Zoraptor

If they did then the question would be "why didn't you kickstart this instead of PoE?" and "won't this take focus away from/ be too similar to PoE?" from a lot of people. They'd already get some people who will not back again due to not having a completed product from the first ks, and they already have the most popular fantasy subset covered. If they were to do a Skyrim type open world thingy in fantasy chances are it would be set in the PoE world anyway.

The big problem there was that the principles that governed good colonial administration and good independent administration were not in concert. For a good colonial administration you want a minimum of trouble for the administrators, and maximal returns on the 'investment' of having the colony- and at least in theory for an independent administration you want a balance of good economic principles and good social development/ cohesion. Unfortunately colonial administration often meant things like deliberately weakening tribes that were 'too strong' by putting half their land in one area and half in another/ promoting weaker tribes as administrators in preference and similar, things which are potentially disastrous when independence comes along because you have resentment and, for want of a better term, national identities that are split between nominal countries. At its heart the problem is that colonialism was always- fundamentally- about benefiting the coloniser rather than the colonised, no matter what justifications were said about it at the time. If you want a good, smooth and seamless transition to home rule it needs to have a good framework of things like education and infrastructure, well run, and native run, industries which are not just obsessed with target profits but also with how those profits are made (eg no corruption tolerated just because they make enough money for the crown), and good 'state' fundamentals like a judiciary and police force set up over decades not months or years plus- as far as possible- sensible boundaries and policies to include and harmonise the people in the new country. Sadly, while those things did happen in some areas (dominions, mainly for the Brits, though they were also usually where colonists outnumbered natives) they didn't happen everywhere.

Contradiction, no. After all, to a certain extent it's exactly what I'm doing. Irony though, yes, if you're going to say that doing so is stupid when you did exactly that twelve hours ago. 1) You kind of do. From the other thread (or earlier this one, asterisked if I can keep it straight) you were talking about post colonialism stopping the UK from interventions and replacing people's governments- which is exactly how much of the British Empire was built and even administered, eg all the Raj statelets that persisted until 1948 and the White Man's Burden bringing of enlightened administration to the Zulus etc. If you're going into countries and replacing their governments, inevitably with 'ideologically pure' ones, then you are being a neo colonialist even if you don't think of it in those terms. Especially with the inevitable double standards that will come in to play where you have to save country X from oppression, but country Y which is already friendly is AOK to do the same things. That's just the Raj principality program with the serials files off and more nominal independence. 2) Evidence required for it being deliberate policy, and not the sort of evidence that has Stalin killing more people than Hitler by counting all the Russians Hitler killed in Stalin's column. Sure Stalin was a monumental asterisk, but if he wanted people dead he was more than capable of getting and frequently did get a metaphorical Mosin Nagant for a lethal lead injection. It wasn't specifically aimed at Ukrainians or anyone else, plenty of Russians and others died too during the same processes, the primary cause was continuing to export food even when in shortage which British India also did on several occasions during famines- as well as the small manner of being the biggest international drug pusher of all time! Of all time!! and producing opium while the population starved.

Hmmm. Do I feel a r00fles coming? Mind you,there really isn't any objective measure to judge degree of evilness other than body count. I'm sure all the Indians who starved kept it in perspective and were comforted that they died in service to good old fashioned capitalism rather than dirty unclean communism, but a more cynical mind might speculate that it wasn't much comfort at all.

At least in some cases there were accusations very similar to those made against Stalin for Holodomor, eg continuing to export foodstuffs while areas starved, which was why I brought it up- and other accusations such as favouring cash crops for export (opium, mostly 19th century) over foodstuffs and over taxing farmers. Exactly how true or fair those accusations are (as Kroney said, nobody can control the weather, which was a common factor) is open to debate, but then you can have plenty of debate on Holodomor too in those regards.

I presume Fantasy isn't there because P(o)E is itself fantasy and it would be a bit odd to kickstart another fantasy game given that, unless it were a sequel- and that was ruled out as a KS, iirc.

