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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alratan said:
One of the only sure fire ways of curing chaos mutations is a sword that the Chaos gods bestow on their champions for the lulz.

Making a champion unable to consume sacred meat as an ironic 'blessing' is completely in theme.
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Yes, but that is a very esoteric item. I would not expect random kurgans to know about that sword.

Sacred meat burns as you try to eat it therefore the gods don't like you seems like a good bet, especially when the person does not want your tribe's special Chaos tatoos either.
 
DragonParadox said:
Yes, but that is a very esoteric item. I would not expect random kurgans to know about that sword.

Sacred meat burns as you try to eat it therefore the gods don't like you seems like a good bet, especially when the person does not want your tribe's special Chaos tatoos either.
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If you're a Norscan, of course you wouldn't want Kurgan tattoos though. It would be a sign if affiliation to a groups that's usually mortal enemies.

Also, self-cooking meat may actually be seen as a blessing, on the treeless steppes.
 
BoneyM said:
For any given X, some people will like X and some people will not like X. If you don't like X but the majority voted to go for X, then I'm sorry but that's just how the format works. People grumble but accept that's just how things work and accept it. And if they can't, if that's a deal-breaker for them, then all there is for it is to move on to a new quest. If X was Warhammer or being a Wizard or working with Dwarves, then a theoretical X-disliker would almost always move on after maybe one post expressing that opinion. I have no hard feelings for that X-disliker. Thank you for giving my quest a shot, and may the next be more relevant to your interests.

But when the deal-breaking X is romance, either in general or with a specific person, for some reason people think that the thing to do is to make the point that they don't like X, over and over and over again. Sometimes when it's relevant to the topic at hand, sometimes when it's not. Sometimes directly and honestly, sometimes obliquely by trying to paint the romance partner negatively. And I've tried to be patient with it because a lot of the people doing it are long-time and valued contributors to the thread, and I rather hoped that once they got it off their collective chests it would die down. But it's one day short of six months since the thread collectively voted yes to romance, and it just keeps happening and I only have so much patience to give.
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As a technical matter of voting structure and quest management, I think problems came from how stretched out the whole process was. Being a wizard or working for Belegar or what position we'd take with Belegar were contentious, but they were one and then done. Often there's pretty fierce arguments about where to use an AP in an action plan, but then we have the vote and that's it, time to move on to the next thing.

We voted whether to have romance in the quest at all. We voted which characters we might be interested in romancing. We had to vote for which characters to share an initial romantic exploration with... competing with other social action votes! Then we had to vote for which one or ones to romantically pursue, mixed in with other social action votes, with a ranked system whereby we could potentially have ended up trying to pursue multiple partners. And now.... well, after the most recent social action vote I said something like:

"Well it wasn't my favored result, but at least now social action votes can go back to being low stress/low stakes." And I got told, no it's still not done! We'll still have romance options on the table in future social votes, and Mathilde could still potentially try to go poly with Cython or something. (I don't know if the person who told me that was correct, but it was pretty distressing.)

Listen, @BoneyM you're a really good writer. Whatever option we pick, you can "sell" to the thread after we pick it as something cool and neat and that makes people happy it was picked. Even people who didn't vote for it! Here, you presold all these options! You had heartwarming/intriguing pre-date scenes with all the major competitors. That was great to read, but at course it raised the stakes even more because now everybody could see how cool and fun a relationship with their choice would be.

My take is, if you want to cool down the thread, please stop making us vote on Romance for a while. For at least the time being, stop putting Romance-tagged options in the Social vote at all, and don't put "more dates with Panoramia" as competing with other options. Instead let the vote be done and treat her like Wolf for a while. Have her be a part of Mathilde's life, write her naturally into scenes, and if you have a vote you can have it be something like "which dating spot". I'm not saying the thread never needs to have a vote on her in the future; sure at some point maybe there'll be a family/no family vote or something else interesting that shakes up the relationship dynamic and you'll want to have a vote.

Just please, please stop making us vote on Romance for the moment. If you do, I really do think the thread will calm down and let you "sell" us on the option chosen. I think this has all been about voting structure, not topic, and that if we had a similarly drawn out process for some other reasonably important topic it could be the same.

This has been my TED Talk.
 
Briefvoice said:
Just please, please stop making us vote on Romance for the moment. If you do, I really do think the thread will calm down and let you "sell" us on the option chosen. I think this has all been about voting structure, not topic, and that if we had a similarly drawn out process for some other reasonably important topic it could be the same.
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remembers the eternal war about whether to read Liber Mortis
Well, there's some evidence to support this hypothesis, at the very least.
 
