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Try to survive the Winter: A planquest in Fantasy Colonial America

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OldShadow said:
Integration depend on how well they deal with Winter, no matter the choice.
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Well, I think I explained myself poorly here @OldShadow , you told us that depending on what we choose on Rights of Assembly the new colonists would feel less isolated and trust the Union more, which would, in turn, increase their chances of surviving their first Winter by a decent margin...

I was mostly referring to that, and if there is any difference regarding that between choosing Power of Decision and Power of Law...
 
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I have to admit, I'm going to find it confusing that our ghost friends and our Native American community members both have a special category of themselves called "Awakes" and refer to entirely different things by the same word. :p

Hunter531 said:
I read some of it years ago, but quit part way through due to all the unpleasantness inherent in being in charge of a Five Year Plan in Stalinist Russia. What can I say, I don't enjoy playing the villain, and that QM was too damned good at injecting pathos into the results descriptions.
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Things got better over time, for what it's worth. The Stalin era ended (Stalin even died early after rolling a 4 on a d100 health check or something, c. 1947) and that quest's USSR wound up being if anything more chill and less at risk of stagnation than the OTL one, if not at all ideal.
 
Fanhunter696 said:
Well, I think I explained myself poorly here @OldShadow , you told us that depending on what we choose on Rights of Assembly the new colonists would feel less isolated and trust the Union more, which would, in turn, increase their chances of surviving their first Winter by a decent margin...

I was mostly referring to that, and if there is any difference regarding that between choosing Power of Decision and Power of Law...
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They would like both more or less equally : Both reforms more or less are "your voices matter".

Simon_Jester said:
I have to admit, I'm going to find it confusing that our ghost friends and our Native American community members both have a special category of themselves called "Awakes" and refer to entirely different things by the same word. :p

Things got better over time, for what it's worth. The Stalin era ended (Stalin even died early after rolling a 4 on a d100 health check or something, c. 1947) and that quest's USSR wound up being if anything more chill and less at risk of stagnation than the OTL one, if not at all ideal.
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Yes, it is a little confusing...
I think I will kept the Rite of Awakening, but replace Awake ghost by Aware in later turn. Should prevent confusion.
 
Well, I still think that the Power of Law is worth the price, but if people want to go for the Power of Decision only, I think we should have an option for getting the Champions as well, I think they are an extremely useful addtion for our Militia, and we would still be on the 70 morale threshold...

[X] Plan Power of Decision with Champions
-[X][Training] Complete the Champions project through…intensive training [-6 Morale]
-[X][Reform] Power of Decision
-[X][Practices] Brought to Deadtown and…(choose as many suboptions as wanted)
--[X] Subjected to the lesser Rite of Eternal Repose (bindings and amulets) OR
--[X] Subjected to the Rite of Awakenings beforehands
-[X][Executor] The Winter Kin of the Deceased (extended family unit/defensive clan/neighborhood)
-[X][Veto] The Captain
-[X][Punishment] 20 lashes, expulsion from the Council if they are on it with a barring from Council candidacy for a period of two years, and a temporary expulsion from the Assembly for a period of one year.
--[X] Additionally, the year in which they are expelled from the Assembly shall contain a sentence of service and duty to Union's covenant with the Dead. From assisting the Mourners in their tasks to working for and assisting the Freed within Deadtown.

[X] Plan Equivalent Exchange
 
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I don't know about you, but the lashes would not look good when it's being read from a history book.

Also, now that I think about it. Isn't the union's Christian heretical? Does it still count as a denomination? Would it even survive to present time but just very localized?
 
Amilia said:
This is the 1600s, a public hanging was like a sunday fair. Things were different back then.
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TBH, hanging was one of better ways to be executed in the 16th century for a serious crime. A kind and skilled hangman could calculate the length of noose needed to kill by snapping the neck. Ones that were inexperienced and/or cruel could have you dangle for some time. Convicted heretics were burned at the stake. Nobles instead got the dignity of being swiftly beheaded.

The worst punishment was reserved for high treason or equal crimes; hanged, drawn, and quartered. Spoilers for graphic nature. You start by hanging the guilty by their neck until they are almost dead from suffocation. You cut them down before they die, allow them to recover, then have them tied to the back of a horse, and drawn across the ground. To finish them off you start the cutting. While they are still alive, their genitals are removed, they are disemboweled, the limbs are sawn off, and head removed. If the victim is lucky, they get beheaded first or die from shock early on. This was a very public process and the results were distributed across the country to be displayed. (Woman typically were burned instead for public modesty.)

