Feudal Quest

[Arkeus]

We need diplomacy. Dita needs diplomacy and probably seduction but that can wait. Investigation will most likely give diplomacy for both us and Dita. We need political capital to be able to force the issue with Dita when it goes tits up. Investigation gives us that.

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I...no? Investigation is what, exactly? Do we go to Vezti with a two-month travel and try to discover who Dita's father could have chosen as witnesses? do we travel to Ikula and talk to our grandfather? go to Kolarovo and talk to our dad?

Where do we investigate? Investigation gives us nothing, because we don't know where to begin. And if we actually do find out something, we are not ready to do anything about it.

Edit: If you're talking about the result of our actions than I can understand why you would disagree because our objectives are different. We have a few paths at the moment. We bow to our family's wishes and work to advance our position under them, we GTFO, we refuse our families wishes and get crushed, or we get enough power to make ourselves too dangerous to be dealt with out of hand.

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The last option doesn't work unless we have a crazy strong army. Think about it, our uncle was loved by the whole family, he was a epic Hero in his own right and was still killed because he went too far.

Trying to strongharm our grandfather may be possible if we have something that he absolutely wants from us, but otherwise? no.

 

[Ghost]

Wrong Investigation, I was talking about Nikoli, but in regards to your questions. We don't have to go anywhere. What we should do is find out who Dita's parents would have got to witness and go from there, spending a full action means that once we get that information we should be able to follow it up.

Edit-to-Edit: But we do. We hold the keys to Dita's cooperation. Which seems to be a very important part of the whole kingship plan that is coming up. At this point he hast to be as pragmatic as possible. Meaning that what we need to do is make the situation we propose the most beneficial to him path available. Also that's a Weak Analogy. We are not doing the same thing Dita's father did. Note that the circumstances that lead to him being destroyed was that our Grandfather believed he was taking too many risks and would harm the families power. We are doing the opposite. We're saying, play this our way and we won't harm you when you can't afford it. Also we'll provide you with some more benefits.

 

[Arkeus]

Wrong Investigation, I was talking about Nikoli, but in regards to your questions. We don't have to go anywhere. What we should do is find out who Dita's parents would have got to witness and go from there, spending a full action means that once we get that information we should be able to follow it up.

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The Nikkolai investigation is a bad idea because it doesn't give us anything and is probably just a follow up from the last adventure we have. We gave up that one for good reasons, and i don't want to do another adventure that we are going to give up midway because "Pavel is not here".

Even if it's something else, it's still not something we can follow up currently.

We don't have to go anywhere. What we should do is find out who Dita's parents would have got to witness and go from there, spending a full action means that once we get that information we should be able to follow it up.

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How do you propose to do that? The best we can do right now is ask Dita about it, and you can do that right now as a free action and decide what else we want.

"Follow up" is a multi-months travel to either our Father, our Aunt, Vezti, Ikula or who knows where. If the papers exists our grandfather has been tried to destroy them for years, so don't believe that we will get to them in half a week.

 

[Ghost]

Nikkolai investigation gives us blackmail material if it all goes well. Which is extremely useful for the objectives I'm proposing. Second, thinking small. We can find out more about the process, who is capable of being a witness, asking for who had visited Dita's father's place right before.

 

[LeoAbogos]

Nikkolai investigation gives us blackmail material if it all goes well. Which is extremely useful for the objectives I'm proposing. Second, thinking small. We can find out more about the process, who is capable of being a witness, asking for who had visited Dita's father's place right before.

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The problem with getting blackmail on Nikolai is the same problem we had with the assassins in the mountain pass. That is, we don't know if it would be valid because we don't know, and really have no reasonable chance of discovering, whether Nikolai is acting on Pavel's orders or not. Any information we uncover might be useful blackmail against Nikolai when Pavel returns, but it could just as easily scuttle positive interaction with Pavel himself. The only other way we would be able to use blackmail would necessarily negatively impact the Petran family name or internal cohesion. I don't think that the gamble on intel of Nikolai's activities is one that leans in favor of being worth our time to take.

For Dita's situation, we should start out using minor actions to ask Dita things so that we at least have a small idea of where to start, if indeed those inquiries lead to any foundation worthy of launching further efforts from at all. Does she remember the names of close friends of her parents, does she remember any suspicious behavior from her parents, suspicious guests, unconvincing excuses for any possibly relevant strangeness, etc, etc.

Throwing Actions at problems without definite or at least sound chances for progress being made is something I would like to avoid at all costs. Clear reasoning and planning towards a desired outcome should drastically improve the efficiency of time spent on a tsk, and time is our most precious resource. It is because of that that I feel we should take our time to understand what the different paths open to us mean, so that we don't waste our efforts and doom ourselves.

