Sudanna

oh boy! That's how the Nalyd looks most days. That's how the Nalyd looks when it's not gross and tired. Note the distinct patterns on the chest: Nalyds often use these markings to communicate. This is how the Nalyd looks when it's exploring abandoned factories. That's how the Nalyd looks outside. Roaming makes Nalyds happy. And this is the Nalyd returned to its den.

My schedule is as completely empty as always.

I've just now watched Nightcrawler, which was also pretty good. It's about a ruthless psychopath building a successful small business.

I think I've only watched two movies from 2014, Gone Girl and The Homesman. They're both real good and I completely recommend them. Gone Girl is a crime drama revolving around a failed marriage between two [censored]ups. It's got a ton of twists throughout and ends up nothing like it first appears. It's serious and dark, but both of the [censored]ups end up being tragic, relatable(or at least understandable) people. It's also got people both condemning and hailing it as both feminist and misogynist, which is a good sign of actual complexity. The Homesman is a western in which a frontier lady has to cart three of her neighbors back to civilization because they've gone insane and can't be cared for. She gets a guy to help her along the ~5 week journey through wild, unsettled country. It's generally reserved and mostly about those two characters and their relationship(not like that) and what the three ladies they're taking care of bring out in them.

Same here.

A rigorously-defined setting can be fun. Or it can be restrictive. One thing to do is involve prospective players in the world-building process.

The problem that I've seen with GMed play-by-post RPs is that people have to either a ) Consult with the GM a lot, slowing things down to a crawl. b ) Post everything in very short segments so the GM can make their direction clear, also slowing things down to a crawl. Or c ) Ignore the GM until they get told to change something, which nobody likes doing. It depends on how much GM involvement there is, but still. Also, there's the problem of forum RPs just not being nearly as popular or sustainable as they used to be. There've been a few tries to start new ones on CR and on here in the last few years, but they haven't caught on. I think forum RPs might be dead.

Thanks, everyone. I joined SW ten years ago, when I was ten. It's been a constant presence in my life throughout my entire adolescence, and will hopefully keep being so into adulthood. I know I'm not the only one, but it still gives me ~emotions~ to think about. And as pathetic as it sounds, that was probably the single most important moment in my life. This has been a pretty neat place for a video game forum.

In that case, the one from Vergil to me should have an arrow pointing to me.

Slarty got to learn how completely useless I am to hang out with. What does the arrow from Wz. As to Drakefyre signify, again?

It would still be running in a little box in windowed mode, it'd just be a window instead of on a black background.

Yeah, the second part of the traditional greeting is. . . really not necessary in this case.

You are wise to ask these questions, Dintiradan, but they will not bear fruit. My master has only two other vassals, each weaker than I, and neither inclined to help. One, the Sheikh of Dailam, is his own son: An unworthy fool. He cares nothing for justice, or work of any kind, spending his days surrounded by women and food. While the other, the Sheikh of Gilan, favors the emir far more than myself: He is a snake, bowing and scraping, but always biding his time, always testing for any threat to his own power. As for my brother. . . An indulgent wastrel, who loves the squandering of coin over anything else. He at least has no drive that would put him in my way. He is old, and unmarried, and unfit for rule. One half of the Karen will have to be enough.

Chapter 1: A Marriage of Hungers It is January 1st, 769. I'm getting married! Zohreh possesses a keen ability for management. The Depaid are only barely a noble house, and Zohreh is singularly unpleasant to be around, but neither of us are in this for love or fame. We're in it for the power. Perhaps I should start at the beginning. I am Vandad Hormozd, son of Karen, son of Vandad, son of Balash, son of Alanda, son of Karen, son of Sukhra, son of Zarmihr, son of Alanda, son of Sukhra, son of Balash, son of Zarmihr, son of Karen, who founded the house of Karen. My family line is too long to fit on one page. . . . However, Karen Karen was the son of Perozamat Karen-Pahlav, son of Vehsachan, son of Erdewan, son of Perozamat, son of Erdewan, son of Karen, who founded House Karen-Pahlav. No, we aren't done yet. . . . However, Karen Karen-Pahlav was the son of Erdewan Arsacid, son of Balaxš, son of Vonon, son of Phraates, son of Orodes, son of Phraates, son of Sanatruces, who was the first of my ancestors to rule Persia, being asked to rule after the death of Mithridates the Great in 88 BCE. Of course, we were kings among the Parthians before even then, but I don't wish to bore you. Alas, the pictured tree only goes back to Vonon. The Karen have waxed and waned over the last nine hundred years, but we have always been lords. In fact, the Karen are the oldest surviving noble house in the known world, however low our ebb may be at the moment. And that lineage won't be ending with me, thanks to today. Today is the key to a great many things. I'm going to kill my liege. Right, right, start at the beginning. Pictured: a lazy, cowardly fool who at least knows his place. This is my master, Emir Sorkhab Bavandid. One of the last remnants of the house of Sasan, who drove Persia into ruin. He serves the Caliph, his emirate a consolation for the empire his forefathers lost. Sorkhab is an idle coward that fancies himself a warrior. Sorkhab grovels at his master's feet and contents himself with fantasies rather than fight to restore his birthright. The house of Sasan long ago lost its power, and Sorkhab could never be the one to restore it. I hate him. I am going to finally destroy his cursed bloodline, the bloodline that let Persia fall. I am going to take everything he has. It begins the moment Zohreh and I sign the marriage contract. Now, I can devote myself entirely to my plotting. You see, the Emir's family has withered significantly under the heel of the Abbasid. The Bavandid are almost as reduced as the Karen. The Emir has only one son, and only one grandson, and there ends the line of succession. His titles will fall to his vassals, and I am the foremost among them. Additionally, I will have the privilege of finally ending his blighted house, and so scatter the last ashes of the Sasanian Empire, which held the Karen in servitude for so long. Vengeance will be sweet.

