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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Tome of Salvation

Have you accepted Sigmar as your personal savior!?

As might be deduced by the existence of the Flagellant career, sometimes people take things too far. The Gods do not generally speak to their cults directly or directly make their desires known, outside of truly miraculous circumstances. It's easy for heresies, heterodoxies, and extremist ideologies to form when the Gods are powerful, real, and distant. One thing I like about the chapter on extremism is that it begins by discussing why people turn to these extreme religious ideologies in setting, and also goes into their general contours so you can make up your own splinter-sects and heresies, before getting into the canon, recognized groups of fanatics. This is generally something the book handles well; it gives you plenty of tools to construct your own holy sites, temples, sub-cults, religious sayings, and superstitions, with the canon ones as inspirations and ready-made examples rather than a hard list. The two general classes of fanatics, people who have gone too far in their devotion to their God, are flagellants and zealots. Flagellants are focused on repentance and building a personal connection between the individual and their God and are usually much more of a threat to themselves. Zealots focus on promoting their God above others, and are often a threat to the community, or even the Empire, depending on how highly placed they might be.

People are primarily called to the extremes of faith by trauma, by being raised by fanatics, by being raised by a different sort of fanatic (you will often see one pious member of a noble family burned for necromancy or chaos worship turn crazy flagellant to 'redeem their honor'), the preaching of a highly charismatic priest, a feeling that they have had direct divine revelations, or, most uncommonly, by thinking they've discovered an important contradiction or revelation through careful scholarship of their God's tenants. Positive and negative experiences are just as likely to drive someone to fanaticism; someone who feels Ulric guided them safely through a winter that starved many of their neighbors might feel just as chosen as someone joining the Sigmarite zealots to get revenge on greenskins. Interestingly, those who were actually corrupted by Chaos or other dark powers tend to become zealots, seeking not just to redeem themselves but to keep themselves above suspicion; no-one would ever suspect that the Witch Hunter in training used to be part of a Slaanesh cult. Those who simply had a brush with darkness tend towards become flagellants, trying to protect their souls and thank their God for giving them the sense to pull out in time.

Fanaticism takes many forms, but the most common is someone who acts as a supremely pious lay-member of the cult, giving more than they can afford and centering their life around their chosen God. They follow their God absolutely, following all the strictures, listening to cult authorities over secular ones, undertaking major pilgrimages despite the danger, and otherwise displaying extremes of piety. They don't assault members of other cults, but they no longer have the energy or time to pay respect to other Gods. The Proper Believer often ends up a mendicant, because God takes priority over everything, even earning a living. Unlike most forms of fanatics, these mostly don't threaten the community and the cults will often encourage them; they set a good example and they're great for the collections box, plus they listen to the priests. These sorts are most common among Shallyans, Verenans, Taalites, and Mannanites.

The True and Faithful Servant is not yet dangerous to the community, but is getting close; these are distinguished from the Proper Believer by their focus on the priesthood of their cult. These believers begin to believe that A: Their God is better than all the other Gods, though they do not yet go so far as to attack or cause trouble for the other Gods, just ignore them like the Proper Believer and B: As corollary to this, the priesthood of the cult is closer to the awesome God and better than normal people, and should be obeyed, followed, and assisted in everything possible. They see the priests as the extension of the word of God itself, often joining the personal retinue of a charismatic. Favored priests should be obeyed as if they were Sigmar or Myrmidia themselves; not coincidentally, this particular mode of fanaticism is most common among followers of Sigmar and Myrmidia, and unheard of among Verenans or Ranaldans.

The Unworthy believe they have sinned terribly against their God and structure their lives around repentance. These are the classic roaming bands of flagellants the Empire gets every time there's a major disaster, wandering around whipping themselves and calling out to Sigmar to preserve them. These people lose any regard for their own safety, believing that they have already angered their God and that the only reasonable thing to do is repent with what time they have left in hopes of saving their souls or drawing the wrath of God away from their community. These are the people who start to make cult authorities uncomfortable. On one hand, they do preach that the wrath of the Gods is to be avoided and they often make grand displays of piety, but the Gods are generally concerned with lives that make sense within a community and these people ignore all the aspects of faith besides bloody repentance. They are also generally a danger to themselves, but wandering bands of crazy flagellants are also disruptive to normal cult activities. High Priests often try to limit their contact with their flocks and channel these would-be-martyrs into something 'useful', especially among the cult of Sigmar. Curiously, this sort of self-flagellation is also common in lay worshipers of Shallya, as they dramatically bemoan the suffering of the world and make themselves suffer in turn.

The Scourges of God are the most dangerous sort of fanatic. These are the sorts who believe they've been chosen to battle the enemies of the One True God, which has the potential to go bad real fast in a polytheistic society. They're prone to believing that anyone who obstructs them is another hidden Chaos Cultist or servant of evil and corruption, and they're usually armed. They form religious militias and march out against the enemies of the divine, and many cults will try to channel them to the frontiers, or into templar orders, where this can be directed at acceptable targets like Norscan raiders or greenskins. If they can't accomplish that, these people often start ranting about the ENEMY WITHIN and going after innocents within the Empire, or even worse, they start yelling about the awful heresy of believing in other Gods and begin to attack other cults. Worse still, sometimes they decide that there's terrible corruption and decadence in the high ranks of their own cults and start to go after the high priests and established religious authorities; from the perspective of a cult, this is an unmitigated disaster. Crusades against 'corruption' by an untrained and renegade militia of zealots can get out of hand very, very quickly. This insanity is most common with Sigmarites, Myrmidians, and Ulricans, but it can pop up with Morrites in areas that have faced vampiric threats.

Those with a Deeper Understanding think they have discovered a great and hidden truth about their God, or have had revelation of an important event. Someone who thinks they've found another Sigmar Reborn is the explicit example in the book, since that's something of a recurrent heresy for the Sigmarites. How this sort of heterodoxy gets treated is going to depend a lot on what the person found and how. Someone who has simply discovered and promoted the life of a new saint might eventually get a new holiday added to the calender and be treated with great acclaim by their church. Someone who advocates for the overthrow of the entire existing cult authority is likely to be accused of heresy. This sort of thing is so common among Verenans that it could be said that every true Verenan is a bit of this sort of fanatic. Aside from the parade of Sigmar Reborns, Sigmarites despise this kind of believer and are more likely to come down on them like a ton of bricks than any other cult, no matter what they're advocating; they are suspicious of books and of people claiming to discover secret revelations from them.

Some believe their God is a Close and Personal Friend, who speaks to them and interacts with them regularly. This is treated with caution by the cults; yes, it's usually a sign of a crazy heretic or huckster, but every now and then it happens. Sometimes, after all, the Gods really do choose an individual for an important task. If the individual shows signs of the God's magic or blessings, they will be treated very carefully; they prefer to name these prophets prophets only after they know the extent of their agenda, and so prefer to wait until the prophet is safely dead. After all, if you name someone a prophet too early, there have been several cases where a prophet then went on to condemn the very high priest who legitimized them. At the same time, the cults really don't want to risk pissing off their God by actually persecuting an actual prophet of their actual God. These sorts of things are always a fine line to tread.

Finally, the most dangerous sort of fanatic are the ones that don't just stop ignoring the other Gods, but declare there ARE no other Gods. One True Godism is extremely dangerous and risks the safety of the community and the stability of the Empire. Officially, it is to be stamped out at every turn, as sternly as necessary. In practice, this is a common heresy among followers of Sigmar, and even there the fanatic must keep it secret or else they will face swift and brutal persecution from their own cult if it comes to light. What's interesting to me is that the tendency to proclaim Sigmar is the only God seems to be more common among Sigmarites, while most other cults often produce fanatics who tend towards a more henotheistic approach where they claim their God is the main one worthy of worship, or they deny the divinity of a specific other God (generally Sigmar). Still, these people are a threat to the Empire no matter what form they take; imagine what happens to sea travel if you try to claim that Manaan isn't a God and stamp out all propitiation of the sea, for instance. Or look at how important Morr is to the defense of the dead against Chaos. Or ask yourself if you want to deal with what happens when you dump Rhya, the Goddess who blesses all harvests and also childbirth and love. These are not good ideas when you're certain these entities exist and get really pissed off if you deny them respect!

