Ok, now that I have returned, let me go over the turn results:
[X][Martial] Upgrade Norm Prime (Wendy Wower) (CoS: 36%, 46% w/ XP)
DC 100 (Reduced by XP)
45+20+5+30+2=102
Bare Success
Deciding to take a break from dissecting hostile robots, Wendy instead took to improving a much more personable one. While Norm's unique and contradictory animal-based propellant system left her confused for a while, she was successfully able to update Norm's software with new and improved combat skills without too much trouble. He's now capable of truly learning from combat scenarios. Other scenarios… well, one can hope.
Norm's Martial has increased by 2! Norm gains the trait:
Omnilearn: Norm gains a +5 to combat against foes he has previously fought.
While the bonus to Martial is nice to have, it´s the "Omnilearn" trait that´s more noteworthy because of the vagueness of "foes he has previously fought".
Does that mean "combat bonus for each next encounter" (for example, for a future rematch against the Inquinator) or "combat bonus for each next roll in the same encounter" (a quest where he comes up against the same enemy multiple times)
If the latter, the bonus kicks off far earlier than otherwise.
[X][Diplomacy] Form a Research Agreement with the Zaibatzu (Goofy) (CoS: 46%, 56% w/ XP)
DC 90 (Reduced by XP)
67+18+28+4-5=112
Decent Success
Goofy had barely walked in the door before you were sending him back out again, this time on a mission to establish a research agreement in San Fransokyo. Goofy is not exactly well versed in such things, but by all accounts things are going well, and next month should see the start of a fruitful partnership!
Research Agreement Action unlocked for next turn- one acceptable research of your choice can be completed with a Zaibatzu's collaboration!
[X][Diplomacy] Try to Collaborate with Olympia on an Issue (Mirage) (CoS: 65%, 75% w/ XP
DC 55 (Reduced by XP)
56+18+24+10+2-5=105
Excellent Success
Evelyn seemed delighted at your willingness to reach out to her. While Mirage utilized a series of intermediaries and pencil pushers, probably because of something to do with her old boss, her longtime Kronos contacts proved extremely valuable in making those introductions effective. While Olympia is still gearing up for a major push on Super rights, you get the feeling they would be receptive to most reasonable proposals at this point, if only to butter you up for their own plans.
Collaboration unlocked for next turn- one acceptable action of your choice can be completed with Olympia's collaboration!
Two similar results, but with different flavors.
The former nets us a *research agreement*, meaning that the choice for what to spend it on will probably be over in Learning.
The latter is a *collaboration*, meaning that it could be in pretty much *any* category (but probably Stewardship).
So, in the end we will most likely still have some free option and not be locked down completly like some feared...Not bad at all.
[X][Stewardship] Restore DoofOS Security (Alan Bradley) (CoS: 34%, 44% w/ XP)
DC 130 (Reduced by XP)
33+24+26+20+5+2=110
Failure
The arcane architecture of DoofOS continued to puzzle Alan as he struggled with restoring security. Unfortunately the firewall is still not up and will require more effort.
...And LOVEMUFFINS fuckup pretending to be an OS continues to stubbornly resist any outside attempts to improve it, *just like its creators*
At least nothing immediately bad came outta that failure, so it´s only an annoyance instead of an actual problem.
[X] Chat with the Bossman (Alan Bradley)
42
You and Alan had a very cordial discussion over coffee one day last week where you talked about your current workplace culture and how unused to it he was. He came to the conclusion that while he may not personally be a fan of it, he could see that it worked for others and would try to keep an open mind in the future.
You also took some time to discuss DoofOS' current issues. Alan was very apologetic, and attempted to go into detail about the problem. The language was very technical. Normally this wouldn't be a problem; you're something of a code monkey yourself. But the terms Alan was throwing around were esoteric even to you. Overall, you get the sense that some sort of vital program was accidentally excluded from the firewall and slipped through testing, forcing Alan to choose between taking the whole thing down or allowing the program to be compromised. He had been expecting a more serious security breach, but the system seems to be quieting down now, and he's hopeful about having the firewall back up soon.
Alan Bradley gains +10 loyalty until November/December 2017!