Meh, oby just needs to go look at the Mandate kickstarter, Glorious Russian Imperium in Spaaaaaaaace! Have to admit I'm finding the coverage of Ukraine hilarious. Imagine if Putin turned up at an Occupy Wall Street protest to support them, the world's supply of hearing aids would be exhausted from deafness due to the squealing and outraeg!!! at the effrontery of it. Let alone all the reports implying it's a broad popular movement when it's a regional movement from groupings that lost the last election. Split the country in half, it's an artificial one anyway. East and south to Russia, west can become Grand Duchy of Never Actually Going to Get Into Europe And If You Think You Are You're Morons, You're Too Poor And Have Too Many People. Oh, and Uncle Joe actually killed fewer people in Holodomor than Britain did in its Indian famines /lof

And accessories do share blame- it's itself a crime to be an accessory to a criminal act if you knew or had a reasonable suspicion of it. Given human nature it is inevitable that some people will see withdrawal of police as an invitation to riot or settle scores, while others will be driven by withdrawal of services of the breakdown of law into doing things they usually wouldn't and previously hadn't. So you can blame the individuals, and you can blame the system/ it's withdrawal, the only question being where exactly the balance of blame lies. But one entity I don't think you can fairly blame is the people as a whole. No country whether India or the UK consists entirely of Gandhis, if it did you wouldn't need police etc in the first place.

I put that down to my influence. I say that RPGWatch is too bland and has too little conflict and next day they have a competition designed for trolling- plus the prize is steam only so they're trolling me as well. Well done, 'Watch, well done. Next competition: "What is the definition of an RPG?". Make it so! Thought the Age of Decadence sales figures were quite interesting. Not often you get detailed figures, especially from steam.

My bad for speed-reading the thread. Clark didn't like Alexander, his (British) boss and was a tool. I am glad Wals agrees. I was more amused that he'd come up twice and in similar circumstances than anything. He's not really the most well known of generals- perhaps the most fitting punishment. And so far as I am aware the NZ Division thought very highly of Monty which is enough for me.

Presumably they're different and better because they are cheaper. Don't think you need to look further than that.

Going by the riots you had fairly recently, quite a lot, quite quickly. The real question there though is how much blame you assign to the people actually committing the violence vs the people who have withdrawn all the services.

Wals already mentioned Clark. Obviously gets a certain reaction from Brits much like Monty- despite being perhaps the most gifted general of all time- gets from Americans.

I never said Britain was to blame, either entirely or even in the majority. But if you run a place for up to three centuries and you end up with millions of dead and displaced when you relinquish control then there clearly is some blame to be assigned, and it's very easy for the victims to blame the colonial authority for the shambolic change over. Heh, that was largely the justification for colonialism in the first place.

The question with India is whether the actual population cares or likes Britain, and that I rather doubt- I'd suspect indifference would be far more prevalent. Certainly there's an anglicised/ americanised ruling class who are also broadly anglo/ americophiles, but they tend to be the only people we actually hear from because they speak english, are on the internet, travel internationally, are frequently educated in foreign universities etc, things that probably 95% of Indians don't do and which skew perceptions, ie we generally see the educated classes and those predisposed to liking/ being in the west and that skews perception. There's also a lot of anger still in certain areas about the events surrounding independence and partition which did, after all, kill and displace millions. Plus other regional things like the Bengal famines that killed more than any of Stalin's shenanigans, the rather brutal repression of certain rebellions etc. Whether those sorts of things can be fairly attributed to Britain is in some cases a moot question, but they are blamed for them and as with many 'young' countries there is a tendency to play on them to prop up perceptions of the current government in education and the like.

I honestly cannot think of a single instance in which a colonised populace genuinely looked up to their coloniser. In most cases I'd suggest dull indifference would fit better. In most of the other some degree of antipathy. Here for example while whitey probably has some degree of affection for dear old blighty still there's a lot more antipathy from Maori- except the elites- plus a lot of indifference. There was plenty of arab resistance in Palestine to the British. The British being biased against the Zionists is... well, if you got a rabid Morsi supporter and a rabid al-Sisi supporter and asked them who the US was supporting each would say the other in absolute sureness that they were right.

Two things I'd note, firstly, you can find many, many arabs who thought that British policy strongly favoured Zionists. That is usually the way in such conflicts, both sides are absolutely convinced that they're the injured party. Secondly, there's a difference between having good relations with elites and good relations with arabs in general- having good relations with elites was practised throughout the Empire, eg in India. Britain had good relations with those countries, but up until WW2- and for some well after- it was more of a suzerain/ vassal relationship rather than anything else.

