BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

I nominate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa

Mansa Musa, a 14th century king of the Mali Empire in west Africa.

Mansa Musa is perhaps best known for his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324.  He took the treasury of his stupendously wealthy country with him (at the time, Mali had some of the world’s most productive gold mines).  While visiting Cairo en route to Mecca, Mansa Musa and his entourage went on one of history’s most famous shopping sprees, flooding Cairo’s economy with gold (and, according to some scholars, indirectly financing the Italian renaissance once that gold began to find its way from Egypt to the Italian merchant princes)..

Male, Sane, Honorable.

Combat: +2 (his army recaptured a rebel city while he was gone)
Scholarship: +2 (interest in Islamic scholarship

Special abilities:
* As a Weekly action, Mansa Musa’s owner may make a GNDT comment of “Mansa Musa Bling DICE15” and increase her Acorns by the result of the dice roll.
* On one occasion, if Mansa Musa’s owner has at least 50 Acorns, then Mansa Musa’s owner may spend 50 Acorns, make a GNDT comment of “Mansa Musa Hajj DICE20”.  The owner may then add a number of points to her Einherjar’s Mysticism statistics, collectively, equal to the result of the dice roll (but no Einherjar’s Mysticism statistic can be increased to more than +10) (for example, if the result of the roll is 12, then the owner may increase a single Einherjar’s Mysticism by 12 if that Einherjar’s Mysticism were (-2) or less; or she may increase two Einherjar’s Mysticism by +8 and +4, respectively; or she may increase four Einherjar’s Mysticism by +3; and so on.)

I nominate Martin Cooper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Cooper
In short, he is considered the father of the mobile phone.

Tinkering +9
Charisma +2 (CEO and founder of ArrayComm)

Oops. Martin Cooper is Male, Sane, Honorable.

I nominate Idi Amin Dada, a.k.a. The Last King of Scotland.

Male, Insane, Dishonorable

  * Wit
  * Scholasticism 4
  * Combat 7 (He was promoted to corporal the same year, then to sergeant in 1953.)
  * Moxie 8(Amin joined the King’s African Rifles (KAR) of the British Colonial Army in 1946 as an assistant cook. -to- ruling the country)
  * Artistry
  * Tinkering
  * Charisma 10 (Amin was initially welcomed both within Uganda and by the international community. In an internal memo, the British Foreign Office described him as “a splendid type and a good football player”.)
  * Mysticism 6 (Amin joined an Islamic school in Bombo in 1941, where he excelled in reciting the Qur’an.)

Special powers-
Instability of choice: If the Valkyrie who owns Idi is not going to win a skirmish, Idi’s statistic used to calculate the Valkyrie’s score is changed to a different statistic at random. If this causes the Valkyrie to win the Skirmish, nothing else happens. If this causes the Valkyrie to lose the skirmish, any acorns lost double.

Blame Shifting: Idi refuses to take responsibility for bad decisions. If Idi is ever going to be transferred to Fólkvangr’s section of the Einherjar page as per the Training Skirmishes rule, another random Einherjar owned by the owner of Idi is transferred instead.

Degrading power: After every skirmish, Idi’s Charisma is reduced by the amount if DICE3. If his charisma is ever 0 or less, Idi is moved to the Disgraced Einherjar section.

I nominate:

Emma Goldman (1869-1940)

Described as a “Modern Joan of Arc”, Emma Goldman was a Lithuanian-born anarchist who lived in New York City for many years before being deported to Russia by President Hoover as, “beyond doubt, [one] of the most dangerous anarchists in this country.”

Wit: 6
Scholasticism: 5 (A prolific writer and founder of Mother Earth magazine)
Combat: 3 (Though anti-war, she advocated the use of violence to achieve a greater good. She was also involved with the unsuccessful assassination plot of industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Later in life, however, she reversed this opinion.)
Moxie: -3 (Her subscription list from Mother Earth had the unfortunate result of helping to deport hundreds of foreign nationals in an anarchist scare.)
Charisma: 7 (A popular speaker, imprisoned on several occasions for
inciting crowds to riot.)

Honorable, Sane, Female

Special powers:

Incite to Riot: If the Valkyrie owning Emma is going to lose a skirmish, roll DICE10 against Emma’s charisma. If the result is less than or equal to her charisma, then each of the Einherjar owned by that Valkyrie will improve their challenged statistic by +2 for the remainder of that skirmish. If the result is instead greater than her charisma, then Emma is moved to the Disgraced Einherjar section, in addition to any other results of the skirmish loss.

On Idi Amin: Blame Shifting should only work if the owner has at least 1 Einherjar other than Idi Amin.  Also, his Scholasticism should be a big negative—supposedly he was nearly illiterate.

Emma Goldman: Incite to riot +2 to _all_ challenged statistics is awfully strong.

+1 would work too. Doesn’t seem too strong to me, especially as it’s temporary—could have the same effect by simply affecting the challenged stat of the losing einherjar. the only way it would make any difference (other than *possibly* stopping a valkyrie from losing her einherjar) would be that it might also cause it to go from a loss to a win, if the valkyrie also had someone with a statistic nearly high enough to win with.

also, it’s only called into effect when the valkyrie is set to lose, and is a random chance. perhaps it should be 1d12 or something if people think it’s too powerful still. but considering there are other effects out there that intentionally change a loss to a win, this doesn’t seem overbalanced to me.

keeping to the meaning of the stats &  meaning of ‘incite to riot’, maybe emma’s incite to riot should only be if the challenge is to combat. or maybe it should change the einherjar’s challenged stat with the combat stat, assuming emma is advocating the violent overthrow of the ivory tower academists during a scholarship challenge or something fancy like that…

Alternative special effect for Emma Goldman: (I’m not attached to either version, and am open to other possibilities as well. Obviously, it’s ultimately the Allfather’s decision in the end. Now that I’ve rewritten it, this version makes more sense anyway.)

Incite to Riot: If the Valkyrie owning Emma is going to lose a skirmish, and the challenged statistic is other than Combat, roll DICE10 against Emma’s charisma. If the result is less than or equal to her Charisma, then each of the Einherjar owned by that Valkyrie will replace their challenged statistic with the value of their Combat statistic for the duration of the skirmish. If the result is greater than her charisma, then Emma is instead moved to the Disgraced Einherjar section, in addition to any other results of the skirmish loss.

for emma—do you mean “lose a skirmish” in the sense of “come in last”, or “not come in first”?

for emma’s incite to riot, i meant in the sense of to ‘come in last’. that should be reworded appropriately for clarity.

after all, the people will only riot if they’re being oppressed anyway :D

I nominate:

Bruce Reynolds

(See also the the Great Train Robbery of 1963)

Scholasticism: +7 (his autobiography is widely acclaimed, and he was the brains behind the robbery)
Combat: -7 (they didn’t use any guns!)
Moxie: +10 (a thief has to have moxie)
Charisma: +5 (he is a sort of celebrity now)
Tinkering: +5

Male, Sane, Dishonourable

Special Powers:

Rob: As a weekly action, Bruce may attempt to steal an item from another Einherjar.  The Valkyrie that owns Bruce, if any, shall roll “1DICEX 2DICEY”, where X is Bruce’s Moxie, and Y is either the target’s Moxie, or 1, whichever is greater.  Should the first roll be greater, Bruce successfully steals a single item belonging to the target of his Valkyrie’s choosing.  Should the first roll NOT be greater, then Bruce is caught, and becomes Disgraced.

Replace item with device…

Is it just me or are there a lot of special abilities that can cause Einherjar to become disgraced?

Yeah, I was noticing that. I did Idi that way because it made sense historically.