Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Kind of surprised the fief is so high up on the list.
See, that one makes sense to me. It keeps cropping up in the thread: new readers, or casual readers, wondering what's going on with it. We haven't been back there in like three years, and it is the justification for the "Dame" part of our titles. Checking it out to see how it's doing is very in-character.
Makes sense to me. In a competition between watching battle wizards wreck vampires or visiting goat farmers and their new dairy, one of these is clearly more interesting than the other.
So I know you're being facetious but I actually agree completely with the statement as written. Yes, visiting a village much like the nowheresville Mathilde grew up in, which she has poured a ton of money into out of her sense of responsibility, to see what her absentee beneficence has wrought is absolutely more interesting than living WMDs blowing up skeleton armies. The thing that makes the battle wizard option interesting is Roswita, not the whiz bang kapow action.
A task so dull that not even our information gathering organisation could find anything to say about it. Hard no to wasting a social action on it too.
We'll get the rundown on what the EIC said about it during the council turn unless we choose Edda and get it during the social turn. It's like Karak Kadrin last turn, where we could pick them to see the striking-out onscreen, and if we didn't we would get the dwarf favour anyway in the next update.
 
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We've not seen it since we got it, and we are nominally responsible for it. I imagine we'll see it once, have a nice little scene, and never bring it up again.

It's a literally a shit farm. There's nothing of value to the fief narratively or practically. Why not have a nice little scene with some of the characters we're actually supposedly working with but basically haven't spent any time with in over two years since going to K8P like you know Kazrik. Bleh.
 
...yeah, you're making my point for me. Similar with Oswald Oswaldson; similar with Ruprecht Wulfhart. We don't want to social these characters because we've not seen them do anything onscreen, which means we'll never get to see them do anything onscreen unless Boney finds a place for them in the main thread actions. That is exactly the phenomenon I find frustrating: using the social turns purely to exploit rather than to explore.
It is a rich get richer. People who have had screen time are more interesting then people who have had no screen time. People want to spend time with people who are interesting. People are deciding to explore characters they already know. Building deeper rather than wider. If you want to get those characters on screen you will have to build a very compelling case to convince people to take a risk on someone they know nothing about and may not even like in the end rather than spending what limited screen time we can give to people we already know something about.
 
X] Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child
[X] Princess Edda, on a hunt for weavers across the Empire.
[X] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
X] Prince Kazrik, as he tries to convince Nuln to let him make them fabulously rich
[X] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.
Your vote wont be counted unless you bracket the X, friend
 
It's a literally a shit farm. There's nothing of value to the fief narratively or practically. Why not have a nice little scene with some of the characters we're actually supposedly working with but basically haven't spent any time with in over two years since going to K8P like you know Kazrik. Bleh.
Because it's not really in competition with those characters, it's in competition with Roswita.
 
and a bookshelf for your recreational reading, which you'd absent-mindedly placed in the Sciences and Arts section of your library before realizing your mistake and quickly relocating them.
Not the recreational kind, no matter what the neighbouring rooms would suggest.
...Her Druchii books may have prepared Mathilde too much.

[x] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[x] Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child
[x] Princess Edda, on a hunt for weavers across the Empire.
[x] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.
[x] The Amber College, to see how your donation of Lustrian eggs is going.
[x] Francesco Caravello, proud leader of the Undumgi
[x] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi
[x] Sir Ruprecht Wulfhart, as the new home of the Winter Wolves takes shape.
[x] Check in on your fief in Stirland.

Edit: Hey @BoneyM when are we going to get our EIC report on how things are going in Sylvania?
 
It is a rich get richer. People who have had screen time are more interesting then people who have had no screen time. People want to spend time with people who are interesting. People are deciding to explore characters they already know. Building deeper rather than wider. If you want to get those characters on screen you will have to build a very compelling case to convince people to take a risk on someone they know nothing about and may not even like in the end rather than spending what limited screen time we can give to people we already know something about.
Yeah, I understand that. I said it, in almost those exact words, a bunch. I find this phenomenon frustrating.

There is no meaningful risk in the social turn. That's the reason the social turn was created in the first place: a safe environment to interact with the characters, because nothing of mechanical consequence, good or bad, can happen during it. Boney does not write boring scenes, and in fact has specifically vetoed a bunch of suggestions people made for additions to the social turn lineup because he didn't have interesting scenes in mind for them. So the risk-aversive behavior, while understandable, puts a sour taste in my mouth.
 
[x] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[x] Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child
[x] Princess Edda, on a hunt for weavers across the Empire.
[x] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.
[x] Check in on your fief in Stirland.
 
Yeah, I understand that. I said it, in almost those exact words, a bunch. I find this phenomenon frustrating.

There is no meaningful risk in the social turn. That's the reason the social turn was created in the first place: a safe environment to interact with the characters, because nothing of mechanical consequence, good or bad, can happen during it. Boney does not write boring scenes, and in fact has specifically vetoed a bunch of suggestions people made for additions to the social turn lineup because he didn't have interesting scenes in mind for them. So the risk-aversive behavior, while understandable, puts a sour taste in my mouth.
That argument doesn't really hold up though.

The risk is not that Boney writes a boring scene, the risk is that the readers aren't interested in the character. That risk is still there.
 
