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Sent 2013-10-06 around 22:00 server time

About a month ago

Alanna eases herself slowly into her chair and pulls the stack of correspondence forward on the desk in front of her. "So, let's see what the esteemed Grandmistress is blithering about..." she mutters, picking up one of the letters. As she does so, however, her elbow accidentally knocks into an inkpot, sending it clattering to the floor. Fortunately, it is empty, but Alanna curses and sighs as she pushes the chair back and painstakingly leans down to pick it up. "Cursed thing, making me scrabble on the floorâ€"ah!" She gasps in sudden pain as her back cramps with the unaccustomed stretching.

Nearly an hour later, she is finally able to fully straighten out on her bed with the help of Isella. As she limps back over to her desk to resume the interrupted attempt to handle diplomatic correspondence, she growls, "By the Gods, I'm getting too old for this..."

* * *

A couple of weeks ago

The knock at her door awakens her from a sound and restful sleep. She is about to call out to ask who it is, when she hears the door open, and Isella and a couple of ladies' maids she doesn't recognize (or, wait, was that one her new one who started last month? It gets so hard to keep them straight...) scramble into the room. "Empress, you're awake!" Isella says somewhat breathlessly. "Are you all right? You've been expected in the audience chamber for the past hour!"

This brings Alanna fully awake. "The past hour? Why, what time is it, Isella?"

"An hour before noon, Empress!" her aide replies.

"An hour beforeâ€"why did you not wake me two hours ago?!"

Isella looks away, her face registering embarrassment. "Well, I...I've only had to wake you a few times since I started in your service, Majesty, and I fear that I...I did not think that you would need it. But I suppose with the meetings late last night, youâ€""

Alanna waves her to silence. "Very well. Get my clothes ready, and quickly; I'll not keep them waiting any longer!"

As the two maids scamper to obey, Alanna sits up and tries to swing her legs over the side of the bed, but finds her muscles protesting lethargically. "Really?" she mutters, so quietly that Isella can barely even hear her. "I stay up till an hour or two past midnight just one night and my body won't get moving without bitter complaints by nearly noon? I really must be getting too old for this..."

* * *

This morning

Isella sets the tea down and turns to leave, but Alanna calls after her, "Isella, can you bring the reports from last night? I'd like to get started on them as soon as I've had my tea."

Isella turns back to her, a hesitant, almost embarrassed expression on her face (though that doesn't seem to mean much, since that's the expression she's almost always wearing). "Majesty...I brought those in ten minutes ago. They're right there, waiting at the back of your desk."

Irritated, Alanna looks where Isella indicates, ready to deny that there's any such thing there, but she sees that her aide is, indeed, correct. Though a flash of anger and exasperation flashes across her face, she keeps her voice calm as she replies, "Of course. My apologies. Please make sure that everything is ready for this afternoon's inspection of the granaries."

After the door shuts behind Isella, Alanna pulls the reports over to her and sighs sadly, shaking her head. "By the Gods...if I can't even remember what my own poor aide has already brought me, maybe I really am getting too old for this..."

She stands and looks out her window, the window with the best view in the whole city. In the foreground rise the lower towers of the Palace, with the spearpoints of the guards on the Palace wall winking in the sun. Beyond them, she can see the mansions and gardens of the nobility who make their homes here in Askileon. There is one garden she always particularly loves to look down onâ€"it is entirely walled off, so the only people who can ever see it are those in the mansion that surrounds it on all four sides, and those high enough in the Palace above it that they can look down over the wall. It has a beautiful floral clock, with different flowers in bloom at each hour of the day, and there are children who play in it that Alanna has watched grow from toddlers from her high vantage point. Beyond the noble section of the city, the window looks down on a district of warehouses and sailors' inns, and then on the harbour, with hundreds of masts rising to the sky in echo of the towers and spires on the hill above. And beyond that...the sea, stretching out from here to Giask, which, on clear days, she fancies she can see the highest towers of.

"My city," she murmurs. "My people. My realm...but are they truly mine anymore? The Lurian Hegemony is a glorious jewel, and a mighty empire, but it is not the Pian en Luries I once ruled, and loved. Though I am once again respected, and even loved by some, rather than being vilified by all at the behest of the usurper Koli and his supporters, I am still a relic of the past. There is none but me remaining here that can remember the reign of Kaennji the Sickly, the dukeship of Proslyn, or the founding of Shadovar, and precious few who can recall the strife within Pian en Luries caused by Katayanna, Zile, or even Gwendolyn Elorie and Loathin."

