Damien wrote:Overpowered ? Of course it's overpowered.
In fact, it's the only possible solution to use an overpowering army for an event where Troll's Bane's leadership has managed to put the town at war with the by far biggest empire on the continent, which at the same time is kinda Gobiath's closest neighbour.
To better imagine the size difference : Imagine a small 3rd-century-town at the border of the roman empire challenging rome for a war. You'll totally agree that the small town will be totally overpowered by the roman forces sent there - and exactly that's what happened to Trolll's Bane.
And the staff said it before as well.
So don't complain if your char was silly enough to be talked into defending just cause troll's bane's nobles choosed to fight a from the very beginning on as senseless declared fight. It's just what happens every day to people in all the world as well.
So, illa is quite a good real life simulation, eh ?
Ah yes. Life would be so much easier when the small and weak would just bend over at the will of their bigger neighbours and take it in the ass willingly. Of course, it will be pointless to elaborate concepts such as "integrity", "independence", "identity" or "having a spine" after that sort of statement. Some people value their freedom (or at least, oppression of 'our own' kind) and independence and are ready to die to defend those. I mean, the Roman expansion came to end at some point too: At east, it encountered the Parthian empire. However, at North there was a bunch of violent Teutons, bad climate and backwards land which simply was not worth the hassle. But just to make it clear, the Trollsbane leadership pulled the town into war as much as you got yourself punched in the face and robbed for refusing to give your wallet to the robber. Sure, you can make such claim: But it requires special sort of twistedness to absolve the robber from any blame in the situation, and despite what you say or what you think about the goodness of the bane administration, the Salkamaerians are in fact glorified robbers. Unlike Illarion, RL doesn't operate in a bubble where all the variables are controlled by someone..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melian_dialogue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_war
But now the real beef. You are basically talking about a situation that is like in...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
There's a small village, in area which is not really important, but the people there are badass and armed to the teeth. They are not NORMAL people. They've defeated invasion after invasion, demons, dragons, demondragons, demondragonliches, Albarians, Siegfried & Roy along with countless undead attacks and assorted attacks of groups or individuals against the town. And you're expecting them to just say "Okay." when someone else asks nicely? Ooh.. they're Salkamaerians! Let's all change our pants because we all surely creamed them. No seriously.
Its very simple logic. There's nothing bout superheroes. Just compare these two :
Self-trained hero / bandit / mercenary person with own equipment grown up in a very remote area
V.S.
professionally trained, heavily armed veteran/elite soldier with elitary equipment (royalty regiment)
Ladies and gentlemen,
Who do you think will win ?
Lets bring some substance into this discussion.
Look at what Nitram said. The Salkamaerian Uberwarriors were infact weaker as individuals in comparison to average PC fighters. Undisputable fact, which means that all of the stuff you said (ie. your personal feelings) can be thrown out of the window regards to that.
Not only that, but you are completely forgetting that on Gobiath, practically every second fighter is a demon or dragonslayer, not to mention mages who kill monsters like that as breakfast. As individual fighters, the Trollsbane people are better, which is only reasonable simply because on the island everyone is
on their own and must rely on their individual fighting skills, as opposed to being a member of an organized military unit.
When you think about professional soldiers, you are not only (or you are, but you should be) thinking about the ability and efficiency of the troops when operating as a group or an unit, rather than look at the individual combat skills of the troops. This is represented by the lack of discipline in comparison to the NPC's. The strengths of organized military lay precisely in teamworking and organization, and the multipliers and efficiencies which stem from those rather than from the assumption that the fighting skills themselves are better on the individual level (something which is not so true in present day, but in the context of Illarion and how the player characters work, it is).
Furthermore, do you understand what kind of idiot you have to be, in real life, to start a military campaign on a distant, potentially hostile land at the beginning of winter? Even the Roman legions with their famed supply systems relied to a degree foraging when it comes to supplying the troops on a march. I mean, ask Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin (vs. Finland) about campaigning offensively on foreign area during the winter.
Difference between here and lich wars :
Lich wars = fun event meant to be won by the players
This event = Worst case outcome after an epic diplomacy fail by the town's leadership. Meant to be lost by the players because the town leaders blew their chance of making a profit and "joining the light side".
It's called roleplaying. You know, considering your character's relationships, experiences, motives or goals and reflecting on those when making a decision, instead of choosing the "smart & easy & profitable" things all the time. Having presented with the situation there was NO realistic way that the town leadership would have yielded like that, without actually being influenced by the fact that we as players know that we're going down down down anyway. Look at the track record of 8 freaking RL years of resistance, staggering from one catastrophy to the other head held high, standing to the last man and woman. The characters are behaving (mainly) as they would in any situation. Some will betray the town, some (most?) will defend it. Different motivations. However, to assume that this is some "diplomatical fail" is to have a head about three feet between your buttocks. Okay, let's stop playing the roles and start throwing flowers in the path of our liberators. When the next demon attack, albarian invasion, PO-Brer batshit crazy character comes, we do the same.
