Let's Talk About Exploitation

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Vordrak, Oct 2, 2014.

  1. Haldurson

    Haldurson Member

    REally off topic, but I'm enjoying this discussion immensely, and learning new things. I'm not going to point any fingers, but I've heard people, even today (people I know) who told me that they drug their kids with cold medication or cough syrup for long plane flights so that they would go to sleep. Legally, it probably could be considered child abuse. But having been a passenger on a few VERY long plane flights, including ones with crying children, you can almost sympathize...
     
  2. Susanne C

    Susanne C Member

    Really off topic again.

    Problem with feeding children opium is that it suppresses appetite as well. What we call Angel Makers and Baby Farmers usually dosed the children in their care constantly. (Except when they right out killed them. A modest estimate is that Amelia Dyer killed of 400+ children.) The constant dosing causing the child to starve to death never feeling hungry. Infant mortality was sky high, especially among children of unwed mother that hardly made enough to keep bread and weak tea in their belly. What do a mother do when she has no money for child care and have to work 14 hours on the textile mill? And how does she make that child sleep when she comes home and sorely need sleep her self.

    A bottle of opium laced sleeping drug for children was dirt cheap, actually cheaper that to feed the children in proper manners.


    Tragedy is that yes, children get drugged today as well, to keep quiet, because mother breastfeed under the influence, lazy babysitters and so on. Some street beggars dose small children in their arms. Anyone been around a toddler know they won’t stay calm hours after hour. And in countries where they are surrounded with drugs like opium, poor parents feed it to their children to suppress starvation, and desperate mothers having to work end up feeding their children drugs.

    Now, reason small children suffer on airplanes is that they are more sensitive to the pressure changes. It can be helped with giving them the nipple or if older, suck on candy. You can also gently massage right behind the earlobe. (Just in case you needed to know.)



    Yes I’m off topic, but we do grow opium in the game, perhaps not to bad to state the consequences of victorian drug abuse.
     
  3. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    This is why games like these are so much fun, too. You feel gleeful when bad things happen to goblins, elephants, or your own dwarves. They're all too stupid to live and fail the turing test in a big enough way it's just amusing to watch them suffer (compare Tropico, The Sims, Kerbal Space Program).
     
  4. frontliner2

    frontliner2 Member

    I agree with the Devs on two points, no slavery and no children. That would just make the game not fun.

    Just reading about Slavery makes me sad. Yuck.

    Keep going devs, I'm enjoying your game more and more everyday :)
     
  5. Viion

    Viion Member

    I'm not quite sure tbh.

    The slavery in game I agree with since it would garner bad press for the game (I want the game to have good pr, lots of players and lot 'n lot 'n lots of reasons for there to continued support by devs and mods) and wouldn't add much to a game that's in essence steampunk meets Call of Cthulhu. I don't want slaves to do work, I want clanks and automatons to do it hehehe.

    With regard to children I'm much more uncertain. It kinda would be fun having interpersonal relationships (they already have a not-quite-working friendship thingy between characters) that could blossom and result in marriage and children. Would be a nice way to increase population etc. But I can see many reasons why not. Let's start with the fact I wouldn't find it entertaining to see "The child of A and B has died from starvation" or see the mutilated corpses of children following either an invasion or axe murderer. In addition to that how long would the time to grow up take? 20 days, 30 days, 1 year, or 18 years? Try imagining playing a game for 1 year of game time? And I do believe the maps are too small for the kind of sim/city builder. Although I do think it would be fun having school buildings, letting the characters have skills they have to learn etc. But again we are suddenly in a different game than CE :)

    So, all in all, I'm pleased with the progress and looking forward to see what else they will add to the game. If they manage to add skills, kids, population increase etc in a meaningful manner I'll be happy, but if not then I'll be happy making automatons and declaring war on what ever there is to declare war on :-D
     
  6. Susanne C

    Susanne C Member

    We would have to roll the dices on sanity… a lot.
    :eek:
     
  7. Orzelek

    Orzelek Member

    You clearly haven't played Dwarf Fortress ;)
     
  8. Susanne C

    Susanne C Member

    Nah, I'm a CoC player. ;)
     
  9. Viion

    Viion Member

    Dwarf Fortress has put indelible scars... I mean, memories, in my mind. I haven't played it for many years, but glorious memories of fun(tm), fun(tm) and more fun(tm)


    Oh, and for those who never played DF Fun (nb...link!)
     
  10. The_Fool76

    The_Fool76 Member

    Yea I'd rather not see Dwarven Child Care played out in 3D. {{shudders}}

    BTW, reading that thread on the DF forums will result in a 1d6/1d10+6 sanity check and 2 points of Eldrich Game Mythos Knowledge. You have been warned.
     
  11. Kaidelong

    Kaidelong Member

    I'm not sure either of this is actually true. The reasons for not wanting to include it probably isn't about not wanting to be the next GTA but more about not wanting to portray a serious issue frivolously. If anything bad stuff happening to kids is more likely to get negative press; Fallout 2 got some for letting the main character murder children but I don't recall any game with slaves getting negative press over it.

    It is possible that any game you could make that addresses slavery in the way David would like to see it addressed would garner negative press though, people seem to want to forget that slavery ever happened here and a realistic treatment of it and its brutality would not help that.

    There was originally much implication that bad things would be happening to street urchins and orphans, just like a real Dickens' inspired steampunk empire! I very much would enjoy to watch Oliver Twist fed to the maw of Quaggaroth, I don't think GLG ever mentioned that bad things happening to children wouldn't be in the game?

    Oh that stands for... Clash of Clans maybe? I was thinking of a... completely different game... higher in the google results, which I shall not mention here
     
    Haldurson likes this.
  12. Susanne C

    Susanne C Member

    Call of Cthulhu, so forget your google results my dear.
     
  13. Viion

    Viion Member

    No need to warn me at least. I'm already huddled up in the fetal position in the corner while muttering repeatedly "oh the horror, the horror" while rocking back and forth. And that's from reading the mermaid farming thread there :-D
     
  14. We actually will have true victorian slaves, I believe they are actually called "the lower class". On the theme of exploitation I'm quite sure that something along the line of "real life victorian factory working conditions" will be surely organized by the devs or the players. Of course descending to depths of DF wouldn' t be much fun, especially if done on purpose.
    About the whole ethic discussion, it reminds me of when a "let's kill some orcs" D&D session derailed in a three hours in-game debate on the morality of our mission (the orcs were attacking military targets against humans who invaded them centuries ago and we came up with a plan of poisoning the orcs food supplies. Still the orcs in D&D are quite evil). It was a fun evening.
     
    Viion likes this.
  15. Viion

    Viion Member

    Yeah, D&D was fun like that. There were a divide in our gaming party when it came to discussion like that. One part wanted to debalte the "collective guilt vs individual responsibility" combined with the "combatant vs non-combatant" while the other half was non-combatant = easy XP hehehe