Fair, but I really don't like the healthcare idea, which...Hm. Maybe going full crim would be fine....Hm.
Bound to Earth: A CK2 Earthbound Quest in an 8-bit Dystopia
- Thread starter Crosswire
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi
OK, so, gonna try and pin down the Youth League idea a bit more, in terms of what we're going for at the base level. So, our secret goal would obviously be recruiting people for aid against Giygas, naturally. But our public front, in this idea, is the Onett Youth League. No culture, that sounds a bit too...High-faulting. But the public-facing goal is to provide activities and socialization for people, particularly in the form of various athletics. For a real world example, I was thinking Boy Scouts in terms of the vibe. And, of course, if some of those "athletics" happen to be vaguely resemble combat drills...We can keep that on the down-low. I'm going for a milkman conspiracy sorta vibe, where we try and seem innocuous to conceal what we're really doing. I agree with others that have said the spiritual healing thing feels way too PSI-adjacent, the kinda thing Giygas would be suspicious of. I'll admit, this is an idea I gravitate to in part because I think it's fun, but there's practicality to recruiting people our own age who are both likely to listen to us and less likely to be in cahoots. Any major issues with it, well, I mean, ask me.
by my measure the mortorium drops soon, if anyone wants to talk about options there?
what do you badly want to see happen? personally i really want to invest in that factory since the other stewardship options seem wasteful, but can deal with various martial/intrigue/research options so long as they're useful/safe.
may be wise to focus on options that will help progress our organisation faster, or that we won't have time to do with national/personal actions once options open?
(doing sports themselves is fine, just don't make it our whole thing/the method we use to fight gygas)
if we get a -10 DC or the like to a bunch of national actions from a single perk that would be pretty wild (and a bit broken if we could make it apply to the administration side of things, wow). just keep in mind not everything would trigger it, like probs wouldn't proc on most stewardship actions for building stuff. maybe if we're lucky it'll give us first-hand knowledge for what people *want* but wouldn't bet on it? we'd probably have pretty low scores compared to someone who actually knew what they were doing, so put them in charge instead
is something to look forward to in personals, at least
what part of it's uncool to you, out of curiosity? is it the overly sanitised rooms/hallways? the fact it's very professional/modern/businessey? the industry and how big it is?
might be possible to either lean towards healing people without your typical hospital setup (home visits, or something?) to avoid that, or if your issue is doing things spiritually what if we try and eventually seize the building itself so we can repurpose it? redecorate it a lot and make it as unconventional as possible. might be blatantly breaking every law while also painting a major target on us but we'll manage somehow :)
what do you badly want to see happen? personally i really want to invest in that factory since the other stewardship options seem wasteful, but can deal with various martial/intrigue/research options so long as they're useful/safe.
may be wise to focus on options that will help progress our organisation faster, or that we won't have time to do with national/personal actions once options open?
KND vibe's admittedly cool, but I really don't want to get bogged down in sports administration. if we have to do that maybe make it a gang ? the galactic KND was pretty evil IIRC :)
(doing sports themselves is fine, just don't make it our whole thing/the method we use to fight gygas)
if we get a -10 DC or the like to a bunch of national actions from a single perk that would be pretty wild (and a bit broken if we could make it apply to the administration side of things, wow). just keep in mind not everything would trigger it, like probs wouldn't proc on most stewardship actions for building stuff. maybe if we're lucky it'll give us first-hand knowledge for what people *want* but wouldn't bet on it? we'd probably have pretty low scores compared to someone who actually knew what they were doing, so put them in charge instead
is something to look forward to in personals, at least
if you don't like the idea of us providing healthcare, how about we drive the hospitals out of business and then do nothing? /s don't worry
what part of it's uncool to you, out of curiosity? is it the overly sanitised rooms/hallways? the fact it's very professional/modern/businessey? the industry and how big it is?
might be possible to either lean towards healing people without your typical hospital setup (home visits, or something?) to avoid that, or if your issue is doing things spiritually what if we try and eventually seize the building itself so we can repurpose it? redecorate it a lot and make it as unconventional as possible. might be blatantly breaking every law while also painting a major target on us but we'll manage somehow :)
All of that plus the spiritual angle, and also just..I get it fits with our powerset, but it just doesn't feel fitting to who CD is, ya know? It's really not her vibe, whereas "ragtag band of misfits" is.
