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Messages - Ehndras

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226
Roll To Dodge / Martyrs of the Vanguard (Neural Flagellation)
« on: February 22, 2017, 10:27:09 pm »
Spoiler: Dear Gods, why. (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Introduction (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Code of Conduct (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: They See Me Rollin' (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Character Shiiiets (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Profession: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Physiology: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Personality / Behavioral Traits & Characteristics: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Abilities / Skills: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Player Characters: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Notable NPCS: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Navigation & Maps: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Inventory: (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Lore: (click to show/hide)

227
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 22, 2017, 08:03:14 pm »
Ahh, those. Apologies, I'll admit I'm biased in that regard. Picked up a questionable habit of multi-posting due to freelance writing and blogging, as people tend to see a super-massive wall of text and NOPE away. For purely psychological reasons, people will apparently read a string of 20 posts and get turned off by an actual structured multi-paragraph text of the same exact word volume.

I blame social media *cough cough*

Soon as I'm done posting my new RP game I'll edit and delete the excess :) Thanks for the suggestions / reminder, much appreciated.

228
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 22, 2017, 05:42:51 pm »
Don't see where that is applicable, as its in response to a prior post which was likely already read by said party.

Been here for quite a few years, between this account and the last. :) Depending on time factors, I've realized edits may go completely unseen.

But aye, was nice discussing something interesting. Cheers!

229
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 22, 2017, 03:17:02 pm »
Interestingly enough, childbirth has always been a trade-off. Some cultures are better off at it, while others have critical levels of pre-natal mortality and/or (usually and) maternal mortality during birth. Even today, with modern medicine and all, this trend persists.

Quote
Adolescent pregnancy

Fact sheet
Updated September 2014
Key facts

    About 16 million girls aged 15 to 19 and some 1 million girls under 15 give birth every year—most in low- and middle-income countries.
    Complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the second cause of death for 15-19 year-old girls globally.
    Every year, some 3 million girls aged 15 to 19 undergo unsafe abortions.
    Babies born to adolescent mothers face a substantially higher risk of dying than those born to women aged 20 to 24.

Birth rates

There has been a marked, although uneven, decrease in the birth rates among adolescent girls since 1990, but some 11% of all births worldwide are still to girls aged 15 to 19 years old. The vast majority of these births (95%) occur in low- and middle-income countries.

The 2014 World Health Statistics indicate that the average global birth rate among 15 to 19 year olds is 49 per 1000 girls. Country rates range from 1 to 299 births per 1000 girls, with the highest rates in sub-Saharan Africa.

Adolescent pregnancy remains a major contributor to maternal and child mortality, and to the cycle of ill-health and poverty.

230
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 22, 2017, 03:14:57 pm »
URR, don't worry buddy. You've got this.

I'm still an avid fan and player, among many, of UnReal World - which has been developed on and off since 1992! No rush, man. Do what you need to do, and do what you can.

We players can get a little antsy sometimes, but as you age, you realize all good things come with patience.

231
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 22, 2017, 03:12:19 pm »
Indeed. Albeit, this was normal at that time in rural Brazil. You needed multiple generations of children to work the land. Sure, they went through some rough patches early on, but having children was seen as an investment: labor production.

(Father would be 71 if he were alive, my Mother 60)

Bastards really got up in age, too. One of my great-aunts is still kicking at 103, and another great aunt died at 109 around 2 years ago. Ironically, they lived in what amounts to mud huts, never went to doctors, and ate off their own gardens.

232
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 22, 2017, 12:46:16 am »
Also, y'all vastly underestimate the human ability to procreate. Ask my grandmother's 20+ kids, or her 19 or so siblings and their 17-24 kids each. :P

If we discount all the deaths due to the 3 instances of Bubonic Plague(4th or 5th century, 12th century, 14/15th century I think it was? China, Byzantine Empire, medieval Europe), plus Spanish Influenza, Typhoid Fever, etc, we'd have a HELL of a large population.

Come to think of it, we need to worry more about keeping enough of a varied genetic pool and viable breeding pairs safe from disease than any war... We've lost far, far more lives to disease/accident/disaster than all the wars ever fought by our species.

