[BNW] How Many Deltas in the world.. (long)

[Mark Kilfoil <kilfoilm@nbnet.nb.ca>]

How many Deltas are there in the world?

Here's my answer:

Enough.

Enough that they make up a significant portion of the population, and 
someone felt that they needed to be oppressed -- namely King Jack.

Enough that they can fight this oppression, not necessarily winning, but 
holding still.

Enough that practically everyone in the world has heard of them.

Enough that there are some in almost every High School in America.

Enough that they make a difference.

Enough that they can be found in groups nearing the hundreds in every major 
city in America.

Enough that people feel threatened and a little paranoid about strangers.

Few enough.

Few enough that they can't just subjugate regs.

Few enough that it has taken Isla Delta a little more than 35 years to 
accumulate 800 of them, but not reach their target number of just 1000.

Few enough that not every bank in the world fears being robbed by them. 
(Although they consider them a threat, and their insurance companies are 
making sure they pay for it.)

Few enough that life for most regs goes on as normal, and many regs don't 
see Deltas on a daily basis.

Few enough that the arrival (or manifestation) of a Delta in a small town 
still brings in your neighbours to take a look -- or brings out the 
equivalent of white-hooded rednecks...

Sure, I'm vague, and sure, I've used only a few numbers here and there...

Trouble is, there are two solutions to the problem:  Matt could put out 
numbers (as I'm sure he's pressured to and probably considering) or you can 
choose the numbers that are "appropriate" to the kind of game that you want 
to run.

The first suffers from "gamer nature":  that is, to put it succinctly, the 
desire to tinker with a published rules system and disagree with hard 
numbers that contradict "their vision" of "the game universe".

Frankly, I don't think that Matt (or probably anyone else) can come up with 
numbers that will be satisfactory to many gamers.

Someone mentioned Vampire a while back in this discussion.  Vampire's 
numbers are a prime example of just the problem I'm trying to illustrate: 
their numbers were, quite frankly, very laughable.  They didn't make sense, 
to some seemingly way too high, and others incredibly low.

What happened in the end?  From White Wolf there was a deafening silence on 
the matter, other than a few attempts to suggest that there were "enough" 
vampires to make a threat and presence in humanity's present, past and 
future, and "not enough" vampires to overrun humanity utterly.

Now, that having been said, I think the pursuit of good numbers is a worthy 
activity, especially for *fans* of the game and not the game designers, 
with a few caveats:

o Blindly throwing percentages around really bites, and is generally 
worthless anyway without respect to density, locale, etc.  I mean, the 
population of left-handed Scottish bagpipe repairman might be a 
phenomenally low percentage of the overall human population, but some 
places they might be more prevalent than doctors.  (And the sheep outnumber 
the humans in New Zealand, so I hear...)  If we were to use a simple 
percentage, we would lose anything useful in the number.  After all, what 
percentage of people in the world are Chinese?  Given that percentage, if 
you came to Earth, what ethnic population would *you* expect to meet? ;)

o It must be accepted that the numbers represent a particular perspective 
on the gameworld setting, and that must be taken into consideration when 
you use the setting.  It *must* be ultimately up to the Guide to decide for 
his- or herself what the numbers mean to them.  If you want a gritty, 
overbearing government oppression of Deltas using Delta Prime, make Delta 
Prime significantly larger than the entire Defiant movement, and put a 
Prime Watchtower on ever major street corner.  If you want an "us against 
them" battle, with regs only holding their own based on a "tradition of 
oppression", increase the ratio of Deltas to regs, perhaps up to as much as 
20%.

o Like the old real estate adage goes, "location, location, location."  The 
numbers are really only relevant when applied to a specific area.  Crescent 
City, for example, is remarkably higher in Delta presence than most of the 
country, as stated a few times in the books and the suggestion that a 
number of the big Delta HQs (Triumph, Delta Prime, perhaps Defiants) are 
located there, not to mention the 70-floor pyramid that is the Delta 
Academy.  Boston is described as the unofficial "gadgeteer capital in this 
hemisphere" -- so expect to run into a higher concentration of gadgeteers 
there than in almost any part of the world...  However, in Denver there are 
*no* Defiants, but a fairly large contingent of Primers.  In smaller 
communities, there may have only ever been two Deltas, "an' they weren't no 
fancy ones like what we seen on TV.  They was just Bobbie and Danny to 
us.  But I guess we'z ain't as 'phisticated as them there Crescent City folks."

[As an aside, notice this little tidbit in the description of Denver:
  "The Denver school system's got an early detection
   system for deltas. ...  More than that, the police have
   teams of *delta hound officers* at their disposal, and
   they use these deltas to help them sniff out their
   *genetic* brethren, no matter how well hid they
   might be." (p. 80, Ravaged Planet, (c) AEG, emphasis mine)
   There are two things of interest here:  one, the "delta hound officers", 
and the other the mention of those deltas being "genetic brethren".  I 
personally find these sorts of dropped hints much more entertaining that 
reading bald (and usually uninteresting) explanations of the origins of 
whatever.  Leave some things to mystery, it's much more entertaining that 
way, especially because you then treat the subject as a mystery, and might 
be less inclined to run the game robotically.]

o The numbers must be viewed and used carefully, to not reduce everything 
to a "numbers" game.  What's instinctively more interesting, saying there 
is a crowd of hundreds running through the street, or a crowd of 621?  Is 
it better to say that there are exactly 132 deltas (oh!  133! one just 
manifested) in a particular city, or can we leave it at "dozens and 
dozens"?  RPGs, for this sort of thing, run much better when you just "make 
up numbers that fit your mind", and really reflect the scene more than they 
do some sort of "reality".  Does it matter that a rag-tag fleet of a 
few-dozen or so worlds defeats the Empire in Star Wars?  Does it make sense 
than a few dozen planets could defeat an empire of several millions 
systems?  Does it matter, or is really just being too pedantic?  It should 
be more fun and fitting that realistic (although you need to keep some 
realism component, or it just become utterly ridiculous..).

Now, I've gotten a bit more ranty than I would have liked, but that's my 
nature, I reckon.  I opened this piece with several statements about "how 
many deltas there are", and I wanted to expand upon that notion, so that we 
can come up with some collective, cooperative, constructive information on 
the world according to Deltas.  The back-and-forth has been at times 
interesting, but most of the time non-constructive.

I wanted to expand upon those ideas, but I'm tired and I've typed enough 
for tonight. Maybe tomorrow.  Or maybe someone else (or several someone 
elses) can start talking about what makes sense, rather than just talking 
about "broken this" and "don't need that".

Ugh..  getting even more ranty..

Good night!

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