 

[ShaperV]

Some comments on the proposed orders for this turn:

Nebulous Adventures
If you want to propose an adventure other than the ones listed in the status post, you should start by describing the proposal and asking if it's practical. Travel in Borjeria is slow and communications between areas are limited, so most adventures outside of Corzu will take several actions (or even several whole turns). The proposed 'Research Dita's Inheritance Status' is a good example of this - it would require traveling all over the kingdom talking to people, probably taking up several months of your time, and would generate minimal XP.

Minor Actions
A normal turns orders might have 2-5 minor actions. A busy turn might need 6-8. Once in a while I might let you get away with 10. Anything over that is doomed to fail in some inconvenient way. As I said in the rules post, you have a limited amount of time in a turn for all your minor actions and trying to shoehorn a million things in every turn isn't going to work. Last turn was already busy, so if you have more than 8 minor actions listed you need to drop some.

Dominic's Research
The way things are currently going Dominic is never going to get anywhere interesting with his magic, because he keeps switching priorities every turn as the votes change and new options appear. I don't want this thread to fall prey to the typical Quest RP problems in this regard, so I think I'm going to have to shift to a less granular research system.

So, I'm looking at switching to a system where you pick a mid-term research goal, and then all Dominic's Research actions automatically go towards that goal until he actually reaches it. A good research goal would be something like 'Develop a good fire/force combo attack spell' or 'Learn how to use flesh sorcery to seriously buff Seduction' - something that takes 5-15 actions to complete and gives you a significant new ability. That way you only have to have a big discussion about what to research next 2-3 times per game year, and you actually get a steady stream of well-developed powers instead of ending up with the first 20% of fifty different things that were never finished.

Naturally you'd still see incremental results coming in every turn as you make progress, and if you really need to you can call a vote to abandon your current goal and pick a different one. But you'd lose an action or two worth of progress whenever you do that, so it would be an emergency options rather than a routine thing.

If you have any concerns about this change bring them up now. Otherwise I'd like to see some proposals for what Dominic's current research goal should be (preferably with some argument for why it's a good goal to pick).

 

[fitzgerald]

Ghost if we wanted to become "King" the flat out easiest way to accomplish that as a goal is to go to Egypt and carve out our own realm.

Any other way requires not only killing Boris, our father and every other Duke in the kingdom

Aka stupid hard and why be a kinslayer (by our own hand or others)

 

[fitzgerald]

Biggest issues I see with Ghosts list is Kat's action, but I've gone over that enough to realize you guys aren't going to change it, and Jaroslaw's action, we don't need to waste a named characters time on that type of thing, and doing so is a big waste when he could be spending that time training our troops.

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Thomas the point of Kats survey is to (hopefully) turn up any thing we can mine: salt, coal, tin, copper, iron, gold, silver etc along with any spots ideal to build villages with water and fertile soil

Jaroslaw and the rangers are going because it involves Kat walking around all of Corzu

 

[fitzgerald]

@Ghost and Bastur

The adventures are costly time sinks right now

We need to get Ditas diplomancy, leadership amd intrigue skills up (she can handle seduction on her own) alongsode her other skills

Please swich to training Diplomancy and training Fire this turn

 

[drake_azathoth]

From studying the Beastman's body, we have an option to learn how to PERMANENTLY enhance Dominic's body. I don't think I need to list all the benefits, but the fact is we probably plan to do some more adventuring and we already have an excellent Charm stat. Upping Body would be incredibly helpful.

So for our research, I'd look into perma-enhancing Body. The Fire/Force combo isn't really that much better than what we've got in terms of killing people with short-range fire or sword, and the Seduction is pointless. We are already at Charisma 4 and drowning in eligible women.

 

[Arkeus]

Dominic's Research
The way things are currently going Dominic is never going to get anywhere interesting with his magic, because he keeps switching priorities every turn as the votes change and new options appear. I don't want this thread to fall prey to the typical Quest RP problems in this regard, so I think I'm going to have to shift to a less granular research system.

So, I'm looking at switching to a system where you pick a mid-term research goal, and then all Dominic's Research actions automatically go towards that goal until he actually reaches it. A good research goal would be something like 'Develop a good fire/force combo attack spell' or 'Learn how to use flesh sorcery to seriously buff Seduction' - something that takes 5-15 actions to complete and gives you a significant new ability. That way you only have to have a big discussion about what to research next 2-3 times per game year, and you actually get a steady stream of well-developed powers instead of ending up with the first 20% of fifty different things that were never finished.

