Is SCOWL right for us?

[Kaiser Malarbor I]

tl;dr version of this post and my thoughts on the subject:

I like SCOWL, but I realise I am selfish in liking it, because when a structured recwar comes to Shireroth, we tend to toss away all the structure and just use the setting for our own stories. I would like to keep the wars coming, because they provide interesting and fun ideas to work with. But too many of us are either uninterested or not cut out for structured recwars to respond in a manner that actually lets the aggressor get a lot of recwar fun out of us. Leaving the SCOWL would be a disservice to us, I believe, but it could be a service to our friends, and I'm not sure yet how to weigh one against the other.

It's getting late-ish so, just putting out some real quick disconnected thoughts here.

- The Magroth storyline didn't go completely unused in Shireroth. It was largely just reapplied in the form that's traditionally been found to be appropriate for us. Leto responded to it by making an RP decree to move the capital, I responded to both the entire Magroth storyline and the decree by using them as the background for the short piece introducing Kaiser Malarbor. I know that wasn't much, but it was stuff that would never have happened if the Magroth story had only been posted in Gralus, and while I'm not sure Andreas got much out of it, I do think it enriched Shireroth in general.

- It should not have been too much of a surprise that there wasn't more of a positive response to the Magroth story, though. I believe the main reason there was such response to the storyline with Gralan's disappearance and such is that I happened to be running an experimental RP-based kaisership at the time, and bringing the story to the Kaiser's court compelled the others to respond (and to school me on how little attention I had been paying to many Shirithian cultural developments )

- I disagree with the complaint that goes something like "Andreas made the rules and bent them as far as he could to advantage himself, no wonder he's playing alone", if not for any other reason than the fact that sometimes the really meaningful thing is playing on the losing side. That's where the big heroic sacrifices and the small victories fought against the inevitably encroaching enemy are. I know I can't really throw a lot of rocks at anyone here, but I think that if you refuse to participate in a recwar is because you are hopelessly outmatched in terms of units, you didn't get the memo: Nobody cares who wins the battles, or even the war. What counts is how much awesome you can stuff in on the way.

- Was there anyone who didn't take one look at the introduction of the bots and go "Well, those are certainly not going to be evil and turn against their owners or something!" . A fair deal, Andreas - telegraphing your intentions from a mile away was the appropriate thing to do for a plan like this. Uh, this wasn't even an argument for anything, I suppose, I just wanted to thank you for giving the people who were paying attention a chance to be all future-conscious and know that they should ban the Magroth bots if they like their skins unpunctured

... well, OK, I guess that all in all I can make some sort of an argument here: I believe that it was better for Shireroth to have the Magroth storyline be published here rather than not, but for whatever reason people just didn't find it compelling or didn't want to respond to it except for a scant few posts. On that subject, two further notes about what we should probably do with SCOWL in Shireroth:

* Unless you happen to press all the right buttons at the right time, chances are you aren't going to catch more than a couple of participants into many kinds of RP storylines Shireroth. Plan accordingly, and always be ready to deal with the Shirithian tradition of getting halfway through a good story and then suddenly stopping posting at all. *Especially* if I happen to be involved
* Sometimes people post storylines on the internet that are incredibly lame, yeah. But I haven't Andreas do that yet. If he does in the future, I might just call him out on it, but up to now, I don't think there's been any need to respond to him with sarcasm just because you personally don't like something he's doing. This isn't personally about Andreas, mind you - he's pretty thick-skinned, anyway - this is about the fact that we *are* a big pile of social maladjusts here, and we aren't good at getting involved into things that are getting drive-by criticised. So, if your opinion about a storyline is that it's lame, you proooobably should just move on rather than post about it - a thread with no replies is enough of a statement as it is.

Oh, and one more thing. Remember, when you start out in SCOWL, you get an army that grows by 1000 points every day, up to 50000 points, simply by having registered that you'll have an orbat (actually the way it works now, after a rules change at some point, is that you get 20000 points of army at first, and then 20 days later it'll grow to 21000 and keep growing until 50000). Considering how rarely wars come up via SCOWL, I wouldn't be surprised if registering an orbat at the SCOWL forum today would give you 50000 points for whenever the next recwar comes, assuming we're still in the SCOWL at the time. I'm not completely convinced of the fairness and reasonability of this system, but considering that you really only just need to submit an empty orbat to have a good bunch of points to orbat with later on when a fight actually comes on... it's not like it's much of an investment. I wish I had any plan of ever being involved in recwars myself so I could be less of a hypocrite and submit an orbat myself :P.

