Messages

1

BM General Discussion / Re: Player Statistics

« on: August 10, 2013, 11:09:09 AM »

Slope this in the other direction, people perceive positive slopes as good.

2

Helpline / Academy for adventurers

« on: May 01, 2013, 01:14:01 PM »

Was the academy disabled for advies? I recall using them earlier but now, none of the cities he goes to have the option available.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 26, 2013, 10:57:49 PM »

I think Alice Arundel and Hendrick Madigan already did that reenactment.

4

BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 08:41:18 AM »

In SMA KRB should be the only loot option that doesn't incur a morale penalty.

I agree that it should have some effect on morale (maybe by giving it to KRBers instead of taking it away from people who don't), but I get the feeling that a lot of people would go nuts.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 03:38:41 AM »

!@#$ Game of Thrones.

How about any other medium that includes rape? History books? The Saxon Stories? The Vikings TV show? The news? The Bible? Shakespeare? Are you embarrassed to speak to your (dickishly judgmental) friends about that? Should they be banned? Would your wife dump you for reading Titus Andronicus? You're just being a creeper reading a creepy story by some creepy old guy about rape, after all.

Pretending you've won this argument because Dishman said something stupid and offensive is pretty disingenuous. I think rappers are only allowed to drop the mic if they kick ass.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 03:29:57 AM »

I understand what you mean, but I admit you do sound like a dick when you say it. Rape is strangely more taboo than murder, yet murder is the foulest thing possible. Sex has a strange way of eliciting stronger responses from people than life and death.

I disagree. Murder can be justified, rape cannot. Also Kwanstein implied that rape is an expression of female sexuality, so he clearly doesn't just sound like a dick.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 03:16:37 AM »

Are you mad that I didn't answer your tangent? Ok. Genocide is not presented within the game in the same context that would offend people. There's no racially-motivated genocide, there's no religiously-motivated genocide, there's stabbing every human being in the throat genocide.

If I told my mother, my boss, my friends that I played a game where I'm a knight and I do !@#$%^& knight things like burn down villages that's fine. If I mentioned there was a specific option to seek out and rape women then suddenly things look very different.

It's equally as tangential as bestiality.

You choose which regions to commit genocide in. You can roleplay that it's religiously or racially motivated. Just like you can roleplay that it's women your character is permitting the rape of.

Nowhere in the game does it say that women are the only targets. Unit commanders can be male or female, soldiers can as well, and I don't believe the targets are at all mentioned, by the game, as being women. You are committing "raping every human being" pillaging, as far as the game's concerned.

I don't want my entire world to be sterile and politically correct and I want to be able to roleplay in a world that's realistically grounded, not one that's been wiped clean by the PC police. I read books that have rape in them and I'm not publicly ashamed about that, it's part of the setting. It makes it interesting. Should we ban Game of Thrones because a preteen gets raped in one of the opening chapters? Because it has an anti-war theme that says that war isn't knights in shining armor, it's innocent people being brutalized in the name of politics they don't comprehend? As long as it's not glorified or celebrated, wtf is wrong with it?

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 02:52:55 AM »

Why not remove genocidal actions? People might get too into it in RPs as well, since it's part of the meta. Or what about prostitutes? Wouldn't want people to think you're playing a virtual Pimp Hitler simulator either, right?

I don't see an epidemic of gruesome rape RPs. Once it exists, then maybe something should be done. But rape's been in the game forever and I don't see rivers of bodily fluids running down the streets. Nor do I see people dressed in all purple sieging their heils.

9

BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 02:39:31 AM »

You mean how we just 'skimmed' over Glaumring's Swastika role plays?

Swastikas are just Glaumring trying to be edgy. They don't build up the world, they don't develop the character, they're just him being a dickhead. If he wanted to build up a fascist regime and start a campaign of genocide, I'd be down with that. I might even join him. Swastikas are just immersion-breaking and exclusively inflammatory.

Rape and other atrocities build the world and they build characters. Cow !@#$ing and swastikas don't. Arguments to absurdity only work if the two things are mutually comparable.

Before you say anything else, please differentiate between why rape should be removed and genocide, whoring, and war should not be.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 02:37:28 AM »

Hell, Norrel, I like you and I get where you're coming from, but by your logic I should be able to post sexually-explicit roleplays involving cattle and people should just "skim over" it without saying anything.

First of all, I would find that hilarious. But that's just me. I don't think anyone's going to get traumatized by reading that and yeah, just skim over it if it's disturbing. Obviously the guy writing it is a bit of a prick and you're well within your rights to call him out on it, just as he's within his rights to keep on truckin'.

You sign an invisible contract when you get on the internet, and that's that you might have to interact with people you don't want to. Ignore lists exist for those extremely rare few who do actually post disgusting crap like that.

Rape's more offensive than cattle !@#$ery, at least to me, anyways.

There's a difference between being sick and edgy for the sake of it and writing well. We shouldn't punish the latter because of the chance of the former occurring.

I also don't think that people should be explicit in their public RPs, and it's far more tasteful (and better writing) to just hint at it, or at least to not describe it vividly. Why does this mean we should restrict it, though? Some people are !@#$ty writers.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 02:27:27 AM »

I think you ignored the whole latter part of the argument that specifically said "because it happened in history" will only carry the argument so far. By including the option to do so, you're alienating part of the potential player base.

