Messages

16

Questions & Answers / Make some magistrate cases private

« on: July 10, 2013, 08:01:48 PM »

So, Magistrates.

A lot of what is on here is useful stuff, particularly given the different ways a lot of BM's rules can be applied.

Some of it is manifestly not useful. Particularly, if players A and B hate players C and D and harassment goes in one or both directions, it isn't my business and it's just a forum for people to pile on whichever player(s) they don't care for in the exchange.

The resolution is going to be fairly particular and probably of limited if any use to the public.

I get that I can just not read the magistrates forum and that's fine. But it is making some useful information less useful through avoidance.

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Feature Requests / Re: Feature Request: Takeovers preventing realm change

« on: July 08, 2013, 07:01:53 PM »

This is one of several problems relating to control in the sense of 'this region is occupied by a large number of our guys' versus long-term control in the sense that the bureaucrats, minor nobility, and tax collectors now answer to realm B instead of realm A.

The former is achievable by winning a battle and clearing out enough of the enemy. If you are in a position to begin a takeover, you 'control' the region - certainly you control it more than the local lord whose garrison was just defeated.

The idea that five hundred troops could spend a week working on the local infrastructure and other takeover activities and then suddenly the local lord who hasn't been in power for that whole week can up and convert everything to another realm and single-handedly un-do the work of the armed soldiers occupying his region is pretty absurd.

Just because realm B doesn't yet fully control a region does not mean that realm A still does control it.

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Magistrates Case Archive / Re: Terran-D\'Hara Realm Merger

« on: July 07, 2013, 04:31:09 AM »

How is it that all of you who play on this continent are meant to be impartial in the first place?

This looks like a lot of squabbling over he-said she-said. Why anybody cares about intent for a handgun of regions on a continent with as many regions as players is bizarre.

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Magistrates Case Archive / Re: Terran-D\'Hara Realm Merger

« on: July 06, 2013, 09:45:31 PM »

They do not, however, have any particular right to keep their regions.

Pardon my ignorance as I'm unclear on why this rule exists in the first place, but why does a region lord not have a right to his region?

He has more control over it than any other individual. It isn't a pie-in-the-sky title referring to an abstract concept like a realm. The Baron of Keplerville has a big estate in Keplerville and everybody in Keplerville knows him. If he says 'we are leaving this poop realm and joining this stronger realm right next door,' unless he is an absolute arse or has several knights who are not inclined to do the same thing, nobody in Keplerville is going to do much about it.

If Terran had four regions and two of them joined another realm, nobody would say anything. But when two of two regions join another realm it's a problem? What exactly is served by stopping this?

I'm not involved in any of this, I am just really surprised lately by how much effort you guys spend telling people that they can't do what they want to do when the only basis for a complaint about what's going on is a rule designed to stop big mergers rather than anyone actually able to demonstrate harm. I thought BM used to be all about hating rules lawyers.

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Magistrates Case Archive / Re: Terran-D\'Hara Realm Merger

« on: July 06, 2013, 02:55:17 AM »

When a couple of region lords can control whether a realm 'merges' it seems like begging an exercise in sophistry to try and parse the difference between a 'friendly merger' and 'the last lords jumping ship.'

21

Helpline / Re: Stepping Down from Permanent Position

« on: July 05, 2013, 10:21:36 PM »

Why not just keep it simple? Treat it like it is a unique item.

Non-city region: +2 honor, +3 Prestige
City region: +2 honor, +5 Prestige
Duke: +4 honor, +7 Prestige
Councillor: +1 Honor, +1 Prestige
Ruler: +5 Honor, +10 Prestige

Step down, you lose 'em. Placeholder nobles get sent to the magistrates already, so are there any other abuses to keep in mind here?

If you want to reward long and illustrious careers (as you do now with fame and rulers, anyway) then give permanent bonuses to honor or prestige if you hold the same title for X number of days where X is pretty high.

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Helpline / Re: Stepping Down from Permanent Position

« on: July 05, 2013, 09:47:05 PM »

That makes you both less well-known and less of a figure of public trust.

This is neither necessarily true nor necessarily implicating honor or prestige if it did. You don't gain honor or prestige when you become King of Keplerstan, do you? Nope.

Furthermore, your argument would be a better case for 'you shouldn't gain honor or prestige for stepping down even if doing so was honorable or prestigious' because the way it is now, stepping down is actively dishonorable rather than simply 'not additionally honorable.' You can easily lose more this way than from mugging nobles in your dungeon.

but the kinds of things you're talking about sound more like fantasy-novel fare than the sorts of things that I suspect to have been common in actual medieval Europe.

I'm not sure what you mean, but history is not a terrific guide for this issue because you are (quite understandably) trying to approximate some medieval-y metric of Important Stuff but you obviously can't know the context in which these things happen. You do assume, for instance, that stealing gold or torturing a noble in your dungeon is always dishonorable because even if you torture the universe's most dishonorable noble, you still have a pretty good case that that action will always be dishonorable.

I haven't run across many cases for abdication in medieval history, at least not in a manner analogous to BM. It was very common for a noble (particularly a highly ranked noble) to 'step down' from one or more lower titles, either because they'd effectively lost them or because they wanted one of their children to have it - Henry II did this with his three kids but outright abdication of your highest title is not something I can readily summon an example for. You lost titles because you were convicted of a crime or because somebody else took your castle, and even in the later case you'd probably still hang on to the title because you'd assume that you'd re-conquer it.

and has to be set up to work one way or another across the board.

