[Pending] Caught in a Threatening Position

[Jutsa]

Ever notice how you don't really have much consequence for bombing everyone?
Well, this is my attempt at something in that direction.

Also, the title was kinda lame, so I changed it... this was the best thing I could come up with at 1:15 AM.

Draft 1.10

Title: Caught in a Threatening Position
The Issue: Nations and organizations alike, including an investigation bureau in @@REGION@@, have grown impatient, scared, and even hostile with your nation's constantly being at war. Some nations are now considering forming a coalition if you don't scale back military involvement.
Validity: Nation has strong military, maybe something about taking over a few nations or something? (low passiveness?)

Option 1: "I'm sorry, @@LEADER@@, but this nation has a horribly active war record," begins @@RANDOMNAME@@ from the Investigative Bureau of @@REGION@@. "I mean it! Look at the statistics of how many people your people have killed — and now look at these detailing how many of your own soldiers have died. Now I don't want to tell you how to run your nation, but unless you start taming your military and its 'peacekeeping', you're going to have a wide-scale coalition of nations against you and your regime. This is not a threat — it is a warning."
[effect]@@NAME@@ is bullied into submission by nations a fifteenth its size

Option 2: "This is outrageous!" bashes your Secretary of Defense, smashing your desk so hard that it develops a small fracture. "Our nation is no more belligerent than Blackacre, Marche Noire, Maxtopia, Macronesia, Wezeltonia, — need I continue? It's a brutal world out there, with unstable governments threatening world domination. Yes, we could dial back carpet-bombing places we don't like, but we will stop at nothing to send aid and protection to our allies!"
[effect]@@NAME@@ has turned its allies into military police states while letting war-mongers become superpowers

Option 3: "Ha, forget all of that nonsense," dismisses your brother, uncharismatically sitting in a chair pretending to squeeze the first speaker's head with his fingers. "It's true that it's a rough world out there, but I figure this: why should we bother being all goody-goody to those jerks? What have they ever done for us? I think we should poor more funding into military spending, as well as get some sick new weapons of mass destruction operational!"
[effect]@@NAME@@ seems to be trying to take over the world
[Flag Change*] Nation has WMDs

Title: Caught in a Threatening Position
The Issue: Nations and organizations alike, including an investigation bureau in @@REGION@@, have grown hostile, scared, and impatient with your nation's constantly being at war, and have sent some people to demand that you scale back your military involvement.
Validity: Nation has strong military, maybe something about taking over a few nations or something? (low passiveness?)

Option 1: "I'm sorry, @@LEADER@@, but this nation has a horribly active war record," begins @@RANDOMNAME@@ from the Investigative Bureau of @@REGION@@. "I mean it! Look at the statistics of how many people your people have killed — and now look at these detailing how many of your own soldiers have died. Now I don't want to tell you how to run your nation, but unless you start taming your military and its 'peacekeeping', you're going to have a wide-scale coalition of nations against you and your regime."
[effect]@@NAME@@ is bullied into submission by nations a fifteenth its size

Option 2: "This is outrageous!" bashes your Secretary of Defense, smashing your desk so hard that it develops a small fracture. "Our nation is no more belligerent than Blackacre, Marche Noire, Maxtopia, Macronesia, Wezeltonia, Zompaboodaland, West Calypso — need I continue? It's a brutal world out there, with unstable governments that sometimes need to be monitored. Yes, we could dial back carpet-bombing places we don't like, but we will stop at nothing to send aid and protection to our allies!"
[effect]@@NAME@@ has turned its allies into military police states while letting war-mongers become superpowers

Option 3: "Ha, forget all of that nonsense," dismisses your brother, uncharismatically sitting in a chair pretending to squeeze the first speaker's head with his fingers. "It's true that it's a rough world out there, but I figure this: why should we bother being all goody-goody to those jerks? What have they ever done for us? I think we should poor more funding into military spending, as well as get some sick new weapons of mass destruction operational!"
[effect]@@NAME@@ seems to be trying to take over the world
[Flag Change*] Nation has WMDs

Title: Caught in a Threatening Position
The Issue: Nations and organizations alike, including the World Assembly, have grown hostile, scared, and impatient with your nation's constantly being at war, and have sent some people to demand that you scale back your military involvement.
Validity: Nation has strong military, maybe something about taking over a few nations or something? (low passiveness?)

