Dinh AaronMk

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

Oh jeez, I thought you'd say something through steam...

Fug.

@gorgenmast

And even if I was able to when I got there there was no internet available so it's not like I could do anything.

So instead I wandered around the family reunion and took pictures of random shit, then after lunch we went to Lake Huron and I took pictures of more shit, then swam in the cold lake, and took away a souvenir for all my fun: a sun burn.

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

This is Radio Aaron, reporting my disappearance to the Port Sanilac area.

How do you make a good formula for war without it being too gamey or number crunching?

@Vilageidiotx

There are some browser-based systems that have a dice mechanic. But they're their own removed thing. They're effectively their own DnD board and I'm not familiar with anything for nation-based RP'ing. Generally if you're targeting that then you're playing Diplomacy in the browser-based genre.

This is the best example of the browser-based platform I mentioned earlier, in LP form. It's got CaptIronicus of Chip and Ironicus fame if anyone cares for obscure Let's Players.

Go through the Alphabet before someone posts a My Little Pony Picture

If it is in question, let me make it certain.

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

There was a hard truth in the club that Sahle had not comprehended when he had worked there, but there were glimpses of it in the drug-induced memories that overpowered him now. It had been like the decadent and boundless orgies of Heliogabalus, the last lewd hurrah of failing Empires. This was the end of the Ottoman Turks, the people who drank in the wealth of the east and celebrated imperium with harems and hashish, and who's one thousand years of fratricidal palace intrigues had came to their climax at the same time Sahle entered Armenia. But there was another Empire ending here. It was also the last hurrah of the 19th century European dream, the mission civilisatrice and the gentlemen who had dreamed it. Those last few orientalists of the old type, the intellectual playboys of Europe who saw the east as a lamp-lit gateway to everything mystical and erotic, this was their place and Stanley Barnham was one of their dying breed. These two, the Ottoman and the European, partied stupid for as long as time would allow, because they knew that when the sun came up over the cold new world, they would be left in a syphilitic gutter to be forgotten.

I love this paragraph.

What's your favorite accent?

Ghetto/Black English is the most romantic and profound articulation of the English language. As explored.

You don't be jivin dawg.

And deep Dixie-tier English is cool too.

Let us become something better than who we were before we read this thread.

<Snipped quote>

do u even lift broffalo

@Blitz

I'm buffalo'd.

How do you make a good formula for war without it being too gamey or number crunching?

@Dinh AaronMk What if there isn't much pre-planning and the RPers can't decide upon a fixed outcome? We all want to be the winners but we all can't win. Then say a ruleset for war might be able to break the tie?

@VATROU

Then might as well try to make it interesting. Either way you will have fighting one way or the other. But when a third party arbitrator has to be involved to calculate and announce the results of certain moves then every action becomes a long and tedious test of patience.

And like @ethanjory said, it's a good idea to not have something as black-and-white to determine outcomes. If you can't learn or don't develop the skills to mediate between one's self and another then you're not going to be a very warm individual. This sort of technique encourages and promotes that behavior. In the real world even you have to know where to work with others. There's not going to be a checklist and dice-roll that determines everything.

So I stick by my standing: from a narrative standpoint stats are too big a handicap and best left for virtual simulation (Civilization series, Age of Empire, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis) where there's a known neutral party and so these things can be calculated in real time or for board "games" where "game" is emphasized, since that's what it is. But for organic, narrative, and character writing: it's not helpful.

How do you make a good formula for war without it being too gamey or number crunching?

Frankly: I don't employ statistics at all. Like all things, they should be tackled as a narrative and not on a calculative measure. These systems are useful in video-games or even in a board-game setting. But where people are writing as part of a story then a lot of things can be too ambiguous to define in a traditional or non-traditional stat-based system. And constraining story-telling to be defined by a strict set up numbers really chokes the organic nature of a story. And in styles where it's assumed that quantified numbers like unit-numbers denies any sort of twist where people with the 2:1, 3:1, or higher can win almost guaranteed against a smaller force.

And in reality

this sort of shit

through the ages

This of course requires a decent amount of planning beforehand between the relevant parties and knowing where one-another stands. But operating on stats I feels encourages an unrealistic amount of aggression since it assigns numerical values to certain successful qualities and this can lead to dick-waving and out-of-character operation to balance one against the other. And that sort of bitch-festing isn't fun.

Some Miscellaneous NRP Ideas (New Ideas Added!)

@ClocktowerEchos

Then I will continue to observe.