Next Time: Major Fanatical Sects

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Anniversary
Sep 12, 2011

I AM A SHIT-FESTIVAL
:goatsecx:
This is a very, very rough draft. I don't have the text in front of me right now so things might be wrong. I'm going to be doing some double checking in a bit, but feel free to call out mistakes.







Okay, so first off, I have a lil' background in Ethics as a field. I don't have any background in insurgency though. [laugh track]. So feel free to critique me on either front, I know there are people on here with more experience and qualified opinions when it comes to both and I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Because of that, I'm going to primarily look at the Ethical Insurgency chapter (though I'll be drawing in material from the later third of the book a fair bit too) through the lens of ethics as a discipline, and honestly it doesn't paint a very deep or nuanced picture.

To start, there's a ton of credible ethical theories out there, but the easiest, quickest divide for these purposes is between Deontological and Consequentialist theories. To bury the leed, I'm more of a consequentialist. But to really, poorly, generalize: deontological systems believe intent matters, whereas consequentialist systems believe consequence is "all" that matters.

Chad Walker is, from what I can tell, a Deontologist. But he argues in a way that I think is meant to be persuasive to Consequentialists? Not only does he propose that what he calls Ethical Insurgency is the Right Thing, but its also the Effective Thing. For Sigmata as a game, this has a lot of problems, for Sigmata as a political work, it has a ton more.

First, as a game Sigmata requires you max out resistance, domestic, and international support. Chad is intentionally vague about a lot of in-universe things, so its not clear what blocs there are domestically. But he repeatedly says that potential resistance allies outnumber Loyalists and at times states that Loyalists will not abandon the cause - though has the Resistance repeatedly enable them doing so. For example, when a Fist drops their weapon and takes off their mask in a firefight, the Resistance will facilitate their escape from the firefight. It won't take them prisoner and will take risks to make sure they get away. In fact, the Fist will probably frag members who do this, right away or down the road, and this is what will, textually, destroy the Fist.

So the argument is that not only is this the right thing to do, but it also gets the results you want. Mind you, this feels like the principle of double effect (commonly known as the last refuge of scoundrels) writ large. I want the Fist to crumble, so I will let members identify themselves and abandon the fight, because I want the Fist to crumble, because it murders them. Textually I'll accept it as true, even though I think that logically and psychologically its got problems. The problem is, if you're doing something that gets someone murdered, that's pretty blameworthy, especially if textually you've argued that killing fascists for any reason other than to prevent imminent death is blameworthy, so Chad says the reason its done isn't so they get murdered its so that the Fist destroys itself. The problem is, the reason the Fist will destroy itself is that someone gets murdered, and you've taken action to ensure that happens. But because its not you pulling the trigger, its okay (hopefully I've made it clear why, I at least, think it is not okay.) Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that allowing them to surrender is bad, but doing so in a way that you know will result in their death, which you are counting on, is the problem.

Also, I mentioned it before, but Chad argues that its unethical to kill fascists out of uniform. In one case, he even argues that picking a one-sided fight with them is the same as killing them in their sleep. I'm going to go back and try and find the exact wording when I have the text handy again, but I don't remember it having a compelling reasoning for this. I think it argues that this will just feed the propaganda machine, which is, well, this is a propaganda machine that has no problem producing and distributing "fake news" anyway.

So really, what I would think is the best argument, would be the psychological cost of performing a "Punishment Campaign" (ie. killing fascists, not just fascist soldiers on the battlefield when they're trying to kill you), is unreasonably straining on the people performing it - but no, the problem with that is it alienates domestic and international support, and the Resistance is repeatedly said to be at risk of falling into a Punishment Campaign, or at least using those kinds of tactics, unless the magic machinemen and the invisible Resistance Ckeep them on the straight and narrow.

Okay, jumping to the international support thing. The US and USSR are the two super-powers, and the US has cyborg super soldiers, oh yeah, they got a ton of 'em. But also the Regime is having financial troubles, but the stock market is booming. But yeah, the wider geopolitical situation is very, very vague and its not clear who the international community is that is willing to risk pissing off a war crazed US by aiding the Resistance publicly, militarily and financially, other than the USSR, but not even the Resistance likes the USSR (except maybe The Party, but they both seem to have schismed from USSR policy and politically and yet accept its backing, oh and if their socialism becomes bad they become Nazis, and the USSR wants this.) And even then the USSR is still seen as an enemy by the People, and its framed as if this is right and justified, so international support can viably come from wherever the players want, but its not really dealt with coherently in my opinion.

Also the Resistance tries people en absentia and this lends them a veneer of legitimacy? And justifies killing those tried if that's decided. Because secret paramilitary tribunals by a non-state actor that doesn't have a clear claim to legitimacy as a government (they don't even start with popular support) justifies murder?

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I mean, I could see 'allowing enemies to surrender and join you or allowing you to subvert them is preferable to killing them whenever possible, from both a moral and pragmatic standpoint' but if it's really phrased as 'allowing them to surrender, so that someone else will kill them, because this is overall more politically effective than putting a bullet in their head' that's hardly an ethical objection to putting a bullet in their head, as you say. It's also ridiculous, and reflects a general vain hope that these various movements will just fall apart to infighting ANY DAY NOW, that thing they haven't been doing for years despite all the infighting inherent in fascist politics.

Hostile V
May 31, 2013

Solving all of life's problems through enhanced casting of Occam's Razor. Reward yourself with an imaginary chalice.

I'll dive into this on a mechanical and textual level when it comes up but uh, yeah. That's a very good look into the text through a lens I'm personally unfamiliar with so thanks for that.

Really the most important thing to take away from this is that it believes that it is not just necessary but it's also morally best for your resistance to be seen as legitimate and accepted in the mainstream and will only succeed if the optics and imagery of your campaign is understood by the world and the common man by fighting a morally clean fight. Or to distill it further, "when they go low, we go high" except for uh you know guerilla warfare and insurgency. Also you should also only try to truly win when the stars are right and the entire world is giving you spirit bomb energy.

Meditate on that mission statement being a textual truth and also that the Civil Rights Act initially happened as it did in our world which was not, uh, just black people being relentlessly polite until racism stopped forever.

Anniversary
Sep 12, 2011

I AM A SHIT-FESTIVAL
:goatsecx:
Yeah... its... strange. Im looking forward yup your perspective of this stuff!

Night10194 posted:

I mean, I could see 'allowing enemies to surrender and join you or allowing you to subvert them is preferable to killing them whenever possible, from both a moral and pragmatic standpoint' but if it's really phrased as 'allowing them to surrender, so that someone else will kill them, because this is overall more politically effective than putting a bullet in their head' that's hardly an ethical objection to putting a bullet in their head, as you say. It's also ridiculous, and reflects a general vain hope that these various movements will just fall apart to infighting ANY DAY NOW, that thing they haven't been doing for years despite all the infighting inherent in fascist politics.

I'll definitely re-read that example when I can to triple check. And the text doesn't say 'the reason they do this is because it gets them killed' iirc but rather the reason this strategy is effective is because it will defeat the fist.

