BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Universe => The Inner Sphere => Topic started by: JA Baker on 10 October 2019, 01:53:15
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OK, so this is one of those odd thoughts that just pops into your head and probably has no canon answer, but what are TV/film/books like in the BattleTech universe?
Specifically, would each planet have their own TV/movie industry beyond, say, local news and events? Or would people on, say, Inner End be watching CSI: Avalon City?
I remember the Immortal Warrior film series being mentioned a few times, as well as the BattleTech cartoon being an in-universe retelling of the Somerset Strikers, even if it is considered to be poorly made and full of inaccuracies, but beyond that, I can't recall much information.
Anyone got any ideas?
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The "culture" sections of the House sourcebooks covers this somewhat.
Each planet has its own local news media that reports on planetary events. This is supplemented by off-world reports from ComStar news feeds and/or (especially after the blackout) data beamed from visiting JumpShips. Smaller worlds would have less robust media, bigger ones lots of competing studios and news agencies.
Several worlds have become known for their media productions. Cinephiles in the Combine can watch "The Attack of the Polymer Coated Man" while League moviegoers can watch "Kingdom of the Gypsies" - about a mad cybernetic Aleksandr Kerensky in a secret base in the Periphery plotting the doom of the Inner Sphere. (Swap in "Thomas Marik" and you've got the Jihad) FedCom audiences thrill to the innumerable adventures of the Immortal Warrior, while Capellan audiences love to watch kung-fu epics.
Most middle-class homes on developed worlds have tri-vid viewers. Less developed outback worlds have never seen holograms and rely on wandering minstrels for entertainment.
Books are transmitted electronically and then reprinted locally, using the same channels as holovid files and other data.
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One thing that is noted in one of the books is that music and movies often have resurgences in popularity long after the original artist is dead. Somewhere out there, on the other side of the Inner Sphere, a radio station is playing Van Halen's Jump for the first time, and the kids there love it. Some merchant is gonna have a DVD boxed set of The Andy Griffith Show, he sells it to a local TV producer, and it becomes a cultural phenomenon on whatever planet. You just never know what people are going to fall in love with.
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It does make you wonder how much Rhonda Snord stirred up the music scene on planets she visited . . .
"Rhonda Snord is singularly responsible for a Sphere-wide resurgence of Ancient Rock. Promoting such classic groups as Bachman-Turner Overdrive and their nearly thousand year old music to worlds that have never experienced Ancient Rock. Many of Snord's fans wonder where she first discovered the music many have overlooked."
One of the Chaos Irregulars stories deals with a movie/TV production site and goes into a bit of the practices.
For production you might look at how TV/movies were divided in . . the 80s! Planetary news, with entertainment feeds coming in for most planets produced elsewhere- think of small countries that either speak the same language as neighboring countries. For instance, while Canadians do have their own productions, they also show a lot of US sitcoms, dramas, and more. New Zealand? Ireland? South Africa? Jamaica? Their airwaves are filled with US & UK productions. Live in the Capellan March? You are likely to watch programs produced on New Syrtis- or more likely Kathil due to better weather.
Can you imagine watching 'The Real Housewives of New Syrtis' or 'The Kittery Shore?'
Honestly, some of it is going to come down to each world's population.
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I think the most important role of mass media would be to enforce a level of linguistic continuity. Language drift over centuries would be extreme, especially on worlds with billions of people representing an infinite myriad of cross-pollinated cultures. I’m of the opinion that planets continuously inhabited for nearly a thousand years will have evolved their own unique dialects that have varying degrees of similarity to the official national languages. A visitor from the same realm might find a large portion of popular media is in languages they didn’t even know existed
Local markets and submarkets will each have their own demands so no two media cultures are going to be the same.
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Extreme linguistic drift would likely only occur on planets that were largely isolated from the rest of the universe, so places in the Periphery or Davian Outback, for example. Most worlds have enough continued exposure to the outside to insure that there wouldn't be anything that severe. Especially since English seems to be a universally spoken language in the setting.
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It’s a possibility though I think the dynamics of billions of speakers with their own planetary conditions, culture, and nationalism (planetism? Worldism?) will cause the inevitable variations due to unique mixes of peoples and experiences on continents much less planets.. I did say that mass media is going to slow that process or at least provide an official lingua Franca, but populations connected tenuously through the HPG net and spaceports will only have so much influence. Much like real world empires, the cosmopolitan nature of language will dissipate the farther you get from those connection points.