Hm, so Alan seems to still be confident that he can wrangle the beast that is DoofOS - which will now com easier to him thanks to his heightened Loyalty factoring in at least a bit (while also counteracting his malus from the borked company retreat)
So yeah, we might wanna continue trying to improve DoofOS despite how much we already put into it to little effect - especially since we now have *these* options on top:
[X][Learning] Study the SHV 20905 Plans (Wasabi) (CoS: 71%, 81% w/ XP)
DC 80 (Reduced by XP)
70+38+24-2=130
Great Success
Wasabi was able to decode the plans you purchased from the pirate with ease and even build a working prototype. It turns out this mysterious device is designed to transform physical matter into data and energy, effectively turning them into a digital representation. Astonishing! No wonder ENCOM is always showing up your systems. The process is too energy-intensive to be a free teleport, but it nonetheless promises to be an extremely valuable technology! Imagine being able to send Genghis Khan to do your debugging for you!
Unfortunately, you've run into a pretty significant snag. It turns out that 'digitizing' things isn't as simple as pointing the device at them and pressing a button. There's a whole slew of complex algorithms that are needed to ensure whatever gets scanned retains its integrity. Your last test put in an apple and returned applesauce. That filthy pirate man scammed you by not providing the codes to keep your digitized things together!
You have enough clever coders on your team that you might be able to recreate those algorithms. You could also try to find that little scallywag and see what happened to those algorithms. Or, alternately… you might try to get them from the source.
Re-develop digitizer code action unlocked!
Copyright Collection action unlocked!
Steal Digitizer Codes action unlocked!
Once we either acquired or "acquired" the Digitizer Codes (decision on how to do it still pending thanks to us not knowing the DCs), we can digitize a strike team and help Alan restructuring DoofOS from within. So yeah, not a bad haul.
[X][Stewardship] Dinosaur Entertainment (Roddy Blair) (CoS: 82%, 92% w/ XP)
DC 75 (Reduced by XP)
71+24+29+2=126
Great Success
Since most of the work had already been done by Mendel-Gruman, creating a dinosaur park was as simple as drawing up the plans and setting some construction crews on it. Roddy had plenty of experience in designing structures for super-strong and incredibly violent individuals, so opening day was able to go off without a hitch! So far the park is a smashing success, though not quite as world-shattering as you were hoping. Dinosaurs are still quite cool, but the novelty seems to have died down a bit. Memes about 'the raptors getting out' are of course circulating all over social media, but in reality the park has multiple redundancies and failsafes, and even if a creature did somehow escape it wouldn't really be much more dangerous than, say, an elephant. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the profit is in the gift shop.
Public opinion has increased!
Gain Doofrassic Park, +2 Income per year
Both stuff we could use some more of, so while a bit little for a "Great Sucess" it´ll still be something we can expand on in the future - as long as we DON´T do the same mistakes as Ingen and try going for "bigger, scarier and more teeth", only for our super-augmented biological weapon to run amuck and destroying everything.
...Great, Doof again has to be *more* competent than someone else....
[X][Learning] Large Herbivore Domestication (Janus Lee) (CoS: 74%, 84% w/ XP)
DC 100 (Reduced by XP)
49+38+22+20+3=132
Decent Success
Janus Lee had a wonderful time in manipulating the genomes of larger herbivores, utilizing some techniques Jumba had shown him to get the work done in record time. While he wasn't able to finalize things before the dino park opened, he's laid out an excellent groundwork for the future, and now that the basic concepts of keeping the big stompy ones under control have been developed, you can move on to the man-eaters!
Large Carnivore Domestication research action unlocked! Dinosaur Weapons Platforms research action unlocked! Large Herbivore Exhibits Stewardship action unlocked!
...What did I just say?
*No weaponizing dinos!* That doesn´t end well.
That being said, I wouldn´t mind either LC Domestication (although I´d rather not have a meat-eater the size of a freaking elephant go on a rampage if we can prevent it) or LH Exhibits to build up on the success of Doofrassic Park (say, are we *sure* that we won´t get slapped for copyright/trademark infringement by whichever stuido that owns the Jurassic Park franchise because of that name?)
[X][Intrigue] Investigate the Death of Alonso Hawk (Russ) (CoS: 51%, 61% w/ XP)
DC 105 (Reduced by XP)
60+17+38+10+5+5+25 (???)=160
Great Success
To be continued in Quest: Who Framed Bonkers Bobcat?
And Russ continues to be dependable.
That being said, I don´t think that even a success in the quest will outright *topple* Doom. Despite everything that transpired, he is still a King like us and therefore will have a lot of defenses to deal with threats. And before someone brings up Syndrome again as an example of Kings being defeatable, I have to remind you that him going down required at least two-and-a-half other Kings cooperating over several months as well as their different plan parts going off without a hitch to get Syndrome into a corner...and even then, only because of him crit-failing *multiple times* (one of these times facing a hostile crit sucess, mind you - something that has a 1 in 10k chance of happening) did he actually fall there -otherwise, he´d be still be around now and only slightly worse for wear.