Anniversary fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Sep 24, 2018

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Like, Spire puts a lot of emphasis on the brutality of revolutionary violence and the need to subvert rather than just kill when you can, because you're not actually fighting that evil Aelfir minister, you're fighting the system that will replace him with another evil Aelfir minister because it has a monopoly on choosing ministers and is also enriched by the slavery of your people and can buy massive amounts of guns and mercenaries to back up its edicts, so killing the evil Aelfir minister won't magically fix things. The end goal is to use a mixture of violence and other means in tandem to defeat a massively unjust power structure that sustains the rule of a privileged race by crushing your people and using their labor to enrich itself. But it's at least honest about the fact that nothing you do is going to make you be seen as 'mainstream legitimate' until maybe after everything is over and you're safely long dead and being held up as a great revolutionary hero and eulogized later.

Spire is a very different game of revolution that has a reasonable reason why heroic/revolutionary violence has to be only part of the equation and it's mostly that if simply doing violence directly was enough, you wouldn't be fighting a guerilla war. Oh, and if you can waste a High Elf Paladin when he's off duty and out of his armor (and maybe blame someone else for it) knife that fucker.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

I'm honestly reminded, with this difference between Sigmata and Spire and the ethics of killing fascists out of uniform, the recent passing of a female Dutch freedom fighter who, during WW2, killed Nazis by seducing them, getting them liquored up, leading them out to the forest for woods sex and her and her sister shooting them in the head.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Anniversary posted:

Okay, jumping to the international support thing. The US and USSR are the two super-powers, and the US has cyborg super soldiers, oh yeah, they got a ton of 'em. But also the Regime is having financial troubles, but the stock market is booming. But yeah, the wider geopolitical situation is very, very vague and its not clear who the international community is that is willing to risk pissing off a war crazed US by aiding the Resistance publicly, militarily and financially, other than the USSR, but not even the Resistance likes the USSR (except maybe The Party, but they both seem to have schismed from USSR policy and politically and yet accept its backing, oh and if their socialism becomes bad they become Nazis, and the USSR wants this.) And even then the USSR is still seen as an enemy by the People, and its framed as if this is right and justified, so international support can viably come from wherever the players want, but its not really dealt with coherently in my opinion.

I mean the bolded bit isn't that unusual. It is kind of close to what we have now.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Hell, Spire mechanically reinforces it: Almost every serious military enemy in Spire is extremely hard to fight unless you have some trick for catching them off guard or getting them out of their armor, because the whole reason you're underground resistance drow is because for the most part a Paladin, Warrior Poet, or whatever is beyond what a bunch of rag-tag rebels with stolen revolvers and shivs can handle. A PC has to be a total badass built specifically for fighting to have any chance against those sorts of hard targets in a straight fight, and even when they do, that's just one enemy and you have an entire elven SWAT team coming down on you.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

WFRP 4e - Holy poo poo

Most villages in the Reikland lie very close to towns for protection and trade, except in the Suden Vorbergland. A quirk of Reikland law dating back several centuries is that a village is defined as 'any small settlement including a Temple of Sigmar,' while a hamlet is that but without the temple, and usually they end up rather smaller. Besides the hamlets and villages, however, there are a currently uncounted number of monasteries, abbeys, temples and other holy sites. Most are not far from settled areas for protection, but particularly well-fortified ones could pop up literally anywhere, for various historical or religious reasons.

The Monastery of the Holy Word lies deep in the Reikwald, west of Altdorf, far from any road. It is tended to by the Sigmarite Order of the Anvil, who keep the laws of the Cult of Sigmar and maintain its history and practice. There, they maintain the Order's greatest treasure - the Testaments of Sigmar. They were collected not long after Sigmar's abdication as a gathering of written memories of those who knew Sigmar Heldenhammer before his ascension. They are believed to be the most accurate collection of the things Sigmar actually said and did in life, and therefore the holiest of works. The Order does not normally accept visitors, but the Monastery of the Holy Word is not normal. Penitents seeking out obscure details of the foundation of the Law of Sigmar travel from across the Empire to meet with the monks. Nobles and wealthy merchants who have repeatedly shown devotion to the cult may be given leave to take pilgrimage to the Monastery. While they may not read or touch the original Testaments (no one is), being given leave to gaze on a page or two is considered one of the highest, most priceless sacred honors.

Rottfurt is a settlement along the Teufel whose name is spoken only in whispered, reverential tones by the scholars and mages of the Empire. While it is mostly a village of shepherds, making wool and mutton, it also produces the famous and expensive parchment known as Rottfurt Silver. This parchment has a faint sheen to it, takes ink very well and resists fading far longer than normal. As a result, the thick-wooled sheep of the village are given every comfort and are its pride and joy. They eat the luscious grass of the Hammastrat Heights and are permitted to wander as they please by day. The shepherds work as part of a rotating militia, protecting the flocks at all costs. Of late, however, some of the sheep have begun to go missing. The guards find themselves falling asleep on watch despite their best efforts, and when they wake, one more sheep is gone. What began as a minor frustration is now an obsession for the locals, with countless and often insane theories as to what is actually going on.

Worlin is a small fishing hamlet, almost impossible to see from the river. It's surrounded by rocky islets and promontories, plus thousands of trees. These, the Willows of Worlin, line the Reik for miles around the village, and no one has any particular need or desire for their lumber. A lot of trade moves past Worlin; almost none of it stops there. Why is this notable? Because on the festival of Sonnstill, the hamlet circle - that is, the council of elders - gather to "water the Willows." This is a ceremony of dancing, feasting, singing, and the kidnapping of a virile stranger and slitting his throat, splashing the blood over the thirsty roots of the Queen Willow to quench her thirst for one more year. If the ceremony is completed, the Queen is pleased. The hamlet remains safe from the creatures of the wood for one more year. If the ceremony is interrupted, the Queen Willow awakes and summons her children, calling forth scores of Beastmen to slaughter all. Outsiders rarely know this, of course, when the knife is put to their throat.

Zahnstadt is an isolated village, often called the last village of the Vorbergland. Certainly beyond it the hills grow barren and rise up to the Grey Mountains. Zahnstadt sits on the bank of the Mos, in a deep and dark valley. Even in the height of summer, the village has sunlight for but an hour or two at midday due to the high cliffs around it. In winter it sees no sun at all, just an eerie twilight and darkness. Despite this, the locals are known for their sunny dispositions and cheer, which many outsiders find offputting and forced. Every house is a garish mix of bright colors, often clashing ones. Its small inn, the Wayward Sun, is famous for never letting its hearthfire go out and for its many cheerful songs, sung deep into the night. It is forced, of course, because ever since the Third Vampire Wars, they've been under the sway of vampires. Janos von Carstein deserted his lord Mannfred's armies and, after weeks of evading Mannfred's minions, he discovered Zahnstadt and its eternal darkness, realizing it'd be the perfect hiding spot. Now, some 300 years later, he still lives there - and has become bold. He sleeps under the Wayward Sun in an ostentatious velvet-lined coffin, rising each evening to 'hold court' out of the inn, forcing the enthralled locals to sing happy songs of Sylvania. Both the Witch Hunters and and the pawns of recently revived Mannfred von Carstein have heard rumors of Zahnstadt's vampire. The Hunters want to investigate the truth; Mannfred wants his wayward son captured and dragged before him. They are likely to slam headfirst into each other.

There are plenty of ruins in the Reikland, between the ancient history of the land and the destruction of the Great War Against Chaos. The Darkstone Ring is one ruin best ignored. The wise do not go near it. It is a place of power, north of Blutroch, near the Altdorf-Bogenhafen road. At nightfall, the six stones, each carved suggestively, glow a wan green, getting brighter with the waxing of Morrslieb. At the center of the ring is a slab of unidentifiable stone, stained with the blood of innocents over millenia. However, despite the ring's evil reputation, travelers seem drawn to it by legends of mystical power and lost artifacts of terrible strength. Not even the frequent sights of Beastmen and cultists, particularly around Geheimisnacht, seems to deter these brave fools.

