Magical Girl Home Base Quest

[7734]

I will admit, the revelation that

Spoiler

Jocelyn's potential plot arc with the Tyrfing shit apparently has gotten thrown out the window because she had a bad roll despite us throwing the book at salvaging her, and she's potentially now eternally stuck at hired help status

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Yeah you think that plot arc is dead? No. It's just waiting in the reefer for when I hit a mid-quarter dry spell, like half the bloody plot threads I plan.

I am honestly tired of trying for this, and I did try my hardest. Better luck to you in the future.

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We're now in the predicted situation of it being impossible to outfit all the girls effectively because we don't have the workshop and it being impossible to upgrade the workshop because we're stuck cranking out trash items and building upgrades

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I'm very sorry the system is working as designed. It's almost like the QM can do math too in order to set up his game state and progression so there's story and gameplay integration! There's no critical dice roll, no magic stratagem, no omake bonus; nothing that can try and shim the reality that you are climbing out of abject poverty one bootstrap at a time with wagon train of homeless vagrants behind you holding onto your coat for guidance.

Maybe we should start charging the magical girls in labor as was done with Calypso. Want trinket/wand/costume X? Pay it off in helping expand the motel.

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That's honestly a thing I'm more liable to do for earmarked items. Most of the girls who live at the hostel have decent bankrolls now (40-70 Stuff) though and vagrant girls are normally flush with cash anyway since they can't liquidate easily.

 

[Nottheunmaker]

I will admit, the revelation that

Spoiler

Jocelyn's potential plot arc with the Tyrfing shit apparently has gotten thrown out the window because she had a bad roll despite us throwing the book at salvaging her, and she's potentially now eternally stuck at hired help status

aggravates me a bit. But the characters and plot are good enough that I'm willing to ignore how virtually everything in this game is random to the point where it's not really distinguishable from a web serial.

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My understanding this that the arc is still there, just on hold until Medicine Boy can heal her and continue. I do have mixed feelings on one shit roll fucking it up so bad, but I remind myself that she's only around at all because of a good roll.

It's part of why I've been pushing so hard on the workshop upgrade. I'm sure the Kolobok would be massively helpful in healing her, so I want to be damn sure that researching it goes as smoothly as possible so the dice have less of a chance a fucking us.

Edit: Ninja'd by the GM! The best kind of ninja.

 

[Alectai]

Yeah, reasonable enough responses.

I mean, I'm along for the ride regardless because this is a great story and it hasn't crossed the line to being heartbreaking despite feeling on the ragged edge of sanity sometimes. Like, for all that our Workshop stuff is getting fucked, we did manage to absorb the influx of new megucas to the point where our problem boils down to "Shit's expensive yo" as opposed to "Young girls are literally dying on the streets"

And that kind of karma is the sort of thing that inevitably pays out.

 

[Naron]

I'm very sorry the system is working as designed. It's almost like the QM can do math too in order to set up his game state and progression so there's story and gameplay integration! There's no critical dice roll, no magic stratagem, no omake bonus; nothing that can try and shim the reality that you are climbing out of abject poverty one bootstrap at a time with wagon train of homeless vagrants behind you holding onto your coat for guidance.

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...you do realise neither veekie nor I were criticising your design in a single word?

I was talking about the majority voting for everything but the workshop several times despite my trying hard to sway people, not anything else.

 

[veekie]

...you do realise neither veekie nor I were criticising your design in a single word?

I was talking about the majority voting for everything but the workshop several times despite my trying hard to sway people, not anything else.

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*flops in agreement*
Basically, we burned our grace period for getting the infrastructure to help people efficiently in order to help people immediately.

And can now do neither.

 

[Olivebirdy]

*flops in agreement*
Basically, we burned our grace period for getting the infrastructure to help people efficiently in order to help people immediately.

And can now do neither.

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On the other hand, all our girls are alive, except maybe Trissa.

 

[Icipall]

There's no critical dice roll, no magic stratagem, no omake bonus; nothing that can try and shim the reality that you are climbing out of abject poverty one bootstrap at a time with wagon train of homeless vagrants behind you holding onto your coat for guidance.

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And climb up we will.

