Messages

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Oh, and another thing I noticed. You can't demand David comes onto the Forum to defend himself, nor can you in any way hold it against nor damn him for not doing so.

The Game Rules and the InAlienable Rights state without regard for circumstance that no one can be forced to be active OOC, and there is no clause there that gives either this Forum Jury nor even the Titans themselves the sovereign right to overrule that.

So trying to place the argument that him not coming onto the Forum is grounds against him .. actually .. hits on the fundamental and most unyielding set of conditions for the Game.

Just thought it'd point that out.

I appear to have stumbled across a new game. It's called JudiciaryMaster.

It is almost staggering reading through that anyone has entertained this topic this far.

What did I see as a player in Arcachon? I saw Duchy after Duchy break from realms to join into a new SuperState, rendering several realms (ie. Cathay and Ohnar especially) massively reduced, and then suddenly Alliances and Peace Treaties forged within a few days. The problem with that, and thus my own comment in Arcachon, was that it seriously jeopardised the game and the situation of F.E.I. Imagine, because lets face it it was possible, and still is, that the Duchy-changes continued. There were two surprise Duchies who joined Toupellon, so lets entertain there were more. Lets say everyone jumped on the bangwagon of this new realm. Every Duke apart from those who command Capital Regions defects to Toupellon and suddenly you've got 16 Duchies under this new realm. Game over. F.E.I. is nigh ruined. And if there was no roleplay and no real IC efforts made to tie it all together, or explain or enrich the whole scenario, would it have been a positive for the continent and the Game at large? No it wouldn't. That's what David was addressing, perhaps not in the most tactile way admittedly.

Lets look at a counter claim shall we?

"Powergaming (or power gaming) is a style of interacting with games or game-like systems with the aim of maximising progress towards a specific goal, to the exclusion of other considerations such as (in videogames, boardgames, and roleplaying games) storytelling, atmosphere and camaraderie."

If there's no roleplay and little in the way of IC storytelling then surely this mass succession in F.E.I. to create a superstate is "maximising progress towards a specific goal, to the exclusion of other considerations".

And yet what did you have with Toupellon but a lack of roleplay, a lack of IC explanation or depth or anything. I mean the other realms didn't even address the issue with War. Ignoring the >massive< oathbreaking and geo-political powershifts, which if it was an SMA continent would be nigh inexcusable from an IC perspective,  and yet loads of realms were simply cowed into signing Peace with the new realm out of, I expect, a mix of shock and a fear of standing up for themselves for fear of being entirely destroyed. Though is seems Cathay is to be the exception.

Now as David put it the problem was the massive lack of substance to the whole affair. It seemed like an entirely contrived effort from the point of view of spectators and even those involved, as he as a player was, as they were forced into the new realm or left watching it happen. F.E.I. is meant to be a "Roleplaying Continent" is it not? I mean it says it on the continent description. So for something like this to happen with apparently little in the way of depth or roleplay is a poor show. I think you'll find that is what David was addressing, whereas I was more struck by the game issues of suddenly a superrealm springing forth and seemingly an endless run of duchy changes which could have largely left one realm in total control of most of the continent. You know, the thing that's not supposed to happen on BM - A continent being "won".

I genuinely thought this is the kind of thing Tom would be against. I must be wrong.

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Now from a "Judicial" point of view (since apparently the righteous intent of the independent and arbitrary Dispensers of Justice Committee is throbbing so heartily amongst the few who speak up here) If you really wanted to >prove< his 'claims' were for cheating you need to say where he specifically said "They're cheating". Which he didn't do. What he pointed out was that characters who joined the realm seemingly from no where and entirely different realms got appointments with no explanation or anything. Nothing was done to explain the situation really. He raised this problem IC also, thats a fact that has been neglected to be mentioned here.

And the suggestion he sent more than the two messages published is a lie. The OOC chatter in Arcachon died pretty quickly.

I put it to you, if Thulsoma, or "The Saxons!" 'did a Toupellon', what would your reaction be? I would put plenty of money that somewhere a forum topic would have leapt up claiming it was fishy and decidedly 'against the spirit of the game'. The difference being that for all the controversy and claims and counterclaims made about the Saxons the one truth is that they contributed massively IC and in terms of Roleplay to the game. Just look at Dwilight without them. They roleplayed the whole Saxon thing nigh to death. Perhaps David simply expects the same amount of effort to be put in by those making even bigger waves in terms of Continent Power and political upheaval on a Roleplaying continent. Quite honestly, so do I.