I do suspect that house governments probably take a strong interest in maintaining linguistic continuity (more in the combine or confederation, much less in the league) but local pride and culture is going to resist that effort naturally, if not actively (like in a place like Skye or Andurien). But we’re talking about humanity spread out in an unfathomable scale. I can’t help but think few of the current models apply.
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There are still tribes (in Amazonia, and Papua New Guinea, e.g.) that are essentially completely isolated even today, so I think there are still models that apply.
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I was thinking in the macro stability sense but sure, on a planetary level you’d see similar scenarios play out.
I keep coming back to structural similarities with early modern empire in the 16th and 17th century Atlantic World. Lauren Benton’s Search for Sovereignty describes power transmitted not as a blanket of authority like you see on a map, but through penetrating vectors (in the old days, waterways like rivers). You can only enforce policy where you can reach.
Connecting the planet via HPG will give you a certain reach, but I don’t believe saturation would be absolute, especially in places where local media was allowed to broadcast according to linguistic demand rather than imperial mandate. The BTU is strikingly short on personal agency - something that colonials far from the metropole have never shown to possess in short supply. I can only imagine what kind of resistance that personal interests would inflict on linguistic norms writ large
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Well said!
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I was thinking in the macro stability sense but sure, on a planetary level you’d see similar scenarios play out.
I keep coming back to structural similarities with early modern empire in the 16th and 17th century Atlantic World. Lauren Benton’s Search for Sovereignty describes power transmitted not as a blanket of authority like you see on a map, but through penetrating vectors (in the old days, waterways like rivers). You can only enforce policy where you can reach.
Connecting the planet via HPG will give you a certain reach, but I don’t believe saturation would be absolute, especially in places where local media was allowed to broadcast according to linguistic demand rather than imperial mandate. The BTU is strikingly short on personal agency - something that colonials far from the metropole have never shown to possess in short supply. I can only imagine what kind of resistance that personal interests would inflict on linguistic norms writ large
Of course it will be violently (I don't use the word casually) different in different nations. The Combine (IIRC) enforces the use of Japanese and historically tolerated Swedish/Swedenese in Rasalhague. There are probably parts of the realm where "official language" policing is unenforceable, like amongst the Azami, but I think after 500-something years of jackbooted thugs beating you for not speaking Japanese you're going to see no more deviation than planetary dialects in most of the core prefectures. Consider that Welsh nearly became a dead language after only a couple of generations of official neglect/unofficial exclusion (it's doing much better now).
By contrast, the FWL is probably a true linguistic melting pot. There are probably a handful of dominant languages by province (e.g. Hindi and Urdu in the Principality of Regulus) but I can see parliament passing language protection bills and voting money for minority language broadcasting.
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You think English is bad with loan-words and 'foreign' phrasing . . .
Just imagine what spacer's melange exists in the League, especially on tramp freighters that are multi-generational family businesses.
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The novel Bred for War involves the tabloid media sector, as well as the "quickly produced human interest movie". It's... bewildering and familiar.
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I would assume that most of the major powers have an "official" language which a significant share of the population throughout their empire can speak reasonably fluently. The further you get from the regional capitals and centers of trade and power, however, the less of that you'll typically see. After 300+ years, most of the core worlds of each empire should have converged toward only moderately different dialects of the official language, and in some cases those could be almost indistinguishable. When you've got mass entertainment in another language, it does affect local speech over time through the incorporation of stray words and phrases, and any planet with a solid HPG connection is going to receive enough communication and mass-viewing content to draw the languages together over time.
Movies and TV programs created for nationwide consumption have unified the language and dialects within the US to a surprising degree just over my lifetime. There's still a noticeable difference, but it's much more subtle now. I can still make fun of them over it, and expect that they'll do the same, no real offense intended or taken.
Note that English gradually drifted away from its largely Germanic origins as it became heavily influenced by more local Gaelic and French cultures as well as Latin, but the drift of both England's English and American English have been fairly similar over time, largely because of the strong cultural interaction between them, and both sharing some of the same outside influences. Basically, pre-Shakespearean "Olde English" is just about as foreign to an Englishman as to an American. Most residents of the two modern cultures can converse normally with those of the other country, aside from a few stray words, or occasional awkward secondary shades of local meaning to an otherwise identical word (example: beyond its application to animal carcasses and pillows, "stuffed" in America also refers to having over-eaten, while in England it takes on the secondary meaning of "pregnant"; aside from a smooth surface, "flat" in America refers to a punctured tire, where in England it's an apartment). Most of those instances would be easily understood through context or a brief moment of confusion and an explanation, and most content intended for interplanetary consumption would very likely provide that as a matter of course after the first awkward "incident" or two.