Castle Drachenfels is a seven-towered ruin, each tower covered in windows meant to appear like eyes. This is (was?) the lair of Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter. He is an ancient sorcerer, mythically potent, already old and powerful when he was first defeated in the time of Sigmar. He has returned several times to haunt the Gray Mountains with his necromancy and daemonology, and while the ruins appear to be inactive now, rumors say they are less abandoned than they look.

Helspire looms over Axe Bite Pass, carved from the living mountains and inlaid with the bones of the dead. It looks long abandoned and still, but on nights of occult significance, terrible lights blaze on its battlements, casting eerie shadows over the pass. On those nights, the truth is revealed - Helspire is a citadel of the Undead, and skeletal knights spill forth to scour the mountainside on either side of the border. Little is known of the Helspire itself, for none living can say they have seen its interior nor know who commands it. Some say it is home to a cabal of necromancers, or a vampire, or even a terrible Liche. It is said to be full of riches from across the Old World, yet none dare seek it and return alive - or if they do, they never speak of it.

The Lorlay is an imposing rock formation jutting from the Reik, around 40 miles downstream of the Grissenwald. The river is fast and deep there, and despite the relatively narrow channels, no crossing has ever been built successfully. Legends speak of a beautiful Elven maiden who swims the waters by dawn and dusk, and the Lorlay has become a popular site for Taalite stag parties before marriage, with a shocking number of classy inns around it. Tales of the singing water maiden are especially common among the river sailors.

The Singing Stones lay west of Schadelheim in a deep valley. They are an ancient dolmen, old beyond any guess, set in a spiral around a central set of pillars capped with a huge slab - a sort of titanic altar. From the ground it is pretty much impossible to spot the pattern of the stones, especially with all the trees and bushes that have sprung up among them. When a west wind blows in from the Wasteland, the stones produce a high, eerie keening that can be heard for miles. Some locals say listening to their song can give insight into problems or wisdom, but others say this is heresy and that nothing but trouble comes from such ungodly power. These people tend to be rather violent about preventing such heresies.

Next time: Equipment

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Equipment will be interesting; it's hard to get a good sense for combat without knowing what the general damage rating on gear is, how much DR you can expect people to have, if that DR can be bypassed, etc.

Also interesting is how much more setting material there is on Reikland here. One of the failings of Sigmar's Heirs is that it devotes a ton of page space to ridiculous stuff like how to mechanically run trials in the Empire (which then mostly boil down to handwaving and social checks anyway) and then leaves no room to actually describe the cities or provinces. Add to that how Nuln, Talabheim, Middenheim, and Altdorf are all barely mentioned so they can be detailed (with Altdorf and Nuln not being detailed very well, either) in the Campaign Books and Adventure Books, and you get a book that doesn't give you a very good idea of what life in the Empire is like or why you should care about the place. I've been dragging my feet on getting to it because I hate that book.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



What's really grinding my gears about Sigmata is that if the author didn't have his head firmly lodged in his own American rectum, there are some international examples of precisely the kind of revolutionary struggle he clearly envisions - complete with fighting for world opinion and legitimacy!

The ANC in South Africa, for one, was a liberation struggle that had to juggle alliances and appearances with the USSR, American liberals, other African resistance struggles (especially north of the border where they kept training camps and revolutionary cadres; this was iirc a major excuse for the ZA Border War with Namibia, aka the Namibian War of Independence). The ANC's struggle to both wield revolutionary violence and present their arguments to the world was a multi-pronged strategy that would have fit right into what Sigmata thinks it's doing. Except Sigmata is trash and the ANC won.

Anyways that's my pitch for referring to Spire as 'crushing elfpartheid.'

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Joe Slowboat posted:

Anyways that's my pitch for referring to Spire as 'crushing elfpartheid.'

Apartheid South Africa is absolutely my main historical go-to parallel for Spire.

Alternately, The Aelfir's Burden.

Really, there are so many brutal regimes and historical revolutions to draw on.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you

Mors Rattus posted:

This is (was?) the lair of Constant Drachenfels, the Great Enchanter.

It's weird to me that I found out that Constant is an actual first name.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Night10194 posted:

Equipment will be interesting; it's hard to get a good sense for combat without knowing what the general damage rating on gear is, how much DR you can expect people to have, if that DR can be bypassed, etc.

Also interesting is how much more setting material there is on Reikland here. One of the failings of Sigmar's Heirs is that it devotes a ton of page space to ridiculous stuff like how to mechanically run trials in the Empire (which then mostly boil down to handwaving and social checks anyway) and then leaves no room to actually describe the cities or provinces. Add to that how Nuln, Talabheim, Middenheim, and Altdorf are all barely mentioned so they can be detailed (with Altdorf and Nuln not being detailed very well, either) in the Campaign Books and Adventure Books, and you get a book that doesn't give you a very good idea of what life in the Empire is like or why you should care about the place. I've been dragging my feet on getting to it because I hate that book.

I think this is part of why they decided to have the core just focus on the single province - it gives them way more space to detail that one place rather than the broad overview of the Empire, which...is larger than all of Europe and thus can't easily be done in a single chapter.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

I think this is part of why they decided to have the core just focus on the single province - it gives them way more space to detail that one place rather than the broad overview of the Empire, which...is larger than all of Europe and thus can't easily be done in a single chapter.

Also the Reikland is the most important part of the country and the major international hub where you're likely to have a bunch of weirdos from multiple countries/places/species meet in a coaching inn and get tricked by a wizard.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Night10194 posted:

Apartheid South Africa is absolutely my main historical go-to parallel for Spire.

Alternately, The Aelfir's Burden.

Really, there are so many brutal regimes and historical revolutions to draw on.

I always saw The Spire as more a mix of this and the Russian revolution's of 1917. Potentially with lots of fallout as things went on.

MonsterEnvy posted:

It's weird to me that I found out that Constant is an actual first name.

Not really, I didn't until recently. I knew that Constance was but didn't know it had a male equivalent.

I would like the old virtue naming convention be applied like it is in Lords and Ladies in Pratchett with people like "Vengence" carter.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

It definitely gives a good sense of what life is like in the Reikland, and what some weird places are, like the Evil Vampire Lair of the Evil Vampire whose sole evil plan is to make people sing happy songs from his homeland because he's homesick.

Joe Slowboat
Nov 9, 2016

Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements



Night10194 posted:

Apartheid South Africa is absolutely my main historical go-to parallel for Spire.

Alternately, The Aelfir's Burden.

Really, there are so many brutal regimes and historical revolutions to draw on.

The only thing that doesn't really fit is like... ok this is maybe unkind but have you ever seen purist Afrikaaner culture? It's like someone hit the Dutch on the head repeatedly with the racist stick until they lost consciousness - the Orania, Northern Cape Afrikaaner separatist settlement produces tourism and culture videos that are just the most numbing things imaginable. The effect of Apartheid on Afrikaaner culture was to completely strangle it to death by cutting off outside influences.

Meanwhile, the Aelfir are art elves, they're explicitly aesthetically vibrant and powerful that way, they do weaponized cultural appropriation as a method of governance. It makes them more interesting villains, but it's also one place where I have to totally decouple my sense of Apartheid's (horrible and police-state beige) aesthetic qualities from Spire.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mors Rattus posted:

It definitely gives a good sense of what life is like in the Reikland, and what some weird places are, like the Evil Vampire Lair of the Evil Vampire whose sole evil plan is to make people sing happy songs from his homeland because he's homesick.

I'm amazed he can find that many HAPPY Sylvanian songs. When I was playing Mina von Carstein's Bizarre Adventure, one of the running jokes was that the major key baffled her and all other Sylvanians.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Night10194 posted:

I'm amazed he can find that many HAPPY Sylvanian songs. When I was playing Mina von Carstein's Bizarre Adventure, one of the running jokes was that the major key baffled her and all other Sylvanians.

