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An Utterly Thankless Job (Alt. Title: No SV, You Are A Logistics Officer)

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[X] Maybe Friends, Maybe More. After that bit of reconciliation, the both of you formed an inseparable bond, if one that is marred with constant rivalry. You two had become akin to Companions, the consensus among your peers had been. That said, neither you or Emil seems to want to push your relationship more than the constant teasing and rivalry. In part, you know that despite the extreme lenience that the Empire gave to its armed corps, there's still frowns and worse reaction to those in romantic relations with one another in the corps, regardless of Names. You refrained from pushing the subject and so did he. +2 Reputation Score. Starts with a Strained Companion Bond with Emil.
 
[X] Friends with Benefits. Your...reconciliation ended up with a great deal of booze drank on both sides. And when you woke up beside Emil on your bed, you knew that you two have crossed an invisible threshold. And honestly? Neither of you cared about it. You two helped each other through thick and thin. His expertise in political matters and connections helped you while your skill in administration and accounting helped with his atrocious spending habits. Of course, you kept your rivalries with him, in all sorts of things. +1 Reputation Score. +3 Infamy Score. Starts with a Normal Companion Bond with Emil.
 
[X] Friends with Benefits. Your...reconciliation ended up with a great deal of booze drank on both sides. And when you woke up beside Emil on your bed, you knew that you two have crossed an invisible threshold. And honestly? Neither of you cared about it. You two helped each other through thick and thin. His expertise in political matters and connections helped you while your skill in administration and accounting helped with his atrocious spending habits. Of course, you kept your rivalries with him, in all sorts of things. +1 Reputation Score. +3 Infamy Score. Starts with a Normal Companion Bond with Emil.
 
[X] Friends with Benefits. Your...reconciliation ended up with a great deal of booze drank on both sides. And when you woke up beside Emil on your bed, you knew that you two have crossed an invisible threshold. And honestly? Neither of you cared about it. You two helped each other through thick and thin. His expertise in political matters and connections helped you while your skill in administration and accounting helped with his atrocious spending habits. Of course, you kept your rivalries with him, in all sorts of things. +1 Reputation Score. +3 Infamy Score. Starts with a Normal Companion Bond with Emil.

 
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[X] Friends with Benefits. Your...reconciliation ended up with a great deal of booze drank on both sides. And when you woke up beside Emil on your bed, you knew that you two have crossed an invisible threshold. And honestly? Neither of you cared about it. You two helped each other through thick and thin. His expertise in political matters and connections helped you while your skill in administration and accounting helped with his atrocious spending habits. Of course, you kept your rivalries with him, in all sorts of things. +1 Reputation Score. +3 Infamy Score. Starts with a Normal Companion Bond with Emil.
 
ToBeRead said:
Potential typos?
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Writing while sleepy tends to make a lot of typo. The problem is that I am perpetually sleepy. Thank you and fixed.

On another note page "Mechanics" have been updated with the exception of the Dice Pool system. Am still working on tidying that portion up. Of import would be the Skill List, that one lists all the Skills and where they track. The Character Compendium/Dramatis Personae are still under works and will be released at the end of the CharGen.

Vote will be open for another nine hours or so. It's currently 17-13 in favour of Friends with Benefit.
 
[X] Maybe Friends, Maybe More. After that bit of reconciliation, the both of you formed an inseparable bond, if one that is marred with constant rivalry. You two had become akin to Companions, the consensus among your peers had been. That said, neither you or Emil seems to want to push your relationship more than the constant teasing and rivalry. In part, you know that despite the extreme lenience that the Empire gave to its armed corps, there's still frowns and worse reaction to those in romantic relations with one another in the corps, regardless of Names. You refrained from pushing the subject and so did he. +2 Reputation Score. Starts with a Strained Companion Bond with Emil.

On second thought, maybe I'd rather not start the game as a walking scandal.
 
