Pre-industrial Fantasy STGOD OOC/Rules Thread:

[Simon_Jester]

TimothyC's maps are white because his real goal is to get the borders right and fitting in with realistic terrain features (he helped me with my borders, for instance). He's actually doing it in a free graphic editor, and the white country-shaped blobs are a different layer, he tells me.

[Jub]

This is the post that has the most recent map that includes basically everybody.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 5#p3940540

If we could edit posts I'd suggest making a sticky for the map.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'd be open to creating a dedicated thread for maps, map questions, map updates, etc., if people don't think that would be too redundant/spammy.

[Simon_Jester]

That would probably be a good idea; that way we know where to find things and they don't get lost in the shuffle of a general commentary/discussion thread.

[Jub]

Feel free to copy an image of my latest map if you'd like, otherwise I'll start a thread for it tomorrow.

[TimothyC]

Sorry guys, I've been distracted with Family things. Still working on it!

[madd0ct0r]

Jesus Zwinmar - that's like a thought poem of Xenomorph meets vultures!

I took Jub's map and wrote in everyone's names as far as I could figure, including named NPCs in the story thread so far, please let me know if I missed any (I like to weave in references where possible): http://i.imgur.com/YJ0jgue.jpg
Black areas are unclaimed, surrounded, land. There's also a huge stripe of it running from the great lakes up to Alaska. I'm not sure how Panzer and Dark Hellion's borders are resolved. I'm guessing the Concordance have the mountains, the Bastians have the rest of Alaska and a bit beyond?

[Simon_Jester]

I like Zwinmar's post even if I don't really understand what's going on. Also the prose/poetry divide in your latest was interesting, maddoc.

I do hope that my Pike and Shot sequence got people interested and mentally engaged with what I'm trying to do with Ohio; I'm planning to start more... plot-relevant story posts soonish.

I really need to think a bit more about the form of Ohioan government. While my inspiration is 17th century France, neither the chaotic conflicts of the Fronde nor the absolutism of Louis XIV is a perfect fit for what I have in mind... although come to think of it, a round of internal turmoil in the recent past might help to explain a few things.

[madd0ct0r]

I was thinking we hadn't had a French revolutionary faction yet...

But for Ohio, could you draw parralels from the sun/star schism to British history?
The English civil war wasn't really about religion, but it did tend to split that way, especially with the Catholic nobles following the king as their only hope.
A period of bloody war, short ruthlessly modernising dictatorship that wears out its welcome and the ancestor ghost pressure re-establishes a more devolved form of business as usual.
Like the tercios, with the amount of ancestors channelling the star's I can't see Ohio as a fast changing nation.

[Simon_Jester]

The funneling of divine power through ancestral spirits is fairly specific to the Ohioan military; it's a defense mechanism that evolved out of the syncretistic combination of religions that occurred in the core territory along the Ohio river. There was an ancestor-worshipping faith held by the nomadic forerunners of the Ohioan peoples (who were chased off the Great Plains by other nomads, sort of like the Germanic tribes that overran the Romans). And there was an astronomy-oriented religion that had been held for a long time by the monolith-raising, mound-building civilizations that formerly dominated the Ohio valley. The two mingled together, and the Ohioans wound up converted to the religion of the people they'd just defeated, while preserving their own ancestor-worship traditions. That was between 700 and 1000 years ago, depending on which parts of the American Midwest you look at and how far along you expect the merging of the religions to be.

This is, incidentally, why you have a religion where all the clergy are female, in what is otherwise a fairly patriarchal society.

Fast forward to the day about 300 years ago, when Ohioan soldiers began swearing divinely enforced oaths that bound their souls to the protection of their regiments, and you get the origins of the Ohioans' battlefield luck and magic resistance.

However, ancestral spirits still influence many Ohioans- it's just that their ability to influence events is limited to dreams, visions, weird feelings, and occasional feats of poltergeist-ery.
________________________________

That said, I'm starting to get a handle on how I want to play this. I think I'm going to model the political situation in Ohio more or less like France right after the Fronde, but shortly before Louis XIV took direct control of the government.

More on what this actually means, for those of us who don't have 17th century history memorized (myself included), later.

[The Romulan Republic]

Apologies for not being more active lately. With my OOB up, at least a basic one, I'm going to be getting into my storylines a bit more. Look for my next post tomorrow, tentatively. As I recall, their are a couple people who expressed interest in visits from rogue elvish necromancers.

