- Location
- Utrecht
The Gambler would probably affect Mathilde's rolls.
I'm hoping her effective Learning 49 will result in Mathilde synthesizing the knowledge and actually contributing something that effectively puts some truth to her bluffing.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
-
- 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.
I'm hoping her effective Learning 49 will result in Mathilde synthesizing the knowledge and actually contributing something that effectively puts some truth to her bluffing.
- Location
- Earth
We don't know the mechanics of how things will work out. Those rolls could be d100s, or they could be d6s, or the cohesion of the project could be determined by some other structure of rolls. What we do know is that putting the Gambler on the Foundations action gives us the best possible chance to succeed on the most important action, and I think that's worth doing over optimizing any of our less critical actions.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Imagine it's 8 d6s and Ranald pulls his greatest bullshit yet and we get boxcars across the board.
- Location
- Oklahoma
8 magical paradigms go in, along with several kegs of Dwarven ale.
Three days later the team returns to consciousness, having invented new and improved Waystones that can be easily reproduced by every Order faction.
No one ever remembers those three days.
I'm heading off to bed but let me just drop my 2 cents on the Gambler discourse before I go:
In addition to the fact that the Gambler might not even have a huge effect on the action of laying the foundations which has already been said, I think everyone needs to consider what 'fuck it up' even means. We have explicit word of Boney that it is not possible for Mathilde to screw up the Foundations so badly that the entire project is ruined, anymore than she could've killed Boris when she dueled him and rolled a natural one. I think it's important to remember this because when the Gambler was first mentioned in the context of the foundations actions that fear was one of the main justifications, and I feel like a lot of people are still acting as if that fear is justified.
Now, the foundations action has two components: the diplomacy part and the knowledge part. We are working with a number of different groups, Runesmiths and Eonir and College wizards and Kislev spellcasters. For every single one of those groups Mathilde has the relevant diplomacy actions. For dwarfs and the Colleges she has the advanced version. For the Eonir she merely has the basic version, but Johann - who is going to be a part of the foundations, being a member of WEB-MAT - has an advanced version. We joke about Mathilde being terrible at diplomacy but 18 is pretty high, and with all those relevant skills and Egrimm and Johann adding their own reasonably high diplomacy scores to our efforts I really don't think we should be too worried about that.
Now, the knowledge part. I want to give an example from a previous task: translating Queekish. Imagine if back when we were translating Queekish someone said "this is an important action, therefore we should put the Gambler on writing our dictionary instead of using the Deciever to get spoken Queekish out of Qrech." This makes no sense - yes, putting the Gambler on writing a book will give us somewhat higher rolls, but it won't magically give us the knowledge of spoken Queekish, and having that knowledge in our dictionary is significantly more important than that book being well written. Now I admit it is theoretically possible that the Nordland Hedgewise don't have any useful Waystone lore, so the analogy isn't quite one to one (though I note that when we spoke to Qrech boney rolled a 1d6 and we only got low Queekish from a roll of 2, possibly a roll of 1 would have given us less so even in that case it wasn't a sure thing). But it is just as possible that the mechanics of the foundations actions are such that the effect of the Gambler is insignificant, and getting more knowledge to make our theoretical framework more well rounded isn't obviously inferior to getting higher rolls, and in fact it is qualitatively different to the Gambler because no amount of luck will magically give us knowledge our framework lacks.
Finally, the Gambler is such a boring face of the coin. Seriously. It just makes actions 'better' in a perfectly generic way. If there isn't anything else to do with the coin we can always fall back on it, but using it when there are other options is cowardice. You want to Gamble? Gamble that the Hedgewise's knowledge is something worth getting. Gamble on Halétha, if you somehow aren't sure yet. Live a little!
(one last point on the Hedgewise and their possible Waystone lore before I finally go to bed - man this post is taking me more time than I thought it will - when we visited the Hedgewise Baba whatshername mentioned that the Jades always left the forest to them and have even before Teclis (that means druids), and while the Forest of Shadows is pretty terrible it isn't choked with Dhar like Sylvania or anything, we've been there we would've noticed, so whose doing Waystone maintenance on the Waystones there? it's the Haléthan Hedgewise, checkmate atheists, ok I'm going to bed now)
[] plan Library
-[ ] WEB-MAT: Hire someone as a full-time Gyrocopter pilot (Adela).
-[ ] Investigate how the Vitae reacts to a power stone.
