Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[Shard]

...I'm going to suggest that if Boney feels something would impede his writing, he will tell us so up front.

Trying to forecast if he will unexpectedly hit writer's block depending on what we pick does not seem like fun. Or like something we can do with any realistic chance of success.

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That's clearly not what I said or implied and I am upset and irritated that you chose to interpret my words in that manner. Please don't do that.

 

[Prime 2.0]

That's clearly not what I said or implied and I am upset and irritated that you chose to interpret my words in that manner. Please don't do that.

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...Well, I'm sorry for misinterpreting you, but getting it wrong wasn't a choice, it was a mistake.

But I still don't see much point in saying that if boney spends time writing one thing, he won't write another - he's currently off worldbuilding for an entirely separate quest, because he said that he can do that without slowing down on divided loyalties because DL requires a lot of windup to start writing for, since it has so much to keep track of. Worldbuilding and writing are not actually a zero sum game.

I've long suspected this to be related to why he seems to update so much more rapidly when we're on an adventure as opposed to when we're in normal turn updates - the scope is smaller, so there are less things he has to keep track of. Extremely far-flung destinations like Lustria or Nehekhara similarly would be more disconnected from the rest of the "established" world Boney has to keep consistent. But that's just speculation, and I wouldn't vote based on speculative update speed.

1. Every time you try to bring up new potential adventures that we could have, you're trying to wave the possibility that we could potentially do things we otherwise couldn't have without the ship if the thread happens to vote for it. You're not arguing for what it will do there, for the usefulness it would have, you're arguing that it is theoretically possible to have new adventures as if that is an actual selling point. Anything where all the rewards are locked behind both whatever the fuck happens to come up and the thread voting to engage with it purely to see whatever the fuck happens to happen isn't a good argument.

This is especially the case when no matter what adventures we end up having, Boney will probably make them interesting, which means the possibility of having different adventures is inherently one of negligible value to me. We've got enough stuff we could do and places we could go, we don't need to waste our reward on the ability to have more stuff to do and places to go.

You are correct you never said it would have much effect upon the strategic layer, but what you seem to not be understanding is that that strategic layer change you consider so important is something I'd call basically irrelevant.

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...I'm sorry, but I think this argument is just categorically faulty, you can use it to discount the value of any metaphorically opened doors an option might have. It is entirely valid to want something because it will provide more freedom and opportunity in general, and I provided examples because I was asked for examples.

I'm trying to wind down from the thread, but I'll get to the rest of your post later - I felt my reply to Shard shouldn't wait.

 

[Smartphone]

[X] Plan: The Prismatic Wanderer

 

[adaer]

So, more loot at adventures where we're not deploying with friendly forces like usual that also happen to have lots of loot, range we'll almost never actually need unless we decide we want to fuck off from the Old World and actually human inhabited regions, the ability to deploy very limited amounts of shit because it's still only a ship, which requires us to then go hunt down units to usefully deploy from it, and a few bits of battlemagic grade enchantments like, well, we've already got in the dragonflask and have used all of once if I do recall correctly.

My apologies, but all of that combined still amounts in my head to it's greatest use being the chapter of Cool Shit involved in making it and then a second chapter of Cool Shit when we first get it.

This is, suffice to say, entirely insufficient for it to feel even remotely satisfying. At least when we saw this done with the anti-dragon herdstone we were doing it as part of a job instead of a reward.

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Unsurprisingly, when you assume that we will never use the thing the things do in fact turn out to to be useless. I think it's pretty reasonable to look at the many people voting for boat and who voted for swamp town previously and take that as a pretty good indication that there's interest in fucking off to a weird place for a few combat/adventure turns. Collecting a group of interesting characters to crew the ship also sounds quite fun, as does getting to see airship combat.

Boney managed to make multiple check-ins with a fief explicitly intended to be ignorable pretty engaging, do you really expect a magical ship to not be?

 

[shepsquared]

Unsurprisingly, when you assume that we will never use the thing the things sure in fact turn out to to be useless. I think it's pretty reasonable to look at the many people voting for boat and who voted for swamp town previously and take that as a pretty good indication that there's interest in fucking off to a weird place for a few combat/adventure turns. Collecting a group of interesting characters to crew the ship also sounds quite fun, as does getting to see airship combat.