Option 1: "I'm sorry, @@LEADER@@, but this nation has a horribly active war record," begins @@RANDOMNAME@@ from the Investigative Bureau of @@REGION@@. "I mean it! Look at the statistics of how many people your people have killed — and now look at these detailing how many of your own soldiers have died. Now I don't want to tell you how to run your nation, but unless you start taming your military and its 'peacekeeping', you're going to have a wide-scale coalition of nations against you and your regime."
[effect]@@NAME@@ is bullied into submission by nations a fifteenth its size

Option 2: "This is outrageous!" bashes your Secretary of Defense, smashing your desk so hard that it develops a small fracture. "Our nation is no more belligerent than Blackacre, Marche Noire, Maxtopia, Macronesia, Wezeltonia, Zompaboodaland, West Calypso — need I continue? It's a brutal world out there, with unstable governments that sometimes need to be monitored. Yes, we could dial back carpet bombing places we don't like, but we will stop at nothing to send aid and protection to our allies!"
[effect]@@NAME@@ has turned its allies into military police states while letting war-mongerers become superpowers

Option 3: "Ha, forget all of that nonsense," brushes aside your brother, uncharasmatically sitting in a chair pretending to squeeze the first speaker's head with his fingers. "It's true that it's a rough world out there, but I figure this: why should we bother being all goody-goody to those jerks? What have they ever done for us? I think we should poor more funding into military spending, as well as get some sick new weapons of mass destruction operational!"
[effect]@@NAME@@ seems to be trying to take over the world
[Flag Change*] Nation has WMDs

[Frieden-und Freudenland]

Hey, I'm honored to be the first one to comment on this.

First of all, the premise seems a little too vague and wobbly to me at the moment.

Sure, we have belligerent nations, but imagine what would happen IRL to these aggressors. I mean, I guess the most belligerent nation IRL is the USA, if we look at their military involvement abroad, and no such thing has ever happened to them. The UN wouldn't and couldn't really "chide" them like this, because it is actually a paper tiger. I think you might need to tweak the premise a little for this issue to work.

Besides, you also mention World Assembly in your description, keep in mind that @@NAME@@ may not be a WA member.

Other than that, some teenie-weenie spelling fixes:

I think carpet-bombing looks better when it is hyphenated, though it might be acceptable without the hyphen as well. (I'm not an authority on this.)

war-mongerer --> war-monger

"brushes aside your brother" --> brushes aside WHAT? I'm not a native speaker, but I feel like this verb should have an object. Is it also used like this?

uncharasmatically --> uncharismatically

--------------------

Cheers!

[Jutsa]

Did a quick update; removed the WA and changed most spelling things.

"Brushes aside" I can't think of a better term here. I envision him brushing aside all of the previous ideas, and my brain is literally stuck in that phrase.
I really wouldn't a suggestion for a better term, here.

@The core premise itself: Mmhmm, yeah... I guess this issue kinda assumes that your nation isn't the dominant superpower on the planet,
which, thinking about, is quite possibly not true. idk, anyone else have an opinion on the matter?

Thank you for your suggestions, FuF. It's nice to both see you comment on a draft of mine and see this draft get a comment.

[Trotterdam]

"brushes aside your brother" --> brushes aside WHAT? I'm not a native speaker, but I feel like this verb should have an object. Is it also used like this?

This sounds like one of those things that is technically grammatically correct, or at least no more incorrect than other common phrasings, but still sounds wrong.

English is normally an SVO (subject-verb-object) language, which means words are ordered like this: "Your brother[u] [u]says 'Hello.'.". First the one doing the action, then the action, and then what the action is being done to (in this case, the words being spoken). However, in certain contexts where it's obvious which word takes which role (quotations don't really do things, they're just things for other people to toss around), you can bend the rules: "'Hello.' says your brother.". The word order is the opposite from the previous example, but it's actually still saying the same thing, rather than the opposite.

However, "brushes aside" works awkwardly here, parly because "brushes aside" isn't normally a verb used to denote speech, but I don't think that's the main problem since it's common for verbs-that-don't-actually-mean-"speaking" to be used in such a manner, where the implication is "speaking in a way that is brushing aside" or "speaking while brushing aside", etc. I think the real problem here is that, as a two-word verb, it's more sensitive to word order shenanigans and so just doesn't like to be used that way.

Try "dismisses", maybe? It means basically the same thing, but it's one word, and I think it sounds better.

[Jutsa]

Rejoice!

... but is the issue still workable?

[Frieden-und Freudenland]

Rejoice!

... but is the issue still workable?

Well, it depends

Are "Blackacre, Marche Noire, Maxtopia, Macronesia, Wezeltonia, Zompaboodaland, and West Calypso" located in @@REGION@@? I guess the game assumes that they aren't.

In that case one wonders why the other members of @@REGION@@ are so upset with @@NAME@@ for waging war with these nations. What is Blackacre to them? It's not their citizens who die in the war... And if the war costs money, well, all expenses are paid by @@NAME@@, right? It seems fighting a war would not be enough to warrant getting a warning from your region mates. Human rights abuses / war crimes could, of course. But the issue cannot assume that @@NAME@@ is guilty of such atrocities either. You need to twist the premise, I think.