[X] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi
[x] Francesco Caravello, proud leader of the Undumgi
 
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It is a rich get richer. People who have had screen time are more interesting then people who have had no screen time. People want to spend time with people who are interesting. People are deciding to explore characters they already know. Building deeper rather than wider. If you want to get those characters on screen you will have to build a very compelling case to convince people to take a risk on someone they know nothing about and may not even like in the end rather than spending what limited screen time we can give to people we already know something about.
Mathilde lives in the human peak but the only people she talks to are wizards and dwarves? I don't like that. She'll travel thoudands of miles to suck up to someone powerful but has no time for her neighbours? I don't like that.
 
[X] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[X] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.
[X] Roswita, as she rides out the chaos of the influx of Battle Wizards.
[X] Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child
[X] Check in on your fief in Stirland.
 
Yeah, I understand that. I said it, in almost those exact words, a bunch. I find this phenomenon frustrating.

There is no meaningful risk in the social turn. That's the reason the social turn was created in the first place: a safe environment to interact with the characters, because nothing of mechanical consequence, good or bad, can happen during it. Boney does not write boring scenes, and in fact has specifically vetoed a bunch of suggestions people made for additions to the social turn lineup because he didn't have interesting scenes in mind for them. So the risk-aversive behavior, while understandable, puts a sour taste in my mouth.

While I will grant that Boney does not write scenes that are inherently uninteresting that doe snot mean all character interactions are created equal, to give an example I found the first Wulfherart scene to be rather unengaging which makes me disinclined to vote for him again. By the same token I loved the byplay with Heidi so I am voting for her.
 
[X] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[X] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.
[X] Roswita, as she rides out the chaos of the influx of Battle Wizards.
[X] Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi
[X] Princess Edda, on a hunt for weavers across the Empire.
 
[X] Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child.
[X] Roswita, as she rides out the chaos of the influx of Battle Wizards.
[X] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[X] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.
[X] Princess Edda, on a hunt for weavers across the Empire.
 
The problem with hammering the same button again once we've found a button we like is that it diminishes the breadth of the world we're engaging with.

We really know very little about Karak Eight Peaks as a newly forming society society or a place, or about the wider world and will continue like that if we insist on spending pretty much all our time with characters who lived in Stirland or the Colleges of Magic at some point.

We should sbe investing the majority of her social time in Mathilde's home at this point, not the opposite.
 
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[X] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[X] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.
[X] Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child
[X] Check in on your fief in Stirland.
 
While I will grant that Boney does not write scenes that are inherently uninteresting that doe snot mean all character interactions are created equal, to give an example I found the first Wulfherart scene to be rather unengaging which makes me disinclined to vote for him again. By the same token I loved the byplay with Heidi so I am voting for her.
Fair enough. It just bothers me that the scenes with shiny people we already know we like are coming at the expense of scenes with people who we might conceivably interact with more often during our actual lives. It makes Mathilde feel disconnected from the world.

(Notably, I don't object to things like visiting Karak Kadrin last turn, or the fief vote that is currently trying really hard to make it to fifth place. Those are cool one-off scenes that establish the world, fleshing out the feeling that this is a place where stuff happens and giving Mathilde the opportunity to have feelings about things other than her job.)
The problem with hammering the same button again once we've found a button we like is that it diminishes the breadth of the world we're engaging with.

We really know very little about Karak Eight Peaks as a newly forming society society or a place, or about the wider world and will continue like that if we insist on spending pretty much all our time with characters who lived in Stirland or the Colleges of Magic at some point.

We should be investing the majority of her social time in Mathilde's home, not the opposite.
Exactly.
 
We'll get the rundown on what the EIC said about it during the council turn unless we choose Edda and get it during the social turn. It's like Karak Kadrin last turn, where we could pick them to see the striking-out onscreen, and if we didn't we would get the dwarf favour anyway in the next update.

When you put your personal intrigue organisation on a job - foregoing other EIC actions - and get the result of meh, it can wait until the the council turn then you're just chucking good actions after bad unless you wait until the council turn.
 
When you put your personal intrigue organisation on a job - foregoing other EIC actions - and get the result of meh, it can wait until the the council turn then you're just chucking good actions after bad unless you wait until the council turn.
It's issue of Boney's writing rather than of importance or preference. If we pick Edda social action it'll get written there; otherwise, it's on council report because QM doesn't want to write it twice over.
 
When you put your personal intrigue organisation on a job - foregoing other EIC actions - and get the result of meh, it can wait until the the council turn then you're just chucking good actions after bad unless you wait until the council turn.
Hrm.

So the issue is that the social turn takes place during the real turn in the fiction of the setting, but after it in the experience of the quester. This is also why we did not get an update from the EIC's Sylvanian information network that we spent last turn on: because if we choose to go to Stirland and talk to people about the Sylvania situation, we'll get the information as part of the narrative there.

I get why Boney is doing it this way, but I also get your objection.
 
[ Empress 'Heidi', to be present for the birth of her child
[X] Yes. What better place to burn armies from than the skull of a dragon?
[X] Anton, to see how his firearm factory is going.
[X] Wilhelmina, to see how she's going when she's not a terrifying financial juggernaut.
[X] Francesco Caravello, proud leader of The Undumgi.
[X] King Belegar, to try to get some idea of where he's at with his crisis of faith.
[X] Princess Edda, to pry for details about her illicit romance with Prince Kazrik.
[X] Princess Edda, on a hunt for weavers across the Empire
[X] Algard, reporting the Skaven Civil War in person instead of in writing.

Just mass approval voting of people I want to talk to.

Also @BoneyM has there ever been thoughts of going back to approval voting for turns proper? I understand it leads to less uniform plans, but I feel like there is more chat involvement over votes when it's not "what variation of this plan do you want".
 
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