Unreliable Torture

[Chenier]

In addition, a number of other scribe notes aren't 100% reliable.

Mixing in with the locals? That gives information randomly. Diplomats checking sympathy? Seem to be randomly missing a good number of realms all of the time, and not always the same for the same regions. Route finder? Travel delays and shortcuts are numerous. Route finder will also make you walk into the blight.

[Chenier]

The reason for this is obvious. Watch this video from 06:50 to 07:00 and you'll have your answer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w19jBMPQXI

You completely failed to grasp my point.

I can report he was tortured, but he will likely not be content unless the game tells him the guy was tortured. But really, the Zuma are far away, there should be no way for them to know either way. They aren't doing the torture themselves. Hell, they didn't even ask for a prisoner to do it themselves. They just asked us to torture any random moot member.

[Indirik]

They want D'Harans to prove that the letter is true? I CAN TELL HIM. But no, they want a "torture report". There is nothing IC about that.

If I wanted you to prove that one of my Astrum nobles was in Paisly when you're ruler got stabbed, I wouldn't accept your word that he was there, nor would I accept a handwritten list of nobles that was in the region. I would demand a scout report showing it. Is that being anti-SMA? Is that using OOC information? Is it metagaming?

If I RPed with the judge that he smacked me into making a detailed confession that the letter was indeed authentic, would Haktoo be content with that?

Have you tried?

If the game didn't provide 100% reliable torture reports, then he'd never have been asking this.

Are you sure? Of course, not, because you're not the GM player, therefore you can't be sure.

Or if the game allowed 100% reliable message transfers, he'd have asked that instead. It has absolutely nothing to do with being in-character.

Are you sure? Of course, not, because you're not the GM player, therefore you can't be sure.

There may be reasons for them to distrust Garret. That doesn't justify demanding a game-generated report for a friendly torture.

Haktoo didn't demand a "friendly torture", did he? He demanded you torture anyone to provide the report. You could grab any random advy and torture them. Or a Lurian. Or a rogue. He didn't say "Grab a close friend and rip off two of his toes."

Really, stabbing your own realm mate to collect the gold and keep it in the realm is against the rule.

But it's not against the rules for part of a treaty to demand that you have one of your own infiltrators assassinate one of your own nobles, is it?

However, it wasn't quite the same. For one, because nobody ever, as far as I know, asked people to torture their own realm mates in order to have a 100% reliable report.

"No one has ever done it before, so therefore it is not allowed to do it now."

And, actually, I have known people to want to see things in a torture report.

Secondly, in normal cases, nobody would back a realm that made such absurd demands.

So, then refuse to comply. Stand up for your noble rights, and refuse to torture your own people in order to satisfy his demands. After all, if your noble word isn't good enough for him, then why should you have dealings with him? For all you know, this is a test, and he wants to see if you're barbaric enough to do it. Handing him the torture report could be the proof that you're not civilized after all, and deserving of being wiped out.

Internally too it wouldn't work. The player community, as a whole, would prevent it from being imposed.

Some realms have espoused torture as a routine practice. Look at Thulsoma. Look at that Yssarian judge that moved over to Caligus. He ran for election on a platform that he would torture everyone that ended up in his dungeons that he could torture. You think a realm that would elect someone on that campaign platform would balk at requiring a foreign realm to torture someone as part of a treaty?

And, after all, the game does say that torture is a *very serious* thing.

Yes, it is a very serious thing. That means we can't do it, because it's serious? So is execution. So is warfare. So is KRBing multiple regions to depopulate them. So is intentionally starving a city of 180K population down into an empty wasteland. Yet we do those things on a routine basis without batting an eyelash.

[Indirik]

SCOUT REPORTS ARE NOT 100% ACCURATE.

For certain intents and purposes, they are. They list many, many things with 100% accuracy. in fact, the only thing they are inaccurate about are the exact CS and the exact number of soldiers. But they are always 100% accurate about a great many things.

In almost the same sense, torture reports can also be said to not be 100% accurate. After all, they don't include *every* message that the character received. Nor do they guarantee the accuracy of the information contained within the report. All they guarantee is that that particular character received that particular message. The accuracy of the information contained within that message could be true or false.

Also, scout reports are about military information, something that there is no reason to assume should be ultimately ambiguous. But the whole premise behind no message forwarding is that messages SHOULD have ambiguity; forgery SHOULD be possible. As is, the Zuma GM is asking us to circumvent game mechanics to make practical forgery impossible.

