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A Rat's Guide to Glory

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Kelasgre said:
I keep wondering how Naron considers all these paths and possibilities, or how he improvises or maintains balance. :jackiechan:
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Well, let me pull back the curtain a little bit. I am putting this in a spoiler tag for the people who do not want to look behind it.
One vote at a time, really. An important lesson I learned running these things is that I only make myself unhappy by planning too much from the start, so what I do is note down implications of a given vote decision and loose ends that come up along the way. Then I decide how to keep the plot going and which of these loose ends to bring in when.

It feels a lot more daunting if you try to imagine every decision I made in succession instead of one at a time. The same goes for improvising, really; basically all of this Quest is improvised after all. What is a little more difficult is keeping everything in line with the City's themes (e.g. ultra-capitalism, simple and direct naming schemes, etc.), but that gets easier with practice.

Though balance is pretty easy without any numbers or dice involved, I always have the executive power to make a scene as risky or safe as I want.
 
Here's the way I see it.

Either we split up and go for the other two options. Or.

We go all in on the Weird Zombos. If you want to check on them, you should vote for full team just to be on the safer side, as this might be a difficult combat encounter.
[X] Everyone goes to investigate what is going on around the Thorns hideout

While I'm not sure whether any of these choices will bear fruits, I am a bit curious about what these zombies might be. Who knows? If what's responsible for them aren't humans or the result of humans, we can give the resident Claw a call and have him deal with the problem for us.

Though that's pretty unlikely since his Beholder would see this coming from yesterday.

Maybe we'll get some loot from this!

Of course, this could also be a 360 epic fail and we either lose our time for a nothing lead that doesn't help us in finishing the exam, or we get our blood sucked out of us like a smoothie by the bloodfiend.
 
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Well, since this regained popularity, who am I to spit on the option I actually want?

[X] Everyone goes to investigate what is going on around the Thorns hideout
 
[X] Everyone goes to investigate what is going on around the Thorns hideout
 
Hmm, honestly going all in to the thorn hideout would be the choice I would make if I wanted to 'sabotage' the mission, so as to speak. But well, I already made my point on it, so there isn't much more to add.

It does have a very high chance of backfiring, but we already know that. I guess just don't be too surprised if/when something bad comes out of this.
 
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[x] Character distribution
-[x] Giano, Rose, and Ciel go to Jade's Office.
-[x] Maria and Hifumi try following the Feathers' trail through the Backstreets.
 
[x] Character distribution
-[x] Giano, Rose, and Ciel go to Jade's Office.
-[x] Maria and Hifumi try following the Feathers' trail through the Backstreets.
 
questioningmeme said:
Personally speaking, I'm waiting to see the facepalms our friends will be doing when Ciel suggest this.
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Ya. I mean, purposefully avoiding the direct clues to Holly disappearance in favor for a place that is seemingly unrelated is eyebrow-raising at best, and hardly a good look for Ciel unless we actually find something important for the mission there. And that isn't even taking into account how badly the conversation with Rose could go.

Well, I suppose I'll have to prepare some popcorn if the hideout vote comes through. Whatever happens there, it's gonna be dramatic at least.
 
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[x] Character distribution
-[x] Giano, Rose, and Ciel go to Jade's Office.
-[x] Maria and Hifumi try following the Feathers' trail through the Backstreets.
 
Metarite said:
And that isn't even taking into account how badly the conversation with Rose could go.
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We don't know if it'll be, that's just wild pessimistic speculations there.

How she react at first doesn't dictate how the entire conversation goes, so even if she react badly, there is a possibility of Ciel making things better, or, more likely, a vote for us to do so.

The others also didn't say that we absolutely shouldn't go check the hideout, they said that we don't know if it's related*, and that it is weird, there is definitely something there, searching what is not the wild goose chase you make it out to be.

Edit:

*I want to insist on that point, not that it must be unrelated, not that it may be unrelated, not even that it might be unrelated, the exact quote from Giano is:

Naron said:
"But we still don't know if it's even related
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That we don't know, actually that we still don't know even.

In that optic, going there to make sure and actually learn makes way more sense, doesn't it?
 
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Nyarky said:
We don't know if it'll be, that's just wild pessimistic speculations there.
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I never once did say it WILL go badly, merely that I don't trust Rose to not take it badly.

Anyway, that is just based on how I tend to think. I take what I consider the most realistic pessimistic view of the situation and make my choice from that. That way we can try to avoid or lessen the blow of any potential issue Naron can throw at us. I would hardly call my claim here wild.

By my metric, I find the reasoning behind your choice much too optimistic, and relies on too many things going right for it to work out. That is what is wild to me.

But well, differences in views is inevitable in a public forum, I suppose. Just don't go assuming others are trying to sabotage the votes just because their views don't align with yours.

Nyarky said:
*I want to insist on that point, not that it must be unrelated, not that it may be unrelated, not even that it might be unrelated, the exact quote from Giano is:

"But we still don't know if it's even related"

That we don't know, actually that we still don't know even.

In that optic, going there to make sure and actually learn makes way more sense, doesn't it?
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That's just schematics. Saying we don't know if it is related is fundamentally no different from saying it may be unrelated.

And no, what would make sense is to go to the Jade office, as we already know that is pretty much directly related to where or when Holly disappeared.
 
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Quick Tally!
Adhoc vote count started by questioningmeme on Sep 13, 2023 at 8:32 PM, finished with 44 posts and 15 votes.
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Seems like things are fairly close!
 
[x] Character distribution
-[x] Giano, Rose, and Ciel go to Jade's Office.
-[x] Maria and Hifumi try following the Feathers' trail through the Backstreets.
 
Alright then, time to close it.
Adhoc vote count started by Naron on Sep 14, 2023 at 9:30 AM, finished with 47 posts and 16 votes.
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And with a one vote lead, we... split the party again. Jade Office and Backstreets tracking are locked in.
 
Naron said:
And with a one vote lead, we... split the party again. Jade Office and Backstreets tracking are locked in.
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Once again, plan thwarted... if the leads takes us to the hideout, I'm going to laugh.

And honestly, I do give that a big chance, I know you said yourself you didn't anticipate everything, but there still are a number of logical reasons for the father to be going to the hideout, in fact, the most likely scenario I see where he wasn't going there, was if he was moving the same or a similar business somewhere else, something we still could have learned about by confronting Rose instead of fearing the only possible reaction she could have was overwhelmingly negative with no way out.
 
Naron said:
Alright then, time to close it.
Adhoc vote count started by Naron on Sep 14, 2023 at 9:30 AM, finished with 47 posts and 16 votes.
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And with a one vote lead, we... split the party again. Jade Office and Backstreets tracking are locked in.
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Are you having too many surprises with these results? The votes seem pretty close lately.
 
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