[Daniel Farewell]

I've never done recwars... Never understood them

[Kaiser Malarbor I]

FOOLISH MORTALS! Your attempts to comment on this thread without actually making replies on the forum by just talking about it on #micronations are useless! MALARBOR SEES ALL!

04:25 <@Harvey> And I don't understand AT ALL what Ari was getting at with his SCOWL rant.
04:26 <@Harvey> The closest thing I can see to a coherent argument is 1) general condemnation on everyone for not getting involved, apparently and 2) Shireroth not leaving SCOWL.
04:26 <@Harvey> But both of those are stretches.

And that they are, sir! Well, the first one is, anyway. Right now my level of conviction on the subject of "Shireroth should not leave the SCOWL" is that I would vote against leaving in the Landsraad if I had a vote and it came up, which is about... one tenth or so of the level of conviction that it would take to make an Imperial Decree saying "we're not leaving the SCOWL". And, of course, after so little response to the Magroth storyline, the issue is *bound* to come up in the Landsraad, either by Andreas's hands or by mine.

I'd like to continue the theme of calling you out on everything you do ( ) and dispute #1 there, though. You know, I write up the occasional RP post when I feel inspired, but I can't pull off RP consistently, certainly not consistently enough to take part in recwars. A lot of other people have their own reasons not to participate. Ric says he doesn't understand them (and lord knows the rules *have* grown into walls of text!), Shyriath does not much appreciate the number crunching, and so forth. Mike just doesn't care, and he has every right not to. I don't mind not getting involved, if I did I'd have to mind myself and some of the people I like most in Shireroth.

If there's anything I'm scolding people about it's the complaints that got, for instance, Cho'Gall to say this:

[03:26:57] <chogall> I thought it would be fun to explore what andreas had up his sleave
[03:27:04] <chogall> But he gets booed off the satge
[03:27:08] <chogall> What for?
[03:27:10] <chogall> RPing
[03:27:15] <chogall> such a crime

(the discussion went on with Harvey trying to convince Cho'Gall to just participate anyway despite the noise; appreciated, sir.)

But, even there the funny thing is, there wasn't actually all that much complaining. Mike said, in his unique way, that he doesn't mind the RP as long as it doesn't expand into Lakhesis. Harvey was very well-reasoned in his critique of SCOWL at the international level and in Shireroth. Now, Bill and Ardy made sarcastic comments, but who wasn't expecting that of them? At the same time, there were Jonas, Allot, Ardashir (sorry about missing you guys in the earlier post... and if I missed someone else, uh, sorry about that too) and my responses that happily at least used the backstory of the war, even if not all were actually involved in the war effort itself.

To get back to the topic, well, here's my current argument on the SCOWL in a compressed form (as also copied to the beginning of the OP). The reason I didn't write this yesterday is that I hadn't yet written enough about the subject to bring my thoughts together. I like SCOWL, but I realise I am selfish in liking it, because when a structured recwar comes to Shireroth, we tend to toss away all the structure and just use the setting for our own stories. I would like to keep the wars coming, because they provide interesting and fun ideas to work with. But too many of us are either uninterested or not cut out for structured recwars to respond in a manner that actually lets the aggressor get a lot of recwar fun out of us. Leaving the SCOWL would be a disservice to us, I believe, but it could be a service to our friends, and I'm not sure yet how to weigh one against the other.

[Ryan]

I have no objection to SCOWL, but at the same time, I haven't had the opportunity to use it. Not because it isn't there or that there haven't been recwars I could participate in, but simply that I haven't had time to sit down and go over all the rules in detail in order to figure out an OrBat for myself.

That said, I've participated in war-gaming with far more depth than SCOWL, and don't think it's wise of us to shy away from it. But like all things, I don't think it's something that should be forced on people (not that it is, I'm just making the point) - if some of Shireroth wants to use it, fine; if others don't, then they should be allowed to do their own thing.

Perhaps the best way to approach such a division would be to delegate a "free for all" area whenever a recwar gets going.

[Cho'Gall]

IM BEING QUOTED! ITS ALMOST LIKE I MATTER!

