Dragon Ball: After the End

[EllenTenshima]

If you're holding a hostage, the hostage's continued existence has value to you even in the impact they have on other people's behavior; thus why hostage takers often hesitate to execute hostages even under pressure (the other reason is that even for hostage takers, killing is not as easy as most people seem to think). Yammar's plan was to bank on that to prompt hesitation while he closed -- at which point killing the hostage wastes valuable time and concentration needed for defending against Yammar, at which point the hostage is again more valuable alive than dead.

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What you said is entirely true... after one have taken a hostage.

But until that point, you don't take a hostage because you value the hostage.

So yes. You hold a hostage because, while held, the hostage has value to you. At the same time, if the person you are trying to threaten is willing to get through the hostage to get to you, its value quickly plummets.

This is not the same as taking a hostage because you value it. You take a hostage because someone else values it, so you can use that value to threaten that person.

This is what I mean, okay?

Kakara tries to use Dandeer as cover while she heals people? I know for a fact that Yammar's response to that is a wide-area blast, forcing Kakara to break concentration to avoid her shield being vaporized.

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This is the post I was talking about.

So are you trying to say this could not have happened at all?

 

[thamuzz]

Yammar's willingness to risk Dandeer's life doesn't matter if Dandeer's death is acceptable outcome to Kakara. Use your hostage like a live shield. If Yammar hesitates, you have your time for IT. If he doesn't and strike through the hostage (or uses wide-area blast or whatever he did to force Kakara protect Dandeer), then just don't protect Dandeer. Now you have a dead Dandeer which is also ok.

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Look, I'm not happy with the situation or the assessment of our options but this particular line of reasoning isn't viable to us, given Kakara's traits. It's just going to annoy @PoptartProdigy.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

But I definitely think I'd have made some different votes at one time or another if I knew the rules that govern the mechanical outcomes. I've mostly been relying on and assuming that the rules would make enough intuitive sense that I could just use my natural understanding of physical activities and Dragonball to predict how well a given plan would or would not work.

But this particular instance is breaking that understanding hard enough and inflexibly enough that I don't even know what to do anymore.

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In retrospect, the Power Level system should mean that Apra and Yammar are going to be the best fighters here - they've had the longest to train, and both the infirmity of old age and the strength of youth are irrelevant if we know that both fighters have the same raw strength. Of course Yammar was going to massively outclass Kakara in a straight fight.

Yammar's willingness to risk Dandeer's life doesn't matter if Dandeer's death is acceptable outcome to Kakara. Use your hostage like a live shield. If Yammar hesitates, you have your time for IT. If he doesn't and strike through the hostage (or uses wide-area blast or whatever he did to force Kakara protect Dandeer), then just don't protect Dandeer. Now you have a dead Dandeer which is also ok.

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Sure, but given how we spared Dazarel, how we've talked about needing to give Dandeer a trial, and Yammar not remembering why we wouldn't like Dandeer, it's not much of a reach for him to be confident we wouldn't want to kill Dandeer.

Now, deliberately letting him maim her so he might rethink that assumption might have been workable, I suppose...

What you said is entirely true... after one have taken a hostage.

But until that point, you don't take a hostage because you value the hostage.

So yes. You hold a hostage because, while held, the hostage has value to you. At the same time, if the person you are trying to threaten is willing to get through the hostage to get to you, its value quickly plummets.

This is not the same as taking a hostage because you value it. You take a hostage because someone else values it, so you can use that value to threaten that person.

This is what I mean, okay?



This is the post I was talking about.

So are you trying to say this could not have happened at all?

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I don't see the contradiction.

 

[Pittauro]

[x] No, I do not want to replay the scenario from the point where Kakara laid hands on Dandeer. I understand that while Poptart may still elect to discard the quest mechanics given their inability to fulfill a key design aim, they will not necessarily do so.

What's done is done, i just want to continue with the story. We have great communication skills, we might still do something with them. The memories of Jaron's near suicide, or of Jaffur's anger and sadness at her betrayal, or the fact that GOHAN (if she's still a believer after being excommunicated..) supported us in wanting to help Jaffur might, if not convince her outright, at least still make her hesitate.
It will still gain us time to send messages to as many of our friends as we can.


