Review: The Blue Book of the War, edited by Herbert Strang

The edition I read was reprinted in 1917, and I think originally came out late 1916 (preceding the revolution in Russia and collapse of the Eastern Front). I believe this book was aimed at older children (it’s a little similar in style to The Wonder Book of Aircraft). The mindset is fascinating and the writing engaging.

Most books about The Great War nowadays tend to conjure images of terrible grind, both in terms of trench warfare not moving very much, and in terms of immense grimness. And those things are not wrong. But they’re also not the complete story.

In the Middle East and Africa, things moved with greater pace, and the middle of the book is dedicated to stories of naval exploits, many of which I had no idea about (British submarines getting up to mischief in the Bosphorus, for example).

The mentality of the book is of another age, with the start of a battle described as an adventure beginning. There’s both a recognition of how terrible war is (quoted below) and a celebration of the human spirit that can arise in conflict.

Early on, the book is poignant (a letter home from a soldier the day before he got killed in one of the many large battles standing out in the memory). But the overriding sense is of a quite alien attitude to both Britain and war, the latter perhaps closer to Livy’s Romanesque glory than today’s immense reluctance. I was wondering if it would be a parochial book, yet one of the examples of heroism cited was of a priest who gave the last rites to an enemy soldier, and whilst there is some German-bashing there’s also praise for Turkish manoeuvres around Suez, Von Mackensen’s Eastern shenanigans, and the final chapter is dedicated to heroism from British allies (Frenchmen, Russians, and Italians singled out, with kudos also given to the Sikhs, Maoris, and others).

Must admit, I found the book to have a lively writing style, and yet was perhaps even more interesting from a psychological perspective. The differing topics of the various aspects of the naval conflict and doings further afield ensured that, whilst the focus is on Britain and her Empire, there is plenty about other arenas where our involvement was either minimal or non-existent.

I shall end this review with a few excerpts that I made note of as I read:

“War is a terrible, hideous thing.” [A short time later in the same paragraph]. “Yet there is something even more terrible than war, and that is the weak and cowardly acceptance of what we believe to be evil for the sake of saving our skins.”

“We shall not, therefore, be surprised when we learn that by far the greater part of British naval strength and resources has in the Great War been devoted to the efficient maintenance of its patrol services: and we may well wonder at the weakness of human nature which impels us to esteem a dashing exploit, carried through in, perhaps, a few minutes, more highly than we regard the faithful endurance of hardship and the vigilant discharge of duty continued for long, weary months amid the stress and perils of the northern seas.”

“Their brigade was lying in front of Gorizia and was much inconvenienced by the enemy’s fire from a particular hill that dominated their position – a hill so craggy, in fact, as to seem quite inaccessible.”

Thaddeus

Musing on RPG Morality Mechanics

RPG videogames have a range of approaches to morality. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 went for straight good and evil with paragon/renegade and good/bad karma respectively. More recently, faction-based approval/disapproval, such as in Pillars of Eternity, has become more popular, perhaps as it offers a more nuanced take on things.

I think there are a couple of interesting other ways that morality could function in RPGs, (focusing on a more medieval/fantastical world rather than a sci-fi universe).

The old medieval medicine system (if we can call it that) involved four humours. There was blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. That could easily be translated into morality/behaviour, with blood and phlegm good, bile bad, and blood/yellow bile action-oriented and phlegm/black bile more thoughtful.

A sanguine (bloody) character would be your bold hero, diving into the fray, keen for action and leading from the front. A choleric (yellow bile) would be aggressive beyond morality, eager for bloodshed and more concerned with self-interest than public esteem.

I think that’d be an interesting approach because it has overlap between a thoughtful/action-oriented approach and good/bad. If certain options are only open to good/bad characters or thoughtful/action-oriented characters then in a given playthrough you’ll have a set of options that (unless you copy your playstyle) will differ when you replay the game. It’d also mean your actions matter.

Another way to go about such things would be to make gods more than window dressing. I’m not a vegetarian, but it’d be interesting if you had to pick gods/a god and live according to their precepts, and that could include a nature-based vegetarian style. Similarly, you could have a pacifist religion (perhaps excepting saving your own life), a god who demands his followers drink alcohol daily, one whose acolytes swear poverty, another whose worshippers must regularly participate in frisky time (making brothels part-business, part-temple), and so on.

The price for contravening your god’s whims would be divine punishment, including gameplay penalties, and a quest to restore you to the god’s favour. Or you could jump spiritual ship, which would make you loathed by your former co-religionists. As for advantages, you could start off with minor bonuses and have the opportunity through side-quests to climb the spiritual ladder to enhance them.

This is slightly similar to the faction-approval approach mentioned near the the start, but there are some significant differences. Not least is the limitation on approval (you can’t join the Lovely Peaceful God’s cause *and* worship Angor the Intensely Violent). Another is that it’d be largely (maybe entirely) optional, whereas faction interaction, at least to an extent, is usually a requirement in games that have them.

And it could easily co-exist with a faction system. Maybe you need to persuade leader X to help you. Sure, you can do that via the old approval system, but if you’re the High Priest of his religion (through prolific questing) it’d be cool to just order him to help on pain of excommunication.

Charitable works is another area that could work. Not only would, say, setting up an orphanage boost your reputation, it could also help get beggar children off the streets, improving your relations with businesses who don’t want half-starved urchins cadging coin next to their stalls.

