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Zitto

Steingrim said:

Honestly, this is why I have never felt comfortable in
Hallifax. I am a science geek and Hallifax represents Science in the way that
Creationism is science. It just has always seemed to me that Hallifax was
designed by ‘artists’ defining science in some artsy way. Science is
anti-authoritarian while Hallifax is authoritarian. I would say that
Hallifaxians are Technology, but technology <> Science. /rant

I get where you're coming from here, but I feel like this is simply the consequence of all of our experiments being made-up handwaving.  Because we're making up our data and results rather than dealing with inconvenient reality, theories never have to be wrong, we never fail to reject the null hypothesis, there's always enough funding for the research, and the project always does what it is supposed to.  As a result, we're very good on the 'science is progress!' kind of RP but there's no real incentive towards the statistical rigor, intense skepticism, competing theories type of RP.  On one hand, it doesn't fit with the real world nature of scientific inquiry, but on the other hand, if we reflected the 'most experiments end in failure in a predictable, boring way' nature of real science it would be no fun to write, frustrating to RP, and generally not all that exciting to be an observer of.  Even the competing theories approach would require massive collaboration on the part of the scientific rivals to be workable, because only mutual OOC agreement could avoid one party declaring "I win because my made-up evidence is irrefutable." I do feel like Hallifax does a very good job of representing science RP in a way that is both fun to participate in for players without a RL scientific background and an engaging environment for those of us who actually are researchers and/or academics but admit that doing so requires compromising some fairly fundamental aspects of RL scientific inquiry.

Asirnys

I thought of Hallifax as being sciencey in the same way as alchemy was a science.  Ie usually in fantasy settings you are looking at the technology of a medieval europe or earlier in history so the understanding that these people had of "science" was quite different than what has been established to be science over the past 300 years.  Issac Newton had a lot of beliefs that would be called magical thinking or mysticism nowadays /my 2c

Aerotan

Zitto said:

Steingrim said:

Honestly, this is why I have never felt comfortable in
Hallifax. I am a science geek and Hallifax represents Science in the way that
Creationism is science. It just has always seemed to me that Hallifax was
designed by ‘artists’ defining science in some artsy way. Science is
anti-authoritarian while Hallifax is authoritarian. I would say that
Hallifaxians are Technology, but technology <> Science. /rant

I get where you're coming from here, but I feel like this is simply the consequence of all of our experiments being made-up handwaving.  Because we're making up our data and results rather than dealing with inconvenient reality, theories never have to be wrong, we never fail to reject the null hypothesis, there's always enough funding for the research, and the project always does what it is supposed to.  As a result, we're very good on the 'science is progress!' kind of RP but there's no real incentive towards the statistical rigor, intense skepticism, competing theories type of RP.  On one hand, it doesn't fit with the real world nature of scientific inquiry, but on the other hand, if we reflected the 'most experiments end in failure in a predictable, boring way' nature of real science it would be no fun to write, frustrating to RP, and generally not all that exciting to be an observer of.  Even the competing theories approach would require massive collaboration on the part of the scientific rivals to be workable, because only mutual OOC agreement could avoid one party declaring "I win because my made-up evidence is irrefutable." I do feel like Hallifax does a very good job of representing science RP in a way that is both fun to participate in for players without a RL scientific background and an engaging environment for those of us who actually are researchers and/or academics but admit that doing so requires compromising some fairly fundamental aspects of RL scientific inquiry.

I usually act as if there's a lot of failed projects behind Usa's successes, they just happen 'off-screen' in the copious amounts of down-time he's got between my logins. Like, for every experiment he does that he talks about, he's got six or seven that are just him watching stuff boredly. He DOES, however, have a running statistical experiment that I still need to collate and publish. It's boring as hell, but it's a collection of the results of well over a thousand gem-cuts, with and without a jeweler's hammer, and using or not using Mastercut. I think.

Enyalida

It's not odd that prime forests are raided more that cities, just sayin. If you're playing an underdog forest (like Glom kinda is right now) with few-to-no alliances*, expect to be prime raided. As anyone else, don't hold your breath for a prime raid.

*Especially if you're lacking 'Southern' alliances.

Cyndarin

That and Communes have more entrances, far more space to run around, and fewer protections (totems vs statues). 

POOR COMMUNES. 

Enyalida

That, and prime cities don't have any objectives. No one raids prime for the fight (for good reason, not blaming them for this per se), and there isn't anything to hit-and-run in cities. Anywaaaays.

Aerotan

So what I'm hearing you saying is we need to be able to smash the generators, assault the towers, kill drachou, dismember the necromentate, destroy the drums of the dead, and douse the Flame of Glinshari?

Everiine

That might be fun...