*flops in agreement*
Basically, we burned our grace period for getting the infrastructure to help people efficiently in order to help people immediately.

And can now do neither.

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You're painting devils on the walls. We can still do them, but we were never, and most likely never will, going to be in position where there is a perfect option of what to do next. We passed on chances to make longer lasting equipment for now, but in exchange we made sure that the megucas had a refuge and actual equipment to survive and make a living.

 

[Angelform]

To be fair, a lot of this is deliberate since my opinion is that there should be no metaknowledge and equally importantly that there should be an element of uncertainty present in everything. Crafting items has dice-based uncertainty, creating rooms has GM-based uncertainty.

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Metaknowledge? How the heck is it metaknowledge? Are the characters somehow unaware of what resources they use to make a room? Do none of the people, some of whom are millennia old, have even the vaguest idea of what a workshop needs? Is the local internet utterly silent on the matter of DIY building refurbishment?

There is a significant difference between 'an element of uncertainty' and the utter lack of information you are allowing.

 

[Derpmind]

@7734 So first off, I think you should have told us that this was changed. Until just now it was known from the rules you posted earlier that we could just upgrade the Workshop to instantly gain better tiers of equipment. I don't have a preference for the current workshop system or the previous one, but it kinda sucks that, even if the action's only been used once, we completely misunderstood what the action actually did. And saying it's "even funnier" that people had the wrong impression was kinda rude.

To be more accurate, I ran the numbers, and decided I didn't like the option path y'all could take if the thread managed to collect it's spaghetti long enough to maximize a paperclip.

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Not to say you shouldn't use what you have now, but there are other options. A hard cap(s) on workshop level (ex: T2 for the first few months), escalating resources costs, escalating time costs (2 weeks to upgrade instead of 1), decent chance to only get a non-tier upgrade, a crisis event, the specter of miserable failure.

In practice I'm not so sure paperclipping was something to worry about here? On the one hand we've still only upgraded the workshop once, which would indicate that the need to balance various actions has worked out so far. But on the other hand some people have been advocating for a workshop upgrade constantly regardless of the current circumstances, so IDK.

I'm always glad to find quests where impactful failure isn't just something that happens to non-protagonists, and it's one of the things I enjoy about this quest. (Too many QMs allow super risky or OOC plans to both happen and succeed.) But it'd be nice to know what our vote options actually do, or rather what our viewpoint character thinks each option would do. It's much worse to get a failure when you don't know what caused the failure to begin with. If for example upgrading the building rolls on a gatcha table of results, it would bu really helpful to have at least a little bit of info on what those results might be and/or what number we rolled. (And I'd caution that Gatcha mechanics owe their allegiance to no one, such as how MG fatalities haven't been as high as you planned on.)

 

[Simon_Jester]

It also doesn't help that the QM is not very clear on some aspects of of how upgrading works. To use a recent example, because of the way QM worded things,people in the thread were mislead into thinking that upgrading the workshop also upgraded the actual Tier of our MG gear. But no,apparently upgrading the workshop has squat to do with raising the Tier of our products,but it does increase the power of some things like durability. And the only way we're getting skill upgrades on Costumes and Bomb on par with our Trinkets(aside from major research) is if we take the inefficient option and craft them. And most of the thread was under this misconception for a while and the QM just now decided to clarify.

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To be fair, if workshop upgrades permit us to do more work or get better mileage out of the work, it also makes taking "inefficient" options like costumes and bombs more practical. Making a Tier 1 costume is a more attractive option now that we get free bombs out of it; that makes EVERY crafting option more attractive.

I will admit, the revelation that

Spoiler

Jocelyn's potential plot arc with the Tyrfing shit apparently has gotten thrown out the window because she had a bad roll despite us throwing the book at salvaging her, and she's potentially now eternally stuck at hired help status

aggravates me a bit. But the characters and plot are good enough that I'm willing to ignore how virtually everything in this game is random to the point where it's not really distinguishable from a web serial.

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I mean, us getting Jocelyn a normal body somehow doesn't strike me as being out of the question? It's just not gonna happen fast.

Gave up already myself. We're now in the predicted situation of it being impossible to outfit all the girls effectively because we don't have the workshop and it being impossible to upgrade the workshop because we're stuck cranking out trash items and building upgrades.

