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Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

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Character Sheet
  • Informational


    • ​
    Stress
    0​
    Office Stress
    0​
    XP
    5​

    Matsura Asuka
    Head Designer for Ohara Airworks
    Age 24 (Legally 25)
    Year 12 AF (After Flight)

    Design Stats
    Aerodynamics Engineering - +2
    Structural Engineering - +2
    Chemical Engineering - +1
    Mechanical Engineering - +1
    Ballistics Engineering - +1
    Electrical Engineering - 0

    Personal/Political Stats
    Social Skills - 0
    Politics Skills - 0
    Importance - 2
    Income - 1
    Investments - Ohara

    Resources
    Power - 0
    Wealth - 2

    Designs
    Type 1 Series - Military Variation (Designated T1M1)
    Type 2 Racer (World Speed Record October 1910-April 1911, 180kph)
    Model 2 Scout (Designated T1M2)
    Navy Scout Prototype (Drowned Rat)
    Dive Bomber B1M1 "Duck"
    Machine Gun Carrier R1A "Dragonfly" (World Speed Record May-July 1911, 200kph)
    Naval Rescue Water-Landing Supply Plane NR1M0 "Dolphin" (World speed record 240kph)
    Rhino Demon Train Hunter
    The world's first airliner
    The world's first pulsejet airplane

    Assets
    Slide Rule
    Computator (1 Reroll per Routine)

    Languages
    Albian
    Gallian

    Familiar Vices
    Drinking
    Prostitutes
    Dancing

    Family Life
    - Engaged to Arita Yachi, formerly the leading Ace in the Imperial Army. Designated #1 Cutest Army Boy, he's having some serious problems with PTSD right now.
    - Taking a second try at dating Mikami Kiho, ex-dockerwork from the south.

    Upgrades
    - 3 XP to upgrade a stat.

    Ohara Airworks
    Start Up, Imperial Capital, Akitsukuni

    Owner
    - Mr. Ohara, Rich. Aircraft Enthusiast. Business guy.

    Engineers

    Kibe Koume, 26, Office Manager
    Tiny & angry, Kibe went to school in Albia, picking up the language, the religion, and a fuckload of swear words. Speaks Albian.
    Mechanical +2, Ballistics +1
    Office Manager: If Kibe is not assigned to a team, the Office Stress is reduced by 1.

    Sakane Jun, 26, Second Team Leader
    A soured patriot, Sakane is married and has a young child being raised gender-neutrally. His two brothers who fought in the war.
    Structural +2, Aerodynamics +1
    Team Leader: If there are any additional projects, Sakane will lead them.
    Joinery: Sakane has training in the traditional Akitsukuni carpentry art of joinery, creating complex self-supporting joints with no fasteners or glue. When working with non-monocoque wooden spars or ribs, +1 Structural.

    Tezuka Kenji, ???
    A stoner with occasional flashes of insight. Nobody really knows what he does, but he's probably useful?
    Aerodynamics +2, Chemical +1
    Flashes of Brilliance: Each natural 10 rolled by any team Tezuka is assigned to gives +1 forward to the next research roll.

    Hasegawa Morio, 26
    A hopeless nerd with a photography habit, mostly on account of developing his own film, Hasegawa seems to do nothing but work and stack card houses, but somehow has an incredible attractive boyfriend. Speaks Gallian.
    Chemical +2, Ballistic +1
    Silent Workhorse: Hasegawa can work on two different projects at once for no cost to Office Stress, providing they use different stats.

    Kawamura Yosai, 25.
    Serially successful womanizer and incredibly attractive, Kawamura doesn't seem to have much of a personality outside of seducing women. Well, except for that time he seduced Asuka, which nobody talks about. Speaks Dyske.
    Structural +2, Electrical +1, Social +1
    Easily Distracted: If Kawamura is working on the same team as a female or non-binary employee, the team is at -1d10.

    Koide Hatsu, 24.
    One of the few female graduates of an Akitsukuni engineering school, Koide is brilliant and incredibly driven, but her first job at Akibara was both humiliating and exposed her to an abusive coworker. Her father is a rich businessman with factories in Joseon, and she's engaged to Ken from Castles of Steel. Speaks Joseon.
    Mechanical +2, Structural +1
    No Sleep: If you let her, Koide will work herself to death. She can work a second project for no Office Stress, but all her stats will be reduced to 1 for the routine.

    Kobayashi Ayao, ???
    Disowned heiress of the Kobayashi family, all Kobayashi wanted was a career and to be a modern woman. For her trouble, a cousin threw acid on her, scarring her face, neck, much of her torso, and her left arm. Despite appearing serene and above it all, she's actually an avowed communist activist and baseball player.
    Aerodynamics +2, Social +2

    Adachi Ren, 24
    Adachi learned chemistry from her father, one of the most famous chemical engineers in the country, rather than through formal schooling. She's married, has a kid, and takes spirituality very seriously. Yes, you did the math right, she had Yuki when she was 17. It's 1912, folks.
    Chemical +2, Electrical +1
    Young Mother: Adachi will cause double Office Stress if she has to work multiple tasks.

    Uyeno Sei, Ballistics Engineer, 31.
    The oldest member of the crew, this is Uyeno's second career. Her first was as an officer in the Imperial Navy with specialized technical training: her very promising career was cut short by her transition. Her work in a naval arsenal on machine-guns landed her the job here. Briefly dated Satomi (the age range is a bit creepy but again, 1912), she's missing a piece of her ear and is deaf on that side, from an exploding cannon. Recently returned from Varnmark from experimental surgery, she's known for her skill navigating gendered bureaucracy.
    Ballistic +3

    Mi Kyung-Jae, 23
    A recent graduate of the Imperial College of Heijo, Mi is from the recently annexed territory of Joseon. For those keeping track at home, that means he's a Korean national living in Imperial Japan in 1912. We haven't seen much of his personality because he's rightfully terrified of everything around him. He has a specialty in endurance engine design and modification. Speaks Joseon.
    Mechanical +1, Chemical +1
    Endurance Engines: Mi has an excellent understanding of metallurgy and tolerances. Any engine he works on gains +1 Reliability if a 16+ is rolled.
    Pulsejet Wizard: Mi is now one of the world's leading experts on the pulsejet engine. He can be given his own project to custom-craft pulsejet engines, and he gives +1 to any pulsejet-related project.
    Joseon National: Mi does not have security clearance to work on any top-secret projects.

    Miyoshi Shigeri, 23.
    A non-binary person and admirer of Asuka's work, they were in an support role in the Army before joining the company.
    Structural +1, Mechanical +1, Aerodynamic +1
    Mechanic: Miyoshi has some experience repairing and refurbishing aircraft. They get +1 if assigned on the clean-up phase.


    Other Employees
    - Ohara Satomi, 22, Mr. Ohara's niece and the company test pilot, Ohara is a general lesbian disaster. She's good at flying planes, driving cars, and kissing girls. She's bad at being patient, being respectable, and sticking to literally anyones conceptions of gender roles. Deeply in lesbians with Coralie D'Amboise.
    - Fujkikawa Sotatsu, old, modelmaker. He's an old man and toymaker and we don't see much of him because he locks himself in his workshop a lot. He's friends with Kawamura?

    Assets
    - Engine Test Rig (Allows engine tweaking and optimization.
    - Wind Tunnel (+1 Aerodynamics)
    - Rapid Prototype Lab (+1 Clean Up)
    Expanded Cast

    Akitsukuni Industry
    - Homura Mohoko: Head Engine Designer for Kobayashi. First female engineer in the country. A lot of sex appeal.
    - Okumura: Head of Akibara aircraft design.
    - Yamanaka Hajime: Kobayashi engineer. Young and eager.
    - Igarashi Masazumi: Kobayashi engineer. Reserved and experienced.
    - Admiral Akibara Toru: Imperial Navy Admiral. Maximum nepotism. Maximum douchebag.
    - Lt.Cmnd Akibara Shinzo: The above's son. A hottie but very forward.



