BrythonLexi

Or - hear me out here, the Orbis World Forums are a stage and that the people behind the doors just wanted to have some fun like the rest of us. Whatever, you're not going to hear us out. Okay. But serious, I swear upon the Gods, that we are literally all here to have fun - and GW16 happened mostly because it was too long since the last war (thanks NPO) and people just wanted to fight because peace is boring.

Thanks! 100 days in and I am still baby.

Is it even worth humouring you? Fine. It's a videogame and the members of Swamp thought it'd be most fun for them to fight the pirates. For whatever in-character reasons; be it a stop to piracy or whatever; it doesn't matter. Could be as simple as "they've raided us too much" or building comradery among allies/friends, but the OWF plays none-to-little in that. People in this game rarely go OOC for why they fight, nor should they - it's generally considered below the belt to fight for salty OOC reasons. Again, the Orbis World Forums are a stage - it's moreso a roleplay to back the in-game actions. We play because the roleplay is fun. P&W itself is questionable in how fun it is, but the roleplay of the OWF makes it all the more engaging.

You don't understand how P&W diplomacy works. At all. When pirates raid ASM [or any other aa] nations, we just counter that pirate. Nothing major, the pirates are a part of the game and honestly spice things up a little. When other alliances raid ASM [or any other aa], we send our foreign affairs people [namely myself as this isn't a high gov issue] to the other alliance, and simply ask them to peace out. 99 times out of 100, they'll accept. Same with the event of an ASM member attacking another alliance - their FA person will go to our Discord and discuss the situation, and we will tell our guy to stand down.

Hello and good morning, Politics & War community! I didn't introduce myself when I first joined, but 100 days is as good a barrier as any to do so. My name is Alexandra Brython, and I am 22 years old and pangender (Basically I feel all the gender at the same time) - any pronouns work fine but I prefer she/her and they/them. My country in-game is the Brythonic Autonomous Zone, currently C15 with 1800 infra (I bought a few credits when I lost my pizza money one day, built 3 cities at once). I'm currently the Secretary of [low gov] Foreign Affairs for ASM, and have previously served as a mixed IA-tech role as well as a high gov advisor for them. I've been enjoying the game so far, and have made friends not just in ASM, but also in the Rosecam sphere, TKR, and even CotL. My thankfulness is incredibly high, as i'll soon be moving in with friends I met in P&W. I hope the new year goes well for everybody, both in real life and in game.

Please stop. We're begging you.

Have you considered why said information is getting harder to come by? You leak private conversations with your alliance leaders in the name of "information" that, if i'm going to be quite frank, doesn't even matter. Those in positions of power and trust are not going to keep talking to you if opsec stuff is just gonna get leaked. I get it. Information good. But it's not so good as to forfeit months or even years of trust in the community. The people in the closed door discussions are people who have spent a long time building up trust and competency in the game. As it stands, you're doing the opposite - lowering your ability to be trusted, especially among those who have the information you seek.

Communists, fascists, and liberals sleeping together, mass hysteria!

Oh gods. It's clear examples don't work, as you just read into them and argue the facts of the examples and not the lessons to be learned. Let's try pros and cons, aye? Action: Leaking opsec info Pros: Get [what you believe to be] the truth out there. Cons: Violate someone's trust. Lose trust from other members of alliance governments. You may not be believed. You may lose respect. You may be kicked out of your alliance. Action: Start many forum posts Pros: Get your words out Cons: People dislike you more for spamming. Possibly reported for spam. More chance to be seen as a liability.

Specifically adding onto "When you re-post something that someone told you privately and in confidence, then you insult them and show them that they should not have "trusted" their assumption of privacy and confidentiality." This, Pheonyx, is why "opsec" exists. Things that are classified as secrets, because them being leaked can negatively impact everybody, be it reputation or otherwise. If somebody had leaked the paperless treaties among Hedge, Rose, etc., then things would have gone on very differently - Quack might not have attacked, the coalition may have never formed or rushed to eachothers mutual defense, etc. If somebody had leaked Quack's plans to attack Rose and/or Hedge (I have heard variations of who they planned on hitting first), Rose/Hedge may have attacked first (if they didn't - again, it is unclear). "Trust" plays an important role in our community, and the designation of "opsec" is there for the exact reason of "trust" and allowing plans to be safely executed - instead of the details being leaked by any random member, foiling the entire plan. If Quack's plans were leaked, they could have been dogpiled even faster. If Hedge/Rose/etc.'s paperless treaties were leaked, that could have spelt doom to the whole coalition and maybe lose them the war. By violating this "trust", not only would more people lose pixels (a meaningless thing in a web game, of course), but real life relationships could be severed over the resulting paranoia. This game community allowed me to find a home with comrades. If I had instead leaked everything ASM ever did to RON or something, I could've sacrificed myself to being homeless for Gods knows how much longer.