I dunno, I could see the odd Sylvanian village coping with being a Sylvanian village by painting everything in bright or pastel colors and singing happy songs all the time, trying to escape the gloom by turning their village into a 24/7 Disney musical because no one wants to admit or seriously grapple with, well, being a Sylvanian village.

Josef bugman
Nov 17, 2011

Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Cythereal posted:

I dunno, I could see the odd Sylvanian village coping with being a Sylvanian village by painting everything in bright or pastel colors and singing happy songs all the time, trying to escape the gloom by turning their village into a 24/7 Disney musical because no one wants to admit or seriously grapple with, well, being a Sylvanian village.

It's a small haunted village afterall?

Daeren
Aug 18, 2009

YER MUSTACHE IS CROOKED

Night10194 posted:

I'm amazed he can find that many HAPPY Sylvanian songs. When I was playing Mina von Carstein's Bizarre Adventure, one of the running jokes was that the major key baffled her and all other Sylvanians.

Well the von Carsteins have to gloat in some triumphant-sounding arrangement once in a while.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Daeren posted:

Well the von Carsteins have to gloat in some triumphant-sounding arrangement once in a while.

Everyone who plays Hams should get a chance to play a Von Carstein at least once, even if you're one of the non-vampire mortal ones.

It is ridiculously fun.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Hostile V posted:

Yeah actually seeing you talk about it reminded me that I needed to get off my duff and tackle this thing again because I am starting to really slow down in this department and would like to at least tie up some more recent loose ends.

thank you so much for finding a second wind! i really enjoy all of the write-ups you've put together over the years.



i think hostile v said earlier that a bunch of the setting meta-plot about the game was originally based on/influenced by the events of the arab spring, which the author then (very clumsily) tried to turn into a believable alt-future setting for the US. the problems with that are many, but a lot of the inconsistencies (like what happened to the judiciary branch?) are likely the result of there being no analogous institution involved in the source material, and then when the author tried to map everything onto a US-centric setting he didn't know enough about our government to know that such a huge thing was missing.

the ethics stuff does sound like the kind of poorly explained drivel you'd get from a stoned first year uni student that's only skimmed a few textbooks. or wait, is there a liberal/leftist version of infowars? if there is, it sounds like the kind of wacky poo poo that outlet would try to pass as a deep and well-reasoned worldview

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It is really weird to see an RPG about fighting fascists that is trying really hard to be apolitical.

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


Night10194 posted:

It is really weird to see an RPG about fighting fascists that is trying really hard to be apolitical.

Centrism is like leprosy except for being gutless instead of having horrible sores.

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Night10194 posted:

It is really weird to see an RPG about fighting fascists that is trying really hard to be apolitical.

my gut says that there's likely to be an overrepresentation of alt-right fascist poo poo heads in on-line TTRPG circles and the attempt at a neutral tone is an effort to avoid alienating a significant portion of the potential customer base. i mean, the game doesn't even convincingly explain why most of the various resistance forces aren't gleefully working hand-in-hand with the government (as our current reality clearly indicates)

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

Joe Slowboat posted:

this was iirc a major excuse for the ZA Border War with Namibia, aka the Namibian War of Independence).

Namibia, then South-West Africa, was governed by South Africa and there wasn't really a need for an excuse to have a war: the war in Namibia was defensive and the only excuse South Africa needed was that they were defending their colony territory. Though the MK (the guerilla wing of the ANC) operated out of Angola, the primary justification for the war in Angola was simply that the People's Liberation Army of Namibia operated out of camps in Angola. I'm sure the presence of MK camps was used too, but if so it was so thin that absolutely nobody bothers mentioning it: PLAN provided more than enough justification for the war, and "everyone knew" that it was about giving South Africa a buffer zone against communism and black nationalism and maintaining a grip in South-West Africa.

The South African Defence Force and their intelligence services did send commandos after MK camps in Lesotho, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe though, countries with far less PLAN presence.

(Looking back at this almost 30 years later, it becomes very apparent just how much our ideas of what constitutes "acceptable" revolutionary violence has changed over time. The ANC and MK used indiscriminate violence that today would be seen as unacceptable by many: bombings with more civilian casualties than military casualties, bombing a shopping centre, bombing a bar because it was "thought to be frequented by the police" and ending up killing only civilians...)

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e: Tome of Salvation

Fanatics

Manaan's first example is the Dyke, a cult that believes an enormous flood is going to kill everyone in the world for offending Manaan. They started out praying to avert the flood and taking care of wounded sailors, and the central cult regards them as weird but mostly not a problem. The problem comes in that their original founder finally died of exposure from spending all her time standing in seawater and yelling at the ocean that she's sorry. The subcult is fracturing, and at least one apocalyptic branch has decided the flood is coming no matter what and breaks flood prevention measures to punish man for their hubris. Another is building a giant ark in the mountains that they think will take them to paradise. These could all go badly. There's also the insane Holders of the Shore, who think humans shouldn't go on the sea, ever, and so run around burning boats; these are obviously dangerous heretics, for obvious reasons. The Sea Born believe they're magical chosen of Manaan born on ships, who will get magic powers like being able to drink sea-water if they never set foot on land. There's an optional talent provided in case you want this legend to be true, so you could play a magic Manaanite prophet who can drink sea water and repair their ship-home even at sea; stranger things have happened in Hams Town and magic sacred maritime adventures wouldn't be a bad idea for a campaign.

The Morrite Doorkeepers used to be a fairly normal group of undead hunters. Then Ingrund the Grim, their current leader, rose to prominence by killing a bunch of vampires and impressing on the others she had Morr's favor. She then went batshit crazy and started claiming that all medicine and healing represented an affront to Morr. Shallyans, surgeons, all these are as evil as vampires! Her group of lunatics assassinate doctors, try to burn down shrines to Shallya, and have been denounced as a likely cult of Khaine. Ingrund survived the persecution and now believes the whole Cult of Morr is an evil anti-deathist madhouse in thrall to the wickedness of DOCTORS. She would be a good arc villain for a very baffled PC party. They still technically fight vampires, but it's much easier to slit a Shallyan's throat than fight a Von Carstein, so their focus has shifted a bit. The Blessed of Morr think the physical world is terrible and Morr's realm is a paradise. They also believe you shouldn't kill yourself, because every soul should undergo suffering to ensure that Morr's Realm will feel like a proper contrast. Thus, they believe the more you suffer in life, the more you'll be blessed in death, but Morr will also call you sooner, since you meet your quota faster. This leads them to practices like flagellation and extreme fasting that tend to kill them even if they aren't intentionally committing suicide. The cult denounces them as heretics, but as they're only really a danger to themselves, the Morrites are busier persecuting those insane Doorkeeper people before they go on another doctor-hunt.

The Cult of Myrmidia Perfecta absolutely hates that the missionaries in the Empire have done the thing successful missionaries have literally always done and converted parts of Myrmidia's worship into analogues that the locals will understand. They hate things like Fury being emphasized or Imperial Fury Knights being mostly men (since Fury is used to siphon off Ulricans) or the way the Imperials primarily worship Myrmidia as a 'mere' Goddess of Strategy. They believe the entire Imperial cult of Myrmidia is heresy against the Goddess of Civilization and that it needs to be destroyed. The central cult is not happy about a bunch of murderers running around actively trying to destroy its careful progress towards expanding into the Empire, and the Perfecta are condemned as dire heretics and enemies of the faith. There is, of course, also an ongoing heretical war between extremist Tilean and Estalian sects about where Myrmidia was born, but this rarely comes up in the Empire. Except that the Imperials haven't got a dog in the fight and both sides have noticed that influencing the new Imperial cult to support one or the other might be an excellent strategy. Thus, they slap-fight in the shadows about which texts to approve for missionary work in the Empire and try to convince new Imperial converts that Myrmidia was obviously born in Estalia or Tilea.

