Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Deathbybunnies said:

So one advantage of waiting until projects finish is that you're not arguing against the entrenched fans of those projects - indeed, they'll be looking at new projects and deciding what they want to focus on next. You're likely to see more success on those turns explicitly because the number of competitors has dropped, and specifically heavily-invested competitors at that.

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Apparitions is literally winning right now. So the strategy were you give up on a chance to get what you want right now just so some other people might (and quite a few of the people arguing against it have straight out also said they just don't care about doing it at all.) give you the same thing you can get right now an unknown number of turns down the line, doesn't strike me as a higher percentage strategy

I'd honestly find the whole thing quite a bit less irritating if the anti apparitions bloc didn't come across like a FUD campaign, every potential downside is massively magnified, every potential loose end has to have space budgeted for turns in advance, etc, etc.

Deathbybunnies said:

This doesn't really make sense to me - this is a vote. If there's enough interest to win a vote this turn, then there's explicitly enough interest in the idea to do it?

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That's not really how voting works in this quest, there's a few big ticket items that get guaranteed support from plan to plan (Basically mainly job stuff) but everything else is subject to very unpredictable levels of churn, if an action doesn't go forward when it captures some momentum in a voting cycle, it often sinks back down to the bottom of the heap and can stay there for long periods of time.

picklepikkl said:

The most obvious time to start progressing this action chain would be after our current self-improvement action chain is done and we can start a new one with a clear conscience; so, T43 if Lore and Metal Windfall wins, or T42 if Codifying and Swords wins. A lot of people, myself included, had been talking about doing Apparitions once Branarhune was done. "Progress one project at a time" is something we can't always do (e.g. last turn we needed to grab the Lovely Laurelorn action for Eike's education rather than train Branarhune, and this turn we need to codify Rite of Way rather than progress AV because our lab is out of commission), but it's something we've been pretty good at mostly doing for the last few turns, if you look at the history of the actions we've taken.

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Hope springs eternal and all that, but it's not like there aren't a lot of popular things coming up - the AV book and the Orbs are a highly favored option and if the "Apparitions aren't started yet and we should finish stuff up" argument is applicable here they should logically be done before we go hunting. The same is true for Windherding and any follow up options we may want to do with it, and with the >3 Waystone actions limit many people have argued for we simply don't have that many free options in the upcoming turns. Then we have to looming Arcane Marks that stand in direct competition with the binding, so even if we would somehow find the time to do start a "new" self improvement project in T43 it's not like Apparitions will run unopposed. The earliest I see a realistic start for Apparitions if it isn't right now is maybe T45 (assuming the double swording plan doesn't get a lot of votes suddenly) with all that coming up and that is a long wait for a the chance that it will maybe start then. And until that point in time, a lot of new, unexpected stuff will come up that Apparitions have to win against.

I really don't like how a lot of pro-Apparition-plans arguments have turned more into doomsaying about "if we don't do it now it'll never happen because Thread" than actually talking about why its a good idea to do them right now.

I'd like it if we could refocus the discussion on the actual quest and the in-universe merits and drawbacks of various plans, rather than about how irrational it is to trust the thread.

For that matter, I'd also like it if the vocal minority who really hate apparitions stopped going on about that and basically trying to relitigate the matter of apparitions, because that is also not helping the thread atmosphere and is only resulting in pro-Apparitions people getting paranoid and distrustful of the rest of the thread like this.

Oh, and one more thing that I think people need to remember in general: the more you talk about the thread being untrustworthy and you needing to vote in pure self-interest and not being able to trust in any kind of long-term-planning, the more that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Distrust festers distrust.

Thomasfoolery said:

Apparitions is literally winning right now. So the strategy were you give up on a chance to get what you want right now just so some other people might (and quite a few of the people arguing against it have straight out also said they just don't care about doing it at all.) give you the same thing you can get right now an unknown number of turns down the line, doesn't strike me as a higher percentage strategy

I'd honestly find the whole thing quite a bit less irritating if the anti apparitions bloc didn't come across like a FUD campaign, every potential downside is massively magnified, every potential loose end has to have space budgeted for turns in advance, etc, etc.

