Re: Olympia: Disasters

From: cedman@tucson.princeton.edu (Carl F. Edman)

Date: Fri, 11 Aug 1995 00:00:00 +0000

In article <40843k$po7@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com>,
Robert Christopher Butchko <rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com> wrote:
> Well, my opinion of various factions is ever-evolving, but let me say a
> few things:  Bastrestric and Dogmatix _make_ the game for me.  Without
> them (and their ilk, such as we have) the game would be much poorer.
> Their interaction (and, I'll admit, BtA has not fried my mage, nor has

Have you checked lately ? :) Now that BtA has single-handely (ok, with some
15 soldiers) eradicated MAFOC, he is looking for new exciting places to
go, thing to do and people to aura blast.

> Dogmatix razed my castle) makes the game global: their existence creates
> the game's "world," without which we have essentially a scurry-and-find
> game which might as well be single-player.  For everyone you meet, you
> wonder: are they AOO, and thus not to be trifled with, or are they with
> Dogmatix, and not to be trifled with?  There is an actual _political_
> undercurrent to the game.

I agree completely with you.  If there was no AOO/Marat/BtA they would
have to be invented.  I just wish Dogmatix still deserved his reputation.
But since Dogmatix got killed and laid to rest the second time, he just
has been in hiding and not made any trouble for anybody.  I imagine he
worries that the true leader of his faction, Getafix, would get one of
those _really_ bad headaches.

>    As some evil mage once wrote, this is not a utopian agrarian simulation,
> but a fantasy wargame.

Again, I agree completely with you agreeing with me.

>    The only person I wouldn't team up with in g2 would be someone who
> cheated the game, not someone who lied to me.  If there's a sociopath
> out there who plays the game well, but lives to betray, well, that
> just means I'll play the same drama twice.  If a player betrays me in
> g1, I'd still play with him in g2 if I admired his playing style.  That's
> gameplaying.  I hope that I'd protect myself better against all treachery
> after being burned once, but I would not shun him.  That's crossgaming.

Well, that is a very ticklish subject.  In principle I think you are
right.  Players shouldn't even be aware of which nobles are controlled by
which other players.  Unfortunately that ideal is virtually impossible to
achieve without a virtually Orwellian control of the lives of the players
by the moderator.  Given that the real life personas and characters are
invariably going to end up being mixed anyway, I think it is just
prudent to draw conclusions about characters on the basis of who controls
them.

> Aside to Carl Edman, defining BtA: What?!!!  Your evil sorcerer is
> immutably loyal to his alliance?  How is that?  You're telling me that
> this evil guy will forswear increasing his power by moving against
> weaklings in his own faction or by taking over his faction.  I don't
> know about that.  The only way he should be loyal to his faction
> would be if he headed the faction.  Otherwise, he should be open to
> offers from IN, or the Gauls, etc.   It sounds suspiciously like BtA
> is trimming the sails of his character to make sure that he will
> always have the AOO to protect him and will never need worry about
> the AOO turning on him.  Some of Carl's "goodness" (I know, I know,
> but just humor the concept) has rubbed off on BtA, and altered him
> from the archetype.

You are right.  As a person I've been conditioned to find it emotionally
very diffcult to abuses anybody elses trust.  As a consequence even BtA
would find it very difficult to be completely ruthless in that regard.
Rather than fight this out, I've just decided to make loyalty a
characteristic of BtA as well.  And don't you think that villains with a
few positive qualities are much more interesting characters than simple
personifications of elemental evil ?

It is also true that while the AOO doesn't have leaders (our enemies find
that hard to understand, but the characters involved make anything else
infeasible), BtA is probably the closest thing that the AOO has to a
founder.  And of course the Gauls, the IN, MAFOC, the Guardians of the
Light (or whatever those new pests are called), couldn't afford BtA
anyway.  After all, they have nothing he couldn't just take if he wanted
it.

Carl Edman (with a little help from BtA)

References

Olympia: Disasters
rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko)
Wed, 26 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia: Disasters
morrow@gandalf.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Wed, 02 Aug 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia: Disasters
tandmb@sierra.net (Tony & Marcia Baldacci)
Thu, 03 Aug 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia: Disasters
rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko)
Tue, 08 Aug 1995 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Olympia: Disasters
rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko)
Wed, 26 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia: Disasters
morrow@gandalf.rutgers.edu (John Morrow)
Wed, 02 Aug 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia: Disasters
tandmb@sierra.net (Tony & Marcia Baldacci)
Thu, 03 Aug 1995 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Olympia: Disasters
rcb@kaiwan009.kaiwan.com (Robert Christopher Butchko)
Tue, 08 Aug 1995 00:00:00 +0000