- Location
- USA
8 voters, 8 different plans.
this is freaking hilarious
its already a fluffy cloak, the option is to remove the fur to turn it into hard boring leather armor. which I don't want to do.
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A Villain In A World Of Heroes
- Thread starter Dark Ness
- Start date
- Original
this is freaking hilarious
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
I have seen it before, I just didn't want to sacrifice all my time to read it. Some of the gaps between updates is because I had found a new story. I suspect that this gap would be bigger then most.
[X] Major: Take the time to make the fenric wolf pelt into leather armour. This will require you obtaining tools and a place to do so, so there may be a cost. (Can not be take if you choose to sell the pelt as is)
[X] Buy a book and educate yourself. You may not have gone to school, but that doesn't mean you can't learn.
-[X] Magical objects and regents, in particular unicorn horns and Ferric pelts. (Note, do this before treating the Ferric pelt).
[X] Examine the book you got in the temple, hopefully you will learn something more from it.
Keep reading this nice magic book.
[X] Buy a book and educate yourself. You may not have gone to school, but that doesn't mean you can't learn.
-[X] Magical objects and regents, in particular unicorn horns and Ferric pelts. (Note, do this before treating the Ferric pelt).
[X] Examine the book you got in the temple, hopefully you will learn something more from it.
Keep reading this nice magic book.
And kill ourselves from exhaustion? No thank you.
Why would it provide concealment? And no. A Cloak is not as strong as properly prepared armor.
Let's at least research the properties of the Ferric Pelt, huh?
Oh hell, everyone is voting for the votes that will likely kill us, and waste one of our magic goodies.
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
It isn't a cloak, it is just a section of fur at the moment.
I'm just kinda meh on this. Seems to be a lot of random attempts to do something, and then waiting to see how the RNG is going to screw us over this time. Might as well just let the RNG choose which actions to go for.
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
I may need to change the system a bit. Any suggestions?
Although, I did do the whole thinking about the future things. I had hoped it would (subtly) convince people to move on from the random turn actions.
To me we have a lot of stuff left to do before we are ready to move on:
1: Practice our magic until we are better. Learn more magic, etc.
2: Get our magical items in order. Make us some good armor.
3: Did we ever sell that old chainmail? Might need to do some of that.
4: Whatever happened to that plot hook about the spy and the hideout... something strange is going on there.
Once we get those things worked out, then I think we move on to the next town, following the Hero - not intending to strike at him, but gathering intelligence.
Well, it's partly the system, and partly that every single person has their own thing they want to do, so we sort of end up rolling a die to see which we end up doing each day, making little progress on any one thing that the RNG hasn't already had us auto-fail at.
We currently have 7 options for major actions (not counting travel or write-ins), and 11 minor actions (not counting buying/selling/write-ins).
Current votes:
Vote Tally : A Villain In A World Of Heroes | Page 118 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.1.17
Major:
[6] Take the time to make the fenric wolf pelt into leather armour. This will require you obtaining tools and a place to do so, so there may be a cost.
-[3] As a fluffy cloak, for concealment. Anything going through the cloak will probably go through regular armor just as well, and it's much less conspicuous.
[1] Look for a mage seeking an apprentice.
Minor:
[7] Examine the book you got in the temple, hopefully you will learn something more from it.
[4] Practice the summoning spell in your hideout. Comes with a lessened risk of discovery.
-[3] Both forms
-[1] Regular form
[1] Supplies for the journey to Taras.
[1] Clean up the hideout, hopefully you won't knock anything over this time.
-[1] The mundane way
[1] Buy a book and educate yourself. You may not have gone to school, but that doesn't mean you can't learn.
-[1] Magical objects and regents, in particular unicorn horns and Ferric pelts. (Note, do this before treating the Ferric pelt).
Total No. of Voters: 7
So everyone is up for reading the book, and 6/7 want to work on the pelt (half for armor, half for cloak). 4/7 are up for summoning spell practice (3 for both forms, 1 for just regular form).
The items with 1 vote don't seem like very good options right now. It'll be a bit before we're traveling; seeking apprenticeship in this town right now seems like a bad choice; cleaning the hideout is just painful; and our attempts to learn on our own have generally been worthless.
So as far as voting is concerned, there's a rough consensus: Work on the wolf pelt; read the temple book; and practice summoning. Just a matter of what is desired out of the wolf pelt.
However, even here, it feels a bit haphazard. Well, maybe a little bit of focus. Give up on training and education, and just learn as much spellcraft as possible. We can probably avoid killing ourself with our own spellbook.
As far as problems with the system... it's hard to say. I'm not sure which are strictly problems with the system, and which are problems with player choices. I guess there's the expectation that, if we're presented with a setup where we have to train daily, and generally train ourselves, with a ~20-day deadline, that studying will be effective, so that's what's chosen. Perhaps improving by actually doing would be better — but then that doesn't seem any better, given the abysmal failures in practicing magic in the hideout.