[madd0ct0r]

In case anyone is having real trouble with their Orders of Battle, I wrote a really rough army generator:
You'd have to play around to make formations and formatting, but it might give you some ideas if you are really stuck

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[madd0ct0r]

Ghetto edit. One of the reasons i did that was to quickly flesh out an NPC for the borderlands. Didn't get quite what I expected:


So that' s a mix of necromantic and heavenly magic, with insanely powerful core troops, bolstered by mind thrall and vampire battle mages.
We're talking an army of undead angels...

The army of the Pure is possessed of a zeal to powerful to merely die in battle. They rose again, and threw down their foe (Necro-gods?).

At their core is a backbone of undead cherubs, (in the enhanced slot). These are bolstered by ground based puppet-cherubs who've had their wings stripped/damaged over the many battles this host has survived (core troops). With a undead angel directing their actions, they are a fearful foe.
The host has summoned allies to help in its crusade. The spirits of great warhorses responded, and were fused with angels too damaged or incomplete to function. As centuars (beast riders), as pegasi (special forces) and as armored stallions (linebreakers) they serve the host. Amongst the ranks of cherubs, there are those who can still channel their energies through the shattered binding crystals the host was using to trap the nerco-god (field guns). These energies are baleful indeed, but pale compare to the 41 intact crystals. (seige cannon) Their interior is carved like a maze, and any soul that enters either leaves empowered in a huge discharge or remains locked in the crystal maze forever.

73 great captains of the host remain, and will sometimes fight together in bands of seven, to corral and harrass the weak flanks. Another 32 have lost all control of their forms, absorbing bodies and cherub alike in a towering spiral of golden wings and singing faces. Beware them, for their golden tendrils will rend armour and still hearts, even if you die with a peaceful smile upon your face.

Last. but not least, the three corrupted champions of the host. Mordaci, Hector and Arkihillies. Trapped within them is the howling vortex where necro and heavenly magic challenge and feed off each other. If one falls, the other two bear him up. As long as the crystals remain, they will bring their host back to face evil again and again. For these three fallen archangels, oblivion in battle is their only chance of grace

-

Heh. I might just fight them

[Simon_Jester]

All that stuff like "36% of cost in accuracy" and "67% of cost in durability and skill" I would... oppose. Lots of weird accounting to argue over, without much real benefit.

Otherwise, aside from that, literally everything is awesome.

[Jub]

My most recent story post is up, it's shorter than expected, but I think it does what it needs to.

I'm spending some of my own points and some of the points granted by DH's dragons and created a pair of legendary heroes. Each is worth a full thousand points, blessed with a divine grace that makes it hard to even want to harm them, and a unique power that makes them deadly to the point of near absurdity. They're also not entirely in control of their own fates with Gitaskog and the yet unnamed dragon each playing a large part in their lives.

These are the first set of heroes that I'm going to make, but probably not the last. I'm doing this to give myself a few great heroes to write about in the hope that it allows me to write interesting stories without having to deal with too many characters at once. I don't intend them to show up at every major battle, but they'll probably come out to meet TRRs counter raid.

[madd0ct0r]

All that stuff like "36% of cost in accuracy" and "67% of cost in durability and skill" I would... oppose. Lots of weird accounting to argue over, without much real benefit.

Otherwise, aside from that, literally everything is awesome.

fixed with a lookup table, the sheet just gives rough estimates now. The Weeping Angels are defiently more interesting then the 'knights with lightning' idea i was considering before. But need to wrap up my trading first.

[Raw Shark]

Nobody's claimed the Azores, right? If not, I want 'em, as my off-shore garrison on my tobacco trade route with my good buddies Old Córdoba. I stole them from those guys in this timeline; the Not!Portuguese are somewhat wary of us but more concerned with the East Indies and the apocalyptic shit-show they ran face-first into in the Amazon recently, so we haven't fucked with each other so far.

On the plus side, I'd have considerable influence over shipping to the New World, Urop, and would probably be the most likely to discover the northwest corner of the continent to the south of there. On the other hand, the rest of you can ignore Urop and other points east and then a bunch of my ships are stuck out there just because it makes me laugh. Any objections?

[Jub]

I might put an NPC nation up in the Yukon, another native style tribe that has access to iron and has used it to create native themed enchanted plate armor. Their probably going to be far less likely to raid their neighbors, considering themselves to have advanced beyond that. Instead they will focus of trade, and the exporting of high quality finished goods. I'm picturing them as a small but tough 50,000 point NPC.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Nobody's claimed the Azores, right? If not, I want 'em, as my off-shore garrison on my tobacco trade route with my good buddies Old Córdoba. I stole them from those guys in this timeline; the Not!Portuguese are somewhat wary of us but more concerned with the East Indies and the apocalyptic shit-show they ran face-first into in the Amazon recently, so we haven't fucked with each other so far.