She also knows Jaffur trusts us, at least a bit. We might convince her that we might help restore their relationship, as he at least care for her enough to hesitate to kill her. (it might even not be a lie. If we can have her magic sealed, we might actually work on that, though it would take years or even decades).
When this probably fails, it will at least raise our value in her head, so that's still a good thing.
We might even offer to send messages from her to her "gods", and give her the memories of these talks back. Maybe answering under a "you can not lie" spell.

to @PoptartProdigy : i do like you mechanics, i really hope you do not change them. Not to a fiat system at least.
this wasn't a failure of the mechanics, but a failure of communication on everyone's side. It happened, it's over, we can go on.

We also have many memories we can share of us trying to convince Jaffur to not kill her. They will at least paint us in a better light.

 

[Lailoken]

Hoo boy.

Thank you for your time and attention, Interested Party. I hope we do not again require your presence in an official capacity for quite some time, if ever.

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I would actually suggest asking a staff member for a precautionary 24-hour lock immediately after major updates. Give everybody a chance to read them, but not a chance to immediately reply.

May I advocate a hail-mary 'give me a write-in to not be knocked out by Yammar' vote? I'm quite sure you tried most of the things we would have proposed, but I'm also pretty sure that we as a thread can outthink one person who had less than a day, no matter how close to human maximum they may be.

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Go down. At these power levels stone is basically a fluid, but it does block vision. Kakara has an extraordinary natural talent for ki sensing and ki manipulation, so turning it into a subterrainian battle might be to her advantage.

 

[EllenTenshima]

I don't see the contradiction.

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Assuming you are talking about the hostage thing.

No, there is no contradiction.

I am clarifying my stance.

Look, I'm not happy with the situation or the assessment of our options but this particular line of reasoning isn't viable to us, given Kakara's traits. It's just going to annoy @PoptartProdigy.

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I sincerely disagree with this assessment. This particular line of reasoning should have been available to us especially given Kakara's traits. It would be great for the trait to evolve given that yes, Kakara values life, but not all life ranks the same when push comes to shove, or did everybody just forget that Kakara murdered a mountain side when she got really angry?

 

[Simon_Jester]

In retrospect, the Power Level system should mean that Apra and Yammar are going to be the best fighters here - they've had the longest to train, and both the infirmity of old age and the strength of youth are irrelevant if we know that both fighters have the same raw strength. Of course Yammar was going to massively outclass Kakara in a straight fight.

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Yes, but that doesn't mean we "should have known" or "it should have been obvious" that Yammar specifically outclasses Kakara in such a way that she can't even teleport away from him faster than he can do a bunch of things including making some significant leaps of logic.

Because that revolves heavily around things like "so how fast can you physically think and act, anyway," which have a lot to do with power level (where Yammar and Kakara are evenly matched, with Kakara even pulling ahead based on that cookie-based willpower surge for a bit) and decisiveness (where Yammar MIGHT have an edge but Kakara is FAMOUSLY decisive).

Sure, but given how we spared Dazarel, how we've talked about needing to give Dandeer a trial, and Yammar not remembering why we wouldn't like Dandeer, it's not much of a reach for him to be confident we wouldn't want to kill Dandeer.

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What I'm getting at is that all this takes a nontrivial amount of time and thought on Yammar's part, followed by him having to actually do something to present the threat in question to Kakara. And managing to do all this faster than Kakara can instant-transmit away.

If I'd known the rules for Instant Transmission all along this might be obvious to me, but as it stands, it's just... super counterintuitive.

Now, deliberately letting him maim her so he might rethink that assumption might have been workable, I suppose...

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We effectively did that in the fight, to the point where Dandeer was getting multiple broken bones from being used as a human shield between us. Apparently this changed nothing?

 

[Deathbybunnies]

Yes, but that doesn't mean we "should have known" or "it should have been obvious" that Yammar specifically outclasses Kakara in such a way that she can't even teleport away from him faster than he can do a bunch of things including making some significant leaps of logic.

Because that revolves heavily around things like "so how fast can you physically think and act, anyway," which have a lot to do with power level (where Yammar and Kakara are evenly matched, with Kakara even pulling ahead based on that cookie-based willpower surge for a bit) and decisiveness (where Yammar MIGHT have an edge but Kakara is FAMOUSLY decisive).

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Yes, I suppose that's slightly counterintuitive - it leads to questions like "what is speed here".

If I'd known the rules for Instant Transmission all along this might be obvious to me, but as it stands, it's just... super counterintuitive.

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I think IT requires the user bring their fingers to their forehead and lock on to their destination mentally. If Kakara needs a free hand to block wide blasts without killing Dandeer, and every time her hand moves towards her forehead Yammar lets rip with such a blast... given how blasts move faster than fighters, I could see that being a sticking point enough to have a roll on. Possibly multiple rolls for multiple attempts, but if he's got big bonuses and rolls well I could see us failing here.

