Our characters didn't assume anything. They planned for multiple possibilities, one of which included allies joining Thalmarkin.
[...]
Do we do that every time we think there's even a chance of a war becoming one-sided? Because, again, initial projections on this didn't anticipate it being that one-sided.
Please go back and consider this, because this is
exactly why I said you made assumptions.
Do we do that the moment we see it turning toward that path? Even if that isn't obvious to everyone involved?
Do we do that with every war?
No, no, and no.
Again, since I apparently wasn't clear before: I would expect this to happen in the event you find yourself in a situation where you are among
a large number of realms that is or will be declaring war on
one or a very small number of realms, such that if they do not have realms join in to help them, they will be massively, hopelessly, demoralizingly outnumbered.
Yes, you may have had many contingency plans, but
you made an assumption that led to your "initial projections" that had the war not being one-sided.
Those assumptions, not to put too fine a point on it, were wrong.
That was
one of the factors that led to where we are now. (Another of them was Zatirri rolling into rulership swinging, and yes,
he deserved to get sucker-punched for his arrogance in this matter. That doesn't mean every player in his realm deserved to be put in a position where they were forced into a war they could not win, and had no way of knowing how they could end without destruction, for an indeterminate amount of time.)
So, let's see how this plays out. But let's also be clear about what we're trying collectively to do here, and talk about it before we jump into major new changes, if at all possible.
What I'm trying to do here—and I recognize that I'm flailing a bit at it, but please try to bear with me—is not to change everything to being pre-planned and risk-free, but to change the culture so that rulers, at the very least, start trying to take some responsibility for the fun of
the whole continent rather than the every-realm-for-itself model we have operated under up to now. To stop and take stock every once in a while, question your assumptions, and check in with your fellow players, "Hey, how are things going? Are you having fun? If not, what can we as a continent do to make that better?" Never expecting to be turning relations and RPs around on a dime, but just starting to
take into account the other people sitting at the table.
If John Read-Jones had had a relationship with Matthew Runyon, and the other players of BT rulers, such that they all not only already saw each other as players, but had corresponded OOC—not about what their realms were
planning, but about the general
mood and what they felt like they needed—then I think it extremely unlikely that the setup for this situation would ever have happened. And this is emphatically
not me saying I think you're to blame for that lack—I think this is a lack in BattleMaster's culture that I myself have only started to really see within the last few months to a year.
It's the same kind of disregard for other players' feelings as human beings that led Alexandros Stavrou to conduct his campaign of harassment and bullying. The same, frankly, that has led to every single major incident of OOC hostility and every single major controversial Titan case. I'm trying to attack that problem at its source and I
do not claim to have a good idea of what I'm doing, but I'll be damned if I stop trying.
I hope you can see me in that light as you continue to bring critiques of my performance as I move through this effort.
