Well in my own country the mass-media at the time with the most reach and certainly the best, certainly among the young and the old was radio, but then the pre-war Netherlands had a fairly high rate of radio penetration and almost every household tried to own a set. Most radio broadcasts were of course state dominated and we did not get commercial radio or television until the 1960’s. That said to really be someone in our tiny country you had to have a radio capable of receiving the foreign broadcasts too and the Germans made hunting these down and confiscating them a high priority.
There has always been a non-negligible amount of support withing the media and the artistic/creative circles surrounding it, as we can see with the smaller union in the latest chapter, so an aristocrat with the right connections might be able to help out Solidarity as well there, particularly in the setting-up of its own mass-media tabloid or radio station (assuming of course Moravia is slightly more progressive and allows commercial radio stations).
Radio could have the advantage of allowing us to reach the poorly literate rural masses too. Again in the Dutch countryside many papers at the time were only weekly and those interested got entertainement and more current news from radio if they could.
(joking mode) Still, a true leftist man is necessarily an autodidact, since if he gets a formal education in the capitalist regime, he will be part of the said regime, legitimizing it.
My one is an autodidact. [quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:418, topic:19177”]
Improving Moravia’s public education would be one of his pet isssues.
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I completely understand that in the long term, and my MC would support it with that in mind, but still, on the short term he is more worried with labor rights, welfare and health, than with education.
This is some amazing thing Alex is doing, making different speeches for different backgrounds, and what amazing speeches.
I have currently 4 MCs. One that is the most probably version of a Moravian me. One high-class, and two low-class (one more ruthless and radical, the other one more idealistic and with a soft-heart). My rich one doesn’t want to pass the amendment, because he is very ideological and might not fully understand the suffering of the people affected by that clause of the budget. I supported the amendment but with mixed feelings. My ruthless/radical working class rejected it because it suits the needs of the revolution, which is the greater good. My working class “nice guy” supported it because he needs to stop the suffering of his brothers as much as he can.
The fun thing is that we imagine different people even for the same middle-class. My middle-class guy is very pragmatical.
The European leftist parties should really learn from this , we would have a better Europe (and the center-left should unlearn it a bit ).
True. But theoretically, he could. The new found position within the political cast might have made him forget his roots and start having more centrist stances. Hanging out in cafes for the rich class might do that to a person
My main MC has a more neutral stance towards it. He is pro-democracy, and does try to preserve the kind of democracy that came out from the war and subsequent difficulties. But if the right goes too reactionary and becomes too big of a menace, he might prefer to go with a socialist dictatorship than to see the working class trampled by the elite or the fascists.
Well those same concessions to pragmatism and realpolitik would probably get real-life me labelled a traitor real-quick, because I did get a relatively fancy capitalist education despite coming from a poor background, as while I’m ideologically a democratic socialist what I’m usually pushing for in practice are gay rights and a fresh injection of 21st century social democracy.
In my experience in our real-life Green party the most radical ideologues on the left often tend to be of the comfortable middle-class, while both the true lower strata people, like me and some of the members who did come at least from families who have wielded real power before (i.e. rich, elitist bastards) tended to be more realistic and practical. Of course those are very broad generalisations indeed. Still it is my real-life example of how even minor party politics can often lead to strange bedfellows.
The mistake our left made was getting swept up in the whole “end of history” and “ideology free” politics era after the fall of the Soviet Union. Of course the “ideology free”, where only the individual managerial competence of each politician should count era did have an ideology, which we today know better as neoliberalism. Only most politicians simply didn’t dare pander it openly since it has been utterly toxic.
Of course our particular tragedy has also been the politically motivated assassination of our first right-wing populists, mr. Fortuyn by a far-lest “animal rights” activist, which in turn allowed the new left to stay in power for much longer then they likely would have otherwise by essentially couping all of the major left-wing parties, except the former Maosists and marginalising all non-neoliberal left-wing politicians for almost a decade in “defense against radicalism”.
Mine probably is too, well except for elementary school probably (since we “only” started working at age 13, instead of six or seven, which did happen in those days. So I’m thinking at least one of his probably barely literate parents must have valued his education at least somewhat), which is likely why he was able to read and write and become an autodidact of sorts in the first place, with the help of the wealthy family’s library. Again that’s probably why he can speak what broken English and French he does speak at all.
He is, again, most likely a firm believer in the power of education to “set one free” and saving up some of his pay to be able to enter university eventually is at least better than buying, or renting a fancy new apartment, like Franz does.
Yep, again why real-life me would probably be an instant “traitor” there.
For mine education kind of logically goes hand-in-hand with labour rights and welfare and he’d prioritise it before substantive healthcare reform even.
Hence why he probably stays in Grosshardern and doesn’t buy or rent a fancy new apartment, like a certain colleague of ours.
Also he really doesn’t consider himself a member of the entrenched political caste and neither did he like that Moosach cafe terribly much.
Not terribly wise in the game, imho, and certainly for my main mc as well. He most likely knows enough of foreign affairs to know that we’re surrounded by hostile countries and the only slim chance we have of surviving then would be to have a lot of support from Moscow and that comes at the price of being comrade Stalin’s little puppets. Considering Solidarity was formed in opposition against Moscow and its loyalists like Kruler, the chances of a homegrown socialist dictatorship surviving for more then a fortnight would be slim indeed, as it would be torn apart by outside invaders and an internal resistance alike.
Lastly @AlexClifford1994 should we edit the tile again to say the link is in post #407 or ask the mods to move it back to the first post?
@Thfphen110 thanks for the detailed feedback, i’ll get around to correcting some of these errors. Your more general comments are very interesting. In particular, about it almost seeming too easy for your party. That will change with time, although I am slightly struggling with balance because I know that certain plot points that are coming which are very negative for Solidarity are positive for New Order. I suppose it’s not the end of the world if one side is a sort of underdog story and the other from a position of advantage.
Nonsense, the level of detail of your responses and your clear engagement with the game and its world are hugely helpful to me!
Yes, I was thinking about this but I’m not sure how it’s done?
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?
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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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).
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…
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.
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.
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.
, we would have a better Europe (and the center-left should unlearn it a bit 
).
. 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.
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