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Dungeon Crawler You!

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FaintlySorcerous said:
@eaglejarl, going on a killing spree makes a reasonable amount of sense, but I'm having moral quandaries. The people we'd be hunting are probably hugely underprepared for this and from a perspective of statistics, come places in the world where the mean daily income is measured in single dollars. I don't feel great about partaking in the equivalent of shooting wolves from a helicopter, but worse in just about every way.
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Aren't there monsters to fight? I haven't read the source material, but I figure if it was just PvP people would just... not PvP. My current understanding of the murderhobo vote is that we're running around aiming for as many early monster kills as possible to generate as many earlygame rewards as we can.

For that matter, does killing other crawlers even have any particular reward? It's not like we're low on supplies or anything, after all.
 
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Inferno Vulpix said:
For that matter, does killing other crawlers even have any particular reward? It's not like we're low on supplies or anything, after all.
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Thinning the herd early is sensible. This isn't quite a zero-sum competition (if we find a paragon of honour and competence then it might make sense to just attach ourselves to them and let them take the final door) but it's pretty damn close. Assuming that a reputation for having literally decimated the competition doesn't come back to haunt us later, everyone we take out now is someone who can't become powerful and cause problems for us later.

There's also the audience engagement angle, although I'm hoping we're currently more than weird enough for that not to be a need.
 
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[joking meme, not a vote] "Shout Leroy Jenkins" while playing "Fortunate Son" on our speakers.
 
ProperAttorney said:
I think the murderhobo option is with regards to NPCs, generated monsters and so on. In tabletop games, the term murderhobo does not usually apply to PvP.
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In that case, specifying an SOP with respect to other characters that possess agency seems wise.

My read of 'muderhobo' is 'apply violence liberally to any problem which can be solved with violence, excepting conflicts within the adventuring party'. Other contestants are effectively *NPCs and doing unto others before they can do unto you is a strategy that someone will employ at some point. I don't want to kick off a race to the bottom, but I don't want to be caught napping, and I'm not sure that brotherly love is a good move.
eaglejarl said:
all four of you
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Typo? Ominous foreshadowing?
eaglejarl said:
After you've been to the tutorial guild, get out there and kill, kill, kill!
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If we select one of these options, what approach are we going to take while trying to get to a tutorial guild?
*At the very least, it isn't clear to me how we're differentiating between 'monster NPC' and 'other contestant' morally, given that monsters etc. are composed of folks who got sucked underground. From a utilitarian perspective, monsters might drop loot, but killing monsters isn't going to thin the herd or give us a reputation as someone you don't fuck with.
 
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FaintlySorcerous said:
*At the very least, it isn't clear to me how we're differentiating between 'monster NPC' and 'other contestant' morally, given that monsters etc. are composed of folks who got sucked underground. From a utilitarian perspective, monsters might drop loot, but killing monsters isn't going to thin the herd or give us a reputation as someone you don't fuck with.
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Why would we want to thin the herd? Guns will rather quickly lose potency as we descend floors. Having allies with "magical" abilities only improves humanity's chances. We want to make it to the end, but our true goal should be for anyone to make it to the end.

Spoilered as it's information from the canon series.
Monsters in the dungeon are probably not humans from Earth. Bosses and elites are sometimes...hybridized with captured humans, but generally monsters are artificially created and reused.
 
RandomOTP said:
Well, don't I feel called out :p
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I was indeed thinking of you. :>

FaintlySorcerous said:
@eaglejarl, going on a killing spree makes a reasonable amount of sense, but I'm having moral quandaries. The people we'd be hunting are probably hugely underprepared for this and from a perspective of statistics, come places in the world where the mean daily income is measured in single dollars. I don't feel great about partaking in the equivalent of shooting wolves from a helicopter, but worse in just about every way.
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You're not going to be hunting other crawlers, you're going to be hunting monsters that were created for the dungeon by Borant. In a later update you'll get the *option* to indulge in PvP killing, but you are by no means required to do it.
 
eaglejarl said:
You're not going to be hunting other crawlers, you're going to be hunting monsters that were created for the dungeon by Borant. In a later update you'll get the *option* to indulge in PvP killing, but you are by no means required to do it.
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Yeah... let's not kill other humans. Unless they attack first, then it's fair game.
 
[X] (Gear) Guard the gear, both of you!
I figure Taylor can stay just long enough to learn how to inventory, come back and get the stuff and the others can experience the rest of the tutorial right after that

[X] (Tactics) Murderhobo! But only monsters, don't kill any humans if you can avoid it
Self explanatory
 
eaglejarl said:
You're not going to be hunting other crawlers, you're going to be hunting monsters that were created for the dungeon by Borant.
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Outside of 'everyone in the dungeon is a paragon of morality and would never dream of adopting a philosophy of Kill The Other Bastard First', what's preventing someone within the dungeon from pointing their favourite firearm at a fellow contestant and pulling the trigger to lethal effect? Are we going to be kept separate from our fellow contestants for a while? (That doesn't seem like it would make for good TV.)