True, we could go full youth gang on it, and that's kinda the vibe i'm going for, but choosing corp is, in my plan, less about BEING a corp and more about how we sell ourselves to the public to stay beneath notice. A front org, is the term.KND vibe's admittedly cool, but I really don't want to get bogged down in sports administration. if we have to do that maybe make it a gang ? the galactic KND was pretty evil IIRC
I think that whatever we do should have a legitimate face to avoid close scrutiny from Giygas-controlled authorities and earn cash to fund our secret fight against evil aliens.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
As someone who lives in a place with (semi at least) functioning healthcare and knowing Eagle Quarter has worse than irl American Level...
Look, I don't think we need to use it to make a cult to like, have decent healthcare. Most of the time the Charges are like, majorly jumped up premiums, at least to my knowledge. Basically, it doesn't cost nearly as much as they're claiming, they just have a monopoly.
Though If it helps, in Earthbound, you do also have outright magic healers who'll get rid of Status effects the Hospitals can't. Introducing PSI healing might be able to be done without needing to make ourselves new-age essential oil chugging weirdos.
Though again, this is one of those things which is more of a Scheme than an org - basically anything we make can implement it, it's just a question of how and how much of an effect it can have due to our structure.
It's not really the cult or whatever i'm concerned about, although that is some of it. It's just, yeah, what you said. I don't like building our whole org around it just because it's the one successful money making venture we've had so far. Especially since Giygas knows what PSI Healing is, and could probably put two and two together. Considering the main advantage of a corp is being able to to be above suspicion in some way, it feels ill-advised.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Eeeeh...
Legitimate face shouldn't be for Giygas. If Recerd is any indication, we're probably already a reasonably known quantity. Hell, we were one of the very first people attacked by a Possessed Object and we saw Giygas in our dreams at the start.
Even if they don't know... we should probably assume that Giygas will EVENTUALLY learn about us and move against us.
However, remember - Giygas' plan means he has to act in secret. So if they move against us, they must also move in secret.
Having a front - and I'd argue it doesn't actually need to be reputable, it just needs to not be "HEY WE KILL ALIENS WHO WANT TO GENOCIDE EVERYONE!!!!" - will help to maintain this as a Shadow War instead of encouraging Giygas to start to operate openly.
This being a Shadow War gives us a significant advantage in terms of what Giygas can't do - which given the thing has armies of Starmen and advanced ships, is a LOT. Outright war would be more risky for them, given what would happen if the City did unite in the face of such a threat, but given the sheer power Giygas posesses... I'm not sure it would be a clear cut or easy win.
It also means that we can more easily get our actual goals done under the noses of people who are working for people who work for Giygas, but who don't know about the Shadow War, and thus won't know what we're actually trying to do or how we do some of our things.
Edit: Again, I don't think it needs to inherently be a 'neat' public face. If we're a criminal group, but our goal is seemingly more reasonable and mundane in comparison, then people not already in the know aren't going to go looking
I wanted to do KND stuff in order to capture the energy of the kids in Onett against the Fresh Breeze movement, and given that this kind of war is going to hit kids who can't defend themselves especially hard (especially other kids like CD with family issues), then a Youth Protection League would feel like it could expand. A criminal Org, since it's inherently anti-authority, but one that manages to feel rebellious without also being too open and keeping some of that KND vibe I'm going for.
...Actually, you know what? I think you could combine the Aesthetics by combining the dual meaning of the word 'League'. Like, I'd still make it criminal (I.E. Against the Status Quo) on principle, but also emphasising that it's for providing a community and sense of purpose and using sports to help that might work.
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See, I think making it a criminal org inherently makes PR harder, that's....What that means, it's why it's a risk. The org choice is in part about how it's fun, but also in part about how we are viewed by the public. A criminal org can have good PR, but we know that, mechanically, it will start lower then a corp, that's the main downside. Besides, Giygas can probably swing taking out criminals without anyone catching on a lot quicker then he can an org that seems pedestrian.
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the powerset isn't the only reason to pursue medicine, remember how the hospital industry in onnet is a massive scam? i'm sure CD would love to oppose that. maybe if we delegate it more?
ragtag gang of kids isn't the worst option, maybe in an explicitly *not* cult-like secret society if we go for a criminal organisation? like, avoid the awkward cult parts
if we pick corp, that wouldn't make us entirely a corp, especially since we're still a group of kids. that doesn't make it a bad way to help create more stability for kart/floppy and everyone else though.
totally reasonable! i'm sort of bringing it up because it's one place to invest in, but there's no reason to limit things
I'm all for expanding into various other things psychic knowledge/ability can help with, but a lot of people seem to really hate that? so focusing medicine for the short term may help us find our feet.