    Character Families
    - Matsura(?) Mizuko: Asuka's sister. Was paralyzed in an accident in Asuka's first flight. Lives Elsewhere and is married now. Can't forgive Asuka, even though she's tried.
    - Adachi Motoki: Adachi's husband, an accountant. Legally blind.
    - Adachi Yuki: Adachi's 7 year old daughter and wannabe pilot. Very adorable.
    - Yachi's Brother: Exists.
    - Sakane's Wife: Exists. Drives him a bit crazy, but he loves her.
    - Yachi's Brother's Wife: Exists. Is statistically likely to be pregnant.
    - Lt. Coralie D'Amboise: Gallian pilot in exile. Satomi's girlfriend. 25. Accomplished bisexual duelist. She flew in the war for a single day, and for her troubles got a hole blown in her cheek and had her left arm paralyzed.

    Akisukuni Army & Ex-Army
    - Lt. Torio Tanaka: Yachi's former observer as an enlisted man. Was jumped up to fly Ducks and lost a leg on his first mission. A trained painter, married to Torio Saya.
    - Captain Amari Shiro: A Dragonfly pilot who ended up flying as Yachi's partner. Kind of delightfully twinky. They sorta slept together at one point, which wasn't great. He lost his previous boyfriend in the April Offensive and turned his plane into a shrine. He was shot in the gut and is still recovering.
    - Major Izuhara: Logistics officer, Imperial Army, this bespectled officer stood up to the Caspian Crown Prince and accidentally kicked off the Akitsikuni-Caspian War. The guilt was so much that, after almost a year of running Army procurement, he shot himself in a phone both.
    - Captain Nakai Sekien: Army scout pilot. First person to drop a bomb from an airplane, later head of the Duck Squadrons.
    - Captain Teshima: A Desk pilot that fought with Yachi. Lost an arm in the process, took over for Major Izuhara after his death. Seems cheery despite it all.
    - Captain Nashio: A real piece of shit dude and probably a rapist, he's also a war hero as the second-highest scoring ace on the Akitsukuni side. He was a young shitty kid in way over his head but it's no excuse.
    - Lt. Kinjo: Kind of a dumb lump and Nashio's friend, one of the desk pilots. Dead at 19.
    - Lt. Okazaki: Yachi's friend from before the war and pilot, he died in a spin in his dragonfly. His death probably hit Yachi the hardest.

    Westerners
    - Rose & Antoinette Sears: Pioneers of flight. Sisters. Black in 1910s not!America. Yikes.
    - Timina Guasti: Famous aircraft designer from Otrusia. Likes big planes and green.
    - Prince Protasov Vasilyevich: Crown Prince of Great Caspia. Real dick. You gotta hand it to him though, a decent flier.
    - Count von Zeppelin: Invented rigid airships. Runs a successful airline business. Damned impressive.
    - Bennhold: Aircraft Engineer. Experimenting with metal aircraft.
    - Aileen Middlemiss: Albian reporter for the Artimis Times. Well meaning and oblivious.
    Available Tech
    • Materials: Wood, Duralumin, Molded Wood, Wood & Silk Composite, etc
    • All engine mounts
    • All wing types
    • Basic reinforcement
    • Wing warping and ailerons
    • Basic water radiators
    • Flying Wings
    • Semi-Monocoque design (requires at least half the slots have frame pieces)
    • Valved pulsejets
    • Basic weapon mounts and turrets
    Tech not Yet Developed
    • Custom engines
    • Monocoque construction
    • Cantilever Wings and associated tech
    • V and T tails
    • Tailless designs
    • Aluminum and titanium
    • Cellulose surfacing
    • Any kind of radar
    • Weapon accessability mods
    • Interruptor gear
    • Geared propellers
    • And Maybe Other Stuff
    Akitsukuni
    Island Nation

    Government
    Constitutional Monarchy
    - The democratic portions of the government are dubiously legitimate.
    - The head of state is the Empress of Akitsukuni. She gives her blessing to newly formed governments.
    - The Navy and a small number of families have undue influence on politics.

    Economy
    Developing Mixed Market
    - Most industry is controlled by a small number of wealthy, family-owned companies.
    - The state provides most contracts to industry. Consumer good market is anemic.
    - Exports are few, mostly cultural.
    - Imports are raw minerals, food, oil, and expertise.
    - Currently suffering an economic crash after the last war.