I would expect that the "official" languages spoken within MOST of the major factions of the Inner Sphere (not necessarily as their primary language) would eventually end up about as close as America's, England's, and Australia's versions of English, with the more remote locations drifting to something half-way in between that and whatever the strongest local influence might be. Some, like the FWL, would likely retain much more internal variation than those of House Kurita.
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any planet with a solid HPG connection is going to receive enough communication and mass-viewing content to draw the languages together over time.
Mass media would be carried by JumpShip, not HPG, and the HPG network doesn't necessarily follow jump routes.
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Here's a evil question for you. The Jihad Sourcebooks represent the WoB's Whiteout as parenthetical inserts, that are easily discernible by the reader. How did this abstract in-universe?
Would be be reading the New Avalon Times and see a opening bracket, followed by obvious WoB propoganda? Some of the in-universe bits seem to be transcripts of news casts. Did the WoB just do a voice over, with the result looking like a dubbed foreign film?
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Mass media would be carried by JumpShip, not HPG, and the HPG network doesn't necessarily follow jump routes.
I wonder how quick news would travel. I would imagine mass media could travel surprisingly fast in some circumstances. Mass media produced on Atreus May reach Oriente in under a day because of the volume of Jumpship travel between major planets. Arriving jumpships beam the media to a soon to depart jumpships which can rapidly spread news along major trade routes quickly. That same media may take a week or several to reach planets like Home or Simpsons Desert that are closer but also less important/significant.
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I wonder how quick news would travel. I would imagine mass media could travel surprisingly fast in some circumstances.
Major events and headline news would likely travel via HPG, with bulk info and most entertainment arriving by the next jumpship. The latter will involve up about to an hour of delay for a light-speed signal to reach from the inhabited world(s) to the jump point, plus whatever time delay there may be until the ship jumps out (ranging from minutes to weeks), and then another light-speed delay from inbound jumpship to the inhabited world(s) in the second system.
Fastest possible time for non-HPG reception of news would likely be in the "hour or two" range, longest might be 6 months or more on some remote planets, if the system only receives jumpship visits twice a year. If it's important enough, the news services and some individuals will pay Comstar's price to transmit a quick summary of the news (as well as things of public interest, such as major Solaris match outcomes) by HPG, but the details and holovids might be a while in getting there.
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Major events and headline news would likely travel via HPG, with bulk info and most entertainment arriving by the next jumpship. The latter will involve up about to an hour of delay for a light-speed signal to reach from the inhabited world(s) to the jump point, plus whatever time delay there may be until the ship jumps out (ranging from minutes to weeks), and then another light-speed delay from inbound jumpship to the inhabited world(s) in the second system.
Fastest possible time for non-HPG reception of news would likely be in the "hour or two" range, longest might be 6 months or more on some remote planets, if the system only receives jumpship visits twice a year. If it's important enough, the news services and some individuals will pay Comstar's price to transmit a quick summary of the news (as well as things of public interest, such as major Solaris match outcomes) by HPG, but the details and holovids might be a while in getting there.
Yes, I would agree that major news would travel via HPG, but the news may still reach a planet slower than via Jumpship. A HPGs only transmit every 6 hours, and B HPGs only once a day. For sure the Home's and the Simpsons Deserts will get the HPG news faster (in a couple of days instead of a week+ via jumpship) but the Oriente example possibly could get the news via jumpship a handful of hours to maybe a day sooner than via HPG unless someone felt the news absolutly important enough to interrupt the whole HPG schedule. This may be the case for matters of state, but I doubt it for the nightly news for Average Joe, regardless of how important the news is.
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. . . HPGs may only transmit every 6 hours, to the same planet. In part it would be b/c of batching and grouping of messages and how often does a intermediary HPG have to function? For example, the LA/FedCom spent on adding a 2nd HPG to a string of worlds between Tharkad & New Avalon to allow nearly instant communication . . . and ComStar spent more to add a spur to Tukayyid. At one point the junction switched off between Dow on Tukayyid and Nondi on Tharkad to allow that live connection to resume.