Ranaldans have two kinds of fanatic: Fortune's Favored believe you should trust everything to luck and just try to make their way through life, taking what comes. They're considered self-destructive but harmless. The orthodox tend to help them out from time to time, trying to support these holy hobos because they see their life as a slightly insane but ultimately pious life. This is the closest you get to a Ranaldan Flagellant, those who live entirely by his mercy and whim. The Humblers are a more extremist sect of Ranald the Protector followers, who believe anyone possessing wealth or power deserves to be taken down a peg simply for the act of possessing those things. They don't wait for someone to be a tyrant; all rich men are tyrants by nature of being rich, and should be targeted for it. Naturally, this is not popular with the authorities. Being Ranaldans, they don't kill their targets, but they ARE happy to get them killed on false charges of Chaos worship, treason, etc. Orthodox followers would prefer to be a little more discriminating in their targeting, and tend to think the Humblers take a little too much pleasure in ruining peoples' lives, but Ranald's cult doesn't officially persecute anyone unless they openly violate the Strictures. The Humblers are careful not to do so.

The Plague Wardens are a terrible heresy against Shallya, believing it is their duty to kill the sick so they can't spread Nurgle's plagues. Shallyan Plague Wardens are some of the clearest 'this is really pissing off your Goddess' heretics in the whole section, because almost anyone who could use Shallyan magic who joins them loses it, quickly. They believe that by killing the sick, they are carrying out an extreme version of triage and preventing disease from spreading, and they are very willing to wear swords and go into combat with Nurglites and the desperately ill. The cult, naturally, condemns them as insane. The book has a little section on 'actually they may well have saved thousands of lives by preventing the spread of disease' but I'm pretty sure a bunch of rotting bodies being transported to be burned probably aren't very sanitary, either, and that preventing the spread of infectious disease by swording everyone who has it doesn't usually work out. Especially when they also accidentally end up killing people who just have a cold. The Suffering Hearts are a sect of extremists who believe that priestesses need to purge themselves of any and all worldly desire and personal pleasure before they can heal the sick. Doing so without 'purifying' yourself will lead to disaster. Thus, they've ended up spending all their time scourging themselves and don't bother to spend any time actually being doctors anymore. Curiously, those who declare themselves purified, leave the sect, and start actually helping people again see an unusually high rate of magic among them; possibly the Goddess trying to encourage them to stop hurting themselves.

Next Time: More Crazy Heretics

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




Freaking Crumbum posted:

my gut says that there's likely to be an overrepresentation of alt-right fascist poo poo heads in on-line TTRPG circles and the attempt at a neutral tone is an effort to avoid alienating a significant portion of the potential customer base. i mean, the game doesn't even convincingly explain why most of the various resistance forces aren't gleefully working hand-in-hand with the government (as our current reality clearly indicates)

According to Word of Author, that alt-right group was one of his intended targets for the game.

Chad Walker posted:

THREAD: I wrote a "political" RPG.

I have some fun/interesting/scary insights from that.

But first, let's get some basics out of the way...

First, *all* games are political and operate on culture in intended and uninteded ways. If you think the games from the 80s/90s weren't political, that's because you internalized their value statements and arrangements of power so deeply that you didn't even realize it.

Second, games will never, ever stop being political. Asking for that is asinine. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. Just like you can't stop women from making/playing games, or expect queers to stay closeted, or expect marginalized communities to stop rising up.

Third, even political agitators like myself absolutely like to kick back with (and often write) totally mindless genre stuff once in a while. We don't spend every waking moment breaking glass ceilings or taking a flamethrower to sacred cows. We like escapism, too.

Alright, that's out of the way, so let's talk about what I learned or witnessed writing and releasing an *explicitly* political game... this one happened to be about waging an ethical insurgency against an American fascist regime in the alt-1980s. #SIGMATA

The first insight, observed during the Kickstarter, was assumptions about the game's political agenda, which both worked for the project and worked against it in unanticipated ways, and elicited interesting responses from various political sects.

The initial reaction from many fans is that this work must be about a socialist revolution composed exclusively of 2018's marginalized groups and resistance/revolutionary communities (e.g. BLM, LGBT+, NoDAPL, DSA, etc.). Which yielded to predictable outcomes...

In short, Leftists cheered, right-wingers jeered. But then slowly, as people read the marketing text more thoroughly, an interesting shift began to happen. "Wait a second... the Resistance is working with militias, fundamentalists, and entrepreneurs?" All hell broke loose...

A game about the seductive potential and extraordinary danger of making "allies of convenience" in the face of extreme emergency was called "centrist," said with a venom of a racial slur. Some Leftists worked overtime in forums to convince backers to drop their pledges. 16 did.

While alt-right trolls over in 4chan were lamenting "SJW power fantasy," the most *active* resistance against a game about fighting fascism and the messy, challenging, dangerous politics of insurgency came from Leftists.

Who were these folks? With a single exception, they were just like me. CisHet White Dudes. This leads to an important point, *especially* if you are a CisHet White Dude.

The people supporting this project who are actually from marginalized communities did not even loving *blink* at the thought of working with some gross allies, fence-sitters, "useful idiots," or capitalist vampires, temporarily, to see their struggle succeed.

Because they are actually involved, by choice or circumstance, in real life struggles, and know how dirty this business is. Indigenous protesters ally with the ancestors of settlers who murdered their people and stole their land. BLM allies with whites who benefited from slavery.

My CisHet White Dude... while you were busy enforcing the party purity and alienating the gently caress out of potential allies, you forgot that someone at some point made a strategic compromise to invite YOUR rear end to the struggle.

That's right, someone practiced the "centrism" you bemoan and welcomed you to the fold, even though all you have to offer is your stupid pasty skin, the fact that you took a political science course once, and your Twitter account.

From there, let's move on to the second (and final) big discussion. When it comes to #SIGMATA, who was the *intended audience* of this explicit work of political propaganda? I mean, the primary audience was just Leftists, right?

No. Because that would make me a *bad* propagandist.

Let me tell you about my intended audience(s)...

My audience was libertarians who, for all their anti-state rhetoric, frequently defacto side with the state because their own struggle ends at their property line. So I draw a direct line between state violence against "them" (Ruby Ridge, Waco) and state violence against (POC).

My audience was Christians consciously or unconsciously herded into nationalism, isolationism, and dehumanizing border politics. Which is why I praise and elevate those among them do the subversive of protecting immigrant families and turning churches into safe harbors.

And yes, my audience was Leftists, too... the very ones using "anti-imperialism" as an excuse to permit Assad's genocidal actions against the Syrian people, and repeat/retweet "RT," propaganda wing for Putin's textbook TEXTBOOK imperialist aggression.

Is this a fool's errand? Maybe. Probably not, though, based on many, many candid conversations with readers and players.

One of the most active and supportive groups playing this game identifies as conservative. Conservative. My response was "Uh... did we read the same book?" I couldn't help but ask "Why SIGMATA?" Their answer was, "We take any chance we can get to crush Nazis and nationalists."

A group of self-identifying conservatives found a game that invites THEM to kick Nazi rear end. The game has heavy anarcho-Leftist leanings, but by simply acknowledging that alliances are complex, uncomfortable, maybe even dangerous, yet *possible,* it serves as an olive branch.

The game didn't ask *them*, specifically, to apologize for the rise of fascism, or to "convert" to any specific political ideology. It just extended a hand and said "Let's kick some Nazi rear end together." And they took that hand. It was as simple as that.