233
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 22, 2017, 12:42:48 am »
...Which is the entire point of dynamically producing cultures via RNG. :P

234
Forum Games and Roleplaying / Re: Corrupt a wish!
« on: February 21, 2017, 02:02:21 pm »
Granted. The fourth wall remends itself. Unfortunately, it was holding up the roof - which crashed down on your head.

I wish I had a kitten named mittens.

235
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: My dwarves have doomed themselves to eternal shame.
« on: February 21, 2017, 01:57:41 pm »
*thumbs up* Allow him to live. See what happens.

236
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 21, 2017, 01:53:58 pm »
(Or, like in World War I/II, maybe they all marched to war and got killed. Now you have a ton of women who wouldn't have worked in industry due to cultural prejudices and expectations, suddenly working your factories, building weapons, bending iron, and doing all that "unladylike" stuff hardline conservative men like to grumble about. If threat of invasion is a thing, it'd be wise to also teach those ladies how to defend man and country alike. The only reason cultures don't do this is to reinforce the hierarchy of male dominance. Give women power and they won't be as likely to cater to the whole "hey, you're marrying the 2nd son of this merchant, and that's final. Go bare his children, serve him wine, clean his clothes, cook his food, and be a servant for life. What? *scoff* Military duty? Over my dead body!)

237
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 21, 2017, 01:49:19 pm »
Quote from: zaimoni on January 24, 2017, 12:23:14 pm
It's strange [allowing women in the military] because such civilizations are preparing to win the Darwin Award.  Keep in mind that before WWI almost all wars were limited wars, and it was nearly an annual thing before gunpowder (no extended peacetime).

That said, low fantasy is rife with dying or nearly-exterminated societies where this is appropriate.

Or, contextual basis only.

General allowance rule gives way to actual contextual basis for allowance.

For example, in modern military, some don't allow women at all. Others, allow women in NON-combat roles. I know a few ladies who are monsters with a rifle, and one who, according to her commander, is impossibly astute with a grenade launcher as if she was born with the god damn thing.

If a culture does NOT allow women, its absolute.

Perhaps another culture allows women, but only those who cannot bare children. Maybe only female slaves. Maybe they have a cultural quirk where their archers tend to be female. If magic is a thing, maybe women are the usual mages due to the whole sage-crone shtick. Of course, combat medics *are* often military, yet non-combat roles.

Hell, maybe rather than battle drums, culture #5 brings yodeling or ululating ladies along to freak out their enemies and raise troop morale. Hey, Banshees, man.

I see no reason why all of this shouldn't be possible.

Sure, having a large chunk of your females in combat roles in any stone to iron age setting is a bad fucking idea if you don't want to go extinct, but then again, nothing says culture #9 doesn't have a weird thing about women giving birth to as many kids as possible and then marching off to war while someone else takes care of the kids.

As a scifi writer and avid student of history, I can imagine thousands of eccentric variations and the specific cultural tendencies and incidents that spawned them.

Chances are its been done by some culture or other.

Anyway, as I've learned, the best way to protect your women isn't to keep them useless and have big strong men nearby to protect them...

Its to teach them how to fight so they can defend themselves.

Sometimes, the "big strong men" won't be around. Maybe they got sick. (some diseases target one gender more than others.)

Maybe they got killed while hunting.

Maybe they died in battle.

Maybe the bloody idiots are busy getting drunk and don't notice the raiding party just west of the treeline.

Best way to prevent catastrophic loss of your only source of new humans?

Teach them how to fight and kill.

238
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 21, 2017, 01:36:14 pm »
Quote from: Ultima Ratio Regum on January 24, 2017, 08:17:09 am
I also went through the existing words, and decided to statistically bias some of them back towards slightly shorter variations, and therefor slightly shorter sentences, as a response to the feedback I regularly get about some of the sentences being too wordy. You’ll see the same in the earlier example, where we have some sets using the same short word twice to boost the chance of that word being selected (this is of course not an especially elegant way to do it, but let’s be honest: my programming is not known for its elegance). This should ensure that sentences will tend to be just a little shorter and a little less wordy, and I’m going to continue this trend of chopping out irrelevant words whilst maintaining sentence variety – though this is a tricky balance to strike.

To build upon that, one can assume scholars, priests, and some bureaucrats might use lengthier descriptions/sentences in general.

