- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Strap in, this is going to be a long response, because I have a lot to unpack. Also, if I use an example that someone here was somehow associated with, please do not take offense. None of what I'm about to say is aimed at specific people, it is merely discussion of ongoing patterns that I see.
CCNJ: Some portion of my response was definitely due to non-quest-related issues, and to the extent that I offended anyone as a result of allowing those to spill into the game, I'm sorry.
That said, I do feel that the discussion was unnecessarily adversarial and condescending. Furthermore, I find it to be related to several ongoing patterns that have frustrated me almost since the beginning of the quest.
Discussions of physics and calculations thereof are straightforward, and have never (to my recollection) been terribly adversarial Someone (usually @Radvic) will say, e.g., "Hey, the implosion bombs don't do what you think they should" and can show actual proof of that, because physics is provable and easily demonstrable. The QMs can then either say "it doesn't work like that because magic" or "okay, thanks for letting us know, please figure out the appropriate numbers to make it work." It's simple, straightforward, and not open to debate as to whether or not it's true.
Then we get to economics.
Discussions of economics in MfD occupy an interesting and unpleasant position, for at least four reasons.
The first reason is that economics is not amenable to well-controlled studies, and it's inevitably bound up in politics. Look at the question of supply-side economics; there are tons of smart, well educated people who are constantly having the following discussion:
A) Look, this is the greatest thing since fire, and it obviously works. Look at Reagan, Bush, etc -- in every case, they cut taxes and there was an economic boom. If you object to the idea it's either because you're stupid or a socialist.
B) Look, this is a terrible idea and it obviously doesn't work. Look at Reagan, Bush, etc -- in every case, there was a short-term boom followed by a serious bust that left us worse off overall. If you believe in the idea then it's either because you're stupid or anti-middle class.
...discussion continues without progress...
The second reason that economic discussions in MfD are frustrating for me is because there is a failure mode shared by many (rationalist-adjacent / computer science / math / etc) types: looking at a subject, finding that it (does / does not) conform to their expectations based on a quick glance, and then making a categorical assertion that the thing is therefore (stupid / wrong / immoral / what have you). I know I have this issue, and hopefully it will not be controversial to say that other people in this community do as well.
Related to this point is that it feels to me as though the playerbase makes frequent user of a standard negotiating tactic: Shifting the burden of proof. There will be an assertion that something is easy, and then a request for mechanics or a declaration of how long it will take to accomplish. (Usually "a few days" or "a week".) The Iron Nerve and seals are the normal culprits here. I can't remember the number of times when I've seen something like "Cryogrenade seals? Oh, yeah, those should be easy. All they need to do is store heat, and we already have storage seals that store air." I read these things and am left boggled -- in the players' shoes I would make no assumptions about what is easy or hard unless it's an extremely small and obvious modification like "make macerators chew slightly harder". After all, storage seals create an extradimensional space with a timeless interior, yet are easy enough to be taught to brand new students. On the other hand, simply modifying the trigger mechanism on an Air Dome was hard enough that Hazō tore the universe open.
On the Iron Nerve side we get things like "Oh sure, obviously it's trivially easy to use the Iron Nerve to defeat any memory-modification jutsu. We just make some motions periodically, then every day we check to see if there are any motions in the index that we don't remember making."
This tactic leaves the QMs fighting an uphill battle. The burden of proof has now been placed on us to say that something *doesn't* work instead of discussing whether it does.
The third reason is that it feels to me as though everyone in this community -- ESPECIALLY me -- has a hard time distinguishing between the probable structures of (a 12th-century feudal society with miniscule population, poor resources, poor education, and an overclass of superhuman military dictators) as opposed to (a 21st-century society with hundreds of millions of people, enormous resources, nigh-universal higher education, democracy, and all people being approximately physically equal.) [1]
The fourth reason is that, in my opinion, the players have a tendency to completely ignore politics, corruption, greed, and prejudice as potential causes for things and to instead assume that everyone is a purely rational and logical actor who makes decisions based solely on overall economic results.
The first round of discussions about the Merchant Council was absolutely infuriating. My recollection is that we were repeatedly told that the whole idea was stupid and broke suspension of disbelief, that no rational society would act like that, etc. Let me be very clear: I do not recall who said what and I don't care. I am not accusing any specific person of anything and I'm sure that I'm misremembering some of what was said, that I took things too hard at the time, that I'm being unfair about XYZ, etc. I don't care about any of that and it's not relevant to the current discussion. I'm telling y'all the impression that I was left with when the whole thing ended so that y'all can understand my reactions to the current situation and factor them into future situations.
From my perspective, this whole thing is very simple. You've got a tax, you've got a deal worked out between (semi-)rational actors who have competing goals on this and other topics and need to horsetrade between them. It's not a perfect system and it's undoubtedly due to stupid politics in the background.
I hung in with the discussion for several pages and then started skipping because it felt like the original Merchant Council thing all over again. From where I sat, this was not a collaborative worldbuilding effort, it was a series of demands that we justify ourselves, assertions that what we had outlined was stupid, and gleeful cackling about how trivially easy it was going to be to abuse.
As I mentioned at top, there are some stressors going on for me right now that undoubtedly caused me to be unfairly negative in my perception and prevented me from doing the sort of "take a breath, read it again, remember that text communication is hard, and give it the most charitable reading possible" thing that I normally do when something in the quest bothers me.
There were definitely attempts to help. @Jello_Raptor , your suggestion of right of first refusal was a good one, as I said after my initial response. I do still believe that your approach to the situation was incomplete, that you were engaging with it in isolation and from a purely overall-value-maximizing economic view, without considering politics, prejudice, or corruption. That said, I do appreciate you contributing a patch instead of merely filing bug reports.
So, put all this together and hopefully y'all will understand where I was coming from. Saying "fuck it, there's no market forces, it's purely a military dictatorship flexing its muscles" -- which, to be clear, was mostly a joke when initially stated -- was not me punishing you [2] for engaging with the worldbuilding. It was an expression of frustration and desire to shut down what I interpreted as an adversarial discussion that was headed towards being a retread of an extremely unpleasant experience. The fact that it started to seem more reasonable after being stated does not mean that I was trying to kick your puppies or that I actually expected or intended for that to become the actual canon. Please do not interpret it otherwise.
Hopefully this massive tome that I've just written provides some clarity on what happened over the past few pages, as well as food for thought on potential approaches to the future.
[1] Higher education by 12-century standards.
[2] The assertion that the QMs are "punishing" the players has come up several times over the course of the quest, and it always bothers me. To the best of my knowledge we have never once done anything that I would consider punishment. Punishment implies a desire to cause behavioral change; we have no interest in changing your in-game behavior, merely in doing the best job we can of modeling its outcomes. I understand how, when y'all don't like those outcomes, y'all would ascribe them to malice on our part, but that's simply not correct.
Last edited:
