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Prince Aladdin Quest (Disney Villains *Almost* Victorious)

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Lifeandlice said:
Dudes kinda sleezy and certainly a bit of a dick but by Greek god standards he's nearly a saint.
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One day... one day people will stop comparing the Greek versions of their legends to the Disney one's. The God's in this are, aside from more shortsighted and prideful moments of Zeus in the TV show, decent people for the most part. Hades ends up being comparatively evil. Not to say he is evil, but he still approved the murder of his infant nephew.
 
MrRobot said:
We also deal with rool like this in the form of RER, the thing is Ababwa is a extremely stable country with only a few enemies. So even in a 2 did not got us a huge issue.
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It also doesn't hurt that our main concern is consolidating our own empire and proving we're worthy of marrying Jasmine. Everyone else and their grandmother seems hell bent on conquering every patch of dirt they can reach that's not theirs or surviving the mother fuckers playing grab-ass with the local landmasses/seas.

Also doesn't help that there are still Heroes running around, ourselves included, and those tend to fuck up any kind of stability for regimes they don't like once they really get a good head of steam going.
 
Shadow-86 said:
Does the EITC have business in the slave trade as well?
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I assume their method of recruitment is to kidnap people and inform them of their new occupation they can't leave.

TempestK said:
There have also been reports of fantastically colored elephantine and mongoose-like figures stalking the brush, disrupting the idyllic spell the python weaves.
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Lol. Go you enemies turned allies!

TempestK said:
Some people also speculate that this is to allow for the easy construction of an Ababwan embassy after the Prince and his companions were instrumental in removing the threat of the Sand Witches from the world.
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Seems like a good idea.
TempestK said:
The land of the Black Sands was in turmoil after a group of foreigners from Europe had landed near the accursed place and wandered in.
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Hmm... no clue. Someone guessed frollos guys. Seems plausible.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Well, a faction has to roll badly over and over to really end up on the rocks. It's "swingy" in that any given faction is constantly dealing with random unlucky bullshit, but only the chronically unlucky factions are likely to be falling apart.
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Which doesn't help when they do roll badly over and over again.
Thozmp said:
if you mean that they only get one roll each turn, I dunno what to tell you. However, Shan Yu, Scar, Hades, and others have been having strings of bad luck, sometimes only holding on by author fiat.
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Maybe it should just be that? Roll three times or something, take some of chance out of this. I'm not expecting the GM to roll on each of the stats on all these factions and characters, but these are suppose to be powers lead by capital V Villains, with some factions having multiple such leaders. They shouldn't be left to pure random chance, they didn't get the power and positions they have by sheer randomness. There needs to be some randomness, but overall I think one die is too little. Somethings make some sense, Shan Yu losing in the three way struggle isn't unexpected, but Hades having things fall apart around him like this is weird. The pirates are a faction made up of powerful Villains, as are the Huntsman's Club.

I don't have a solution, so I get this isn't particularly helpful, but I always think that something is wrong every time the rumor report comes up, and it's always going to feel wrong.
 
A big thing that we have to remember is that the rival reports aren't actually the only rolls the other nations get. It's only the stuff we would reasonably know about. And given the fact that we have so many potential enemies, for narrative cohesion and to prevent a death spiral their needs to be a couple that manage to take themselves out.
 
Let's also acknowledge that running a quest with this many factions is hard.

I certainly couldn't do it. And if it makes things easier to just have a event roll per other faction that still seems like a lot of work.

I'm fine with not worrying about a dozen background rolls per faction.
 
Also, enemies who death spiral have just as much interesting narrative fuel behind them as ones that grow to be important rivals. Picking up the pieces of villains who are having a bad time gives us a lot of fuel for interesting character interactions and development. Now that shen yu is no longer in a place of power we get to ask interesting questions about what type of person he is when he doesn't have to be an iron fisted ruler of a fragmented army composed of infighting clans. Will he turn into an honorable warrior? Scramble desperately to regain his former power and become worse than he was before? There's all sorts of new questions we can answer.
 
Nottheunmaker said:
Which doesn't help when they do roll badly over and over again.
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Well yes, but that's not swingy, that requires persistent streaks of good or bad luck across multiple turns.

Somethings make some sense, Shan Yu losing in the three way struggle isn't unexpected, but Hades having things fall apart around him like this is weird. The pirates are a faction made up of powerful Villains, as are the Huntsman's Club.
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Hades is a single powerful villain-deity in a setting/region where there are many other powerful entities. Much of his control comes from having those entities sealed away, so the situation is never truly stable until he can drain them of their power or something. Furthermore, he is a chronically hapless and humorous villain, which makes things more complicated.
 
TempestK said:
News from Greece has been... chaotic. Apparently when Hades designated areas for the various gods to be held within the Underworld, he made one minor miscalculation. The cage that held Phthonus was placed at the foot of the hill of Sisyphus. The cunning old king made use of his punishment after several weeks of seeing at what point the rock he was pushing stopped, and where on the hill. And then, just before it would have reached the point of return... Sisyphus let it go, and shoved the rock. It crashed and bounced down the hill, plowing into the cage and freeing the God of Envy. Pledging himself to the god, Sisyphus was able to free several other minor gods whom then streamed out of the underworld. With deities on all sides of him, Cerberus was unable to perform his duty and keep the dead within the underworld.

Not only the dead mortals and captive divines escaped, but also a few that sat between. The giant Tityos once again terrorizes the land. The messenger of the TItans, Arke, now roams free. Tantalus, Ixion, and others whose names had faded from history emerged. While the escape has put both Hades and his wife in vile moods, their one solace aside from their incoming child is that the major gods and Titans had been passed by in the rush to escape. What these beings will do now is anyone's guess, but it's unlikely to benefit anyone but themselves.
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Ouch, poor Hades has not been having a good time. And here I was hoping that my omake would give him a shot in the arm or something.
 
DaOneInDaCorner said:
One day... one day people will stop comparing the Greek versions of their legends to the Disney one's. The God's in this are, aside from more shortsighted and prideful moments of Zeus in the TV show, decent people for the most part. Hades ends up being comparatively evil. Not to say he is evil, but he still approved the murder of his infant nephew.
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He could also have his appearance in Fantasia under his belt, where he wakes up from a nap throws lightning at a bunch centaurs that had been on dates and their cherub wingmen, laughing all the while at the chaos he's causing until he's tired enough to just go back to sleep.
 
DaOneInDaCorner said:
One day... one day people will stop comparing the Greek versions of their legends to the Disney one's. The God's in this are, aside from more shortsighted and prideful moments of Zeus in the TV show, decent people for the most part. Hades ends up being comparatively evil. Not to say he is evil, but he still approved the murder of his infant nephew.
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I mean, there are already elements of other versions of Hades in here, such as having Zagreus from the videogame Hades be a significant character (and Disney Hades is actually a better dad than the Hades in that game).
 
Okay, I know we have problems closer to home, but we very probably need to reinforce Xiang Wu somehow. We will not let one of our few allies (and our gateway into China) fall into that genocidal peacock's grasp.
 
Nottheunmaker said:
Which doesn't help when they do roll badly over and over again.

Maybe it should just be that? Roll three times or something, take some of chance out of this. I'm not expecting the GM to roll on each of the stats on all these factions and characters, but these are suppose to be powers lead by capital V Villains, with some factions having multiple such leaders. They shouldn't be left to pure random chance, they didn't get the power and positions they have by sheer randomness. There needs to be some randomness, but overall I think one die is too little. Somethings make some sense, Shan Yu losing in the three way struggle isn't unexpected, but Hades having things fall apart around him like this is weird. The pirates are a faction made up of powerful Villains, as are the Huntsman's Club.

I don't have a solution, so I get this isn't particularly helpful, but I always think that something is wrong every time the rumor report comes up, and it's always going to feel wrong.
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Well, I for one prefer this way of doing the Rival Reports, because part of why I quit the Doof-Quest was that it was so utterly frustrating to me to see so many Rivals landing so many Crit Rolls all the time while the Players struggled to get anything done.
I like this arrangement way better. Especially since someone rolling so badly as often as Shan Yu did is VERY unlikely.
 
Alexander Sturnn said:
Well, I for one prefer this way of doing the Rival Reports, because part of why I quit the Doof-Quest was that it was so utterly frustrating to me to see so many Rivals landing so many Crit Rolls all the time while the Players struggled to get anything done.
I like this arrangement way better. Especially since someone rolling so badly as often as Shan Yu did is VERY unlikely.
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I know this doesnt belong here, but MiH and the others explained multiple Times, that Our Rivals (*not* Enemies, but distinguishing These two concepts is another problem many players still have) seemingly "suceeding all the time" and "only US having huge troubles getting anything done" is a fallacy borne from Our incomplete PoV over the setting. We simply never know everything anyone is doing. Coupled with even artificial Crit sucesses just being way More likely mathematically than Crit fails, *of course* to An outsider it would Look like Everyone Else was having way better luck.

Remember the Critical Meltdown turn, where we caused everyones National Actions to become either crit sucesses or crit failures and the QMs decided to Show US all the other Kings rolls for once specifically to dash those grumblings about Things being stacked against US? As Shere Khan, Toffee and others had shown that turn, other King can and Do get shat on just as much (actually even more so than US on average according to those calculated every faction's average "showing" across the years) as US.