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Veekie, the cause and effect doesn't point that way.

We can't outfit all the girls because there are too many and there were always too many for us to equip everyone, unless we were going to deliberately turn everyone but our first four or so away and let them die on the streets in droves. We were never going to be able to outfit literally everyone. The problem comes from the limits of our own crafting skills, the logistics of only being able to craft one item per week, and it being Week 12. Not from a lack of workshop upgrades. If we'd done nothing but workshop upgrades and item crafting, we'd still be pretty limited in the number of items we could have produced, and the number of girls we could "outfit effectively."

I'll push for a damn workshop upgrade on the first turn that I'm not specifically thinking "we could save like six people with a single additional building upgrade" or "we are going to run out of money literally right away if we don't craft and sell something for Mundanes." But while we might theoretically be able to craft a bit more shiny if we'd taken another workshop upgrade or two, we wouldn't be playing a completely different game.

@7734 seems to have put a considerable amount of effort into creating a game where there are always aspects of Medicine Boy's situation that are flawed, limited, and kind of janky. And I'm pretty sure there is no royal road to post-scarcity conditions, no Make Everything Okay button we could push if only we were smart enough.

Stop catastrophizing the choice you consider suboptimal.

Maybe we should start charging the magical girls in labor as was done with Calypso. Want trinket/wand/costume X? Pay it off in helping expand the motel.

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We've already gotten offers like that. If we market relatively good stuff to our existing population it'll probably happen again, though as the QM points out it's often more likely to be a thing for earmarked items.

That's honestly a thing I'm more liable to do for earmarked items. Most of the girls who live at the hostel have decent bankrolls now (40-70 Stuff) though and vagrant girls are normally flush with cash anyway since they can't liquidate easily.

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Hm. That's a good point. The girls accumulate Stuff over time, so we can command higher prices from the local girls the longer we wait.

[Obviously there are limits to this as a strategy, but it's a side effect of not crafting anything for 2-3 weeks]

 

[Naron]

Stop catastrophizing the choice you consider suboptimal.

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I am not sure, but I think you just built yourself a strawman there.

Veekie's point was not to do nothing but workshop upgrades. It was that so far, players overprioritised building upgrades over workshop upgrades instead of doing them at least somewhat evenly with crafting. Which means that now, even if something was crafted, more people are left unarmed than there would be if another upgrade had been made (that likely grants additionally crafted stuff, same as the bombs MC creates with each action).

And the brunt of the fighting is apparently about to hit soon.

So yes, upgrading the building so much might have prevented a few more girls from having to live on the street. It might also lead to a bunch of these dying soon because there is not even nearly enough gear among all of them. Not even the veterans are all that properly equipped.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I am not sure, but I think you just built yourself a strawman there.

Veekie's point was not to do nothing but workshop upgrades.

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I didn't say that WAS Veekie's point.

But he's citing a condition ("we have a lot of poorly equipped girls") as being the fault of a choice we made ("lack of workshop upgrades") when in reality the situation is more nuanced. There would be a lot of poorly equipped girls anyway, they just wouldn't be under our roof. Even if we'd done nothing but pour out goods from the forges and upgrade said forges, turn upon turn, since game start, we just plain haven't had that much time.

If we'd concentrated on "arsenal of light" mode, we'd have better equipped girls... but a lot of other girls would be shivering on the street, especially now that the crisis is falling on us.

Instead, we've got a large and (somewhat) coordinated force of magical girls under our roof, and their equipment may not average out to be so great but we've got numbers on our side and what may well be the closest to centralized control and intelligence gathering of any place in this part of the continent for all I know. "Army of light" instead of "arsenal of light," if you will.

Strength in numbers matters, and while there is no such thing as the power of friendship there is still a very real power of teamwork. There is, as I said, no royal road to a "Make Everything Better" button. Taking, say, two more workshop upgrades wouldn't be a Make Everything Better button any more than what we actually did would be.

Therefore, saying "we're screwed and it's all the fault of you fools for not doing as I said" (or something functionally equivalent to that) is at best grossly premature and at worst a form of sheer arrogance- claiming to know things that one cannot possibly know.