The trouble with this whole situation is it's OOC hysteria.

A few of us are lucky enough that we  don't live in the culture of "Insta-Libel" and having to watch our every words just in-case we "offend" or "infringe upon" someone with our views, and in casual chatter trying to construe that serious allegation was being made against someone is laughable. Enough people in Arcachon seemed to think the situation was odd or disappointing, and those players are those who characters who regularly seem to argue with one another. Says a lot about OOC reactions between players when it comes to light it's not just the reaction of >one< player who can easily be targeted.

Otherwise all you're saying is "Don't ever voice an opinion OOC" .... Unless of course it's on the Forum in which case, apparently, you can be as trumped up, egotistical, insultingly dismissive, purposefully confrontational and quite plainly predictably hostile to anyone, anywhere, and get away with it. Thumbs up for the Community.

This whole Forum seems to ruin the basic nature of Battlemaster : Playing– >The Game<. BM. Ran fine for years without this ridiculous amount of OOCism and the Forum just gives more avenues to bring the personalities of the players out rather than the Game being ran through the characters, with the occasional OOC comment here and there within realms. No one lamented the lack of OOC elements before the Forum compared to the masses who simply enjoyed the game for what it was IC.

And you know since this "Jury" seems to be made up players who have all had provable issue with David or his characters at some point it's a biased farce anyway, and in a real life Jury it would be dropped and the whole thing considered untouchable.

Geronus, Chénier, Indirik, Sacha  - issues with the character of Haruka in Thulsoma on Dwilight.
^ban^ issues with the character of the popularly hated Xaphan in Norland on Atamara.
Bedwyr, Lefanis and of course Anatole himself who is directly involved in this whole dispute with Farnese in Arcachon and Druhtinaz priorly in Toupellon on F.E.I.

Did I miss anyone out?

And most of you have spoken against David on the forums before also.

If you want this Jury thing to hold up it should be minimal in bias, involving random players and with as little input from additional parties as possible just like a real Jury. Something akin to the Peer Review you get In-Game ; Nigh anonymous. Not this Arbitrary Oligarchy with vested interests in "nailing the Vanimedle'". I mean, anyone who knows of your character interactions can see it. It's more than obvious. And even if you wished to maintain that you were entirely impartial in your judgements OOC regardless of IC occurrence and history ; No proper Judicial court would allow such a hung Jury, simply for the past associations. Its self evidently-flawed.

Before anyone claims otherwise - that would be what I'd say in any situation like this ; because it's simply true.

If there's no OOC element to    Toupellon and no one thinks it's damaged the continent by questionable means, if Tom doesn't think it's in any way exploiting what I think is a bad idea (multiple Duchies changing to form a new realm (and personally I think Duchies should only be able to Sucede, not switch realms to avoid exactly this)) then good, fine, well done, but points deducted for the lack of RP. You have nothing to fear from someone making idle comment, and little grounds to construe it into being a full on allegation of "cheating".

Cheating suggests effort, what more was being highlighted was the apparent lack of effort. That's a very clear distinction to be made.

If this whole thing turns out the way it looks like it's going to .. then .. wow. Where has the BM of 2009 gone but lost to a minority on a Forum. The game will have become little more than a sideshow for an OOC stage.

I truly hope that is not the case.

First point - change the fame stat? Or make a whole new one. Like I say I find it bizarre anyone would waste a character for a fame point. How about you get the single fame point for choosing the option and dying, regardless of whether you should get three, and it counts as the non-legendary hero death? Pretty much sorted. I won't begrudge anyone a single fame point if it means so much to them.

Second point - forcing .. some guy in the other noble's unit? Let's face it, all of this "Yeah my character totally >killed/wounded/captured< that other guy personally" we see is such rubbish. It's the unit that kills the Hero. It's the unit as a whole that is noted as doing so. The chances are 'Just some guy' in your unit is the one who does the wounding/killing/capturing. Easy enough for anyone to 'avoid' the responsibility if they want to or claim it if that so floats their boat. Jesus .. it's .. a Battle. People Kill Other People. If their character doesn't like the idea of that maybe they shouldn't be fighting ;p

Thirdly - A certain, specific way? Like having a tiny amount of autonomy about whether your character stands his ground and dies or retreats? Having this option is about the same amount of choice as actually setting travel to take part in the battle anyway. Or as simply pressing "delete". The difference is the realm sees it as a hero death. The continent sees it as a hero death. It's noted in the Battle reports, it can be put up on the realm Wiki. It plasters itself onto your Profile as a big, indisputable banner ... simply "Deleting", regardless of whatever sentiment you may wish to express in the deletion message to your realm, doesn't say it's a Hero death, and doesn't note it as such. It just says "He snuffed it". If you're all in favour of people deciding their character's died in the battle .. why not simply make it so they >can< say that.

