I remember the days when Belegar was such an automatic pick that Boney was reluctant to include him. Now he's getting edged out by a rat. Just goes to show that tastes change.
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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
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- Tags
- warhammer warhammer fantasy fantasy be gay do crimes (gay) female protagonist pansexual protagonist ck2 quest divided loyalties mountain vietnam ranald is real this is a dwarf quest (dwarfs) this is maybe an elf quest this is not a vampire quest this is not an empire quest try it and find out open voting
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Earth
Top 5 make it in, so Belegar's not out.
...we're just picking them over a library
- Location
- between Venus and Mars
[X] Pay a visit to your fief, to see if anything has changed. It probably hasn't.
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[X] Julia, to see what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Stirland, to see for yourself how the war against Sylvania is progressing.
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[X] Julia, to see what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Stirland, to see for yourself how the war against Sylvania is progressing.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I thought of another Social option. A random Tor Lithanel social event of some kind. Like just walking in on a garden party or some street event, either among the lower classes that slum it in the open/in a cafe, or at some "everyone of note is invited" upper class gala.
I assume that the WEB-MAT members still do their own off-screen activities, both for personal development and actually related to WEB-MAT in some way? Like, not in a concrete X AP per turn complete with strict dice rolling kind of way of course. But in a narrative whatever feels right at the time way maybe? You know, with some of them maybe suddenly springing anything from a genius breakthrough to a major screw-up on us unexpectedly. Or even a Divided Loyalties™ event.
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] Vicarius Galenstra, to get to know him and his Ward.
[x] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[x] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[x] Belegar, to discuss who has been made Loremaster after you.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[x] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[x] Middenland, to see how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[x] The Gold College, to see what's become of their research into Skaven technology.
[x] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[x] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[x] Belegar, to discuss who has been made Loremaster after you.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[x] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[x] Middenland, to see how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[x] The Gold College, to see what's become of their research into Skaven technology.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
[X] Belegar, to discuss who has been made Loremaster after you.
[X] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Middenland, to see how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[X] Julia, to see what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.
I think that visiting Qretch after he publishes will be more interesting than right before it.
[X] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Middenland, to see how the Ulricans are going with their new Eonir coreligionists.
[X] Julia, to see what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.
I think that visiting Qretch after he publishes will be more interesting than right before it.
I imagine they do not, because all that stuff has to be considered and rolled and it adds to GM workload. It's the same reason why we do not get political events in Bretonia with their Chaos orcs, even thorough those are technically supposed to do something, it is conservation of detail because the GM only has so many hours in the day.
- Location
- Alaska
[X] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Pay a visit to your fief, to see if anything has changed. It probably hasn't.
[X] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[X] Vicarius Galenstra, to get to know him and his Ward.
Abelhelm entrusted her with that fief, she should at least check in on it once a decade or so.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Pay a visit to your fief, to see if anything has changed. It probably hasn't.
[X] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[X] Vicarius Galenstra, to get to know him and his Ward.
Abelhelm entrusted her with that fief, she should at least check in on it once a decade or so.
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My take is that I had imagined WebMAT more as a group thing where all the wizards work together rather than us having to shepherd along each WebMAT member individually. I understand the action economy issue, but I think my preferred version would be WebMAT can only do one or two things per turn but the things it can do are BIG because there's a team of wizards on them. So it's the same amount of narrative writing from BoneyM, but the results are much more powerful.
An example from the quest would be when we were getting aid from multiple Lord Magisters and a Runelord on building the Eye of Gazul, and it at least had the potential (which we rolled high to realize) to produce a really incredible result. I don't expect our current WebMAT team could produce an Eye of Gazul level result, but I could see it able to do much more than an individual Max action or Johann action or Egrimm action could manage.
Like, what I wish we could have done this turn was have WebMAT as an institution scour the archives of the Colleges for Waystone material. We would have lost the individual Johann and Egrimm actions, but because Egrimm was part of the action he might have been able to push us immediately to "negotiate for whatever the Light College knows".
Does that make sense and would anyone else prefer it worked like that?
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
I mean not simulating Bretonnia makes complete sense.