Briefvoice said:
As a technical matter of voting structure and quest management, I think problems came from how stretched out the whole process was. Being a wizard or working for Belegar or what position we'd take with Belegar were contentious, but they were one and then done. Often there's pretty fierce arguments about where to use an AP in an action plan, but then we have the vote and that's it, time to move on to the next thing.

We voted whether to have romance in the quest at all. We voted which characters we might be interested in romancing. We had to vote for which characters to share an initial romantic exploration with... competing with other social action votes! Then we had to vote for which one or ones to romantically pursue, mixed in with other social action votes, with a ranked system whereby we could potentially have ended up trying to pursue multiple partners. And now.... well, after the most recent social action vote I said something like:

"Well it wasn't my favored result, but at least now social action votes can go back to being low stress/low stakes." And I got told, no it's still not done! We'll still have romance options on the table in future social votes, and Mathilde could still potentially try to go poly with Cython or something. (I don't know if the person who told me that was correct, but it was pretty distressing.)

Listen, @BoneyM you're a really good writer. Whatever option we pick, you can "sell" to the thread after we pick it as something cool and neat and that makes people happy it was picked. Even people who didn't vote for it! Here, you presold all these options! You had heartwarming/intriguing pre-date scenes with all the major competitors. That was great to read, but at course it raised the stakes even more because now everybody could see how cool and fun a relationship with their choice would be.

My take is, if you want to cool down the thread, please stop making us vote on Romance for a while. For at least the time being, stop putting Romance-tagged options in the Social vote at all, and don't put "more dates with Panoramia" as competing with other options. Instead let the vote be done and treat her like Wolf for a while. Have her be a part of Mathilde's life, write her naturally into scenes, and if you have a vote you can have it be something like "which dating spot". I'm not saying the thread never needs to have a vote on her in the future; sure at some point maybe there'll be a family/no family vote or something else interesting that shakes up the relationship dynamic and you'll want to have a vote.

Just please, please stop making us vote on Romance for the moment. If you do, I really do think the thread will calm down and let you "sell" us on the option chosen. I think this has all been about voting structure, not topic, and that if we had a similarly drawn out process for some other reasonably important topic it could be the same.

This has been my TED Talk.
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This would be all well and good for those that want that result, but that's not what the past votes were to decide, and retroactively changing the consequences of past votes does not sit well with me. If I have to sacrifice voter agency so drastically to keep the thread tolerable then it's defeating the entire purpose of the quest format and it's time to hang it up and switch to prose.
 
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BoneyM said:
This would be all well and good for those that want that result, but that's not what the past votes were to decide, and retroactively changing the consequences of past votes does not sit well with me. If I have to sacrifice voter agency so drastically to keep the thread tolerable then it's defeating the entire purpose of the quest format and it's time to hang it up and switch to prose.
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Fair enough, but then when can we stop having to argue about this matter? When does it get settled?

Because if something is still open to vote then it's still open to argument. You mentioned the thread voted for Romance six months ago and people are still arguing against it, but the way you had the votes structured people against Romance could still win as recently as last Social. All they had to do was ensure Romance never made it into the top four in a social action vote and they could stop it forever.
 
Briefvoice said:
Fair enough, but then when can we stop having to argue about this matter?
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This sentence is a doozy. 'When can we stop having to argue'. Nobody ever had to argue. Everyone that did so made a choice to do so.

Briefvoice said:
the way you had the votes structured people against Romance could still win as recently as last Social. All they had to do was ensure Romance never made it into the top four in a social action vote and they could stop it forever.
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No, they can't. It did not and does not work that way.


You're treating romance as one big unchanging question that requires one big unchanging answer. If that was the case then yeah, it would be pointless to drag it out. But it's not. It's a journey, like every other part of Mathilde's life. It involves Mathilde figuring out what she wants, and the thread figuring out what it wants for Mathilde. Forcing the thread to lock in an answer sight unseen would be weird and it would cheapen the characters and the relationship.
 
Gonna respect the spirit of the one-cycle soft shhhhhhh.

Fehu said:
I just figured an interesting boon Mathilde could ask for. To support the formation of a stable realm worshipping order gods, from the Border Princes!
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I like it, but I do have an objection...

Valmond said:
Not within Belegars power.
Let's not break Belegar.
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Mopman43 said:
That one might be of the "break the Karak" variety.
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Not actually this objection. :) I'm on the other end- I think ulrikadrin, with it's secure approaches and paths of retreat, reliable trade routes, strong allies, and technical independence from the empire- I think it's going to develop into the strongest of the border princedoms simple through inertia. The advantages it has are too great, even as they are similar to the other longer-term realms that can retreat into the Vault or other karaks, so I think it's a matter of time before wealth and promised stability will drive consolidation.
 