Amassing power and dramatically reducing the number of competitors seems like a strategy that has the potential to be dominant or at least effective in the first few rounds.

Also: how does this 'number of doors down to the next level' business work? Someone walks through a door, and then it closes? The doors, collectively, track the number of entrants and they all shut once the cutoff number have passed through? Or is the only limit a time limit, and we could, theoretically, bring the entire population of the dungeon down to the final floor with us if we were clever enough?
RandomOTP said:
Yeah... let's not kill other humans. Unless they attack first, then it's fair game.
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The monsters are made of people. I'd actually argue that they're more innocent than our fellow dungeoneers by dint of having had their agency absolutely stripped from them. They didn't elect to take a risk.
eaglejarl said:
"As to the rest...so long as their brain is collected, they have a chance of surviving. They will be placed in storage until the crawl ends. A handful of them may be repurposed to be mobs or NPCs in the dungeon, in which case they could actually die, but that's exceedingly rare. Perhaps a dozen or two across the entire duration of an average crawl." She shrugged.
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How many monsters are we going to see, and how do we tell who's a full person and who isn't?

I imagine that a lot of this will be covered when we get access to the tutorial - hopefully this is a useful set of framing questions. (I have no familiarity with the source material, so maybe it's apparent to people who have read it.)
 
[X] (Gear) Guard the gear, both of you!
[X] (Tactics) Murderhobo! But only monsters, don't kill any humans if you can avoid it
 
[X] (Gear) Guard the gear, both of you!

Gonna say this one, and then we can play up our persona without others to harsh our vibe just yet. Instead, we can work the audience. We're the star of the show and the first one (hopefully) in. All eyes are on us, and we're used to the pressure. Let's perform!
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
Outside of 'everyone in the dungeon is a paragon of morality and would never dream of adopting a philosophy of Kill The Other Bastard First', what's preventing someone within the dungeon from pointing their favourite firearm at a fellow contestant and pulling the trigger to lethal effect?
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To the best of your knowledge, nothing.

FaintlySorcerous said:
Also: how does this 'number of doors down to the next level' business work? Someone walks through a door, and then it closes? The doors, collectively, track the number of entrants and they all shut once the cutoff number have passed through? Or is the only limit a time limit, and we could, theoretically, bring the entire population of the dungeon down to the final floor with us if we were clever enough?
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TDK (Taylor Doesn't Know), but it's going to come out in the tutorial which I assume is next episode, so I'll go ahead and answer it: It's only a time limit. As many people as desired can use the stairs; the trick is finding them.

FaintlySorcerous said:
eaglejarl said:
"As to the rest...so long as their brain is collected, they have a chance of surviving. They will be placed in storage until the crawl ends. A handful of them may be repurposed to be mobs or NPCs in the dungeon, in which case they could actually die, but that's exceedingly rare. Perhaps a dozen or two across the entire duration of an average crawl." She shrugged.
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The monsters are made of people. I'd actually argue that they're more innocent than our fellow dungeoneers by dint of having had their agency absolutely stripped from them. They didn't elect to take a risk.
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Emphasis added.
 
eaglejarl said:
To the best of your knowledge, nothing.
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So, the reason that we can't (currently) participate in PvP combat is because the characters would balk/you wouldn't write it?

(I'm not suggesting it - I'm trying to understand the earlier statement that IMO read as 'you can't do this yet' in the context of 'we can't think of anything that would prevent it from being an option'. Perhaps I'm used to your MfD QMing, where 'no, that wouldn't work' is a rare statement and not to be trusted...)
eaglejarl said:
Emphasis added. (stuff about monsters and persons)
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Until we hear otherwise, we don't really know if Random Monster has part of a person in them or not. I assume that it'll be fairly clear, but as it stands, I don't know that we can necessarily feel good about killing monsters.

That said, within the context of brutal efficiency-maximization, I'm not sure that killing other players is actually a net moral evil.
 
FaintlySorcerous said:
So, the reason that we can't (currently) participate in PvP combat is because the characters would balk/you wouldn't write it?
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The reason that you can't currently participate in PvP is because there's no other people around to kill, unless you want to shoot Drew or Calliope or Moose. When you eventually bump into some other humans you'll be given the option to kill them if you so desire.