How about demanding a scout report to prove the presence of a noble in a region? (i.e. an infiltrator who attacked one of your nobles) For that purpose, the scout report is 100% reliable proof. Should it be illegal to demand that? By your definition above, my demanding that would be metagaming, and should be disallowed.

[Indirik]

In addition, a number of other scribe notes aren't 100% reliable.

Mixing in with the locals? That gives information randomly. Diplomats checking sympathy? Seem to be randomly missing a good number of realms all of the time, and not always the same for the same regions. Route finder? Travel delays and shortcuts are numerous. Route finder will also make you walk into the blight.

The basic assumption here is incorrect.The scribe note link for all of these things verifies that the information being passed in the report is the exact information the game provided to the person that was first given the note link. It makes no guarantee as to the veracity of any of the facts contained within the message. Whether the information contained in the report is 100% accurate is irrelevant. It is guaranteed to be the exact, unforgeable game-provided content.

This is the exact same sense in which a torture report provides 100% unforgeable content. If I send a message that says the moon is made of green cheese, and that gets included in a torture report, does that make the contents of that message a 100% guaranteed fact? Of course not. But it does 100% guarantee that I sent that message. Which is the same thing that a "mixing with the locals" scribe note guarantees. Not that the information contained within the report is 100% accurate, but that the text contained within the scribe note is 100% guaranteed to be the text that the game provided to me.

[De-Legro]

I think of it this way. Had you obtained, through torture of an enemy noble, a message that incriminates his realm in some way, say a letter that detailed their dealings with an invading force. You obviously post this message to the rulers channel to discredit them. Would you allow the realm to respond that the report can't be trusted? That is was gained under duress, that perhaps your torturers are making it up? Or would you rely on the fact that the other rulers know it is 100% accurate when making your accusations?

Going further if you suspected such messages exist, would you order the torture of enemy nobles knowing their is a damn good chance that if you torture nobles enough you will get the proof and that it is 100% accurate?

[Vellos]

But the difference is significant: the text the game provides from scout reports is not 100% reliable, the text the game provides from torture reports is, allowing it to be used to circumvent other game mechanics.

If I wanted you to prove that one of my Astrum nobles was in Paisly when you're ruler got stabbed, I wouldn't accept your word that he was there, nor would I accept a handwritten list of nobles that was in the region. I would demand a scout report showing it. Is that being anti-SMA? Is that using OOC information? Is it metagaming?

Yes.

I think of it this way. Had you obtained, through torture of an enemy noble, a message that incriminates his realm in some way, say a letter that detailed their dealings with an invading force. You obviously post this message to the rulers channel to discredit them. Would you allow the realm to respond that the report can't be trusted? That is was gained under duress, that perhaps your torturers are making it up? Or would you rely on the fact that the other rulers know it is 100% accurate when making your accusations?

I in fact have given that exact response; that, given under duress, it cannot be believed. When Hireshmont was tortured in Old Rancagua. He made a compelling RP case (admittedly there was a bug at the time that led some people to believe torture might actually not be reliable).

And you know what?

The judge believed him. The player knew it was total !@#$, of course.

I have made that argument once as a judge before as well.

Some of us do actually RP.

Going further if you suspected such messages exist, would you order the torture of enemy nobles knowing their is a damn good chance that if you torture nobles enough you will get the proof and that it is 100% accurate?

I have characters that would torture every noble they come across just for the giggles. And I have characters that would use a more restrained approach to torture. I have had characters who categorically rejected the use of torture. I have had characters involved in counter-espionage who had the chance to begin a campaign of regularized torture, and had the RP-background to make it morally permissible for them. They did not. Why?

Information gotten under torture is not reliable.

Am I seriously the only person who treats torture as anything other than some type of exchange of H/P for enemy messages?

[Bedwyr]

Am I seriously the only person who treats torture as anything other than some type of exchange of H/P for enemy messages?

No.  One of the skulls on Jenred's throne is from the only man who ever tortured him, and Ethiala was destroyed, in large part, because of that one act of torture.

But I think you're missing a key point.  If we call this into question, then we have to call scout reports into question.  Forget the rest of the reports for a moment, and just think about that.  Yes, it would be nice if we could all be trusted to play that we don't trust scout reports, but I'm not sure I could even manage that on a consistent basis.