I think the brutalilty of the setting is an integral part of it. We risk alienating people whose families have suffered genocide by including genocidal actions, or alienating veterans with PTSD by including war, or maybe allowing our soldiers to hire prostitutes will alienate the former prostitutes among us. If seeing the words "x has raped, pillaged, and marauded" in a report brings you flashbacks, maybe it's time to get a therapist and stop blaming an online text-based strategy game.

I don't want to play a game that's sterilized and clean. For me, that's an integral part of the game. I think it gives it substance and makes the world more real. The devs obviously agree. Just skim over the distasteful RPs.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 01:54:07 AM »

That's true enough. In fact, one of the reasons that chivalry was created was to put restraints on what a person could and couldn't do in terms of violence. One theory is that part of why the chivalric code came into being was to protect noblewomen from male violence.

Specifically in terms of the game, I don't think it's appropriate because having an option to rape is just an arbitary choice, and many modern players (women, in particular) will feel uneasy about it. Equally, saying character's soldiers have the option to rape because it happened in history will only carry the argument so far. For example, there's the 'Kill, rape, and burn' option. But there isn't an option that says 'Kill babies' or 'kill everyone with a different skin tone'. Both of those things happened in medieval times (and are still happening) but there are no options to do that in the game, presumably for morale reasons.

Rape happened a lot more than racial genocide or infanticide, though. This was an era where rape was considered a spoil of war - even if knights wouldn't participate in it themselves, most would turn a blind eye to it. It boosted morale.

This was an era where actually attacking a castle was an almost suicidal proposition. The best thing to do was to roam around the countryside, committing as many atrocities as possible in order to force them out of the castle to attack you, either because you were destroying their food source or because they were legitimately disgusted. Rape was a large part of it.

I don't deny that it's a disgusting thing, but I think ignoring it does a disservice to exactly how barbaric and awful this era actually was.

Obviously some people don't want to read disgusting things, but you can just skim over a RP if you're getting hints that it's of a less-than-tasteful nature.

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BM General Discussion / Re: KRB What do you think about this?

« on: April 24, 2013, 01:15:37 AM »

I've spoken out strongly before on the forum against RPs that contain rape. Personally, I don't think its an appropriate subject for gameplay and I don't like to see it. But, equally, I'm not going to force my sense of morality on someone else playing in a fictional virtual world if they want to create a really evil villain.

Why? I think the contrast between the brutality of medieval warfare and life and the chivalrous code is a large part of what makes the setting interesting.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Long Distance Wars Impossible?

« on: April 23, 2013, 10:18:58 AM »

I've said it before, there are two things which drive diplomacy in this game. The first thing is prudence, players want to see their realm do well, so they will naturally and unconsciously choose the diplomatic paths which are most sensible. The second thing is role play, the idea that instead of a player conducting himself in a manner that he prefers, he might act counter to his own benefit by playing in favour of the character he invented.

These two types of behaviour are in conflict, due to the fact that the character cannot exist apart from the player and so is subject to the player's neural make-up and conditioning. One might reasonably compare this conflict to the sort of conflict which the guy in FIGHT CLUB experienced. The guy in FIGHT CLUB wanted to play the character he/society had created for himself (the buttoned down desk jockey) but was subconsciously foiled by his inner self, his Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden was the manifestation of Edward Norton's base character, a concept-made-physical which Edward Norton could not deny. Try as he might to play to his character's benefit, he could not deny his primordial lust for violence and other base instincts and so was constantly confronted by Tyler, who drove him to abandon his character and revert to his primitive nature.

This type of thing is why Morek Empire is at war with Aurvandil. The players know that there is no practical cause for it, however by denying their nature they have gone ahead with it anyway. For, it is for their characters' benefit somehow, I do not know how, I am not privy to diplomacy, but the specific reason need not matter -- only that it is there. So, Dante, that is how Morek's war with Aurvandil is justified (and it needs no justification other than the players' self-justification; might is right and if it is within their might to engage in an activity then it is outside of anyone else's ability or right to stop them). Perhaps, some day, they will be presented with their own Tyler Durdens. Scaled appropriately to the level of which they have breached their human nature.

Speaking as someone who just finished a freshman level psych course, why do all of your posts seem like they're freshman level psych papers? Did you just read a chapter on cognitive dissonance so now that's your thing? A while ago you were all about the superego and operant conditioning. You realize that you can phrase these arguments in normal English, right? They're not very complex.

Also, way to spoil Fight Club for anyone here who hasn't read/seen it.

To actually say something constructive, I don't think that distance limits force people to fight closer to home. What it does is force them not to fight. Basic politics dictates that your closest neighbors should also be your closest friends. If they were enemies, either they would be dead or you would. Why not let people project force? Going on distant voyages to raid foreign lands seems like an awesome adventure, to me, and it sucks that the game shuts it down. Should you be able to TO and all that? Probably not. Should you be able to raid and pillage? Totally.

15

Development / Re: Ability to go to Tournaments

« on: April 23, 2013, 04:19:24 AM »

Well the main alternative to warriors are adventurers, courtiers, and priests. Besides spectating, organizing, and blessing contestants, why would any of those belong competing in a tournament?

Unless you watch Heath Ledger's "A Knight's Tale", of course...

Courtiers still fight and many people switch between classes really often. I'm one of them.