"My father died in Battle!"
".. Not according to your family page"
-sigh.

In general, any time a character becomes a lord, the family history should show it, and how it happened.

In both those instances the Game doesn't record it. That's why I listed them.
Aulus' first election to Oberndorf isn't on the Family page. All the subsequent entries are when he was Appointed. Same goes for RTO's it seems.

In general, I agree. However as a player, I think that it would be nice to see some advy stuff in there. Specifically, creation of advies, advy deaths, and why they died. Pretty much the way it is now. :)

Oh yeah, I'm fine with the way the game deals with Advy's now. I just meant that should be it, a mere footnote, and the other stuff about selling items and etc seems superfluous and unnecessary. Personally I'd like to wipe the fact I ever made an Advy .. since it existed for about 30 seconds before I decided "Just no" and deleted. But then that's just Scipii pride.

The chances of getting killed in any given battle are very, very small.  Well under 1%, I would say.

Sort of why this option is needed then ..

Four fame points: one for regular hero death, three for legendary.

That's enough to tempt almost anyone who cares at all about fame into, ah, indiscretions.

Extend the time qualifications or prestige requirements for a Legendary Hero status to be achieved, or reduce the reward granted if you choose this option. Family fame is largely unimportant from what I've seen. Unless you're playing for 'stats', which I'm pretty sure BM has never been about. Besides, it's only really risking 1 family fame gain, since you never know if a Hero is Legendary until they die, so anyone trying to just 'fame-up' on the Legendary death wouldn't know if their character yet qualifies.

Maybe a few of the very old old heroes will be popped off this way, and will subsequently be Legendary deaths. Oh well, new blood, and the opening up of realm positions for younger characters. If people want to sacrifice real IG established characters for some barely noticeable family fame .. more fool them.

I think a 95% chance is too high. It may be better to lower the odds to a point where some people might "risk it" for RP purposes even if they don't want to absolutely die. 25% seems a good number

Well, don't Heroes "risk it" in every battle? The point of this is that it's a (nigh)Certain-to-Die choice. If the odds don't massively reflect that .. it makes it pointless. If the higher chance is simply you get wounded I can see more people lamenting how their Heroes spend more time Wounded and unplayable instead of dying off when they want them to.

Eh... this will probably get exploited by fame whores. Create a disposable hero they don't have attachment to, have him die in some random battle for no reason other than getting the fame, and collect the fame.

Yay for a single Fame point? I think we can afford the one-up on Fame. It can't exactly be exploited that much. No more exploitable than someone making an adventurer just so they, or someone else, can execute them.

- When a character become a Lord in an RTO
- When a character is elected Lord of a region in a Vote (only seems to log Appointments)
- When a character Wins a Tournament

Those are the only three I can think of.

Things like Duels, Executions etc. might be things some characters want to hide. It's not like we want everyone going round with their life's history pinned to their chest with a drop-down list of failures and achievements. It's too easily to go "Oh but look Sir, you once >insert event<, according to your family history" and that makes the usual IG options of lying and twisting the truth, or simply hiding it, to be impossible. It's much better that most of a character's fame or infamy lives on through IC knowledge passed on from actual character interactions.

Advy's shouldn't be relevant to family history. They are bastards afterall. "Below contempt" I think the game describes them.

One thing I would say is the family history should have a longer list. Some of the old old families have histories so long the earlier stuff doesn't seem to come up. Unless Family History just wasn't active at the time ...

["Til Death" option for Hero characters.]

"Til Death" option for Hero characters.

Heroes are the only characters that can die in Battle, and on very few occasions they get to recruit locals and raise region morale. They can't do police work or civil work if I understand it correctly, and get only marginal unit advantages. (Does their Swordskill even add to the unit CS anymore?). This is why I propose they get an additional option. A "No retreat, no surrender" option in their Unit settings.

Let's say this raises the chance of the Hero dying to something nearer 90%-95% (since in BM you apparently can never have certainty over anything, though I would also be in favour of a total 100%), with the very slight chance that instead of dying they are just Critically Wounded.