    Politics
    The Diet is currently ruled by a Constitutional Nationalist government. It has a system of nonlocal proportional representation, with representatives appointed by the party in accordance to their share of the vote.
    - Constitutional Nationalists: 50%
    - Purity Club: 9%
    - New Independents: 26%
    - Fairness Association: 11%
    - United Communist League: 2%
    - Monarchists: 1%
    - Assorted Fringe Parties: 5%

    Demographics
    Akitsukuni is mostly very ethnically homogeneous. Around 5% of the population are various minorities, most from nearby countries. Roughly .1% are westerners here for business or in advisory positions.
    - Population: 55 Million
    - Religion: Mostly Kodo. Roughly 2% of the population follows western religions.
    - Wealth: Most wealth is concentrated in the top 5% of the country. Nearly 20% of the population lives in conditions indistinguishable from peasantry.
    - Urbanization: Heavily urbanized for a small economy: 35% and rapidly growing.

    Military
    At Peace
    - Imperial Akitsukuni Navy (IAN): The 6th largest in the world, and the most experienced.
    - Imperial Akitsukuni Army (IAA): 150,000 highly experienced soldiers, and a considerable reserve.

    Aspects
    - Poor Resources: Aluminum costs +1.
    - Damn Akitsukuni Engines!: Engines have -1 Reliability.



    The Main Character Of This Quest Is Nonbinary And Uses They/Them Pronouns.

    I Am Putting This Here Because The Next Person To Misgender Them Is Getting Yeeted Into The Trash

    Also here's the Gayaverse TV Tropes page, because why not.​
     
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  • Informational
    • brmj said:
    In flying circus I don't know what I would do, except maybe seek out and take the most boring jobs. That is additionally concerning because I worry that a GM trying to maintain an interesting level of conflict despite a group of players all avoiding situations likely to create stress at all cost might lead to an undesired adversarial relationship.
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    I'm gonna take a guess that the boring jobs would lead to stress anyway? They might be lower paying, or not build your reputation very well, or so on, and so you'll inevitably have something outside of the job itself that stresses out your circus if you try and play it cautious like that.
     
    What I would like is basically... stress as an inevitability, stress relief as a fun time, the breaks as making interesting roleplay happen.

    And generally, taking characters from a point where they are just messes, throwing them into a deep end that creates fun interpersonal drama (with the Breaks restructured from "losing things" to "improv prompts for the next chapter"). They get addictions and mess up and make mistakes and encounter things that aren't good for them.. and then they level out, learn moderation, branch out as people, get into steady relationships (sexual or otherwise) and learn to deal with their feelings like adults.

    One of the main differences here is that... as long as you don't have 10 stress, there's no consequence to having stress. So you don't always have to jump on it right away. Asuka can build up some stress and deal with it in little bits here and there.
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    Personally, I want to see what a break does.
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    Breaks are being rewritten to be less harsh, but in the old system, the nicest break was "Lose a stat point", and they got worse from there, escalating to "Fight to the death with another PC", and most of them things that might not outright kill you, but would result in people deciding to roll up a new character.

    Therefore, stress was to avoided at all costs, and needed to be dealt with immediately, because if it wasn't, your character would die.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    What I would like is basically... stress as an inevitability, stress relief as a fun time, the breaks as making interesting roleplay happen.

    And generally, taking characters from a point where they are just messes, throwing them into a deep end that creates fun interpersonal drama (with the Breaks restructured from "losing things" to "improv prompts for the next chapter"). They get addictions and mess up and make mistakes and encounter things that aren't good for them.. and then they level out, learn moderation, branch out as people, get into steady relationships (sexual or otherwise) and learn to deal with their feelings like adults.
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    That helps a lot. Thanks.

    Okay, restructuring the Breaks like that seems key to making this work and re-contextualizes the new stress system a bit. Part of what had been bothering me as that it seemed like the arc of any given character would be from inexperienced but functional steadily downward to a broken wreck of a person who has learned a couple neat tricks along the way. Changing the Breaks helps avoid that.

    I see how your system is intended to enable the second half of that arc. Those are the narrative interpretations of the exact tools I'd be reaching for to min-max viable stress relief. Minus that last one, of course, unless there's a mechanical counterpart to it I'm not right-off seeing. This does raise a more philosophical question, though: does it end up with the right feeling of growth as a person if the mechanics push players down that course as quickly as possible from the start? Beyond that, this does also create a situation where the only really viable way to absorb large quantities of stress is to get in as many relationships as possible. Being very, very poly is mechanically optimal by a large margin. Is that as intended?

