Choice of Rebels Part 1 WIP thread

@Ramidel: Yes, cosmopolitan currently means embracing Karagondization and the loss of your own culture. There is no room for multiculturalism in either the definition of cosmopolitan or the definition of nationalism. The game also assumes that even when you’re speaking to an all Shayardene audience, word will always get out to non-Shayardenes that you somehow are not interested in working together against the hegenomy just because you used a “touchstone” or “totem”. It is not always so in real life. As @Zolataya has pointed out, @Havenstone’s writing is so nuanced in other ways, that the polarity of the duality scale doesn’t work that well.

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Not so much. For example, the option at the feast has you using the other nations’ names for themselves. In fact, the only “embracing Karagondization” that I can see that pushes your Cosmopolitan is the use of Koine (either in the camp or, passively, in your name). The rest of Cosmopolitan comes from openness and trying to understand the rest of the world (which admittedly shouldn’t be incompatible with wrapping yourself in the Shayardene flag).

I agree that the scale is a bit either-or, but it does make sense that embracing Shayardene-specific ideals will indicate (to your Shayardene and Whend audience, both of which are talking to others at various points - helot camps, for example) that your rebellion is Shayardene-nationalist in character, which is likely to turn off those who are not inspired by dreams of Shayard. Similarly, attempting to broadly appeal to all nations means not relying solely on Shayardene icons.

[quote=“Ramidel, post:3850, topic:1601, full:true”]

Not so much. For example, the option at the feast has you using the other nations’ names for themselves. [/quote]

Your own example illustrates my point. Nowhere in that choice does the MC talk about restoring or reviving the cultures and languages of the subject peoples. It’s entirely left as a very vague “My goal is to free all four provinces” which doesn’t necessarily mean turning back the clock on Karagondization. Most of the time however your audience is purely Shayardene, and when you talk about preserving Shayardene culture, you are deemed a nationalist, and thus not cosmopolitian.

The system as designed can’t handle either a nationalist or cosmopolitan who tells Whends that they need to save their culture from Karagonds intent on destorying it. It assumes nationalists don’t care about any culture aside from Shayard’s, while also assuming cosmopolitan’s have no interest in preserving any of the subject peoples cultures, either their own or anyone else’s.

For nearly the entire game as written so far your entire audience is Shayardene, and anything you say or do in supporting turning back the clock on Karagondization is scored as nationalist and not cosmopolitan. It doesn’t take into consideration that you’re simply targeting your words to your audience which is entirely Shayardene. Either you use the Shayardene words for other nationalities (+ nationalist) or you use the Koine words (+ cosmopolitan). There is no choice to use the words of other nationalities for themselves, and that bothers me.

It doesn’t necessarily mean using Karagond’s icons either. I’d much prefer to use Whend icons when speaking to Whends, but the game doesn’t provide that option. The word Whend itself is Shayardene, while the word Wiend is Koine. Surely we can ask a Whend what the Whend term is for a Whend and use that when speaking to Whends, correctly pronounced, instead of either Whend or Wiend.

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To be fair, after centuries of Karagondisation, I’m not sure there’s anything left worth preserving as thus far what’s left of “Shayardene” culture seems to be centered around a watered down version of the Xthonic religion and nostalgic nobles hankering for a past and a royal family none of them (or very few of them, but those very few are likely now theurges and Karagond staunchest supporters) have lived to see in action.
The nationalist path may work slightly better for Aristocrats as with their education they might actually know something about the old Shayardene culture, but Helots likely don’t or at least not enough that it becomes worth fighting for.
As for my mc personally the past is dead and done (for the most part), why seek to revive a pale imitation of it when you can build something new and better instead?
Yes, I know that elements of that past in the form of its best ideas will likely be incorporated into the vision for the future but the unneeded parts can stay dead.

I do agree that it is subject matter that doesn’t easily let itself be captured by an opposed stat however.

