A lot of people on here are making the point that war is profitable in many cases. They aren't wrong, but it's much simpler than that and has nothing to do with money. The entirety of the sovereign state based system we live in is predicated on the premise that to consolidate power you have to have a monopoly on use of force. And when you have a bunch of individual states claiming sovereignty over a bunch of individual territories, the only way that sovereignty is actually worth anything is if that state is willing to put up a right to prove it. I think the only way we will ever get away from war in the way we see it now is by moving onto an Earth-encompassing single state. We are a long, long way off from that.

So full disclosure: I am not trans but I have a legitimate question. Why is there so much pressure on trans people to put themselves into one box or another? Isn't the recognition of gender fluidity supposed to free people from sex-based boxes and social norms? This is not me saying at all that people shouldn't be able to express themselves as they want or shouldn't be able to identify in whatever way makes them most comfortable, but I find it hard to reconcile these two sides to what I see as the same coin. Maybe you could provide some perspective to me? I wish you the best and hope you get some good answers from people much more knowledgeable than me!

Used to scroll endlessly when bored but now I try to force myself to open up a book on my Kindle app when I have free time...or I gett on Lemmy/kbin 🫣.

This is sound advice. I'm under no illusion that you owe any company any "loyalty," but a little bit of professionalism goes a long way. People talk, and many industries are much, much smaller than they seem.

So depending on how "gamey" you want to make it, I could see implementing an aid type of system. The idea would be for each task or quest or whatever thing it is each group of NPCs is doing, there would be a behind the scenes roll with a DC based on the difficulty. Your party, through interacting with NPCs, setting up appropriately during downtime sessions, choosing the right combinations of mercenaries for a given job, etc. could modify or otherwise have an effect on that DC.

Say for example one task the mercenary company has available is to escort a carriage to the next town over to deliver precious cargo. The PCs could handle that, but maybe they'd rather let some of their fellow mercenaries handle it instead. You might know a group of bandits is waiting along the road, so it would be say a DC 15 to see whether the cart makes it safely. The party might choose to send a veteran mercenary (-1), might make sure the carriage is well armed for the journey (-1), and might have a conversation with a younger mercenary also slated to join the trip to try to boost her confidence (-1). So the final DC based on the party's preparations would be 12. It could also make sense to use a success/failure threshold like how Pathfinder 2E handles things. If you fail the check by only 5 or less, maybe the cart still makes it but some of the goods were destroyed in a scrum. Fail the DC by more and the cart might get completely lost. Or maybe the young mercenary is kidnapped and has to be rescued!

This is just one example but it really depends on what sort of framework you have in mind for the types of tasks their fellow mercenaries will be performing. Best of luck to you!

Currently making my way through The Guns of August. It's pretty dense compared to what I usually read but something about the writing style makes each chapter fly by faster than expected!

Circuit Superstars and Cook, Serve, Delicious!

Circuit Superstars and Cook, Serve, Delicious!

I think the issue is packing SCOTUS isn't even a band aid fix to the problem. You'd have to completely overhaul the way the Court works to get a meaningful impact on the way it operates currently. I've seen ideas floated like expanding the judiciary and then choosing a certain number of justices randomly to preside over each case, but that is probably worse than our current system because you could end up with an even more radical Court presiding over a very impactful case.