[Chenier]

No.  One of the skulls on Jenred's throne is from the only man who ever tortured him, and Ethiala was destroyed, in large part, because of that one act of torture.

But I think you're missing a key point.  If we call this into question, then we have to call scout reports into question.  Forget the rest of the reports for a moment, and just think about that.  Yes, it would be nice if we could all be trusted to play that we don't trust scout reports, but I'm not sure I could even manage that on a consistent basis.

On a SMA island, I could absolutely see a case being made that demanding nothing less than a game generated scout report not be acceptable.

[Indirik]

So from now on, whenever someone asks me for a scout report, I get to file an SMA report?

[Bedwyr]

On a SMA island, I could absolutely see a case being made that demanding nothing less than a game generated scout report not be acceptable.

That's going to take a direct ruling from Tom.  It will overturn years of accepted common practice in the game, require people to pretend they don't know how game mechanics work (which worked so well with region buying, as you might recall) and in some cases overturn existing RP on why scribe notes are reliable.  I know I'm not the only person in the game who's come up with RP justifications for some of the less real-world realistic mechanics.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Some people forget so quickly that despite it all, BM is still a game. Sometimes acceptable breaks are...well, acceptable. Mostly because otherwise, how exactly would you play the game? It's like plopping you into an RPG where the guy who tells you to go on a quest says you have to bring back a common rare item, but you get no quest screen, nor any notification of that, and you have no  guarantees that he was actually telling the truth or just yanking your chain, thereby wasting potentially hours of your life searching for an item for a non-existent quest.

Ok, not entirely the same, but intelligence is key in battles. Sure, in real life there are a lot of complicating factors, but this isn't real life, nor should it be. Because then barely any of us would be capable of playing the battling aspect of Battlemaster. Try to make it believable, but in the end, really, whatever, everyone will have different takes on it, much like everyone has different ideas of what BM is. Some who play BM as a more strategy game with RP as a leisurely aside for flavor would probably insist on scout reports for battle planning, SMA be damned.

[egamma]

Has nobody seen the REAL problem with the request? Nobody?

What's wrong with the request IC?

...
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The Zuma believe the word of the judges scribe over the word of the judge.

Isn't that what the GM is saying, essentially?

[Anaris]

Has nobody seen the REAL problem with the request? Nobody?

What's wrong with the request IC?

...
...
The Zuma believe the word of the judges scribe over the word of the judge.

Isn't that what the GM is saying, essentially?

So what?

Are you telling me you want to hold the Zuma to normal human (medieval) standards of who fits where on the hierarchy of trust?

[Chenier]

Some people forget so quickly that despite it all, BM is still a game. Sometimes acceptable breaks are...well, acceptable. Mostly because otherwise, how exactly would you play the game? It's like plopping you into an RPG where the guy who tells you to go on a quest says you have to bring back a common rare item, but you get no quest screen, nor any notification of that, and you have no  guarantees that he was actually telling the truth or just yanking your chain, thereby wasting potentially hours of your life searching for an item for a non-existent quest.

Ok, not entirely the same, but intelligence is key in battles. Sure, in real life there are a lot of complicating factors, but this isn't real life, nor should it be. Because then barely any of us would be capable of playing the battling aspect of Battlemaster. Try to make it believable, but in the end, really, whatever, everyone will have different takes on it, much like everyone has different ideas of what BM is. Some who play BM as a more strategy game with RP as a leisurely aside for flavor would probably insist on scout reports for battle planning, SMA be damned.

Yea, there are a bunch of non-SMA continents for you if you don't care about RP.

There's a difference between asking a scout report for the level of precision and conveniance it grants, and asking for a scout report because you believe the peasant more than you believe the noble. Same with asking for a torture report because you believe the scribe more than the noble. While it might be fine everywhere else, I do not consider it to be fine on a continent with SMA. A lot of trouble was given to people for a lot less when Dwi opened up.

Second rule of the "don'ts" of SMA is: "If the only reason you do something is game-mechanics, you should probably not do it." Asking for a scribe report over a noble's letter only because game mechanics mean that the scribe report is 100% reliable is a direct violation of this rule. Trusting lowly scribes and scouts over nobles also goes against the third point of the "dos": "Behave like a real, living noble.".

Enforcement of SMA has considerably waned over the years, but the rules remain the same, and such attitudes go against absolutely everything SMA stood for when the continent was opened up.