To be faithful @Havenstone would probably have to track both the views our characters really hold and what they choose to present to the public.
While I don’t think it’s wise for anyone but a high-charisma character you could certainly try to tailor your message to your audience, with the result that you become a typical, sleazy politician where 95% of what your character says is just rhetoric and you’re right that the current system has trouble with smoothly representing such a character.

Isolationism versus internationalism might work slightly better here, using the other nationalities own words and language would probably also be +nationalist under the current system, except that the mc as recognizably Shayardene would obviously make a poor Wiendish nationalist.

I’m kinda with you. I think it can be explained as the MC being new to this whole rebellion/leadership/politician thing and hasn’t had any call to be ideologically pure or really old enough to have that level of maturity. I also see the stats as being the perception of your rebellion rather than the MC’s personal characteristics. I know that doesn’t follow for every situation, but I have never been gated off from a choice based on any of those perception stats. I would expect to have been if my MC was personally so compassionate he couldn’t fathom hurting the brecklanders for instance.

To be faithful @Havenstone would probably have to track both the views our characters really hold and what they choose to present to the public.[/quote]

Yes. For the game to stay true to itself, a distinction between what the player says and thinks will need to ultimately be incorporated in some fashion or another, even if it’s simply a recognition that a player’s previous choices will not necessarily preclude different choices under different circumstances, and that things said or done in private will not immediately and necessarily affect the opinion of outside groups who have no way of knowing what was said. My biggest issue of all however is the current zero sum game between nationalism and cosmopolitan(ism). It should at times be possible to increase one without negatively impacting the other, and ending that zero sum game will also make it much easier to deal with the other issues mentioned above in a realistic manner.

Says the person who is willing to watch millions die in a Maoist style revolution on the slim chance that a better future -might- result. :stuck_out_tongue:

Tailoring your message to your audience isn’t just something that typical, sleazy politicians do, it’s something that ALL good communicators do in order to build the biggest possible coalition. The distinction is in the intent. Are you lying through your teeth? Or are you using your understanding of your audience to transmit your message in the way that they’d find most relateable? Are you doing it for your own aggrandizement? Or are you doing it to forge a better world for everyone? Those are the key distinctions.

[quote][quote=“P_Tigras, post:3851, topic:1601”]
Either you use the Shayardene words for other nationalities (+ nationalist) or you use the Koine words (+ cosmopolitan). There is no choice to use the words of other nationalities for themselves, and that bothers me.
[/quote]

Isolationism versus internationalism might work slightly better here, using the other nationalities own words and language would probably also be +nationalist under the current system, except that the mc as recognizably Shayardene would obviously make a poor Wiendish nationalist.
[/quote]

Yup. A single opposed variable doesn’t really do the various possible approaches justice.

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If my mc ever says anything positive about the Shayardene codex and the old royal family you can bet he is.
The current system makes me, as a player, avoid doing that however as it will immediately give me +50 fairmath nationalism.

With my mc’s charisma it still remains unwise to outright lie however so it would be rather better to train him in rhetoric so he can use his formidable intellect and moderate charisma to instead become a master of obfuscation like sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes (Prime) Minister except that my mc will be using those gifts to deconstruct his society, rather than maintain the status-quo.

That way he can say something about Shayardene Royalism that merely sounds nice but really says nothing, or is in fact critical of it.

Well you can’t make an omelet and all that…:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
Also doing anything else as a Helot means you’ll only manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the end.
Or as Machiavelli put it nothing is harder than attempting to install a new world order.

The truth is likely more complex but this is the picture my mc ultimately needs his propaganda to paint of the Shayardene nationalists, particularly the royalists. For my mc to win the Shayardene royalists do need to be put into this role of deluded, bigoted, profiteering villains who seek to subvert the revolution and institute a system that’s even worse than the Hegemony.

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But has anyone thought that… your character is 19 years old and probably has no idea what they’re doing?