Boney managed to make multiple check-ins with a fief explicitly intended to be ignorable pretty engaging, do you really expect a magical ship to not be?

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Considering we never went to swamp town, that we haven't yet managed to go to Nagarythe and there isn't much thread interest in doing so little as tracking down the Iron Orcs so some bretonnian knights can do the real fighting, I'm deeply hesitant to assume there's that much thread enthusiasm for going on adventures and I doubt the ship will change that.

 

[cheesyme]

Unsurprisingly, when you assume that we will never use the thing the things sure in fact turn out to to be useless. I think it's pretty reasonable to look at the many people voting for boat and who voted for swamp town previously and take that as a pretty good indication that there's interest in fucking off to a weird place for a few combat/adventure turns. Collecting a group of interesting characters to crew the ship also sounds quite fun, as does getting to see airship combat.

Boney managed to make multiple check-ins with a fief explicitly intended to be ignorable pretty engaging, do you really expect a magical ship to not be?

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Ah yes, and tell me, how many years did it take before we finally got around to investigating the Aetheric Vitae? And are there any signs or plans to start investigating the 5th side to our Coin that's been dangled in front of us for the last three and a half years? Have we used the Dragonflask more than once against Drycha yet? Hell, how bloody long have people been pushing for Elfcation, five and a half years I think?

And while you're on the topic of swamp town, lets go look at the actual tally for where to go next where that came up why don't we? Waystones were at 317, Markgraf at 304, Bodyguard and Tutor at 295, Loremaster-at-Large at 293, and then we go down rapidly in votes over the next 5 options till we get to Governor-General of Swamp Town at 46 votes. The only time Swamp Town got a decent chunk of votes was to be one of the things we actually investigated, where it got 144. If you actually want to argue this you want to bring up Loremaster-at-Large honestly, but even then it's debatable if any given problem would actually make use of it given we also go for intrigue, leadership, assassination, dwarf, and anti skaven actions.

Now yes, I agree, a lot of the things we could do with the airship could indeed be quite interesting with Boney writing them! I just also have very little faith that we're actually going to do any of them, and even less that we'll do more than one in the next three years. And you wanna know what the most likely reason one of those votes would pass? Not because we wanted to do so, but to try and get some use out of the bloody airship that we would be spending a major reward on getting.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Citing aetheric vitae as a thing that got put off is perhaps a little strange when the ship is as broadly applicable as the armor is, and when the AV was put off because we had other exciting adventures the ship was applicable to to prepare for and go on.

Or when the AV was chipped at along the way for a while, for that matter.

I'm pretty game for taking on the forest of shadows with Parabola, myself.

Swamp town is... like, yeah, there was initial interest and then reality set in. The initial interest still demonstrates that there are significant numbers of people who want the opportunity to go on adventures in far flung places, and while I still maintain that update speed is not a reason to vote for or against something, adventures in foreign locales like the ship produces more opportunities for tend to have far faster update speeds than regular turn posts.

And of course, there'll be a new arc after this one eventually. Swamptown was ruled out because we couldn't support going there without abandoning everything else - changing that, and otherwise permitting similar travel-heavy arcs requires acting in advance. Or just benefitting more adventure heavy arcs like Loremaster-at-large could have been, I'm down for that.

I think the people voting for the ship are generally gung ho about using the ship, and like the things it can be used for. Otherwise they'd probably vote for something else.

 

[hugo239111]

Yeah that's the way I imagined the ship mainly, part of the reason I was pushing against it was the Gyrocarriage makes sure we are "tied" to the Old World. It's nice to dream about the New World and visiting Ind and Cathay, but being tied to the Empire is kind of why I like the Grey Order winning the original vote. We can't just drop everything and run away on flights of fancy, we've got too much work to do! And too many people we can be smug about solving their problems and making sure they forever have a migraine.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Yeah that's the way I imagined the ship mainly, part of the reason I was pushing against it was the Gyrocarriage makes sure we are "tied" to the Old World. It's nice to dream about the New World and visiting Ind and Cathay, but being tied to the Empire is kind of why I like the Grey Order winning the original vote. We can't just drop everything and run away on flights of fancy, we've got too much work to do! And too many people we can be smug about solving their problems and making sure they forever have a migraine.

