Answers through Page 184:
I would say reality is the opposite of truth to the same degree ice can be the opposite of water. The subjective nature of our experience makes it impossible for absolute objective truth about reality to be known. Therefore, reality is inherently incompatible with truth, even as truth is built upon its foundations.
In other words, Truth, interpreted as What We Know To Be True, is not necessarily the same thing as Reality, interpreted as What Is Objectively True Before Being Filtered Through The Perception Of The Beholder, and is definitely not remotely similar to Lies, interpreted as What We Know To Be False. Something like that?
Short answer: I think you're looking for Illusion/Perception/Reality or maybe Illusion/Viewpoint/Reality, or something like that. Truth isn't
quite the right word there.
Longer answer:
- Would you claim you objectively know that "The subjective nature of our experience makes it impossible for absolute objective truth about reality to be known."? Because that's self-refuting.
- On the other hand, you might be trying to define the word "Reality" and/or "Truth", in which case... honestly, the answer to that would be "sorry, TreeQuest Magic uses a slightly different definition."
- Note that, if you wanted to precisely say, "certainty of knowledge about objective truth is unattainable," that is something that - barring a few odd cases like "cogito ergo sum" - I'm willing to give you.
"What is knowledge" is a fascinating bit of philosophical history. It started out defined - for the
longest time, since
Plato apparently - as "a justified true belief." Then someone came up with a case of "a man with a hitherto-infallible pocketwatch looks at the watch, believes the time it says, and indeed his belief is accurate - but only because the watch wound down exactly one day previously." I'm not aware of any border-cases except this one, for whatever
that's worth.
@Nigerian Duck . could you do a corpse because this feels like a serial killer stalking
Hunting a non-sapient animal isn't generally considered a horrible crime, and (I think?) that's what he was originally proposing.
Wait, how's my cooking going?
are they going to regret letting me Cook?
Fine.
No. Not even the kids that asked for Worm Apples.
- I invented ornamental UL for that, we just need to remind Robinton when the Turn is about to come.
Reminder much appreciated.
I'd lean towards using what we have now to manipulate spy network into not being an obstacle, but us being honest with the city, while somehow causing the network to appear to its handers as if nothing is wrong/odd for the time being - its failures being attributed as 'luck' while we gather more evidence.
Then present that greater amount of evidence to the city.
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Related to that:
The bolded bit is in reference to us getting a good treaty via taking over the spynet, but I think we can break that into two parts:
1. That we can do such a thing
2. That we chose to do such a thing to get a 'good' treaty.
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I think that the Full disclosure option slightly hints at part 1, a bit, so if we accept that to be known, hopefully those that would be concerned will be reassured that we are careful to avoid part 2.
I'd appricated input to the following write in please:
[ ][Talanburg] Write-in - Run interference with/take over the spynet to prevent it from impacting the negotiations, while gathering as much evidence as possible, for as long as we can make it appear to the spynets handlers that any failures are not noticed or are otherwise attributed to 'bad luck', but make no actual use of it in the treaty negotiations - make a point of dealing with the people of Talanburg fairly, with the intention of presenting all gathered information to relevant Talanburg folk when we believe that our control/interference of the network is at risk of being noticed.
Edit: The above is very spy-games shenanigans, coming from a 'white hat' starting point. There's also a lot to be said for focusing on having an explicit end point where sufficient evidence is collected, and the spynet is just dissolved rather than being taken over, and I'd be ok with that too.
My main desire is to gather more evidence, stop the spynets shenanigans against us/Talenburg, while not engaging in shenanigans against Talenburg ourselves. And of course, the Woo Clan somehow never finding out we know about their spynet would be fantastic.
shenanigans
Huh. So this roughly comes down to, "Stall for perfect proof, but mess with the spynet enough that this is minimally risky from the Woo and/or Negotiations-break-down-completely angles, in exchange for having people slightly concerned about the mind-controlling Forest if they notice - which we're trying to make sure
nobody does"?
@Robinton is there such a thing as 'luck' magic?
And if so, is it the sort of thing can be made use of in terms of 'effort expended -> good luck', or would it be more 'you can expend effort to get good luck, but bad luck is gonna rebound at ya so it's never worth the effort to begin with'?
Yes, though it's one of the more annoying Magics to get.
I wasn't planning for it to be an
active Magic - except for purpose of cursing your enemies - but rather give you something like "one free reroll on a Write-In or Action, and one free 'random stroke of Luck' per turn."
@Robinton in case of a disclosure, would we get the chance to spend actions to try to improve the outcome or would that be a "between the turns" thing?
Also, are regular player trees fast enough to go to Talanburg and do something there in one turn?
That would be a write-in.
Yes. Well, mostly - they'd get slightly less done than otherwise, due to the movement.