Alanna closes her eyes, sighing, and touches the memories of those timesâ€"the good and the bad both. Then, opening them again, she draws the curtain across the view, and turns back to her desk.

"Perhaps it is time," she says, a tear glistening in one corner of her eye, "to think of passing on for good the burden of holding Luria together, and standing for Luria against the world. Perhaps it is time...to rest."

The Roleplaying board is now also unlocked, but it is still important for everyone to follow the newly-clarified Forum Rules of Conduct, reproduced here for easy access:

• Be respectful of other users. No insulting or derogatory behavior toward other players or forum users.
• The moderators have complete editorial control and may delete or modify posts that violate these rules, or are judged inappropriate for the forum.
• The forum is for discussing things about the game. In-game matters should only be discussed in the game.
• Do not post in-game messages on the forum, other than posting your own Roleplays on the Roleplay board, or when appropriate as part of a Magistrate case. Players may post the roleplayed death of their character on the Roleplay boards without sending it in-game, since they cannot post it in-game.

Please abide by these rules when posting to the newly-reopened subforum, noting particularly the last of these rules in regards to roleplaying.

The Locals boards are now unlocked, but it is important for everyone to follow the newly-clarified Forum Rules of Conduct, reproduced here for easy access:

• Be respectful of other users. No insulting or derogatory behavior toward other players or forum users.
• The moderators have complete editorial control and may delete or modify posts that violate these rules, or are judged inappropriate for the forum.
• The forum is for discussing things about the game. In-game matters should only be discussed in the game.
• Do not post in-game messages on the forum, other than posting your own Roleplays on the Roleplay board, or when appropriate as part of a Magistrate case. Players may post the roleplayed death of their character on the Roleplay boards without sending it in-game, since they cannot post it in-game.

Please abide by these rules when posting to the newly-reopened subforum.

Here are the new BattleMaster Forum Rules of Conduct as proposed and revised earlier this month:

• Be respectful of other users. No insulting or derogatory behavior toward other players or forum users.
• The moderators have complete editorial control and may delete or modify posts that violate these rules, or are judged inappropriate for the forum.
• The forum is for discussing things about the game. In-game matters should only be discussed in the game.
• Do not post in-game messages on the forum, other than posting your own Roleplays on the Roleplay board, or when appropriate as part of a Magistrate case. Players may post the roleplayed death of their character on the Roleplay boards without sending it in-game, since they cannot post it in-game.

These are no longer open for discussion, so please do not post asking for this, that, or the other change to be made.

With these new Rules of Conduct now in force, the Locals boards will be reopened forthwith.

[primary purpose]

There has been a certain amount of confusion regarding the rebalance numbers that are now showing up. The dev team would like to officially dispel some of it.

First of all, the primary purpose behind the rebalance has been to give the gold and food values for all the regions a basis in logic and the inherent statistics and other aspects of the regions—things like region type, population density, and such. Before now, every single region had its values assigned manually and arbitrarily—numbers were just made up on the spot. Not only does this make sure that every region on a continent follows the same rules and gets to both the same benefits and the same disadvantages, it makes it vastly easier for the dev team to readjust values overall when and if we detect a systematic problem. We simply need to adjust the algorithms behind the rebalance, and rerun the part of it that actually sets the updated values to the regions. As an example of this, it has allowed us to significantly increase the food produced on Dwilight (which was too low) and decrease it on Beluaterra (which, with the loss of several cities, was much too high) without much trouble.

Second of all, the dev team has been concerned that the rebalances in the past have moved the game much more toward homogeneity. There was becoming too little difference between being Lord of a city and being Lord of any other region—particularly with the separation of Dukeships from Lordships of cities. This may make people feel more equal, but it's not good design for a game of medieval nobles and knights. Inequality is an inherent part of the system, and should not be played down to the extent that it was. We believe, for one thing, that the general homogeneity has led, in part, to the apathy of rural region lords in selling their food. They make plenty of money already, and mostly don't have knights to fun: why shouldn't they just sit on their piles of food forever?

Third, it is important to note that all these changes are being made based on nominal population—the maximum population of a region, not its current population. So any attempts to compare the changes in two particular regions based on their state right now is pointless unless they are both at maximum population.

We understand that these are, in some cases, some pretty drastic changes. We also understand that, in some cases, they are leading to some undesirable situations—such as regions that, even if they sold their entire food production for 50 gold/100 bushels, would never make enough to even support a Lord with any serious income. We are working to find good solutions to these situations that do not involve breaking the system. In some cases, regions of this nature will simply have their populations adjusted so that they can support a real economy. In others, we may have to find other solutions. However, rest assured, we do not intend to leave any region useless.

Furthermore, there are other changes already either in discussion, in development, or otherwise in the pipeline that should help to fix or ameliorate a number of issues related to this. For instance, there is a general consensus among the dev team that we need to lift the food price cap—at least to 100 gold per 100 bushels, and possibly higher, or removed entirely.

As an indifferent student of Medieval history, I would like to tap the collective hive-mind of the BattleMaster community to benefit the development effort.

In examining our assumptions about food production, in order to try and provide a solid foundation for any future changes to the distribution of food and population across the game, I have realized that I do not know how much food, relative to his own needs, any given farmer would have produced during the Medieval period.

So if anyone has some information—or general ideas about where I could look for information—about production per farmer or production per unit land area, I would greatly appreciate it.

(And naturally, this will be an incomplete picture of actual food consumed by people, as there would be hunting, gathering, and fishing, too—though if anyone has data about that, I would definitely appreciate it, too!)

[to the game's administrators]

This feature, which was added many years ago, has outlived its usefulness. The functions it was meant to perform are now entirely capably handled by the Magistrates and the Titans. Making rulers judge, jury, and executioner is no longer the appropriate way to handle players who are not, in whatever manner, abiding by the social contract and the game's other rules and policies.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the OOC ban effects an IC solution to OOC problems: it removes the character from the realm. This does not prevent them from causing whatever trouble they've been causing in other realms, nor does it send them a clear message that their conduct is unacceptable to the game's administrators.

There is one situation in which the speed of an OOC ban can be important, and that is when a player is spamming a realm with excessive and/or profane messages. I can count the number of times I have seen this occur in my 9+ years in BattleMaster on one hand. And if anyone were to let me know about such an occurrence, I would be sure to take appropriate steps to ensure that they could not bother anyone while a more official Titan or Magistrate case proceeded.

It is also worth noting that for several years, nearly every use of the OOC ban has been punished by the Titans for being abusive and/or inappropriate.

So, I would like to remove this feature, and Tom has asked that I put this to the community first, to see what your thoughts on it are.

There have now been a few incidents of players declaring that they're leaving a thread (or even the forum) because they're disgusted with it for one reason or another, and either deleting all their posts themselves, or demanding that a mod do so.

I would argue that this should not be something mods should do, unless their posts in the thread are pretty obviously inflammatory (and in that case, they shouldn't be waiting until the person asks!). The sole purpose seems to be along the lines of, "I don't want to talk with you guys anymore, and if I can't defend them, I don't want my posts hanging around to be discussed!" This is an immature attitude, and seems to me to be at odds with the spirit of the forums.

However, I'm not a mod of any sort, so I thought I'd open a discussion on the subject.

Well, Quintarianism is now fully funded, and will be founded by this time tomorrow in Ajitmon, Riombara. I've got pledges of support from three Lords, and several other vague noises of interest.

If you liked Qyrvaggism because it was in Riombara and began with a Q, you'll love Quintarianism! ....That's about all the two have in common, though.

Though it will be founded in Riombara, it is firmly intended to be a non-realm-centric religion. That does not mean apolitical: Liara has absolutely no intention of either ignoring or trying to be neutral in politics, but her first thought will be for the religion's welfare, not the realm's.

So come, join us, spread Quintarianism far and wide across Beluaterra!

(And if anyone likes the ideas in the religion, but really dislikes the idea of sharing a religion with me and/or Riombara for some reason, ask me about the built-in variant/enemy religion, Quadrenism!)

[very]

It's releasing officially this Friday, and there's a bunch of information about it here: http://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/mm6i4/legend_a_new_tabletop_rpg_system_releasing/

I've been peripherally involved in its development, and I'm very pleased with what these people have created.  It looks to be much, much easier for someone like me, who doesn't want to spend hundreds of hours carefully optimizing characters, to play and get lots out of.

It uses a very streamlined class system that is much easier to understand than D&D's, and vastly easier to tinker with if you're of a mind to create your own.

One of the guiding principles in creating Legend was to make sure that any class at level X has an equivalent power level to any other class at level X, within reason.  This means that rather than having spellcasting classes ruling the game by higher levels, many spells have been removed, all those that remain have been reworked, and non-spellcasting classes have been given many more interesting abilities.

Anyway, I don't tell this very well, so go look at that Reddit thread and read about it there. You can also ask questions there, where the official Legend publicity guys can answer them.

Well you can already use Secret Societies this way, so it wouldn't exactly plug the hole...

Well, when the new system goes online, SSes will be taxed too, so yes, it would.

For those who haven't looked at the announcements yet, there's a new update that makes some important changes to how archers, MI, and ranged SF and Daimons act.

This should cure the "stupid MI" problems once and for all.

This update also includes a few bugfixes:

• A problem was introduced by the addition of male/female symbols to the names of the recipients of a message with only a few recipients.  Occasionally, it was causing the message to turn blue and small, like the subtitle.  This has been fixed by making the male/female symbols only show up on the message composition screen, and not be included in the actual message subtitle.


• Caravans sent with the auto-caravan feature that were giving food away (selling for 0 gold) were producing an error message when they returned. This has been changed to a more sensible message, since the error message was from a time when we assumed that all caravans must return with either some gold or some food.


• The "Delay Arrival" feature was not appearing on the page after you selected your destination when traveling, forcing you to go back to the main Travel page to see it.  This has been fixed.


• Reclaiming the upper ranks in a guild/religion mistakenly gave the elder who clicked it the Founder rank, thus also inadvertently granting Founder fame. This will no longer be the case—the Founder rank will always remain, even if it is empty.

And finally, the update includes a minor enhancement to the Message Search feature, allowing you to search your sent messages, or both sent and received (which should allow you to view entire conversations among message groups you are in, including your own messages).

Someone (De-Legro, maybe? I forget) mentioned this extension a while back to fix our reputation troubles:

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1890

Looks pretty good to me.

Just over a month ago...

While camping in Craigmore, Liara notices a man approaching quickly.  He holds aloft something that looks like a courier's baton, but something seems slightly...off.  She loosens her sword in its sheath and moves to meet him.  He slows and stows the baton, reaching in his saddlebag and producing a message.

Only too late does she recognize him.  "Rodis?" she exclaims.  "How did you—"

But she never gets the chance to finish the question.  His eyes wide with something between terror and grim triumph, he raises the hand holding the papers, and points it at her.  She half-sees a flicker of violet light arcing from him to her; then the papers crumble into dust in his hand, and the world goes dark.

* * *

When she awakens, she is in a small room, lit by a single candle.  It is burned most of the way down.  She remembers the strange attack by Rodis, and wonders where he has brought her.  She quickly takes stock of her situation.  Her sword has been removed, but she has been left everything else—her armour is still on, and even the three knives she keeps concealed about her person are untouched.  The room has a single door, and no window.  The door seems to be—not locked, when she tries it, but blocked from the outside.  The room itself is of a type familiar to her, with a small, simple bed, a chest, and a table, and only barely room besides that to stand up and turn around.  It is the sleeping chamber of a personal servant, and on the other side of the door would be the bedchamber of the master—or mistress, as the case may be.

Given what else she knows, she suspects it must be Rodis's chamber.

As she waits, she makes a catalog of the questions to ask when Rodis comes in.

How did you find me?

Where is this place?

How long have I been unconscious?

Why did you bring me here?

How did you knock me out without touching me?

That last, she is afraid she knows the answer to.  That violet not-light is something she has heard of before, though never seen: it is the indicator, to those with the eyes to see, of demon-magic.  And if Rodis has contracted a demon, even a little one...Five Gods, that would be answer enough for why he left his home!  For a Quadrene to carry a demon is deepest heresy...

The candle has burned down nearly to a stub before there is a muffled scraping on the other side of the door, and it opens to admit a light that nearly blinds her, adjusted as she is to the dim light within the room.  As she blinks away the spots dazzling her vision, she hears Rodis's voice.

"Please don't try to attack me or anything, Liara.  I don't want to have to put you to sleep again.  I don't want to be able to do anything like that!  I just...I need your help.  You're the only one I could turn to."

