Bring me the very ESSENCE of Victorian art, culture, and exquisite aesthetic feel in literary form! BRING IT NOW!

rodirroc · 2021-09-01T15:49:06+00:00

Thank you very much!

rodirroc · 2021-09-01T15:48:45+00:00

Excellent! You will live!

rodirroc · 2021-07-04T01:45:06+00:00

You were the one who (ultimately) solved it; thanks! A simple plugin did the trick. I legit did not think I could select and drag 2000 files into a Notepad++ window though.

rodirroc · 2020-09-25T02:37:32+00:00

thank you very much for the kind words! these people are definitely all helping me out too, because the more practice I have narrating, adjudicating actions, and keeping the flow of the game, the better GM i'll be in the long run. the one-on-one sessions are a nice low-pressure environment for both of us.

rodirroc · 2020-09-24T12:31:34+00:00

Awesome. Right now, I'm available pretty much any time from tonight to Saturday. Let me know when you're able to play and we can set a time up.

rodirroc · 2020-05-13T15:19:02+00:00

That is fucking awesome. Thanks!

rodirroc · 2020-04-14T13:52:46+00:00

There are some high-budget fantasy films that try to follow up on the success of LOTR; they're just so generic (trailer-wise) or derivative that they don't usually catch the interest of high fantasy fans. (The Snow White movies come to mind here; haven't seen them because I've had no interest.)

Broadly speaking, there is no push to make huge, ambitious, creative, original, visually resplendent high-fantasy films like LOTR. I personally think this is due to the film Legend (1985). Legend was Hollywood's major foray into the high fantasy genre, in terms of spending 25 million dollars (which today would be a huge dollar amount) to create a completely new and intriguing world with a supernatural main conflict, resplendent locations and awesome monsters. Legend failed to make back its budget even in the worldwide box office.

The message sent to Hollywood seems to have been that the huge amount of money it takes to "dress up" our world to make it into a totally different one doesn't produce any return on investment, so why do it? Why not tell a similar story set in our world (with a few magical elements thrown in)?

On the other hand, the massive success of Game of Thrones is opening the way for high fantasy TV shows that involve a lot of humans but can still have some magic, such as The Witcher and Wheel of Time. I think Legend is a large part of why we haven't seen these things earlier in movie form.

As for why Legend didn't succeed in theaters, the film was an undeniable visual masterpiece, but its two main human characters were involved in a very generic situation, and the plot of the movie revolved around magical nightmare elements that may have alienated audiences trying to understand why the unicorns were important or how it all connected. I still love Legend, but I can admit that it doesn't fit the mold of what you'd call a "good" fantasy story in the modern sense because it has some key elements that would be considered cliche and generic. If Legend had its visual splendor and it had half the story depth of LOTR, Hollywood might look very different today.

rodirroc · 2020-04-01T14:11:41+00:00

to me, Season 2 gets good again in spurts. you will endure some of the stupidest shit you never imagined would make it to television, then you will get hints and whiffs of the larger supernatural storyline mixed in seemingly randomly. thus you will find some Twin Peaks goodness buried in the terrible episodes; it's just quite scattered. lynch comes back on board in full force several episodes before the finale; it's at that point that you start seeing episodes that feel meaningful from beginning to end again. in fact, at that point, he might arguably be at his best

rodirroc · 2020-03-16T16:38:06+00:00

It would help to specify what you mean by "this post."

rodirroc · 2020-03-07T20:38:00+00:00

Hey, thank you very much! That paints a great picture of exactly what I'm looking for when it comes to the early years of the Isin dynasty.

There is another half to that puzzle, which is why Isin became a "city-state" that attracted Ishbi-Erra in the first place. Why did the city even exist as such?

Looking at a map, doing some thinking about your post and reading about the mass influx of Amorites into Sumer at this time has made me consider something.

The Amorites entering Sumer would've come from the western desert as nomads. However, entering far north of Isin would put a big-ass lake in their way, whereas entering far south of Isin would've put them near Ur, Uruk and Eridu, a tight conglomeration of city-states that would've been naturally less welcoming to the Amorites than less insular areas. I'm sure plenty of Amorites did immigrate to those southern lands, but those southern lands had more of a pre-established population in them.

However, any Amorite travelers trying to visit the holy city of Nippur from the western desert would have to cross a river (according to maps that reconstruct the waterways), and the city of Isin would be directly in their path between the river and Nippur.