I asked what kind of political conversations the sessions provoked, and heard one example. They discussed antifa and black bloc, and at least a couple of them conceded that maybe, MAYBE, there was a strategic need for this type of radical response to rising fascism.

So that's it. I'm spent. I'm tired of weak rear end Leftists/purists/zealots busting my balls. I'm going to end this thread with two pages from the book, to lay my own political agenda bare, in terms more ambiguous than many of you want to hear.

Appendix: This rant basically pulled a Mitt Romney "binder full of women" move, essentially using the sentiments of specific individuals from marginalized communities to be representative of broad consensus of those communities. It was a cheap rhetorical trap and I hosed up.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

So, Sigmata's author is an idiot.

I mean, that was pretty clear already from his writing, but it's nice of him to be so direct.

Anniversary
Sep 12, 2011

I AM A SHIT-FESTIVAL
:goatsecx:

Freaking Crumbum posted:

i think hostile v said earlier that a bunch of the setting meta-plot about the game was originally based on/influenced by the events of the arab spring, which the author then (very clumsily) tried to turn into a believable alt-future setting for the US. the problems with that are many, but a lot of the inconsistencies (like what happened to the judiciary branch?) are likely the result of there being no analogous institution involved in the source material, and then when the author tried to map everything onto a US-centric setting he didn't know enough about our government to know that such a huge thing was missing.

Ethics stuff is, yeah, eesh. He uses the phrase "moral calculus" which I have only ever heard as criticism of Utilitarians, but its not in that context.

And the Arab Spring is the justification for chapters on 80s netwar as a parable about modern resistance infosec?

Oh! And a 2.5 page (p.270-2) derail about how Assad (took actions which) created ISIL so Russia could aid him militarily and the US could avoid aiding the resistance. "Assad was able to degrade and kill the Signal" is a thing he writes (p.271).

quote:

the ethics stuff does sound like the kind of poorly explained drivel you'd get from a stoned first year uni student that's only skimmed a few textbooks. or wait, is there a liberal/leftist version of infowars? if there is, it sounds like the kind of wacky poo poo that outlet would try to pass as a deep and well-reasoned worldview
It strikes me as either intentionally pop in its treatment of ethics, or unknowingly ignorant. I wouldn't be happy with either, but I mean, I like Ethics as a field so maybe I'm an outlier.

Night10194 posted:

It is really weird to see an RPG about fighting fascists that is trying really hard to be apolitical.

But its a "political work", that just, tries to make it so everyone can and should get along to fight the government.

Josef bugman posted:

It's a small haunted village afterall?
I love this.

Joe Slowboat posted:

What's really grinding my gears about Sigmata is that if the author didn't have his head firmly lodged in his own American rectum, there are some international examples of precisely the kind of revolutionary struggle he clearly envisions - complete with fighting for world opinion and legitimacy!
But those are dependent on the US/USSR as an international source of legitimacy, right? That's the huge problem about taking a resistance movement anywhere other than maybe the USSR and transporting it to the US in 1986. Like, who are you going to turn to for legitimacy, since the USSR is right out? The countries that rely on the US?

Josef bugman posted:

I mean the bolded bit isn't that unusual. It is kind of close to what we have now.
True, but its a fascist state so why doesn't it just nationalize some parts of those booming businesses. It's not like the Regime isn't opposed to blatant theft for thefts sake.

Young Freud posted:

I'm honestly reminded, with this difference between Sigmata and Spire and the ethics of killing fascists out of uniform, the recent passing of a female Dutch freedom fighter who, during WW2, killed Nazis by seducing them, getting them liquored up, leading them out to the forest for woods sex and her and her sister shooting them in the head.
Yeah, that example echoed through my mind for the whole book.

Liquid Communism posted:

According to Word of Author, that alt-right group was one of his intended targets for the game.

But you see he's shot down people wanting to know if you can play as the Fist in a revenge fantasy!

Night10194 posted:

So, Sigmata's author is an idiot.

I mean, that was pretty clear already from his writing, but it's nice of him to be so direct.

I wish you had told me this before I read his drat book.

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




Night10194 posted:

So, Sigmata's author is an idiot.

I mean, that was pretty clear already from his writing, but it's nice of him to be so direct.

Eh, calling him an idiot isn't really useful. He's just come to some conclusions from a perspective that I don't really think the facts support, and has what appears to be a communication style based on intentional provocation of his allies and silencing critics. It's interesting to look at the F&F and Sigmata as a work from the perspective of his stated intent, though.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

WFRP 4e - How Am Coin

You get your starting trappings free, and during chargen you may freely purchase anything you can afford; after chargen, availability of a lot of gear becomes much more limited. But before we learn about that, we need to discuss money. The Empire's coinage is most commonly minited in its three main denominations - brass pennies, silver shillings and gold crowns. A coin usually weighs around an ounce, and its value is determined by weight and material, such that even a foreign coin can be valued easily with scales, albeit with some suspicion. Other coins exist within the Empire; however, for OOC convenience, the game deals exclusively in values based on the three main denominations. 12 brass pennies make a shilling, and 20 silver shillings make a crown. So 240p make 1GC. (Well, the game's abbraviations are GC, / for shillings and d for pence. This makes no sense to me except GC so I use s and p because what the hell?)

Cost of living is broadly speaking tied to your status tier; at Brass tier, you're likely spending pence on food and clothing, and going over that makes your peers think you're putting on heirs and need to be called out. So it's pretty easy to maintain Brass status. Silver Status means you're spending shillings on food and clothing by and large - pence maybe for beer money, gold for major purchases, but your main currency is the shilling. Gold status means you're eating luxuries, sleeping on satin, and stand out due to expensive clothes. You rarely use anything smaller than a crown. If the GM really needs hard numbers, you need to pay half your status in coins per day to maintain appearances - so for Silver 4, 2s per day. Personally I feel this is pointless to track.

Gold Crowns are also known as Marks, Karls and Gelt. Silver shillings are called Bob, Shimmies and Mucks. Pence are also known as Pfennigs, Clanks and Shrapnel. Coinage standards do not derive from Altdorf. It's the capital, yes, but coinage standards have historically been out of Nuln. Nuln was the historic capital of the Empire until the restoration of the Altdorf throne by the House Holswig-Schliestein a century ago, and a lot of Imperial institutions are still Nuln-based. The Nuln Standard governs all coin weights and metallurgy, though not stamp imagery, which can vary heavily by province. Coins are, unsurprisingly, taken advantage of criminally in a number of ways. The game details two main options that PC rogues may well wish to look into. First up, counterfeiting. Reikland is full of coins from other lands, but are generally wary of scams. A successful Evaluate test will usually detect a counterfeit coin by checking weight and hardness. Actually making them is harder. It takes an Art (Engraving) test to make a good stamping die, then a Trade (Blacksmith) test to strike the coins, generally with an assistant's help. While including a higher concentration of precious metal makes counterfeits harder to spot and gives penalties to the Evaluate test, it also costs more. However, using less than a fifth of normal value makes it very easy to spot a fake. Clipping is the practice of clipping or shaving slivers of metal off the coin. It is largely done by shopkeeps and tollkeepers who have access to large amounts of money, and the filings are then melted down and sold to jewellers, counterfeiters or fences. Clipped coins are detected by Evaluate, with a bonus based on how much has been trimmed.

So, when you go to market, how do you know what's available? Well, all Trappings have an Availability - Common, Scarce, Rare or Exotic. Common items are always available no matter what - if there's a market in the Empire, they have this item. Period. Scarce and Rare items are not - you have to make a test based on settlement size. A village will have a 30% chance of having any given Scarce item, and a 15% chance of any given Rare item. Towns have a 60% Scarce change and 30% Rare. Cities have 90% Scarce chance and 45% Rare. Exotic items are never openly available. To get them, you need to commission someone to acquire one or make it yourself. If you fail a Scarce or Rare Availability test, you can either go to a new settlement and reroll, or you can, if in a town or city, wait a week and roll again once the new goods have arrived. The GM determines how many of an item are available, but broadly speaking, villages only have one of anything, towns have 1d10 items, cities have as many as the GM thinks are appropriate. Double this for Common, halve for Rare (rounding up).

