Its a complex tactic vote, mate. People never turn up for votes that take up more than like, four rows. That's all that is to it, you can see it in every quest ever. Even the most popular quest around, topped like 600 votes on vote with decision of basically yes/no, whereas the plan turns usually have around like sixth of that.
The more thought that has to go to the vote, the more it shows in dip in voters engaging with it. All that is to it.
Yeah, I figured that was the problem. Doesn't make it feel any better. Eh- I've got interview prep to worry about for the next week, so it's not like I'd be too focused on the update anyway.
Could we sink the boat? Controlled scuttle and drown 'em?
That would be a bit beyond the pale, even if you fixed the ship afterwards. Also, you know, you'd need to use the Process
extensively for both parts of that, and so far people have shied away from being that open about it just yet.
[X] Keep the Lights On, Badcell Riot Police! V2
-------------------
Well, first of all, there's numbers again. I remember you got pretty fed up with rolling and doing math for this quest and declared 'Bold Choice, I'm replacing the system with nothing' and turning the quest into pure narrative. So the sudden return of numbers without any forewarning is... interesting, because now nobody knows what the numbers mean. And, actually reading through the numbers reveals that they're really more like weird stand-ins for manually assigning actions for everyone rather than something that would get... actually rolled, but how many people actually read the bold white text author notes? I know I tend to just skim them.
Second, hey, remember how in every(?) chapter previous where there were combat votes there were some example default example plans? Like, say, the end of Chapter: Democratic_Process(), for instance. Or really the entirety of the Initiation arc. Or when we fought Dove during Beacon, Cycle 1 through Tutorial_Fight: Do you even read... or, hell, how about something more recent, like the chapters ends of Port(Port), for the stairs, and the end of chapter Jailbreak()? I won't include the end of Inmate_Suppression() because that was a binary choice with no write in option. Where'd that go?
And as for the way you want things to be formatted by the only given example... uh, I still don't actually understand the hell you want us to do with these 'd6's' but if my suspicion on how you want it is correct, I'm not really interested in trying to make a vote that way.
Essentially you spooked the players by suddenly changing thing and leaving them a big empty directionless void. You took away the handrails.
+1
Generally speaking, Prok, assume your voters start from having zero information. What information they have is limited to what has been provided clearly in the most recent update. If you're lucky, voters draw on information provided by all previous updates in the quest. If you've made an easily-understandable informational post explaining all of your current capabilities, that can be helpful, too.
But remember, you also have to account for what information you're providing on the opposition and other complicating factors in a given situation.
Here, we are given plenty to be worried about and it's all open-ended. We had to ask you if the Hag is bulletproof or not, and the answer is apparently no, except its cauldron can somehow catch bullets and that creates some game-changing problems. How a cauldron on the ground is meant to catch bullets shot at the back of the head is hard to figure out, so voters will just assume "don't shoot at the Hag", except it's also really dangerous to approach, so it becomes "don't do anything regarding the Hag". Now, in your mind, that might seem ridiculous, but you laid out the scenario of the cauldron catching bullets and creating problems.
Similarly, you went into detail that any amount of shadow near the Vampyr is catastrophic because it will become a bogeyman that will murder you in your sleep. That is a terrifying problem because shadows are everywhere and also relative, so what counts as a shadow? Any differential in light creates shadows, depending on where you draw the arbitrary line. So if one of the students takes a big sword and stabs the Vampyr straight through the torso, is that problem solved or did that create a shadow that fucked us all over?
Similarly, the Imp: is it no longer a problem now that it can't unlock any more cages with their now digital locks? Is it capable of running over to the Vampyr and creating a shadow with its body? Will one of the students just shoot it and take care of it for us out of hand?
Like, this situation seems like the kind of situation where the easy solution is just "have Ruby shoot the Hags in the head, we shoot the Imp dead, and then Port kills the Vampyr" except you went into detail about how we'd get better results for a clever plan, as if this was a really tough situation with easy answers not being sufficient.
So either these Grimm are not easy to kill even in their current state, or they are. If they aren't, why hasn't this powder keg of an operation exploded long ago? If they are, why the implication needed for a clever plan using XdY indicators and target designations and don't create a shadow don't go near the Hag don't shoot the Hag it'll catch bullets somehow and that Imp is somehow not immediately full of bullet holes despite a room full of students with guns looking right at it.
