Castles of Steel - Lesbians Good, Imperialism Bad

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Lieutenant Arisukawa Haruna

Balance Stats
❁ • ❁ Work / Life ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Warrior / Princess ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Radical / Respectable ❁ • ❁

Tactical Stats
Gunnery 0, Navigation +2, Command +2, Technology -4, Personal -2, Strategy +3

Stress: 3​


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PLEASE READ THE QUEST RULES BELOW

You collectively vote on the actions of Arisukawa Haruna, the first woman to serve openly in the Imperial Akitsukuni Navy.

This quest is set in a universe which is much like our own circa 1910, but with different politics, cultural norms, and ideas about gender and sexuality, as well as some unusual and advanced technology in places.

We are using this quest to explore themes like breaking the glass ceiling, divergent outlooks on gender and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism, and the place of royalty.

Content Warning
This quest goes some dark places.

There is violence, often explicit, often unfair, often against undeserving targets.

There are not always good options forward. The protagonist is not necessarily a good person.

There is implied content and discussion of sexual harassment and assault.

This is a world where people are often racist, sexist, queerphobic bigots. Sometimes, even the PC and the people they are friends with.

Voting Rules

We will tell you if write-in votes are allowed. If we do not say that write-ins are allowed, they are not. This is to prevent people from unrealistically hedging their bets.

You may proposal other options in a non-vote format, subject to approval, on non write-in votes.

We will tell you when a vote allows approved voting. If we don't say the answer is no, pick an option. We like making people commit.

Discussions makes the GM feel fuzzy.

Game Rules
When we ask you for a roll, roll 3d6. You are aiming to roll equal or under the value of your stat. If you succeed, Haruna gets through the situation with no real difficulties. If you roll above the target value, Haruna will still succeed, but this success will cost her something or add a complication.

Whenever Haruna loses something or faces hardship from a botched roll, she takes Stress. The more Stress Haruna has, the more the job and the circumstances she's in will get to her, and it'll be reflected in the narrative. Haruna must be kept under 10 Stress: if she reaches 10 Stress, she will suffer a breakdown and the results will not be great for her.

Haruna loses stress by taking time for herself, by making meaningful progress on her dreams, and by kissing tall, beautiful women.

Meta Rules
Author commentary is in italics so you know it's not story stuff.

Please don't complain about the system or the fact we have to roll dice. We've heard it before, we've heard it a thousand times across multiple quests. We're not going to change it, and it wears at our fucking souls.

Just going "oh noooo" or "Fish RNGesus Why!" is fun and fine. Complaining at length because you didn't get what you want less so.

If you have a question, tag both @open_sketchbook and @Artificial Girl. If you only tag one of us, you will be ignored. Seriously, we both write this quest.

And yes this is an alt-history type setting with openly gay and trans people, ahistoric medicine, and weird politics. Just... deal, please?

This quest employs a special system called Snippet Votes. Please read this post for more information.
 
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Would it be possible to find an MP, give a verbal report, and then head off to party?
 
My thought on this vote is that the middle options seems like the worst of both worlds, we should either damn the personal consequences and take Hisanobu out now, or decide we don't care about his dumb corrupt schemes and get down and party, thus allowing Haruna more leeway to pursue whatever other goals she wants.
 
Subtlety is kind of hard.

Karlito said:
Odds seem relevant here.

Normal subterfuge roll: 99.54% Partial, 83.8% full success
Hard subterfuge roll: 98.8% Partial, 64.51% full success
Very Hard subterfuge roll: 96.45% Partial, 47.44% full success

Anydice, click "at least"
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...I feel silly. I've been accidentally using the probability of getting at least a 23 for a full success. Apparently, basic addition is my weakness. I'll just refer to this site instead from now on.
 
I say we go all in on gathering evidence. Realistically we've already heard enough for it to be nagging at us the whole time during the party.

Then again, our complete absence from the party would also be noticed. Even Cousin Shithead would be a tad suspicious if he found out.

Not sure how to avoid that.
 
IMHO, the six hour voting moratorium makes me likely to not vote. I go, hey, new update, read, v- OK, I'll vote later. Forgets about it.
 
Kinruush said:
Subtlety is kind of hard.