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I was speaking generally about new projects versus old - you'll see that at the bottom I started talking about Apparitions specifically, in contrast.

I think that apparitions is the most likely "next" project the thread at large will want to do, with Windherding as its main competitor - and we're coming up on finishing two long-running projects in the short term. As such, it seems very likely that waiting on Apparitions means getting those rewards sooner, whilst not finishing apparitions any sooner, unless you're taking the unlikely stance that it'll all be done in a single AP. (If I thought it was a single AP action I'd have been arguing for it already.)

As for FUD - unfortunate modern associations with the term aside - I've seen fearmongering before, and buddy, this ain't it. People are worried about spending less actions on our job than we literally ever have before to my knowledge, and are talking about the benefits of long term planning versus "I want to do this right now." That's not fearmongering.

Open question to the thread, because I continue being stumped by its behavior: why is there is no variant that replaces the Windfall paper with the apparition hunting?
To be clear, I'm not going to vote for an apparition variant either way, and I think the Windfall paper is a great paper and I'm looking forward to having our apprentice co-author a paper with two Lord Magisters, but I would really think that the first action to get the boot in order to make space for a self-improvement action is a paper writing action rather than a Waystone project action. Are people just really worried about Egrimm all of the sudden? Do people think the paper is necessary to get CF for the Morbing (it's really really not)? Was there a secret powerful Windfall lobby in the thread all along and I'm just finding out?

Vote is currently tied between ditching work to play pokemon and not ditching work to play pokemon.

mathymancer said:

Open question to the thread, because I continue being stumped by its behavior: why is there is no variant that replaces the Windfall paper with the apparition hunting?
To be clear, I'm not going to vote for an apparition variant either way, and I think the Windfall paper is a great paper and I'm looking forward to having our apprentice co-author a paper with two Lord Magisters, but I would really think that the first action to get the boot in order to make space for a self-improvement action is a paper writing action rather than a Waystone project action. Are people just really worried about Egrimm all of the sudden? Do people think the paper is necessary to get CF for the Morbing (it's really really not)? Was there a secret powerful Windfall lobby in the thread all along and I'm just finding out?

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Didn't occur to me and I am on the mobile for the most of day so I can't really do it. If somebody does it I will vote for it.

[X] Plan Lore and Metal, Windfall Edition

I don't see any problem with the apparition action tbh.

We'll have to investigate a way to keep it contained, a way to attract the Red Ridder, etc. With the part of actual 'catching' the Red Ridder most likely takes the least time of all.


Even if we don't follow it next turn all that research would be already done for the next time we try.


That said I'd prefer if we focused on learning arcane things like Arcane Kazhalid, Nehekaran, controlling our Arcane Marks, building a Sevirscope so Kragg can investigate Bok's runes, etc. Rather than focus on just becoming more killy. But those things never seem to get any traction so I'll take what I can.

Apparitions are cool and I think they will need multiple AP and I think that the first action can be WEB-MAT, but not the others, and I look forward to doing them.

I also want to finish Swording a tiny bit more than starting Apparitions, I want to do at least one Apparition action more than trying Windherding again, and I want Egrimm to do the Windfall paper before our next Windhearding attempt.

I do feel, on an 'illogical emotional takeaway' that some of the meta-planning discussion occasionally veers unfortunately close to painting the playerbase with a broad brush and it feels a bit cruddy after reading some of those posts.

mathymancer said:

Was there a secret powerful Windfall lobby in the thread all along and I'm just finding out?

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There is now a Windfall Paper cabal.

Aranfan said:

Vote is currently tied between ditching work to play pokemon and not ditching work to play pokemon.

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I may have voted for the non-Apparition plan myself, but I'd still appreciate it if you didn't talk so dismissively about a plan that you disliked. This is the sort of thing that contributes nothing other than making the thread more hostile to each other.

Retrueno said:

Even if we don't follow it next turn all that research would be already done for the next time we try.

