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Magical Girl Home Base Quest

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Hydroplatypus said:
Also, any ideas on what we could have done - in retrospect - to avoid overworking ourselves? Because nothing on the work list last turn seems like it would be particularly relaxing, or de-stressing. It might be that this was unavoidable due to the prolonged crisis and deaths, but it feels like we could have done something, and just missed the signs.
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Considering that all of our weekly actions are us actually doing something either physically or mentally exhausting (crafting, research, upgrading our workshop or building), I don't think so. Short of maybe no megucas dying and all of the mission rolls being the absolute highest ones.

So, no.
 
Sirrocco said:
Regardless, is that sentiment an accurate one, from your perspective as a QM? Was Kolobok the clearly superior choice, had we had but eyes to see?
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Yes and no? The problem with the Kolobok was that it was a risk-reward option, and in every instance I've presented a risk-reward option the quest-goers have chosen to avoid risk. That's not a sustainable mindset, and I'll be getting into it more when I write the QM debriefs.

Hydroplatypus said:
Also, any ideas on what we could have done - in retrospect - to avoid overworking ourselves? Because nothing on the work list last turn seems like it would be particularly relaxing, or de-stressing. It might be that this was unavoidable due to the prolonged crisis and deaths, but it feels like we could have done something, and just missed the signs.
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Find a way to resolve this crisis faster; see previous comment response.
 
I wonder if the lack of risk taking came partially from the limited perspective we have. While we know that our artifacts can do great things in the hands of a magical girl, we don't really see that impact directly. Even the - visible - mechanics don't seem to reflect the quality of the equipment, with everything being d6 rolls. Now, I imagine magical girl equips actually do effect things behind the scenes, but they aren't really visible to the players. So when we get a 25% change for a tier 5 token - one of the notable risky options I remember - the players don't really see this as being THAT much better than another tier 3 we could make on our own time. But maybe having that around might have let us resolve the crisis faster if the difference is really that much larger.

Now the limited perspective of the players makes sense - the PC himself never really sees this combat, so why should the effects be immediately apparent from his perspective? But I wonder if that limited viewpoint is obscuring the benefits and costs so that the rewards don't appear as rewarding as they actually are, or that the risks are larger than they actually are. Maybe we need to try to step outside the PC's limited perspective and consider how the risks/rewards effect the larger picture of what is going on here. Something to think about at least
 
7734 said:
This is when I write out the "What I saw, what the players saw, what we played" meme except it's a wall of text.
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Oh that'll be a riot to read, whenever it shows up.

Hydroplatypus said:
Now the limited perspective of the players makes sense - the PC himself never really sees this combat, so why should the effects be immediately apparent from his perspective? But I wonder if that limited viewpoint is obscuring the benefits and costs so that the rewards don't appear as rewarding as they actually are, or that the risks are larger than they actually are. Maybe we need to try to step outside the PC's limited perspective and consider how the risks/rewards effect the larger picture of what is going on here. Something to think about at least
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I honestly just want it off the table so we can stop having the damn argument about "oh but we need more SAFETY" when it's pretty clear to me that we're never going to ever realistically reach a state where we can research it without the risk of something going catastrophically wrong.

Or have the thread agree to just throw the damn thing out in the trash if they're never going to vote for it.
 
Krika said:
I honestly just want it off the table so we can stop having the damn argument about "oh but we need more SAFETY" when it's pretty clear to me that we're never going to ever realistically reach a state where we can research it without the risk of something going catastrophically wrong.

Or have the thread agree to just throw the damn thing out in the trash if they're never going to vote for it.
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I suspect that researching it will be pretty high priority when the crisis ends. The main opposition to the idea seemed to be that losing two weeks worth of productivity right in the middle of a crisis (1 week for failed research, 1 for failure knocking us unconscious) would be devastating. OTOH once the crisis ends, losing time isn't as important anymore. And then it's just a really good chance at a healing item which will help alleviate the next crisis that'll inevitably come, which I think the thread will like.

Though to change perspectives a bit, I wonder how many of the magical girls are walking around with injuries at the moment. We don't really focus on their state in the narrative all that much - beyond the dead being dead - but it wouldn't surprise me if our patchwork first aid left a lot to be desired, and a bunch of the magical girls are fighting at a disadvantage due to the injuries. And if that's the case the priority shoots up, as it could actually help resolve the crisis sooner. Hadn't though of that perspective last vote, but maybe we should start attempting to read between the lines a bit more to really get at these sort of things.
 