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There's also just "Wizard airship is cool", tbh. Even in the old world, spicing things up with some SMB3 music while we rain magical death from above would be quite welcome.

 

[cheesyme]

And of course, there'll be a new arc after this one eventually. Swamptown was ruled out because we couldn't support going there without abandoning everything else - changing that, and otherwise permitting similar travel-heavy arcs requires acting in advance. Or just benefitting more adventure heavy arcs like Loremaster-at-large could have been, I'm down for that.

I think the people voting for the ship are generally gung ho about using the ship, and like the things it can be used for. Otherwise they'd probably vote for something else.

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This is fair, and once the focus is on adventures and aggressive problem solving around the Empire rather than randomly heading off to explore elsewhere it's a lot more interesting to me too.

I will note however, the ship has about 40% of this actual vote despite this being an approval vote, and even if we assume they're all gung ho about using it, I doubt they'll all be voting for the same adventures with said ship, or even necessarily adventures that are using it at all.

There's also just "Wizard airship is cool", tbh. Even in the old world, spicing things up with some SMB3 music while we rain magical death from above would be quite welcome.

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This is also fair, and it's much better than arguing we could go on entirely new adventures previously not available, though I must admit that's not that big of a draw for me, and indeed I expect cool scenes from boney regardless of which of the top 3 votes wins.

 

[Prime 2.0]

4. Britannica Dictionary definition of PIE IN THE SKY: something good that someone says will happen but that seems impossible or unlikely : a very unlikely or unrealistic goal, plan, etc.

Yeah, I'd call what you're peddling something good that seems impossible or at least unlikely to both happen and be as good as you're suggesting. The firepower arguments, those are different, but the adventure line of argument very much qualifies.

5. The magical weaponry and firepower you started bringing up here? We've already got one of them on Mathilde's hip, it's the bloody dragonflask. Bringing more of those to the fight is indeed potentially useful, but this is still the sort of thing we're looking at, decent artillery effects or some esoterics, a very limited ammo supply, and an obnoxious refresh mechanic. The warship's ability to carry a bunch of them that are probably set up to be either synergistic or have things to make more convenient doesn't change that that's about what we should be expecting, though if we're getting a bunch of powerstones to fuel things that would help significantly. Flock of Doom will look different, the prow will probably be working off of Mathilde's own terror effect or similar grade of thing, but this is probably the range of shit we're looking at.

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Aight, so there's nothing much to comment on with 2, and 3 just comes back to 1 which I've already answered.

4 is... I mean, when other people start jumping in to say "This is an adventure I would like to go on with the help of the airship", it's looking a bit threadbare, but I'll try not to repeat myself; "People might not vote for it" is not a useful reason to say that open ended freedoms and opportunities are unlikely to be of any value.

5. The dragonflask has the significant limitation that we are weak after using it - Mathilde is rendered unable to cast for a couple minutes. This, more than anything else, is why we don't use it that often, because it's a huge commitment and taking that commitment at the wrong time could get her killed. Despite that, we've still gotten some important uses out of it.

The ship does not have this issue at all. She can fire at will without worrying about whether or not she dies if the fight isn't ended - and that means any fight she can take the airship to, she has little reason not to let 'er rip.

Point being, it's a lot more broadly applicable than the flask, even ignoring non-combat applications.

This is fair, and once the focus is on adventures and aggressive problem solving around the Empire rather than randomly heading off to explore elsewhere it's a lot more interesting to me too.

I will note however, the ship has about 40% of this actual vote despite this being an approval vote, and even if we assume they're all gung ho about using it, I doubt they'll all be voting for the same adventures with said ship, or even necessarily adventures that are using it at all.