So with player focus so spread out, and almost no progress in any area because of the RNG, the idea that we'd be capable of even trying to do anything with this hero inside a month seems laughable. Of course, longer-term goals, that's fine.
So, my thoughts on plans for the next few days:
1) craft wolf pelt, study book, summoning
2) study spells, supplies for trip, sell unneeded stuff
3) head to next town, and start looking for an apprenticeship, because by god it has to be better than studying on our own
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Vote:
[x] Take the time to make the fenric wolf pelt into leather armour. This will require you obtaining tools and a place to do so, so there may be a cost.
[x] Examine the book you got in the temple, hopefully you will learn something more from it.
[x] Practice the summoning spell in your hideout. Comes with a lessened risk of discovery.
-[x] Both forms
[x] Take the time to make the fenric wolf pelt into leather armour. This will require you obtaining tools and a place to do so, so there may be a cost.
[x] Examine the book you got in the temple, hopefully you will learn something more from it.
[x] Practice the summoning spell in your hideout. Comes with a lessened risk of discovery.
-[x] Both forms
- Location
- USA
What I really don't get is why we don't just try again to do the same thing until the RNG doesn't screw us. Since so far the screwing didn't close any doors
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
Yeah, I have been trying to avoid that as much as possible. I don't think that a bad roll should lock you out of an option, it seems a bit unfair to me.
Because there's no coherent focus or goal. We only have one long-term goal, with no clue as to how to actually accomplish it other than a few random ideas tossed out. Since we don't really know how to get where we're going, we just keep trying various different things to see what, if anything, works out.
If one thing fails, you try something different. However, unlike in real life where such progression would eventually lead to something you could actually be good at, the RNG is equally uncaring about any choice we make. Just because you succeed one day won't mean you won't fail horribly the next, or vice versa.
For example: If we try to craft the wolf hide into leather, and roll a 2, is that going to be a "burn down the tannery shed" event, or "almost cut your own hand off" incident, or something similar? Despite being reasonably well-skilled in the craft? Is there anything we can do where we won't have about a 10% chance at crippling failure?
You shouldn't have to depend on the long-term trends of an RNG to have any chance at progress. And the lack of any feel that the character is actually good at something (in the sense of talent and skill, not "I was given a BFG") leads to very undirected meandering.
For that matter, what is Cedra actually good at? She got the spellbook, but there's no indication she's actually good at magic; she was just gifted with the opportunity to learn a lot of it.
So, actual skill? Crafting? A sharp mind? Holistic intuitiveness? Efficient mana usage (for summoning magic)? A head for numbers? Kinetic sense? Interpersonal relations? Spatial awareness? Anything? Does she learn better via theory, or by doing? What actually makes sense for her to try doing? We don't really have any IC reason for trying one thing rather than another.
Which I guess is a core problem — she lacks any real defining character. In most other quests, I'd be trying to get into her head to get focus and direction. Here, it's just a bunch of random choices thrown at us, with no cohesive theme other than the nigh-unwinnable end goal.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
Because it's a big fur, and the whole point of a cloak is to be concealing? Have some examples.
Baggy, to better hide things like, say, armor (because running around wearing leather armor as a young girl is ridiculously conspicuous), we can wear our chain-mail under it and have it be muffled by the fluffy (a cloak lets us have armor-cake and eat it too), it encompasses our entire body, and it has a hood to hide our face. It also serves another practical purpose as a Ye-olde coat, keeping us warm at night and in bad weather.
It's basically us choosing subtlety over raw fighting power, because there's no way to hide any of our armor right now, so we can't go around wearing it without being ridiculously conspicuous; the appearance of an innocent, teenage girl down on her luck is a sword that cuts both ways, and making the armor instead of the cloak is going to make us bleed from that metaphorical edge.
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Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
Leatherworking is an automatic success, the roll would just be for how much it costs.
I am very much open to suggestions on how to do better.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
Have internal thoughts? Flash backs? Right now Cedra is just a blank slate; she's not a character so much as an avatar of SV that isn't allowed to act in certain ways. Maybe if she wasn't so much of a meat puppet rather than somebody we're actually playing as we'd be able to do things better, and we'd also be easier to write for because you'd be able to extrapolate the character's actions from their personality and thus carry on more, and more natural sounding, dialogue.
Of course, this is all a lot harder than just saying it, but there'd be people willing to at least try to make your people sound like people, if you'd be willing to let those people help your people.
Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
That is probably an issue with my poor writing and general lack of motivation, but I will try to do better in the future.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
Maybe you could just come up with some keywords for each character you have, and then apply them to a list of topics for conversation?
Example: Bob *keywords: angry, barely-restrained* -topic: eating a turkey-
Bob ripped into the turkey, taking out his frustrations on the poor carcass in place of Alice; her previous words were squatting in his mind like malignant toads.