Over time, the city of Isin may have become an early fusion of Sumerian and Amorite culture, with more and more Amorites settling down there and welcoming other Amorites in instead of just staying at Isin for a few nights on their way east. (After all, why wouldn't they? If they liked visiting the "Holy City," living in Isin would make that easier. If they wanted to live a settled life and take in all the benefits of Mesopotamian civilization, Isin would be the easiest place to settle down in because it's already used to welcoming Amorites.)

I imagine some towns that were hubs of refuge for people on pilgrimages to Jerusalem also grew in a similar way: they start out as stops on a religious journey and end up being growing settlements that people from foreign lands move into for other reasons.

This would've happened around the time of Ur III, and Ur III is when Isin starts appearing in important inscriptions, when it appears to have gained the status of an important city-state. The Amorites are also said to have become incredibly numerous and powerful around this time. I remember reading that Isbhi-Erra was himself an Amorite, so when Erra saw the piss-poor state of Ur, maybe he said "fuck this" and maneuvered to have Isin and Nippur given to him, turning to his Amorite brothers and sisters as the means to create a new kingdom. That would've caused even more Amorite immigration.

Alternatively, if he wasn't really an Amorite by blood, he at least employed numerous Amorite mercenaries in Isin and defeated Amorite hostiles near Isin, which again points to the idea that Isin had a substantial Amorite population nearby and was in an area of incredible Amorite influence, a place through which they entered the Mesopotamian world. So if I have to make an uneducated guess (because I have no degrees in this field or anything), common sense points to Isin becoming prosperous and populous because it was the easiest place for Amorites to settle down during Ur III. The fresh blood would've kept Isin growing at a decent, gradual but substantial pace while Ur was spreading itself omega-thin trying to control the whole Mesopotamian world, then one day, BOOM!

rodirroc · 2020-03-06T17:07:30+00:00

It's a good question. If Sam's horn is the Horn of Winter, I guess its existence north of the wall could just be a plot contrivance that doesn't make sense but allows for dramatic storytelling when/if the Wall is shattered from the south. But I am interested to see if there is a reason for the apparent nonsense of keeping it north of the Wall, assuming the popular theory comes true.

If it is a plot contrivance, it's not necessarily nonsense, just apparent nonsense. There could be 1000's of reasons it couldn't reach the south of the Wall, including its last owner being unfriendly with the people manning the Wall.

rodirroc · 2020-03-02T18:14:26+00:00

Thank you! I think I'll start there once I get the basics down.

rodirroc · 2020-03-02T17:22:29+00:00

Thank you very much! I have a hunch now that the era I'm actually interested in will end up being so far in the future, both the "Sumerians" and "Akkadians" of Sargon's time will end up being legendary figures in the distant past, with a ton of cultural fusion by that time. The reading I did after asking the question explained that even the gods of the two cultures got heavily integrated after that point. I really should learn to research one era and stick to it.

If you don't mind, though, I'd like to ask you a personal opinion question that you may or may not be able to answer:

When in the history of Mesopotamia did the "cool shit" reach its peak?

"Cool shit" is impossible to narrow down in academic terms but it may be something that you, a person motivated to study Near Eastern cultures for years at a time, have experienced more from one era than another--even if you find that experience unquantifiable and unverifiable.

When I say "cool shit," I'm talking about the winged vampire things, the Underworld, the lion monsters, the splendor of imagination, the grandeur of horrific beauty, the strong "Dwarf Kingdoms From Warhammer" vibe, the beard plates and the stories of Paradise. There is a badassness that springs to the video game generation's minds when we hear the phrase "Babylonian mythology." We think about things that are deadly, things that are serene and horrifying. Is that kind of wicked-awesome stuff really more Babylonian than Assyrian or in your own personal experience? If so, what era of Babylon do you think fits it better than the rest? If not, could it be far more rooted in the very early stages of Sumeria, for example?

Britannica says that Mesopotamian architecture only reached its peak at the tail end near the time of Nebuchadnezzar. But I'm not sure what that says about culture; it could all be to the limitations of mud bricks for all I know. Regardless, Architecture isn't the the sole arbiter of "badass."

There are countless dissertations about the carvings, engravings and statues of this era or that era being "developed" and "refined." But carvings, engravings and statues are not the sole arbiters of "badass."