Or, a GREAT way to figure out someone's affinity: if you ask me about something random, you won't get much out of me. Ask me about a topic I like, and... Well... *points to wall of text in last comment*

If you're conversing with random person #12 and suddenly their answers go from curt to holy-shit-that-was-in-depth, chances are you struck a chord of which they're either highly knowledgeable or highly opinionated.

Thus, some guy from the culture who praises Keshua may give you the expected greeting out of custom, but a hardline fundamentalist or thoroughly devout follower might betray their religious zeal by adding more flavor and depth to anything that warrants a response based on faith.

The same goes for insults, compliments, and other questions.

Once you put in personality traits, someone with anger issues may go all-the-fuck-out with insults and threats, or be more likely to default to such things. Their opinion of you may be harder to shift into the positive, but far easier to sway toward the negative.

A kind, compassionate, humble, etc. insert-nice-guy-meme-here individual might be overly gentle and tread carefully in negative territory more as a general behavioral bias, and less a sign of implicit context.

I'm sure we all know people who will rarely mention something negative, but still hold negative or even aggressive opinions. All the same, there are those who will always find something negative to say about anything, and default to that.

Some people, well, they're just quiet. Or whatever the opposite of verbose is. They'll say far less, but not necessarily rush you to end the conversation. This accounts for people who aren't necessarily in some great rush to get elsewhere, but still have a solid reason for why they talk as they do.

Others, never shut the hell up. We ALL know someone like this. Get the bastard talking and you'll be the one having to suddenly remember an appointment.

OH. That reminds me.

How you choose to greet, or say goodbye to someone *should* have an impact on their opinion of you, and shift their behavior.

You could secretly be a follower of the Cult of Lazarus, which everyone hates. You *could* use that in a greeting, if you so choose to deviate from the basic *click greeting*, to test their opinion or see if your hunch about them also being a hidden cultist - and thus potential ally or source of information - is correct. Or, you just want to piss that self-righteous prick off. Who knows. If you get him to attack you, you have an excuse to defend yourself. Scratch one inconvenience, and without the law getting on your back.

If your cult is legal, they have no defense. Their opinion alone does not constitute an applicable reason to attack someone, so you effectively just baited them into criminal activity by taking advantage of their personal or cultural beliefs and opinions.

Good job!

239
Other Games / Re: Ultima Ratio Regum - roguelike/Borges/Eco, v0.7 released!
« on: February 21, 2017, 01:22:05 pm »
Quote from: Ultima Ratio Regum on January 10, 2017, 06:43:00 pm
leadership_like: This trait refers to how much the NPC likes the leadership of their nation. This is not to say the leadership policy of their nation, as above – theocracy, monarchy, etc – but the individual personality/personalities of the person/people at the top. There are a lot of elements which go into this particular decision for each NPC, and as with the above set, I’m hoping to later tie this into the potential for social movements, conspiracies, and the like…

fellow_soldier_opinion: For those who are within the military, this determines what they think of their fellow soldiers. This varies by rank, by leadership, and by the individual histories of particular soldiers. I’m not quite sure what else this variable will affect yet – beyond a couple of possible conversation replies – but I think it could be a nice way to build up a sense of how different military forces function in the URR world.

Suggestion: As in modern and ancient armed forces, there are contextual details one might often miss if solely observing basic rank/hierarchy details.

For example, the Navy Seals and Green Berets can hold the same rank as a counterpart of far less skill and experience. My Father, for example, was a US Army drill sergeant and first fought in Vietnam as a footsoldier. He wasn't infantry, but they got ambushed and many died. He definitely saw combat, but never discussed his service before he died. Not sure what his rank was, but he was at least a Sgt. At the same time, a Sgt. whose a recruiter or officer may be a paper pusher with little combat experience, while another guy might be like my best friend's husband: demolition specialist, former paratrooper who participated in the Bay of Pigs and numerous major conflicts, and thus presents a far greater variable of experience, skillset, and vital to personality and behavior: opinion. As he's now in his 70's, the generational differences have lead to a highly complex set of ideals and opinions that wouldn't be shared by most civilians, nor even soldiers. Still built like a fucking fortress, though, even at his age. 73 or 74 I think? 6 foot 3 or 4 in height (far taller than most humans the world-over) and arms/legs like tree trunks. Not someone you'd want to challenge to a bar fight. (which, ironically, happened a lot)

To show even most variation, let's compare that to another relative of mine. Comm-spec, US Army Guard, warrant officer (W‑1)(I think? Not entirely sure.), was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan but not to a combat unit. Saw some shit, got bombed and mortared, drove their upper in convoys for a bit, etc. If I'm not mistaking them with someone else I know, present deployed to the FOB during the 2010 Tali strikes.

