I think you need to pm the moderators asking them to change the first post with the updated link of the game.
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Changing the title now and @Havenstone @FairyGodfeather @Sashira could one of you move the link from that post to the first post and then change the title back, pretty please?
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Would you guys like a sort of mood board of pictures I made that inspired the characters? Or would that damage the mental images you’ve created of them?
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I’d like it! All media related to your games are welcome if you ask it.
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I am also a democratic socialist. But do you think European democratic socialist parties lack on LGBT rights and everything that has to do you moral liberal policies? I guess I am kinda making this thread go a but off topic, so feel free to pm me. I always up for some political discussion, especially with a fellow progressive democratic socialist comrade.
I really hate when people talk about ideology free politics, so I feel you. It is like they don’t know what politics is about. The “national interest” and “best thing to do” is nothing but a subjective and ideological assessment of reality. Our (Portuguese) former president liked to say “with the same information, two intelligent persons will reach the same conclusion” 
. That is the most anti-democratic statement possible. But it didn’t surprised me, he was of a political generational wing that only woke up to politics after the revolution, they were perfectly fine with the fascist regime.
Well, in Portugal, in the poor-strata context, the generation of the 1940s people started to work around 10 (when not sooner), and in the 1960s around the fantastic age of 12. So I can totally see Moravians starting to work at that age (my ruthless poor mc did started to work around the age of 8).
Franz is a piece of work, great and funny character.
My MC might be a bit more traditionalist in that regard. If he had to choose between public education or public health system, he would go with the second. People could still not be educated, but they would at least be alive. That seems more logical to him, especially since Moravians are literally dying in the streets. But he appears to be more “materialist” in his policies than your character.
My main MC (middle class) was like, ok, I get why these bastards are trying to preserve their money while our people dies in the streets.
My poor MCs were completely disgusted by that cafe.
Truth, but my MCs aren’t necessarily wise, with some of them full of passion or with the potential for that.
I would. If they are inserted into the game it is probably best to create a page just for them in the stat page, it seems like a good compromise for those who do want them and those who don’t.
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I love the conversations this thread throws up…
Anyway, if you want to, have a look at my characters mood board here. I won’t put it, or any of the pictures in the game, to allow the reader’s imagination to do the work but also mainly because i don’t have the rights to any of the pictures.
^This is what happens when you spend ages on google images instead of working on your WIP
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Only Franz look really different from what I assumed the characters to look like. In my head he looked like a friendly blond highschool jock XD
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You do realise I meant the one on the right, not the left, right?
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By all mean go ahead, always nice to see what the author thinks, but remember in these kinds of games it won’t override my own headcanon, particularly when it comes to the appearance of the characters, anyway, unless I actually like it better of course.
Also a core tenet of our “new left”, managerial competence and the whomever could best ensure the continued growth of the economy (and all “good” managers would do what was best for economic growth with the same info anyway) would always be preferable to inefficient ideologically motivated politics. In true trickle-down fashion that growing economy would then float everybody’s boat. Needless to say embracing that bit of conservative leaning liberal dogma has hurt and to some extent is still hurting our left-wing.
We never did have a proper democratic socialist party in the Netherlands during my lifetime, our only one ever was the pacifist socialist party, but that disbanded long before my time, I did join its partial successor, the Greens in their social-democratic wing. The legacy of that is why our Green party is called GreenLeft.
Well my headcanon is of course based on the history of my own country here elementary school ran until age 12 and from 1917 onwards it was nominally “free” (except for books and uniforms and such, and the cost of potentially losing another cheap farmhand, but that was more a concern of the rural then the urban poor, since child labour in factories was effectively banned for those under age 12 since 1887 and effectively enforced since 1902) at the local level.
Attending elementary school was also technically mandatory up until age 12 since 1900, though unlike the factory labour laws poorly enforced in practice until the 1930’s, when the politicians made an even harder effort to push children out of the labour market entirely due to the Great Depression.
My mc’s time in elementary school would have been well before the era of effective enforcement, but assuming the family valued his education at least a little and could scrape up the books and a uniform somewhere he could likely have attended and finished elementary school at the very least (and learned to read quite well, which would be the basis for his further autodidact learning).
Better education will lead to more and better doctors and nurses in the long run though and it is not that my mc wouldn’t value a public healthcare system, just that with limited resources he would prioritise education, as a logical extension of his primary goals of labour, tax and welfare reform first.
True, I guess ultimately it is a question of priorities in the face of limited time and resources and for my mc education has a vital and necessary link to labour reform. I know that would put him a bit ahead of the times compared to some of his contemporaries, but it wasn’t a totally unique position to link education and labour even then.
Oh I will definitely play some not-so-wise mc’s as well but my main one has always been eager to learn and curious, so even if his knowledge of foreign/geo-politics comes mostly from the press and a couple of books he knows enough to know that going it alone with a socialist dictatorship no matter how benign would be tantamount to suicide.
It is also why he is accommodating towards a popular front and a coalition government eventually (so long as Solidarity comes out ahead as the senior coalition partner, since he doesn’t particularly relish a rerun of premier Kovak and he doesn’t fully trust Kant, even while working with her).