There are plenty of times in actual Medieval History when Knights fought without retreat and died doing so, which seems like the very epitome of what a hero should be.
(See Sir Geoffroi de Charny at Poitiers, Sir Simon de Montfort at Evesham. etc).

Sure, you'd have to calculate what their unit would do, perhaps almost every man retreats when the unit reaches the values for when they would usually retreat, and only the Hero and a few other men as a close personal bodyguard stay the field and ultimately die alongside them. (When a Hero dies the unit disappears anyway, so if 5 men staying the field for that little bit longer swings a battle then .. well .. all the more fame to the dead Hero, epic roleplay etc.) I can't imagine that would be too hard to implement.

So as well as making Heroes that little bit more interesting and desirable it also allows players to .. dispose, of a character they otherwise have no other use for. I had Sextus do a one-man-cavalry-charge against the besiegers in Valkyrja before Averoth fell, and then roleplayed he simply "disappeared". Had I had the option to actually have him die in that battle it would have been much more appropriate. (but then .. maybe he did ;p) The fact Heroes are otherwise useless is the reason I've never played one. Their abilities are seemingly so rare to enact they're the only character class that has almost no reward for a binding-subclass, save for the slight chance the character might die. And then it's just a termination of the character, a one-off and often not very consequential end.

It's better than simply having to "Retire" a character, or suddenly having them spontaneously die. This doesn't make the game any "easier" like so many other suggestions, doesn't over-power or give any real advantage to a character, save for letting a player enact a powerful roleplay before sending their character to what would hopefully be their glorious demise in battle.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms, the usual -

More than likely we would have just sat back and ate some popped corn, laughing among ourselves IC about those silly northmen committing suicide by declaring war on the Zuma.

More than likely, but the inability for others to join in doing something big should never hold you back IC. But as I've said before, Averoth had nothing more to do in the end but find a ridiculous war to throw itself in. I don't especially find the idea of wasting away with Too Much Peace to be particularly fun. Apparently too many realms on Dwilight do.

Though it would also have been fun watching the Zuma march all the way through Terran, Caerwyn and Astrum.

You wouldn't classify a continent wide alliance making them the focus? The problem for the Zuma is that by their nature any time they do anything it quickly becomes a major part of the world. The players are just too interested in what the GMs might be up to.

>Being< The focus suggests you're saying Dwilight = Zuma = Dwilight. Simply doing something doesn't make them the purpose of Dwilight. However, they're quite obviously something that will have to be overcome in the future, so how ever much they end up being 'focussed' on is simply a waiting game. So no, I don't especially. Dwilight in general is just about overcoming adversity in a harsh continent.

The Zuma are like anything. On their own they're only especially intriguing when they're being elusive. Intrigue only lasts so long though.

They don't need to be the focus, they could just do with being, in the words of Sextus, a bit more "relevant".

And on the contrary. I don't play Dwilight anymore, but before the SA War I did actually considered having Averoth declare War on the Zuma. The idea of them marching all the way to Valkyrja to attack us seemed amusing, especially if the whole continent could have been united in opposing them and wiping them out, and for a realm of "Cavaliers" it seemed like an appropriate thing to do. Now that would have been a much more interesting "Crusade" for Dwilight.

To me it just largely seems like the Zuma could be, or could do, a whole lot more. A lot of the roleplays seem largely inconsequential. They're just sort of .. there ... in the corner.

Hell, I'd love to play them. I think there's a lot that could be done, and not simply in the Belauterra-style-invasion killmurderdeath Daimon rampage, since Dwilight won't be able to withstand that.

You know, it's the Zuma. Unless this the beginning of something big, which I doubt but would love it to be, then it is literally irrelevant. Does it matter who knows?

The most interesting thing they've done thus far was when they called for visitors from as many realms as wished to travel there to go and be told all about them. Turned out to be little enough to be worth the effort though.

Aside from burning D'Hara(?) down a bit, of course.

Wow, the Zuma ... actually doing something?

From what I remember as Ruler of Averoth - I just saw copious numbers of their Government members auto-pausing and then coming back time and time again.

[he]

Also Timothy -

Not so much that he wants them to be, but that he has decided that they (or, rather, we) are. 

Have I? Have I really decided that? You've divinely ascertained that I think that, through my total silence on the issue while I wait for Tom to do his thing?