Her vision beginning to clear, Liara looks at him again in the light from the room beyond—which is, indeed, a bedchamber, with its windows bright with daylight.  "If you need my help, Rodis, you picked a very strange way to go about it.  How did you find me here?"

He shrugs one shoulder, glancing from side to side.  "I found out where you had sailed to by bribing some harbour officials.  Then I bought passage on another ship going the same way.  It...it barely made it.  I think the timbers were rotten clear through."

Liara grimaces.  The timbers were probably in quite reasonable condition before he came on board.

Rodis continues, "Once the ship docked in Strombran, I just had to ask around, and they told me you were riding to the front, and where you were.  From there...well, it was easy.  It's not like you were trying to hide.  ...Not like me."

"Where are we, Rodis? This is some Lord's house, isn't it?"

"Well, yes.  I'm an honoured guest of the Baronet of the Southmarch of Craigmore.  I...smuggled you in in the night."

Liara rolls her eyes.  How typically melodramatic of him.  "How long have I been unconscious?"

"Only the one night.  I...I tried to make it as gentle as possible; I'm not really that good at it.  Four Gods, I don't want to be good at it!"

Liara's nose wrinkles, just briefly, at his oath.  He doesn't seem to notice.  Then she sighs.

"So, you have contracted a demon?" she asks.

His eyes go wide, and he looks around in terror, shushing her frantically and stammering something vague and negative. 

"Don't worry," she says, cutting through his babble.  "There's no one here but you and me who would know what it means in the first place.  And, by all the Gods, you're the only one here who thinks it's heresy!"

He stops, and looks confused.  She puts her hand on his arm.  "Rodis, you do remember I'm a Quintarian, right? The reason most of our meetings had to be in secret?"

He just looks sullen.  She sighs again, and asks her last question.

"Well, anyway, since it's clear that is exactly what's happened to you, why did you come to me? There's nothing I can do about a demon! You need to go to a trained exorcist or a saint of the Bastard!"

Rodis flinches at the name of the fifth God, Who he has always been taught is no God at all, but a demon, after His father's lineage.  Then he turns his face away, and looks both stubborn and dejected.  He mutters, "I'm a Quadrene.  Quintarians wouldn't want to help me, and other Quadrenes would only want to burn me.  You're the only one I could trust.  The only one who can help."

"Five Gods!" Liara bursts out.  "You're being ridiculous, Rodis! No Quintarian with the ability to banish demons from this world would turn away anyone who has contracted one, no matter whether he signs the Five!"

Rodis looks, if possible, even more sullen and mulish.  "There's...there's more.  I'm..." his voice, already small, becomes a nearly inaudible mumble, "...afraid I might be going mad."

Liara blinks.  "What? Why?"

"I've been...seeing things.  Things that no one else sees.  Things that aren't there.  Oh, Brother of Autumn, why have you let me come to this?" This last Rodis wails, his head back and his eyes shut, in pure despair.

Abruptly, he stands up, goes out into his bedchamber for a moment, and comes back with a tray of food.  The tray also contains a fresh candle.  He places it on the small table.  "Here.  You should eat this.  You need to think of some way to help me, and I can't let you go until you do."

"Rodis—" she cries, trying to get him to stay, to listen to reason, but he overrides this.

"No, Liara; I don't have any other choice! I'll be back in a few hours.  I hope you have a better idea by then."

He closes the door, and she hears scraping again, as whatever large object was blocking it before is moved back into place in front of it.

"Well," she mutters to the empty room, "that went well."

That last part seemed to scare him more than the demon itself, she muses.  Seeing things that aren't there...could he be not only a sorcerer, but also a saint?

Something very strange is going on.  And it appears that I'm not going anywhere until I can at least figure out what.

OK, so this is going to be the thread for at least the initial setup of our DF succession game.

