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Post by hocestbellum on Jan 31, 2019 16:59:34 GMT
Okay, I was going to carry on in full Khador patriot mode, but something important has come up: I need you to tell me where we use a volcano as a weapon so I can read it!
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Jan 31, 2019 20:06:14 GMT
In Aftershock, Strakhov redecorates Rynyr with a gratuitous amount of "liquid hot maggggmaaa".
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Post by michael on Feb 1, 2019 2:23:26 GMT
Nonsense. We are simply righting the historical wrong forced on us by the no-longer-valid Corvis Treaties. Through invasion and subjugation of an unwilling populace, seems legit. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but if you work with a witch who sicced the grymkin on an unsuspecting populace, you keep frozen gods of other races in your cupboard, and you use volcanoes as siege weapons....you miggghhhhhtt be a redneck evil faction.
The Old Witch was trying to prevent the Infernals from manifesting to claim the souls of most of humanity, so... Might want to rethink who's the villain there.
Zerkova chose to hoard Nyssor, secretly, without informing any of her superiors. It wasn't sanctioned by the government / Empress. (I always hated that plot twist, by the way.)
Regarding Acts of War II: we're not responsible for the actions of a bad writer. "Khador is eeeeevil, because Cygnar is good! I get it, let's have them blow up an incredibly valuable city that produces material absolutely vital to the Khadoran war effort, all to find out some secrets from some imprisoned, emaciated warcaster! Move him somewhere more secure? That's dumb! Nope, we've got to blow up the biggest producer of blasting powder in Western Immoren instead!"
....ugh.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Feb 1, 2019 14:39:00 GMT
I mean, the deal was struck with the infernals already, and killing someone so that someone else can't steal your soul hardly makes you a good guy. At that point, it's a matter of which villain kills you first.
The rest of it, hate to break it to you, but if the major plot points in general aren't to your liking but form a consistent and compelling narrative...you might be an evil faction.
Also, Cygnar is so not the good guys. They are Political Evil while Khador is Mustache Evil.
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Post by scarecrow on Feb 1, 2019 15:13:43 GMT
I just finished Flashpoint and will be reading Aftershock next. Catching up on the Humble Bundle books I bought whenever that sale happened.
The most annoying thing to me is the editing discipline. There are so many descriptors that get repeated within 1-2 pages that clearly should have been edited out. There are multiple examples I've noticed in Wrath of the Dragonfather, Blood of Kings, and Flashpoint. The most recent one I can think of was in Flashpoint, when Stryker is holding his war council meetings in his command tent. Rudel describes the tent, the large table and maps spread out on it. The chapter ends. The next chapter begins ...with another description of the same tent, table and maps with slightly different verbiage.
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Post by hocestbellum on Feb 1, 2019 15:28:07 GMT
The rest of it, hate to break it to you, but if the major plot points in general aren't to your liking but form a consistent and compelling narrative...you might be an evil faction. I mean, that's just a load of cobblers. You can write a consistent and compelling narrative about anything, and that doesn't imply that people that dislike the plot are evil. But if you want to go down there, Cygnar are evil for what they did to the Trolls, and the Inquisition Menoth are evil because they follow the Law, and the Law is not nice. They will torture, burn, and wrack you, and believe they are right to do so. Retribution's aim is literally genocide. Convergence is also genocide, but with caveats. Khador treat lives as mere numbers, and are imperialist aggressors. Cryx are the baddies. Skorne are the most warlike race, and are powered by torture and subjugation. But they do have strict codes of honour Legion have destroyed entire societies, and are looking to enslave everything. Circle are after the destruction of civilisation, but with a decent reason Trolls are a bit of a mixed bag, but Doomshaper is certainly an evil douche. Depending on how you want to look at it, everyone is a baddie in some way. It's always been one of my favourite things about the lore; no-one is monolithic good or evil, except maybe the dragons. Which is why I would be quite annoyed if they have turned Khador, or any other faction, into a panto villain in these stories.
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Post by scarecrow on Feb 1, 2019 15:41:49 GMT
I find that I enjoyed the shorter length fiction more, probably because there was no world narrative to drive and the writing could focus on more small scale moments. The Called to Battle series, the Warcaster/Warlock Chronicles, and similar writings I enjoyed much better.
For one, they're shorter so the editing mistakes don't get compounded as much. And the writers can focus on just having cool characters within a small narrative story set in the Iron Kingdoms. Even if they involve named characters, like Thagrosh, Gastonne, the Butcher, Makeda, Doc Killingsworth, etc the more personal stories seem to be written better and are much more enjoyable to read.
The scale of the large narratives they write are too much to include in relatively short novels. I'm reading them on an iPad, so the page count means nothing to me there, but in the course of a single novel there was a treaty written, broken, a city invaded, and then counterattacked within ~400 pages. I don't need Tolkien levels of descriptions, but the pace of the plot makes it fairly choppy I think.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Feb 1, 2019 16:08:01 GMT
The rest of it, hate to break it to you, but if the major plot points in general aren't to your liking but form a consistent and compelling narrative...you might be an evil faction. I mean, that's just a load of cobblers. You can write a consistent and compelling narrative about anything, and that doesn't imply that people that dislike the plot are evil. But if you want to go down there, Cygnar are evil for what they did to the Trolls, and the Inquisition Menoth are evil because they follow the Law, and the Law is not nice. They will torture, burn, and wrack you, and believe they are right to do so. Retribution's aim is literally genocide. Convergence is also genocide, but with caveats. Khador treat lives as mere numbers, and are imperialist aggressors. Cryx are the baddies. Skorne are the most warlike race, and are powered by torture and subjugation. But they do have strict codes of honour Legion have destroyed entire societies, and are looking to enslave everything. Circle are after the destruction of civilisation, but with a decent reason Trolls are a bit of a mixed bag, but Doomshaper is certainly an evil douche. Depending on how you want to look at it, everyone is a baddie in some way. It's always been one of my favourite things about the lore; no-one is monolithic good or evil, except maybe the dragons. Which is why I would be quite annoyed if they have turned Khador, or any other faction, into a panto villain in these stories. Bad explanation on my part. I meant more that if you dislike all the evil stuff they do, but it forms the largest part of the fluff, you might not actually be liking the part of the faction that is the "core identity" (e.g. I like the concept of The Heretic as a redeemer of those corrupted by the evils of Menoth, but that's ignoring all of the evil parts of the fluff).
