Talk:Slobbovia

message: The claim that the meme of crottled greeps originated in Slobbovia had bothered me for a little while; I remembered seeing reference to it elsewhere in SF fandom. It in fact predates Slobbovia by some years: Dean Grennell's fanzine FILLER in 1953, in which in issue #378 we find the question "But if you don't like crottled greeps, what did you order them for?" MarkVolundNYC 10:33, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Legacy

message: I've restored a phrase in the section "Holy Sativan Church" which had been deleted:
"(it is left to the imagination on how he is mounted, keeping in mind he was known as Tostig the Perverted)"
I will grant that some (including, possibly, the contributor who deleted the phrase) may consider it to be in dubious taste. However, it does accurately reflect the atmosphere in which the game was played and the mindset of many of the players, many of whom were young men of college age or slightly older.-MarkVolundNYC (talk)
I was of two minds about restoring what I typed originally regarding Tostig the Perverted (which you went ahead and did).  I try to exercise a reasonable amount of descretion but still convey at least the intent of the original game.  Thus, when someone absolutely came out with a more exact translation of "Fecundar Strakh" (even with asterisks, it was pretty obvious which four letter anglo-saxon invective for sexual intercourse was involved), I toned it down to "something rather more obscene".  Similiarly, how does one convey Tostig the Perverted without at least some kind of implication of the "pose" for the statue?  Implied but not graphically detailed.  The overall thrust of the "strakh" was humor, and hopefully that is what is being conveyed here, even when it gets risque.  Two-Tonic Knight (talk) 02:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irreverency and relevance 

message: I added a couple of specific military titles to the warfare section.  All I could dredge to mind were Oberhorc and Unterflunky, two terms that were in general use.  There were some more specific listings of ranks for given countries, but I haven't bothered to look them up.  Title unique to Slobbovia were what I was looking to add more than Vurklemyerian lists. Let me add in here: perhaps the title of the section should be "Military and Warfare".Two-Tonic Knight (talk) 02:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There was an NCO rank, Grundjerk. I know the Novarians used them. Of course, the Novarians had the uniform sense of the pre-1940 Soviet Army and the military competence of the Battle of Adowa Castrati Choir.GABaker (talk) 04:11, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Military Ranks

message: I decided to start this new section because the Empire simply was NOT all that was important on the board. As stated, I think it should be limited to those that were of fairly long standing (including intermittent occurrences over a major chunk of the game's life, such as Rabbitania or Valgoria) or generated a fair amount of strakh from multiple players ... or both. (Notice the absence of Barataria; but perhaps Phumpha should be mentioned?) If it's going to be more comprehensive, it probably should be hived off into a separate article. My blurbs on Rabbitania and Valgoria are from memory plus what old material I could refer to. I may eventually take a crack at SoC, unless someone else beats me to it, but somebody with a longer history than I should attempt Venturia/Triarchy and Jamul.MarkVolundNYC (talk) 18:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There ya go, I made the initial attempt at Venturia and the Triarchy. It of course lacks depth, but I hope gives some overview/flavor of a part of the game that engaged a very significant portion of the board and of the players. MarkVolundNYC (talk) 17:41, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

text: I also corrected what I wrote about Valgoria. I had conflated Zhebatinsky's attempted usurpation (which Raoul the Rude has opportunistically tried to turn into the "War of the Valgorian Succession") with the later mess which included Vasili's revolt/crusade, Chekov's being revealed as a Satinist and the Gorean incursion. MarkVolundNYC (talk) 14:32, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Yes, I seem to recall that, it being around the point when I joined the game or a little before. Ra-Man the Rotten was Czar; Dimitri Valgoricanus was Prinz of Venturia (until he abdicated to Nikolai), and was nominally co-Czar, but really wasn't (depending on who you asked); Julian B-V was Triarch Major. And your character of Jurgen was also a Triarch Minor, opposed by Ivan Dragomilov and his Dreadites and I think also the Tarnkaps and their Pseudowikings, who represented Ra-Man's interests in that part of the south. (It is amazing and scary just how much of this I remember ... ) MarkVolundNYC (talk) 15:46, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In fact, Jurgen made specific mention of having been a Triarch Minor in the strakh release detailing the Imperial election that brought Aleksandr Illanov-Rabinsky to the throne, when he cast his own vote for Constance Dmetrievna Vurklemeyer (something about standing up for or sticking together with a fellow Triarch). MarkVolundNYC (talk) 17:48, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

text: That actually makes sense; how could Alfred Aardvark remain Slobbovia's eternal bogeyman if his fate was known to be dying and becoming merely part of a demon (no matter how powerful)? As for the illustrations, as artist I'd assume you have the rights to those, right? Would that include the map? Lastly, I wonder if a Fourth Survey map could be manipulated to reflect the extent of the board at the point of each earlier survey (or at least the 3rd, which is known to most contributors here)? MarkVolundNYC (talk) 16:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

text: I also have the later (perhaps up to the last?) issues of the Zhurnal, from when I joined (in the middle of Ra-Man's reign). Lipton had also been kind enough, back in the day, to give me photocopies of the Sharp issues (and maybe some of the early Apa-Slobbovia issues? Have to look.) The problem with a lot of the material is, of course, that it's on twilltone ... MarkVolundNYC (talk) 15:51, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Other Nations

message: I was wearing black pants, black shirt, and a black leather jacket when I wrote that. :-) Two-Tonic Knight (talk) 17:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: End of the Great Ice Age?

message: Okay, whoever wrote this section originally had it as 2 Czars and a Grund Patriarch. Costikyan's article, cited in the outside links, has it as 1 of each. I'm wondering whether anybody who has contributed here who was a player has a better memory. Some of the older examples of what were referred to as Great Families seem not to have fulfilled either criterion. For example, the Boleskis were universally regarded as a Great Family: they had 3 Czars/Czarinas (Mo'reen, Janun and Egor the Fink) but none of the prominent Churchmen in that family (Guru Guy, Cardinal Justinian) ever became G.P. MarkVolundNYC (talk) 17:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great Families 

message: I'd never heard of Slobbovia before now, much less ever played it, but this article was very confusing. The rules section on differences from conventional diplomacy was fine, but as it got into strumph and strakh and then descriptions of the obscure politics of imaginary nations in an already obscure board game? I was just confused. Is there any way someone could tone down the level of "in universe" description so that it means something to a non-player? Tiger Khan (talk) 14:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Still, I think that there are much better ways to describe that "state of mind" than by chronicling all of the obscure religious/political/etc. aspects of Slobbovia. This article could really be simplified and I don't think it would lose anything. Wikipedia isn't a dumping ground for all of the aspect of something: it's about explaining something in a coherent, concise way. This article explains very little in a way that is distinctly neither coherent nor concise. Tiger Khan (talk) 00:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

text: I think the original point, though, is a fairly relevant one--I stumbled onto this page from Al Capp's biography page, and cannot help but notice that this page is longer.  Like, I understand that even though this article may seem confusingly unimportant to the average reader, that it does have historical value--but seriously, it is way, way, way too long.  There are countless real nations with shorter entries. 97.113.109.44 (talk) 17:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Universe/Overly Complex 

message: Sources are given within the article, but none are listed at the bottom of the page, nor are there any concrete examples of maps, articles, or format for any of these anecdotes.  A fuller examination of the rules or an adjuncation map would liven up this article considerably.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.156.95.226 (talk) 05:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cited Sources 

message: I added a composite of the best maps I could find through WorldCat, however these are from issue #69 and do not contain the final map expansions.  Could someone look in their personal collection and upload a more recent version of the map?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Triskelli (talk • contribs) 01:12, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maps and Rules