This is also fair, and it's much better than arguing we could go on entirely new adventures previously not available, though I must admit that's not that big of a draw for me, and indeed I expect cool scenes from boney regardless of which of the top 3 votes wins.

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So, something interesting to note about the vote - even with approval voting, people often choose just the frontrunner they want to win the most and leave the others out, especially if the two are fighting for first place. Sure, there are voters who hold one of the top three in contempt enough to keep approval votes for the other two, and there are people who just don't keep up with the thread...

But, well, we've just had a massive influx of new voters and old voters updating their votes to be more relevant to the top three race. Point being, people not voting for the airship right now are not necessarily people who did not vote for the airship previously - and the same for the other options.

It doesn't take much crossover to hit a majority - and it doesn't take a majority to win a vote. But fair on "but which road trip" being a concern, though considering there's a dedicated "Adventure!" crowd, I expect people will congregate on something, even if it takes a few turns.

Or rather, I hope it takes a turn or two, because I promised to vote and campaign for elfcation during the next turn vote. Hopefully we can turn up in style.

...

Anyways, in terms of "how about that next arc", one thing the elfcation shows is that you need to start preparing for the thing you want to do well in advance of campaigning to actually do that thing, or you'll face headwinds of "not prepared enough".

That does indeed require planning and making prep votes years in advance sometimes, lol. Such is Divided Loyalties...

 

[Talon TigerDino]

Maybe people should stop quoting that statement out of the very specific context it was made in.

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Damn it I fell for the mind worm. Well thank you for the reminder.

Indeed.

That said, when the everchosen war kicks off, I'd rather Mandred have Von Tarnus's armor while Mathilde has a suit of runed ithilmar and a flying warship. The image of Mandred, an elector count and possibly emperor wearing a badge of the colleges' founding and original leadership would be an impeccable political symbol, pragmatics of "don't let the emperor die" aside.

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Will Mandred even be old enough to march out at that point? He's just gotten into the Colleges as a young boy, hasn't he?

The airship can carry more loot, more people, and more equipment. Our gyrocarriage forced us to leave most of our loot behind from the black library.

It can travel longer distances. You can't take a trip to Karag Dum in a gyrocarriage for example, while an airship was the method of travel for one of the canonical KD expeditions.

It can act as a base for the gyrocarriage to deploy from - or anything else to deploy from, being a mobile base is all about that, really.

And it's a rare battle that does not benefit from some heavy duty fire support.

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You know what can carry more loot, more people, and more equipment than a flying ship? A flying tower. And there are runes for strengthening such fortifications that do not exist for wooden craft.

Also do not take a non-Runed airship into the Chaos Wastes, the winds carry corruption and warpstone just a ton of raw magic and your crew will get fucked. You really need the magic-dunking Runes on the crew compartments to hole up in.

Or fly really close to the ground, but at that point you may as well go with the dwarfish landship caravan anyways.

Also a tower/citadel is far superior for establishing a beachhead, just slam the reinforced tower/citadel down through the forest canopy in a way a wooden hull never could. Rock and stone is mightier than wood and loam.

And as long as the metastable trio continues its rotation, I can hold out hope for an upset in favor of Imperial Mobile Fortress.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Damn it I fell for the mind worm. Well thank you for the reminder.

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Happens to everyone. Sorry for being a bit short with you about it.

Will Mandred even be old enough to march out at that point? He's just gotten into the Colleges as a young boy, hasn't he?

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Maybe? Could be 5-10 years out, and as I joked earlier, Mathilde is short - there's some capacity for refitting the armor to someone.

You know what can carry more loot, more people, and more equipment than a flying ship? A flying tower. And there are runes for strengthening such fortifications that do not exist for wooden craft.

Also do not take a non-Runed airship into the Chaos Wastes, the winds carry corruption and warpstone just a ton of raw magic and your crew will get fucked. You really need the magic-dunking Runes on the crew compartments to hole up in.

Or fly really close to the ground, but at that point you may as well go with the dwarfish landship caravan anyways.

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Well, Boney did say we could spend favors/boons on adding bells and whistles - a runed crew compartment seems in that ballpark.