We ever get a data rate for HPG?
I mean its the future of the 80s, so hearing 'You've got mail!' would not be surprising.
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Don't recall ever seeing a data rate, but the "standard" HPG message form was once mentioned to be about a typical paragraph in length. That would go out with an unknown sized batch of other messages. Any more than that and you're paying premium rates. For headline news, the cost of a handful of forms isn't at all out of the question even for a small local news service, but video is going to get awfully expensive in a hurry.
I would assume that the data rates and total volume of transmission would match the rest of the BT economy: as much or little as the plot requires.
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Hmmm... seems the last telegram wasn't sent until 2013, so that "one paragraph" form could still reasonably be the future of the '80s, even though fax machines were around then...
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Novels published in serial would only take decades to disseminate :D
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Novels published in serial would only take decades to disseminate :D
If you lived in the Suns outback and then traveled to New Avalon, just imagine al the spoilers to your favorite shows and books. “I can’t believe they killed Ned Stark!”
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If you lived in the Suns outback and then traveled to New Avalon, just imagine al the spoilers to your favorite shows and books. “I can’t believe they killed Ned Stark!”
Don't be that guy. :)
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It would not be Ned, but the Red Wedding . . .
However! Its a great chance for a little business during a vacation. "Yes, I want to buy 10,000 copies of Danielle Steele's latest novel, divided into these formats for the storychips. What is my bulk discount?"
Honestly, its a revenue stream for JS & DS that travel outside of normal triangle trade routes since they will intersect with multiple triangles. Sell it to another JS or even to the planet . . . hmm, funds for such a exchange would have to be held in escrow with ComStar for JS crews.
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It would not be Ned, but the Red Wedding . . .
However! Its a great chance for a little business during a vacation. "Yes, I want to buy 10,000 copies of Danielle Steele's latest novel, divided into these formats for the storychips. What is my bulk discount?"
Honestly, its a revenue stream for JS & DS that travel outside of normal triangle trade routes since they will intersect with multiple triangles. Sell it to another JS or even to the planet . . . hmm, funds for such a exchange would have to be held in escrow with ComStar for JS crews.
Sounds good until a couple captains loose their license because they didn't prevent their crews from cutting into some media conglomerate's juicy exclusive distribution contract.
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Normally the ship would be part of that network . . . like the old M in RMS standing for mail. I have not seen Customs busting people for bringing back pirated movies, military commanders hammering troops for buying them, and the limitation is they can only bring 1 back stateside afaik. Besides, its catching the crew/ship . . . look how long Napster & Limewire (DATED!) operated and they were not constantly moving.
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The military is generally too busy looking for ordnance to notice pirated IP... xp
As evidence, I offer the board of contraband posted just inside the customs inspection point in Kuwait on my way out of Baghdad. Someone actually tried to take an RPG home...
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True . . . my drill sergeant was a MP who did CID work, I heard a few stories about what folks tried to bring back from Desert Storm. I also heard about a couple of 55 gallon drums buried in the desert containing all sorts of captured weapons . . .
But seriously, what is going to happen to that merchant sailor on a dropship crew that travels between the LC and FWL who happens to carry digital copies of shows, movies, music, and books as part of their personal gear allotment from one House into the other while meeting with publishers on each world they visit? About the same as the guys in Russia who sell 3D printed mechs online or novels based off their BT fanfiction on Amazon.
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At least until they return to Lyran space... ^-^
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Don't recall ever seeing a data rate, but the "standard" HPG message form was once mentioned to be about a typical paragraph in length. That would go out with an unknown sized batch of other messages. Any more than that and you're paying premium rates. For headline news, the cost of a handful of forms isn't at all out of the question even for a small local news service, but video is going to get awfully expensive in a hurry.
I would assume that the data rates and total volume of transmission would match the rest of the BT economy: as much or little as the plot requires.
I think it said somewhere that a C-bill was the cost for a single HPG transmission of one page of text. A C-bill was also supposed to be the equivalent of about 5 US dollars back in 1990.
Sports scores, stock prices, newspaper articles, and things like that would be cheap enough to transmit. Even a massive novel like Stephen King's The Stand would only cost like 1300 C-bills to send from one planet to another. A publishing company could afford a $7,000 expense to send a copy of a best selling book to a subsidiary company on a different planet.
What you wouldn't have is sound or video that was remotely affordable by normal people. But you could send an e-mail to grandma for 5 bucks, wishing her a happy birthday or something.
