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Dungeon Crawler You!

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My first thought is to puff up our feathers, get all big and intimidating, and implicitly suggest to them that we aren't the best prey for them to pick on. Drew starts making smoke forms, we light up our yo-yo, Calliope... she'll match us even without instruction.

Show that we got skills, tell them just how well we're handling ourselves, and offer (mis)information if they don't escalate to violence. If they do, then peace was never an option and we'll need to take them down.

I mainly want to avoid a fight here because if we're not killing them (and I'm not keen on picking up a PK skull this early) then there's basically no reward and the best possible outcome is 'we don't waste many resources beating them up'. If we can resolve this encounter with a little bravado and bigger stick diplomacy, that seems like the best route to me.
 
[x] Social Plan: Dickplomacy
  • Main gist: Appeal to their sensibilities (racism, freedom, guns etc) without compromising your own values. Sanity check all with Taylor's social skills and Americanness.
  • Telepathy to teammates: friendliness before aggressiveness. Still, keep a lookout.
    • Calliope, we will punish them after milking them for all their info.
  • Put up our barricade from our inventory. Apologies, but we feel that we have a right to be careful.
    • see how they justify their player-killings
  • Neutrally compliment their clothing articles
    • What were they getting up to in the middle of the night on National Happy Hour Day?
    • Probe whether there are any more confederate dickheads around and where they might be holing up
    • Check if the AI was just being a dick and gave them that confederalist stuff.
    • If they are actually decent people and the AI is just being a dick, just be a normal friendly person and don't do the below conversation points except the last two.
  • If they question what we were doing,
    • don't mention we were warned by aliens.
    • don't lie directly.
  • Try to turn their racism towards something more productive like aliens or dungeon monsters.
    • Humanize ourselves through personal stories
    • Commiserate over difficulties in the dungeon
    • Try to kite them into mentioning Borant
  • If they're actually decent people, offer them the barricade or something we won't mind giving.
  • If we attack:
    • Try for nonlethal. Telepathically relay tactics.
    • Taylor: use Goldpuller to tug their stuff, then throw caltrops at them, then use yoyo!
    • Drew: Make smoke decoys!
      • If decoys are recognized as such, concentrate dark smoke over enemies' heads instead.
    • Calliope: Maintain range, shoot their legs!
    • Moose: Guard!
      • If they close the range: target the lightest enemy!
 
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[X] Plan: Big Stick Diplomacy
  • Puff up our feathers. Be boastful, but not immediately hostile.
    • Light up our yo-yo. Tell Drew to start making smokeforms. Calliope... you know cool better than us.
  • Tell them about the Kruthaks we killed. Make it sound like it was easy for us, like we're having a good time.
  • Offer some 'advice'. If they accept, give them believable-sounding misinformation. Assume they got a good tutorial and focus the misinformation on what we've found since.
  • If they start getting pushy, keep the feathers puffed. Fighting us is not a good idea.
  • If diplomacy fails altogether:
    • Beat them up until they run away with their tail between their legs. No PK-ing unless absolutely necessary.
    • Drew:
      • Cover them in smoke, as opaque and debuffing as possible.
      • Throw caltrops around them, make it dangerous for them to move.
    • Calliope:
      • Use your superior mobility to harrass them from all angles.
      • Focus the ones without skulls, try to knock them down and make them hurt.
    • Taylor:
      • Throw Precious (the Yoyo) behind two-skull leader guy to try and distract him.
      • Strike him while pulling the yoyo back.
      • Attempt to entangle the leader in the indestructible Yoyo string. Choke him out, if you can.
      • Use Summon Gold intermittently to further destabilize and disorient any combatants wearing gold.
    • If they start running away, let them. If they double down, immobilize all of them and take all their stuff. If they start winning, start retreating and bringing out lethal weaponry.
 
Any changes I can make to my Dickplomacy plan to get yall to vote for it?