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To @Havenstone’s credit, there generally hasn’t been a feeling of being gated off from existing options. Nevertheless that appears to be changing now that you get additional support if you have a very high or very low nationalism/cosmopolitan score, but no additional support if you have something in the middle. In addition, I strongly suspect that the deeper we get into the game, the more this score will affect the MC’s options. So it’s probably better to discuss this sooner rather than later, as the longer the game gets, the more effort it will require on @Havenstone’s part to adjust should he choose to do so, and it certainly sounded like it was something he’s been mulling over.

How do you become a goete or a wisard as opposed to theurge?

At the moment, it’s only an option if you raid the temple in Ch 2; but in the next update, like picking an alias and a slogan/image for your rebellion, it will be a choice for all players, not dependent on going on one specific raid.

Edit: and thanks everyone for the helpful conversation on whether nationalist/cosmo belongs as an opposed stat. I’m giving it some thought, and for now my only contribution is this Wayback Machine link to a related conversation late in 2013:

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wait, what

finally, i can make every playthrough an obnoxious reference-fest? at last! no-one can stop me now!

It’s in the tax collector path at the moment, if you decide to threaten the Telone’s family and kill the Alastors on guard outside Bleys’ house. Not surprised you haven’t found it. :slight_smile: Edit: or rather, the choice of slogan/image is there. Alias is currently written into the sheep raid in Ch 3, but I’ll move it back to the new-and-improved-with-more-mules Ch 2.

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You mean I have to specifically choose a specific path to be able to personalise my own fail brigade?

…I must replay at once!

Maybe I’m some sort of mutant, but as a child I quickly learned how to phrase my desires in a way that would be most likely to get what I wanted from my parents, and soon recognized that what worked with my parents did not necessarily work with others. I then learned over time what worked with many other adults too, and as a result learned to pick up on little cues that told me what was most important to the various individuals I interacted with. I didn’t really need to be taught this by anyone. It’s just something that I picked up while growing up. Now the line between manipulation and good communication isn’t necessarily a clear one to a child, and compared to adults, my childhood peers were cake. I recall a few situations where I conned some of my peers out of their toys, only for their irate parents to later call my Mom… “But they gave them to me Mom!” I’d whine, and my Mom would reply, “It doesn’t matter, you’re giving them back.” lol.

I think this is something all children do to one extent or another, given their total dependency on the adults around them, but not all of them are motivated enough to develop it beyond their parents, or introspective enough to analyze it the way I did. So my answer to your question is that while many 19 year olds don’t know what they’re doing, there are some that do know exactly what they’re doing.

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Right and those extra forces are persuaded to join you based on your reputation for either nationalism or cosmopolitanism not really your personally beliefs. Right after they join you you could turn around and start acting the Shyard nationalist. I think there is an opportunity for some future benefit if you have steered a middle road with more moderate elements that would never throw in with a rebellion on such tenuous footing.

Some of the things that adjust your score however are personal and/or things that they’d have no way of knowing. So there is no real line between your personal beliefs and your reputation currently.

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Time flies my friend. :slight_smile: It’s hard to believe that it’s been over two years since that conversation… :astonished:

And it doesn’t look like I responded to that post back then. I’ll have to write one up when I return later today. :smiling_imp:

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@Havenstone
There is another small gender mistake. In this sentence (near the caves/water):
Kala just shakes his head, grinning as well; you get the feeling she’d never let down her guard enough for a mountain swim.

In the first part: Kala just shakes his head…
That ‘his’ should be a her

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I know this is a month late (I haven’t visited CoG since December), but while I was reading the update I had a thought about the psychological impact on the main character.

The first time I played through the trap for Hector, I accidentally killed my childhood best friend with a tree (oops). Even though I picked the most compassionate and sad reaction, the narrative spent all of five seconds on something that, for any sane person, would be earth-shattering.

Conclusion: The protagonist is a psychopath.

I would like a chance for the reader to be able to say something about how the protagonist is feeling about everything. Maybe after they survive the winter? Or around the father’s breakdown? A comment after the first time the protagonist personally kills someone could also help. Being around violence all your life is one thing; taking someone’s life eith your own hands is another.

But aside from that, I love the additions and this game in general is lovely. :slight_smile:

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