Naturally you'd still see incremental results coming in every turn as you make progress, and if you really need to you can call a vote to abandon your current goal and pick a different one. But you'd lose an action or two worth of progress whenever you do that, so it would be an emergency options rather than a routine thing.

If you have any concerns about this change bring them up now. Otherwise I'd like to see some proposals for what Dominic's current research goal should be (preferably with some argument for why it's a good goal to pick).

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The problem with this is that sometimes there are instances where we have limited windows of opportunity, like the Beastmen bodies or the Chosen, so in those cases we kinda need to switch gear or we will lose unique possibilities.

Another issue is that i personally prefer to improve all of our Sorceries slowly rather than focusing on one, though i guess that with the "project" we can still do that.

Anyway, here was the path that i was planning to take:
-Get a minor Force ability that we can use in adventures and give us a minor boost in combat
-Get fire and Force to 2 before snow set in
-develop a "balls of heat" force/fire spell that can be used so that a band of thirty or so can adventure in winter (not sure if it's possible, so i was planning a wait-and-switch depending).
-Develop a powerful Force/Fire combo attack spell.

-Switch back to Flesh, get to level 3
-Begin the path of permanent body modifications. I was thinking that a good start would be improving our horses.

From studying the Beastman's body, we have an option to learn how to PERMANENTLY enhance Dominic's body. I don't think I need to list all the benefits, but the fact is we probably plan to do some more adventuring and we already have an excellent Charm stat. Upping Body would be incredibly helpful.

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Keep in mind that we'll need Flesh 3 to begin that path. I personally prefer having a Force/Fire spell before that, but colors and taste.

 

[LeoAbogos]

My concerns with a less granular approach are missed opportunities, as already stated by others, and that we should still have the ability to go for relatively minor yet useful magical tricks that might otherwise not qualify for a "mid-term" research project.

I think the proposed reform is a great idea and should help us out a fair amount, but it would be best if grabbing minor side projects is still possible once in a while.

I'm also curious how the research goals will fit in with overall sorcery advancement. If we want to research permanent body modifications for the most obvious example, how does Dominic's time get split between specific spell research and overall sorcery research? This is something I would expect to be more of an issue with fire or force research projects where prerequisite skill levels are not necessarily as clear. Overshooting our ability when assigning research projects is something I could see happening, and then us having no palatable recourse for trying to manage the timetable we're set on.

I still feel favorably towards the proposal though, despite the potential pitfalls(and let's be honest, there are pitfalls of the current system).

 

[ShaperV]

The problem with this is that sometimes there are instances where we have limited windows of opportunity, like the Beastmen bodies or the Chosen, so in those cases we kinda need to switch gear or we will lose unique possibilities.

Another issue is that i personally prefer to improve all of our Sorceries slowly rather than focusing on one, though i guess that with the "project" we can still do that.

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I'd still allow you to study a unique information source without penalty. I just don't want to see the group continue researching a different type of magic every turn, because you'll never get anywhere that way. But if you want flexibility you can certainly propose small research goals and alternate sorcery types.

I'm also curious how the research goals will fit in with overall sorcery advancement. If we want to research permanent body modifications for the most obvious example, how does Dominic's time get split between specific spell research and overall sorcery research?

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I'd have Dominic work on things in the order he thinks would be most efficient (and he'll usually be right). So in this case he'd start by working up Flesh Sorcery to 3 because that's a prerequisite for doing anything permanent, then he'd start working on how to shapeshift stuff like increased muscle mass, and the project would be complete when he gets enough of a buff effect that it actually gives +1 Body.

This is something I would expect to be more of an issue with fire or force research projects where prerequisite skill levels are not necessarily as clear. Overshooting our ability when assigning research projects is something I could see happening, and then us having no palatable recourse for trying to manage the timetable we're set on.

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I'd put rough time estimates on each option when you vote on them, and if something turns out to be far harder than expected that would let you change goals without penalty. Really the only reason for the penalty is to make sure we don't end up with a fresh argument about research goals every turn.

 

[Ghost]

@ShaperV How would I configure these two things so they work with the new research mechanism?

1) [X] Research: Fleshcrafting Sorcery buffs to social actions (EX: extending empathy's range to ranged rather than touch)
2) [X] Research: Fleshcrafting Sorcery buff to senses.

 

[Thomasfoolery]

I'd say the long term research system is definitely needed, different plan makers have different priorities so if whoever wins changes from month to month it'll be very difficult to get anything done, after a certain level people also seem pretty reluctant to spend actions to get the permanent level ups needed to do better magic as well.