 

[Naron]

Therefore, saying "we're screwed and it's all the fault of you fools for not doing as I said" (or something functionally equivalent to that) is at best grossly premature and at worst a form of sheer arrogance- claiming to know things that one cannot possibly know.

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Yeah, except no one is saying that. No one is saying everything is horrible, or that we are screwed entirely.

I do say that things could have been done better, though. It is not impossible to guess what may happen soon, seeing that all the options exist for a reason and are viable for a reason. And if you look back, you find that one of them has been taken a total of once while two others were taken four and five times out of twelve, being crafting and building upgrades respectively.

That aside, before anyone misinterprets this, I am not advocating to have an equal number of workshop upgrades. But neglecting the workshop itself so much as to have such a ratio thus far is simply not a good thing for the Quest's future. It can not be if our QM actually put as much thought into this as they claim, which I do believe.

 

[Chaosbrain]

One "solution" that might help or something might be behind the scenes before the turn starts the QM rolls for what an upgrade will do, and posts that and never changes it. What I mean is when we vote for our action instead of it just being "Craft Item, Upgrade Building, Upgrade Workshop" its "Craft Item, Upgrade Building (Specific upgrade), Upgrade Workshop (Specific upgrade)." This way we dont get people arguing for say upgrading the building to open more rooms when in fact it will just improve the shower situation. However no other upgrades for the building can happen UNTIL the shower upgrade choice is made. This way people dont "put off" an upgrade until the last moment planning to take it to fill a niche that it actually wont do, and slightly pushes people to take upgrades so that "better" ones can be populated. Obviously item crafting and research doesnt change due to their inherent randomness.

Just a thought.

 

[7734]

Just a thought.

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While not an inherently bad idea, my answer is still no. In this case, because it creates an artificial entry barrier to things that unlock quickly, and ensures that for Cool New Things everyone has to get their shit together for two votes in a row. That hasn't really happened yet, and won't happen due to how this quest is an exercise in crisis management.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, except no one is saying that. No one is saying everything is horrible, or that we are screwed entirely.

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Ahem, and I quote:

We're now in the predicted situation of it being impossible to outfit all the girls effectively because we don't have the workshop and it being impossible to upgrade the workshop because we're stuck cranking out trash items and building upgrades

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Sounds like "we're screwed" to me. Note that "we're screwed" is not the same as "game over," or "we lose" or "there is no way out of this." Being screwed is, well, survivable. Usually.

Veekie is saying something pretty much along the lines of "we're screwed, as I predicted, because we didn't take more workshop upgrades the way I wanted." I'm sorry, but I'm not going to step back from that observation, because that's what he said.

I do say that things could have been done better, though. It is not impossible to guess what may happen soon, seeing that all the options exist for a reason and are viable for a reason. And if you look back, you find that one of them has been taken a total of once while two others were taken four and five times out of twelve, being crafting and building upgrades respectively.

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I don't think we should assume that building, workshop, and crafting actions were all 'meant' to be taken in alternation at a 1:1:1 ratio.

I'm not saying we should never upgrade the workshop, or even that we shouldn't do it soon. What I'm saying is that we quite simply have no idea whether we would be more or less screwed by having made slightly different choices. Too much depends on unforeseeable factors, and on rolls.

For example, we know- this is one hard fact the QM HAS shared with us- that magical girls tend to live longer when they team up. This is illustrated by Trompdoy, who was disemboweled and would probably have died if not for Eowyn bringing her to us to be crudely patched up with duct tape. Now, obviously pairing up senior girls with juniors will extend the juniors' life expectancy... but the reverse is also true. At least this way they have someone to drag them home from a serious injury, someone to shout "LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU" in a fight, and so on.

It's entirely possible that the decision to take in apprentices (so to speak) will be a life-saver for one or more of the girls. Not just the apprentices, the senior girls. But we couldn't have done that without the building upgrades.

Then again, maybe not.

Things are complicated, a lot of factors are outside our control. It is grossly unbecoming for us to stand around and express dismissive contempt for the choices that won on the grounds that obviously those choices are fucking us over, with the implication that if only we'd made different choices, those other choices would not be fucking us over.