I'm not familiar with canon, but I believe the second dum expedition's airship actually did rely on winds magic - somebody else in the thread said so, at least. Not that I seriously think we'll do a salty runback on Dum if I'm being honest, even if I personally would quite like to, lol.

As for hoping for things in the back of the pack to catch up - preach it, brother! We'll get Eike that reverse engineering super education, just you see!

 

[ReImagined]

And are there any signs or plans to start investigating the 5th side to our Coin that's been dangled in front of us for the last three and a half years?

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In fairness, we did already use the Father on Turn 38 which confirmed Haletha. And the other main candidate so far seems to be the Lady in Bretonnia—a theory which seems to have attracted some vocal support, though personally I still find it a bit dubious.

...Well, I'm sorry for misinterpreting you, but getting it wrong wasn't a choice, it was a mistake.

But I still don't see much point in saying that if boney spends time writing one thing, he won't write another - he's currently off worldbuilding for an entirely separate quest, because he said that he can do that without slowing down on divided loyalties because DL requires a lot of windup to start writing for, since it has so much to keep track of. Worldbuilding and writing are not actually a zero sum game.

I've long suspected this to be related to why he seems to update so much more rapidly when we're on an adventure as opposed to when we're in normal turn updates - the scope is smaller, so there are less things he has to keep track of. Extremely far-flung destinations like Lustria or Nehekhara similarly would be more disconnected from the rest of the "established" world Boney has to keep consistent. But that's just speculation, and I wouldn't vote based on speculative update speed.

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As I understand it, what Shard said is basically a reiteration of the Doylist explanation for why AP exists—Boney's writing time follows the laws of scarcity, in that he only has so many hours in the day to write, so time spent developing one thing necessarily is time spent not developing another thing. AP represents the thread's interest in those things to give Boney direction in what to develop, and this is why we can't acquire more AP in-character even when it would make sense. You can develop more things, like for example doing both regular turn actions and social actions, but that corresponds to a proportional increase in amount of time spent, as we've seen in the longer turns since the thread voted to opt in for regular social actions.

Or to frame it another, more gluttonous way:
Words spent on Mathilde making a sandwich take up space that could otherwise be spent on Mathilde baking a pie or Mathilde inventing the pizza.

Introducing new potential gourmet items doesn't change the fact that we can only eat so many things, so each choice of dish we make matters, and it shouldn't be assumed that we can follow-up through all the potential meals.

Therefore, if you want to see Mathilde make a delicious burrito, vote for the burrito. If you want cake, you can get that too, but do you really want to do that at the cost of less burrito?

 

[Prime 2.0]

Therefore, if you want to see Mathilde make a delicious burrito, vote for the burrito. If you want cake, you can get that too, but do you really want to do that at the cost of less burrito?

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I just had PB&J on rehydraded milkbread but thank you for asking

EDIT: almost forgot, it also had mini marshmallows

 

[xamaplak]

And are there any signs or plans to start investigating the 5th side to our Coin that's been dangled in front of us for the last three and a half years? Have we used the Dragonflask more than once against Drycha yet? Hell, how bloody long have people been pushing for Elfcation, five and a half years I think?

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The problem with this argument is that there's a decent sized movement behind doing Elfcation next turn, and Fathermaxing with an action in Brettonia.

Likewise, we haven't gotten into a fight since Drycha.

One of the reasons I (and presumably a decent amount of other people) like Airship is the extra options it gives and 'Mathilde has a lot on her plate and it takes a while to get to things' is not a strong enough argument to change that. Yes, it will take a while to get around to things. Okay. I'm patient.

 

[ReImagined]

Likewise, we haven't gotten into a fight since Drycha.

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Drycha was Turn 37, Drakenhof was Turn 39. Granted, it wasn't much of a fight, but poor Johann did get zapped.

 

[Tobtorp]

Aside from the main reason why I want the airship (super cool, absolutely rad, look at That thing!) the other reason is that it would be (to my knowledge) on of the first purely intra college projects where all colleges are invited and even forced to help. We did a big thing and that will get the 8 patriarchs/matriarchs to give a shit. Imagine what cool things we can read about when they get to working together!

