[RPG]: Orpheus, reviewed by Justin Mohareb (3/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10006.phtml

Justin Mohareb's Summary:

Wraith V 2.0? Not quite. A bit more like the Bridal Dress of Wraith (Something Old, Something New...)

Go to the full review for more information.

Post originally by bastion_korupt at 2004-01-12 21:49:56
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"Now, think about that for a while. How soon until some FTC investigator comes in and tries to nail them for fraud? Orpheus main precept requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Believing there are Vampires, werewolves, or mages for a game is one thing, but believing that enough people will believe enough in ghosts that a company that claims to deal with them professionally won't be laughed out of the door is another matter."

ACTUALLY... there are plenty of ads on (US) television regarding prescription medications where they do not tell you what exactly they do. These are first rate ads with people happily having lunches and biking and such. No clue as to what the medicine does is even eluded to in the advertisement.

It isn't too much of a stretch of imagination that they could advertise likewise.

In addition, the FTC has investigated and is in legal limbo for numerous corporations. The ability of an American business to evade federal scrutiny is completely under-rated. As exhibit A, try Enron. Plus, if you figure that this Orpheus Group has personnel working in tandem with law enforcement (who may be less interested in bringing a 'good' company down), I think that Orpheus Group could very well exist in the real world.

Alot of people have commented on how un-frickan-believable such a company is but in truth, I think people don't really understand how much malarky is crammed down their throats in real life already. If a big time PRIVATE (as in not publicly traded on the stock market) corporation that offered discrete solutions to unusual problems appeared and had high society clientele as their primary customer base, you can bet that they would survive trivial public scrutiny. This is doubly-true of a world in which the downtrodden are even moreso and the rich are even more decadent than in real life.

In the World of Darkness, it's also important to point out that more people -believe- in the supernatural because they have good reason to. They don't have much proof of such things, but the truth is more people in the World of Darkness have had run ins with such things than people in the real world claim to.

This is ALL explained early on in the book, totally to the authors credit since it is an important difference between this world and the World of Darkness.

Post originally by Omega at 2004-01-13 10:27:30
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Dude, this is a bit off topic, but I can tell you exactly why U.S. drug ads are vague: it's the law. When the federal govt. lifted the ban on prescription drug advertising (in 1990, I think it was) they stipulated in the new rules that prescription drug advertisers could only state the purpose of their product if they also presented a listing of side effects and warnings. Since a listing of side effects that may include severe illness and death sounds even more alarming when read as fine-print auction babble in a TV commercial, most drug companies sidestep by not mentioning what the drug is for.

Omega, a little too involved in his work.

Post originally by bastion_korupt at 2004-01-13 11:03:31
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This doesn't negate the fact that American television viewers are now accustomed to seeing big vague ads for things they don't really understand. And that was my point, dude.

Post originally by smg13 at 2004-01-13 13:22:35
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Reality IS stranger than fiction. I am an architect in my daily life outside the gaming table, and I do a lot of work for pharmaceutical and chemical corporations... some of the stuff I have to design and some of the equipment being installed in out-of-the-way places for private research and stuff like that, makes Orpheus looks mundane and un-original. Some of the best adventures I have GM came straight out the things I saw or have dealt with at work. Crazier things than Orpheus or Lazarus Redux go on in our real world.