I am not clear on why it has to work at all. If you gave people honor or prestige for assuming a title, I very much understand losing an identical amount when you give up that title, but in that instance the title is more like a unique item: you have it, so your prestige is +3 and it stops being +3 when you stop carrying it.

Especially as the Magistrates are happy to clobber anyone who blatantly abuses game mechanics these days, I am just not sure what you are purchasing with all this except to incentivize people to hang on to titles or else to pause rather than step down.

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Helpline / Re: Stepping Down from Permanent Position

« on: July 05, 2013, 08:44:31 PM »

Stepping down from a position of power is one of them.

No, it isn't.

Certainly the circumstances exist where it might be, but a similar number of circumstances exist where stepping down is the 'honorable' thing to do. The game has no way of knowing, and as a result the mechanism is ham-handed and arbitrary.

Stepping down might be the result of something that cost you honor or prestige, but even if you abdicate because you've been found out doing something embarrassing or illegal, the abdication is an effect of the loss, not the cause.

Neither honor nor prestige actually refer to how honorable or prestigious a character is, as both of those things, while not entirely subjective, are not easily quantifiable - and even if they were, in BM they are more properly a measure of valor, since by far the fastest way of achieving them is to fight in battles.

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Helpline / Re: Stepping Down from Permanent Position

« on: July 05, 2013, 03:28:05 PM »

BM can't seem to decide which out-of-context punishments it wants to inflict on you: remove you from power because you landed in a dungeon for a few days (but with no h/p cost) or arbitrarily dock you a half-dozen battles' worth of honor and prestige because you elected to step down? One method prizes turnover and the other is trying to prevent abuse but isn't smart enough to know context.

For some positions I could make a case that there's just no stepping down right away: ruler would certainly be one, maybe Duke. General, Banker, and region lord? Eh.

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Far East Island / Re: Post News Here for our Facebook Page

« on: July 05, 2013, 02:55:58 PM »

In the Far East's first capitol sack in some time, the allied armies of the Free People defeated the Zonasan army and garrison in the city of Zonasa after a long and bloody siege in which the capitol's walls were reduced. The Zonasan Regent was wounded in the battle.

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Questions & Answers / Re: Implied Threats from Powerful People

« on: July 03, 2013, 09:46:42 PM »

Here's a constructive idea:

You know how you appoint a steward for your region to do stuff while you're not there?

What if every title had something like this, but with the catch that, when you are out of action - in jail, seriously injured - your steward/2nd banana got all the buttons typically reserved for you?

Fer instance, the Emperor of Arcaea was critically injured in a duel the other day. He didn't lose his position (even though the ruler of Ohnar West did for being in jail for only a couple days while the Emperor is still injured) but what if somebody else got to press all the Emperor buttons until he returned? They wouldn't be the Emperor, they'd just be the person with access to diplomatic relations, crown taxes, and treaties until the Emperor comes around. Then you lose access to things.

- moar scheming
- no silly 'sorry you're not the Duke anymore, we locked you in a hole for 48 hours'
- spread the power around to more people (ostensibly the whole point of the current system anyway)

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Questions & Answers / Re: Implied Threats from Powerful People

« on: July 03, 2013, 08:46:05 PM »

Why does someone have to be stupid to recognize an implied threat?

Someone has to be stupid not to recognize an implied threat, or conversely, to be unable to tell the difference between an implied threat and a statement or offer from someone in authority.

If the sheriff tells you 'a little contribution to the police athletic league would go a long way toward making sure that your shop has a patrolman around after dark,' that's an implied threat.

If the sheriff tells you 'we have apples and bananas, you can have either one' you would have to be very dim, insecure, or else very ignorant to imagine that there was a threat. I'll gladly go so far as to say someone brand new to the game might fall into the later category because hey, who knows how sheriffs work in this town, but when dealing with lords or Dukes I don't think that applies.

Your argument here is a classical nanny authority appeal: 'People with any authority will always abuse it, so I who have maximum authority must intervene.' I'm hardly Bendix's biggest fan but this whole thread is pointless busybodies. Either your game caters to adults or it doesn't. If it does, protect them with IR and leave it there.

The entire placeholder problem and the hamfisted rule which applies to it are creations of the game (of the devs, that is) designed to arbitrarily force turnover when the game has no possible way of knowing the context. The result, of course, is that people in authority just do less of whatever it is that might cost them their title, further incentivizing stagnant seat-warmers in power. There is certainly no IC reason why somebody being injured for a week or two or captured would lose a title; at worst they'd have a regent step in and maybe muck things up for them. Otherwise, this whole business is just you guys making work for yourselves in the name of protecting ... who exactly?

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Magistrates Case Archive / Re: Accusation of cheating with no proof

« on: July 03, 2013, 04:55:58 PM »

His English is fine.

I wouldn't say it's fine. It's serviceable. In Cathay we usually have a team of three or four people to read his letters and then conference on what we think they meant.

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Questions & Answers / Re: Implied Threats from Powerful People

« on: July 03, 2013, 04:52:43 PM »

It's basically like the local gang leader saying, "you know, this is a dangerous neighborhood. It would be a real shame if you didn't purchase private security from me and something bad happened to your store."

I've never bought this argument that assumes everyone who isn't the ruler is dumb or so new that they can't tell the difference. It enables cherry-picking because all you need is one declarative statement by a ruler. It is also unambiguously different than your above example of an outright threat.

Making policy on the assumption that your average player is an idiot will insure that the only people left are idiots.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Messages and Metagaming

« on: July 03, 2013, 02:30:31 PM »

Peasants are never implicated in any assaults on nobles.

They assault priests all the time.

They also form mobs and kick out region lords.