 

[Prime 2.0]

Aside from the main reason why I want the airship (super cool, absolutely rad, look at That thing!) the other reason is that it would be (to my knowledge) on of the first purely intra college projects where all colleges are invited and even forced to help. We did a big thing and that will get the 8 patriarchs/matriarchs to give a shit. Imagine what cool things we can read about when they get to working together!

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...Is it? I'm not sure that it is, even if intercollegiate projects are rare.

Fair cop on this being a hell of a wonder because the top brass of all of them are putting their noggins together at the same time, though.

Drycha was Turn 37, Drakenhof was Turn 39. Granted, it wasn't much of a fight, but poor Johann did get zapped.

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Nonsense, it is an affront to basic decency that we did not cook ourselves and our allies alive by setting off a firebomb in close quarters. If it's worth doing, it's worth cooking well done!

 

[Tobtorp]

...Is it? I'm not sure that it is, even if intercollegiate projects are rare.

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There is a reason I put the asterisk (to my knowledge) there. I did think about if I could recall any other inter college project on that scale and the next best thing I remembered is the waystone project itself and that's not all 8 even. But honestly I'm not as well versed as others in Warhammer fantasy lore so I might (and probably have) missed something.

 

[hugo239111]

Aside from the main reason why I want the airship (super cool, absolutely rad, look at That thing!) the other reason is that it would be (to my knowledge) on of the first purely intra college projects where all colleges are invited and even forced to help. We did a big thing and that will get the 8 patriarchs/matriarchs to give a shit. Imagine what cool things we can read about when they get to working together!

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...Can you imagine the Lothern Sea Guards face watching a ship fly in and then park itself, only to see a human climb out. "Hello I am Lady Magister Mathilde Weber, I know you don't let humans anywhere else in Ulthuan but I have an invitation from Nagarythe. Mind if I park my ship here?"

 

[Tobtorp]

...Can you imagine the Lothern Sea Guards face watching a ship fly in and then park itself, only to see a human climb out. "Hello I am Lady Magister Mathilde Weber, I know you don't let humans anywhere else in Ulthuan but I have an invitation from Nagarythe. Mind if I park my ship here?"

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Can you imagine an archmage of the white tower puzzling at all the chisel handedness! Just "now why would they route the shyish line through the ghyran boards? That doesn't make any bloody sense!"

 

[xamaplak]

Drycha was Turn 37, Drakenhof was Turn 39. Granted, it wasn't much of a fight, but poor Johann did get zapped.

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I actually forgot that there was a vampire in Drakenhoff.


Which is a sentence that people in-universe won't ever say. Unless Wrong Turn wins

 

[Talon TigerDino]

Happens to everyone. Sorry for being a bit short with you about it.


Maybe? Could be 5-10 years out, and as I joked earlier, Mathilde is short - there's some capacity for refitting the armor to someone.


Well, Boney did say we could spend favors/boons on adding bells and whistles - a runed crew compartment seems in that ballpark.

I'm not familiar with canon, but I believe the second dum expedition's airship actually did rely on winds magic - somebody else in the thread said so, at least. Not that I seriously think we'll do a salty runback on Dum if I'm being honest, even if I personally would quite like to, lol.

As for hoping for things in the back of the pack to catch up - preach it, brother! We'll get Eike that reverse engineering super education, just you see!

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No need to apologize, brevity is the soul of wit and all that.

I have no clue why someone said that the Dum Expedition airship relied partially on the Winds - The Spirit of Grungni is a completely dwarfish vessel, and no wizard was upon it as it ventured into the Wastes to rescue Dum's survivors in Daemonslayer.

And yes, hope springs eternal here for the lower rungs.

 

[hugo239111]

Can you imagine an archmage of the white tower puzzling at all the chisel handedness! Just "now why would they route the shyish line through the ghyran boards? That doesn't make any bloody sense!"

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It shouldn't work like that, this thing should blow up! What the hell did you teach those Asuryan Damned Monkeys Teclis!?!?! Human why doesn't this work when I tried to steal borrow your ship?