As for what I favor: Permanent body enhancements, extremely useful line of research not just for us but can also make all our other units better as well.

 

[ShaperV]

Alright, here are the options that are currently on the table for your research goal. Hopefully the time estimates will make it clear why I'm making this change. Note that several of them include the cost of raising one or more types of sorcery, so they'll become easier as your sorcery levels increase.

Will Dominic develop:

[ ] A force-based melee buff (5-6 actions, includes Force Sorcery 2)
[ ] A fire/force 'balls of heat' efect for letting large groups travel during winter. (12-16 actions, includes Fire & Force Sorcery 2)
[ ] A powerful fire/force combo attack spell (9-10 actions, includes Fire & Force Sorcery 2)
[ ] A permanent +Charm buff (10-12 actions, includes Flesh Sorcery 3)
[ ] A permanent +Body buff (9-10 actions, includes Flesh Sorcery 3)
[ ] A permanent strength/stamina buff for horses (10 actions, includes Flesh Sorcery 3)
[ ] A special sensory ability to buff social actions (1-4 actions)
[ ] A temporary vision/hearing buff (2-6 actions)

...or suggest something else.

 

[megrisvernin]

[X] A special sensory ability to buff social actions (1-4 actions)

 

[fitzgerald]

[X] Permanent Body Buff

 

[Ghost]

[X] A special sensory ability to buff social actions (1-4 actions)

 

[drake_azathoth]

[X] Permanent Body Buff

 

[BFldyq]

[X] Basical Magical Husbandry

 

[Thomasfoolery]

Thomas the point of Kats survey is to (hopefully) turn up any thing we can mine: salt, coal, tin, copper, iron, gold, silver etc along with any spots ideal to build villages with water and fertile soil

Jaroslaw and the rangers are going because it involves Kat walking around all of Corzu

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Just noticed this, we locate a bunch of resources we have no time to do anything with for the foreseeable future, at a cost of possibly not getting our building projects done before winter (and wasting Dragos's time on something he can't do). Sending the rangers is fine, but Jaroslaw doesn't need to go along, we already had pretty much this exact same discussion earlier about Traian.

[X] A permanent +Body buff (9-10 actions, includes Flesh Sorcery 3)

 

[LeoAbogos]

Okay so I was working on this list before ShaperV's post went up so there's some repeats but I'm keeping them on out of pride. The list is also sort of stupidly long and in no particular order so sorry about that. I'm just throwing ideas out there in case anyone likes them. I'm also sorry about the space-wasting speculation. Sorry about being so sorry.

Cosmetic Alteration(Flesh):
This one is fairly straightforward, the permanent alteration of cosmetic features in ourself and others. Useful for all sorts of plots, sneakiness, adventuring in secret, a foundation for low-level Charm buffs, and general evasion of consequences. Requires Flesh 3.

Permanent Body buff(Flesh):
The permanent improvement of the Body stat. Benefits speak for themselves. Requires Flesh 3.

Anti-arrow shield(Force):
The use of force magic to prevent Dominic from getting hit by projectiles, basically. Quite useful in my opinion, stray arrows are a dangerous liability for many encounters and one that Dominic can't rely on his swordsmanship to defend himself against. Scales from active deflection to a sustainable static defense. Most likely requires Force 2.

Mobility enhancement(Force and/or Body):
This is a broad category of potential projects focussed around using magic to make Dominic faster, more agile, or otherwise able to get around easier. We could most likely start on things like reflexes, jumping strength, and improving our existing speed enhancement at our current level of skill, but probably not much further. I think that Force ultimately has more potential in this area. Force jumps, slowfall, and essentially mimicing Dita's mobility enhancements should be feasible with force magic. Should require Body 2 or Force 2 to get started.

Force fire sword(Force/Fire):
The use of Force and Fire sorcery to arm Dominic with either a "sword" of fire contained by force magic, or a concrete projection of force shaped into a sword and wreathed in flames, depending on the interpretation. Having this spell would mean that Dominic would nearly always be armed with an implement he can use his swordsmanship with, and a magic one at that. Fire as a cleansing element means that it would be particularly effective against tainted entities. I went with this rather than learning to wrap a physical sword in fire because I imagine that would damage the blade and the heat weaken it. Should require Force 2 or Force 3, and Fire 2 to be practical.

Winter operations magic(Fire+Flesh):
A collection of spells and tricks to make travel during the winter safe for small to moderate parties. Fire magic to keep people warm, flesh magic to treat hypothermia or make them more tolerant to cold. Flesh 2 or 3 and Fire 2 or 3 depending on the desired scale.