So yeah, while we now have the chance to make him really bleed in terms of PR and maybe power-base, I don´t expect him to actually go down as long as things don´t go really good for us and really bad for him at the same time.
[X][Intrigue] Investigate Orton Mahlson (Tobe) (CoS: 38%, 48% w/ XP)
DC 110 (Reduced by XP)
91+17+25+2=135
Decent Success
To be continued in Interlude: Cavendish & Dakota & Tobe's Excellent Adventure
Dunno about that "celeb", so got nothing here in terms of ideas or expectations.
But a sucess is still a sucess, so I am not complaining at all.
[X][Occult] Study Dance Magic (Juniper) (CoS: ???, but probably quite high)
DC 80 (Reduced by XP)
76+4+0+15=95
Success
To be continued in Interlude: Dance, Magic Dance!
I only now am realizing how well Dance Magic might synergize with both Toons and Doof himself because of their showmanship (as long as we can put the whole "magic" part under wraps until that part of the Masquerade finally breaks - and we all know that it will do so eventually despite us and David managing to keep it glued together during both the auction and Demonas attack)...I am now ashamed about having written of Dance Magic as "not important" beforehand.
So yeah, not bad at all.
[X] Tinker with your Inators
63
A vote will be included in an upcoming interlude.
The Deviled-Egg-Inator: One random, non-villainous hero turns mustache-twirlingly evil for the next turn, gaining +5 to rolls on anything they would consider evil and -10 to anything that they consider good.
The Garum Farminator: All through his life in Drusselstein, Doof was always told about how delicious Garum was! It was a rare condiment only available to the rich! So he never actually experienced it himself, but he always wanted it! Thus, the Garum Farminator! Doof has no idea what Garum is, or how it's made, but why should that stop him from farming it and giving it to his citizens? The Garum Farminator creates a Garum Farm just upwind of downtown Danville! The noxious smell of rotting fish produced by the garum farms will cause riots followed by a Garum Themed Supervillain attack in three turns unless Doof dedicates 1 Income and a Stewardship action to relocating the Garum farms elsewhere.
Honestly, right now I am slightly favoring the Deviled-Egg-Inator, because while its effect could be annoying at best and nasty at worst (depending on which character gets hit by it), the Garum-Farminator *will* deplete some of our scarce liquid income as well as our action economy if we don´t want to risk riots after three turns - and even then we might not get anything positive outta it unlike with the first Inator (for example, if say, *Russ* gets hit, we could use his pretty nifty stats for..."off-the-counter" stuff and possibly even circumvent his "Lawful Good"-flavored trait).
Let´s just hope that *Hego* doesn´t get hit...then again, the Inator will target all non-villainous Heroes and not just explicitly *heroic* ones, so the chance for Hego getting hit should be negligible.
[X] Hire the Dickens Detective Agency (Large)
[X] Spy on your Employees
DC 125
17+17+55=89
Miserable Failure
The Dickens conducted a thorough investigation of "your most belligerent employees", coming forward with a report on how LOVEMUFFIN was preparing to commit acts of violence against the city! Unfortunately, the Commodore was too thorough. He delivered his findings to you approximately thirty seconds before something downtown exploded.
[X] Perform Mad Science (LOVEMUFFIN)
DC 150
22+38+14-2=72
Critical Failure
To be continued in Interlude: Put a Stop to It
[X] Reorganize OWCA (Major Monogram)
53
In stark contrast to your other old associates, Monogram has made steady progress in his attempts to bring OWCA up to a higher standard. He may be a bit out of the game at this point, but he has experience, and his intern has a number of good ideas. You realized recently that you actually prefer being around OWCA to L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N., and threw up a little bit in your mouth. Monogram probably would be finished by now, were it not for… well.
To be Continued in Interlude: Put a Stop to It
[X] Psychoanalyze LOVEMUFFIN (TECHNOR)
3
To be Continued in Interlude: Put a Stop to It
[X] Study odd scrolls (Jumba)
98
To be Continued in Interlude: Put a Stop to It
As seen above
...Where to even begin with that one?
So, as we feared, the scrambled-eggheads finally snapped and literally blew up.
Going from the HUs involved (the Commodore, LOVEMUFFIN, Monogramm, TECHNOR and for some reason *Jumba* as well), I think something along these lines happened:
TECHNOR was just doing group therapy with the idiots, when they probably took something he said in the worst possible way, got their poor egos bruised some more and decided to do Mad Science "to show them all how great we are".