    As it relates to ADQ, we have a soft-cap of 3 set by societal expectations before we have to start figuring out various types of platonic relationship or having some potentially difficult conversations. We might have to look at making better use of that for stress management. And yes, I acknowledge that the fact that I am talking about it this way is gamey and ignores what should be a very narrative thing, but that's part of the point that is being made. The mechanics encourage people to start treating it that way. Not sure what if anything ought to be done about it, though, beyond making it very clear that maintaining confidants is not free emotionally or in terms of time and that this gives the GM a lot of extra... ways to drive the story forward, I suppose.

    One of the main differences here is that... as long as you don't have 10 stress, there's no consequence to having stress. So you don't always have to jump on it right away. Asuka can build up some stress and deal with it in little bits here and there.
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    This only helps if it is possible to accumulate stress slowly enough to have a chance of dealing with it that way. As it stands, I doubt that it is, so this just turns into a break every couple routines if we try to treat it that way.
     
    Actually poly-ness won't help (that much) because Quality Time is a limited move: once per routine, not once per partner. The only way many relationships help is in, um, accessibility to partners if you split the party I guess.
     
    Looks like the best strategy is to always try a new vice at the start of the night, then round things out with familiar vices. Your goal is to develop as many familiar vices as possible, so you can easily sacrifice one when you need to risk 3 failures on a vice roll.

    So I'd assume you get a dictionary (or whatever) to look up every vice you can think of, and start cultivating them.

    So once you develop 5 familiar vices, you are set. You can indulge in them to get your vice track to five, and take a 50% chance on having to set one of them on fire at the end of the night. But that's OK, you'll start cultivating a new vice to replace it tomorrow night.

    Of course, it's not a great choice to go up to a 50% chance of needing to set one of your carefully cultivated vices on fire, as your expected stress reduction only rises 1.5 points over the safe 1 new vice + (maybe) 1 old vice method that you would normally use to both reduce stress and cultivate new vices.
     
    This sounds pretty reasonable. I guess the only problem is I'd sort of like it if you were more inclined to try a new vice after getting messed up...

    OH SHIT WHAT IF EVERY FAMILIAR VICE YOU DID GAVE YOU A STACKING +1 FORWARD TO DARING?
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    Actually poly-ness won't help (that much) because Quality Time is a limited move: once per routine, not once per partner. The only way many relationships help is in, um, accessibility to partners if you split the party I guess.
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    I stand corrected. That makes sense.

    Okay, there goes that criticism. However, this brings the difficulty of dealing with stress even higher than I thought it was. We're back to excess caution, depending on what the Breaks end up like.

    Could we get some examples of Breaks of the sort you are moving towards? That would help understand how the whole system looks and what behavior it would encourage.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    This sounds pretty reasonable. I guess the only problem is I'd sort of like it if you were more inclined to try a new vice after getting messed up...

    OH SHIT WHAT IF EVERY FAMILIAR VICE YOU DID GAVE YOU A STACKING +1 FORWARD TO DARING?
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    But what if we do not Dare?
    Offer a reroll per (un-)familiar Vice that you have practiced last time you destressed until the next "night out", to be applied when player sees fit.
     
    My other complaint about making doing vices multiple times have a large negative effect is that they no longer become character defining. Instead characters are incentivised to cultivate a wide number of vices, and only engage in each of them a little bit.

    So your long running flying circus has long ago had to set things like drinking and smoking on fire to reduce stress. Now they all cultivate new vices together to reduce logistics costs.

    Character one:
    Well, cutting ourselves has generally dropped off the utility curve. What's next on our list of vice cultivation?

    Character two:
    Well, we've had to set so many vice on fire that we are kinda scraping the barrel here. Next on the list is... doing naughty things with sheep.

    Character one:
    Well, when needs must...
    Minion! go and purchase us some sheep!
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    maybe a "favoured vice" mechanic could be taken as an advacne, which could be double dipped?
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    That could be doable, yeah.