I mean, when people say that an average citizen is complicit in the actions of the state they're living under, they're not usually saying that that person needs to be punished because they're bad. They're saying that they should try to make things better as best they can, because they are in a small way responsible.

I don't think very much radical politics is centered around a bloody reckoning against everyone complicit in current immoral systems. Mostly, it's about not doing those immoral systems anymore and doing something else instead. Not vengeance.

There was Persia. Then there was Rome. And, for a thousand years, they held each other by the throat. Wars were waged from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, blood soaked deep from Arabia to Anatolia. They were the sum of civilization, the two sharp horns of empire, and their rivalry never broke. Then came Islam. Rome, already a wraith, was broken, never to recover. Persia was devoured. It is January 1st, 769. Persia stirs within the belly. --- This is not the first time Persia has fallen. The first Persia was the Achaemenid. This is the empire that fought the Greeks, that broke Egypt, that built Persepolis, and that fell to Alexander. The second Persia was the Parthian. This is the empire snatched back from Alexander's successors, the empire of horse archer tribes, that fought the Roman republic and the empire, and that fell to its own subjects. The third Persia was the Sasanian. This is the empire that saw the rise of Christianity and reformed and codified Zorastrianism in response, the empire that personally destroyed two Roman emperors, that laid waste to the Levant and was laid waste to in return, that was emptied by plague, and that fell to the first and greatest Caliphs. There may yet be a fourth. --- In the third Persia, there were seven great Parthian houses that struggled against each other and the shahanshah for power. They have been destroyed, except for one - The Karen live on, in the bodies of two men, small and distant subjects of the Abbasid Caliph. They have been lords since the second Persia, and one is a lord still, if only just. The Sheikh Vandad Hormozd Karen, lord of Dihistan and Gurgan, carries with him the seeds of Persia's rebirth. But will they take root? The world, as we know it. The Sheikh himself, and his holdings. --- I hope you guys remember the last one. Poor old Emir Hasan, lost to the vagaries of digital storage. It's the same general setup - this is going to be in-character, after this intro, and audience input is encouraged. We're starting in almost the same place as last time, but there's been a few changes to CKII since then - most notably, the Charlemagne expansion moved the start date back almost a hundred years. Just as a note, I am running a few mods, but only one should really be visible or effect gameplay. The Better Gender Laws mod unlocks a few in-game options for succession laws and female rulers or council members, so we could eventually play as an especially enlightened feudal monarch, if we so wished. I hope you enjoy reading.

Gender, whether it's two boxes, a bipolar scale, or an endless collection of word salads, will always be a limited system of behavioral taxonomy that encourages or discourages certain people to do or be certain things. People should do and be what they want without social coercion. It's bad enough that people are given a sex without their input. That there is an attendant, entirely social structure in gender is just unnecessary.

Do you enjoy discussing controversial topics? Yup, let's fight. What is your stance on abortion? If you get knocked up and don't want a kid, blast that thing. Where do you stand concerning the laws centered around LGBT? Laws are bad. Do you believe extraterrestrials. Prolly. What is your stance on globalization. Nope. I like diversification and balkanization. What is your stance on animal captivity. I don't care about subhumans. What is your stance on feminism? I like it. I don't do anything, though. What is your stance on gun laws? Guns are neat. I want some. I'm willing to exchange human suffering for neat things. Do you believe in a god? Nope. Do you believe the extinction of mankind will come in the short-term or long-term as compared to the geological timescale. Dunno.

dude, i answered your question in the first reply, come on, get on game.

"Late capitalism" would seem to imply a rather unjustified hope that it'll be over any time soon.

Yep. We are all morally responsible for all elements of the systems we are even the remotest part of. The best thing to do is to give up and despair.

*cough* http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/19034-nalyd-teaches-you-how-to-run-geneforge-1-4-in-a-window-in-ten-easy-steps/

I didn't mention luck, for a reason. I know Edgwyn did, but yeah. What exactly is being abstracted by hit points is up to you, of course, and it can make as much or as little sense as you're willing to give it, but a luck meter is at least as silly as hit points. Continuing with the way I contextualize hit points, hit points are actually your ability to continue functioning in spite of damage, and so healing spells are actual healing spells - they repair minor injuries, steady your nerves, refresh your strength, whatever. It's not a buff, it's undoing what's been lost. A stat buff often does provide some increased ability to survive or avoid damage, but that depends on even more minutiae around what game mechanics actually mean, and that's generally up for interpretation. Much like above, it can make as much or as little sense as you're willing to let it. In my head, hit points are the kind of thing where one guy can take a kick in the gut and keep fighting, while another guy will go down right there, and that's sort of the level of injuries being delivered here. The depletion of hit points is how long until someone's taken too much damage to effectively defend themselves from someone trying to kill them. Only the final blow is gonna be an even potentially mortal one, but the more minor injuries you take, the less able you're gonna be to avoid it. So, a healing spell would not provide stat bonuses, because those stats refer to other methods of defense, like dodging or having good armor. It should be self-evident why more physical characters get more hit points, if that's what hit points represent. A big beefy dude can take an elbow to the face or a nasty cut on the arm better than a twig, and will continue fighting better afterwards, the better to continue deflecting or avoiding or mitigating potentially lethal attacks. If you've ever actually seen medieval european martial arts or , it can be a lot easier to picture what someone being "worn down" in this kind of fight looks like.