That's the thing - what you've "revealed" is kinda public knowledge anyway. All the different spheres gave their public reasons for fighting - but that's irrelevant. The OWF has, is, and always will be a stage. It's kinda like basing your knowledge of the Scottish monarchy off Macbeth. The real action, again, is behind closed doors. The things every alliance / sphere says in public, and what they say in the closed door discussions, is completely different. There's paperless treaties, different possible CBs, and all sorts of things that I don't have any idea about, and i'm the low gov FA person for ASM. The real politics of this game happens in secret. Edit: Let me give an example from the real world. In 1618, Bohemian aristocrats chucked a Holy Roman official out of a window in Prague, igniting the Thirty Years War - a conflict that dragged Europe into a decades-long slaughter. The common soldier was fighting for God, be it Catholic rule or Protestant. However, the real reason many of these empires went to war was completely different. King Gustavus Adolfus of Sweden claimed to be fighting in defense of Protestantism - but was really fighting to expand Swedish control in the Baltic and northern Germany. The French rode out to combat the Holy Roman Empire, despite both of them being nominally Catholic - because the French wanted to curb Austrian aggression. The casus bellis we are given are not the actual causes for war. But we will likely never know what really ignites these things, because they happen in secret and for underhanded reasons. It is not our place to know, and that is why we are not at the negotiation tables.

Dude, you're C13 and have been playing just slightly longer than I. Let me be clear: We don't know anything. The real foreign affairs work is done at a level higher than you and I would even be aware about. When our alliance and sphere leaders go to discuss things like peace settlements, even people in said alliance govs have very little idea what's going on other than maybe the leader, 2ic, and high gov FA. The Orbis World Forums are a stage - and the posters here are merely players. You're not going to be able to uncover what goes on in those closed-off talks via postings on the OWF.

I have to agree w/ @Isjaki on all this. When the punishment for a swear is equal to a dehumanising, transphobic attack, something is messed up for sure.

So uh, Trump just vetoed the $600 stimulus. Not for the reason you'd think he, a Republican, would. He vetoed the stimulus because he feels it should be higher, at $2000 per person. I'm as diehard anarchist as they come. I believe that all states should collapse into horizontal and democratic local governments. I believe Trump is the worst of a bad line of imperialist, warmongering Presidents who abuse the office to give tax cuts to the bourgoise class. But i'm actually on his side for once - he actually managed to support something that lefties and progressives have been pushing for. Feels straight out of Castle Itter. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, I suppose. Not gonna stop me from wanting his ass in prison, but... I can't believe i'm saying this... good on Trump.

Fixed that for you

Given that we're lefties whose mission statement is eating the whales, It's clear that ASM is La Résistance.

This is beautiful. @Changeup when's Peanut Gallery happening? 😛

There is no need to be ashamed, comrade. To try and push a morally dark person to do the right thing is an incredible struggle. While it was for naught this time, the struggle itself for honour and dignity is incredibly noble. You should keep your head held up high - we at ASM are proud of you for trudging through the mud, even for a few hours, to provide safety to the Schruters. Peace to you in Rose, and thank you for your support.

They're already slotted, so what [non-opsec] things can we do? We already have a treaty with them.

We will stand with the workers of Schrute Farm as we always have. The whales who left and robbed these poor farmers of everything they reaped will be shamed by us for the rest of their days. Again, the whales want nothing but their own benefit off the backbreaking labour of those who actually make the alliances function. All the best to Lightside's administration, which I hope will defend their fellow workers in the way the whales refuse to.

OK, let's go and say that the police did not intend to fire on Breonna Taylor. It would still qualify under manslaughter: "the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder". The police did not intend to murder Breonna Taylor, but they did kill her. The only charge any of the officers were given was wanton endangerment.... of the white family's house next door. The black family upstairs, who had a bullet enter their apartment, had no charges filed in their defense.

Huh, that's amazing! When was this update added?

It appears that my nation is experiences a fall in approval ratings over time. However, based on the Wiki's calculations for approval rating, this does not make sense. Pollution is at 0, population density is less than 125, and I have both money and food. The only factor should be a 0.025/turn increase as well as the positive boost from low pop density and no pollution.

Nation Link: The British Isles Ruler Name: William Carter Nature of Violation: After joining my alliance's Discord server, I had made [what I thought to be] an innocent joke about the Alsace-Lorraine territorial claims. After this, the offending nation made several comments regarding regions such as Denmark, Poland, and the Netherlands being German. After being told repeatedly to stop, the offender kept going and ended up banned. They evaded the ban with a second account. I know this would not fall under game reports as it took place in Discord, but evidence for this can be provided. The actual report stems from the offending nation later private messaging me even further, defending their words and criticising that I flagged it as Nazism [as it was German nationalism and defending it using annexation during both World Wars] on my alliance's Discord server. I blocked the user, and am filing this report for both potentially subtle Nazism as well as harassment for pursuring my private messages after I had already banned them from my alliance's server [which would be a clear sign that I was not interested in continued discussion].

Yeah. We're in a situation where everyone is throwing arms at eachother. It just went from a racist police problem to now far-right people shooting protestors dead and vice-versa. Trump refusing to concede is only making it worse, and I fear a civil war if things continue on this path.