Tervell [he/him]
https://podcastaddict.com/episode/77635551 the “Download episode” link takes you directly to the mp3 on the Exiled website. This feed has it for all the episodes.
Westeros, the place with all the white people, is the most powerful nation in that world
Westeros is as much a “nation” as the Holy Roman Empire. The Seven Kingdoms, as implied by the name, aren’t very unified, and even this low level of centralization has only been the case for 300 years. Before Aegon’s Conquest, the various kingdoms were independent and waged constant wars with one another, and even after the Conquest there was still the occasional civil war and lots of instability. As for power - far more powerful empires have existed, like the Great Empire of the Dawn (although that one’s possibly mythical), the Valyrian Freehold, the Old Empire of Ghis, and one still exists - the Golden Empire of Yi Ti. Seeing as Yi Ti is basically fantasy China, it would probably be the most powerful state, although it seems that at the time the books are taking place it’s been pretty weakened. Westeros however definitely isn’t the most powerful “nation”, because it simply isn’t a unified political entity - some of the individual kingdoms might be considered to be powerful, but not the whole continent.
while the continent with all the brown people is mostly made up of disparate city-states and warlike savages
While I definitely agree that the Dothraki are a pretty dumb portrayal of a steppe culture, those disparate city-states are quite wealthy, and powerful at least in an economic sense, if not a military one. They are also arguably more culturally developed, if we consider an oligarchy of merchants to be more developed that feudalism, and while they may be disparate now, most of them trace their origin back to the Valyrian Freehold, which controlled all of their territories and more as a unified state. Besides, there’s more to the further east of the continent - Slaver’s Bay is also incredibly wealthy, and similarly used to be part of a unified empire until it collapsed. There’s various states around the Bone Mountains, and Yi Ti even further east.
Europe was a balkanized backwater while the Islamic world was a cultural powerhouse and China was already a thousand year-old empire
That’s basically the case in ASOIAF. Westeros IS and has historically been a balkanized backwater, while the Free Cities are more politicaly and economicaly developed and used to be part of one of the world’s greatest empires, and Yi Ti has been around since the Long Night, with the Great Empire of the Dawn that it (allegedly) succedeed being even older.
Someone posted a link to the first episode, but there’s technically two ‘prequel’ episodes (with the same guest, also covering Italian politics), here are the direct links to all the episodes:
http://exiledonline.com/wnradio/rwn_ep_131.mp3 Radio War Nerd episode 131 - Italian Resistance http://exiledonline.com/wnradio/rwn_ep_134.mp3 Radio War Nerd episode 134 - Italian Post-War Politics
http://exiledonline.com/45wn84klrz/media/rwn_ep_135_v31.mp3 Radio War Nerd episode 135 - Italian Years of Lead 1 http://exiledonline.com/45wn84klrz/media/rwn_ep_1361.mp3 Radio War Nerd episode 136 - Italian Years of Lead 2 http://exiledonline.com/45wn84klrz/media/rwn_ep_139_v21.mp3 Radio War Nerd episode 139 - Italian Years of Lead 3
Revolutionary Left Radio: The Vietnam War https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/the-vietnam-war
really bad porn manga
Hey, it’s great porn manga, if you like copious amounts of oil.
He lost his house and studio in an earthquake (the Great Hanshin Earthquake, 1995), and there was a theory that a bunch of his work ended up getting destroyed, and he lost motivation for plot-heavy stuff afterward. It could also be just because the porn paid better, or a combination of the two. I also read about another theory that Shirow was actually a collective of artists rather than a single person, and the one responsible for the writing died in said earthquake, but that’s probably bullshit - Shirow’s a pretty private person who doesn’t do public appearances, so it’s easy to make shit up.
I’m pretty sure I set them a long time ago, but I just looked and didn’t have them, so I dunno what’s up with that.
Can’t you just make “any pronoun” the default and forcibly convert the blanks to that? Why does the blank option even exist, the site didn’t roll out with pronouns as far as I remember, but why keep it now that they’re implemented?
The problem is CK’s core mechanics are based around feudalism (or at least an imaginary idea of feudalism) and playing as a landed aristocrat, and mostly fail to represent anything other than that (republics and nomads kind of work, I guess). A massive imperial bureaucracy of scholar-officials isn’t something the game can really deal with it.
It already has this problem with the Eastern Roman Empire, which has barely anything to do with the historical one, and a lot of the Middle East, which ingame just operates under slightly different feudalism. Adding China would make it even worse - like 3/4 of the game world would essentially be fantasy with historical names.
It has plenty of the world
Which brings me to the point in the other comment, which is that the game’s mechanics are tailored to representing a specific political system, which isn’t really applicable outside of Western Europe. It’s already inaccurately representing the Middle East, North Africa, India, Central Asia, Southeastern Europe, and even not all that accurately representing Western and Central Europe.
What would be the point of adding all these things to the game, only to have them be represented in an incredibly shallow manner, as just feudalism with different words for the titles?
We could argue that there’s an issue of eurocentrism about how few games are made with specificaly non-european history in mind, and I’d agree. But just putting the entire world in a single game wouldn’t solve it.
Okay, how feasible would it be to have a game with 30 entirely different gameplay systems, all somehow interacting with one another?
That’s why I made the point about a single game - if we had Mesoamerican Kings, Indian Kings, Steppe Kings and a bunch of other ones as separate series, with mechanics tailored to each region and period, it’d be one thing, but having a game which just has the entire world would inevitably end with very shallow, boring mechanics, that don’t really facilitate anything beyond mindless blobbing.