Naturally, they fucked up completly and Monogram along with what remains of OWCA did his best to contain the fallout. Considering the fact that the interlude is named the same as his anti-WackyVillain trait, I suspect that he did intervene in some form and actually managed to hold his own for a while (unlike with the Repulse-Inator, where OWCA got assimilated pretty much *immediately*), until Jumba apparently suceeded so well in scrying the scroll we gave him that he ended up saving the day.
So, bottom line:
- LOVEMUFFIN choked on their own egos and caused some great calamity
- Monogramm and OWCA managed to contain things well enough for a bit.
- Jumba swooped in and accidentially saved the day *Again* (honestly, I wonder if him and Monogram end up striking a rapport with each other, since that´s the second time the alien saved the "agents" bacon without intending to)
...What a day to be us, huh?
[X] Study science and technology (Genghis Khan)
47
Temujin has continued to make slow but steady progress in his study of modern technology. While he's got a long way to go before he becomes an expert, Ludivine estimates that he should at least be up to speed with most modern technology soon.
(154/200)
So, next turn Khan has a slightly-better-than-a-coinflip chance to complete his Modernity-studies next turn? Thanks, I´ll take it.
[X] Personally oversee ACME product testing (Wile E. Coyote)
62
Wile E. redoubled his focus on ACME corporation this quarter. Somewhat surprisingly, his friend the Roadrunner actually has quite the head for numbers, and the two of them have come up with a brand new market for ACME products: Japan!
Japanese productions have up until now simply drawn in backgrounds and incidental props after the fact instead of using Toon produced goods. Imagine! This is an untapped market with excellent potential! However, Japanese cartoons have a very different entertainment style than American ones once did, so it'll take a bit of effort to adjust ACME's narrative conventions to fit the tastes of the new market.
Unlocked: Expand ACME products to Japan (Reward: 62/250)
Honestly, given how different Japan is in terms of culture, us having to adapt our Toonforce-reliant stuff to their understanding of entertainment before being able to cash in on that market makes total sense.
That means that our SpplyChain Comedization will have to wait for the same reasons as well before we can reliable tackle that issue.
Fine by me.
[X] Try to become a Real Boy (Norm)
60
With his brand new, updated AI systems, Norm examined the fruits of his efforts over the past two years and realized that he was not, in fact, a real boy. This did not stop Norm from wanting to become a real boy.
Norm did not become a real boy.
Norm gains +1 Learning
That´s not too bad on top of the earlier +2 Martial as well as the new trait.
Our little boy is growing up...
Can we get rid of his platypus-hunting routines next? They are probably holding him back a lot.
[X] Train (Hego)
77
Hego spent the past two months watching workout videos, listening to motivational speeches, and reminiscing on the glory days. After a few pep talks and a lot of effort, he's ready to face the future.
Whatever it will bring.
Next turn, Hego can only take the [ ] Do Good Deeds action. If he rolls above 40, he will gain +40 to his roll, and if he rolls below 40 he'll gain -40 instead. If he rolls 40 exactly, there will be no change.
So, next turn Hego has a 60% chance of getting better, but a 40% chance of spiralling even harder than before? Let´s hope things work out on that end.
I´d rather not Shego blame us for him breaking apart completly, thanks very much.
[X] Retake the SAT (Vanessa)
52+10=62
Vanessa retook the SAT, and did… okay. She marginally improved over her last result, but not by much. This will improve her odds of being accepted into some of the better colleges, so at least you can rest easy in knowing your little girl isn't going to Backupsmore.
Yeah, Vanessa remains on PA duty for the time being..I wanna capitalize on that bonus of hers as much as possible before it leaves again.
[X] Study magic with Feldrake (Janna)
86
To be continued in Interlude: Try to Focus
[X] Hang out with Janna (Queen Lizzie)
81
To be continued in Interlude: Try to Focus
[X] Train Janna (Kitsune)
100
To be continued in Interlude: Try to Focus
...Oh dear.
So, Janna aced both her training with Kitsune and to a lesser extent Felldrake as well, while Lizzy had some good times as well?
Our dice really love anything Janna-related...while also despising DoofOS, but I covered that one already.
[X] Search for Star (Tom)
59
Tom and Marco scoured major cities searching for Star, but weren't able to make much headway. The only evidence they could find was extremely out of date, most likely from before Star even came to New York at all. This is going to require a lot of effort and multiple angles. After all, the Lizard has been trying and failing for years now.
[X] Search for Star (Marco)
52
See Above
Figures that Star is laying low now after essentially magical-nuking one of Toffees digs. All things considered, Tom and Marco did well enough though.