[X] Maybe Friends, Maybe More. After that bit of reconciliation, the both of you formed an inseparable bond, if one that is marred with constant rivalry. You two had become akin to Companions, the consensus among your peers had been. That said, neither you or Emil seems to want to push your relationship more than the constant teasing and rivalry. In part, you know that despite the extreme lenience that the Empire gave to its armed corps, there's still frowns and worse reaction to those in romantic relations with one another in the corps, regardless of Names. You refrained from pushing the subject and so did he. +2 Reputation Score. Starts with a Strained Companion Bond with Emil.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Shebe Zuu on Nov 2, 2018 at 5:24 PM, finished with 37 posts and 33 votes.
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kylina said:
[x] Maybe Friends, Maybe More.

If we get this husbando, can we get a waifu later on too? :V
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If you want this husbando then that isn't the right vote. I doubt us getting drunk together again would happen for a long while. Plus with him on the battlefield we will be alone for long periods of time. We can totally get our own waifu later.
 
Ancient Scholar said:
Plus with him on the battlefield we will be alone for long periods of time.
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I will interject that Mages are valuable assets, no matter who or where they are. The chance of Emil being put in the frontline, pushing as the tip of the proverbial spear is as likely as him being put to work in the propaganda machine, which is Gram-Grelav's family expertise.
 
And now the vote is tied. It isn't exactly a rush with six hours left for voting, considering we've reached past 34 voters, which is... record-breaking for my Quests, I don't know if there will be more coming.
 
[X] Friends with Benefits. Your...reconciliation ended up with a great deal of booze drank on both sides. And when you woke up beside Emil on your bed, you knew that you two have crossed an invisible threshold. And honestly? Neither of you cared about it. You two helped each other through thick and thin. His expertise in political matters and connections helped you while your skill in administration and accounting helped with his atrocious spending habits. Of course, you kept your rivalries with him, in all sorts of things. +1 Reputation Score. +3 Infamy Score. Starts with a Normal Companion Bond with Emil.

Better to have people assume we slept our way into our job and then realize we're actually good at what we do than to have people know we're competent and then find out that we're in love with our boss.

First, doing it this way around means we can bait out the corrupt, the incompetent, and the unprofessional in our assigned unit by letting them make assumptions about our earning our position bent over our desk and then watch the life drain from their faces when they realize we earned our job sitting behind a desk instead. Second, it means that people trying to make trouble for us are likely to come at us through attacking our competence (a vector which we can shut down at will), whereas the other option probably has them attacking us by insinuating a relationship that in that version of the quest doesn't exist, an attack we aren't prepared to counter and against which it's difficult to make a defense without severing our relationship entirely. Finally, it means we have a person we know has our backs under most circumstances from the very start of the quest, which is invaluable.

Also there's no way we're avoiding Infamy gain as a quartermaster, so we may as well just own it from the get-go.
 
To me, this seems like a choice between Hertz becoming either Lawful or Chaotic in D&D terms.

The sexual tension is there either way and we can't really affect it, so that isn't the crux of the vote. Reputation will be formed naturally as a sum of great many things, which means that this vote isn't about choosing renegade vs. paragon or anything like that either. This makes me think that this vote is about one aspect of Hertz's reputation score, specifically Hertz's attitude towards the law in general. Lawful being honoring the non-intimate relationships in the army rule, and chaotic being ignoring it.

Choosing lawful here is a bit of a gamble since we don't actually know anything about the laws yet. That makes me want to go chaotic.

[X] Friends with Benefits.


I have to add as a comment that while I really like @The Sandman 's style of argumentation in the previous post, I intensely dislike the argument itself. He basically says that Hertz chose to have sex with Emil because of its beneficial effect on her career. His argument recapped: 1 & 2: To get a a surprise advantage by getting rivals to underestimate Hertz. 3: To secure Emil as a backer.

