Dinh AaronMk

Military RPs- a Cause for Debate

kingkonrad said
it doesn't portray the real grit of the infantryman, rather that or generals.

Have you cracked it open and looked at such story arcs as my own for the adventures of Li Tsung?

I think you're pretty over generalizing the RP's components based on its genre-placement. True it's a nation RP but where others might go on a grander level of broad depiction of politics more often than not we take a interest in the individual characters within the story to carry the politics and not only say there's a war and for an excuse to talk about inane troop movements, but to also look at the condition.

In my own particular [mis]adventures I'm exploring my own - China's - conflicts through the eyes of two men on the ground. I may invoke one of my generals, but that's to simply give a broader narration on what's going on, since a lonely tank driver or sergeant in the field isn't going to have a worldly scope on what the strategy is and where what unit is going, unless it pertains directly to them and they're informed for tactical reasons.

And with the long-awaited Second Great War basically kicking up there's a wider chance of exploration. It's currently small because it's at best concentrated on a single spot but is due to flare up beyond that. This current battlefield already being explored by the individuals of that state's player, a few of which have had their own stories and adventures of their own and are on the return. Soon I'll be making the return of my own individuals to explore the other fronts from the ground as we all do.

PoW isn't much an emphasis on politics on the broad scale as is the case of World in Revolution or other NRPs. It's a person taking up an individual character - or a population - to tell their stories. We may have started off being a generic NRP back in the old days of its first forum. But we've evolved and defined our craft and attitude of the RP to be more of a literary adventure than calling out stats and numbers against someone else.

Compared to the past as well the situation in this coming future will be on a broader and longer scope than it has in the past. We had too bad a habit of being rather limited, whether out of energy to keep up or cowardice on the part of the people who operated the story like a RTS experience than something like Game of Thrones.

And we've had ran by our Ethiopia player - VilageidiotX - a revolution in the Congo explored from the bottom up by a pair of captured journalists, basically forced to witness and document the adventures of the anarchistic, cross-dressing Congolese rebel general as he tried to dismantle the Pan-African empire, and the emotional choices of his Ethiopian rival as he picked his moves and came to the conclusion lobbing off the arms of a village worth of young children would be enough to draw him out, and through that the personal conflict that rose between him and the Emperor's sister. Not to mention lobotomies, LSD, and a patrol of stranded or deserter (I can't remember which) Ethiopian men trying to get home from the Congolese jungles, ultimately having their leader incapacitated in a fight with a guerrilla and malaria.

Military RPs- a Cause for Debate

SyrianHamster said
So we seem to be at some level of agreement. Hypothetically, how would we go about making something that could cater to the average joe, and the average professor?

1) Take up the individual character offer made in Precipice of War
2) coordinate character to match up with the Grand Arbiters of Spain, Ethiopia, China, or the UK (optional: Russia whose lore has been sort of adopted by the China player until a fitting guardian arrives)
3) Fill out app
4) ???
5) Profit from having war fix in fictional wars in fictional operations in nonfictional locations with a fictional alternate history well beyond a single point of deviation.

Or do Mercs right. But all mercs rot away and die because no one can into them.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

'oi lyk to fuck burds.

The Forest(Crossover Roleplay)

You know something's up when I'm agitated no one's posted or given word on why they haven't.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Feo and Chapa should get together so Chapa can teach Feo some British lingo.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I'mma drop this here for Evan.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I had to call in council about your last post Max since it raised a lot of probable red-flags with me. But in the end a lot of it we decided could be simply ignored out of the over-all ambiguity of the post. Just keep in mind when it comes to things like radios that downsizing of electronics hasn't become a big thing in this world, so those headsets might as well come packaged with a big metal back pack with the power source and electronics needed to operate. And probably no tuning unless you want to take it off, because all of that is in a place where another guy can get to.



But in all it was decided the ultimate ambiguity of the post means that I can just as well re-imagine the tech use as being more appropriate.

And I ignore the mid-post time-skip given you were MIA for so long.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

No problem.

