. It showed one of those videos (a baby trying to slide across a magazine page), with the slogan being "For a baby born in 2010, a page is just a broken screen."

And in many ways, it's true. Research shows more and more young kids have very undeveloped typing skills, for example. They can't use keyboards because they don't need to, all the technology is slowly moving towards touchscreens.

If this looks to you like "degeneration" or like they're losing skills, consider that this is how the previous generation thinks about your inability to navigate without a GPS, retain information without Wikipedia or find websites without Google (and even if you personally are an exception, the fact this is true for most of the current generation). What consists an "important skill" simply changes with the times. When we were kids, it was typing. Now, it'll probably change to something we'll be bad at and say kids who are good at are being little degenerates.

A little more than a decade ago, a video game charging real money for cosmetic skins was considered ridiculous. Now they commonly charge real money for RANDOMIZED BOXES of cosmetic skins.

Don't know about the touchscreen thing, but it looks related to what's known as the Google Effect, or more professionally "digital amnesia". It refers to a specific cause for an observed (apparent) reduction in people's ability to remember facts, especially numerical ones. The Google Effect theory basically says that this is because a modern person's brain no longer considers memorizing facts something it should waste cognitive resources on - every fact is a Google search away. It's really just an evolution of the phenomenon of people no longer remembering phone numbers because our phones do it for us, for example.

Also, just to clarify before some oldfag leaps out of the woodworks crying about degeneracy: those cognitive resources don't evaporate into the void, they get reallocated. The same research shows (for example) that the same people who can't be bothered to remember facts because they know they can always Google them also show a corresponding improvement in ability to quickly absorb (if not retain) larger amounts of information than the previous generation, and are IMMENSELY better at multitasking.

This is something I've noticed in myself to a large extent, coupled with this sense that rather than flip through pages looking for something I should just plug keywords into a search bar that doesn't exist. This also extends to when I'm looking for something in a cluttered room or for a room in a building.

No, but it makes it fucking awesome.

Modern cyberpunk would be plenty cool, though. A lot of recent advances already make the world closer, but expand on what was once considered. It's always funny how just like some science fiction authors happen to predict the future with frightening accuracy (e.g. Jules Verne), some ideas are so "out-there" that nobody even considers them. They're not just advances of things we can imagine, but are completely new "ideas". People thought "spaceships" for decades at least, because a spaceship is just an advanced "vehicle". But who could've predicted "social networking websites" until recently?

>But who could've predicted "social networking websites" until recently?

Well if cyberpunk was created nowadays it would probably be more like mirrors edge, or possibly infinity the rpg.

1977 isn't exactly antiquity.

>tfw you have underdeveloped typing skills, because you were a kid before PCs become a common thing.

It's impressive nevertheless.

Cheer up, soon they'll be irrelevant.

>mfw homesick for a place i've never been.

Cali?

Teenagers from Outer Space (all of them... oh god...)
Mekton (all of them)

TfOS I agree about, but what was so timely about Mekton?

I once caught myself looking at the corner of a page to check the battery life. I didnt even have a smart phone until a year ago

Post 9/11 society has sapped the fun out of most paranormal/fantasy settings that take place in the modern age.

Try The Machine Stops from 1909. It's more internet and skype than social networking websites, but still.

I maintain it could see a resurgence if someone made a serious, honest to goodness attempt to edit the core book and tighten it up, and come up with a more ergonomic way to approach things. It has a lot of material, but it is so scattered in focus that it gets confounding, and it needs serious balance attempts.

[Spoiler] sneaking in and using a mega damage laser pistol in a saloon to confront bandits and crashing the entire building on myself is still my favorite character death [/spoiler]

It's very much "internet in general".

Google becomes an extension of the brain? We’re going full transhuman but we haven’t even got DNI working. Beautiful.

>all those games which today feel like they're making fun of the zeigeist
No, they don't.

Horse armour was shit and you have the ability to earn those skins by just playing the game.

In the same sense that people have been steadily losing their sense of direction since we started using maps (Australian Aboriginals literally have vastly more developed areas in their brain dedicated to that, is the most commonly presented example), or their rote memorization ability since we started writing (a phenomenon mentioned, ironically, on ancient clay tablets). In a sense, that's the whole point of "technology".

More like, we're becoming less human. Evil corporate giant siphons your soul bit by bit, and in a few generations - if not sooner - your children (yeah OK that's breaking realism a bit) will be pale autistic things unable to function without a network of computers doing their brain's work for them.

We need full Butlerian Jihad in 21st century before our souls are removed and replaced with machine simulacra.

>find websites without Google

Use another search engine? I mean, outside of that it's pretty much knowing the address by heart.

...

>your children [...] will be pale autistic things unable to function without a network of computers doing their brain's work for them

Awesome. I can't wait for it.

