Dinh AaronMk

The Ghosts of Napoleon

Sorry for the delay in posting; just hit writer's block.

@Letter Bee

Take your time to figure things out. My computer decided it would become difficult and I have to figure out what's wrong with us and a few others have personal stuff going on

Sum up your week in roleplaying in just 3 words

Always be researching

Context:
My latest RP project, though alternate history is probably one of the tightest - I guess - Alt History subjects in which compared to other topics the change is one of the slightest and the time elapsed between that change and the start of the RP itself is pretty short. So to keep myself on track, and to moderate other's I've been doing a lot of research on everything from cultural trends of 1830's France to "what the fuck was happening in Libya during this time"

The Ghosts of Napoleon

Compelled mostly to always be researching, I have come across some material that is relevant to you @Letter Bee and how you might be perceiving Egypt.

Legacy Of The Development Policy of Muhammad Ali

tl;dr - Muhammad Ali's centralization policies had a dire effect on the Egyptian economy. While it aided in the industrialization of the Egyptian economy it was predominately centered on a mono-culture of cotton only which devastated agriculture on the long term, as well as provided the basis for an unstable development cycle where the state rose and fell depending on the global market. Egypt did well when the cotton economy was at a high and supplies elsewhere were generally low, and The State could charge European merchants higher prices according to the whims of market forces; but did not bring in that much money.

Likewise as I have told you before; all lands in Egyptian being owned by The State and Muhammad Ali by decree, as well as the rates to tax collection and Islamic charity to weaken the base of his opposition made everyone in effect an employee of the state. Where as before the Egyptian peasant merely paid tax to a local noble at a certain rate of agricultural produce per season, he now owed substantially more of it to the central state because Muhammad Ali's tax policy also meant many communities paid ten to a hundred times more in taxes than before. He also demanding mass corvee levies on the regular of his people meant that a lot of work in the field went missing to go work on a canal project somewhere which regularly killed thousands, if not tens of thousands. As the article goes on, this proved to be even worse for the development of the peasants as a monied class because even the forced break up of the state monopoly meant that all those functions just went to a few hands within the Muhammad Ali expanded dynasty, and also a mass of displaced peasants that ran away or mangled themselves to avoid any conscription what's so ever.

Combined of course in this RP of there being a much wider Egypt, and cotton prices probably being at a low because there's no real major crisis affecting the market means in all likelihood the Egyptian state should not be doing good. And I say this in urging of you to consider sparking off some rebellions for the long term. Combined with the impulse of the Mercantilist State to always be expanding to seek out new places from which to extract more wealth for use by the state. But the use of that wealth for development will be of course hindered, because it needs to maintain an army in a state of permanent mobilization to police its extensive frontiers and wastelands. There will be no end in sight either, no doubt; because Muhammad and Ibrahim were both very invested in this state and even accelerated under Ibrahim.

Which is to say: there must be war with the Arabs and there must be war with the Libyans for tithes must be paid in wealth or slaves and there must be revolt in Egypt. These are my missions to you, and they must be developed and launched.

help - spatial awareness

@Dinh AaronMkI love that.
Simply a dot can help allot and maybe if needed a grid on toposcopic terrain where one can have [x,y]
Maybe I can along with mile lines examples there can be sample ones for general movement based on player type where one could use a ruler too

@pyramidsoup

I wouldn't get that titled since doing x,y stuff and drawing straight lines for trajectory is some like, early naval combat and radar stuff. But using a map you can either make a point on your position and draw some healthy assumptions from post details and like, how fast a person moves while walking and how much time should have elapsed between posts, give or take. You shouldn't have to ever give specific metrics unless the whole point of the post is you're doing Highfleet the Roleplay.

(And even then in a "lost in the wilderness" situation people are probably moving slower than they normally would even because they may be bushwhacking)

But as general use then maybe x,y is useful for OOC chatter and it's mostly left out of IC posting because it would be purely dead weight on narrative flow.

help - spatial awareness

Get a map where positions can be noted with a dot. Anyone with a computer has or can get an image editing program. Something as simple as MS Paint will allow people to put a dot down anywhere on the map.

The level of sophistication of the map can vary depending on where you get it or how you yourself make it. It can feature terrain elevation, a grid system that breaks the map down in a regular pattern of every X meter or kilometer, and the map can of course contain geographic features.

It's easily the simplest way to convey the most detail possible. Even in non-NRP RPs I'd consider it honestly a good investment if not a flat requirement.

What kind of RP mood are you in?

I think I've shown interest or joined at least 4 RPs at this point. The excruciating part is waiting for any single one of them to start.

Horror, Powers, Fantasy... Heck, I might even consider Sci-Fi if it meant that one would just get going instead of hovering in limbo

@Leophael

Replying to this late because sort of scanning backwards in hopes of poaching people, but if what you want is RPs that are on right now then I can direct you to NRP where I have one going right now if you're so desperate; Ghosts of Napoleon.

Gaslands: a Palimpsest’s Tale

So it seems

Gaslands: a Palimpsest’s Tale

@Liaison

Unless your GM comes back and the two of you can soldier through: I don't think so. You're probably better off looking for an RP that wasn't necro'd from the depths.

Is Your Next Door Neighbor an Alien

The Ghosts of Napoleon

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

Yeah, it's unintentional; I didn't mean anything ill.

Hmm, want to help me brainstorm ideas for what I can write about instead?

@Letter Bee

That a non-negligible number of people in Egypt were cutting off their hands, fingers, or blinding themselves by dripping rat poison into their eyes to escape enlistment in Muhammad Ali's army or corvee work system, or emigrating from the country all together, and that by and large you control the lands that Muhammad Ali controls now, who would be inhabited by people not at all happy with the fact that now all their shit can be confiscated as the centralized property of the state, his state.