It was also primarily facetious (trolls are the closest we have to good guys, with the exception of the Circle faction that is actually seeking balance for the good of all creation). I just have to keep my "the Llaelese are the bestest good guys ever and Khador are super mean jerks for no reason" hat on.
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Post by hocestbellum on Feb 1, 2019 16:28:54 GMT
Ah! I see. Well, with my Khador hat back on:
"We know Llael is great! That's why we brought it into the fold..."
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rantmo
Baby's First Wargame
Posts: 8
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Post by rantmo on Feb 1, 2019 16:39:47 GMT
The most annoying thing to me is the editing discipline. PP has been in desperate need of good editing work for ages now across the board, a good editor could actually help them lay out the rules in a way that flows well and makes any sense at all, other game companies have done it and it works! The fiction though is unforgivable; as much as I do genuinely enjoy the books for what they are, they seem to lack even the most basic copy-editing. Someone has to go through and check the grammar and spelling, to say nothing of catching repetition.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Feb 1, 2019 17:10:38 GMT
Ah! I see. Well, with my Khador hat back on: "We know Llael is great! That's why we brought it into the fold..." Well how about you make like an invasion of a totally awesome country...and unfold it! Wait...that didn't...
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Post by michael on Feb 1, 2019 17:39:52 GMT
I mean, the deal was struck with the infernals already, and killing someone so that someone else can't steal your soul hardly makes you a good guy. At that point, it's a matter of which villain kills you first. The rest of it, hate to break it to you, but if the major plot points in general aren't to your liking but form a consistent and compelling narrative...you might be an evil faction. Also, Cygnar is so not the good guys. They are Political Evil while Khador is Mustache Evil. The Old Witch was/is trying to cull a small portion of humanity in order to prevent the majority of humanity from getting wiped out. That is pragmatic, not evil. Also, Khador has been written as Cartoon Villain a lot, and I contend that most people don’t find that believable. I certainly don’t! Hands-down the best Khador fiction was Malakov’s Rites of Passage story. It perfectly encapsulates the feel of the country — the politics, the outlook, everything — and makes it believable. It’s not “blow up our volcano city that produces all the alchemical wealth that was basically the whole reason we invaded Llael” cartoony, or the annoying “Immediately betray Cygnar like eight seconds after the last battle was over, seriously we all know wars on four fronts are totally sustainable” in Vengeance/Reckoning, or the truly inexplicable actions of Supreme Kommandant Irusk in Acts of War II. Seriously — the man who was so severely chastised by the Empress for his flagrant waste of life in Escalation/Apotheosis that he almost committed suicide — this man decides to shell (Llaedry? Riversmet? Whatever) while a huge number of troops and Khadoran civilians are inside the city, all to kill some of Stryker’s Storm Division? No, just no. That’s awful writing. That abuses the character. I liked “Wicked Ways” so much that I would rank it as one of Privateer’s best pieces of fiction, except for one ridiculously overbearing scene. Can you guess? Yep, the scene with the Khadoran border guards, where clearly educated and moderately high ranking military officers act like peasants from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “She’s a witch, burn her!” I mean, seriously? The country literally could not function if the people in charge behaved as ineptly and outlandishly as they have been depicted to behave so many times. It goes beyond “suspension of disbelief” (“Butcher killed 80 people at Boarsgate and rats drowned in all the blood”) and into TV Tropes bad guy territory. It makes no sense. And don’t get me started about the editing. Reading Aftershock was a chore. I don’t think I got through a whole page without spotting one or more typos. Gah! Okay...okay...deep breaths...
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Post by hocestbellum on Feb 1, 2019 17:56:37 GMT
Ah! I see. Well, with my Khador hat back on: "We know Llael is great! That's why we brought it into the fold..." Well how about you make like an invasion of a totally awesome country...and unfold it! Wait...that didn't... Unfolding a country sounds like another job for the Volcano Gun! Excellent suggestion, recently-acquired Komrade!
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Zaku
Junior Strategist
Posts: 224
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Post by Zaku on Feb 1, 2019 20:15:00 GMT
The most annoying thing to me is the editing discipline. PP has been in desperate need of good editing work for ages now across the board, a good editor could actually help them lay out the rules in a way that flows well and makes any sense at all, other game companies have done it and it works! The fiction though is unforgivable; as much as I do genuinely enjoy the books for what they are, they seem to lack even the most basic copy-editing. Someone has to go through and check the grammar and spelling, to say nothing of catching repetition. Wait... Which other game companies are you talking about? Because it sure as heck can't be GW, Corvus Belli, FFG, and even Steamforged as they have some pretty wonky rulebook layouts.
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Post by marxlives on Feb 1, 2019 22:03:36 GMT
Not too worried, PP has managed projects like this before so it is not new territory. And honestly further community engagement is the future of war game business models. The only difference is that this is going to be a novel rather than a novella.
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