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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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DragonParadox said:
You can assume her motivations are the same.
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Well yeah, but jumping on it right now would be OOC because Viserys doesn't know that. Unless we want to start throwing out grand demands in a meeting we didn't even call, I'm just wondering how the beginning can change from what it was previously that boesn't break character.
Snowfire said:
The issue with the update as it stood was that it was a very hard one for DP to write, which made it awkward on its own, and that the vote I wrote was entirely the wrong one for the situation. In part that was misreading of my own. But it was also the result of the OOC calculations changing without us knowing. If I'd known the narrative systems had changed, I wouldn't have been nearly so overconfident.
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That makes sense, I guess. Just worried that no matter what we do we'll get yelled at again and end up in a similar positon.
Actually hold on, I think I just thought of something. The first line of any vote should be something like "Your friends are perfectly healthy, as are Lucan's subordinates. I am not a monster, whatever rumours may paint me as." There should be just enough impetus for something like that, since even asking after their safety suggests we would be commiting war crimes, and it brings up the whole problem of rumours not being accurate, which is a realization we've already had. That would set the stage for any attempts to basically clear the air and start to et an actual measure of both Lucan and Danelle beyond their public portrayals.
 
Azel said:
I... would really love to know when things began to diverge that much. You of all people were always conscious of the difference between talking to a person and talking to a vaguely person shaped piece of plot...
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I think this has been explained enough over the last hundred pages. The narrative calculus here is different. If I'd known what we've discussed over the last day going into the Conclave arc, I'd be far more likely to actually pay attention to the character rather than channel, well, you a lot of the time when talking to NPCs. Building mental models for people takes work, and I don't do it for every NPC we run across. I'm anything but perfect, too, which means that over time, bias creeps in.

This arc has, quite bluntly, expressed that I should take extra care to prevent that and put more work into mental models. Therefore I'm going to do so. And that is entirely OOC in terms of required knowledge, logic chain, and result.
 
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AQShedim said:
Arc 3 questions:
House of Kenib heir status?
Intelligent wolves in Braavos swamp?
Horen the orphan dropped in a swamp village
Nerys the tyroshi registers daughter returned to Braavos
  1. Glyra robbed the Procurer of the Sweetwater blind much later, other than that gone from the story
  2. They are not inteligent, Vee can just talk to animals
  3. He'sa priest of Yss
  4. Gone from the story. I did not follow her up
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Snowfire said:
I think this has been explained enough over the last hundred pages. The narrative calculus here is different. If I'd known what we've discussed over the last day going into the Conclave arc, I'd be far more likely to actually pay attention to the character rather than channel, well, you a lot of the time when talking to NPCs. Building mental models for people takes work, and I don't do it for every NPC we run across. I'm anything but perfect, too, which means that over time, bias creeps in.

This arc has, quite bluntly, expressed that I should not do so. Therefore I'm not going to do so. And that is entirely OOC in terms of required knowledge, logic chain, and result.
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You missed the point of my post. I'm aware of the what, but I'm still puzzling over the why and when.

It's especially important for me to ponder this since it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Did we stop engaging with characters as, well, characters and thus they became flatter less worked out, or did become flatter and we began noticing the serial numbers on the same-ish copies, thus reusing the same talking pointer again and again?
 
Snowfire said:
I think this has been explained enough over the last hundred pages. The narrative calculus here is different. If I'd known what we've discussed over the last day going into the Conclave arc, I'd be far more likely to actually pay attention to the character rather than channel, well, you a lot of the time when talking to NPCs. Building mental models for people takes work, and I don't do it for every NPC we run across. I'm anything but perfect, too, which means that over time, bias creeps in.

This arc has, quite bluntly, expressed that I should take extra care to prevent that and put more work into mental models. Therefore I'm going to do so. And that is entirely OOC in terms of required knowledge, logic chain, and result.
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This isn't hard to understand. Not a lot of effort was going into fleshing out NPCs before the decision to put more effort into their motivations was made, without really making that known to the players before hand. So the punishments for lemmings isn't because players are just intractably lemmings, it is because people are caught in the cognitive dissonance that is just as much @DragonParadox's doings and responsibility as an author as it is for the playerbase of what is ultimately an interactive story.

I feel like being hostile to people trying to cope and understand with what's expected of them, at minimum, when they are obviously confused, upset or dissatisfied, helps no one.

Clearly communicating intent behind each action does, somewhat, which is what I spent the majority of yesterday basically dissecting the OOC motives for each thing being done, which did no more than make people really chaff at a lot of the stuff going on behind the scenes being basically meta-based rather than something discussed in advance and taken, rather than as a jab at players' decision-making, an actually coherent story.
 
Azel said:
You missed the point of my post. I'm aware of the what, but I'm still puzzling over the why and when.

