Pre-industrial Fantasy STGOD OOC/Rules Thread:

[Esquire]

I see your silly hats, and raise you the following magnificent headgear:


So there.

[Imperial528]

Meanwhile in Ohio...

[Eternal_Freedom]

*Orion shuffles off wearing their top hats and muttering about sartorial decadence of foreign believers...

[Raw Shark]

[snip slavery]

I kind of figured, but our merchants would still offer, for the disturbing factor. We don't have any high quality slaves currently available for sale, but we are capable of shipping in bulk, Y'know, for future reference.

The idea of a financial deal with the Aztecs is... hm. Interesting. The official stance of the Ohioan church is that you're devil-worshippers just as much as the Detroiters are, correction, more so than the Detroiters are; there are such a wide variety of devils out there. It's why we made chocolate illegal. It is far too yummy to be a normal food, so it is obviously a demonic trick!

Here in Aztlan, we draw the distinction between gods and demons by the fact that demons can possibly be summoned and controlled, and the gods cannot. The rest is folklore and practical details. Also, just for the record, the stars are the 4000 hostile brothers of Huitzilopactli, on our end, who he must repeatedly kill to save the world, so not exactly rosy on the non-secular side over here, either.

I like the idea of having some of the annuities be purchased by the Aztecs, now I just need to work out how to make it work and what to do with it.

The faithful who worship Yacatecuhtli are, by their nature, very familiar with shady and/or proxy forms of commerce. Just sayin'.

On a side note, hats definitely exert subtle influence on Ohioan decision-making. Ohioan hats are, in all their baroque glory, superior to almost any others, and Aztecs may be among the few peoples capable of giving them hat envy.

Yeah, I've been planning to make the hat rivalry a thing ever since you started talking about it and I learned that there were Nottomans.

[madd0ct0r]

Well, once again you have all this stuff about 'durability' and 'mass' and 'speed' and I honestly don't understand what it's all supposed to be for.

You can get my take on the point values of light fighting ships by looking at my entry in the Order of Battle thread, which doesn't have a complete army order of battle but does list all my ships, though not the precise locations where they all operate.

The lightest vessels which can realistically be described as a "warship" would include things like an oar-powered riverboat with a dozen or so rowers, a swivel gun, and a squad of marines. I place that at 25 points, plus or minus a few. Galleys armed with small numbers of cannon would tend upwards into the high double digits.

A ship-rigged sloop of war with 12-20 guns of medium caliber would be, I estimate, typically around 200 points. A heavy frigate with about twice the guns, a thicker hull, and probably some heavier artillery might push up to 500-600, and ships of the line could easily be worth 1000 points or so. This has the advantage that a nation with 300000 points could roughly reproduce the historical Royal Navy of the late age of sail... but only at the cost of much of their points, as Britain invested most of their points into the RN in real life.

Cool, that's enough to calibrate it, and now you get a more textual description of the ships too

[madd0ct0r]

Guess who's got two thumbs and a story post up? This guy!

Light on plot developments, but I'm just trying to introduce my nation and one of the prime characters. Let me know what you all think!

I enjoyed that. A ptsd whirling dervish with such casual command of the elements he cooks his tea on it. An empire fractured by civil war each generation and with institutions that weather each storm. Glorious builders, technological and magical leaders hamstrung by their own fratricidal royal family.

What of the sisters?

[Eternal_Freedom]

This being the second STGOD I've been involved in, it never fails to amuse me how the otherwise (normally) sensible and rational (and generally liberal) denizens of SDN can come up with the most twisted and fucked up nation-concepts for these games.

I thought I was bad for planning a borderline-fascist Kingdom last game. Given my own history with RPG characters, it's really fucking weird for me to be playing a, ahem, "sane and sensible" faction.

[Simon_Jester]

[Makes notes of other things that were said]

I see your silly hats, and raise you the following magnificent headgear:


So there.

You are most definitely our peers in hattitude, oh brethren of the lower Ohio!

