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Panopticon: A Game of Posthumans, Perniciousness, Paranoia, Politics, and Plasmaguns

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[x] The Dragon(Slayer)'s Might: He who slays the dragon demonstrates his superiority over the dragon in might. Gain a Legendary Physical attribute of your choice and +1 to one other physical attribute. Had this been gained from eating of the dragon's heart, it would have echoed the first two (+3 to all attributes, Legendary Physical).
-> Legendary Stamina
-> +1 Strength

Kessler Invictus.

He chose to live, in full knowledge that his death would have been glorious. Proceeding to live in glory anyway kind of does an end run around the importance of that decision, in my opinion. Not to mention that Legendary Stamina is also incredibly cool.
 
Oh, random thought: if Kessler had Spirit 5, could he have used his Enlightenment 6 Make Shit Up ability to finish off the dragon by digesting the heart really thoroughly?
 
[x] Forged By Dragon's Fire: Slaying the great wyrm has imprinted your name on the very dreams of Sleepers themselves. People who never knew what you accomplished will understand, instinctively, that you existed, that you could exist. You are legend. -2 Permanent Paradox.

Super-stamina is boring in comparison. Actually it's kind of boring in general. It's not even a cool looking sword, which wasn't that amazing in the first place.

Making an indelible mark on Consensus? That's meaningful.
 
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[x] Forged By Dragon's Fire: Slaying the great wyrm has imprinted your name on the very dreams of Sleepers themselves. People who never knew what you accomplished will understand, instinctively, that you existed, that you could exist. You are legend. -2 Permanent Paradox.
 
vel10 said:
Making an indelible mark on Consensus? That's meaningful.
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Oh, it is. It's going to be so meaningful when Kessler gets shot by an anti-vehicle plasma cannon and I'm going to be back here, quoting this post that I have just made, telling you guys, "You chose a paradox reduction instead of being tougher than a tank because you deluded yourselves into thinking that there was a Huge Consensus Change there instead of that being fluff." And I will be cackling evilly while I do it.

Huuuuuuubriiiiiis

Too late now to change your votes, sadly.
 
Well, that's what happens when people wilfully talk themselves into the idea that they're not getting the explicitly-listed benefit, but are instead getting some kind of special super-bonus.

vel10 said:
Super-stamina is boring in comparison. Actually it's kind of boring in general. It's not even a cool looking sword, which wasn't that amazing in the first place.
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No. You literally chose the most boring option listed. -2 Paradox was the most boring option by far, and you were too busy back-patting to actually look at what you were getting.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Well, that's what happens when people wilfully talk themselves into the idea that they're not getting the explicitly-listed benefit, but are instead getting some kind of special super-bonus.
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I voted for it because thematically it sounds like the kind of thing you get from slaying the mother of all dragons in what amounts to be dreamland of sorts.
 
EarthScorpion said:
...

No. For fuck's sake, all of them were appropriate bonuses. And no, -3 Paradox has no particular resonance.
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This is correct. Every one of the bonuses was one that made sense in context.

Anyways, what has happened is that Kessler, Kessler specifically, has become a mythic thread. This does not change the rest of consensus any more than Achilles being invulnerable makes invulnerable Grecians with swords consensual. So, he has Permanent Paradox 2 now, much like Piero has Permanent Paradox "way less than the approximately two dozen permadox I should have for being literally invincible to anything smaller than warship-mounted ordinance."

Also, literally everyone who studies such mythic threads and likes dragons (so a lot of House Thig Hermetics) have literally woken up in their beds weeping at what the fuck Kessler has done.
 
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I...actually don't care? Legendary Kessler is really a lot cooler than 'supertough Kessler' from a plot perspective, in my personal opinion.

That was what I was leaning towards even before Kerrus made his emotional appeal. The 'benefits' never really mattered, though Kerrus' appeal made it marginally more convincing.
 
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drake_azathoth said:
I give ES credit for thinking in literary and thematic terms rather than purely mechanical terms when the decision as to whether or not we eat the heart came up.

But let's be serious here- THIS is also a choice of theme or paradigm, even if it's one the players are making rather than John Kessler. The question is whether it's John Kessler who can slay the dragon and save humanity - or whether any human, any heroic man, any patriot or mother's son could potentially have done the deed.

Both are certainly true from a certain point of view. The second may feel like it's not giving John due credit, but it's the kind of ideal that he's devoted his life to upholding- that humanity is stronger than the monsters that it faces. Iteration X in particular, who John has devoted his life to, is all about Enough Gun. Back in the day it was Enough Sword, for some it may be Enough Plasma Cannon, but the ideal is empowerment of humanity in particular through technology, not just mages.
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Yeah, that's pretty much exactly why I wanted the sword. I honestly figured we'd just be donating it to the Technocracy. Maybe it turns out that little bits of it are great catalysts for making true primium and it makes a non negligible bump in the supply of that as it gets added to every HITMARK. Maybe we give it to the Void Engineers in a "bitch please, we've known about Threat Null since forever" gift. Maybe it gets given to the TYRANTs. Hell, maybe it functions like one of those tomes that wakes up Geniuses of people that read it. Maybe it just makes a really swell weapon. It doesn't really matter since it was the symbolism and overall benefit to the Union.
 
Well, Dox reduction might not be sexy, but it is undoubtedly useful for Mages, so I don't find myself weeping. For now anyways.
 