We effectively did that in the fight, to the point where Dandeer was getting multiple broken bones from being used as a human shield between us. Apparently this changed nothing?

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I don't think we did? There was that bit at the end, but that was Yammar jumping on an opening, not Kakara being deliberately careless.

 

[wlowery]

[X] No, I do not want to replay the scenario from the point where Kakara laid hands on Dandeer. I understand that while Poptart may still elect to discard the quest mechanics given their inability to fulfill a key design aim, they will notnecessarily do so.

 

[TheRuisu]

*sight* People are being idiots to Poptart again...

[x] No, I do not want to replay the scenario from the point where Kakara laid hands on Dandeer. I understand that while Poptart may still elect to discard the quest mechanics given their inability to fulfill a key design aim, they will not necessarily do so.

 

[CaesriusPolybius]

[X] No, I do not want to replay the scenario from the point where Kakara laid hands on Dandeer. I understand that while Poptart may still elect to discard the quest mechanics given their inability to fulfill a key design aim, they will not necessarily do so.

 

[HoratioVonBecker]

[X] I reject the premise. I'm having fun with this brainstorming session, and destroying the rules would be a terrible price for getting to execute it.

 

[HoratioVonBecker]

Go down. At these power levels stone is basically a fluid, but it does block vision. Kakara has an extraordinary natural talent for ki sensing and ki manipulation, so turning it into a subterrainian battle might be to her advantage.

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That's brilliant. Sorry for taking so long to reply to this, I've been writing an Omake wherein we decrypt the Ki Overcharge technique.

 

[Bommelom]

[X] No, I do not want to replay the scenario from the point where Kakara laid hands on Dandeer. I understand that while Poptart may still elect to discard the quest mechanics given their inability to fulfill a key design aim, they will not necessarily do so.

 

[Bommelom]

Also..

Whether or not coming up with a plan to defeat Yammar doesn't change up the fact that we almost certainly wouldn't have voted for a successful plan.

The most favored courses of action were to try to somehow revive Jaffur, either with a senzu bean or trying to heal beam him, both of which would have failed miserably and resulted in Yammar doing the same as Vegeta. Indeed, if some people (including me) hadn't argued that we should just grab Dandeer and decide what to do from there, we would have voted for that (and I kinda regret arguing against it given that it'd have prevented at least some of this mess).

Even if we somehow come up with a successful plan that Poptart hadn't considered now (such as taking advantage of Yammar's crappy deceit to try to distract with by talking while we use telekinesis to give Jaffur a Senzu bean and/or throwing a monkey ball at him to force him to close his eyes and then getting the hell away and going for Spirit Saiyan, both of which almost certainly wouldn't succeed), those are not what we would have done if we had actually been given the vote, and we'd most likely have voted for trying to heal people, which would end up with being knocked out by Yammar.

So while I can understand why people would have liked to have gotten the vote, it wouldn't have changed a thing even if Poptart somehow didn't take a winning plan into account, because they did take into account all plans we were actually discussing and would actually have voted for, and the fight would have ended with us trying to heal Jaffur and then getting knocked out.

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Very interesting ideas under consideration, on all sides!

None I hadn't already rolled out and discounted, but fascinating thought processes going on, nevertheless. Oddly, though, nobody actually voting to replay the latest update.

One more thing:

I think this wasn't actually fair. I like the mechanics, and a large fraction of the regular voters (specifically, the ones that haven't made their peace with the way this went) have had threadbans or are just cooling off. Can we actually have a moratorium this time?

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The fact that a significant amount of people have been threadbanned is not a persuasive argument in favor of me delaying this for days or weeks. It is, in fact, the primary reason I want to be done with this quickly; I want this done and in the past so that things don't blow up again.

 

[EllenTenshima]

Very interesting ideas under consideration, on all sides!

None I hadn't already rolled out and discounted, but fascinating thought processes going on, nevertheless. Oddly, though, nobody actually voting to replay the latest update.

The fact that a significant amount of people have been threadbanned is not a persuasive argument in favor of me delaying this for days or weeks. It is, in fact, the primary reason I want to be done with this quickly; I want this done and in the past so that things don't blow up again.

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You seriously considered taking the fight underground?

 

[PoptartProdigy]

You seriously considered taking the fight underground?

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Yes!

 

[HoratioVonBecker]

Very interesting ideas under consideration, on all sides!