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Just a reminder:

Boney said:

Any given containment method only works for a combination of a type of Apparition and a specific Wind. Mathilde will have to invent a new containment method for anything she catches, and how long a shelf life those methods might have can't be known in advance.

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There's no guarantee we'll be actually be able to not immediately follow up on it. There's a decent chance that if we capture an apparition now, we'll be locked into an action to follow up on that next turn, so make sure you're okay with that possibility if you vote for the apparition plan.

[X] Plan Lore and Metal, Windfall Edition
[X] Plan Codifying and Swords

Here is is with apparitions and mapping think i copied everything right

[X] Plan Lore and Metal (ft. Red Riders and mapping)
-[X] WEB-MAT: Hunt an apparition with a member of WEB-MAT (Johann, Rider in Red)
-[X] MAX: Study an artefact (Lustrian Rubbings)
-[X] Waystone: Mapping (Tilea, Estalia) (Johann)
-[X] Waystone: Capstone (Max, Johann, Egrimm, Elrisse, Thorek, Hatalath, Sarvoi)
-[X] Tributary: Water Spirit (Stirland) (Niedzwenka, Zlata, Max, Cadaeth, Tochter)
-[X] Attempt to codify Rite of Way so that others can learn it.
--[X] The Gambler
-[X] Branulhune's ability to disappear and reappear at a thought allows entirely new forms of combat. Continue to work on them.
-[X] EIC: Attempt to establish a trade route with the Eonir (charcoal)
-[X] KAU: Seek an exchange arrangement with another Library or a Karak's archives to be able to make copies of their corpus (as many Nuln libraries as we can get in exchange for using the KaK metalsmithing guild boon to help rebuild Nuln's foundaries)
-[X] SERENITY: The Black Orc Warboss' worship of Only Gork, and what you saw of the Rogue Idol ritual
-[X] Eike Actions: Lustrian Rubbings study, Branulhune training, EIC action
-[X] Eike Study: Petty Magics
-[X] Contains Overwork


[X] Plan Lore and Metal
[X] Plan Lore and Metal, Windfall Edition

Deathbybunnies said:

I was speaking generally about new projects versus old - you'll see that at the bottom I started talking about Apparitions specifically, in contrast.

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Yeah, this just illustrates why I don't really buy this rhetoric at all. Literally this turn we have a new project (Codify) that has an uncertain number of actions until payoff. Yet somehow not a word is spoken about it in regards to this new project paradigm being championed.

Deathbybunnies said:

unless you're taking the unlikely stance that it'll all be done in a single AP. (If I thought it was a single AP action I'd have been arguing for it already.)

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My understanding is it might actually be possible to do it in a single AP yes, but it would mean less time for study so might be riskier. From what I remember Boney said something like depending on how it played out we might get a vote to try or to wait.

Deathbybunnies said:

People are worried about spending less actions on our job than we literally ever have before to my knowledge,

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You say it's not, and then in the same post come up with this line, making something that is manifestly not a big deal, into something that we need to be worried about, which is not really helping your argument.

LadyLynn said:

There's no guarantee we'll be actually be able to not immediately follow up on it. There's a decent chance that if we capture an apparition now, we'll be locked into an action to follow up on that next turn, so make sure you're okay with that possibility if you vote for the apparition plan.

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I'm ok with that. What I was trying to say was that even if for some reason we didn't follow it up we'd already have a containment method for the Red Rider. And probably have an action like "Capture and investigate a Red Rider". Since the most time consuming part of catching the Red Rider, the figuring out the how, would already been done.

Wodger said:

Here is is with apparitions and mapping think i copied everything right

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I don't think we can double up on the same person for webmat actions? Suppose we could map with Egrimm if we wanted to.

Wiggy said:

I don't think we can double up on the same person for webmat actions? Suppose we could map with Egrimm if we wanted to.

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We can and we did so last turn (Max and Johann both went with us to the Reikland nexus and also wrote papers/explored Tor Lithanel with us).

mathymancer said:

We can and we did so last turn (Max and Johann both went with us to the Reikland nexus and also wrote papers/explored Tor Lithanel with us).