Doesn't feel right starting off with boasting and/or killing. Combat is dangerous, I feel like we should at least try a softer kind of diplomacy first. It's easier to milk these guys for info when they're at ease (and alive). Boasting about ourselves might put them on edge since boasting also implies competence implies competition/power imbalance. Also, how threatening are we compared to gym bros with broken glass, wrecking balls and irrational beliefs? And it's easier for us to go from friendly->boastful->threatening->combat, but not easy any other way round.

I made the following modification to the last bullet point of my plan to hopefully make it more appealing: If we decide they're better off beaten up, or things suddenly escalate into hostilities, transition to Plan: Big Stick Diplomacy.
 
I love write-in plans because they show engagement and involve ideas that I wouldn't have had, but I have a few requests:

1) Keep them at or under 300 words
2) Don't do modular plans such as "if X then execute <other plan / the next highest voted plan / etc>". Everything should be included in the plan without making me click on links.

I'm somewhat flexible on these things if you check first, but it makes my life a lot easier if you follow these guidelines.
 
kitkatnacho said:
Any changes I can make to my Dickplomacy plan to get yall to vote for it?
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For a start, remove the last bullet as per EJ's request :V

Also might be too long, dunno. Other than that, would probably be better to ask Calliope what she wants to do (but yeah ideally in a way that limits her impulsiveness) rather than try to restrict her directly again

But in general I think we should be flexing at least a little for audience purposes, which is why I support IV's plan
 
Shrooms said:
But in general I think we should be flexing at least a little for audience purposes, which is why I support IV's plan
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I think the TV is only turned on after the 2nd Floor... But the Alien Overlord Mods are watching. And we've already cursed them out by name at least once. I'd rather avoid giving them cause to fuck us over even more...

And, to be clear, I'm not sure that using the nicknames, or vague references would be enough to mask the alien bashing. Taylor already called them out by name, and we don't know how long they'll spend looking at Taylor's feed to determine punishment.

Let's not give them another cause for SMITE, yeah?
 
Shrooms said:
They can't watch us live but they are still compiling trailers from the first floor. Of course the odds of being in them are low since there's literal millions of people, but there's still a chance
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Maybe not "live" but Levi said that Taylor cursing out the aliens by name meant that it sent up a flag for review. And we don't know how long into the future the mods will watch to determine Taylor's punishment. If they watch, and see Taylor bashing them again not long after doing so the first time?

Well. Punishment. Boom, squish.
 
eaglejarl said:
I love write-in plans because they show engagement and involve ideas that I wouldn't have had, but I have a few requests:

1) Keep them at or under 300 words
2) Don't do modular plans such as "if X then execute <other plan / the next highest voted plan / etc>". Everything should be included in the plan without making me click on links.

I'm somewhat flexible on these things if you check first, but it makes my life a lot easier if you follow these guidelines.
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Ah uh whoops sorry alsdjasldj ok edited plan to remove modularity and reduced length and included basic combat section. The plan is still very much a diplomacy and intel-gathering plan though so I focused more on talking instead of tactics.
 
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kitkatnacho said:
Doesn't feel right starting off with boasting and/or killing. Combat is dangerous, I feel like we should at least try a softer kind of diplomacy first. It's easier to milk these guys for info when they're at ease (and alive). Boasting about ourselves might put them on edge since boasting also implies competence implies competition/power imbalance. Also, how threatening are we compared to gym bros with broken glass, wrecking balls and irrational beliefs? And it's easier for us to go from friendly->boastful->threatening->combat, but not easy any other way round.
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The main reason I'm going for boasting is because, like, these guys are total predators. They're hunting, and making basically no effort to disguise that. They got their dream-come-true of a world where might makes right and are indulging the heck out of it.

The last thing you want to do against a hunter is look like prey. If we look like a soft meek lootbox ready to be popped, they'll want to go in for the kill. If we instead look like a hard target (or even better, fellow hunters) they're less likely to try and prey on us.

And it should be noted that we are pretty threatening, at first glance. Not many people get lootboxes like ours right out of the gate, so magic should be scarce right now. Scarce means 1) they don't have it and we do, and 2) they don't know what we're capable of. They walk up and try to see if we're prey, we start demonstrating a bunch of flashy magic which even they don't have. If I were a predator in that situation, I'd suddenly be really wary. Like, 'these might be bigger fish than us' wary.