Hell, I think not simulating the WEB-MAT characters in detail makes sense. I'm more thinking along the lines of keeping in mind their personalities and how it could affect off screen progress, and occasionally throwing something into the on screen situation as quest hooks/to muck things up/to explain an out of left field crit roll/to make the characters feel like they have agency without having to simulate each of them each turn.
Also, I think that characters working directly under us should have their own agenda that might occasionally clash with ours in ways we don't expect or even in ways that are confusing to us without further investigation. It's a big part of the whole original premise of the quest and it would finally give purpose to the "spend time investigating someone without their knowledge" action. If the people under us are only up to no good specifically if we choose to investigate them then it never makes sense to do so. So there must be some QM tool that creates situations that makes players go "if only we had investigated them sooner", no?
Edit: I think that the illusion of NPC agency among our subordinates is what I am most interested in. Like, I am a really big fan of the locked in social action initiated by someone else thing and I'd like WEB-MAT to be capable of something similar, but with more concrete and significant impact and consequences.
Hell, I think not simulating the WEB-MAT characters in detail makes sense. I'm more thinking along the lines of keeping in mind their personalities and how it could affect off screen progress, and occasionally throwing something into the on screen situation as quest hooks/to muck things up/to explain an out of left field crit roll/to make the characters feel like they have agency without having to simulate each of them each turn.
Also, I think that characters working directly under us should have their own agenda that might occasionally clash with ours in ways we don't expect or even in ways that are confusing to us without further investigation. It's a big part of the whole original premise of the quest and it would finally give purpose to the "spend time investigating someone without their knowledge" action. If the people under us are only up to no good specifically if we choose to investigate them then it never makes sense to do so. So there must be some QM tool that creates situations that makes players go "if only we had investigated them sooner", no?
Edit: I think that the illusion of NPC agency among our subordinates is what I am most interested in. Like, I am a really big fan of the locked in social action initiated by someone else thing and I'd like WEB-MAT to be capable of something similar, but with more concrete and significant impact and consequences.
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- Location
- USA
I assume they do, just not in a narratively-relevant-to-Mathilde way. Otherwise this is like saying that the Ducklings never did anything other than meet with Loremaster Weber every 6 months. Or unless she explicitly poked them something during a turn.
[x] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[x] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[x] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[x] Belegar, to discuss who has been made Loremaster after you.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[x] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[x] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[x] Belegar, to discuss who has been made Loremaster after you.
It's been less than a decade since we checked on it. (This is the ten year anniversary of Abelhelm's death, and we checked on it between then and now.)
I do not have time to express this in detail because it is almost 1 AM, but take it from someone who has had to very regretfully leave a very long running quest unfinished because of an overwhelming level of simulation among other things, amalgamating characters into abstract actions and creating complicated webs of conflicting motivations would not make things easier. The format of 'character action with Mathilde aid' presents a simple template to work things out and for the PoV it is to be written from. The alternative would be much more complex in what is already an ever more complex quest world.
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[x] Pay a visit to your fief, to see if anything has changed. It probably hasn't.
[x] Roswita, to get a sense for who will control Sylvania after you turned down the position.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[x] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[x] Roswita, to get a sense for who will control Sylvania after you turned down the position.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[x] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
But these are our direct subordinates. Shouldn't they be at least as active, alive and potentially troublesome as, say, our Council colleagues back when we worked for Abelheim? And that requires at least some off screen "action".
Even if not, there are other ways to create that illusion.
Say for the sake of argument that there is a "source of unexpected event" table that Boney rolls on. On that table there are whole neighboring countries like Kislev and Bretonnia without differentiation, Imperial provinces and the most major organizations (like the church of Ulric/Sigmar or some major evil infiltrator faction) get their own entry, then specifically organizations that already have a relationship with Mathilde (like the Colleges or the Runesmithing Guild or a Karak that she's been to), then all those groups directly relevant to her current occupation(s), then the rest of the introduced characters that Boney still considers interesting and relevant. This turn the "roll" on the table would have apparently fallen on the [Ostermark] number, with Boney then thinking of something interesting to do with that.