[Chan Island]

Rejoice!

... but is the issue still workable?

Well, it depends

Are "Blackacre, Marche Noire, Maxtopia, Macronesia, Wezeltonia, Zompaboodaland, and West Calypso" located in @@REGION@@? I guess the game assumes that they aren't.

In that case one wonders why the other members of @@REGION@@ are so upset with @@NAME@@ for waging war with these nations. What is Blackacre to them? It's not their citizens who die in the war... And if the war costs money, well, all expenses are paid by @@NAME@@, right? It seems fighting a war would not be enough to warrant getting a warning from your region mates. Human rights abuses / war crimes could, of course. But the issue cannot assume that @@NAME@@ is guilty of such atrocities either. You need to twist the premise, I think.

I'd say the exact opposite actually. If @@NAME@@ is going around conquering and invading all of their region mates, then the other members of @@REGION@@ would be more likely, not less, to be worried about all of this aggressive military action. What is Blackacre to them? The answer: a window into a potential near future.

As for the issue itself:

1) option 2's effect line is a bit boring.

2) *Disappointment that I can't just crush everyone in the Investigative Bureau under my tank treads intensifies*

[Frieden-und Freudenland]

Well, it depends

Are "Blackacre, Marche Noire, Maxtopia, Macronesia, Wezeltonia, Zompaboodaland, and West Calypso" located in @@REGION@@? I guess the game assumes that they aren't.

In that case one wonders why the other members of @@REGION@@ are so upset with @@NAME@@ for waging war with these nations. What is Blackacre to them? It's not their citizens who die in the war... And if the war costs money, well, all expenses are paid by @@NAME@@, right? It seems fighting a war would not be enough to warrant getting a warning from your region mates. Human rights abuses / war crimes could, of course. But the issue cannot assume that @@NAME@@ is guilty of such atrocities either. You need to twist the premise, I think.

I'd say the exact opposite actually. If @@NAME@@ is going around conquering and invading all of their region mates, then the other members of @@REGION@@ would be more likely, not less, to be worried about all of this aggressive military action. What is Blackacre to them? The answer: a window into a potential near future.

As for the issue itself:

1) option 2's effect line is a bit boring.

2) *Disappointment that I can't just crush everyone in the Investigative Bureau under my tank treads intensifies*

Blackacre is probably not a region mate. That's what I meant.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

We've discussed many times whether there should be an "at war" policy and the main barrier at present is any editor wanting to implement this, though there are other concerns raised. However, one argument in favour is that it would allow for interesting war-specific narratives.

This, however...:

Nations and organizations alike, including an investigation bureau in @@REGION@@, have grown hostile, scared, and impatient with your nation's constantly being at war, and have sent some people to demand that you scale back your military involvement.

...is way too broad.

A good story told within the context of ongoing war could include an option to head towards peace. However "your nation is at war, do you want that?" is not a complete narrative.

[Jutsa]

True... but in combination, "other nations wish for you to simmer down and stop being at war with everyone", it could hypothetically work.

Want me to keep this draft on hold to see if "at war" is a policy that actually makes it into the game, or should I keep it open and continue working on it anyways?

Ed: "Blackacre is probably not a region mate. That's what I meant." true. To be perfectly honest, the region might not be best given I'm sure regional RP wars are a thing,
buuut then again we've got all kinds of other regional stuff in issues

[Australian rePublic]

Option 2 is a little unclear

[Jutsa]

Yeah, that's a fair observation. tbh I wasn't entirely sure what to do with option 2,
so I tried to make it more "compromise"-y. Idk what you folks think of it, though.

[Australian rePublic]

Yeah, that's a fair observation. tbh I wasn't entirely sure what to do with option 2,
so I tried to make it more "compromise"-y. Idk what you folks think of it, though.

I meant the wording

[Jutsa]

Oooh, ok. I'll see if I can make it a bit simpler then.
Ed: I agree it's a little disconnected atm. I changed the later half a little before uploading.

[Jutsa]

However "your nation is at war, do you want that?" is not a complete narrative.

I agree. However, I feel like the question is more like "your nation is (frequently*) at war, other nations are threatening a coalition if you don't stop, do you think it's worth the fight?"

*May be removed depending on if your nation's just super militant or this applies to an "at war" policy.

I changed the description and option 2 a little bit, though. I enjoyed having Zompaboodaland and Wezeltonia in there, but 7 nations is kinda... long.

This is still open for discussion, but I may want to wait until it's decided whether an "at war" policy is added or not.
Though if it is, I've got another issue idea ready to be made into a draft >:3