-[ ] Lay the foundations: work with the current members of WEB-MAT and the Waystone Project to build a single unified framework for understanding the Waystones.
-[ ] The Gambler: specify an action this will apply to.
A +20 bonus to up to two dice rolls resulting from a single chosen action.
-[ ] Branulhune's ability to disappear and reappear at a thought allows entirely new forms of combat. Continue to work on them.
-[ ] The many legends about the amount of books contained within and under Castle Drakenhof still haunt you. Organize an expedition to mine the ruins for books.
-[ ] Decide who your library staff will consist of, and go about recruiting them. (NEW)
-[ ] EIC: Have the Hochlander set up a shadow headquarters for the EIC in the Sunken Palace.
-[ ] Write a paper: Mushroom book.
-edit thinking of putting gambler on book mining.
Ok I am looking for something fluke this. People want to wait for the book mining and others want to go and to hire staff. If we are going to ignore most of webmat we get some things done. I say we spend AP and hire staff and do the book mining. That way we can secure the books and open the library to the public. I personally believe that the book mining action is important because it is one of the largest Libraries in the old world and the most known library to hold dark magic. With only that Count having one close in Nuln. The Black library may hold knowledge on waystones, secret texts from cults, lost books, and plunder from centuries of looting.
-[ ] WEB-MAT: Hire someone as a full-time Gyrocopter pilot (Adela).
-[ ] Investigate how the Vitae reacts to a power stone.
-[ ] Lay the foundations: work with the current members of WEB-MAT and the Waystone Project to build a single unified framework for understanding the Waystones.
-[ ] The Gambler: specify an action this will apply to.
A +20 bonus to up to two dice rolls resulting from a single chosen action.
-[ ] Branulhune's ability to disappear and reappear at a thought allows entirely new forms of combat. Continue to work on them.
-[ ] The many legends about the amount of books contained within and under Castle Drakenhof still haunt you. Organize an expedition to mine the ruins for books.
-[ ] Decide who your library staff will consist of, and go about recruiting them. (NEW)
-[ ] EIC: Have the Hochlander set up a shadow headquarters for the EIC in the Sunken Palace.
-[ ] Write a paper: Mushroom book.
-edit thinking of putting gambler on book mining.
Ok I am looking for something fluke this. People want to wait for the book mining and others want to go and to hire staff. If we are going to ignore most of webmat we get some things done. I say we spend AP and hire staff and do the book mining. That way we can secure the books and open the library to the public. I personally believe that the book mining action is important because it is one of the largest Libraries in the old world and the most known library to hold dark magic. With only that Count having one close in Nuln. The Black library may hold knowledge on waystones, secret texts from cults, lost books, and plunder from centuries of looting.
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K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
Yes, we won't fail the Project for one bad roll. But failed rolls could mean less options availables.
Lol, that's not a valid argument. It's extremely useful and polyvalent, and I'm not a risk taker by nature. Why would I want to take a riskier option when there's a much safer one at hand, with better chances of pay-off?
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- Location
- Earth
The mechanics of how the Gambler works means it either salvages some of our bad rolls or pushes some of our good rolls into great rolls. Preventing failures is good, but it's not just a 'prevent screwing up' tool, it's also a 'win more' tool. And 'winning more' on laying the foundation could be very impressive indeed.
But more importantly:
But more importantly:
Mathilde began this game with no chips and no cards. This is the first major play in that game, and I can think of no more fitting way to handle the greatest gamble Mathilde's ever embarked on than by honouring the Gambler.
I think we should also keep in mind that the other face of the Coin that has been proposed for use this turn, the Father, is not really that optimal. Like the Deceiver and the Night Prowler that face of the coin works best if you can put it on multiple actions. Short of trying to hire on multiple kinds of Hedgewise (which has very high odds of being redundant) can anyone think of what else to do with the Father? I mean the Damsels seem off the table until we have either solved a major geopolitical issue (the orcs) or shown results.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
House Tindomiel.
I don't know that Hekarti is a strong contender, but it would settle it either way.
- Location
- Earth
Not really? All that we know for certain is that if followers of a suspected goddess act hostile towards Mathilde when she has the Coin flipped to the Father, then that goddess is not one of Ranald's daughters. If the group would normally be untrusting but acts helpful and cooperative, it's likely but not quite certain that their patron is a daughter, since it could be the Father but could also be a diplomacy crit.
However, if that group was positively inclined anyway and acts friendly, then we have absolutely no idea if the Father actually did anything.