Oddly enough, today's Vampire failed utterly and is pretty much being replaced by an updated version of Masquerade.

You don't get it. The computers are part of you. You can't separate man and his tools the same way you can't separate the brain and the arm. Our tools make us what we are, and we make the tools what they are.

>people no longer remembering phone numbers because our phones do it for us

And before that it was the phone book or the little address book next to the phone you had all the numbers of your friends and family in it. I could only remember the numbers I called every other day. There wasn't many of them and it was more by muscle memory on the keypad than actually knowing the numbers. I even remember my pin number or my door code more by the motion than remembering the actual numbers.

I would not call the ammount of books published for V:tR a fail by any stretch.

Over-reliance on tools is weakness. There are grown ass men and women who can't cook for themselves and have no practical or even creative skills aside from whatever shitty office job pays their bills, and it is shameful.

Mekton's got the old-timey anime aesthetic from the 80s/90s.

TfOS depends on the edition... The oldest two I've seen were based on 50s(earliest edition I've seen)/60s(newer) american highschool life (with the art to match). The newer I've seen is 80s anime aesthetic.

>You can't separate man and his tools

Yeah, you can. How many carpenter's sets do you have? You got reloading tools for your musket? How about for shoeing a horse?

The effects of man on the world are completely reliant on his tools, and has always been so since the dawn of agrarianism. Domesticated animals, selectively-bred crops, all these things are the tools of man. Specialization is how societies succeed.

Even if they kept pushing books out, it failed to replicate its former incarnation's success. It's nobody's favourite splat, to the point where most people would rather use M lore for it, and eventually the developers just said fuck it and converted all the old stuff into the new mechanics.

In twenty or so years of TTRPG I think I've seen one short-lived game of Requiem.

Just wait till the future is all about cars that drive themselves, refuel themselves and go for repairs automatically and people get everything handed to them on a platter by a cold machine. Going to be some dumb useless motherfuckers around, more so than usual. Just cows, bred solely to consume.

As expected from a 400-lb shipment of lard

Brain + Tool + Aptitude = good
Totally Automatic Tool = bad

Which is why you're fighting to abolish the coffee machine? Automation exists for a reason, to decrease the human time investment in labor.

...

That will not happen until the day computers become as smart if not smarter than us, and then we have more things to worry about. When I look at some of the roads I travel, and consider all the times GPS has been wrong, it'll be a cold day in Hell before I have any use for a self-driving car.

I'm sure it's great for all the big city folk, who slowly turn into Wall-E people, die out, and leave the world to us barbarians knocking on the gates of Rome.

so throw away your computer and post on Veeky Forums the hard way, by doing sums and quickly tapping two wires together in binary.

Or you barbarians knocking on the gates get trashed by industrial automated warfare. No amount of "strong independent country living" will save you from a drone strike. Technology marches forward inexorably. People move to the cities, and have been doing so for most of history.

>Durr you're writing in english instead of making up your own language

Coffee machine:
>put water in machine
>put coffee filter in machine
>put coffee in machine
>wait
>pour

Brewing your own coffee:
>put water in kettle
>put coffee filter in the funnel thing
>put coffee in funnel
>wait
>pour water through funnel
>wait

Yeah, totally less work there. Also, I have yet to taste one of those coffee vending machine coffees that didn't taste like absolute shit. I'm no hipster, I buy the cheapest crap I get in the store, but at least it tastes like coffee.

You are posting on a product of industrial society by sending a signal from your computer (product of industrial society) through the communication infrastructure (product of industrial society) to the Veeky Forums server (product of, you fucking guessed it, industrial society).

Being against overly automated lifestyles is exactly the same as decrying industrial society and wanting to chase deer through a forest with a wooden spear, yes.

Modern industrial society gave you more free time so you can use it to better yourself, not be a mindless consumer. You don't need to chop wood and start a fire and butcher a pig to make yourself a nice meal today, now drop that frozen Hungry Man trash and cook yourself something nice.

>No amount of "strong independent country living" will save you from a drone strike.

The drone can't strike, if your fingers are too fat to press the button.

>People move to the cities, and have been doing so for most of history.

So, why aren't the oldest cities in the world the biggest? Why are there cities that are in ruin and cities that have been forgotten?

ok let's make this simple

fucking kill yourself.

Here's a guide

Ask me how I know you're a civilian.

Why are you bothering, user? Cattle are mindless and can't be changed.

Enjoy your fat-induced heart attack at 30 and inevitable dementia at 50 from not using your brain, my dude.

Well, your opinion clearly represents the whole hobby, so I was wrong. So sorry.

Industrial work replaced farm work. Farm work replaced hunting and gathering. The concept is the same, you work and you get food.

If V:tR had been a success, White Wolf would still be around.

>luddism

Kept OP going for years.