[Ohioans have an inordinate fondness for feathers on hats and esteem them highly. Consequently they underestimate the magnificence of the less-beplumed Ottoman hats, while being horribly jealous of the Aztec hats]

[In other news, I am extremely bad at Googling images of glorious baroque European hats from the relevant period of roughly 1550-1700]

[Eternal_Freedom]

Orion renews and reaffirms it's condemnation of such decadence. Such a waste of material! And the problems of raising doorways and ceilings to avoid having to remove such headgear...tsk.

Just wonder, Ohio, how much has your nation spent on fancy hats for it's rulers in the last centuries? Enough for a frigate? Two? Such illogical waste!

[Esquire]

Oh, we have feathers too - they're just attached differently. We can transfer feathers and expensive shiny things between turbans, for maximum efficiency in our decadence.

Plus, you can but five or six of those on one hat, creating a glorious megaturban!

[Raw Shark]

Expensive quetzal feathers are a small price to pay for the esteem of the bloodthirsty masses or deities. Dressing up can mean life or death in Aztlan.

Mega turbans and the like are less common, but present. Employed among the cosmopolitan wealthy, such as the quetzal-clad merchant envoys, but also more among the priests than the nobility, who mostly rely on their personal charisma and / or forces to remind the crowd of who they are and why they matter when fame isn't sufficient.

[Simon_Jester]

You may have us out-jeweled and out-feathered, but can you do wacky?

[Esquire]

I... what. Sorry, I had a clever response all planned out, then I realized that the woman on the left is wearing a boat on her head. Silliest hat prize conceded.

[Raw Shark]

I am also going to concede the wacky point, here. My headgear shit is, without a doubt, wacky, but I have officially been outdone and am not topping that, without embedded cannon or like six feet of quetzal feathers...

[Beowulf]

Since we're on these topics: Drachenimperium diplomats do generally have plenipotentiary authority. This includes those to Orion (but they have special training to keep the Orionians out of their head (you can try to force it, but you risk autopyrokinesis)). That said, ship logs and diplomatic journals are magically twinned (what's written in one appears in another).

Slave labor per se doesn't exist, but indentured servitude does, and the Kingdom of Holstein is notoriously ravenous for them to work the sugar plantations. Some trade with the Aztecs probably exists to acquire these.

Ohio exports to the Drachenimperium likely includes significant numbers of horses, which could be part of the trade concessions for the 24pdr cannon (18pdrs don't have field carriages)

[Simon_Jester]

So, to summarize...

The Aztecs win on plumes and on death-metal cred.

And the Ottomans definitely have the edge on in resplendent jeweled headgear, also in modular design for the superior engineering win.

Ohio wins on actual fabric hat geometry. Also on most goofy overall result.

Now we just need a neutral party to host the Best Hat competition...

Orion renews and reaffirms it's condemnation of such decadence. Such a waste of material! And the problems of raising doorways and ceilings to avoid having to remove such headgear...tsk.

Just wonder, Ohio, how much has your nation spent on fancy hats for it's rulers in the last centuries? Enough for a frigate? Two? Such illogical waste!

No. Regrets.

[Imperial528]

...I've gotten more stuff filled in on my map here: http://i.imgur.com/wJyOz8n.png...

...For a key, solid squares are mundane cities, empty squares are fortified towns or military bastions, and circles are mage cities....

Correction: Diamonds are the fortified towns or bastions, hollow squares are large towns/small cities.

Now, Simon, I've thought of a microstate:

The Duchy of Worcester

Worcester is a small city on the shores of Erie, and the jewel of Worcestershire. For the continued well being of any travelers or tourists that find themselves in either Worcester or its shire, do not bring this connection to light.

For the past fifty years, Worcester has been simmering on the embers of a cold war that so wishes to be a civil war. There has always been animosity between the entrepreneurial nobles of the city and the land owners of the countryside, the peasantry often treated as pawns in their squabbles. For over a century, there was little more than economic rivalry and smatterings of racial tensions between the primarily Norman city and the mostly Anglish country. Major conflict usually withered and died in the face of more pressing matters, such as fending off the influence of the Anglo Crown or aiding their southern neighbors in wars against the nearby Germanic empire.

