Everything You Know Is Wrong

nihaodomhan asked: hey just wanted to let you know that the "child names" are a thing in china, it's a cultural thing and most chinese children get a name that everyone calls them until they become an adult, maybe even still after that. so regardless of whether liu shan was really adou, he most likely still had a child name. to call someone adou in chinese now means that that person is slow and not very smart, so either way it's a name that stuck culturally because of him

Thank you for informing me. I’ve got some fairly obvious gaps in my cultural knowledge and I appreciate the correction. It’s always nice to learn something new.

littlemercury asked: I just want to thank you for being awesome about the Three Kingdoms. I have learned SO MUCH that I wouldn't have ever found on my own and every time I see one of your posts it lights up my day.

Aww…thank you so much. I’m glad to be of help.

I’m also glad to direct you to resources should you ever decide to conduct some independent study. There are many great free resources on the Internet, and some very good stuff if you’ve got a bit of extra money for expensive books.

temp-anonymous asked: All the answers are here. koei*wikia*com/wiki/Dynasty_Warriors_7/Conquest_Mode

Thank you, though that’s not exactly what I meant when I said that I didn’t have all the answers.

What I meant was that for some of the questions, multiple answers were correct. (Like “Who Died in X year?”) But without knowing what all of those possible answers were, I can’t properly elaborate on them. For now, I’ve skipped them.

Still, thank you. I appreciate your intentions.

DW7 Scholar Questions (With True Answers): Easy

I’ve complained before about the “Scholar” in DW7. He’s in the towns in Conquest mode. You go to him, he asks you questions about the Three Kingdoms, you tell him whatever he wants to hear, and he gives you prizes or something. The thing is that a lot of the “answers” are not right, historically speaking.

And if this “Scholar” just clarified that he was asking about the fictional stuff, that might be fine, if irritating to people like me.

The problem here is that sometimes, the “Scholar” is asking about history and sometimes about fiction. And DW makes no effort to distinguish between the two. So I got a list of all the Scholar questions, did a little research, and provided historically correct answers.

While I was at it, I also expanded upon some answers that, while technically correct, were misleading oversimplifications.

There were some questions where I recall multiple options being just plain wrong. Unfortunately, because I can’t find a list of the questions with all possible answers, I cannot properly elaborate on these ones.

What follows are the questions in the “Easy” category.

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karasu-fuma asked: So have you ever studied the truth about Lu Bu. I'm sure I'm not the only one curious about him and Koei's portrayal. So was he actually a strong warrior with a red horse?

There is actually a surprising amount of truth to some of the Lü Bu stories. The SGZ (which is not always accurate but is the best thing we’ve got) says that he was known even before the Yellow Turban Rebellion for his prowess in combat. He was said to be an archer and horseman of supreme skill and also possess incredible physical strength. These claims seem to be the basis for his fictional portrayal as a nearly invincible warrior of unparalleled skill.

Of course, the fictional portrayal is still pretty far from the mark. While Lü Bu seems to have been a pretty tough guy, he was far from unstoppable. Sun Jian personally crushed Lü Bu in two separate battles and he lost repeatedly to Cao Cao in spite of holding many advantages over him at the start of their conflict. Then again, Lü Bu was not wholly incompetent as he was able to achieve significant victories over the likes of Zhang Yan, Liu Bei, and Yuan Shu. While those three were all pretty poor generals, Lü Bu’s success is certainly worth noting.

All in all, Lü Bu is a pretty complicated person. He seems to have possessed a great deal of personal skill and bravery, which was probably why people like Gao Shun and Zhang Liao followed him across China. And he was able to overcome incompetent and weak commanders. On the other hand, he simply could not stand up to the great generals of his time.

Also, his behavior was extremely erratic. He would constantly make and break alliances with his neighbors. He would give conflicting orders to his soldiers and switch around his commanders on a whim. He seems to have been content to listen to whatever adviser spoke to him most recently and certainly had no head for strategy. It’s really hard to say why his behavior was so unpredictable, and I personally suspect that a lot of his decisions were made for him, perhaps by his wife (the good decisions, I think).

There’s also a story about Lü Bu that Gina and I love. One night, while Lü Bu was asleep, one of his officers - He Meng - broke into his home and attacked him. Although Lü Bu was supposed to be a tough guy, his reaction was to immediately run through the camp - bareass naked - screaming for Gao Shun to come and help him. I’m not sure what exactly this tells us about Lü Bu, but it’s funny.

It seems like Lü Bu was really bad at making quick decisions. When he had time to stop and think (like “Should I kill Dong Zhuo?”) he usually made a good call. But when he had to react immediately…well, then he ended up running around naked.

In other words: He was a pretty tough guy, but not some unbeatable juggernaut. And while he could take time to think things through and reach a good decision, when he didn’t have the time to do that he panicked and messed things up.

Oh, and he really did have a good horse named Chitu, or Red Hare.

To the person who followed History Class:

So you might have notices that I haven’t had much to say about DW/the Three Kingdoms lately. Well, mostly that’s just because I’ve been having some serious RAGE at Koei lately about…well, a lot of decisions. I haven’t been able to play DW without feeling enraged about some things lately, so history class and such have been at a bit of a standstill. I think I’m finally starting to mellow out a bit so hopefully we’ll have that going on again soon.

In the mean time, i think I have a rant about how much I hate something around here somewhere…