[Shyriath]

Perhaps the best way to approach such a division would be to delegate a "free for all" area whenever a recwar gets going.

Seconded. Going into battle is fun, and I miss it; I just never personally saw the attraction of doing it all by numbers. A free-for-all area might help with that, or at least a more story-centered area.

[Erik Mortis]

Yeah.. we used to just shun the god moders.. you know.. people with evil world destroying doomsday satalites, magic orbs and flying mountain that could level a county with a push of a button.

[Shyriath]

*Nods*

Not that I don't wish I had an evil world-destroying doomsday satellite...

[Erik Mortis]

We all wish we had one.. but they break the story completely. As I've said before, I miss simpler combat without missiles and stuff.

[Andreas the Wise]

I was intending to not comment on this thread, but two things have become apparent to me which I think need to be pointed out. Please don’t take this as ‘Andreas knows so much more about recwar than you’ or ‘You’re old all farts’ or any sort of personal attacks – I’m just trying to make objective observations.

1. Shireroth is a large nation with a variety of citizens who like a variety of things; so any system which relies on the majority participating is going to have troubles.
We all know that Shireroth is one of the biggest nations in the sector. It’s become more noticeable, in recent months, that there is practically nothing all citizens agree on and like to do – even our flag or the Landsraad, some of the most prominently Shirithian institutions, are disputed. Some people participate actively in the economy; but not all. Some care about all the laws in the Landsraad; some don’t. Some do development on their county and nothing else; others haven’t posted in their county for the last two years but are active elsewhere.
In the contexts of GROWL (upon which SCOWL was based): the system was designed for a dozen people to regularly participate and contest land that’s probably 2/3 the size of all of Shireroth. While it has built in safeguards for dealing with inactive people, as long as part of your army is determined by the land you hold; and some people think that the person with political control of the land should also have military control; SCOWL is not going to work well if only a couple people use it in Shireroth; particularly if they divvy up all the land between them.

2. Recwar has evolved significantly in the last ten years; and SCOWL is a product of the newer end of recwar evolution.
We all know, I hope, that recwarring practises have changed over time. I’ve been here about three years, and in that time, I’ve fought under two different SNARL systems; ZRS (Ardy might remember the Goloni conflict); Anunia; QUARREL; and a variety of Gralan charters and magic systems (all of those based off the idea of points=strength to resolve battles). I’ve also at least skimmed the GSO recwar system (if you think Anunia is complicated, you should have seen it. It made Anunia look like a grade 3 class playing rock paper scissors ). I don’t say this to say ‘Look how experienced a recwarrer Andreas is, he must know what’s best’. I just say it to make it clear that I’ve participated in the majority of international conflicts in the last three years, as well as a bunch of internal ones, under a variety of systems. I’ve learnt my recwarring straight from the intermicronational community; and then practised it in Gralus.
In all that time, I think it would be fair to say that it has been inconceivable to the intermicronational community (and certainly inconceivable to me) that you could have a recwar without numbers or a clear structure. You can tell a joint story about war, sure; but that’s not a recwar as the term is generally understood by the current intermicronational community. And yet several people have talked of recwar without numbers or structure as if it was normal.
My point is this (and Ardy may be the only person in a position to confirm this, having fought in wars like the War of the Orchids and international ones in the present day): the conception of recwar in the current international community (as epitomised in Anunia); and the conception of recwarring that seems to be what older people are fondly recalling, are completely different. I’m not saying that your conception of recwar is wrong, or inferior, or even better; I’m just saying it’s really, really different; and so you shouldn’t expect people my age or younger to understand your allusions or concept of recwar (if I am right in how different it is); nor to base our systems upon it. I’m 90% sure that several times over the Al’Magroth incident we’ve used the same words but meant very different things by them. A brief example:
Erik, you talked about giant space based lasers as god modding. To me, god modding is when you post your opponent’s response for them (eg you launch missiles and say they all hit and destroy someone’s city, instead of letting them respond and stop you). It has nothing to do with the strength of the unit. The context of your use of the phrase seems to be how I’d use ‘broken’ or ‘overpowered’. A unit is overpowered if the strength it’s used in battle as is noticeably different from its cost. A unit is broken if its abilities are beyond what could be considered appropriate for recwar, and costing it differently wouldn’t help. I can see how a giant space based laser, costed inappropriately, could be overpowered. I can see how, played inappropriately, it could be broken. I can’t see how mere possession of it is god modding, as I understand the phrase.
[/example]

It should also be noted that the international community is very much into realistic’ recwar; whereas Gralus is happy to utilise magic (under an organised system) and push the bounds of existing tech (Gravships anyone?). But both those conceptions of recwar seem to be miles away from the old days, as far as I can gather.