Worcester's joining with the Adirondack Commonwealth some hundred and fifty years ago prevented such outlets of aggression, leading to rising tensions. Yet hope arose from the marriage of Duke Alberic III of House Granville with Lady Eleanor Baxter, a union of political aim, meant to produce an Anglo-Norman bloodline to smooth over both the racial and economic differences between the city and the shire.

However, the tragic death of their eldest and favored son, Gerald, shattered the fledgling dynasty. Alberic contracted a bought of madness and depression, passing away under suspicious circumstances barely five years later during a retreat with the Duchess at her family's estate. Within months, various members of both the Granville and Baxter families began to meet untimely deaths, and the Duchess, fearing for her own life and the safety of her surviving children, fled to parts unknown.

The City of Worcester, without any clear heir, appointed Lord Guilbert Dorsey as Interim Governor. As Governor, Lord Dorsey's rule has been harsh, perhaps cruel at times, but has kept order. The now elderly Governor has begun to hear the call of the reaper, and with no clear heir from the Alberic's line, nor the political unity to declare a new ruler, it is likely that his death will shatter the weakened government, potentially leaving Worcester in a state of civil war.

[Simon_Jester]

Worcester is a small city on the shores of Erie, and the jewel of Worcestershire. For the continued well being of any travelers or tourists that find themselves in either Worcester or its shire, do not bring this connection to light.

...Huh? I'm a bit confused by this text. Ah, wait, I see... the aforementioned conflict.

For the past fifty years, Worcester has been simmering on the embers of a cold war that so wishes to be a civil war. There has always been animosity between the entrepreneurial nobles of the city and the land owners of the countryside, the peasantry often treated as pawns in their squabbles. For over a century, there was little more than economic rivalry and smatterings of racial tensions between the primarily Norman city and the mostly Anglish country. Major conflict usually withered and died in the face of more pressing matters, such as fending off the influence of the Anglo Crown or aiding their southern neighbors in wars against the nearby Germanic empire.

I'd refrain from referencing explicit cultural names so closely inspired by real life. Make up your own, since if there are Normans it begs the question of "where are Normans from?" in a way that there being... Greenbearers or whatever... doesn't.

But that can wait; your description works about as well if you replace them with [Ethnicity A], [Ethnicity B], and so on.

Worcester's joining with the Adirondack Commonwealth some hundred and fifty years ago prevented such outlets of aggression, leading to rising tensions. Yet hope arose from the marriage of Duke Alberic III of House Granville with Lady Eleanor Baxter, a union of political aim, meant to produce an Anglo-Norman bloodline to smooth over both the racial and economic differences between the city and the shire.

So they're already a member state of your confederacy? Is that correct?

The City of Worcester, without any clear heir, appointed Lord Guilbert Dorsey as Interim Governor. As Governor, Lord Dorsey's rule has been harsh, perhaps cruel at times, but has kept order. The now elderly Governor has begun to hear the call of the reaper, and with no clear heir from the Alberic's line, nor the political unity to declare a new ruler, it is likely that his death will shatter the weakened government, potentially leaving Worcester in a state of civil war.

Question: where are these guys, exactly?

The Ohioan border on Lake Erie terminates, oh... somewhere comfortably to the east of OTL Cleveland, but no further east than OTL Ashtabula, Ohio. I'll let you decide where, actually.

How close are they to me?

[Jub]

My people may not have the most esteemed hats around, but I think we get by.







We also have some pretty cool masks.







-----

On a less headdress related note, I should have a new storyline starting soon. I think that it will document the movement of a load of slaves from Hope down to Tarn. I also have a few other smaller ideas that should be done in a single post to ensure that I get things up more regularly.

[Raw Shark]

Y'know, it took me this long to think to myself, "Wait, if we never got pillaged by Spain, we still have all that 'gold' stuff that the whiteys love so much laying around everywhere, too." [facepalm]

So yeah, much more efficient shipments of hard currency than I was picturing are possible if a financial deal is reached with the Aztecs.