I'm also not too concerned about getting info from them, because, like, what would they even have to give us? The crawl's barely started and we already got through the tutorial. Maybe they've seen an enemy type we haven't? Doesn't seem worth changing our strategy imo.
 
I'm trusting the characters to have smart ideas about how to achieve goals (e.g., using the yoyo to tie people up) so I'm describing broad goals in this plan without a lot of implementation details.

[X] Action Plan: We're All Friends, Here
  • Drew: smoke them out. Get them as high as you can without hitting us too hard. Try not to be obvious about it.
  • Plan A: walk away.
    • Keep them at distance. Don't brandish your weapons, but keep them ready.
    • Talk as much or as little seems like a good idea but be clear that what you want is to leave each other alone.
      • Look moderately dangerous - well-armed, capable of violence.
      • Don't discuss having taken damage, the specifics of the loot you got/how you got it, or anything that might make you an appealing target. Share intel if asked - kruthaks are 'tough but boring', describe tactics/rough location.
      • Don't ask questions about them personally - it's none of your business.
  • Plan B: run away.
    • Turn around and bail. Use Drew's smoke and whatever gear you have to obscure yourselves and slow them down. Try to lead them through the kruthaks.
    • If they pursue, at least they might get a little spread out so they're easier to take on.
  • Plan C: fight.
    • Do not screw around - use guns, tools, whatever comes to hand.
    • Try to stay at range and harass them. Don't engage in melee unless you're SURE you can take them out.
    • Do not try to pull blows - they won't, either, and you're definitely not good enough shots to try anything fancy.
      • If you have a chance to incapacitate someone, take it, whatever it looks like.
      • That said, goal is to incapacitate them. If someone's unconscious, ignore them and refocus on someone else.
 
RandomOTP said:
Maybe not "live" but Levi said that Taylor cursing out the aliens by name meant that it sent up a flag for review. And we don't know how long into the future the mods will watch to determine Taylor's punishment. If they watch, and see Taylor bashing them again not long after doing so the first time?

Well. Punishment. Boom, squish.
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No, like, I'm saying they're still recording right now, they're just not streaming live to the galaxy (at least, assuming this carries over from DCC)

You can get interviews and stuff before you actually start floor 2. There's like a recap thing that will show highlights to the audience to know who to root for once the livestream begins on floor 2
 
[X] Plan: Big Stick Diplomacy

CrabTravelLLC said:
Confederate flags? Shoot them and take the skulls imo
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If you can incapacitate them you can loot everything they have and leave them to wander into monsters. Killing without skulls.

Also: gah, sucks we didn't/couldn't take the bug corpses into inventory (unless we did offscreen?), acid containers that summon more bugs if their rest of pheromones doesn't get controlled by someone with air manipulation abilities? Could have been useful.
 
Olivebirdy said:
Gonna suggest that brandishing a yo-yo isn't threatening. We have guns, let's brandish those instead.
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I think I disagree. Brandishing a weird, magic yo yo when we have guns implies that the yo yo is more powerful than the gun. It's also an unknown - if these folks are a gang of some sort, this won't be their first time staring down the barrel of a firearm. It will be the first - second at most - time they've been confronted by a group with magical weapons.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
I'm also not too concerned about getting info from them, because, like, what would they even have to give us? The crawl's barely started and we already got through the tutorial. Maybe they've seen an enemy type we haven't? Doesn't seem worth changing our strategy imo.
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That's fair. I was more interested in who else was outside with them on the night of the Sucking if they were wearing all those flags. If it turns out there was some huge Confederate protest going on at the time we would do well to know how many other dickheads might be down in the dungeon.
 
I just want to beat up the bigot and his group, not going to lie. Don't want to kill them (long term disadvantage), but beating them unconscious, and looting their stuff? Heck yes.
 
I'm not sure you CAN loot someone without killing them, though it's certainly possible. Looting them kinda guarantees they die anyway though...
 
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