Morovia appears to be a constitutional monarchy - just how much power does the Queen hold in relation to the powers of its Parliament?
Also is Moravia a rural or industrial nation? Are the majority of its people of the working class? Are there ethnic and religious divisions? Moravia is presumably a Christian country by tradition - so is it Catholic or Protestant?
@Harian I advise you take a look at the guide on the demo (where the stats screen usually is) which answers a few of those questions. The monarch has similar power to the UK at the same time; the power to dissolve parliament and appoint the prime minister.
The Moravian capital of Freistadt is rather top-heavy in having 2.5 of the 8 million population and has a large industrial district. The rest of the country is quite rural and hilly. It was traditionally a catholic country but has a large urban working class who have largely abandoned religion.
It was an absolute monarchy right up to 1918, so rode out the disturbances of 1848, and like it says in the guide, Moravia was occupied by the germans in WW1. It is suffering very badly from the great depression, hence the rise in extreme politics.
They have the same electoral system as weimar germany, i.e. complete proportional representation, so MPs are elected on pure % of the vote, not for a district or borough.
Phew, you’ve forced a bit of world-building out of me!
@cyanide@CaesarCzech@Eiwynn
I think I’m going to make Riga a leader of the resistance against the German occupiers in WW1 to sidestep all of that.
@Kyle Thanks for the heads up on the typo, the demo does need a check over. I’m aware of Moravia the actual place and as discussed above it isn’t supposed to be that place although the name and geography appealed to me
Thats actualy a great idea. Nationalists institutions have a tendency to hate each others. Think Italy opinion of Germany and their plan after the war.
This certainly seems interesting. Looking forward to see where this one goes. Is playing Divided We Fall before this required? Or is it a spiritual successor of sorts?
Like the premise, it holds its own with the special flair things get from pushing the edge of what the status quo is on what is allowed to be put out. I think that you can do this excellently. But to stave off those who would disagree i will recommend that the characters in all factions be set humans and not be specific good/evil dynamic try to truly make them as human as possible and i don’t think there will be much irritation over the game. This comes from your friendly asshole of a person on the right side of the spectrum.
P.S i to loved divided we fall your characters and their development were as close to perfect as i have ever seen written.
It certainly isn’t required reading but as the author of Divided We Fall, I’d obviously love people to read, I do think it’s half decent. This game is set in a similar time period and about similar issues i suppose so spiritual successor is a nice way of putting it, even if they are totally unconnected (DWF is very much a historical drama, I tried to be as accurate and realistic as possible, with this I’ve given myself a bit of creative licence)
I would like if there Wil be stats a certain ambitious stat or hidden variable. The Mara I portrayed is a noblewoman who has a big ambition of being crowned and being the saviour of Moravia through new order is a messianic dark magic occult follower exactly as the ss leader searching for the grial. The truth and commoners is just a tool she doesn’t care about.
Wonderful idea. You can customize his skills this way too… and he’ll still be a war hero[quote=“poison_mara, post:44, topic:19177, full:true”]
Lol I though it was theo both are portrayed really similar except the jewellery but their lives were similar as hell so still fits
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yup; they were sisters after all and so I wasn’t worried.
Reds? Who reds? Ahh you’re talking about that solidarity mob uppsss they just were killed by a totally not commanded by unity urban militia same militia that is protecting royal family.
when the working class revolts lets see who wins, some of that militia could refuse to shoot fellow citizens and switch side when mobs of reds storm the palace. But don’t worry i save you from mob justice if i see you been caught and drag from your fancy house.
I’ve seen political CS games before, but this is the first serious effort I’ve seen in a while. DWF had a thought-out vibe, which is nice to see in a subject mostly overshadowed by WWII.
This one already has the feeling that your other game had, but I’m interested in knowing what extent we’ll be able to influence Moravia and its future.
Well, the debate seems already lively. I doubt I’ll have much to add but I’ll toss in what I had in mind anyhow.
What I would like to bring up is that there is an alternative to presenting things from a moral point of view. We have the obvious benefit of hindsight, so you should perhaps not focus on the ideologies themselves, but what they actually stand for in the setting of the story.
Present the reader with the dilemmas of the age, from economy to foreign diplomacy, to the rights of the monarchy, to the growing influence of the big neighbours. Disenfranchisement, poverty, jingoism, etc. The ideologies, and revolution in general, tend to be answers that arise in response to a stagnant system.
It’s always worth remembering that ideologies are pure, people using those ideologies for their personal gain are not, and that everyone is a hero of their own story. If you intend to provide more background for the PC, it would not take too much effort to flesh out a brief period of time where the player gets to see just how combustible the system is and then make choices that naturally lead towards joining either the left or the right. Lay the groundwork and establish the setting some more.
I believe the morality should always be grey in something like this, so as to avoid it becoming a caricature based on modern interpretations. That should mean that not every fascist is a horrific racist, not every communist will be willing to die for a workers’ utopia, and while there will always be hatred between the two sides there should also be mediators in the groups to open discussion across the aisle. Equally, none of that disqualifies horrific racists and demagogues from being major characters alongside more rational ones.
I wish you good luck. I’ll be watching this one with great interest.
I don’t see how radical left-wing aka communism is any better than fascism. I’m from Poland and we experianced a lot of suffering from both Nazi and Soviet regimes. That said, we have a “joke/saying” which goes:
“You have a German and a Russian (both obviously associated with Nazism and Communism respectively), who do you kill first?”
“The German, because business before pleasure.”
Communism killed more people than fascism and nazism combined and that is a fact. From famine in Ukraine, through various purges, exiles to Siberia etc. It’s only because of the fact that history is written by the winners that for some reason Nazism is ultra-taboo in most media, while communism - not so much.
With all that in mind, I’m all for having facists too, but you’ve probably figured as much from my post already.
As for feedback why not add in the Christian Democrats or Liberals (maybe amalgamate them into a bland “big tent” centrist party, for the game’s purposes) and give your players the chance to defend democracy by making sure the centre will hold, after all it very nearly did in that real life European country.
On the other hand that would be yet more work for you.
While many people around here do know I like to play revolutionaries a big part of that is making my character believe the very foundation of his nation’s political system in this case is so rotten that it cannot achieve meaningful and lasting reform in any other way.
While this is true, I would like to note that many Communist leaders where nothing but authoritarian thugs hiding behind a theoretically noble ideology, unlike with Nazism.
That being said I’d still choose Communism over Fascism not in the least because with Fascism “deviants” don’t even theoretically have a place in the new world order and tend to get exterminated, instead of “just” re-educated.
Still if we are going for the Communist revolution here I hope the MC can try to make it live up to the ideals of some of the prominent German Communists regarding sexuality and gender (expression).
Indeed, unless our characters come from very comfortable backgrounds people rarely have the opportunity to make their decisions based on morality and ideology alone. Plus providing a bit of background to help us flesh out our characters is always nice. Maybe my character in spite of being a talented politician is thrown out of the more centrist party for having a gay affair or not being from the right race or background or something like that, which would drive him into the arms of more radical forces.
Oh and @Goshman still eagerly waiting to see how the Revolution is going to unfold in your own WiP and what dubious role our mc’s get to play there.
Grey and Gray Morality is always a plus in my opinion. The feeling that there is no “one, true choice” and that you have to choose between two ‘evils’ that have equal pros and cons to them is always intellectually and morally entertaining.
Aside from increasing the replay value, it would also allow us to step into the feet of the people who did not have the benefit of hindsight as we do. All in all, I agree with everything @Goshman had said above.
