Vlad reference
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I bought the game on steam so I am replaying it. And I have 5 of anarchy that I dont know where it come from Now I have to replay again to get rid of that incredible hight violence. Also I have more weapons than men.
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I need a urgent help from players. Evil Gandhi needs you.
I choose have an affair with Héctor my cousin years ago. Made a pact with her sister to she gave me all his men movements I choose use it to avoid Hector.
Well something there makes me magically gain 5 anarchy.
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Maybe it’s the anarchy from Horion’s death? If you don’t kill him and hide the body, then you get an anarchy hit around then
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Of course, I didnt kill them or harm them. But the rumours . Damn rumours
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By the way - it is possible to end the game with negative anarchy. Order maxxing
Also irduwhen
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it was years ago the negative yes. I go roleplaying pure so I cant mix max for it.
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For anyone wondering about the contents of the Stoicheia of Hyron: Randall Munro has just summed it all up. 
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“革命不是请客吃饭，不是做文章，不是绘画绣花，不能那么雅致，不能那么从容不迫，文质彬彬，温良恭俭让。革命是起义，是一个阶级推翻另一个阶级的暴力行为。”
“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
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XoR readers who are fans of Mao will have the option to follow his dicta on violence.
Fans of non-violent revolution will, as in the real world, have options that go beyond dinner parties.
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What about something in between?
Dinner parties and gold for potential allies, armed insurgencies and steel against our enemies.
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There are certainly benefits to the Gandhian line, but reality teaches us
The weapon of criticism cannot, replace criticism by weapons
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Search “nonviolence” on this thread for why “the Gandhian line” isn’t the most compelling way to understand nonviolent resistance, as well as plenty of historical cases where nonviolent mobilization (rather than “criticism by weapons”) was the decisive factor in breaking an oppressive regime.
If you want to respond to the stuff I’ve already written, I’m happy to engage…but if your response is limited to pithy slogans, I’m happy to let those stand unanswered while I keep writing the game.
And @Zamfir, sure, you can make some use of dinner parties regardless of your tactical orientation. “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.”
PS - I should note that this last line has become one of my young sons’ favorites, though they prefer the less dinner-party-appropriate versions with “shamrocks” and “shampoo.”
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Funnily enough this implies that dinner parties will indeed be one of the options.
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That could also be a violent option hypothetically speaking.
“Are there bitter almonds in this soup?”
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Funny thing you can make a non violent event terribly frightening for your enemies.
Imagine Evil Gandhi in a march for a city no weapons visible only silently launching over all the homes and businesses all nobles rose water and red powder. Thousands in silence. then going away.
A violently act can be fear but is something that they have seen violence and blood.
But a mixed group of all states of society following a religious leader in silence but symbolicly marking your city and then gone all.
That’s something that could really shock a ruling class.
That is a real political revolution not a rebellion
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I mean, how can you engage in peaceful evolution with such backward productive forces and a worldview that lacks universal values? Take the non-cooperation movement in India back then as an example, one is that a global consensus has been formed on anti-colonialism, and the colonial powers belong to the lost cause, and the other is that, with the rise of Europe and the United States during the post-industrial period, the hegemonic position of the United Kingdom has been frequently challenged, and with East-West warfare, self-concerns, as well as the global downward economic pressure, all had to force Britain to make changes. Of course, if the Indian people had not actively taken the means of resistance, the powers that be would certainly not have voluntarily relinquished their power. South Africa, on the other hand, is in a difficult situation both internally and externally. It has been embargoed by the United States and the Soviet Union for interfering in the world, and has suffered successive setbacks in Angola.
Like Bangladesh, the government hung the bodies of eighty students in the square to deter the public, the students and the people turned their heads to kill the police, to kill the family members of the ruling party members, to publicize the identity of the police to kill the whole family, so that the lackeys of the powers that be to be cut off from their children and their grandchildren, and that is why the police in Bangladesh did not dare to run rampant in the city to flee in fear and the victory of the students.
I mean, for demonstrations against taxes or certain policies, relying on city dwellers to march may be effective, but you want to destroy the regime and subvert so many vested interests without relying on violent means which is unlikely to happen
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I mean, if the peace route is fixated on cooperation with the powers that be, without the goal of overthrowing the entire regime, then it seems much more middle of the road and also much more normal
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Thanks to the magic system of the gameworld, the productive forces aren’t as backward as all that–it’s an early industrial world in many of its economic systems, though the first game is set on its barely-industrialized periphery. I’m also not a believer in a strictly determininstic link between systems of production and political possibilities, e.g. Marxian historicist schemes. In particular, I don’t see a reason to think nonviolent transformation is only possible under certain modes of production.
I’d be very interested to hear more about why you think the opposite. Modern modes of production certainly increase our capacity for oppressive violence; what would you say are the distinctive aspects of modern production that increase our capacity for nonviolent mobilization?
As for “universal values,” I disagree that there was anything resembling a global anti-colonial consensus during Gandhi’s time. There were still plenty of Europeans, both in and out of power, who believed whole-heartedly in the White Man’s Burden and the need for colonial populations to continue to be governed by “less backward” nations. True, there were also plenty of Europeans who’d come to see the wrongness of that view…but the “universal values” at play there were justice and compassion, which could have been and were applied to issues of colonialism and slavery centuries before Gandhi. That moral shift wasn’t waiting around for the invention of the steam engine before it could spread more widely.
On this we agree. Nonviolent resistance still has to be resistance–intentionally working to challenge and hamper the oppressive regime–if it’s to be more than passive quietism.
But resistance doesn’t have to be violent. Corazon Aquino and Cardinal Sin chose a different path against the police of the Marcos regime than the Bangladeshi protestors have chosen, even though the Philippine dictatorship’s many murders and massacres had included the assassination of Aquino’s husband. Their peaceful mass movement led not just to the fall of the regime but to a successful tradition to a more just and democratic successor regime. I hope the same is true for Bangladesh, rather than this turning into just another cycle in the country’s decades-old politics of revenge. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
I agree that nonviolent movements often end up being coopted into elite bargains that preserve many of the oppressive elements of the regime. And that will certainly be a road that’s open to MCs in Choice of Rebels.
But then, violent movements also very often end up replicating the worst injustices of the regime they were fighting against – sometimes by making common cause with old regime figures, and sometimes because that’s simply the most familiar, well-trodden route for them to hold and use power. A cycle where one blood-harvesting empire is replaced with another that’s fundamentally the same besides the fact that you and your friends are on top would similarly be “much more normal.”
Holding to a genuinely revolutionary vision of a system not based in Harrowing will be hard, when there are so many tempting options for either being coopted into or just taking over the corpse of the old regime. A non-violent movement will have significant advantages in one of the primary possibilities: the massive administrative challenge of replacing Harrowing with a nonlethal blood taxation system comprehensive enough to cover the core duties of a functioning gameworld state.
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Man can’t wait till game five when I see someone’s MC, who started as an chainbreaking idealist turn into Stalin or mao or the best communist leader Pol pot.
Anyway I believe Authoritarianism is quite Inevitable amongst violent MC’s. Power is precious and no one will ever give it up to some Aristo or peasant, nor the mages who work under them.
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