It's especially important for me to ponder this since it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Did we stop engaging with characters as, well, characters and thus they became flatter less worked out, or did become flatter and we began noticing the serial numbers on the same-ish copies, thus reusing the same talking pointer again and again?
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Oh, right. Um...kinda both as far as I can tell. I think it started with our socials getting so bonkers that we could stop engaging with characters as characters, and then things just started to...degrade from there. And when there are, as you imply, serial numbers present, there aren't a vast number of mental models needed. I have one for Rhaella, and Rina, and a few more. I don't really do these often, because they take a lot of work. And if that sort of thing is going to be necessary going forward...I'm not going to be able to really engage with most social votes. Because I don't have the time to do this every time we go into a complex social situation with a new NPC.
 
Azel said:
You missed the point of my post. I'm aware of the what, but I'm still puzzling over the why and when.

It's especially important for me to ponder this since it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Did we stop engaging with characters as, well, characters and thus they became flatter less worked out, or did become flatter and we began noticing the serial numbers on the same-ish copies, thus reusing the same talking pointer again and again?
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We are quite used to a lot of little errors sliding under the radar. (High Diplo)

In this case someone was simply keeping track of them all, and when all taken together they painted a VERY alarming picture.

Edit: @Snowfire how'd you get a mental model on Rina? I have a hard time with her usually.

Her being so chipper for example has always weirded me out a smidge.
 
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Azel said:
You missed the point of my post. I'm aware of the what, but I'm still puzzling over the why and when.

It's especially important for me to ponder this since it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Did we stop engaging with characters as, well, characters and thus they became flatter less worked out, or did become flatter and we began noticing the serial numbers on the same-ish copies, thus reusing the same talking pointer again and again?
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Six of one, Half a dozen of the other.

Bias creeped in because we started dealing with people with similar motivations (which is perfectly natural because you can change the skin and the clothes and the culture but at the base people are people) and it became verified when preforming certain actions created certain results.

It wasn't so bad that it reached the point of cliche, but I won't lie in saying that dealing with someone like that Old lord who survived during our Father's reign (who's name escapes me at the moment) was a breath of fresh air and a shock because he showed, well, thoughts of the future instead of some kind of short term reward.
 
Snowfire said:
Oh, right. Um...kinda both as far as I can tell. I think it started with our socials getting so bonkers that we could stop engaging with characters as characters, and then things just started to...degrade from there. And when there are, as you imply, serial numbers present, there aren't a vast number of mental models needed. I have one for Rhaella, and Rina, and a few more. I don't really do these often, because they take a lot of work. And if that sort of thing is going to be necessary going forward...I'm not going to be able to really engage with most social votes. Because I don't have the time to do this every time we go into a complex social situation with a new NPC.
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Personally I always had:
- Westerosi Lord
- Essosi Magister
- Faith of the Seven
- Burny Worshipper
- Braavosi / Trader

Respectively all of them in the "Regular" and "Complete Idiot" variants, with the former amounting to a default recruitment pitch and the latter a number of social cues to stab them with word-shivs or provoke them into battle.

It worked like a charm. All the time.
 
Snowfire said:
Oh, right. Um...kinda both as far as I can tell. I think it started with our socials getting so bonkers that we could stop engaging with characters as characters, and then things just started to...degrade from there. And when there are, as you imply, serial numbers present, there aren't a vast number of mental models needed. I have one for Rhaella, and Rina, and a few more. I don't really do these often, because they take a lot of work. And if that sort of thing is going to be necessary going forward...I'm not going to be able to really engage with most social votes. Because I don't have the time to do this every time we go into a complex social situation with a new NPC.
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I would say there should still be a certain level of commonality. I can only build so many characters to that level of depth too after all. It should be reasonably clear in narrative who is more fleshed out, but if I see a vote is not detailed enough I'll signal OOC.

Does that sound good?
 
By the way, the solution to "High Diplo risks warping the story" isn't "weaken diplo". I know that someone is thinking it (it's the obvious solution), but please don't actually suggest it without an actual rules revision proposal.
[I'm against it. Epic Diplo is a cornerstone of Viserys and this quest, and the insane Diplo-fights we've had in the past have been amazing]

Azel said:
Personally I always had:
- Westerosi Lord
- Essosi Magister
- Faith of the Seven
- Burny Worshipper
- Braavosi / Trader

Respectively all of them in the "Regular" and "Complete Idiot" variants, with the former amounting to a default recruitment pitch and the latter a number of social cues to stab them with word-shivs or provoke them into battle.

It worked like a charm. All the time.
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Same !
Although I didn't have one for "Burny Worshipper".
 
DragonParadox said:
I would say there should still be a certain level of commonality. I can only build so many characters to that level of depth too after all. It should be reasonably clear in narrative who is more fleshed out, but if I see a vote is not detailed enough I'll signal OOC.

Does that sound good?
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Excellent!

Not every single diplomatic encounter needs to have huge stakes or demand a shitton of work, but it'll be good to have a word of warning when we're starting one.
Kinda like how fights start with "roll initiative" :D
 
AQShedim said:
Also, I pulled this quote out from our encounter with the village killing bandits at Vee's request early on. It's somewhat relevant now but, I think, a really good Viserys character piece.