3. Elections for a player leadership in Troll's Bane were originally created for the purpose to give the players some action, and a goal, and to give EVERY PLAYER the chance to compete for that, to make politics, become something. Lately, a group of players abused that possibility and declared themselves nobles and "grabbed" the whole "sponsored" town for themselves - so the whole thing turned into an unfair ingame advantage for one group of players (who even wanted to have the workshop locked and accessable only by citizens) - so much for a newbie town with start ressources for everyone and an ongoing fun fight/election stuff for leadership. Plan ruined.
Mesha wrote:To go on with that in mind: The prince is coming here without quarrel. We have sent emissaries into town, with the simple request to talk with the Troll's Bane nobles, who will remain nobles when the Prince comes, as long as they swear allegiance to him. The notice on the board announces this fact. This, in a sense, means that the Prince as a ruler will just be a sham. A ruler still, but one who listens to his peers before making decisions. The noble system, might I add, has been added to a game by the Cromwellness, and preserves player rule.
You
really have no idea of what you are talking about, right? Fail.
So what you are saying is, that it's bad that a group of players attempted to take control of a mess by roleplaying, and by actually involving more than just single character in the town administration. Trying to have a consistent management of the town?
So, you are saying that in fact some players *gasp* took action and contol by *gasp* roleplaying (instead of marching around like good little soldiers, waiting for someone tell, instead of relying on characters who're around on the boards mainly, and only come around to comment when someone tries to do something in these gated communites that rest of the towns are. If that was indeed so horrible, all it would have taken to wrestle control away from the mean, grabbalicious players would have been.. other players. Considering you apparent panache for adjusting character's actions to ooc-perceptions, I'm sure you could have arranged something via the Illa-irc in no time.
I can tell you that I was already a couple of times ready to flee with Ed, but since no serious and concrete threat ever materialized after all, meh. Running bane sucks anyway, I can tell that. It makes characters and the PO's who play them quite jaded.
Damien in another thread.. wrote:
On the island, there has been an active and recently even open moshran cultist temple. The "Moshran" concept though is an "evil" concept and intentionally it was thought for NPC use only, not for the inconsequent-wannabe-evil-nice-person-from-the-neighbourhood-villain player-guild type cultist we have now (who don't "even" have regular human sacrifices :p). On the continent, cultists are insanely evil and cause bloodshed and slaughter of innocents, and therefore every organized government - even albarians - have a reason to strike down every cultist gathering they can hear of, even if they have to travel half the world over that.
Same counts for the lizardfolk people.
Shortly said, from this happening it is in fact a very logical conclusion to have Salkamar send some legionnaires or even paladins or even a knight accompanied by those to the island to take things over and execute every cultist and every root of such a cult, or even burninate down the whole island with that action.
I will put this here, just to make a point about the reason why people tend to take Damien's writings so seriously. It's the constant making-shit-up & referring to the background story and justifying stuff through the background story instead of the stuff that goes on in the real game.
To my knowledge (I asked around too): No such "forces of light cleansing the city of its corruptness" stuff has infact been given at any point. Do you understand that the citizenry and nobility alike have been invited to swear loyalty to the prince? There has thus far been no IG evidence presented that the TB leadership would have had anything to do with the fact that the prince is going to come and take the town over because "it's his". Light side, yeah. It has been said that the Prince considers himself as the rightful ruler of the town, which seems to indicate that the TYPE or rulership is actually irrelevant to him, because it's NOT him. That's the issue not your personal issues about Moshran or whatever.
So much for that. Staff decisions are staff decisions, and even massive protest won't stop something that will be a benefit for the community and especially new players (and might keep them here instead of scaring them off). And believe me, new players will log off and never log in again if they have a profession but no tools available, and if they are regularily robbed by orcs who are patrolling the area just outside the town walls with the order to only not-harm registered town citizens. You simply can't do that to a newbie town.
If you consider all the above reasons, i think it's pretty easy to understand the staff and why that decision was finally made.
For the record:
I am not really opposed to GM-takeover of Trollsbane at this point. I mean, as I have discovered it'd be easier for a gamemaster to do interesting decisions because he can actually enforce those without suffering enormous shit-storms (which for a player will be rather stressful). He can also lend this enforcement power to others, creating a situation where there's maybe authority beyond having a mean gang of hired blades behind yor back. However, I do think that the case was handled rather poorly. The staff should have kept their GM mouths shut. Your should have said that this just 'serious' quest. The reason is that I believe that most of the bad-stupid RP has actually been coming from the non-participating people, as the players know that there's very little chance for TB winning so they behave in a way in which they probably would not have otherwise behaved. If you are playing a character who is not helping TB, chances are that I'm not meaning you. I am thinking about a very specific group of people who seemed to be taking the mick at the fight, because they know that there's no retribution or consequence coming from the bane side.
Just a friendly hint, PO Damien: Actually having a clue about the game (like, what has actually happened IG and on the boards) instead of making shit up regarding to the "background story" or patronizing & sweeping generalizations on "how" people should behave with their characters in such situation (which is strongly related to being familiar with IG matters) helps when you don't want to come across as a smug, ignorant and condescending ass. If you want to, well... success?
Seriously. If you don't have any substance to back up your assertions with, then consider not contributing to the discussions at all, please.
scotland was another country, we wernt practicing the tribal system in the lowlands, and thats were the majority of scottish soilders came from