I just plain don't think it's a good idea to recruit the Hedgewise at this point anyway. We don't know that they know anything useful, and it would be a political pain in the ass to give them a literal seat at the table and treat them as though they were on par with these other groups.
Well, Ranald is a bit of a show off (see Protector + Vlag), so I suspect that if the father coin triggers, it will be very noticeable.
That said, I have nothing to back that up with, it's just a gut feeling. But I feel that a divine artefact doing divine things is not the sort of thing that we can miss happening.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
We don't know that the Hag Witches do either, we just grabbed them because we had the opportunity and they might be useful. Furthermore, I found mathymancer's point here about the Forest of Shadows compelling:
And here Algard and Kurtis talk about the Hedgewise in the same breath as Damsels and Kislevite mages as heterodox magical traditions that might be useful:
If our Magister Patriarch takes for granted the notion that they would be useful contributors and that the Articles of Magic awkwardness can be circumvented, probably we should take that seriously.
As far as I'm concerned, we're very likely to pick up the Hedgewise eventually. The question is just now or later.
Wouldn't it be better to use the Deceiver considering how we're basically bluffing?
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
We need a prepared lie if we're going to use the Deciever.
What would we lie with?
This is an interesting line. Algard is suggesting that we might not want to jump onto hedgewise involvement too quickly, but instead wait until we're more secure in our position. That said, I do want the hedgewise involved.
The Hag Witches are a recognized and legal magical tradition of Kislev, recommended by the Tsar's heir himself. Grabbing them because we had the opportunity and they might be useful was fine. The Hedgewise are an illegal organization. Not even technically illegal, actually "the colleges really do intend to bring them into the fold someday, it's just there are higher priorities and they aren't doing active harm at the moment" illegal.
Would it be possible to navigate that, as Algard suggests? Sure! But there's a difference between having them sitting at the table as the foundations are laid, if all of this goes well to be someday included in a massive portrait hanging in a museum commemorating the occasion, and bringing them in a little later as a backdoor consultant who need not be talked about very loudly. A "pain in the ass" are the words I used and I stick by them.
Let's make it later.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
Tbh i always viewed this as the fallacy of single point of view.
Not only is Algard not infallible (especially so in a topic that mistifies most of the old world), the entire Hedgewise debate is to me like extremely weird because it implies organization where there might be none. Some people that got involved in the network might not've even heard the other half from the same network even exists. Thats sorta the nature of rural living.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
What do y'all think of studying Power Stone creation with Egrimm through WEB-MAT? Then we could in a later turn involve him in all the AV actions. I don't know what action I would replace with that right now, but I thought I'd just put the idea in the room anyway.
Actually a dumb question, because I'm just going to start now and leave it up to you whether or not you answer.
Is the Gambler on foundation an essential to you or could you live without it?
What elevates sword style development to essential instead of very nice to have?
Do you have any order regarding which recruitments you want to see more or less?
Do you have any actions you don't want to see.
Also, you know that if you have two WEB-MAT actions you get another one for free, right? Because currently you have two in your second plan and are just leaving an AP on the floor while also Overworking.
I second this. The Hochlander is not a Ranaldite We don't even know if he has Ranaldite sympathies.
I'd be interested to see your version of a plan though. Now is the time for it, while we're still in a moratorium.
I for one would really rather wait a turn or even two for this particular shiny. I don't see it running away.
But yeah. I'm not completely opposed to delaying their recruitment. As long as Tindomiel happens right now.
May I interrogate you on your priorities a bit?
Actually a dumb question, because I'm just going to start now and leave it up to you whether or not you answer.
Is the Gambler on foundation an essential to you or could you live without it?
What elevates sword style development to essential instead of very nice to have?
Do you have any order regarding which recruitments you want to see more or less?
Do you have any actions you don't want to see.
We don't have anyone other than maybe Lord Hatalath specialized in four out of eight Winds. Devotees of the Hydra Queen might be able to provide all of that in a single person.
It gave us at least two mini-actions worth of progress and we didn't have many of those available.
I don't really feel like interdimensional plagiarizing of Tolkien is a worthwhile or interesting action. Like, what do you even expect Boney to write about such an action?
Also, you know that if you have two WEB-MAT actions you get another one for free, right? Because currently you have two in your second plan and are just leaving an AP on the floor while also Overworking.
I second this. The Hochlander is not a Ranaldite We don't even know if he has Ranaldite sympathies.