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Huh. Well okay. Guess we just typically don't since we want to keep everyone busy. But Egrimm is doing waystone stuff so I suppose that's not a problem.

Thomasfoolery said:

Yeah, this just illustrates why I don't really buy this rhetoric at all. Literally this turn we have a new project (Codify) that has an uncertain number of actions until payoff. Yet somehow not a word is spoken about it in regards to this new project paradigm being championed.

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There has been a lot of discussion about Codifying RoW starting since we first started discussing making the spell [as that was part of the discussion], the project is not new - turn 34 '[ ] Attempt to codify Rite of Way so that others can learn it'.

What is new-ish is that over the last few turns there has been an additional utility to codfying it: We can give/sell/whatever it to the Eonir so they can make an enchanted tower and any neded ancillary infrastucture so they can have merchants travel to them easily without compormising their defences against armies.

I will speak a word about the matter: As per word of Boney, Coidfying RoW might be done in one action, it might it might take more actions or might not be possible at all. If it is possible, it might turn out to be a really tricky spell for others because we roll badly. It may or may not be possible to spend additional AP to try and make something better if that is the case.

Acknowledging that it is is in no way certain that success is possible, or that it may take more one AP, or that we will roll Iow and it 'technically works' but is a bit crap, I still think that we should start the Codify project this turn and also feel that it is worthwhile spending extra AP on it if needed because of [Eonir trade reasons] and [all those other reasons that I am really enthused about that the playerbase has explored over literal years].

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Reading your post makes me feel you have experienced something meaningfully different from what I did wrt what people have said about codifying RoW over the past [long period of time]

Wiggy said:

I don't think we can double up on the same person for webmat actions? Suppose we could map with Egrimm if we wanted to.

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He was written as not liking it last time tbh, so I'd prefer to not bring him along unless there's a compelling reason to do so - as in, a reason I think he would find compelling.

Aranfan said:

Vote is currently tied between ditching work to play pokemon and not ditching work to play pokemon.

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Actually as of your vote tally it's 51-50, @HanChenYou voted for Windfall with no Red Riders but isn't counted with the rest of the vote due to a typo. As of the writing of this post it's 53-50 counting @HanChenYou's vote.

BeepSmile said:

Reading your post makes me feel you have experienced something meaningfully different from what I did wrt what people have said about codifying RoW over the past [long period of time]

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If you want to roll codifying RoW in as part of the same project as creating the spell, I don't think there's any honest way you can separate actually binding Apparitions from learning to bind apparitions. So it all amounts to the same thing in the end. One item is getting massive relentless scrutiny and held to various invented standards. The other action passes through without comment despite their circumstances being very similar. If there was actually some new project moratorium as is being proposed there's no way this would be the case. Instead as I mentioned before, there are just items people want to do and items they don't want to do, and people are applying one set of standards to things they don't want to do, and another to the things they do.

Thomasfoolery said:

If you want to roll codifying RoW in as part of the same project as creating the spell, I don't think there's any honest way you can separate actually binding Apparitions from learning to bind apparitions. So it all amounts to the same thing in the end. One item is getting massive relentless scurrility and held to various invented standards. The other action passes through without comment despite their circumstances being very similar. If there was actually some new project moratorium as is being proposed there's no way this would be the case. Instead as I mentioned before, there are just items people want to do and items they don't want to do, and people are applying one set of standards to things they don't want to do, and another to the things they do.

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I don't think there's a double standard in play at all. Apparitions are known to be a multi-action chain before we have a usable apparition-summoning spell to unleash monsters on our enemies. Furthermore, we received confirmation from Boney that taking this first step is going to lock us into needing to take another action in an unknown span of time to avoid wasting this one, which is the real killer for me and others. Codifying a spell, on the other hand, was a single action the last time we did it (the MMAP) and there is no reason to believe that even if it ended up requiring more AP that we couldn't set our work aside for a bit and come back to it later; unlike the trapped apparition, there isn't a time limit.