Viserys: What a merry troupe we make, you think with no small amount of self-irony. Children out to hunting monsters in the dark. Pretending to be brave, needing to be brave because there is no one else to do the job.
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It is, isn't it? Even here, where the Faith are, at the least, trying to do something, they have failed horrendously and in no small part because they simply don't know what they're facing. I have yet to see any real efforts to protect Planetos as a whole from anybody else that didn't just make things worse.
 
Azel said:
Personally I always had:
- Westerosi Lord
- Essosi Magister
- Faith of the Seven
- Burny Worshipper
- Braavosi / Trader

Respectively all of them in the "Regular" and "Complete Idiot" variants, with the former amounting to a default recruitment pitch and the latter a number of social cues to stab them with word-shivs or provoke them into battle.

It worked like a charm. All the time.
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Missed this. I don't really have them indexed. Basically what usually happens is that I rip out a basic outline, fill in the spaces with various applicable model sets, and then just kinda run with it from there. Doesn't always work, but usually it has some success.
 
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I think I know what our, and in this case's, Viserys problem is here. We don't think like a human any more.

Which is to say our time frame is vastly expanded compared to their own.

Every action we do, or plan, or enact, pays dividends in the future instead of the present. All of our Major goals are extremely long term compared to the average person, and we're more than willing to bide our time in order to maximize our profit.

Tyrell for instance, he wants to marry of his daughter to Royalty in order to raise his family higher on the noble food chain. How does he do it? Preposition us first, which is very ballsy considering how his family behaved during the rebellion, and when we declined go for the next nearest Royal, a Fae, not thinking about just how that marriage would play out in the future.

He was concerned with an immediate reward, we were concerned with the long term consequences because we're going to live long enough to have to deal with them.

Here Lucan wants to unite the faith to better protect Westeros, which is good. We don't want him doing that because in a few years that large block of power is going to be sitting pretty against the throne's wishes and will only continue to grow in time if not pruned. And the Pruning will take severe casualties among the soldiers of both sides, weakening the realm even more than what it would gain from the initial strength build up.

He doesn't see that though, all he sees is a red scaly asshole sticking his apostate nose in the business of righteous men, and he's not wrong to think that because that was our step one.
 
Evaunit02mark1 said:
...

I think I know what our, and in this case's, Viserys problem is here. We don't think like a human any more.

Which is to say our time frame is vastly expanded compared to their own.

Every action we do, or plan, or enact, pays dividends in the future instead of the present. All of our Major goals are extremely long term compared to the average person, and we're more than willing to bide our time in order to maximize our profit.

Tyrell for instance, he wants to marry of his daughter to Royalty in order to raise his family higher on the noble food chain. How does he do it? Preposition us first, which is very ballsy considering how his family behaved during the rebellion, and when we declined go for the next nearest Royal, a Fae, not thinking about just how that marriage would play out in the future.

He was concerned with an immediate reward, we were concerned with the long term consequences because we're going to live long enough to have to deal with them.

Here Lucan wants to unite the faith to better protect Westeros, which is good. We don't want him doing that because in a few years that large block of power is going to be sitting pretty against the throne's wishes and will only continue to grow in time if not pruned. And the Pruning will take severe casualties among the soldiers of both sides, weakening the realm even more than what it would gain from the initial strength build up.

He doesn't see that though, all he sees is a red scaly asshole sticking his apostate nose in the business of righteous men, and he's not wrong to think that because that was our step one.
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While that is not a bad thought keep in mind people can and do think in terms of centuries too, particularly ones who hold to some cause/entity that will outlast them. Most noble lords will think of the legacy of their houses for instance
 
DragonParadox said:
While that is not a bad thought keep in mind people can and do think in terms of centuries too, particularly ones who hold to some cause/entity that will outlast them. Most noble lords will think of the legacy of their houses for instance
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True, but they humans (the one's that don't find a way to cheat themselves a little immortality at least) will be thinking of that in the abstract. We're going to be thinking about it like a guy planning on what's going to be happening next month because we expect to live to see next month.
 
DragonParadox said:
While that is not a bad thought keep in mind people can and do think in terms of centuries too, particularly ones who hold to some cause/entity that will outlast them. Most noble lords will think of the legacy of their houses for instance
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I feel that's a little different, though. They think of legacy, what they'll leave behind. Someone like Viserys thinks of what they will have to face in a decade, or a century, like they might think of months or years. The lifespan change...matters. And I think it's a big part of how even good-aligned dragons or outsiders can be very alien. Because they're acting on a timescale that's just...literally beyond real comprehension by a mortal.
 
Evaunit02mark1 said:
True, but they humans (the one's that don't find a way to cheat themselves a little immortality at least) will be thinking of that in the abstract. We're going to be thinking about it like a guy planning on what's going to be happening next month because we expect to live to see next month.
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Snowfire said:
I feel that's a little different, though. They think of legacy, what they'll leave behind. Someone like Viserys thinks of what they will have to face in a decade, or a century, like they might think of months or years. The lifespan change...matters. And I think it's a big part of how even good-aligned dragons or outsiders can be very alien. Because they're acting on a timescale that's just...literally beyond real comprehension by a mortal.
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Fair points on both counts. I just wanted to point out that short-lived does not necessarily mean short-sighted.
 
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