Talk:The Journal

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/skins/common/images/bm-logo.png The Journal
	Discussion Board

Another aspect of this project is that I would like to generate some discussion and maybe even an exchange of tales and views. These days, it isn't really appropriate to have OOC exchanges in-game. Likewise, whilst the discussion list serves its purpose, it's a little too heated for my tastes. Perhaps this little Oasis of Tranquility can become the place for mature and nuanced debate about BattleMaster? I can dream...

Estates

Villains finish last.	.
Dear "The Journal" I have a subject you may like to include in your next article. I have been playing a villain character on Dwilight for some time, you may have heard of him he is the Demon of Dwilight, and I think that we players who choose the dark side have hard luck. The question you will address is "what to do with an old character?", what I am wondering is "what to do with a villain character?" Since BM is a social game, playing a villain character bounds the player to failure. Not to say that my villain character is not my favourite, I have had the best times with him, but there is an inevitable doom. What do you think? P.S. I am a big fan of the show! Heh, since this letter I've actually had the pleasure of playing with Bowie. You're right, it is difficult to play a villain character alone. In perfect circumstances before, I've managed to get a few other players in on the act because it's so much easier to do something fun and exciting with a scoundrel than a paragon. Giblot used to amazing for it back in the day, but I'd argue BM isn't as social as it used to be. That's not to say you can't succeed, there are enough people in the world who will do anything for influence or position no matter how unpalatable they find the person they're working with. But finding people with the confidence and desire to play around with villainous characters these days? It's hard. Perhaps it's not the experience everywhere, but it feels like too often people RP and chatter into complete silence nowadays. People don't appreciate the flavour. --Revan 21:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
D.west.ton

Expansionary Wars...	.
...are not the only kind of war there is. In Dwilight, for example, the Averoth/Astrum war, the Raivan/Morek war, the current Xinhai/Aquilegia wars are not expansionary in any way. That is less so on other continents, but I think it's part of what makes Dwilight different. To be honest, I find Dwilight to be very challenging to enjoy and I don't think normal wars would change that. Either way, at the time I wrote that article there was certainly a lot of avoidance of wars of conquest simply because realms couldn't afford the new regions. Even a couple of months ago in Mesh, folk were looking covetously at the rogue regions on the Enweil border but the truth of the matter is that neither realm was or had been in any position to touch them in a long, long time simply because of estates and Beluaterra's small number of nobles. --Revan 21:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
vonGenf 09:38, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

General Comments	.
I look forward to your other articles. Your current one has already sparked some ideas in the bm dev channel on IRC. I've always thought we needed to recruit more players. However, my attempts at this brought in the typical Nighthawk624 player, so I ditched it. If you have ideas(in addition to feature requests to solve this problem/I take it a simple remove estates is what you're proposing?) to aid recruitment, I would be happy to read them. Oh, and good luck bringing the battlemaster discussion from the mailing list to wiki. :P VonGenf, let us think this through carefully. While I'm not saying you are wrong, it could likely be that the reason those wars weren't expansionary is because there weren't estates to hold the lands so they had to go for an alternative style. This is not necessary bad or good. I do think less expansionary wars would be a good thing, but they should still exist. Of course. What I want to say is that it is a good thing that different islands have different estate coverage, since that leads to different dynamics. Part of what I understood from the article is that the reporter thinks the amount of warring is directly proportional to estate coverage, and I disagree with that. It is true for expansionary wars, but lack of possible expansion leads to creativity. I think variations among the islands is a good thing, and a simple removal of estates would remove a lot of that variation. vonGenf 16:01, 28 September 2009 (UTC) Remove estates, amalgamate estate functions, allow Knights to set up estates remotely, even allow region lords to set up estates they don't have for increasingly ludicrous and expensive prices. Either way, I think anything that removes/softens structural, OOC obstacles from the BattleMaster equation would be beautiful. Who knows, perhaps something has even changed already that I haven't even noticed >.< --Revan 21:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
Ethan Lee Vita (Talk), Editor and Community Manager 15:41, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Well Done!	.
I'd just like to say "Well Done" to you on your new paper. I hope that we can see more analyses on other game aspects in the future. Once suggestion: Your articles will probably generate quite a bit of discussion. (At least I hope so!) I would suggest adding a new discussion link to your article that points to a sub-page specifically for discussion of that article. That would separate discussion for issues, and allow your main page discussion to be specifically for general comments on the paper itself. Thanks :-) We'll have to see if I haven't left it too long though or indeed, if I can bring myself to keep going before I get on that though. I think your suggestion will be the way forward however. --Revan 21:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
--Indirik (talk), Editor (talk) 15:43, 28 September 2009 (UTC)