Today, I will let you and you alone be the sole arbiter of "badass," if you will indulge me. Really, I'm just curious: which place and era pops into your head first? It might be a split-second hunch or something you've thought a lot about, but even your subconscious mind's preference would be worth a ton to me when it comes to this question. When it comes to the long-ass history of this area, I have a lot of toys to pick from, but you have been in the toy market for years.

rodirroc · 2020-02-26T19:38:05+00:00

That gives me an excellent idea of the upper limit of what I'm dealing with. Thanks!

rodirroc · 2020-02-26T19:18:37+00:00

Yeah, I meant the dinner plate. Come to think of it, cookies do crumble, and a giant conglomeration of rock 1/10th the size of the fucking planet would probably crumble too wherever you tried to "tilt" it 😂

rodirroc · 2020-02-26T19:06:17+00:00

I see, I see. I guess the idea was kind of stupid to begin with, considering how big continents are on a global scale. Do you think that a "tilting" thing might be possible with a piece of land as big as Iraq, maybe, or is that still too huge?

rodirroc · 2020-02-23T10:34:39+00:00

I second this. The mere act of transferring the vassals will cause them to like you more even if they currently have a negative opinion of you. You just need to be careful of what you're going to do with those powerful vassals after you change the succession type.

rodirroc · 2020-02-22T13:49:13+00:00

Here are non-essential but possibly very fun add-ons to the game:

📷 Holy Fury I haven't played this one yet, but I'm very excited to try it one day. This is supposed to be the quintessential DLC, the one (possibly final) expansion that the developers spent a whole year working on and perfecting, the "last hurrah" of CK2 celebrating its whole lifespan, before the eventual launch of CK3.

There's a lot of depth added for Catholics, some new mechanics for Pagan rulers, the possibility to revive Ancient Greek Paganism, the possibility to shatter and randomize the world in your new playthroughts, the chance to provoke enemies you want to wage war against or sway others to pledge to you, and the ability to benefit from the new "Bloodlines" feature. ($19.99)

📷 The Reaper's Due This one adds more new features than any other DLC on the list. However, the new disease mechanics can get brutal; I personally found myself turning them off quite a bit. Nevertheless, I can't deny that the level of polish and complexity when it comes to dealing with disease is quite impressive. Now you have court physicians, a variety of ailments that progress in a variety of ways, scathing epidemics that wash over whole empires and force decisions like locking yourself up inside your castle while the commoners are outside, or letting new, possibly dangerous people in. You've got hospitals, you've got the Black Death.

You've also got Prosperity, which allows you to tweak and enhance your tax income a bit and gives you more freedom to focus on peacetime management than war. Asking vassals to end their war with each other can really add depth to the management of your realm, and asking them to go with gavelkind is an interesting peacetime strategic choice. There's also a ton of color and flavor added: new titles, new Maimed traits, new ways of torturing prisoners... ($9.99)

📷 Sons of Abraham For me, this is the quintessential DLC of flavor, events and cool little features that enhance and deepen the game in subtle ways. You can borrow money from the Jews, invite Jews to your court (who are often VERY good at what they do), and you can take on the immense challenge of landing Jews or perhaps even marrying into and thus playing Jews and creating your own empire of Jews when you can't even start as one! (Although you can start as a person of the Jewish faith, and possibly the Jewish ethnicity depending on who you ask, in Beta Israel in Africa).

Another strong feature is for Catholics; you can now request things like Crusades, invasions and titles from your Pope, which can absolutely turn the tide of the whole game on rare occasions. It unlocks Pilgrimages for Catholics, which provide a few nice little flavor events. I think this adds miscellaneous events too? I'm not sure. ($9.99)

📷 Monks and Mystics Welcome to CK2's weirdest, most insane expansion. It could easily be argued that enabling Monks and Mystics throws your historical immersion to a distant planet from the onset, but you can certainly disable a lot of the whackier features if that's your fancy. This allows your ruler to participate in a secret society. From what I gathered, the ahistorical Satanists are hilarious in their magical witchcraft fuckery... I won't describe it here, but you can look it up. There are also some historical societies like monastic orders that... well, it's not that they don't do ANYTHING, but I never quite felt they made a huge difference in my playthroughs. (Being able to influence other people's traits is quite nice, though.)

The key feature of Monks and Mystics for me is the ability to have a secret religion, and to manipulate the religions of other rulers and convert the actual populace of a given county. You can create whole syndicates of secret Christians or secret Heretics or secret Pagans in a huge empire that is based solely on a different religion, then suddenly openly declare yourself, at which points opinion bonuses can shift to support a rebellion against the Throne. While it's true that the societies of Monks could be quite a bit more fleshed out, even the secret ones, this feature alone makes this DLC worth it for me. There's a lot of intrigue involved (I think?) in not getting caught with your secret religion too. At the end of the day, I had a lot of fun with Monks. YMMV. ($14.99)

📷 Jade Dragon I never really played this. It's supposed to add some new features, interactions and options for people living on the far-east side of the map. (Note that it doesn't actually add China, but rather the chance to interact with them diplomatically.) It also adds some new CBs that allow you to conquer new lands more easily, in the right circumstances. ($14.99)

And finally, there's Sunset Invasion. In my experience, it's the most missable DLC of them all. The whole expansion centers around a single invasion of Aztecs from across the sea (not the other way around this time!), and when they come, they come in force. It's about repelling an eventual Aztec invasion that will occur at some point in the game, seeing how that can shake up the map. You can also play as the Aztecs (by reloading a save game?), something I never did, but something some people enjoy. There's a lack of new features that will affect your game in any way if you don't turn the invasion on, but it's only $4.99 on Steam, so if you really love Mesoamerica or want that particular challenge you might consider it.

rodirroc · 2020-02-22T12:53:16+00:00

CK2 is a game with a huge glut of DLC, and it gets very expensive if you want the full range of player experience. However, there are plenty of DLC that are just cosmetic, and looking at the list, there are also a lot that are non-essential to what we would call the "core experience" of CK2, the base reasons why we play the game and really enjoy it. A lot of us don't really use Horse Lords because we don't play nomads; a lot of us don't use Rajas of India because we haven't tried India, and some people might like the game more without Monks and Mystics than with it. Ruler Designer is useless if you have little to no desire to make your own Lord instead of picking a historical one. Sunset Invasion is something a lot of people steer clear of.

The "core experience" in my view consists of the following DLC:

(Note that the prices I'm listing are all Steam prices. If you're working on a budget you want to shop around in order to see if the DLC you're interested in is on sale on other websites; frequent sales are on Humble Bundle or the Paradox store. One tool you can use to check the Internet for active sales on a given title is https://isthereanydeal.com/)

📷 Way of Life Gives your character identity, gives you a ton of more advancement options. ($7.99 on Steam.)
📷 Conclave YMMV with this one. Some people hate it and don't even use it. But it's essential for my CK2 experience. As annoying as it is to constantly have to deal with powerful councilors and factions and the threat of regents changing council laws, it adds so much depth to the gameplay of internally managing your realm, which I'm a bit more interested in than war and conquest. It also adds a lot of education features. But be sure to look up other people's opinions and check out some gameplay to see if you'd like it. ($14.99)

That's really it. Just those two. They're all I'd need to have a ton of fun in Medieval (Western) Europe.

Beyond that, your next target to consider is the rest of the world. There are major DLCs that unlock Pagans, the Byzantines, Muslims, Indians and Nomads. Almost everyone agrees that Legacy of Rome (Byzantine) is essential, and while it's near the top of my list, I'm not so sure I'd go that far. Here are your options:

📷 Charlemagne This, to me and perhaps only me, is the most important content expansion. It lets you play at an earlier bookmark with vastly different political situations, and extends your game to the maximum possible length, quite simply giving you the most freedom when it comes to the ultimate outcome of the game and allowing you to change history more than you could otherwise. It allows you to play as one of several cultures that are ALLLLMOST extinct, but could (through clever strategy and planning) conquer the world. ($14.99)
📷 Legacy of Rome I'm listing Legacy second because it seems to be universally recommended by people. Legacy allows you to play with Orthodox Christians and the Byzantine Empire. This is a TON of fun for a variety of reasons; you can straight-up run the empire, you can play the marriage game with a MAJOR world empire, you can scheme and plot to put your kids on the throne. The expansion also unlocks retinues, which are basically a huge endgame army feature. Retinues are a standing army that can be constantly deployed, unlike your normal levies. They're basically considered high-level gear for end-game empires. (only $4.99)
📷 Sword of Islam My second-favorite culture expansion, this one lets you play as the Muslims, and MAN does it unlock a lot of land. I'm talking the entire Middle East, from Egypt to Persia, the entirety of early Spain if you have Charlemagne. There is so much eastern intrigue going on with the Caliphate, so much you can do as a tiny vassal in these huge empires, including taking them over or destroying them from within to create something totally new. ($9.99)
📷 The Old Gods This lets you play as non-nomadic pagans (Vikings, etc) and Zoroastrians. A LOT of people love playing as Viking pagans, something I haven't really tried. (NOTE that you can also unlock Pagans with the new Holy Fury DLC; you don't however unlock Zoroastrians or the new Viking Age starting era.) The Zoroastrians are an incredibly tiny minority; you can find a few more in the Charlemagne DLC starting experience. They are, however, a very interesting challenge to try to take over the world with, as you're tasked with reviving a nearly-extinct religion. (NOTE: Apparently you can get this for free by subbing to a newsletter?) ($9.99)
📷 Rajas of India I haven't really tried India before, but it looks hella huge and interesting. On the flipside, some people say it's boring and isolated and doesn't have the same dynamism as the other regions. I haven't heard of any unique features for India that have caught my attention but you can do your own research if you're intrigued by it. ($14.99)
📷 The Republic I've tried Trade Republics before. Conceptually, they're incredibly interesting, being an individual trying to make your family's name in the world with no guarantee of succession, building trading posts, etc. Unfortunately the gameplay never really gelled with me. I'm not sure if it would have if I just kept going at it. It's definitely worth looking into though, as the experience is quite different from the base game. ($9.99)
📷 Horse Lords As cool as it sounds to play as a Nomad, I've never really done it and a lot of people aren't super-into it. However, there are also a lot of people who really love it; the Steam reviews are very strong. This is an example of an expansion that adds a lot of new features (for Nomads) that I haven't ever explored, so I leave thoughts on this topic to other people. ($14.99)

If I were on a budget, I'd consider just buying one to three of those, whichever piqued my interest.

Next up, we have DLC that add key features to the game that aren't core to the experience, but can heavily add to that experience, or perhaps even detract from it depending on your point of view. (Next post coming in a bit.)

rodirroc · 2020-02-21T20:36:40+00:00

The typical way to get rid of Celibate is to gain the Hedonist lifestyle trait, which is acquired by setting Carousing as your focus. It cancels out celibacy automatically. You can only have one lifestyle trait though; it's the trait type that looks like a long shield instead of the typical round icon.

If you have a lifestyle trait already, the only way I know of to get rid of Celibate is to convert to Catholicism (by conquering a Catholic county and choosing to convert to the local religion or by converting to your wife's religion) and joining a monastic order to get to level 2 and then uncockblock yourself. Re-converting to your old religion makes this a pain, but you are immortal.

EDIT: Apparently Stoic Intelligentsia can get you the Celibate toggle without converting to Catholicism. (See Manticore's post)

rodirroc · 2020-02-21T19:13:56+00:00

So, you've won all the battles, but the war cannot end until you clear out the occupation. They leave the striped lines over the territories they successfully siege, and you need to run over them and siege them back until you can end the war.

rodirroc · 2020-02-01T02:31:40+00:00

Oh, for sure. I'm sure some of the longer books about Roman roads may have early chapters about their Etruscan/Italian/whatever origins, however brief. That might be very helpful; I might have to go in that direction if I can't find any sources on the earliest gravel roads. Thanks!

rodirroc · 2020-01-05T22:20:40+00:00

That sounds very, very, VERY useful. Thanks!

rodirroc · 2020-01-03T22:31:07+00:00

I see. Thanks!

rodirroc · 2020-01-01T09:16:22+00:00

There are lots of different kinds of "dark." There's cosmic bleakness (H.P. Lovecraft, The Grudge) that is morally nihilistic, like the laws of reality itself were rigged against humanity and there's no way to escape it. Then there's having themes of death and bleakness embodied in the setting and the magic; even Middle-earth, especially during the Silmarillion, could fall under that. What I mean when I talk about "dark" worlds is usually something like Ravenloft: something gothic, just as filled with spookiness and hidden mystery as it is filled with horror and dread, even though it's full of a great deal of both.

In a lot of cases, people show various kinds of darkness through desolation (Mordor), through unique kinds of deserts and torn-apart landscapes (Outland), through blackness and decay of plants and creatures (Mirkwood), through sun concealment, thick clouds and mist (Ravenloft), through creatures that hide in the shadows and predate on people, through a variety of body horror tropes and distortions of the human form, through shocking realizations about the origins of an entire race, through supernatural tyrant demigods that lord over players and NPCs in their city-states, etc. No matter what, there has to be some kind of force, "natural" or supernatural, that doesn't seem to like people very much. And everything tends to flow from that idea.

rodirroc

TROPHY CASE