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/05/taliban_attack_kanda.php

(Sorry for vagueness, hope you understand the necessity with the way the world is these days. The other two are way past their time, and thus its no issue to discuss. The last is recent, so its a different story. I have their permission to discuss. The last, I am only allowed to mention vaguely.)

That last one has a solid shot at joining a federal intelligence agency in 2 years time, to give you an idea of rank-to-factionalization divergence. Thus, comparing three soldiers of relatively similar rank brackets, you get highly developed contextual skill, knowledge, experience, physical builds, mental acuity, languages known, and thus: opinions & beliefs.

For URR, this could mean the soldier you're chatting with is going to gather data on *you*, is a total newb with a shortsword, or is the Achilles of spearmanship. Or, they could be a spy and lying through their teeth.

Hoping you account for that detail down the road. :) All of this in the last few updates implies people tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. All the time.

We all know that's rarely the case. ;)

Quote from: Ultima Ratio Regum on January 10, 2017, 06:43:00 pm
What do you think of the leadership?
What do you believe your foreign policy should be?
What do you think of your culture’s art?
What are the religious policies of your nation?
How widely spread is your religion?
What is your job?
What is the history of this monastery?

In all of these cases the game can’t just take a default sentence and then vary it, but it has to instead select a sentence from a wide set depending on the data available, and then create that sentence anew each time. There are substantially more possible “base” responses for option questions than there are for all the basic sentences combined, which gives some idea of the kind of variation that some of these need to have. With this fortnight finished, I’ve now finished these off, and I’m very happy with the kinds of sentences they create – they’re varied, detailed, and will take far longer than the basic sentences before the player will ever come around to seeing the “same” sentences again.

Suggestion: Do such inquiries account for multi-tiered context? For example, why not ask the soldier from Uralia what he thinks of the Rothgarians? Maybe they're officially allies, but you find out Uralians and Rothgari don't get along too often. Maybe their alliance is shaky, or on paper yet effectively non-existent. Or perhaps, within a variable magnitude of deviation, they might really fucking hate them for botching an operation or being unskilled at a particular type of combat.

If you take Colonial British tactics against, oh let's say, Revolutionary American tactics, British lose. I'm sure there are those who held strong beliefs that the Brits were buffoons for wearing bright red coats and marching rank-and-file against hit-and-run tactics in dynamic terrain.

That reminds me: broader, or contexual opinions on random details.

Hey, maybe the Rothgari really like those spiffy Uralian uniforms. Maybe they scoff at their cultural facial-tattoos and see them as technologically-advanced barbarians.

If URR is anything like Earth, some cultures/people will be prejudiced against *anyone* with body modifications, whereas others will see them as a normal and righteous sign of faith, culture, or strong roots.

In the Brit's case, something as seemingly silly as uniform color may be a major point of contention, or even a serious weakness in combat.

As we know, a knight in heavy platemail is great in some ways, yet seriously lacking in others.

All the same, a scimitar-wielding, or dual short-sword dancing Sikh warrior has little protection against a rain of arrows from above.

Opinions will vary.

After all, Armokian Dwarves really tend to dislike those tall, lithe elves and their "stupid wooden bows".

Hell, someone can dislike Elvish soldiers alone because they once watched them lose a battle, or they can outright hate the entire Elvish species, or a particular culture specifically, because they were in a village under attack and the Elves failed to arrive in time to protect them.

So much variation to account for. After all, opinions are flimsy, seemingly nonsensical, and as dynamic as the Earth itself. :)

Hope this provides you an idea or two. Cheers!

240
Other Games / Re: If you combined the last two games you played, what would you get?
« on: February 21, 2017, 12:12:47 pm »
Quote from: anexiledone on January 26, 2017, 03:27:23 pm
Haven and Hearth mixed with Battle Brothers.

A turn based survival game set in Medieval Europe.

I want it.

Do want.

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