hopefully this happens no matter what. this is the real advantage of discretion, making it harder for someone like the cops to dogpile us
to get away from a direct giygas attack, what do you feel about structuring our organisation in a way that's harder to take everyone else down? I've previously suggested cult/mlm style organisations because they're dispersed anyways, but are there any other ways to achieve this
(making it harder encourages giygas to not kill everyone we care for, which is a major priority)
this is more of a guess than usual, but maybe it's the case that with a criminal organisation, they expect more illegal stuff so reputation loss is less unless we're specifically hurting people, while with a corp any particularly dodgy behavior that's known would stand out more?
it's a matter of doing what our organisation is expected to do, and that being beneficial to stop people freaking out? hmm, some organisations live and die on community support, so those are probably going to be more vulnerable here.
do you think there's anything to prevent PR attacks/make them less effective? like, if you're providing a service people want to buy, they won't stop wanting to buy it unless we become public enemy #1?
Anything specifically built on PSI use would both A. Exclude the majority of people who don't have any PSI potential and can never use it and B. Would pain a massive target on our back. Giygas is hunting PSI users, using it openly is the kinda thing we want to avoid if possible.
I mean...The quest has gone over the pros and cons of each:
I'm currently leaning either corporate or anarchic.
not everyone will have PSI powers, but some people will, and those people can use them. other people are in no way excluded from beating up animated furniture, selling stuff etc. it doesn't make them *less* useful? it's not *just* selling the use of PSI powers, but enabling their use
just want to clear up, Giygas is hunting us anyhow so we don't need to worry about being discovered, they should be able to understand we're a PSI user. all that matters is avoiding their patsies and making them underestimate us.
to achieve the latter, maybe some obsufating stupidity? hide our real strengh, deliberately pretend to misunderstand how to use psi by acting like a bunch of unneeded stuff is needed and the like. Giygas is super prideful right? they could just think we're backwards monkeys etc
yup, re-read that to brush up on things. what i'm looking at here is "expected to hold to certain standards" part. if this gets violated it would harm our PR, so if we're a corp maybe we'd want to take action to ensure those standards are held to/break them on our own terms so Giygas can't do it even worse. or something like that?
I don't know, still don't like the PSI focus. Not only does it feel exclusory, but I think this is getting increasingly convoluted for no real benefit.
Pirkle declared himself a mayor because he has the most money and influence in town and because of that cops (or a main cop rather) decided to play along. If CDs org (any sort of org, though maybe outright criminal would have it harder) gathers more income and influence, CD would be able to declare her Plushie a mayor.
At least that how I interpert the setting. Maybe Crosswire should clear it up.
Again, I do not quite understand why think that this would be limited to soft power. It's not like corps do not have their security wings or cannot do the corporate espionage/information gathering against their opposition. Why the "non-profit" org would not be able to do it? Like yes, it wouldn't be able to use money as freely as the corp on the whim (due to raison d'etre), or send thugs to rob the bakery in broad daylight, like criminal org could.
But why couldn't it have their own security arm, medical arm, espionage arm? "Informational service" (totally not propaganda) arm? And it totally would have stewardship admin powers. I firmly believe that covertly breaking into the Pirkle's house and covertly (not in the daylight) vandalizing the signs should be options. It would just damage the org's reputation and weaken it if comes to the light. But doable and desirable if stays hidden.
excluding people is a real issue, it would definitely be awkward to give the people with superpowers more authority than the ones without. might end up happening regardless of the org picked though. could try and force them to take more risk/do more work? but that's dubious if it's effective or not
part of the reason i was interested in developing technology to do similar stuff more, good way to lower the inequality.
regarding it being convoluted, to be honest I'm mostly just making suggestions of how possible problems can be solved/avoided. fairly sure some things brought up are mutually exclusive haha, the answer for what to go with will always be "what works"
lot of small reasons, I think? for a lot of the more violent stuff, doing so would erode our message. for a lot of the weirder stuff, it would be hard to explain to people when we do it.
want to do it discreetly? possible, but then you run into having far less resources available/harsher limits to operate under
you've mentioned not being able to use funds freely, but using funds for things that are important but also weird like greater security would whiff of being insincere/selfish (if we're fighting against an invasion, that would take more resources than most groups of our sise)
now this isn't a huge issue if people don't find out, but can't bet on that being kept up forever, especially if they get options to investigate. and of course Giygas knows what we're doing regardless
plenty of concerns of getting bogged down building something (physical or not) that it's disproportionately easier to blow up/sabotage, whether it's by a rival faction, animated/possessed stuff, the animals, or someone effected by mind control
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Not being limited to soft power doesn't - despite what you seem to insist on taking away - mean that we are only limited by how much we can argue it's sports themed.