Heh, for me only the image of von Harzberg is really off, I imagined him smaller, a bit balder and with glasses for some reason. Also that picture of Anton doesn’t really give me a good impression of him, do you have any pictures of the same guy closer up and from the front @AlexClifford1994?
Also, while I haven’t cared enough at this point to even try to imagine him in detail prince Georg is a bit more handsome then I imagined.
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I Do! I meant that I imagined him to look more like the buff german guy stereotype with a smooth shaven jaw, square shoulders, blonde hairs and blue eyes. Basically I imagined him as if he was what the nazi wanted german mens to look like.
Basicaly less rough and more metrosexual and only now that I say it do I realise how nazi germany was really on its way to become a homonationalist dream world before the rest happenend.
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Haha, I’m only messing with you! I know what you mean though, that sounds like a pretty good description of Franz to me.
Shhh, don’t tell the fascists, they’d hate that
Ok, how about this?
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wow. Excellent pictures. Somehow they really fit my idea of the characters. Franz was more skinny in my head, Wolf a bit heavier, but just look at Vitori Kant! Gorgeous. Absolutel gorgeous. That photo is becoming my new head-canon. I am starting to fall in love with her. Excellent personality, and now those looks 
.[quote=“AlexClifford1994, post:434, topic:19177”]
You do realise I meant the one on the right, not the left, right?
[/quote]
My idea of him was exactly like the guy in the left 
I am pretty sure Alex will not give that chance. I am starting to see the game heading towards a tragic ending, where all solutions will be bad (at least from the perspective of someone between social-democracy and communism).
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Because I’m a) really shallow, b) have a free evening and c) haven’t talked about ROs very much recently, I decided to put together these nifty little RO tables.
The characters who you have not yet encountered in game and when you can expect to do so are as follows:
Anton Riviere - French diplomatic representative (Solidarity chapter 4)
Geoffrey Bowman - British photo-journalist (Solidarity chapter 4)
Alessandra Bianchi - Cultural & political attache to Italian embassy (New Order chapter 4)
General Rudolf Falk - c-in-c of the army (New Order chapter 3)
Prince Georg - queen’s younger brother, heir to the throne (New Order chapter 3)
EDIT: I know those tables make it look like i’ve put in loads more ROs for the left story than the right, but it’s merely a trick of the eye, there are 7 for left and 6 for right, which I think is pretty fair considering the left has to cover 2 extra sexual orientations…
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I came here because I knew I would enjoy the game by default but I must admit that your RO options got really good. Anton and Sash really seem interesting in particular. I see a lot of variety and thats really good for replayability.
That realisation I just had a few posts back up made me wonder if you planned any gay right wing RO choices. Not that I mind much since I only really planned a female (or gender neutral if that was ever a planned feature.) royalist playtrough for my new order character but even today there’s a surprisingly high number of radical right wing homosexuals. I think that adding at least one gay and lesbian right wing RO that wont end in a huge disaster could be a great way to distinguish new order from the nazi who used but killed their gays. Recent events and individual do show that the right is ready to accept openly homosexual members if they say the kind of stuff they like.
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Maybe not quite, I mean we will probably get overtaken by a German invasion during WWII, that much is pretty much inevitable, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make some positive changes to Moravian society before that happens. Also should we succeed in a plebiscite to abolish the monarchy then the allies probably won’t re-impose it as the Americans in particular weren’t very keen on restoring them in countries that didn’t have them before the war and expressly wanted them back.
Awww…poor young Franz. 
Ha! That might be even better our young Franz an insult to the Nazi’s except I’ve already kind of had that particular thing in mind for my main, working class mc, what can I say he cleans up nicely now that he’s in politics. 
Also that was a Nazi, not a general fascist ideal, so Riga is probably less concerned with it, still I did like my mc looking like the Fuhrer’s perfect Aryan poster-boy (except like that Wentworth Miller cutie he likely has some coloured perhaps even black ancestry in there not too long ago. In my headcanon one of his grandparents likely was one of those horribly offensive stereotype circus performer’s “cannibal woman” or something back in the day)
So while he’d look the part he’d actually be far from “pure”. and very much gay to boot! 
Then again I did base my main mc’s looks of off a blond(er) version of Wentworth Miller. A bit like this:
Broad shoulders and all, since like many lower and middle class gay men he’d do everything to look as masculine as possible, so in that he’s a bit like Franz only perhaps even more obsessive due to being fully gay.
I do however picture Franz to look a bit more rough compared to my mc, particularly given his actual love of fighting. Otherwise they could probably pass for brothers if they tried a bit. Which has always been another reason I won’t romance him with my main mc, they’re too similar both in background and looks.
Lastly I figured my mc here kind of had to look younger then he is and cute, despite his working-class background, since everybody’s favourite insult for him, from Kovak to the Americans seems to be “kid”. 