On the plus side, I'd have considerable influence over shipping to the New World, Urop, and would probably be the most likely to discover the northwest corner of the continent to the south of there. On the other hand, the rest of you can ignore Urop and other points east and then a bunch of my ships are stuck out there just because it makes me laugh. Any objections?

Considerable influence perhaps, but Beowulf and I would probably contest this at the slightest hint of hostilities, and you really don't want to wind up trading broadsides with one of my 74s. By all means have the Azores, I don't need them anyways, my off-map sea trade is with OTL-Britain, Frace and Central/Northern Europe anyways.

[Raw Shark]

Sounds good to me. As long as we're not actively at war, we don't have privateers actively raiding each other, as was noted upthread, so multiple avenues of trade with Urop shouldn't be a problem.

NPC Suggestion: I think it'd be funny if we made the OTL Canary Islands seriously weird. Like ostensibly controlled by Not!Africans, but really in the thrall of crazy magic, like Toon Town level. Nobody can really control them, and stories involving them are going to be wacky. not!Portugal can still have Funchal.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I like that idea about the Canary Islands...Looney Toons time!

[Simon_Jester]

I like the island stuff, although as an inland kingdom I obviously have no dog in that fight. My main concern is just getting goods to and from the Atlantic at all, which at the moment it looks like can only be done with the cooperation of:
1) The Turks via the Mississippi
2) Orion via the St. Lawrence Seaway, which also requires the cooperation or at least consent of whichever faction within Imperial528's coalition controls Lake Ontario
3) IF Imperial528's coalition built the OTL Erie Canal (which would be very difficult in a pre-industrial society but at least credible), then that would also be a viable path.

That said, I am really finding it frustrating to engage in worldbuilding on a border with a guy who almost never posts or does anything whatsoever...

I'm seriously wondering if we need a protocol for declaring people AFK when their prolonged absence is wasting others' time and role-playing opportunities.

fixed with a lookup table, the sheet just gives rough estimates now. The Weeping Angels are defiently more interesting then the 'knights with lightning' idea i was considering before. But need to wrap up my trading first.

Yeah. Points are points are points, basically.

It's not worth trying to say "this has points because it is fast, this has points because it is strong, this is worth X under circumstance A but Y under circumstance B."

It's much better to just assume that everyone sensibly uses the appropriate forces under the right conditions, with occasional exceptions for hilarious tactical stupidity, and let roleplay decide which force should win under which conditions.

[The Romulan Republic]

Its a fair point about people who are absent for a prolonged period of time.

Maybe have a time limit, like if you're absent for such and such amount of time without posting, your faction becomes an NPC? Would that be workable?

I'll give it some more thought.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, Imperial528 sticks his head in every week or two, and visits the forum frequently, but he's not participating in the sense that I can ask him questions about what his country is doing and get definitive answers.

It's especially problematic because the one thing I know about his country for sure is that it is a "confederation." This strongly implies that it may be:

1) Internally divided, which presents strategic opportunities for Ohio, and no I'm not just talking about 'conquest.'
2) May or may not have trouble maintaining large internal infrastructure projects, when it would have a direct impact on my economy if they did have a large internal infrastructure project.
3) Spread out interestingly in a jigsaw puzzle of lesser sub-polities of varying sizes, which is absolutely fascinating... except that I have no details whatsoever.

I could hardly care less about his order of battle, since unless something very unlikely happens, Ohio is not invading him for at least two years and probably quite a bit more.

But I need to know about his nation's geography and politics, since they have consequences for mine.

[Simon_Jester]

The current emperor of Ohio, Louis the Tenth and Fourteenth, is a seventeen year old who was only declared of age two years ago.

His mother, who's about fifty-five, is still an influential figure in court politics, at least for now. Quite influential, since she was empress regent for ten years after her husband died, ending only when her son was declared to be of age.

The historical figure I'm basing her on was a Spanish princess who'd married into the French royal family to cement dynastic ties between the two countries. I can't think of any nation in North America that it would make sense for the Ohioan queen mother to be coming from, though, because she'd pretty much have to be someone who respected the Living-Stars religious tradition enough to convert to it.

However, I am open to suggestions on this, so for the moment at least I've got an unassigned royal marriage.

Note that historically, Anne of Austria forswore her dynastic claim to the Spanish throne for herself and her descendents, so no this is NOT somehow a trick to give my monarch a claim on someone else's country's throne.