Hleghe basically sums up a lot of it here. Making a Sports League means we would have to fulfill certain goals and targets. Trying to use a Sports league to ACTUALLY run our own personal private army is going to cause a lot of problems very quickly.
Like, I think what you're trying to go for is something like Shadaloo or the Mishima Zaibatsu, just with baseball instead of Martial arts... but those aren't Fighting Tournament Organisers who run criminal enterprises or corporations on the side. They're Criminals and Corportations who organise fighting tournaments to benefit their goals.
Like, it's late - like, 10pm here, so I can't actually write up all of what I want to say. I'm kinda mad at this as well, because it feels like you're hyperfocusing on this idea of "Well why not?"
Why can't a News group run their own Fast food chain? Why can't Big Boss set up a Museum dedicated to fine art? There's technically nothing stopping them, right? so why don't they?
Sorry if I'm incoherent. And for the love of all the fucking gods there aren't, actually take the Big Boss argument in the spirit it's meant to be instead of hyperliterally and go "Well of course he wouldn't, he's not interested".
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I will say there is a bit of hyperfixation going on.
Please don't overthink things TOO hard please. This is supposed to be fun, and you shouldn't become deadset on a single idea. Especially if there's a large chance it won't come to fruition.
[X] Plan: De-Stress to be Refreshed!
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
I do not have the brainspace available right now to form an actual plan, but my "will doggedly chase this in all votes" action for this turn (besides forming an organization) will be having Buzz-Buzz help around the house.
CD is in a bad place right now and she needs help, but more importantly her siblings will also need it.Part of me almost wishes Buzz-Buzz will get caught just so he doesn't have to hide anymore, even if the consequences will be dire
CD is in a bad place right now and she needs help, but more importantly her siblings will also need it.
- Location
- Italian City
- Pronouns
- He/They/Name
[X] Plan: Dealing with our feelings along with social interaction
[X] Plan Build Back Up
-[X] Fight Local Wildlife [Buzz Buzz]
-[X] Found an Organization
-[X] Buy Stock in the Baseball Bat Factory [Porky]
-[X] Try to Sneak into the Arcade
-[X] Obscure Talks with the Treehouse Boys
-[X] Buzz-Buzz: Help Around The House
-[X] Porky: Try to get a...mole?
This plan is mostly focused on long-term bonuses. Fighting wildlife to vent and potentially train, Organization for obvious reasons, Stock for money, the Arcade for info, and talking with the boys to either make them like us or help CD relax.
-[X] Fight Local Wildlife [Buzz Buzz]
-[X] Found an Organization
-[X] Buy Stock in the Baseball Bat Factory [Porky]
-[X] Try to Sneak into the Arcade
-[X] Obscure Talks with the Treehouse Boys
-[X] Buzz-Buzz: Help Around The House
-[X] Porky: Try to get a...mole?
This plan is mostly focused on long-term bonuses. Fighting wildlife to vent and potentially train, Organization for obvious reasons, Stock for money, the Arcade for info, and talking with the boys to either make them like us or help CD relax.
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
For the record, with Porky's help we're going to roll with a Stewardship bonus of +16, so buying Stock in the Baseball Bat Factory has a 24% chance of leaving us at 4 Funds, 40% chance of 5 Funds, 10% of 6 Funds and 26% of 7 Funds (+/- the SMASH fail/success odds).
Without Porky, those odds change to 33-40-10-17, and given that we are currently in a Funds-draining situation I would say that even that small change is a decent use of our Porky.
I can't imagine founding an organization is going to be free.
Without Porky, those odds change to 33-40-10-17, and given that we are currently in a Funds-draining situation I would say that even that small change is a decent use of our Porky.
I can't imagine founding an organization is going to be free.
[X] Plan Build Back Up
-[X] Fight Local Wildlife [Buzz Buzz]
-[X] Found an Organization
-[X] Buy Stock in the Baseball Bat Factory [Porky]
-[X] Try to Sneak into the Arcade
-[X] Obscure Talks with the Treehouse Boys
-[X] Buzz-Buzz: Help Around The House
-[X] Porky: Try to get a...mole?
-[X] Fight Local Wildlife [Buzz Buzz]
-[X] Found an Organization
-[X] Buy Stock in the Baseball Bat Factory [Porky]
-[X] Try to Sneak into the Arcade
-[X] Obscure Talks with the Treehouse Boys
-[X] Buzz-Buzz: Help Around The House
-[X] Porky: Try to get a...mole?