So between "first step in a multi-action chain where taking the first step commits us to taking the second step soon" and "probable one-off action where even if it took more than that we still have flexibility in planning future turns," it's really clear that the first is a bigger ask than the second.

picklepikkl said:

I don't think there's a double standard in play at all. Apparitions are known to be a multi-action chain before we have a usable apparition-summoning spell to unleash monsters on our enemies. Furthermore, we received confirmation from Boney that taking this first step is going to lock us into needing to take another action in an unknown span of time to avoid wasting this one, which is the real killer for me and others. Codifying a spell, on the other hand, was a single action the last time we did it (the MMAP) and there is no reason to believe that even if it ended up requiring more AP that we couldn't set our work aside for a bit and come back to it later; unlike the trapped apparition, there isn't a time limit.

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Again I seem to recall a Boney post that mentioned we could try to bind it in the first AP depending on how things go, but it would be riskier. If we roll well and Mathilde feels good about it I would be okay with voting to try that.

Anyway ignoring that acting as if the time limit if guaranteed to be some incredibly tight deadline based on basically very little evidence, and a decent amount of countervailing evidence doesn't particularly strike me as the most unbiased presentation of the likely asks.

All that aside my argument about double standards wasn't about people saying, this new action will take more investment than this other one, so lets not do it. It was "Oh of course we shouldn't start new projects" While blatantly ignoring a new project they were fine with starting. It speaks for itself.

Thomasfoolery said:

Yeah, this just illustrates why I don't really buy this rhetoric at all. Literally this turn we have a new project (Codify) that has an uncertain number of actions until payoff. Yet somehow not a word is spoken about it in regards to this new project paradigm being championed.

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Thomasfoolery said:

If you want to roll codifying RoW in as part of the same project as creating the spell, I don't think there's any honest way you can separate actually binding Apparitions from learning to bind apparitions. So it all amounts to the same thing in the end. One item is getting massive relentless scrutiny and held to various invented standards. The other action passes through without comment despite their circumstances being very similar. If there was actually some new project moratorium as is being proposed there's no way this would be the case. Instead as I mentioned before, there are just items people want to do and items they don't want to do, and people are applying one set of standards to things they don't want to do, and another to the things they do.

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For the record, I do agree that codifying RoW, if it is a multi-action chain, qualifies as a "new project". I suspect BeepSmile might have interpreted "new project" as meaning "new to thread discussion" rather than as "starting a new multi-action chain with eventual payoff". But other than that...

picklepikkl said:

I don't think there's a double standard in play at all. Apparitions are known to be a multi-action chain before we have a usable apparition-summoning spell to unleash monsters on our enemies. Furthermore, we received confirmation from Boney that taking this first step is going to lock us into needing to take another action in an unknown span of time to avoid wasting this one, which is the real killer for me and others. Codifying a spell, on the other hand, was a single action the last time we did it (the MMAP) and there is no reason to believe that even if it ended up requiring more AP that we couldn't set our work aside for a bit and come back to it later; unlike the trapped apparition, there isn't a time limit.

So between "first step in a multi-action chain where taking the first step commits us to taking the second step soon" and "probable one-off action where even if it took more than that we still have flexibility in planning future turns," it's really clear that the first is a bigger ask than the second.

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I agree with pickle. And I also want to ask to please stop viewing the people voting for other plans as your enemies, who are unwilling to engage in good faith. Seriously, a lot more people here genuinely want to have a good experience for everyone involved - including you - than you're giving them credit for.

Thomasfoolery said:

Again I seem to recall a Boney post that mentioned we could try to bind it in the first AP depending on how things go, but it would be riskier. If we roll well and Mathilde feels good about it I would be okay with voting to try that.

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I am deeply skeptical that we will be able to bind it in one AP. I think that would take some serious crits. I am much more optimistic about codification being a one-action endeavor.

On my part, I think it is very scary to go Apparition hunting without Coin: The Gambler on it. It feels reckless.

I dislike Apparitions, but seeing it there without risk mitigation for a known dangerous action just scares me. I don't think I usually vote, either.

(Codifying RoW without Gambler would also have terrified me because Battle Magic is dangerous.)