Hydroplatypus said:
Though to change perspectives a bit, I wonder how many of the magical girls are walking around with injuries at the moment. We don't really focus on their state in the narrative all that much - beyond the dead being dead - but it wouldn't surprise me if our patchwork first aid left a lot to be desired, and a bunch of the magical girls are fighting at a disadvantage due to the injuries. And if that's the case the priority shoots up, as it could actually help resolve the crisis sooner. Hadn't though of that perspective last vote, but maybe we should start attempting to read between the lines a bit more to really get at these sort of things.
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Especially given that our actual medic is fighting a very high fever. Medical care is very much crippled right now.
 
7734 said:
The problem with the Kolobok was that it was a risk-reward option, and in every instance I've presented a risk-reward option the quest-goers have chosen to avoid risk.
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Krika said:
Welcome to the SV questing community, I guess.
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Man, these comments threw me through a loop. I went "wait, that can't possibly be right" before reviewing and finding that yes, in this quest the voterbase has consistently voted for low-risk options. I guess I've been too deep in A Simple Transaction I, I forgot that in some quests people actually posses sanity.

Anyway, perhaps we should take this as a sign that in this quest at least, we need to be daring a little more?
 
ImperatorV said:
Man, these comments threw me through a loop. I went "wait, that can't possibly be right" before reviewing and finding that yes, in this quest the voterbase has consistently voted for low-risk options. I guess I've been too deep in A Simple Transaction I, I forgot that in some quests people actually posses sanity.

Anyway, perhaps we should take this as a sign that in this quest at least, we need to be daring a little more?
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Okay, so given that... what's the high-risk, high-reward option *here*?

Vote change

[x] Build a Room
-[x] Magical Condenser: Allows multiple workshops to run in parallel.

If we can't afford to keep taking the safe option every time, then maybe we shouldn't be taking the safe option every time.
 
Krika said:
Have fun trying to talk people into it.
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Word of the QM is that always playing it safe is not sustainable. We've got to do something to get ahead of the disaster curve at some point, might as well start now while our main item crafter is out of order.

[x] Build a Room
-[x] Magical Condenser: Allows multiple workshops to run in parallel.
 
Sirrocco said:
Okay, so given that... what's the high-risk, high-reward option *here*?

...

If we can't afford to keep taking the safe option every time, then maybe we shouldn't be taking the safe option every time.
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I think one of the things that keeps splitting the votes is that questers have to not only choose between high and low risk options but long and short term gains as well. A choice that is "high-risk, immediate relief" tends to accumulate votes over a choice that is "low/medium risk, payout after x weeks."
 
Yeah, none the building options seem risky in the slightest. I suppose real bad rolls could make them explode or something, but right now they just seem like something that has a long term pay off. I'm pretty sure none of them will be done in time to affect the outcome of the current crisis.

Maybe that's the risk? Spend time working on something that won't help with what's happening right now, so it's ready for the next crisis? Doesn't quite click with me, but maybe I'm missing something.
 
ImperatorV said:
Word of the QM is that always playing it safe is not sustainable.
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Word of QM would be more accurately surmised as 'this story is based upon my experiences working in soup kitchens and clothing donations centers and reflects the realities of endemic poverty' since my work with the Baldwin Center of Pontiac was the direct inspiration for a lot of the scenes involving food and the mess hall. I'm not going to lie, when I started this I had a morbid curiosity in how SV's best and brightest would handle something this... I suppose I'll say grounded?

And now I know.
 
...I mean, I can see why playing risk-averse all the time is an issue, but I think this here
Hydroplatypus said:
I wonder if the lack of risk taking came partially from the limited perspective we have. While we know that our artifacts can do great things in the hands of a magical girl, we don't really see that impact directly. Even the - visible - mechanics don't seem to reflect the quality of the equipment, with everything being d6 rolls. Now, I imagine magical girl equips actually do effect things behind the scenes, but they aren't really visible to the players. So when we get a 25% change for a tier 5 token - one of the notable risky options I remember - the players don't really see this as being THAT much better than another tier 3 we could make on our own time. But maybe having that around might have let us resolve the crisis faster if the difference is really that much larger.
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Is very much true. Giving us a risky choice with "incredible" payout if it works and a rather safe choice with "really good" payout is one thing. But without a sense of scale for how the "really good" and the "incredible" option differ from each other, none of us can actually tell if the latter is worth its risk.

Which means there were either information hidden in minute details that no one noticed or pointed out, or not mentioned at all.

For example: the Kolobok. All we know is that it is a healing item, not of what potency or what it could potentially do. It could only remove small cuts, it could completely undo a mortal wound, no one knows what capabilities it might have. We also know that researching it will knock our main character out for several weeks on a bad roll, and yield nothing on a mediocre one. This can inform the actual quality of what the item does on a success, but it is only implied and still vague while the consequences attached to a failure are very clear.

So no, players not picking the risky option is not the players' fault. Without knowing if the thing is actually worth it, it makes perfect sense to pick the safe choice with (almost) guaranteed payout, especially when things are already difficult. The same goes for the other risky choices I remember not being picked (the possible T5 thing and healing Jocelyn).