I'll lay out what seems reasonable to me, and we can haggle till we can all agree on something ;)

• Each "turn" will be one year, spring to spring.
• Those wishing to sign up should make themselves known on this thread ASAP. Unless there is strong objection to it, I would like to be the one to start off the fort.
• Each overseer must write, at minimum, a summary report of what happened during each season.  I will attempt to set the tone for such reports with my initial year, based on my readings of previous succession forts.
• No intentional sabotage of the fort—that means no "drunken" overseers commanding everyone to do nonsensical things, no suicide charges against a siege (assuming there's any reason to believe the siege can be survived), no induced tantrum spirals, no digging down to unleash Hell in year 3...  Silly stuff is permitted, stuff that is less than efficient but makes IC sense is permitted—basically, just don't be a jerk.  Losing is Fun, but deliberately losing breaks the fun for everyone else.
• Forks are permitted, if someone really wants to take the fort in a totally different direction from a particular saved game; they just won't be considered "canon."
• The world is generated, see this post for the parameters used.
• The initial embark has been chosen based on the group's desired characteristics, and is being vetted.

Initial images of the embark area:

Full size (Warning: 3456x3456 pixels, very large!):
Z-level -1, showing the locations of the river and pools
Z-level 0, showing the location of the wagon, the volcano, and the mountains

80% Smaller (691x691 pixels):
Z-level -1, showing the locations of the river and pools
Z-level 0, showing the location of the wagon, the volcano, and the mountains

Initial list of overseers:

• Zulban 'Anaris' Ducimonol, expedition leader
• Zeneg 'Indirik' Tangathkilrud, miner
• ^ban^
• Adil 'Foundation' Inalnish, farmer
• Bembul 'LGMAlpha' Saramathel, butcher
• Ducim 'Telrunya' Nishabod, hunter
• DoctorHarte
• Iltaran

Unclaimed starting dwarves:
Kivish Bufutsibrek: Novice Wood Cutter, Competent Carpenter, Novice Wood Crafter, Novice Stone Crafter, Novice Bone Carver
Vabok Rullokum: Novice Mason, Adequate Fish Dissector, Competent Fish Cleaner, Competent Fisherdwarf

If anyone objects to the order, it's open for negotiation.

[years]

Three major new changes were committed so far today, which will go live with revision 5339.

The first is notifications of militia attrition.  Militia units have always lost a few men every few days, and small militia units auto-disbanded.  However, until now, there has been no notification of this.  Now, Lords will be notified each day of the militia losses that day—both from attrition, and from undetected murder by infiltrators.

The second is the implementation of three previously unimplemented scroll types, Magic Steeds, Magic Weapons, and Magic Armour.

The third is the implementation of a feature that has been sitting with a little "TODO" tag on it for years now: the ability to buy a region, but have the fraud delayed till sunrise.  This will make it indistinguishable from a normal region revolt. Of course, it also gives the guards more time to cotton on to the scheme, and an extra chance to catch the fraudster.

Some of you may have heard of Minecraft.  Well, Dwarf Fortress is what Minecraft was based on. http://bay12games.com/dwarves/

Its AI is absolutely staggering.  It generates a world, from scratch, with erosion, mountain formation, caverns, volcanoes, civilizations, trade...it's just incredible the amount of detail that goes into the background of the game. 

You can play it in two modes, "adventure" mode, which is very much like a classic roguelike game (Angband, Moria, Nethack, etc), or "fortress" mode, which is the one that Minecraft is based off of.  So far, I've only played fortress mode.  If I want a regular roguelike, I play Angband http://rephial.org/ ;-)

In Fortress Mode, you pick a place on the world where you want to build a fortress, equip your seven initial dwarves, and start digging.  And building.  And making beds, and crafts, and doors, and furniture, and weapons...

It's an incredible sandbox, and the kinds of things that you can make with it are vastly varied, and very cool.  My latest fortress has been running for about 7 IG years, and has tapped a magma vent to power its forges, smelters, and glassmakers, and is churning out steel armour and weapons just as fast as my dwarves can make it.  I've dug out the housing for a set of pumps that will bring the magma up into a giant holding tank at the top of the cliff my fortress is delved into, so I can dump it out on invading goblins any time I need to.  After a number of immigration waves, I'm up to (I think) 142 dwarves, and the Mountainhome is about to promote us to a Dukedom.

If you like building things, and can handle the steep learning curve (following one of the various tutorials is pretty nearly essential), it's an amazingly fun game.

Tom,
Do you suppose it would be possible to change the "from" address in the email notifications for new topics, new posts in watched topics, etc?

It seems a little odd to have them all coming from "tom@battlemaster.org".  Perhaps they could be from "forum@battlemaster.org"?

The Army Banners feature-in-development isn't particularly secret, so I thought I'd share a screenshot of how I, at least, intend it to be used:


Enjoy!

Timothy Collett