In such a case I would wish that the WEB-MAT members, instead of being just more names on that long table, would make their own little table with an additional roll happening every 1 or 2 turns just to see if any of them came up with some story relevant shenanigans to do independently of the player vote.
Now to clarify, I am not speculating that Boney does in fact use tables like that for this purpose. Even less am I suggesting that he should switch to such tables. He is the experienced QM that's been doing this successfully for years after all. All of the above was just an example to express the proportional importance I hope for WEB-MAT characters to have.
After all, we already know for a fact that Boney spends at least some time on off screen events and developments. That's where the Marienburg stuff comes from for instance. Essentially I am just expressing a preference that a proportionally significant amount of off screen energy is spent on the WEB-MAT characters, towards both positive windfalls and problematic complications (on the two extreme ends of the spectrum), regardless of whatever shape or form Boney decides to do the game mechanical part of that.
Even if not, there are other ways to create that illusion.
Say for the sake of argument that there is a "source of unexpected event" table that Boney rolls on. On that table there are whole neighboring countries like Kislev and Bretonnia without differentiation, Imperial provinces and the most major organizations (like the church of Ulric/Sigmar or some major evil infiltrator faction) get their own entry, then specifically organizations that already have a relationship with Mathilde (like the Colleges or the Runesmithing Guild or a Karak that she's been to), then all those groups directly relevant to her current occupation(s), then the rest of the introduced characters that Boney still considers interesting and relevant. This turn the "roll" on the table would have apparently fallen on the [Ostermark] number, with Boney then thinking of something interesting to do with that.
In such a case I would wish that the WEB-MAT members, instead of being just more names on that long table, would make their own little table with an additional roll happening every 1 or 2 turns just to see if any of them came up with some story relevant shenanigans to do independently of the player vote.
Now to clarify, I am not speculating that Boney does in fact use tables like that for this purpose. Even less am I suggesting that he should switch to such tables. He is the experienced QM that's been doing this successfully for years after all. All of the above was just an example to express the proportional importance I hope for WEB-MAT characters to have.
After all, we already know for a fact that Boney spends at least some time on off screen events and developments. That's where the Marienburg stuff comes from for instance. Essentially I am just expressing a preference that a proportionally significant amount of off screen energy is spent on the WEB-MAT characters, towards both positive windfalls and problematic complications (on the two extreme ends of the spectrum), regardless of whatever shape or form Boney decides to do the game mechanical part of that.
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[X] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Belegar, to discuss who has been made Loremaster after you.
[X] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
[X] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[X] Belegar, to discuss who has been made Loremaster after you.
[X] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[X] Qrech, who is putting the finishing touches on his tome on the Chaos Dwarves.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Let's please not dedicate a library to the anthropomorphic representation of deception. What's next? A hospital dedicated to the Gambler and a bank dedicated to the Night Prowler?
NeonLights
Formerly Reliable_2IC
- Location
- In shambles
I thought that was already happening. Johann with his Gilding and sports, Egrimm studying Eltharin, and presumably Max is blacksmithing and went snooping through libraries off screen for his own interests.
I kind of think it's a little pointless at that.
If it hits its goal of being 'knowledge for everyone' Verena and her cult are going to come in and not even a crowbar is going to move them. regardless of what shape it's built in.
Valarauko
Demon of Power
- Location
- Angband
Which is indeed precisely the purpose of it all. It's us playing wingman for Ranald by building a peace offering to his mother-in-law. Mathilde naturally has her own reasons for wanting the library (quite Verenan reasons, at that), but making it this shape means Ranald can sign his name on it while also having complete plausible deniability, thanks to the library name and the Agrurhun symbolism. With some luck, we can get Verena invested in a project that Ranald can use his domains to aid, thereby improving Verena's opinion of him.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
[x] Vicarius Galenstra, to get to know him and his Ward.
[x] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[x] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.
[x] Thorek Ironbrow, to witness the arrival of the first Dwarf in Tor Lithanel for over four thousand years.
[x] Egrimm, to try to sound out more information about the Alric situation.
[x] The Karak Azul Architects, to get involved in the design of your Library in detail.