Really, if it is expected that I pick risks, I would actually like either more information about what that risk could actually net me (read, bait me into taking the risk), or no mention that it is risky in the first place (read, go all-in on not actually giving information). Just expecting that I pick risky over safety without actually knowing what benefit that gets me is bad design.
 
For healing Jocelyn, some people were convinced that going all-in WAS the risky option. We really didn't know what it would do.

I would argue that a 75% chance of nothing is almost always a bad bet (yes, there was an alternate payout in Stuff, but we have never been short of Stuff, because one of the main uses of Stuff is to make more Stuff).

I guess it really does depend on how strong T5 items are. If that thing was a FMA Philosopher's Stone like it appeared... it might have been worth the risk. Given the T3 Trinkets we've seen, that's possible. But (presumably) we've benefited from putting T2 Wands into the economy, which wouldn't have been possible without Tyrfang.
 
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Naron said:
We also know that researching it will knock our main character out for several weeks on a bad roll, and yield nothing on a mediocre one.
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Point of order; at no point did I say that. The Kolobok's drop table bottoms out at a T3 Trinket before you hit personal injury, and considering your labratory is a massive risk reduction, you'd have to roll spectacularly poorly to actually get screwed.


Naron said:
Which means there were either information hidden in minute details that no one noticed or pointed out, or not mentioned at all.
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This, ten thousand times this. If at first you think there's a dearth of information, read the text more closely. Everything not part of the mechanical system is properly described, if not where one would expect to find it.
 
Naron said:
Is very much true. Giving us a risky choice with "incredible" payout if it works and a rather safe choice with "really good" payout is one thing. But without a sense of scale for how the "really good" and the "incredible" option differ from each other, none of us can actually tell if the latter is worth its risk.

Which means there were either information hidden in minute details that no one noticed or pointed out, or not mentioned at all.
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The problem with this view is that you are fundamentally misunderstanding the situation. We have guaranteed 'very good' or risky 'better', but what you're not accounting for is the situation we're in.

The state of things is such that playing for 'very good' every time simply won't cut it. 'Very good' just isn't enough to pull us out of this, we need at least a few 'better's in there, and so far we haven't gone for any.

At least, that's how I understand it...
 
In some cases if you are in a bad situation gambling with high stakes is the only way to get ahead.

Also, I don't think people put enough weight on what some would call 'flavor text'. If we had paid better attention we could have seen this burnout coming.

Remember that for all the crafting mechanics this quest puts a lot of weight on *narrative*. Not just in the quest story wise but also magic. Small things can add up.
 
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aceraptor said:
In some cases if you are in a bad situation gambling with high stakes is the only way to get ahead.

Also, I don't think people put enough weight on what some would call 'flavor text'. If we had paid better attention we could have seen this burnout coming.

Remember that for all the crafting mechanics this quest puts a lot of weight on *narrative*. Not just in the quest story wise but also magic. Small things can add up.
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I don't know why people are saying we didn't see the burnout coming. It was very clearly stated that we were heading for a burnout. But it's not clear what we could have done to prevent it - apparently the only thing would have been to somehow cut weeks off the crisis, and there's no telling what choices would have caused that.
 
Sure, there were signs of a burnout coming. We also were clearly shown after each exhaustion that was a period of rest, though it getting continuously worse was certainly a thing. More to the point, it doesn't really matter since we didn't have any option to take a rest or something. The healing device may have helped, or we could be fighting off radiation poisoning while also having whatever's currently afflicting us, and considering we're near-death already I wouldn't be surprised if we'd cut off the "near" part of that.

Also, I'm pretty sure this is the first confirmation we've gotten that improved workshop provides improved chances of research success/reduced consequences for failure. This was heavily assumed, but nice to be confirmed.
 
Spectral Waltz said:
The problem with this view is that you are fundamentally misunderstanding the situation. We have guaranteed 'very good' or risky 'better', but what you're not accounting for is the situation we're in.

The state of things is such that playing for 'very good' every time simply won't cut it. 'Very good' just isn't enough to pull us out of this, we need at least a few 'better's in there, and so far we haven't gone for any.

At least, that's how I understand it...
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I am not disputing that. My point is that if the person in charge wants to entice us into going for risk, they need to communicate that the risk is worth taking at least clearly enough for someone of the twenty-odd people actively participating to catch it. If they fail at doing that, it can not be blamed on the players for acting based on incomplete information. Having been QM myself, it is really easy to think you communicated something properly only for no one to notice because what appears clear to you really is not without GM-knowledge or hindsight.

We know it now, if only because it was actually pointed out to us OoC. So next time the matter comes up, we can make better informed choices.

Although I can already see the dice deciding that risk-takers need to be punished, giving us a bunch of failures
 
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