Lars Forkbeard + Jordan Sharkmouth & Felag
Actually, no. These guys are from Rogaland. Totally different place from Vestfold. Reidar Swordfury and the Skirsvikingar are our only enemies in Vestfold. Or at least the only ones we're aware of.
If it turns out we can actually agree on a middle road here, then that would be fine by me. If you feel I'm misrepresenting your overall approach here, then I apologise, but I have been responding to the things you've written, so maybe it's that we've got a bit overly focussed on a few points of contention and lost sight of the bigger picture?
To try and lay out concretely where I think we disagree, what started this discussion was when you said that we should not continue with the fence. Quite recently, you said (and let me know if you feel this paraphrasing is inaccurate) that you did not feel we had "actual good topics" for cultivation research. If you're happy to continue work on the fence and immediately start work on the fields in our soul next turn, then great, we agree. But I hope you can understand why that hadn't been my impression from reading your posts.
I never said we shouldn't continue with the fence. I said we didn't want to spend 4 dice a turn on it as that seemed excessive and faster than we needed. My entire point was advocating for more like 1 die a turn since that would complete it fast enough.
I also suggested we maybe take a single turn off from the Wall next turn while we threw 8 or 9 Training Dice towards Security Skill-Trick before continuing because if it's gonna be a lot of effort to build, we don't want to redo it even if doing so isn't a long term problem, but that's a one turn delay at most and wouldn't keep us from starting the laying out the actual plots of land for farming in the coming turn (which I'm definitely down for).
Equally, if you feel Building is a skill-trick we really need before attempting the farm buildings, then fair enough. In my view, that would logically means we should immediately put as many Training dice into Building as we need to rank it to an appropriate level, then proceed. But you've said that we will get to it within the next couple of turns (I don't know if this means rank it up, or start ranking it at one success per turn), which I think is glacially too slow for something that important. If this is a misunderstanding or you'd be happier with going faster, then that's fine by me!
There are actually two different skill tricks for buildings, Residence and Utility. And honestly, I think we'd be fine picking them up the slow way after getting Security the fast way, because we can't do everything at once and shouldn't try. We can get the wall completed and the fields laid out while we learn how to do those things. See what those actually do, if anything.
If people in general prefer a faster method, we could aim a bunch of dice at Utility the turn after next (next turn being the one we aim a bunch of dice at Security) and likely start around then, and leave the house for last when the Residence Trick finishes, but honestly, I don't think we're in enough of a rush that doing that is necessary.
Like, personally, I would like a third magical plant for our Soulscape (3s being important to the Norse) and to get them all to level 3 before we try advancing and see if that does anything special. That's gonna take a little while, though.
And, of course, all that is ignoring Seidr, which may eat a significant portion of our dice for at least a few turns going forward depending on what's available and what bonuses to learning it the seeress provides, so all this is highly speculative.
On the GM confirmation thing, thank you for tracking down the details. To my mind, the fact that our understanding is speculative is a compelling reason we need to begin experimenting and find out for sure which is a red herring, as soon as possible. Do you feel the same way?
No, because we literally just spent Reward Dice for a hint and can spend more if needed. We can narrow it down that way much more easily and economically than wasting large amounts of effort on things that don't matter. Blind experimentation should be used on things that probably aren't dangerous and don't require huge amounts of effort to do, we should try real hard to figure out an optimal route before even starting anything dangerous or effort intensive.
The problem is that slow-rolling means we progress at 1 point per turn, and the first roll might give zero (Because you can't slow-roll until you've rolled at least once into a given Skill or Trick). Yes, this is mathematically ideal because we remove the possibility of Failures from the table, but it's boring as hell to sit through.
I feel like it's only boring if there aren't other interesting things going on. Personally, I'm fine with wall building, soulscape farming, and particularly all the seidr related stuff we're about to do, plus the likely Dwarf expedition next turn, plus delving into what's going on with Minna, sparring Gabriel and Steinarr, and the host of other things planned for the next year, without adding 'buildings in our soulscape' as well.
I feel like the buildings can wait while we do all of that, y'know?
Like, if all we did with our whole turn was Training Dice assignment I'd be very against 1d in a bunch of stuff because it would indeed get boring...but honestly, Training Dice are not where most of the excitement lies in this Quest even if we use them in 'exciting' ways so using them for 'boring' stuff, from my perspective, just frees Imperial Fister to put the energy and wordcount into the other interesting stuff going on.