Also, because this quest is supposed to be relaxing for all concerned, let me drop some OOC knowledge in order to settle the moral issue: The VAST majority of monsters in the dungeon are not harvested people, nor humans of any stripe. You might run into a boss monster that is "mashup of characteristics from a harvested person and from a monster that we had on file", but those are rare. If a monster is a harvested person or has elements of a harvested person, that will be extremely clear. You don't need to worry that you're murdering people every time you shoot a rat.

Also, since I have a reputation for being a literal genie over in MfD, let me say that this post is attempting to be clear and informative. There's no weasel-wording, literal genie-ing, or other forms of deception.
 
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Why would we want to thin the herd? The win condition for our race is for a human to make it 18 floors down. Every living human is another shot at making that happen.

To be clear, this is Squid Game/Hunger Games the LitRPG. It's not humans vs. each other, it's humanity vs. the Gamemasters.

Spoilers for the books currently available on Amazon:
In history, no one, or almost no one, has made it past Floor 15. The more humans to roll the dice, the better.
 
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[X] Action Plan: Avoiding Stupid Mistakes
FaintlySorcerous said:
Amassing power and dramatically reducing the number of competitors seems like a strategy that has the potential to be dominant or at least effective in the first few rounds.
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No! Bad! No murdering humans! bonk

Find humans. Protect humans. Gib weapons and survival stuff if they want to part ways. Humans are not the enemy. Aliens are the enemy. Except the aliens are outside the dungeon, so our new scapegoat shall be the dungeon. Keep humanity together enough to not Moloch itself.

Also give away our guns. Linear shooter, quadratic wizard and all that. If guns are still effective, they are better off giving other people survivability instead of being hoarded. If they are no longer effective, then we don't lose much. And kindness will be hopefully passed on and keep humanity from falling apart.

[X] (Tactics) Humans Ingroup, Aliens Outgroup
- Sanity check all using Youtuber social skills and genre savviness.
- If you see another human, greet them and help them if they are in danger. Offer your protection and a gun (grab a few extra guns for this purpose) and try to find the tutorial guild together.
- If you don't understand each other, use nonverbal communication to get them to come with you and try and find the tutorial guild together.
- Build rapport while exploring and not in danger. Talk about people you miss, draw on that emotion to portray yourself in a sympathetic light and paint aliens and dungeon monsters as the enemy. Frame dungeon as another hostile challenge humanity will overcome together.
- If asked how you are so prepared, be mostly honest while heading off potential accusations of selfishness. You received a premonition but didn't know if it was real. You regret not being able to accomplish more in that one week. etc. Try not to get into an argument.
- If they want to part ways (and if they aren't extremely mad at you), offer them the gun and other useful extra stuff you have. Wish them luck, tell them you believe we as humanity will get through this.

[X] (Tactics) Dungeon Denizens Diplomacy/Duels, Depends
- Sanity check all using Youtuber social skills and genre savviness.
- If you see an aggressive and dangerous dungeon monster, kill and loot.
- If not aggressive and sapient, try talking to them. Find out their names and the history of the dungeon, Borant Corporation, and the gameshow. Ask them for advice on how to navigate the dungeon, find tutorial guide and staircases, any hazards on the floor, and other stuff related to the dungeon.
- Carry sweets and other small trinkets to serve as trade items and bribes. Use them to get important information or if they are selling esoteric effects.
- If denizens are exhibiting obvious NPC-like behavior (like repeating dialogue and animations), it's fine to steal their stuff and/or mug them if they have shinies. Do not do this if they give important information or quests that can be repeated to other humans.
 
[X] (Gear) Guard the gear, both of you!

My initial vote to leave only Thomas behind was because I figured Calliope would want to be at the forefront with us rather than on the back lines, but I found more compelling the argument that going solo helps us create our initial defining moment.
 
I don't think we should hide the fact that we got advance warning on the dungeon; that seems like the kind of thing that'll be brought up later to drive a wedge between us and anyone we run into, if we give 'em a chacne.
 
So, I was thinking. Taylor is a.. Charisma main with a side of Dexterity? We should play to our strengths, not only because we're good at Charisma stuff, but because as we Do things with Charisma, we're likely to earn loot boxes that directly aid us in using Charisma. Basically we're at the top of the mountain right now. We have to decide which side we're going to go down now, because it's much harder to change direction once we already have items and skills and points into apunching or shooting, etc.

[X] (Tactics) Ask questions first, shoot later. Try using your Charisma when possible. Where not possible, use lead.
 
[X] (Tactics) Ask questions first, shoot later. Try using your Charisma when possible. Where not possible, use lead.

Maybe we can do cool yoyo shit to distract people and amaze our audience of dungeon monsters. Who knows?
 
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