Insular and prosecuted people often know that outsiders are bumbling clueless idiots who can't differentiate between ordering a beer, insulting someone's mother and a marriage proposal. And Mathilde didn't seem like someone in the know during her visit.
We have a shrine to Ranald at our fief. The Sunken Palace pretty much is a shrine to Ranald.
If we add two additional WEB-MAT actions then not doing so without using those for our research backlog might be a bit hard. Maybe learning Power Stone creation with Egrimm? But even then there's a free action left over.
I'd be interested to see your version of a plan though. Now is the time for it, while we're still in a moratorium.
The Father isn't really an aspect of Ranald like the other four. He's not the god of fatherhood just because he has two daughters.
Just to make sure, does that mean you are looking forward to having another multiple updates long adventure right now? Because according to what Boney said, we shouldn't do this actions if we don't feel like having an adventure and whether it is a multiple updates style interlude (like the two we had in a row just last turn) or not is a "try and find out" kind of situation.
I for one would really rather wait a turn or even two for this particular shiny. I don't see it running away.
Good point. Didn't think of that.
If it's necessary, we have someone there who knows it already.
You really hate the idea of turn 39 happening before the summer starts IRL, don't you?
I'll probably approval it. The only things I'm iffy on are Apparition hunting without the Gambler (seems scary) and that the specific item of choice doesn't seem all that interesting as far as possible Windherder synergies go. But I'm willing to take the risk and I'm willing to do a "whatever" attempt at Windherding, especially since you have all of my other high priorities covered.
More rolls also means more chances of critical failure/success. And if the Coin prevents/upgrades one of those the result might be very meaningful even if all other rolls are mediocre.
I don't know about everyone else, but my reason for not wanting to do Drakenhof right now (with emphasis on the right now) is not because there's a better and more important Library action I really want to do instead.
If meeting valid Father targets with the Father active still results in Boney not even giving us a hint that something's going on then this whole consolidation prize becomes even more frustrating. Which to be fair is just realistic verisimilitude, but forget that I will ever vote for anything Father related ever again if something like that happens.
They are still illegal in the Empire and don't have any kind of "we're priests actually" excuse. Neither are illegal in Tor Lithanel though. And if Elrisse or Tochter want to get anyone in trouble over it then they've got their work cut out for them.
But yeah. I'm not completely opposed to delaying their recruitment. As long as Tindomiel happens right now.
Whilst the thought of having turns in real time does amuse me, I think the rest of the thread would lynch me if I were to try to cause that to happen.
- Location
- Earth
@Boney If we take enchantment classes with a WEB-MAT employee, does it matter if Mathilde's current skill and that of the other wizard aren't exactly the same level, or can the other wizard be a rookie at enchantment as opposed to Mathilde's Fiendishly Complex without affecting either party's learning rolls?
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- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
@picklepikkl I'm off for now. If I'm not back when the vote opens, will you post my plans? I think since you changed your mind on Drakenhof for this turn they are pretty much your plans anyway. So feel free to name them whatever you like. Also feel free to fiddle around with the EIC action or the research actions if you like.
Well, I read two to three multi-update adventures in your plan. Add the update for the rest of the plan plus the social section and that could well get us to June.
Protip: writing fiction isn't actually easy. It's a bunch of interwoven skillsets that take a fair bit of time and effort to get even kind of good at. If anyone is expecting any actually useful results out of Mathilde trying to go from zero to Tolkien, you should probably reconsider. If you're expecting it to be an immediate money-printer you should really reconsider.
I know this isn't what you were suggesting, but to head anyone else off, this would not mean you would be able to turn Egrimm into a power stone farmer. Creating power stones is a tedious and perpetually in-demand process that attracts people that seek a boring, predictable, and safe job. Egrimm is not such a person.
In that case it would more or less turn into Mathilde teaching that person, and she probably won't get anything out of it personally.
I know this isn't what you were suggesting, but to head anyone else off, this would not mean you would be able to turn Egrimm into a power stone farmer. Creating power stones is a tedious and perpetually in-demand process that attracts people that seek a boring, predictable, and safe job. Egrimm is not such a person.
In that case it would more or less turn into Mathilde teaching that person, and she probably won't get anything out of it personally.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
I think it be a fun idea for Mathilde to slowly embrace writing fiction. I don't see it as a money maker or a particularly useful to our job. But it feels IC for Mathilde want to sit down and give a go and writing something herself considering her already transparent love for fiction books.