BoneyM said:
You're treating romance as one big unchanging question that requires one big unchanging answer. If that was the case then yeah, it would be pointless to drag it out. But it's not. It's a journey, like every other part of Mathilde's life. It involves Mathilde figuring out what she wants, and the thread figuring out what it wants for Mathilde. Forcing the thread to lock in an answer sight unseen would be weird and it would cheapen the characters and the relationship.
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I just want to say that this approach is absolutely great, and it's the first time romance in a quest actually felt like romance, and not just hammering the button until affection is maxed (after a ridiculous short time too, generally?).
 
BurnNote said:
I just want to say that this approach is absolutely great, and it's the first time romance in a quest actually felt like romance, and not just hammering the button until affection is maxed (after a ridiculous short time too, generally?).
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Most quests suffer from rapid pacing problems in various ways. I think it's because accomplishing stuff in real life takes an appreciable fraction of a person's lifespan, while the quest format has no interest in taking up a third the lifespan of its main characters building up a nation between wars, or mastering a skill, or what have you. Particularly when it's a quest about a particular character, not their dynasty.

This happens to romance too.
 
BoneyM said:
No, they can't. It did not and does not work that way.

You're treating romance as one big unchanging question that requires one big unchanging answer. If that was the case then yeah, it would be pointless to drag it out. But it's not. It's a journey, like every other part of Mathilde's life. It involves Mathilde figuring out what she wants, and the thread figuring out what it wants for Mathilde. Forcing the thread to lock in an answer sight unseen would be weird and it would cheapen the characters and the relationship.
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It doesn't require an unchanging answer, but some people have one anyway.

And the problem is that the Quest constantly asks questions to which the unchanging answer remains a valid response. Which is why you end up with the same answer (and same discussion) over and over again.
If people do not like Romance, then they can still get that, even though the threat voted the other way. Because Mathilde could still decide, even now, that she doesn't want romance. All they need to do is win the social vote and keep romance down.
If people do not like Panoramia, or any other character, they can cut off the relationship at every single point. .

Other controversial votes did not have the same aspect. We do not have to vote every single turn on whether or not we continue to work for Belegar or someone else, and so on...
 
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Guys, if you like reading this quest, please stop discussing/mentioning romance.

It stopped being constructive once QM explicitly stated that the ensuing salt was exhausting his will to write.
 
At this point I don't really care who Mathilde ends up with. I just want her to be happy.

The only regret I have is that we never met Kazador's sons.
 
Horium said:
Guys, if you like reading this quest, please stop discussing/mentioning romance.

It stopped being constructive once QM explicitly stated that the ensuing salt was exhausting his will to write.
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I know you're trying to be helpful, but treating 'salt' as the inevitable and automatic result of romance discussion is feeding a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
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BoneyM said:
I know you're trying to be helpful, but treating 'salt' as the inevitable and automatic result of romance discussion is feeding a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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I meant salt as in the already present frustration of some voters due to romance which I perceived to be bothering you.

I did not mean to imply that salt is the inevitable result of romance, or to be more precise, I used to believe that some months ago, but I no longer do.

Hence, I am also a bit confused as to how you came to that conclusion from my quoted post, but then again, I am not a native speaker.
 
Horium said:
I meant salt as in the already present frustration of some voters due to romance which I perceived to be bothering you.

I did not mean to imply that salt is the inevitable result of romance, or to be more precise, I used to believe that some months ago, but I no longer do.

Hence, I am also a bit confused as to how you came to that conclusion from my quoted post, but then again, I am not a native speaker.
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Then I apologize for misunderstanding you. 'Ensuing' often implies that it's happening as a result of something, and this 'ensuing' seemed to be pointing to 'discussing/mentioning romance' as the cause.
 
Glau said:
Not actually this objection. :) I'm on the other end- I think ulrikadrin, with it's secure approaches and paths of retreat, reliable trade routes, strong allies, and technical independence from the empire- I think it's going to develop into the strongest of the border princedoms simple through inertia. The advantages it has are too great, even as they are similar to the other longer-term realms that can retreat into the Vault or other karaks, so I think it's a matter of time before wealth and promised stability will drive consolidation.
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The Ulrikadrin are too far form the Border Princes proper to form a centre if I understand the geography correctly. They're in the nearby mountains to Karak Eight Peaks whilst the Border Prince lands start north of Barak Varr. In between is the open area of the Badlands; aka one of the most orc infested places on the planet.

A stronghold in the mountains is one thing - that's how Azul made it for millennia in the first place. Controlling all that open space? Way beyond what the Ulrikadrin can even dream of doing. A Waaagh like Birdmuncha's would instantly evaporate any polity that isn't inanely well fortified. Being spread out and also not being dwarfs means there's no way a fledgling kingdom can get its feet under it without extremely major backing.
 
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