    I think the better way to do it might be for the Favoured Vice to be something you could dip multiple times, but you get closer and closer to Epic Failure every time. So the first time you indulge in it, you basically get a free Stress reduction unless the dice gods seriously fuck you. The second time you indulge, you have a pretty good chance of failure, but it's not that big of a deal. Third time, it's like 50/50. Fourth time, it's basically guaranteed that you're going to get a failure.

    Dunno how reasonable that is, but it seems useful. That way, you can have something that your character is pretty well defined by, but the game still encourages you to cultivate multiple vices.

    I guess on a broader level I'm not sure why we want to encourage players to cultivate multiple vices. I can sort of see it, because it seems like something that would quickly devolve to "yeah whatever toss dice moving on" if you didn't force multiple different vices, but at the same time I feel like a lot of the groups I've either been in or spectated tend to like dicking around out of mission anyway. I feel like it should be doable to just have one or two vices and depend on the role-playing to get you the rest of your stress reduction.
     
    open_sketchbook said:
    OH SHIT WHAT IF EVERY FAMILIAR VICE YOU DID GAVE YOU A STACKING +1 FORWARD TO DARING?
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    And this leads to pilots slamming back a shot of rotgut from the emergency booze flask before trying a tricky maneuver.

    I love it.
    open_sketchbook said:
    maybe a "favoured vice" mechanic could be taken as an advacne, which could be double dipped?
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    "The first time each night you indulge in a favored Vice, remove one stress. Do not mark the Vice track."
     
    (EDITED IN after I realized I'd forgotten to add it)

    open_sketchbook said:
    What I would like is basically... stress as an inevitability, stress relief as a fun time, the breaks as making interesting roleplay happen.

    And generally, taking characters from a point where they are just messes, throwing them into a deep end that creates fun interpersonal drama (with the Breaks restructured from "losing things" to "improv prompts for the next chapter"). They get addictions and mess up and make mistakes and encounter things that aren't good for them.. and then they level out, learn moderation, branch out as people, get into steady relationships (sexual or otherwise) and learn to deal with their feelings like adults.

    One of the main differences here is that... as long as you don't have 10 stress, there's no consequence to having stress. So you don't always have to jump on it right away. Asuka can build up some stress and deal with it in little bits here and there.
    Click to expand...
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    Okay, yeah. If the Breaks are thus restructured, things start to work out pretty well, at least potentially.

    The trick, especially in a game that's subtly different from the core Flying Circus paradigm in that Stress is potentially avoidable... is to make sure players don't start to fear Breaks and avoid them to the point where it creates a form of arrested character development. Like, maybe make it so that a Break is a place where potentially a good thing can happen, and/or as you say "provides improv prompts for the next chapter."

    (end edit)

    open_sketchbook said:
    maybe a "favoured vice" mechanic could be taken as an advacne, which could be double dipped?
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    This would be a good idea.

    It's like, I use Coralie as my benchmark for what a normal Flying Circus character would look like, because she fits the type a lot better than most of our quest protagonists we see outside of Whispers from the Deep.

    Now, if Coralie were a Flying Circus character, her vices would be (in chronological order) Problematic Flirtation,* Write Mediocre Poetry, Drinking, and Epee Duels.**

    But we could take that vice list and make her a completely different person during a cooldown 'routine' depending on which of those Vices is the signature vice that she can double-dip. Super-Flirty Coralie is very different from Super-Boozy Coralie, who is in turn very different from Super-Poesy Coralie and Super-Stabbity Coralie. And all of them are somewhat distinct from a Coralie who's flirty, boozy, poesy, and stabbity in roughly equal proportions.

    (I am honestly not sure which of these is the best fit for the real Coralie and she may not actually HAVE a Favored Vice, but we can clearly see how adopting any of her four Vices as such would have a significant effect on her character development)

    ======================

    *The only requirement is that the flirtation be in some way problematic, but this is a very strict requirement. Size of resulting problem varies wildly, from "just causes some girls' school drama that everyone gossips about for a month" to "tease the Crown Prince enough that he flies into a rage after the race when he sees you dancing with That Foreign Woman, resulting in a major land war."