Other situations that might be taken into consideration is the economic impact of the prolonged Great War and likely economic depression that could have followed (though not at all explored, so I guess we may need to make a consensus and agree if there was a massive international or European depression post-war) that could have impacted the Australian fleet. There could end up no possible need to maintain a modern fleet designed for defense from an invasion and it shifts to trade protection, as it did during the RL Great Depression. This could probably sit and linger and stagnate Australian capabilities given no support from the UK given it's political destabilization in the 50's; or however Feo decides/decided.

Probably redundant, but oh well.

feminist roleplaying

How does one include elements of racism and sexism in an RP? In however it defines a character. Not to say to force it in for the sake of having it, but if it matches with a character's life-style and personality. Or if it might even be a part of a conflict within the group of protagonists themselves.

Story-telling - even Roleplaying - shouldn't be two dimensional in that there's an absolute "evil" and an absolute "good" with one side representing all the factors that make an ideal society - sexual equality, gender equality, race equality, economic equality, etc. - and the other everything that's not. There can be defining factions within even the "good" or the "evil" that drives numerous or infinite subplots tied in some way into the central story you're trying to tell. Ideological ambiguity and moral relativity in story-telling is as valid as clear absolutes when pursuing a moral conflict.

So what a "protagonist" is racist towards elves? Or has a hate of women or fear of women of certain types that feeds into his hate? It's part of a character and perhaps even a element in a side-story within the greater plot to be resolved as the story progresses. This in turn sort of opens an alternate avenue to explore more in-depth the setting by having third-party critics of both sides.

Hell, perhaps someone can take the whole moral polarization to allow these third-parties to take a critical standpoint that The Jackal tapes assume as a self-commentary of Far Cry 2.

The Witcher makes a pretty interesting philosophical observation on the practical functionality of evil in the world, having evolved - or been revealed to Geralt - as not being so clearly defined as chaos vs order. And within the entire story you basically have two relative evils fighting and another relative evil that's the main antagonist, and the entire world is relatively evil. Ultimately I'm a fan of the idea that any character should have his or her motivations to be a part of a larger plot, whether they know it or not. Forcing someone on two defined paths isn't organic, allowing people to have characters who assume one of infinite paths and interpretations of evil to ultimately meet at some major point is a more organic - and noir - solution.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Well, the general rule I've enforced when it comes to the relation of military to civilians is ten percent, though this largely adheres to wartime situations.

If you want to use a base to look at for reference then there's no harm I see in at the least looking into the current state of the Royal Australian Navy and gauging what can be changed to make it more probable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Australian_Navy#Current_ships

At a quick look most of their own fleet is basically built pretty light. You wouldn't expect them to even survive an actual naval engagement and the bulk of what I suspect they could do is anti-piracy measures against the run of the mill Indonesian pirates. But when it comes to challenging the Chinese or Japanese fleets - as both being dominate regional powers - they really couldn't hold up. At the best maybe the Australian Navy could mount a landing if you use similar numbers, but prolonged naval engagement wouldn't be possible.

Historically I imagine this boils down to them being a part of the British Empire and the Brits themselves would have been the ones to own, operate, fuel, equip, and man the many larger flag-ship and main battleships of the Empire or Commonwealth's navy. So most Aussie craft would act in a support role in any event.

So a bunch of small and lighter class ships, or logistical things. A reconsolidation or collapse of the British military would leave Australia very much vulnerable potentially.

Consideration given to the pre-divergence structuring of the Australian navy would be most useful. From the same Wiki page (because quick reference material):

"The Commonwealth Naval Forces were established on 1 March 1901, two months after the federation of Australia, when the naval forces of the separate Australian colonies were amalgamated. A period of uncertainty followed as the policy makers sought to determine the newly established force's requirements and purpose, with the debate focusing upon whether Australia's naval force would be structured mainly for local defense or whether it would be designed to serve as a fleet unit within a larger imperial force, controlled centrally by the British Admiralty.[1] In 1908–09, the decision was made to pursue a compromise solution and Australia agreed to establish a force that would be used for local defense but which would be capable of forming a fleet unit within the imperial naval strategy, albeit without central control. As a result, the navy's force structure was set at "one battlecruiser, three light cruisers, six destroyers and three submarines"."