So sry to say that, but your frustration is kind on you not listening to everyone explaining why Things Arena as one-sided as they look
 
TheGleeman said:
I know this doesnt belong here, but MiH and the others explained multiple Times, that Our Rivals (*not* Enemies, but distinguishing These two concepts is another problem many players still have) seemingly "suceeding all the time" and "only US having huge troubles getting anything done" is a fallacy borne from Our incomplete PoV over the setting. We simply never know everything anyone is doing. Coupled with even artificial Crit sucesses just being way More likely mathematically than Crit fails, *of course* to An outsider it would Look like Everyone Else was having way better luck.

Remember the Critical Meltdown turn, where we caused everyones National Actions to become either crit sucesses or crit failures and the QMs decided to Show US all the other Kings rolls for once specifically to dash those grumblings about Things being stacked against US? As Shere Khan, Toffee and others had shown that turn, other King can and Do get shat on just as much (actually even more so than US on average according to those calculated every faction's average "showing" across the years) as US.

So sry to say that, but your frustration is kind on you not listening to everyone explaining why Things Arena as one-sided as they look
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I know their explanation, but I personally couldn't help it. Even though I knew we had an incomplete POV, the fact that we only ever saw them succeeding for such a long time robbed me of my Motivation for the Quest.

That's entirely my Problem and I freely acknowledge that. But it's just how it felt to me. Sorry.

Also, I'm pretty sure I had already left the Quest when that Critical Meltdown Turn happened.
 
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Lifeandlice said:
Fuck.
He doesn't deserve this. Dudes kinda sleezy and certainly a bit of a dick but by Greek god standards he's nearly a saint. Here's hoping Herc sets aside his grudges to help keep Greece from falling apart.
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Real Greek mythology Hades don't deserve this, Disney Hades kind of does, he's less nice than Real Greek mythology Hades is, and the Disney Greek gods, are far nicer than Real Greek mythology Greek gods, Disney Zeus for one don't cheat on Hera, is a supportive dad, and aside from occasionally overreacting to slights(how he punished Prometheus, and after Hercules talked with him about it, Zeus actually admitted that he was too harsh in punishing Prometheus) he's not all that bad a person.

Disney Zeus isn't perfect or anything, but he certainly don't deserve the fate that Hades has subjected him to, nor do all the other Disney Greek gods.

Even if Herc sets aside his grudges, I doubt Herc is going to set aside his desire to free his parents, he might decide not to seek revenge on Hades, but he's almost certainly not going to be satisfied, letting his family be imprisoned for eternity.
DaOneInDaCorner said:
One day... one day people will stop comparing the Greek versions of their legends to the Disney one's. The God's in this are, aside from more shortsighted and prideful moments of Zeus in the TV show, decent people for the most part. Hades ends up being comparatively evil. Not to say he is evil, but he still approved the murder of his infant nephew.
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Disney Hades is evil, he's not the evilest of evil, but evil he is, he seem to be becoming a somewhat better person, but he's still kind of evil, and he's still keeping the other gods locked up.
Nottheunmaker said:
Which doesn't help when they do roll badly over and over again.

Maybe it should just be that? Roll three times or something, take some of chance out of this. I'm not expecting the GM to roll on each of the stats on all these factions and characters, but these are suppose to be powers lead by capital V Villains, with some factions having multiple such leaders. They shouldn't be left to pure random chance, they didn't get the power and positions they have by sheer randomness. There needs to be some randomness, but overall I think one die is too little. Somethings make some sense, Shan Yu losing in the three way struggle isn't unexpected, but Hades having things fall apart around him like this is weird. The pirates are a faction made up of powerful Villains, as are the Huntsman's Club.

I don't have a solution, so I get this isn't particularly helpful, but I always think that something is wrong every time the rumor report comes up, and it's always going to feel wrong.
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Hades having problems is entirely plausible, as seen in the Hercules cartoon, Greece is pretty much constantly having problems, and that's with the full Greek Pantheon working on keeping Greece running, considering Hades imprisoned something like 90% of the Pantheon, set free the Titans, who are basically walking disaster areas, who he at best have tenuous control over, and killed or drove out most of the heroes, making it so no one were opposing the monsters, it's no wonder he has problems.

Hades is trying to run Greece, with a tenth the godpower Zeus had access to, the people of Greece like him far less than they liked Zeus, so instead of the mortals supporting him in whatever small ways they can, they are more likely to cause inconveniences for him, if they think they can get away with it, and that goes double for the surviving heroes.

Outside of Author fiat, a Hades victory would never last long, far too few of the gods like him, especially after he betray them, by setting the titans free and imprisoning the gods, and we clearly see in the Cartoons, that running Greece take a pantheon of gods.

If Greece was a corporation, then Hades performed a hostile takeover, fired 90% of the employees, don't have a particularly good relationship with most of the remaining employees, and isn't managing to hire new employees to replace the ones he fired, that's a setup for failure if I have ever seen any.
 
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