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Sounds good until a couple captains loose their license because they didn't prevent their crews from cutting into some media conglomerate's juicy exclusive distribution contract.
In the real world, international copyright doesn't really get enforced until there's an established market that people care about. Think about guys bringing over bootleg anime tapes in the 1980s. The Japanese companies that owned the rights to those shows didn't pay any attention until they realized there was a lot of money to be made. In the Inner Sphere, bootleggers wouldn't be making money off of delivering known media along existing trade routes. You'd do it by going to places with little direct contact with each other.
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Unless the licensed version was really expensive or had tons of DRM on it.
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40% of household in the FWL have working RHE https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Recreational_Hologram_Environments (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Recreational_Hologram_Environments) gear in 3025. They have viewing parties and sharing equipment spread that out further. The tech has advanced substantially into things like smellovision by the late 3060s. We would call that something like room scale augmented reality these days. The Boreal Reach arena on Solaris is the largest example of this technology.
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I always thought that each House has their own mass media conglomerates.
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Sure, but just like IRL there would be something like the AP and Rueters- which INN sort of covers with shades of CNN. But I think you would also have stuff like bureaus on capitals of other Houses- except the DC, maybe the CC. And Solaris VII, just because it was the game world.
So . . . here are some of the news networks I have tracked, and programs/podcast/webzine from some of the networks-
New Avalon Broadcaster- owned by Karl Green
Capellan State Broadcasting- CapCon company
Tharkad Broadcasting Company
Donegal Broacasting Company
Federated News Service
Atreus Free Press
Taurian Broadcasting Company
Holo-Mags
Conflict (FNS/FS)
Banner Headlines (AFP/FWL)
Headline News (FNS/FS)
New Avalon Daily (FS)
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Don't forget Battletechnology magazine! :)
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And Mechbunny Monthly
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And Mechbunny Monthly
Yeah, mix the guns magazines and car mags with bikini clad models draped on the hoods.
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Yeah, mix the guns magazines and car mags with bikini clad models draped on the hoods.
…or models in really minimalist cooling vests and short-shorts, setting various poses on or leaning against a Battlemech or other exotic combat hardware.
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Sure, I want to say we are told there are pin up posters of Natasha or Rhonda Snord to that effect. I was just pointing out the two current type of publications that would qualify.
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BTU media? Shallow, politically motivated...like it is now. If its the media of the 1980's...not as bad...Shallow but less dogmatic.
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In interstellar empires that at best make only a pretense of having representative governments? No chance that you'll see media that's less dogmatic.
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To a certain degree, governments like the Federated Suns and Draconis Combine are fictions. They exist at a very high level of abstraction. Historically, these were small empires that grew and absorbed neighboring entities either through conquest or mutual defense pact. Duke Stuffypants is granted control over the world Backwater V by the Coordinator. But that's because he already had control over Backwater V. Before he became Duke Stuffypants, he was Dictator-for-life Stuffypants. He joined the Combine in a mutual defense agreement and got official recognition of his claim, rather than risking war. And he and his descendants have kept that iron-fisted control over that world. To the people of Backwater V, the "Combine" is some far off entity that doesn't have much affect on their day to day life.
In other words, I don't think you'd have any politics at a national level the way we do today. Everything is too far removed. Modern politics (avoiding any specifics here to dodge Rule 4) revolve around what kind of policies people want to see implemented on a national level. But most of those policies would be implemented on a planetary level in the Inner Sphere. Many of the planets would be so different from one another that the issues just wouldn't translate.
A lot of the Great House politics are personal. The 0.000001% have enough personal wealth and power to start interstellar wars. And sometimes they do it because that guy slept with your sister, and screw that! It doesn't matter what the civilian population thinks. Even if you don't like Duke Stuffypants, he's got a massive army and that's that. If he wants to invade a neighboring territory, that's between him and the Coordinator. Besides, the other side also has a Duke Stuffypants equivalent, and that guy just might decide to invade your world as well. There's nothing you can do about it, so just hope your guy makes good decisions.
As a result, the mass media beyond a planetary level would probably be more like gossip magazines than the political talk shows of today. Think British Royal Family stuff, except if the Megan Markle situation was actually threatening to bring the USA and UK to war with one another.
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It still amazes me that 3 Houses Entertainment Agency manages to get live acts over the CapCon/FedSuns and FedSuns/Combine boarders.