Thaddeus

The Three-Inch Fool part 1

One of the Shakespeare plays that ages the worst is The Taming of the Shrew, the central message of which is that the key to a happy marriage is for a husband to psychologically crush his wife until she’s mindlessly obedient to him.

It does, however, have some cracking jests, perhaps my favourite of which is “Away, you three-inch fool!”

I’ve used that as the basis for a daft character name in Skyrim, and edited some videos into short episodes (I’ve got more in progress). It’s vanilla gameplay footage plus the internal monologue [via text] of The Three-Inch Fool, a morally dubious Argonian with a fondness for cheese and murder.

Anyway, if you enjoy Sir Edric’s internal monologues and self-absorbed comedic style, you might like this. I have limited experience editing, so any insightful feedback is welcome (is the volume fine, captions up too long/not long enough etc).

Thaddeus

XCOM 2 DLC Review (PS4)

I hardly ever buy DLC, but I really liked XCOM 2 and happened to see there was quite the sale on (the original three pieces of DLC reduced by 50% and War of the Chosen, the later, larger, expansion reduced by 62%). For the record, I played on an old, fat PS4.

The bundle of three include some new cosmetic options for customising your cannon fodder, ahem, beloved soldiers, the Shen DLC that adds the Spark class, and the Bradford DLC that adds some swanky one-off weapons and three tough bosses (I did a playthrough of the original XCOM 2 base game plus these DLC, and almost my only losses [I played on normal difficulty] were due to these bosses).

DLC Bundle of Three

The cosmetic options offer a nice range, but, despite how splendid midriffs are, this isn’t something I’d buy by itself. The Shen/Bradford DLC each includes an extra mission with some story background I won’t spoil (both refer back to characters from XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the previous entry in the series.

The Shen DLC adds the Spark class (think Johnny-5 meets Terminator). I quite like the class, as it comes preloaded with the very useful shred ability, and overdrive, allowing multiple moves/shots in one turn.

The Bradford DLC has some unique weapons you acquire through scanning, and three bosses that have multiple turns, (the normal one and reactions to everything your soldiers do, even reloading). The multiple turns appear toned down a bit in War of the Chosen. These bosses are variants of the usual enemies, and come with a bucketload of hp and a penchant for running away (which is handy, to be honest, as they’re pretty damned tough).

These are good additions to the base game, which blend in seamlessly and add a little more variety. They’re nice to have without being fantastic.

War of the Chosen

There are a huge number of additions, some large, some small, with the War of the Chosen DLC. A quick summary of my view is that I like it a lot.

The Chosen are three high-powered individuals that you may randomly encounter when you perform missions in their territory. There’s an Assassin, a Hunter, and a Warlock, each with specific strengths and weaknesses. Taking them down is challenging (they’re easier than the bosses from Bradford’s DLC but effectively immortal and thus come back unless you complete the story missions to kill them permanently) and if they show up during a tricky mission they can make it a lot harder.

There are also three semi-independent new resistance factions who co-operate with XCOM: Skirmishers, who are ex-Advent, Reapers, who are sneaky scouts, and Templars, who are slightly nutty psionic enthusiasts. Each one provides a soldier for XCOM with unique skills (personally, I like Mox, the Skirmisher who can fire twice in a turn, and has a voice a bit like Todd from Stargate Atlantis). The factions also offer missions via the Ring facility, which involves sending off soldiers to act outside your control (although if they’re ambushed you’ll get an extraction mission). Each faction can also fulfil orders which offer you bonuses for a month (like recruits who go through training becoming sergeants rather than squaddies).

Pairs of soldiers can now form bonds that offer bonuses when they’re on the same mission, with this can be levelled up to increase the advantages. Propaganda posters are automatically generated and can also be manually created to celebrate promotions, victorious missions, or midriffs.

Some facilities are new, and with the right one you can select extra abilities outside the usual class options for soldiers (from options randomised for each soldier). This is very useful, perhaps to the point of being a little excessive.

There’s also the Lost. The Lost are effectively a horde of zombies (independent of alien control so they’ll attack the aliens almost as much as you). They’re very weak but there are tons of them. Killing them with ranged weaponry refunds your actions and their attacks are weak. I’m less fond of the Lost than other new aspects of the game as their whole shtick is high numbers, which can make missions something of a lengthy meatgrinder. (One time I had almost my whole squad in a great, elevated position, but it still took me forty odd minutes to effortlessly slay the shambling fools).

Research has two additions: breakthroughs and inspirations. One means research takes far less time for a particular subject, the other offers a rare (some can be acquired through faction missions as well/instead) new bonus like cut-price facility construction or extra damage to a specific weapon type but only if the research is conducted immediately.

A word on the older DLC Bundle: that’s included here. As mentioned above, the bosses are mildly nerfed, but that’s fair enough as they were perhaps overpowered in the original version. Neither Shen nor Bradford get their story mission, though, as the bosses have been repurposed as facility guards rather than appearing randomly, as that would coincide with the Chosen and open up the possibility of encountering both in a single mission, which might be too much (although it does sound quite cool).

I like the War of the Chosen expansion a lot. But there is at least one downside. I had two crashes, both around the end (one just before, one just after) a long mission involving the Lost. It was quite frustrating, especially as the first one cost me a soldier’s promotion which I needed to complete a certain action.

I don’t buy DLC often, but I’ve got to say I enjoyed this extra content. Would I recommend it at full price? Only if you’re Captain Moneybags. At a discount, give it a look, particularly War of the Chosen.

Thaddeus