... You know what, you're both entirely right, and you know- I have, genuinely, been staring at the dice in those votes, for about three days now. Because for the life of me,
I could not think why they were there. But I put them there. I even wrote instructions on what they meant! It must have been a deliberate decision, right?!
But I know what it is now, I, Hercule Prokot, the greatest detective of my own bad decisions in the world, know- it's that
fucking game I've been writing. So, first off, turns out- I enjoy it! I do actually enjoy tinkering with game mechanics like that. Game mechanics, in an RPG, are an entire
dimension through which you interact with your audience- they shape the experience as much as a story, and characters, and a setting, do, if not more! They're
fucking important!
What I
didn't enjoy, when it came to the mechanics of this quest, was doing it on the fly with something else that was already a source of stress in my life. An enjoyable one, but still a source of stress. Y'know, like bondage.
And then one bled into the other at 1am, because I'd had a rough day, and I was tired, and basically, in what amounted to a
fugue state, I put something that's meant to be on my shoulders, literally just something I do in the background when I'm stuck, to be like "eh yeah that works fine," or "eh he rolled lower than the Grimm, I should punish that," and I put it out there for you to worry about. Like, that's all the numbers mean, they're just for determining the vibes; I might as well be drawing tarot cards, or rolling animal bones.
God, I fucking datamined my own quest and said "here have fun" without actually being wholly aware of what I was doing. While being
so unaware of what I was doing that when I woke up, I might as well have been staring at someone else's update that I now had to defend. That's, that's a new low, I'm not gonna lie!
But okay- the mistake's been made. I'm going to try and fix it now. Again. How I should have the first time.
So, let's take a deep breath, and... once more, from the top.
Just make something or vote for something that you think'll work. Don't worry about dice. Don't worry about bonuses.
Those don't exist anymore. You are freed from your obligation to care about dice.
Got it? Good. Let's move onto the Grimm.
The Imp is the only free Grimm, and they
are actually pretty powerful- one of them is maybe about as dangerous as an Ursa Major, just because they're so damn- you'll see, they're fun.
That does not matter, because it has a dozen Hunters with it in their sights. Sheer numbers have reduced something that would otherwise be a miniboss for your team as a whole if you ran into it in a forest, into a
five-second annoyance. It is going to die very quickly unless you make a concerted effort to get people to ignore it for something else. Kill him anyway. He deserves it. He probably pretends to have shit takes online to get people mad. He's the dude that left that one comment you saw that you still think about in bed sometimes.
The Vampyr is functionally disabled, unless one of two things happen- one, the fog reaches its cage, or two, another source for a
hard shadow, or an
otherwise significant area of darkness, is created in its cage. This place is covered in floodlights. Shadows
don't exist in this area in a way that honestly kind of breaks your brain. It would take a concerted effort on the part of what I hope is an
imminently dead Grimm, or incredible bad luck on your classmate's parts, to allow that to happen.
Now imagine the shadow that would be made if you put something in front of
one floodlight. That kind of shadow is what it needs.
The Hags' cage was so well-sealed to keep their fog in. It was, until someone started poking holes in it, all but hermetically sealed. If it's sealed back up, and the Imp is dead, they are functionally a non-issue. You can then leave, or deal with either Grimm as you see fit. Entirely unrelated, their favourite album is Bob Marley & The Wailers' seminal 1974 classic,
Natty Dread.
Anything else beyond common-sense stuff, like "DON'T GET IN THE CAULDRON," or what you've learned through the Library(), like setting Vampyrs on fire, is beyond you right now. Thankfully, you have a very experienced Huntsman with you. He'll have advice on what to do if you ask him, and you're
going to ask him. Trust in Port, just as he trusted in you.
You look back at the beach you have walked and ask Port, "but Professor, I can see where, in the saddest moments of my life, there were only one set of footprints- why did you leave me then when you said you would always walk beside me?" And Port replies, "OF COURSE I LEFT MY BOY, I SAW A GRIMM IN THE DISTANCE I HADN'T KILLED BEFORE SO I WENT AND CROSSED IT OFF THE OLD TO-DO LIST, DAMNED IF I EVER LET THAT COFFEE-ADDICTED LOON TAKE THE LEAD-"