None I hadn't already rolled out and discounted, but fascinating thought processes going on, nevertheless.

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Can you write up the one where we got all the bonuses and tried swimming through rock while attempting to unlock Ki Overcharge, followed by trying to fake being knocked out while we Mind Project into Yammar, and so forth? I'd be satisfied with a reel of our cleverest gambits failing, with the reasoning why.

Oddly, though, nobody actually voting to replay the latest update.

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Well, you've put the rules at stake here. I genuinely don't think they were the problem; I think the problem was you not giving us the challenge to fail on our own merits, as it were.

 

[nkd1325]

[X] No, I do not want to replay the scenario from the point where Kakara laid hands on Dandeer. I understand that while Poptart may still elect to discard the quest mechanics given their inability to fulfill a key design aim, they will not necessarily do so.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

Very interesting ideas under consideration, on all sides!

None I hadn't already rolled out and discounted, but fascinating thought processes going on, nevertheless. Oddly, though, nobody actually voting to replay the latest update.

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Whilst I am personally of the opinion that rolling the fight back isn't worth the bother, I suspect that in this case it's because people are quite strongly in favour of not losing the rolls.

I'm also vaguely tempted to come up with increasingly outlandish strategies, but it would be rather missing the point to go for strategies we'd never vote for just to find something new.
Lol what if we went USSJ, shielded Dandeer and just tanked the hit whilst we IT'd?

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Can you write up the one where we got all the bonuses and tried swimming through rock while attempting to unlock Ki Overcharge, followed by trying to fake being knocked out while we Mind Project into Yammar, and so forth? I'd be satisfied with a reel of our cleverest gambits failing, with the reasoning why.

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You're really going to push on this, aren't you?

I can assume success on every check up to this one:

trying to fake being knocked out

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Assuming success (as in, Kakara is capable of executing your gambits), the investment of Andres's final cookie, and really stretch the definitions of remaining omake bonuses to cover this, then your best possible result is to still fail by a margin of 23, far too wide for the kind of gambit you suggest. But, for reasons I hope to be unsurprising, I don't actually want to go through with writing all of that.

Whilst I am personally of the opinion that rolling the fight back isn't worth the bother, I suspect that in this case it's because people are quite strongly in favour of not losing the rolls.

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Well, the rolling system is at the least up for heavy review in the wake of all of this, if it's staying at all.

 

[Modus_Tollens]

Yammar's willingness to risk Dandeer's life doesn't matter if Dandeer's death is acceptable outcome to Kakara. Use your hostage like a live shield. If Yammar hesitates, you have your time for IT. If he doesn't and strike through the hostage (or uses wide-area blast or whatever he did to force Kakara protect Dandeer), then just don't protect Dandeer. Now you have a dead Dandeer which is also ok.

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Kakara would absolutely have a psychological breakdown afterwards, one hundred percent, with nasty long term consequences... this is the sort of thing that twists your motivations in knots that basic soul searching can not fix... but all it takes is hesitation. That same hesitation that has been used before to prevent a character's death would be the same hesitation, just a moment too long of trying to weigh your options in a slightly too complex situation, and the problem would solve itself.

I don't really support that sort of action, I like having a protagonist bound by a sense of morality that conflicts with the realities of the world, but it is rational for the player base to weigh the possibility.

Poptart, I wouldn't take this sort of thing as a testament as to what players really want. I don't think many people would have assassination by omission high on their list of desirable options. They just want to know that options were not being taken off the table unnecessarily and that, if things were fucked up, they fucked up purely on their own merits and not because of perceived railroading. Even if that perceived (and note that I say perceived) railroading was simply by not listing options or by making it hard to find alternate options to explore.

I think the real complaints all radiate from how this started far more than how it ended.

Well, the rolling system is at the least up for heavy review in the wake of all of this, if it's staying at all.

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I'd focus more on the 'shot in the dark' system for getting options put on the table. I think people were rather dis-incentivized to gather information or gather together a table of options that they can weigh, fiddle with, and discuss.

A lot of this is on the player base for not really having the bloody-mindedness to beat through that wall regardless, but over all my time lurking it seemed like that sort of thing wouldn't have really been welcome. Even when it seems like what would have been necessary.

 

[Cariyaga]

Um... this is kind of obvious, I'd think, but what about a willpower push?

 

[PoptartProdigy]

Um... this is kind of obvious, I'd think, but what about a willpower push?

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Shatters the wards and gets everybody in the fight against you, for one thing.