In the contexts of GROWL (upon which SCOWL is based): the system was born out of the Gralan interpretation of the current international understanding of recwar. And, judged by the standards of recent international recwar charters, it’s a fairly simple and inclusive recwar charter (alright, redeploy is a little complicated because it’s a constant system; but the alternative is to make you buy each unit, and when we did that, it messed our whole economy up. We think this way is fairer on newcomers). All it has are rules on who can be involved, what units can be used, how big your army can be, how to format a move and how to resolve battles. That’s not to say it’s better or worse than the old days; it’s just different, and you can hardly expect it to be like recwarring ten years ago because none of us Gralans were around more than four years ago.

There, said my bit, so I’ll leave you to discuss it. On a final, unrelated note: SCOWL is a constant recwar system. That is, people always have their orbat deployed/can redeploy, and wars can happen at any time. The alternative is that wars only happen when everyone agrees to have a recwar, and they then make an orbat specifically for that war (and it can’t be redeployed in the middle of the battle). That should have some bearings on the discussion (ie does Shireroth want a constant recwar system at all, SCOWL or not).

PS: It would be nice if someone could actually explain to me how recwars worked in the old days. The best I’ve got is a few vague comments when I enquired six months ago; the last person I asked wasn’t interested in explaining. Otherwise it’s a bit hard for me to do recwar any other way than the way I’ve been brought up by the micronational community to do it.

[Aurangzeb Khan]

ZRS (Ardy might remember the Goloni conflict)

Yes absolutely - it was quite the best for detail and simulation I encountered - mainly because of the astuteness of the judge who was able to the behind the scenes moves in a way that complemented the main war-fighting narrative without ruining it. For instance Babkha was able to run a covert war against the Ocian garrison which included air strikes, cruise missile attacks and a gun-running racket amongst the tribes whilst pretending to offer humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping forces to the Zindarians without being exposed. I think someone, possibly Andreas, had the mother of all unethical mining corporations galloping around stirring up the tribes in the best Congolese fashion. Good clean unethical fun was had by all.

I think there are two ways to go - a return to the completely free-form and anarchic free for all of yesteryear (with no grounds for complaint or means of redress when things lapse into the Omens and Ohl'Tars and Flying Statues of Stalin realms of the absurd) or a ZRS style system where the Judge is at the hub of everything and has the final say on what goes "on record".

Which ties in with an ongoing Antican-Ashkenatzi powwow on the subject:

I'll develop this some other time but I am starting to edge towards the conclusion that "grand strategy" and "narration" in recwar should be separated out and that moves should be fed through a judge for him to determine the results of any combat, and incorporate an appropriate level of SNAFU and other phenomena into the game - more like proper war-gaming only without the ridiculous obsession with meticulously painting little metal toy soldiers... while the narrative side would focus on life at the "sharp end" i.e. on one of the lesser characters - say no higher in rank than a major or even a non-military character all together like a war correspondent or a refugee and the quality of the story telling would provide the gold stars, awarded by the Judge, which tip the balance between combatants who on paper at least are roughly equal.

Yes, that's a good idea. The current generally accepted RecWar style seems to hinge less on tactical efficiency and more on grandiose story lines and creative writing. Of course, those aspects are important in making a war enjoyable, but at the moment they can somewhat prohibit people who either don't have much time or simply have little skill in creative writing to participating as effectively as they'd like.

The only reservation I'd have is that many parties may see a judge with so much power to decide the outcome of every battle as biased, or perhaps having too much power. Whoever it is shouldn't be pressured into rushing their analysis of military confrontations, and should post a comprehensive and detailed report of every battle including maps and names of units involved. I'll post an example of what I mean using two fictitious battles from the Mahoz Insurgency later on.

Such a comprehensive analysis of military conflicts would greatly aid researchers of micronational conflicts in future years, who are probably put off at the moment simply due to the vast amount of trawling through posts they need to do in order to see any information of consequence.