Because 7734 has made it very clear that ALL choices in this game system lead to situations where things will be bad. Because things are bad, and we are trying to put out a house fire with a garden hose here.


That aside, before anyone misinterprets this, I am not advocating to have an equal number of workshop upgrades. But neglecting the workshop itself so much as to have such a ratio thus far is simply not a good thing for the Quest's future. It can not be if our QM actually put as much thought into this as they claim, which I do believe.
[/QUOTE]

 

[Simon_Jester]

While not an inherently bad idea, my answer is still no. In this case, because it creates an artificial entry barrier to things that unlock quickly, and ensures that for Cool New Things everyone has to get their shit together for two votes in a row. That hasn't really happened yet, and won't happen due to how this quest is an exercise in crisis management.

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Hm. Modification to the suggestion:

You could reroll every turn. So THIS turn our options are "shower upgrade, workshop upgrade that does THING1, craft" and NEXT turn our options are "figure out how to rig an elevator, workshop upgrade that does THING2, craft" and so on.

There'd be no tech tree, no published list of things unlocked by the things we do THIS turn. If a new option comes up that we just unlocked and you want to give us a fair shot at it, you just do "QM OVERRIDE: this is your option now" in one way or another. It can be listed alongside the 'random mundane building upgrade' option, so the options become "shower upgrade, workshop upgrade that does THING3, craft, build command center."

...

This would be a pretty potent anti-paperclipping measure, since while any upgrades we missed a chance on would be back later, we couldn't count on them coming back right away, or work out a schedule on which to upgrade.

The point being, it's kind of a kick in the shorts to be forced to make decisions without even the limited IC knowledge Medicine Boy has about his own plans and intentions. It means we're endlessly arguing about vague shit whereas even in character Medicine Boy probably has at least a rough idea of what will happen if he commits this week to upgrading his _____.

This is especially relevant for the building upgrades, which are extremely simple to understand conceptually and where there's not a lot of hidden wonder to be had by not telling us what happens until we vote for it.

[Also, because upgrades cost Mundanes, it'd be nice if we had a rough idea of how much the upgrades cost, since this would sometimes inform our decisions and, again, it's something Medicine Boy would probably know more or less]

 

[Naron]

It is grossly unbecoming for us to stand around and express dismissive contempt for the choices that won on the grounds that obviously those choices are fucking us over, with the implication that if only we'd made different choices, those other choices would not be fucking us over.

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Look, I really can not help you if you see it that way. That is not the read I got from anyone at all, and not what I myself wanted to convey.

Anyway, the conversation is beginning to go in circles, so we might as well drop it here.

 

[veekie]

Veekie is saying something pretty much along the lines of "we're screwed, as I predicted, because we didn't take more workshop upgrades the way I wanted." I'm sorry, but I'm not going to step back from that observation, because that's what he said.

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We are being screwed because our craft efficiency is crap.
If our workshop got another bonus like the free bomb factory they might not be all armed, but they'd at least have a few more bombs or weak items to tide things over with, and we wouldn't be in as bad a resource crisis.

We've spent basically every turn focusing on solving the most recent and immediate problem at the cost of improving our ability to solve problems effectively. The first few turns we had about 2 turns to 1 problem. The workshop upgrade to auto bomb has basically let us solve 1.5 problems with 1 turn, 3 bombs go a long way to keeping butts intact. We got an assistant who makes bombs when we do other things, which let us produce 1 solution per turn to either housing or MG gearing.

Except now we're dealing with 3 problems every turn, and we have the ability to solve 2.5 of them a turn.
Not upgrading workshop is only one issue.

On the flip side, getting large numbers of magical girls lets the command center get started early, which MIGHT improve our problem solving efficiency, if it can get the information to work with, and the tools to solve the problems with.

I.e. right now, its too late to do workshop upgrades. Best we can do is crank out as many pieces of gear as we can with our current materials and switch to housing upgrades so our buddy can make his super bombs once we have the information from the command center to create targeted bombs, like he did last turn.
Either that or research for a hail mary.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@veekie

My fundamental criticism of your position is that you are "counting the hits and ignoring the misses."

You clearly perceive the advantages of your chosen approach, and the opportunity cost of the path others chose instead.