Not him, but while this indeed may happen to some people, even more we see people going to the gym at their free time. Time they wouldn't have without tech-aid. And as said before, not using memory to remember phone numbers doesn't destroy the memory "slots": they get free to allocate other info.

I still remember my best friend phone that he used in 99, and my ICQ number.

You're ignoring the point of the original post. In some theoretical world where no one has to know how to drive or cock the space that was use in out brains for driving and cooking skills will be replaced by something more immediately relevant.

A theoretical world this advanced has no need for humans.

That's... not true at all.

You gonna make any sort of support for that point or just keep posting fake deep? Skills that used to be mainstream have been phased out to nearly complete irrelevancy for thousands of years now grandpa

If people even want to give up driving. I mean, humans are funny that way. You can make any and all arguments towards why it's safer to let the computer drive, just like you can make arguments why you shouldn't drink, and people will still want to do it and no amounts of laws will stop them.

i actually like those two games

>Over-reliance on tools is weakness.
>this is what he types from the confines of the basement of a structure composed of shaped, cut, hardened, and chemically treated concrete, stone, and wood. A building which delivers water and electrical power directly to him, collects and removes his waste (I hope), temperature controls his life, and protects his body from rain, snow, and heat. He types these words on a machine made of materials nature cannot create that fires electronic signals thousands of times per second. He types these words that are sent into fucking space and beamed to other magic boxes to display his staggering lack of intelligence to hundreds if not thousands of other human beings from across the entire globe.

There's nothing wrong with automation. It just means more leisure time, which can be used for whatever you want. It gives you ease of life, and it's not a moral failing to use that. Your stance is flawed, as it conflates automation with over-indulgence and laziness. They don't go hand in hand. It's much more complicated than that. Hardworking people without access to luxuries often have to consume quick and easy options as well, because their hard work takes up all of their time. Only they can't afford the nicer ones. People who do have the luxury of more leisure time because they can afford increasingly advanced automated systems are actually more likely to be healthy, in my opinion. They can order fresh ingredients from a market delivery app and make healthy meals everyday, because they have time. They can go to the gym several times a week, because they have time. Going to see doctors, or a dentist? They've got the time. Hobbies and other activities, like reading and social gatherings? Not a problem. They've got free time.

Compare this to a person without time. Full-time jobs with inflexible schedules, either because you're a student or you're in the blue collar workforce. Work hard, then come home and be exhausted. They can't afford deliveries of fresh, expensive ingredients and they certainly wouldn't feel like preparing and cooking them. So it's fast food and frozen shit most of the time. No time for the gym, and they're too tired anyway. Not much time for anything.

And of course there's nothing actually stopping that blue collar guy from doing his best to be healthy, and that guy with all the free time could just be plopped in front of his tv all day eating pizza. There are no hard rules.

It's just a matter of what's most likely, and instead of thinking critically about it you've bought into what media tells you, the biggest liar on the planet, who'll say anything if it thinks it appeals to you on some level. I mean, WALL-E? Really?

>Pointing out the ludicrousness of the situation must invalidate his point of people being incapable of survival.

Man optimizes his skills to survive in society, not without it. That's the bloody point of society.

Society is the collection of the individuals coming together to help survive.

But what happens when natural disaster strikes, or foreign conflict becomes domestic? At some point the society cannot handle the stress and collapse.

What then user?

>But what happens when natural disaster strikes, or foreign conflict becomes domestic? At some point the society cannot handle the stress and collapse.
You've just described two situations in which people working together in an organized fashion (likely using advanced technology) are MORE likely to survive than people who don't.

>thank god for that automated coffee machine! We couldn't survive the hurricane without it.

>But what happens when natural disaster strikes, or foreign conflict becomes domestic?
You mean like it does all the time? Relief aid. Donations. Emergency services. Massive, organized efforts to save lives and re-establish stability and security.

People don't just drop dead and fall off the world's radar when they lose power and fall into shitty conditions.

Fair point.

Feel you bro

They definitely wouldn't have survived without automated monitoring, alerts, communication organization, and all the other advanced, automated services that enables effective countermeasures.

And what's wrong with this? Looks great, as long as we unlock the key to extending human lifespan so you don't die from a heart attack at 30.

No, you just want to get your dick wet.

It's not an opinion, it's a fact. NWoD Changeling, Geist, Mage, and Promethean are all beloved by the WoD fanbase. Requiem is that game nobody plays. Even new players tend to avoid it, because they often get drawn in by what they've heard about Masquerade, and then nope out when they see that Requiem isn't that.

Well, "vagina other than the one you're born from" would be a place he's never been...

That was uncalled for, user.

>Christ, dat ass
>And this was before photoshopping

OP is some dude in his garage, it isn't hard to keep a company going when your costs are that low.