And
Alice *Happy, calm* -eating a turkey-
Alice calmly consumed a slice of her roast turkey, taking the time to enjoy it's rich flavors. Her quick wit had swiftly ended that argument.
The same snippet, but you could tell the difference between the two of them, and you could get a little bit of insight into their characters; Bob is also a little bitter, and Alice is kind of smug.
I think that I was going for a different point when I started this post, but I got lost and may not have succeeded. Sorry.
Example: Bob *keywords: angry, barely-restrained* -topic: eating a turkey-
Bob ripped into the turkey, taking out his frustrations on the poor carcass in place of Alice; her previous words were squatting in his mind like malignant toads.
And
Alice *Happy, calm* -eating a turkey-
Alice calmly consumed a slice of her roast turkey, taking the time to enjoy it's rich flavors. Her quick wit had swiftly ended that argument.
The same snippet, but you could tell the difference between the two of them, and you could get a little bit of insight into their characters; Bob is also a little bitter, and Alice is kind of smug.
I think that I was going for a different point when I started this post, but I got lost and may not have succeeded. Sorry.
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Dark Ness
Rises Where Silence Dies
- Location
- The Primordial Soup
Its okay. I will try it, but I am not sure how much good it will do.
Slith10
Back from the dead and ready to party!
- Location
- New Zealand
Looks like we are using the pelt regardless of what anyone else wants, so:
Major:
-[X] As a fluffy cloak, for concealment. Anything going through the cloak will probably go through regular armor just as well, and it's much less conspicuous.
Minor:
[X] Examine the book you got in the temple, hopefully you will learn something more from it.
[X] Buy a book and educate yourself. You may not have gone to school, but that doesn't mean you can't learn.
-[X] Magical objects and regents, in particular unicorn horns and Ferric pelts. (Note, do this before treating the Ferric pelt).
I think rolls should be slightly less harsh (ie instead of collapse, we just don't find anything/etc) or have some positive modifiers the more we do something, so it doesn't take weeks to do something if we keep getting bad rolls.
Major:
-[X] As a fluffy cloak, for concealment. Anything going through the cloak will probably go through regular armor just as well, and it's much less conspicuous.
Minor:
[X] Examine the book you got in the temple, hopefully you will learn something more from it.
[X] Buy a book and educate yourself. You may not have gone to school, but that doesn't mean you can't learn.
-[X] Magical objects and regents, in particular unicorn horns and Ferric pelts. (Note, do this before treating the Ferric pelt).
I think rolls should be slightly less harsh (ie instead of collapse, we just don't find anything/etc) or have some positive modifiers the more we do something, so it doesn't take weeks to do something if we keep getting bad rolls.
- Location
- Leeds
Is it an option to avenge the injustice of the last session? Seem like a good warm up to the hero, and we don't want to show up with nothing on our villains CV.
- Location
- USA
I get that, but that doesn't explain why people don't try again when they objectively know that the only reason it failed was the RNG. why change your vote instead of just repeating it until it succeeds?
But we have not had any crippling failures, QM even said he doesn't like crippling failures. We had regular failures.
Cutting our hand off is irrelevant when we can grow a replacement in a day
Arkatekt
Harbinger of Shitluck
Why? Why do you people keep insisting on trying to summon Demons (even if they are the weakest form we know of) in town, where we can easily be discovered? Why do you also think summoning multiple demons at once is even remotely a good idea when we know that all summons have an upkeep cost in mana on top of however much mana it costs to summon it in the first place? The hideout is not secure (it doesn't even have working locks, let alone any sort of warding or alarm traps), and we have no idea how long summoned creatures last or how much control we actually have over them.
(To clarify, I don't have a problem with demon summoning as an action. My problem is that you keep insisting we summon them in the town where we live and need to stay for at least a few more days in order to do all the shit we wanted to do here. I would be completely fine going out of town into the plains, or into the forest and doing it. Also, summoning a Demon and an Angel-tainted Demon together is likely to cause problems)
(To clarify, I don't have a problem with demon summoning as an action. My problem is that you keep insisting we summon them in the town where we live and need to stay for at least a few more days in order to do all the shit we wanted to do here. I would be completely fine going out of town into the plains, or into the forest and doing it. Also, summoning a Demon and an Angel-tainted Demon together is likely to cause problems)
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It's not what the option is offering. It's just making sure both forms of the summoning are tested, not both forms at the same time.
Because they can be dismissed? Unless I completely misunderstood, summoning is not a permanent thing.
As for why I selected it? Because it had enough support to not make it yet another turn of a random die roll on what to do with the last action. That, and there's no motivating factor to have her either do it or not do it. I'm still trying to work out details on how to actually define her as a character, so honestly, it doesn't really matter to me whether she does the summoning or not.
You missed the part about the RNG being applied to the action selection as well. A half-dozen options with 1 vote each, so eventually someone moves their vote to something else just to break the tie. Maybe people are mostly all staying with the same preference for what to do, but that doesn't matter if their vote doesn't win.
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