Imperials love haggling. When making a deal for an item, there's two main skills - Evaluate and Haggle. Evaluate can identify the quality of an item, the value of a set of coins, spot counterfeits and so on. An Evaluate roll will also estimate the average price of any Rare or Exotic item to within +/-10%. (Everyone knows the average prices of more common goods.) Haggle is generally an opposed test with the Haggle of the other side of the deal. It's expected, and most prices have a slight markup as a result. Successful Haggle tests for a buyer reduces the price by 10%, or up to 20% with the Dealmaker talent or 6+ SLs. Bad failures of a lot of SLs usually mean the seller doesn't trust your coins. The GM may, as a note, overrule normal Availability - a village that makes boats probably has boats on hand even if they normally wouldn't, and Availability can get a +10-20% boost if you are an especially diligent hunter, have the Merchant or Fence career, or spend an entire day making Gossip tests and scouring the markets.

Selling your goods is handled broadly the same way. Availability is still checked - this time to find a buyer for whatever you have on hand. (Yes, this means that Exotic goods are hard to offload - most people have no need for them.) You then bargain as normal. Sale prices are, by default, base half the normal price for the item due to being secondhand. If you are a Fence or Merchant and you put in some Gossip time, you might be able to find a buyer for up to 80% of the base value, but that's up to the GM. Successful haggling will mark up the deal by up to 10-20% as above. If you cannot find a buyer, you can halve the price. Each halving increases the item's effective Availability by 1 step. So an Exotic good is normally worth half its purchase value but has no buyers. Dropping to a quarter purchase value increases it to Rare chance of having a buyer.

The game also has barter rules. Basically the way these work is you divide up the goods you want to barter into their Availability ratings, then take the value of each of those divided groups and add them up. Then boost or diminish group values by comparative rarity. Then trade in units of broadly equal value, using the Haggle and Evaluate rules as normal. It's...complicated but there's a helpful table so that you don;t need to do a ton of work at least.

Items can have Qualities or Flaws. For each Quality an item has, double its price and make it one step less Available. For each Flaw, halve the price and make it one step more Available (unless it is Exotic; that remains Exotic). If the GM rules that the town has relevant craft guilds, Flaws make an item less Available rather than more, and the first Quality does not reduce Availability. Prices are still modified. Some Qualities and Flaws are unique to Weapons or to Armor, but all items can have the following:
Qualities
Durable: The item is made of strong materials. It can take +(number of Durables) Damage before it gets any penalties and against any instant breakage effect such as Trap Blade, roll 1d10. On a 9+, it survives intact. Obviously, this can be taken multiple times. Each time you take the Quality, reduce the number required on the d10 roll by 1.
Fine: The item is very pretty. This can be taken multiple times. The more it is taken, the more beautiful and high-status the item seems.
Lightweight: The item takes up -1 Encumbrance point from normal.
Practical: The item is made with utility in mind. Any failed test with this item gets +1 SL. If this is on armor, instead reduce any penalties for wearing the armor by one level (IE, from -30 to -20).
Flaws
Ugly: It is ugly. It may attract negative attention, and relevant Fellowship tests may get -10.
Shoddy: The item is badly made. On any failed test that rolls a double, it breaks. If it is armor, it breaks if the hit location it protects receives a Critical Hit.
Unreliable: The item isn't very functional. Any failed test gets -1 SL. If it is armor, any penalties it causes are doubled.
Bulky: It's clumsy. This cannot be put on any small trinket. Increase Encumbrace by +1. Clothes and armor are Encumbrance 1 even when worn, and cause double Fatigue penalties.

So how's Encumbrance work? All items have a Encumbrance points (Enc) from 0 to 3. 0 is easy to carry, 3 is extremely big. You may carry a total of (SB+TB) Enc without penalty. Knives, coins or jewelry are usually Enc 0, swords, mandolins and bags are Enc 1, greatswords, tents and backpacks are Enc 2, and halberds, casks and huge sacks are Enc 3. 200 coins is about Enc 1. Some large items may have 4+ Enc, such as kegs or saddlebags. You can only carry one of these at a time, and it likely takes up both your hands. Draft animals ignore the normal formula for what they can carry, but instead have a limit in their description. A single Human-sized passenger is assumed to weight 10 Enc, modified as necessary for especially small or especially large people. Any worn item, such as most clothes, jewellery or armor, have their Enc dropped by 1, to a minimum of 0.

What happens if you go over your Encumbrance limit? You are slowed and likely fatigued, which stacks with any penalties from armor. Whenever you are Overburdened and need to take a Fatigued condition for any reason besides Encumbrance, you get an extra +1 Fatigued. If you are Overburdened by up to double your limit, you get -1 Movement (min. 3), -10 Agility and +1 Travel Fatigue. Up to triple limit, you get -2 Movement (min. 2), -20 Agility (min. Agility 10) and +2 Travel Fatigue. More than that and you are incapable of movement. Penalties apply immediately, and can be removed only by dropping stuff. Travel Fatigue causes that many Fatigued Conditions at the end of each day's travel and can only be removed via rest.

Next time: Weapons

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

That's the thing, though. A stupid work by an ignorant (I think, given that the main problem is that his assumptions don't really line up with what we can observe actually happening right about now, ignorant is probably a better term than stupid) person from a stupid place is still interesting to analyze, sometimes, because it says a lot to look at his assumptions and what he thinks 'reaching out' means or what his idea of an 'acceptable' revolution looks like. You can get a lot of value out of examining flawed art.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Sep 24, 2018

Anniversary
Sep 12, 2011

I AM A SHIT-FESTIVAL
:goatsecx:




I don't think he's stupid. Maybe ignorant. Probably out of his depth. Almost definitely being kinda unethical from my perspective. But stupid, no.

e: Oh you edited your original post, sorry, yeah I agree with your edit.

To that extent I agree with Liquid Communism and you about analysis. I just really wanted to reference Apocalypse Now. It feels contextual.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Anniversary posted:

I don't think he's stupid. Maybe ignorant. Probably out of his depth. Almost definitely being kinda unethical from my perspective. But stupid, no.

Hah, before you quoted me I was just going back and changing it to that exact word after thinking about it a moment.

Need to remember you don't have to be dumb to be wrong.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!
I think Sigmata's author isn't necessarily an idiot, but somewhat full of himself and lacking a lot of important knowledge. :v: If he didn't want to do the research necessary to set the game in the believable real world, he should have set it in a fantasy world instead. It's not really a place where you can cut corners without compromising your end result.

Perhaps the reason his protests came from CisHet White Dudes is that a lot of the hobby is CisHet White Dudes and minorities aren't as regularly rear end-deep in experimental nerdgame wank. :v:

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Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


Chad Walker posted:

So that's it. I'm spent. I'm tired of weak rear end Leftists/purists/zealots busting my balls.

that's a pretty great closing sentiment right there. "i'm tired of people critically analyzing my work and challenging me to make the game objectively better, so instead i'll drop a steaming pile into a word processor and call it a wrap and sell it to people that won't ever question anything i've written or engage with my work except for in the most superficial of ways".


"I want to kickstart an RPG about the resistance!"
oh cool i'll fund that can you tell me about how you envision marginalized peoples in your set--
"NO NEVERMIND THAT'S TOO HARD WHAT IF THE NAZIS CAN BE GOOD SOMETIMES? CUT PRINT SEND IT TO PRODUCTION!"

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