...I feel silly. I've been accidentally using the probability of getting at least a 23 for a full success. Apparently, basic addition is my weakness. I'll just refer to this site instead from now on.
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Just realized i dont think i ever shared this in this quest, but if anyone wants a breakdown script for both this dice scheme and the 2d10 one in airplane and the like, that narrows things down specifically to failure/partial/full instead of needing to do 'at least' and look for the right number:
AnyDice
Where '-1' results are failures, '0' is partial, and '1' is full success.
(The transposed graph is cool for looking at how things change with each skill increase, btw)
 
The Sandman said:
I say we go all in on gathering evidence. Realistically we've already heard enough for it to be nagging at us the whole time during the party.

Then again, our complete absence from the party would also be noticed. Even Cousin Shithead would be a tad suspicious if he found out.

Not sure how to avoid that.
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That's probably baked into the Subterfuge check? We have (a few) friends (or friend-adjacent people) in the crew who might be willing to vouch for us, especially if it means taking down Captain Jerkwagon.
 
The question here, matters of stress aside, is "is it better to assuredly get something small that can be chewed on later, or to risk getting caught eavesdropping in exchange for a shot at a bigger prize?"

And, of course, selecting a risky option is explicitly a vote to put things in the hands of the Dice Gods, which could go very right or very wrong but either way will be interesting to read.

Artificial Girl said:
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open_sketchbook said:
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Not sure how to ping people here.

How serious would it be for someone with connections to be implicated in an arms-smuggling conspiracy? Would it be a scandal with mostly reputational damage if they didn't perjure themselves in court, or a sure ticket to demotion and permanent assignment to an Antarctic garbage scow, or the sort of thing that gets people cashiered in disgrace?
 
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[ ] Forget the party. This is serious. (Roll subterfuge, Very Hard roll. No stress relief. On a success, get enough to implicate both of them. A partial will give you a hard choice.)

I want to bury these bastards. Were an Akitsukini princess, stress is our life.
 
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Pyrelight said:
The question here, matters of stress aside, is "is it better to assuredly get something small that can be chewed on later, or to risk getting caught eavesdropping in exchange for a shot at a bigger prize?"

And, of course, selecting a risky option is explicitly a vote to put things in the hands of the Dice Gods, which could go very right or very wrong but either way will be interesting to read.



Not sure how to ping people here.

How serious would it be for someone with connections to be implicated in an arms-smuggling conspiracy? Would it be a scandal with mostly reputational damage if they didn't perjure themselves in court, or a sure ticket to demotion and permanent assignment to an Antarctic garbage scow, or the sort of thing that gets people cashiered in disgrace?
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Fairly serious. Smuggling arms for an extremist political party isn't exactly small change. The other officer can probably expect to lose his entire career over something like this. Your cousin has political connections and some insulation, but at the very least he'd probably never command another vessel ever again and be stuck on a desk for the rest of his career. More likely to avoid scandal the Navy would quietly pressure him to 'retire' and his name would be mud with the Navy and in your familial circles for the rest of his life. Or he could get both barrels and be raked over the coals in front of a court martial if the Admiralty want to make an example of what happens to officers who try to play politics. There are a few different results, basically, and none of them really go good places for Hisanobu.
 
[] Another minute couldn't be too bad? (Roll Subterfuge, Hard roll Will give you enough intelligence to implicate the XO on a success.)
 
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[ ] Another thirty seconds won't hurt. (Roll Subterfuge, Will get you limited actionable intelligence you can work on later.)

These guys need to go down, but we need the stress relief and I'm pretty frightened by the "hard choice" trying to take them down here and now will likely result in, let alone what a failure would be. Better to get enough that we can work on it later on our terms.
 
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CynicalCoffee said:
[X] Forget the party. This is serious. (Roll subterfuge, Very Hard roll. No stress relief. On a success, get enough to implicate both of them. A partial will give you a hard choice.)
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Glau said:
[X] Another minute couldn't be too bad? (Roll Subterfuge, Hard roll Will give you enough intelligence to implicate the XO on a success.)
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brmj said:
[X] Another thirty seconds won't hurt. (Roll Subterfuge, Will get you limited actionable intelligence you can work on later.)
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Moratorium.
 
[X] Forget the party. This is serious. (Roll subterfuge, Very Hard roll. No stress relief. On a success, get enough to implicate both of them. A partial will give you a hard choice.)

Extreme, yes, but as good a victory as we can get.
 
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