I think this is pretty cold from a teenage girl. I'd much rather have Hertz choose to go to bed because of tender or lustful emotions, than because of strategic calculations. A matter of taste of course and sometimes needs must, but nothing in Hertz's character description so far seems to necessitate her using sex as a career advancement methid, not to mention treating Emil as a political asset instead of a person to have important feelings for.

Some others have suggested that Hertz chose to Avoid going to bed because of similar calculations involving scandals and such, but even then I'd rather have her doing it just because of general respect for rules and laws and norms, instead of machinations.

I'm not against strategic thinking in general of course, I just think that dealing with companions based on that is wrong. Calculations on those relationships does not lead to true friendship, but instead just using each other as tools. Very useful tools unlikely to be discarded maybe, but not the kinds of things I want for Hertz and her future inner group.
 
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I have no great arguments or well reasoned logic, unlike those before me, but I still would like to present the case that jumping into bed with the first guy who, in 800 words, seems decent might not be the best idea for our development. Let's go with maybe more than friends please.
 
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I will say that while the rationale/arguments used to debate options can impact how Hertz make her outlined choice, they will not dictate the full thrust of her decison-making process, framing them in her own way.

And the whole 'Hertz is a golddigger/opportunist' angle is not what's happening between the two. That's just how other people perceive her. If that was the case, there wouldn't be a Companion Bond between the two.

As for the two arguments given? Rationalized superbly. I hope to see more of these in future votes. As a reward/risk warning, I will say that both of you, or rather, those who voted for Benefits, haven't quite nailed down the entire issue with the Infamy Score.
 
@Paroni, at no point did I say Hertz slept with Emil because of the effect on our career. What I said was that people would assume this was the case, and that we could use that false assumption to our advantage.

My assumption is that she slept with Emil because they were both drunk, he was attractive, and then it turned out they actually had good chemistry so they kept doing it.

EDIT: As far as the full impact of the Infamy Score itself, probably it sets a certain tone for our career. Essentially, starting with the extra Infamy means our Reputation is capped lower, and probably gives us penalties to dealing with superior officers who did the socially acceptable thing and kept it secret that they were fucking their secretaries.

It also might mean that people will either like us or trust us, but unless they're Companions they won't ever do both at the same time the way they might if we had higher Reputation and no Infamy.

Ultimately though it's a playstyle vote, because I trust the QM to give us an actual explicit warning if we're choosing to activate Hard Mode during chargen.
 
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Paroni said:
To me, this seems like a choice between Hertz becoming either Lawful or Chaotic in D&D terms.

The sexual tension is there either way and we can't really affect it, so that isn't the crux of the vote. Reputation will be formed naturally as a sum of great many things, which means that this vote isn't about choosing renegade vs. paragon or anything like that either. This makes me think that this vote is about one aspect of Hertz's reputation score, specifically Hertz's attitude towards the law in general. Lawful being honoring the non-intimate relationships in the army rule, and chaotic being ignoring it.

Choosing lawful here is a bit of a gamble since we don't actually know anything about the laws yet. That makes me want to go chaotic.

[X] Friends with Benefits.


I have to add as a comment that while I really like @The Sandman 's style of argumentation in the previous post, I intensely dislike the argument itself. He basically says that Hertz chose to have sex with Emil because of its beneficial effect on her career. His argument recapped: 1 & 2: To get a a surprise advantage by getting rivals to underestimate Hertz. 3: To secure Emil as a backer.

I think this is pretty cold from a teenage girl. I'd much rather have Hertz choose to go to bed because of tender or lustful emotions, than because of strategic calculations. A matter of taste of course and sometimes needs must, but nothing in Hertz's character description so far seems to necessitate her using sex as a career advancement methid, not to mention treating Emil as a political asset instead of a person to have important feelings for.

Some others have suggested that Hertz chose to Avoid going to bed because of similar calculations involving scandals and such, but even then I'd rather have her doing it just because of general respect for rules and laws and norms, instead of machinations.