If you're unwilling to admit that a mistake was made, you're probably not going to figure out why the mistake was made and thus how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Kerrus' argument was completely unfounded and it was obvious that the Merits, being much lesser versions of benefits we would have gotten from eating the Dragon's heart, would be more or less what they were on the face of it. For that matter not eating the Dragon's heart might have been another mistake of overthinking, where the real trap was in making a bad choice of the array of Powers it could have provided rather than it being the case that going for more power was the wrong choice in and of itself.

On the other hand we're here because of the huge modifier for the "HEROIC SACRIFICE" option, so...
 
MJ12 Commando said:
This is correct. Every one of the bonuses was one that made sense in context.
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Well, you know. Actually the one which got chosen made the least sense, because when you've just explicitly rejected fame and accepted to yourself that you're going to die on the battlefield, the "reality fame" one is the least in character.

But hey! People talked themselves into the idea that they'd be getting a benefit which was merely implied by fluff, and then sold themselves as if it was the primary benefit, rather than actually reading the goddamn benefits and voting on them. And when I (aka "Mr Paranoid About Paradox") aren't voting for the less Paradox one ... maybe there was a reason for it.

vel10 said:
I...actually don't care? Legendary Kessler is really a lot cooler than 'supertough Kessler' from a plot perspective, in my personal opinion.

That was what I was leaning towards even before Kerrus made his emotional appeal. The 'benefits' never really mattered, though Kerrus' appeal made it marginally more convincing.
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... you think the one which literally fucking made him Legendary wasn't the Legendary option? Riiiiiiiiight.

And if the benefits didn't matter, maybe you shouldn't have voted for a benefit-based vote. Rather than assuming you'd be getting a super-special benefit from things.
 
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Well it wouldn't be Panopticon Quest if we didn't earn that Bad Decisions tag every once in a while.

EarthScorpion said:
Well, that's what happens when people wilfully talk themselves into the idea that they're not getting the explicitly-listed benefit, but are instead getting some kind of special super-bonus.



No. You literally chose the most boring option listed. -2 Paradox was the most boring option by far, and you were too busy back-patting to actually look at what you were getting.
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Hey, remember when everyone chewed you out because you talked us out of getting two picks from the dragon loot table for reasons that turned out to be not true?

No?

Yeah, me neither.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
Hey, remember when everyone chewed you out because you talked us out of getting two picks from the dragon loot table for reasons that turned out to be not true?

No?

Yeah, me neither.
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... do you not see the difference in the situations? When you are literally told that "you can't just kill something like this" and "it always finds a way back", that's basically a red flag.

Oh, it wouldn't have been fast. It'd have been subtle, at first. It wouldn't have been possession. But Resonance is a really big deal in oMage, and do you have any fucking clue what the Resonance of that kind of thing would have been like? You know what the Vampire Resonance of Vitae does to mages who use quintessence derived from vampire tass? You know the reason Henrietta was a paranoid, aggressive, unstable mess even by her standards which the Computer was concerned about was because of the side effects of that? (obviously there were other reasons, but using tass from vitae fucks you up)

Now think about what that 5 free quint from the heart for all casting would do. All that Draconic Resonance leaking into you. All the time. And the Resonance influx from internalising its gifts, twisting your personal Resonance. Resonance shapes all kinds of things.

So, please, don't compare the two, unless you've actually accounted for the situation and the really quite important differences. When you've just slain a dragon, becoming like the dragon is a betrayal of the self. Nothing of the sort applies here.
 
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FunkyEntropy said:
Hey, remember when everyone chewed you out because you talked us out of getting two picks from the dragon loot table for reasons that turned out to be not true?

No?

Yeah, me neither.
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Okay no guys. Let's calm down. Because again:

1) MJ never said there wasn't a trap, just that there would have been extra goodies. And since he liked that post of mine, I'm inclined to believe that I was correct. In that there was a trap.

2)MJ also never said that the dox reduction was a bad choice. All he said was that we passed over a choice that would have been good in certain situations. The surviving a tank shot or something like. That's not saying which choice was superior, that's just him pointing out that the reasoning for choosing the current goodie was flawed and that the other goodie was good too, not that the one we choose was objectively bad. Just that might would be much better at tanking shit.

Honestly guys, if we make it this easy for him to troll us for shits and giggles it'll just encourage him.
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
Oh, it is. It's going to be so meaningful when Kessler gets shot by an anti-vehicle plasma cannon and I'm going to be back here, quoting this post that I have just made, telling you guys, "You chose a paradox reduction instead of being tougher than a tank because you deluded yourselves into thinking that there was a Huge Consensus Change there instead of that being fluff." And I will be cackling evilly while I do it.

Huuuuuuubriiiiiis
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Oh, well now that I know we're mistaken about it, I'll just -
Too late now to change your votes, sadly.
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fffffFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-!!!! *plasma cannoned*
 
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So, what are the amalgam member's permadox now?

Jamelia's at 3... Kessler would now be at 3 too? How much does Henriette have?
 
Alright, well, I and the other people who were tricked into voting for the permadox reduction fucked up. I guess we just don't have the GM's friendship spark of Genius required to change the setting with cool ideas. :(

We'll just have to make the best of it. Everyone could use less permadox, even though Legendary Stamina would have been legendary.
 
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