On the subject of my navy, I'm picturing my ships being worth about the same as the Orion Empire's, in a different but equal sort of way. We're both hella fast, and our other advantages mostly cancel each other out, IMHO: They almost always have us outgunned, we can almost always pick our battles; we can almost never dislodge them from a specific position, and they can almost never get the drop on us or pin us down, without an overwhelming commitment of force in either case; they're magically reinforced against being intimidated by our death metal schtick, we're too terrified of the higher powers and desensitized by constant exposure to grisly carnage to be intimidated by their huge guns; they have telepathic comms, we have swarms of fangy goat-bats trained to go for the youngest, skinniest victims first, etc. However, despite individual ship values, I'm spread all over the place with Pacific*, Caribbean, and east Atlantic fleets defending my interests, so I'd be severely on my back foot if he came directly for my east coast, or especially the Azores, with everything he's got. Sound about right?

* Despite the current lack of major PC threats from the West Coast, we keep numerous frigates and even a few ships of the line over there, because of shark men, piracy, and this little kaiju problem a couple decades ago that's had us kind of jumpy ever since.

[Raw Shark]

Ghetto Edit: Regarding the slave trade, we're definitely shipping them to the Dragon Empire, but demand is probably lower there than in our immediate neighbor, Tarn. While the wealthy hemovores such as certain vampires there probably favor the high-quality blood bags imported by the Sylix, the Aztecs are more the McDonald's of the meat market, providing a quick full belly with little flavor or nutrional value for relatively dirt cheap prices.

We don't ask questions about what Not!Texas does with them.

[The Romulan Republic]

Esquire, I sent you the preliminary post for the necromancer storyline by PM. Let me know what you think. If you have no objections, I should be able to post it in the story thread tonight at the latest.

Again, I'll probably be largely inactive until next Sunday or Monday (my Tuesdays through Saturdays are quite busy until the end of the month), but I will try to get at least one more post up (not sure which of my story lines it'll be for).

Apologies once again for the delays.

[madd0ct0r]

Simon - when you do start to move in earnest against detroit, could you have some summoners flee north? It'd make a useful plot hook for me.

Jub - after I wrap up the battle with EF I might start fleshing out some rival magocracy kingdoms in the borderlands if that's ok? Quite small individually, probably each centered around a tower or keep.

[Jub]

Jub - after I wrap up the battle with EF I might start fleshing out some rival magocracy kingdoms in the borderlands if that's ok? Quite small individually, probably each centered around a tower or keep.

Feel free to have them interact with me if you'd like. The Sylix would probably have an interesting if yet undecided reaction to having the undead so close to their borders.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Y'know, it took me this long to think to myself, "Wait, if we never got pillaged by Spain, we still have all that 'gold' stuff that the whiteys love so much laying around everywhere, too." [facepalm]

So yeah, much more efficient shipments of hard currency than I was picturing are possible if a financial deal is reached with the Aztecs.

On the subject of my navy, I'm picturing my ships being worth about the same as the Orion Empire's, in a different but equal sort of way. We're both hella fast, and our other advantages mostly cancel each other out, IMHO: They almost always have us outgunned, we can almost always pick our battles; we can almost never dislodge them from a specific position, and they can almost never get the drop on us or pin us down, without an overwhelming commitment of force in either case; they're magically reinforced against being intimidated by our death metal schtick, we're too terrified of the higher powers and desensitized by constant exposure to grisly carnage to be intimidated by their huge guns; they have telepathic comms, we have swarms of fangy goat-bats trained to go for the youngest, skinniest victims first, etc. However, despite individual ship values, I'm spread all over the place with Pacific*, Caribbean, and east Atlantic fleets defending my interests, so I'd be severely on my back foot if he came directly for my east coast, or especially the Azores, with everything he's got. Sound about right?

* Despite the current lack of major PC threats from the West Coast, we keep numerous frigates and even a few ships of the line over there, because of shark men, piracy, and this little kaiju problem a couple decades ago that's had us kind of jumpy ever since.

Your comparisons sounds about right to me. One thing that has occurred to me is that my Navy is pretty light on ships of the line, since when I wrote my OOB I didn't think there were any other major maritime powers for battleships to fight, hence the 70 frigates and 100 sloops but only 12 battleships.

I think I may use my first year's 50,000 point expansion (or whatever the figure was) to expand my capital ship fleet.

EDIT: Also, I'm thinking that Orion does not like the slave trade and may begin looking at more effective ways of stopping it than diplomatic protests soon.