I'm not against strategic thinking in general of course, I just think that dealing with companions based on that is wrong. Calculations on those relationships does not lead to true friendship, but instead just using each other as tools. Very useful tools unlikely to be discarded maybe, but not the kinds of things I want for Hertz and her future inner group.
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On some level I agree, although I must say Sandman's reasoning came across as a meta perspective than one from an IC perspective to me.

Edit: Lol, of course I was ninja'd


Vocalend said:
I will say that while the rationale/arguments used to debate options can impact how Hertz make her outlined choice, they will not dictate the full thrust of her decison-making process, framing them in her own way.

And the whole 'Hertz is a golddigger/opportunist' angle is not what's happening between the two. That's just how other people perceive her. If that was the case, there wouldn't be a Companion Bond between the two.

As for the two arguments given? Rationalized superbly. I hope to see more of these in future votes. As a reward/risk warning, I will say that both of you, or rather, those who voted for Benefits, haven't quite nailed down the entire issue with the Infamy Score.
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I might as well ask so I'm not disappointed later. Are you going to play this like Mass Effect (or a lot of games) where the paragon option is almost always the right option? In my experience the "good guy" route is inherently better than the "bad guy" route, especially in cases where they aren't mutually exclusive.
 
Blonddude42 said:
Are you going to play this like Mass Effect (or a lot of games) where the paragon option is almost always the right option? In my experience the "good guy" route is inherently better than the "bad guy" route, especially in cases where they aren't mutually exclusive.
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Inherently? From a design angle, I can't say that for certain (There's the "I have no idea what I am doing" tag for a reason). But I certainly intend to make the choices have their ups and downs. @Paroni gets around the ballpark when he mentioned the arguments of "Lawful" and "Chaotic".

That being said of course, there will be choices where one option is straight-up better than the others. Whether those choices will be a moral choice or not, well, that will have to be seen. Just as much as you all Questers can (hopefully) expect me to give you a fair shake in terms of the given deals, I should be able to expect you all to intercept any fastballs I throw your way.
 
Personally, I figure the thing about the benefits route people are missing is the idea of us becoming a stain on Hertz's career-we're the lowborn who seduces a noble and that's going to drag him down considerably.
Thusly, I'm going to vote like so:
[X] Maybe Friends, Maybe More
So instead of playing games, people know we're competent right off instead of thinking Hertz schmoozed in on the weight of three names and we managed to grab his coattails.
 
Vocalend said:
Inherently? From a design angle, I can't say that for certain (There's the "I have no idea what I am doing" tag for a reason). But I certainly intend to make the choices have their ups and downs. @Paroni gets around the ballpark when he mentioned the arguments of "Lawful" and "Chaotic".

That being said of course, there will be choices where one option is straight-up better than the others. Whether those choices will be a moral choice or not, well, that will have to be seen. Just as much as you all Questers can (hopefully) expect me to give you a fair shake in terms of the given deals, I should be able to expect you all to intercept any fastballs I throw your way.
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Thanks, that's reassuring. When they aren't mutually exclusive the play-styles for both tends not be balanced in my opinion.

***

The biggest problem I see with voting for Maybe Friends, Maybe More is that unresolved sexual tension. I think we can all agree on that.

Now how the hell does anyone plan on solving that in a way that solidifies the bond and isn't sleeping with him? Shit, sleeping with him is unlikely to automatically fix the issue too. Honestly, I'd love to see someone's plan for that; I trust SV with a lot of things, but dealing with relationships isn't really one of them -- especially romantic ones.

We can root out devious plots, pull off strategy on a grand scale, run the numbers to make hard scifi work in a space opera, and perform the required rights to the dice gods to earn their favor.

I have yet to see a quest that's outright amazing at dealing with relationship problems




(although now that I think about it I guess for those that think husbandos are bad and want a waifu or nothing might see this as a plus :V)
 
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