    **(she smokes, but not to the chain-smoking level required to make a proper Vice)
     
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    Simon_Jester said:
    But we could take that vice list and make her a completely different person during a cooldown 'routine' depending on which of those Vices is the signature vice that she can double-dip. Super-Flirty Coralie is very different from Super-Boozy Coralie, who is in turn very different from Super-Poesy Coralie and Super-Stabbity Coralie. And all of them are somewhat distinct from a Coralie who's flirty, boozy, poesy, and stabbity in roughly equal proportions.
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    I wonder though, would that be a downside of using the "favored vice" mechanic? Like, maybe the reality is that people usually have a wide variety of vices and it's actually not super reasonable to have a particular thing? Personally I find that weird, because if I was to be a Flying Circus Character, my vices would be Coffee and Alcohol, and I'm really not sure what else I'd include. I wouldn't call myself a particularly stressed out person or low on proverbial spoons, but maybe I've just spent much time at 7/10 stress that I can't tell the difference anymore?

    Maybe another way to think about it is that most people either end up with one or two vices that they go really deep into, or they end up with a lot of vices that they indulge very regularly. So you either have the one vice that you can use to remove a lot of stress all at once, or you can have lots of vices that you can use to remove a little stress at a time.

    Which now that I think about it makes a pretty good chunk of sense. You have some people who are the "Work hard play hard" mentality, and you have other people who try to strike a consistent balance.
     
    Crasian01 said:
    I wonder though, would that be a downside of using the "favored vice" mechanic? Like, maybe the reality is that people usually have a wide variety of vices and it's actually not super reasonable to have a particular thing? Personally I find that weird, because if I was to be a Flying Circus Character, my vices would be Coffee and Alcohol, and I'm really not sure what else I'd include. I wouldn't call myself a particularly stressed out person or low on proverbial spoons, but maybe I've just spent much time at 7/10 stress that I can't tell the difference anymore?

    Maybe another way to think about it is that most people either end up with one or two vices that they go really deep into, or they end up with a lot of vices that they indulge very regularly. So you either have the one vice that you can use to remove a lot of stress all at once, or you can have lots of vices that you can use to remove a little stress at a time.

    Which now that I think about it makes a pretty good chunk of sense. You have some people who are the "Work hard play hard" mentality, and you have other people who try to strike a consistent balance.
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    Well, Flying Circus characters tend to live high-profile high-stress lives in active war zones, so they're PROBABLY racking up Stress points at a higher rate than you. If you only average 0-2 Stress per 'adventure' and you only have two Vices that let you absorb 0-2 stress per cooldown 'routine,' then it all balances out in the long run.

    So for you, "have two vices" works, but in Flying Circus terms you're an NPC. For a PC who encounters PC-levels of drama and danger and stress, "work hard play hard" isn't just an option, it's mandatory. The only question is whether you 'play hard' by indulging in an endless revolving array of different weird and entertaining debaucheries, or by playing really, really hard at one or two things, I guess.

    ...

    For reference, I was talking about a hypothetical scenario in which Coralie gets one of her already-extant four Vices as a Favored Vice, not a scenario where one of her existing Vices replaces all four of them put together.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    Well, Flying Circus characters tend to live high-profile high-stress lives in active war zones, so they're PROBABLY racking up Stress points at a higher rate than you. If you only average 0-2 Stress per 'adventure' and you only have two Vices that let you absorb 0-2 stress per cooldown 'routine,' then it all balances out in the long run.

    So for you, "have two vices" works, but in Flying Circus terms you're an NPC. For a PC who encounters PC-levels of drama and danger and stress, "work hard play hard" isn't just an option, it's mandatory. The only question is whether you 'play hard' by indulging in an endless revolving array of different weird and entertaining debaucheries, or by playing really, really hard at one or two things, I guess.

    ...

    For reference, I was talking about a hypothetical scenario in which Coralie gets one of her already-extant four Vices as a Favored Vice, not a scenario where one of her existing Vices replaces all four of them put together.
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    That's an interesting point. I do keep forgetting that this is intended to be calibrated for Flying Circus proper as opposed to just Asuka. I suppose that in principle, then, the best way to address it in this quest is just for there to be less stressful things that Asuka might encounter?
     
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