From many of the really old members in the gay rights movement I learned that you could certainly be gay in the 1930’s even when (originally) working class in the major cities (the countryside was far more dangerous however), so long as you weren’t effeminate or seen as a “queen”. Ironically one of the most safe places for masculine looking gay men to meet up in Amsterdam back in the day used to be amateur weightlifting and athletics at the Olympic stadium after hours and a side effect of doing that a lot was getting really, really fit.
Fun fact: the nickname for the gay hating Hitlerjugent was the Homo-jugend and a particular brand of homosexuality did play a vital role in influencing Nazism and of course there was Rohm and the sexy uniforms…
Anton does seem cute, plus he has the whole mysterious, sexy & sophisticated foreigner vibe, which my main mc digs. 
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In my canon that is not going to happen. Fascism will be defeated in Moravia and the Germans wiłl go like “well, if they aren’t good enough for Moravia, they aren’t good enough for us, and besides he isn’t even german, nor he looks like arian…”. And our government will endure
So, @AlexClifford1994, Kant, Lou and Sash for my MC? I guess I will obviously need to replay it 3 times just for the sake of the ROs, on top of the infinite times I will try every possible political decision and outcome.
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That will probably only happen if Anton could somehow convince the French Third Republic to put up a much stiffer and better thought out fight too and Hitler makes to mistake of wanting to take over the tiny fellow “German” country of Moravia simultaneously. Not impossible, Hitler made an awful lot of boneheaded military decisions historically after all.
Assuming enough former resistance fighters still keep some of their guns at home and particularly if we move towards a more Swiss style conscription “army of the people” (which might not be a bad thing for solidarity to try if in power, if only to break the stranglehold of general Falk and the old army), then, yes, Moravia could be even worse for the Germans then it was back in the alternate WWI.
If Moravia could give them about half the trouble Switzerland would probably have given them had they actually gone ahead and executed operation Tannenbaum as planned, then together with a stiffer French fight it might just be enough to end the Nazi regime early. Though that end would probably come by hardline, traditionalist military coup, so the Germany that is most likely going to replace it might not be all that much friendlier to even social democratic Moravia, let alone a (democratic) socialist one.
Of course should (socialist) Moravia “beat” the Germans and be sufficiently valuable to the other Great Powers, mainly the US and the Soviet Union both then an mc who manages to become the new hero of the Moravian resistance might be able to parlay that into a position not unlike that of Tito, but that would require a whole awful lot of things to go just right.
The way I see it for Moravia to stand a chance of repulsing the Germans outright most of these need to happen simultaneously:
First of all the Nazi’s have to invade Moravia either early (but not too early) or late in order for it to coincide with either the invasion of France if early or to coincide with the invasion of the Soviet-Union, if late. This will prevent them from just applying Zapp Branigan’s patented techniques and just overrunning us with limitless reserves. If early, which is rather more likely, unless Moravia manages to somehow become a Communist (Stalinist) republic firmly allied to Moscow, then France needs to fight better, smarter harder and longer then they did historically as well, since Moravia alone might delay them and bleed them but wouldn’t defeat them nor topple the Nazi regime outright on its own.
Secondly we’d need a large conscription or citizen’s army and a decent amount of guns to arm it with, both may not actually be all that easy to achieve with both reactionary and likely social-democrat opposition to any such plans.
Thirdly we need to be strategically valuable enough and have enough “teeth” to ensure the Brits and/or the Americans won’t just roll in for some regime change once the Germans have “softened us up a bit”.
Now it certainly doesn’t seem impossible, but neither does it seem terribly likely to achieve all of this.
However a Moravia that fights back hard and determined enough could certainly make the Nazi’s bleed enough to shorten the war by at least a bit.
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Wow, that is a perfect assessment of the situation. Consider yourself the newly appointed “Minister of Moravian resistance to foreign invasion”.
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I just wanted to say how awesome this looks, I have been hoping for a political game on this site as it makes perfect sense with the multiple choice game play.
One thing I also wanted to add was if New Order has been receiving aid from Nazi Germany?, or is that an actual plot point?.
Another thing, what was the major philosophical difference that Rosa has with the Soviet Union?, they seem similar with the whole advocating violence and so forth. Does she think they betrayed the workers after they came into power?. Last but by no means least (I only just thought of this because I am an idiot) is Rosa based on the real life Rosa Luxemburg?.
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Some typos that I noticed. Probably missed some more:
During the interview with the reporter:
responsible for several
Sharing your aristocratic backstory w/ Franz:
Skeptical
The encounter at Altstadt:
Gramophone? Or is it some new invention or something?
Talking to Franz in the soup kitchen:
Here
Scandal
At the film shoot:
Scandalous
Wulf’s special assignment:
Just “coffee” will do.
Voluntarily
Suspicion
Discussing the budget with Kant:
Also, I had to oppose her budget amendment twice in a row. First time, I got that response above. The next scene, she made me sit down and have a brandy, and she and I had the budget discussion again, as if we never talked about it a page ago. When I rejected the proposal a second time, she finally said my name.
I’ll try to replicate it with screenshots later , if you need it, when i’m not busy.
The voting:
“Means Test” was capitalized the last time Kant mentioned it.