But you don't reckon the opportunity costs of your chosen approach, or the advantages of the path others chose instead.

...

"Unarmed" girls are not literally unarmed and combat-ineffective. And more equipment is not the only way to improve survivability.

Larger groups of magical girls working together with central coordination are more effective than singletons operating without coordination.

Upgunning the magical girls we could have given gear to if only we'd taken more workshop and crafting actions matters. Reducing the number of magical girls who can easily be picked off by things that go bump in the night because they're sleeping in a culvert and hoping no gribblies get to them ALSO matters.

(Note that Trissa is still MIA after getting thrown out for not making rent; others can end up like her)

...

If we'd taken, say, two more workshop upgrades instead of two more building upgrades, the girls we did have in the building would have a slightly higher standard of kit (since only the crafting actions taken AFTER the workshop upgrades but BEFORE the current turn would be affected). We would have a different set of problems. But we would not have NO problems, or the means to solve all the problems that arise. Because @7734 has repeatedly told us point blank that he's not going to create a game situation where we push the right Make Everything Okay button in the first ten turns and bang, all our problems are solved.

You're looking at the fact that we face obstacles and an uphill battle, and assuming it's because we did something wrong, and specifically because we didn't do as you said.

We'd be facing obstacles and an uphill battle anyway. And you don't actually know what would happen if we did everything differently, nor do you actually get to see all the mechanisms by which our choices affect our outcomes.

 

[BelligerentGnu]

You could reroll every turn. So THIS turn our options are "shower upgrade, workshop upgrade that does THING1, craft" and NEXT turn our options are "figure out how to rig an elevator, workshop upgrade that does THING2, craft" and so on.

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I just want to throw my fervent and vocal support behind this option. Because this:

The point being, it's kind of a kick in the shorts to be forced to make decisions without even the limited IC knowledge Medicine Boy has about his own plans and intentions. It means we're endlessly arguing about vague shit whereas even in character Medicine Boy probably has at least a rough idea of what will happen if he commits this week to upgrading his _____.

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Is very, very true. It's similar to how we can't even be certain on earmarking craft items for certain MG, just make a ton of noise about it in thread and hope it reaches the necessary threshold.

 

[Icipall]

You could reroll every turn. So THIS turn our options are "shower upgrade, workshop upgrade that does THING1, craft" and NEXT turn our options are "figure out how to rig an elevator, workshop upgrade that does THING2, craft" and so on.

There'd be no tech tree, no published list of things unlocked by the things we do THIS turn. If a new option comes up that we just unlocked and you want to give us a fair shot at it, you just do "QM OVERRIDE: this is your option now" in one way or another. It can be listed alongside the 'random mundane building upgrade' option, so the options become "shower upgrade, workshop upgrade that does THING3, craft, build command center."

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This does sound like a good option.

@7734
How uncommon/common it is for magical girls to form permanent/semi-permanent groups, or is it more common for magical girls to work alone, and if so, why?

 

[LunarDreams]

Making a Tier 1 costume is a more attractive option now that we get free bombs out of it; that makes EVERY crafting option more attractive.

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it might be more attractive on paper,but in practice? I haven't seen anyone vote for crafting a Tier 1 costume OR Bomb or if they do,they only get 1 or 2 votes tops.

 

[Icipall]

it might be more attractive on paper,but in practice? I haven't seen anyone vote for crafting a Tier 1 costume OR Bomb or if they do,they only get 1 or 2 votes tops.

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Remember, every time we craft something we also automatically craft three Tier 1 bombs. Crafting costumes is going to be more attractive in the future since now we know that that's the only way to upgrade our costume crafting level. Costumes haven't been popular before, cause originally we couldn't craft them, and offensive tools (Tier 1/2 wands) and high level multitools (Tier 3 trinkets) have been seen more useful thus far.

 

[KreenWarrior]

We also now know it's possible to improve skills through practice - I'd been assuming that since we got a nat 10 on our Trinket and it didn't register as anything, they were gated in some other way. That also helps make the low Tier options more helpful.

But overall another workshop upgrade or two would potentially make the lower tier upgrades even better.

We also have 10 minor artifacts - we may be able to research more than one at a time since they're minor, but that's pure speculation.