From: "Cas and Lisa (also Silvia, Max & Viveka) Liber" <casliber@ozemail.com.au>Subject: (TFT) psychology of castle building Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 19:48:28 +1000 This is a delicate subject and if anyone gets upset by mentioning this please accept my apologies in advance:One thing about the WTC disaster was how vulnerable they were, which made me think of discussions of castle vulnerabilities and how castles may not exist in a fantasy world as they are vulnerable to attacks which wouldn't exist ina nonmagical medieval world. Another way to look at this may be that a castle or tower of an overlord/ruler IS vulnerable, but the object is such a psychological symbol of the ruler's power (Castles being the ancient equivalent of skyscrapers) that any attempt to destroy it will be met by such ferocity from the ruler that someone better be pretty strong or devious to avoid it. Thus the psychological rather than physical means of defence. Cas
I would bet this has been contemplated exceedingly by Dungeon Magazine over the years. How do you keep the dragon/bullets/wizards out of castles or dungeons. The answer is probably in there. (I don't know if it is or isn't, since I only sporadically read it.)
(PS: We over here are pretty blown away by the Sept 11 events. I have photos of me on top of them in '89 and am spun out by the thought of them not beingthere)
Yes, Terrorism is supposed to be horrible. But if these guys (the group that backed the terrorists) had declared a real official war first, had a few skirmishes in India or the middle-east, then done this, would it have been an act of Terrorism or a commando raid using non-military vehicles attacking non-military targets. This is the only type of "war" these guys can field. As we can see from the news in Afghanistan, they can't go head to head in the open. They are bringing the only kind of battle that they can have any chance in. And since they really didn't belong to Afghanistan in the first place (weren't these foreigners in a coup aided by Pakistan?), they don't really care if it gets nuked, so long as they can "get the enemy." Expect more of this and not just from this group. See how this converts to gaming below.
I would bet that the Twin Stumps scenario and worse has been pulled by player characters playing Paranoia, ShadowRun, Cyberpunk or any number of other games. This just happened to be real. Let your carefree character's player's think about the consequences to the rest of the area, before they start escallating their turf wars. Then again, maybe that's why we play escallation games. No real consequence. A way to escape from the real Terrors of the world.
Wow, so cynical today. Tomorrow I can tell you just the opposite with conviction. Did I tell you that I'm helping create and play in a post-holocaust game soon? The Terrorist events happened soon after we decided on this campaign.
Hail... John... _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"