I was pretty down on the idea of a 'Skyrim' type game, but it really depends on whether it's being used as shorthand for open world (something like Gothic or Fallout could be considered similar to Skyrim in some ways) and as clickbait/ PR speak or not. The big problem with name dropping Skyrim is that while that is great for pitching it to publishers Skyrim has a rather more... polarised view amongst people who kickstart, who usually do so because they want something other than what mainstream publishers produce. I could certainly see an open world style system working quite well where you had something like the overland map from Storm of Zehir. That could also work for some of the other ideas mentioned in the RPS interview, have episodic content where new dungeons/ dlc/ expansions can be plugged into the overland map etc. Wouldn't have to be standard Tolkienesque Fantasy either, do a sort of Faster Than Light hybridised with XCOM thing with an open universe for all I care, or something with a Syndicate vibe. Do wonder what the licensed property they might KS would be though. D&D seems too similar to PoE, Star Wars seems unlikely for numerous reasons, it isn't Alpha Protocol*, I doubt Wheel of Time would be a realistic prospect. Nothing else I can come up with seems likely either- System Shock, Gothic while PB is busy with Risen etc are all pie in the sky and I struggle to think of any TV/ film stuff that would be suitable/ realistic (The Wire The RPG seems... unlikely, unfortunately) *Hey, I'd kickstart Omega Methodology.

Hmm. Not sure about 'friends' at all. The Brits (and French) had after all promised the arabs independence in WW1 then reneged spectacularly and betrayed their main arab ally after WW1 to boot. And a lot of the ethno religious and other conflicts happening now is because of those lines-drawn-on-maps countries much as it is in Africa. Whether a pan arab state would definitely have been better is unknowable, of course. Once the hodge-podge approach had been decided upon Israel's creation certainly did not help matters.

There is the possibility that the licensed IP Feargus was talking about in his RPS interview is a WoT game, though I'm rather doubtful of that personally. The only real positive to it is that Red Eagle are themselves familiar with kickstarter.

Well yeah, they should. It's far more efficient to produce the power where it's actually used, and inconveniences the people using the power rather than people somewhere else. NIMBY works both ways after all, you have cities saying Not In My Back Yard to power plants near them, then shouting about how rural areas should be converted to produce their power then complaining about hippies blocking them. Sometimes it gets particularly stupid. They wanted to build a wind farm on the Crown Range here- basically in the middle of the South Island, miles away from anywhere. And it's utterly pointless. The South Island already produces far, far more energy than it uses which is then pumped up to us in the North Island without giving them any advantage whatsoever despite all the crap like having large areas stuck deluged by hydro dams. It'll produce energy that has significant losses before it reaches anywhere, it's in a glut area, and was pushed on the extremely rare occasion of the SI not being in energy surplus (due to running the hydro at 100% capacity through out a drought, hydro energy being extremely cheap) when the only reason the lakes were drained was to send the power to Auckland and Wellington. But it isn't near a big population area, so you won't get entitled morons whinging about their house values being impacted and politicians won't lose votes, so let's go for it!

No controversy, too polite, too little difference in opinions; so all that is left is the equivalent of me tooing and giving impressions. And there's no absolute drawcard, an official forum can often get away with being a bit bland because it's an official forum. Every good forum needs a small dollop (or in the codex's case, a torrential deluge) of controversy, of argument, of hate to get to a critical level of actual discussion. There'll usually be more utter guff along with the good stuff as well, but I don't mind sifting the good stuff from chaff. Their articles are usually pretty good though they suffer a bit from being 'too nice' as well.

Yeah, the FIS won the election and the military stepped in, net result was tens of thousands dead. I wouldn't really use Algeria as an example except in the very narrow sense of being a 'good' western ally, you have to disregard rather a lot otherwise.

Yeah I disagree, I think it's likely to change. You reckon? Here's the wikipedia summary of the leaked Trans Pacific Partnership Intellectual Property provisions, an agreement that is currently wending its way via totally secret negotiations towards inevitable utterly undemocratic ratification, and it's an Orwellian melange of every vile stricture and limitation designed deliberately and explicitly to further entrench the current trend to patenting and licensing everything in perpetuity- which would, of course, enshrine such luminously competent patent awards as Basmati Rice and Yellow Beans being unique US inventions (let alone asterisking rounded corners on electronic devices being a unique invention, ffs). On the copyright front it would enshrine a ban on parallel imports and make everyone adopt the Mickey Mouse copyright extensions, criminalise tools that can be used for circumventing copy protection and a host of other garbage that makes the DMCA look like an enlightened and balanced piece of legislation. Yeah, copyright and IP in general should be getting reformed as it's been perverted from a way to ensure that inventors get reward for invention to guaranteeing corporates cash and actively stifling invention; but that reform ain't going to happen. They'll just ratchet down the restrictions as much as they can get away with.

Bethesda the publisher is not there, but there is one Bethesda owned (via Arkane) title on GOG, Arx Fatalis.