Comparatively, getting whipped, put in stocks, branded, lightly drowned, hard labor, etc. is much better.
 
PetroleumMedium! said:
I don't know about you, but the lashes would not look good when it's being read from a history book.
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Dude, this is the 17th Century, you could get executed for poaching, smuggling, or even stealing grain and/or cattle (and in Virginia OTL you could be executed for stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians)... Corporal Punishment like this could be considered a slap on the Wrist.

And that is nothing if we compare it with 18th Century England, in which there were more than 220 crimes punishable by death, including shoplifting, petty theft, "being in the company of Gypsies for one month", "strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age", or "cutting trees from an orchard"... Fortunately most judges of that time had at least a speck of human decency on them, and when they had to judge these minor offenses they automatically commuted or respited those death penalties.

PetroleumMedium! said:
Also, now that I think about it. Isn't the union's Christian heretical? Does it still count as a denomination? Would it even survive to present time but just very localized?
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Well, our religion looks very much like early Catholicism, including the part in which we are integrating the heathens into Christianity by transforming their "gods" or "ancestors" into Saints...
 
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Yes, everyone, remenber this is the Colonial Era.
Union, simply be being somewhat egalitarian, is better than 90% of places...
Well if you ignore the constant danger, physical and spiritual.
 
Fanhunter696 said:
And that is nothing if we compare it with 18th Century England, in which there were more than 220 crimes punishable by death, including shoplifting, petty theft, "being in the company of Gypsies for one month", "strong evidence of malice in a child aged 7–14 years of age", or "cutting trees from an orchard"... Fortunately most judges of that time had a speck of human decency and when they had to judge these minor offenses they automatically commuted or respited those death penalties.
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That code was known as the "Bloody Code". So even for that era it was considered brutal.
 
I mean, in this era you can't really afford to imprison people (unless you're like. Enslaving them). Judicial option are pretty much fines, reducing privileges, public humiliation, lashes, branding people, cutting off limbs (that would be a super bad idea for us), and death. In rough order of severity, though a few spots could be debated. Branding people is both only useful for humiliation or to basically provide first strike amnesty, and is probably yikes on a mystical level.

TLDR: we don't have a ton of options.
 
Aria the Mage said:
I mean, in this era you can't really afford to imprison people (unless you're like. Enslaving them). Judicial option are pretty much fines, reducing privileges, public humiliation, lashes, branding people, cutting off limbs (that would be a super bad idea for us), and death. In rough order of severity, though a few spots could be debated. Branding people is both only useful for humiliation or to basically provide first strike amnesty, and is probably yikes on a mystical level.

TLDR: we don't have a ton of options.
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You are kind of forgetting forced labor and service in the Army/Navy though...
 
Amilia said:
That code was known as the "Bloody Code". So even for that era it was considered brutal.
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I believe that the name "Bloody Code" was created later on rather then during the time it was active. There is also the fact that judges disagreed with killing people over minor crimes, so they would decrease the value of stolen items, dismiss cases for not having evidence, and had people be sent to the colonies instead of killing them.

Throw in some kindness with all that death.
 
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Lurking_Badger said:
I believe that the name "Bloody Code" was created later on rather then during the time it was active. There is also the fact that judges disagreed with killing people over minor crimes, so they would decrease the value of stolen items, dismiss cases for not having evidence, and had people be sent to the colonies instead of killing them.
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The fact that they did that at all shows that even in that era the penal code was considered pretty brutal by the people of that time.

Though now I'm wondering if part of our incoming charter will be to accept petty prisioners and what to do with them.
 
IIRC, the Bloody Code also completely failed in its goal of making crimes so harshly punished that fear of the penalty would keep people from doing them ("Men are not hang'd for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen".)

But the point remains that corporeal punishment for crimes, significant corporeal punishment, is an accepted norm. If anything, Union gives a light touch for punishment (I do think looking back I should have had breaking the Councilor oath be more harshly punished than just a permaban from the Council, but too late now.)

My overall thoughts for Union punishments are that Banishment ought to be reserved only for the most awful and unforgiveable crimes, and maybe not even then, because it takes something truly awful to deserve being thrown out and abandoned to Winter. The death penalty is also something that needs to be carefully considered because every individual body counts for Union.

But are there any thoughts on whether the punishment should be altered? Would a reduced amount of lashes in exchange for a years hard labor be more suitable? And what amount of time should violators be banned from the Council be for (the QM offered options are 1 year and 10 years), and should there be a similar or lesser amount of time being barred from the Assembly as well?
 
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