Tactical flesh buffs(Flesh):
The use of flesh enhancements on a tactically relevant scale. Buffing troops with Dominic's existing suite of short-term enhancements, essentially. This could work a number of different ways depending on how flesh sorcery works exactly. Probably requires Flesh 3 to be really practical.

Basic magical husbandry(Flesh):
This would be a general grounding in the mechanics of fertility, pregnancy, and heredity and how to monitor and ease the processes. The actual research would be done on animals because of ethics but also the much swifter gestation. This would also form the foundation for exploring the nature of human pregnancy. Dominic would probably spend time gaining some skill in the related mundane skill at some point. Flesh 2 is likely sufficient for learning about and assisting pregnancy, Flesh 3 if you want to do anything fancy.

Force imbue(Force):
Similar to Dita's holy imbuement, this would be storing an extra punch of force energy into something to be released on impact. This would probably be fairly effectiev against armored foes. Likely Force 2 to be useful.

Fire control(Fire+Force):
This is the ability to generally control fire in Dominic's environment. Controlling the intensity, duration, and movement of flames around him at range. This would be a great ability for battlefield control or even just firefighting which is a valid concern for the time. Likely includes improving our fire resistance. Should be feasible at Fire 2 and Force 2.

Purifying flame(Fire):
Fire is supposed to be a purifying element, and so it may be possible to push that aspect to the fore in the flames that Dominic produces, to more effective combat taint. This would require collaboration with Kat and possibly help from Dita as well, but could be incredibly useful. I'm hopeful that this is possible to a limited degree at Fire 2, but it may be 3 or even 4.

 

[Seventeen]

[X] Basic magical husbandry.

Despite having decided we want Dominic to be a Feudal Lord rather than a wandering Hero, the majority of posters seem to have once again lost their direction. I'm going to chalk that up to Dominic being antsy, and not to several new posters apparently not reading the rest of the thread.

I've chosen the above option from LeoAbogos because it's a prerequisite for the Sorcerer Lord specialty. If you recall, Dominic having a bunch of children to his wife and mistresses was part of that. Making sure pregnancies come to term healthily is absolutely necessary to that, given the rates of child and mother mortality for the medieval period. Further possible benefits in the mid- to long-term include generally stronger, smarter, etc, children and being able to make sure they have magical potential. For now, though, the main benefits are getting Dominic a strong grounding in what pregnancy actually is, the skills he needs to successfully alter traits of animals (and eventually children) in utero, and a surplus of animals for when we get that influx of refugees.

Any questions?

 

[drake_azathoth]

Any questions?

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Sure. Would you like some cheese with your whine? If you recall, we have had to fight once or twice despite largely going feudal lord route, and being the family's specialist in Sorcery was stated to include a certain amount of adventuring.

 

[Seventeen]

I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say. I'm not arguing that Dominic can never adventure ever.

 

[Captain]

I have a long term plan for Dita which will remove the threat Timis poses to Kat and give our family a clear inheritor for Dita's barony, but it requires Cosmetic Alteration, Flesh 3 sorcery, and works better the sooner we execute it. Which means if we're going to do it, we should start working toward it right now.

In the broadest of strokes, Timis likely won't try to press the issue on Kat being in our territory until he has the superior negotiating position. One way for him to feel he has that position is for him to have a hostage he knows we care about.

By making sure it is known that Dita's our "cousin and close friend" we could sucker Timis into taking a Dita bodydouble as a hostage to try to force us into giving up Kat. When he has taken the bait, we would then arrange for an incident where the bodydouble dies before we had a chance to officially respond, framing Timis for it and dumping a scandal on Timis.

As long as we're reasonably sure Grandfather suppressed the paperwork and witnesses to Dita's appointment as baroness, we don't need to have the bodydouble bear an heir- we only need to have her marry whoever Grandfather tapped for that position.

Dita would agree to this if we spun it as her giving up her identity to help protect Kat from Timis (by effectively giving the family cause to neutralize Timis). Grandfather gets to keep Dita's barony in the family. We get to actually secure Kat from Timis and eliminate a potential later problem. And Dita gets a new identity that she can be free to use without the family getting in trouble for her actions.

It's the best solution I can come up with that has a reasonable chance of accomplishing what we want. Dita's a particularly hard case because she's young and silly and also soul-bound to a demon priestess (that last bit makes keeping her around as herself a death sentence for her, because as soon as it gets out she's got such a connection the church will demand she be killed for the good of the nation).

 

[BFldyq]

Honestly, I think the big problem is that we started off too weak. Yes, you heard me.

An example: Ezti is 16, and gets only one action per turn. Yet the total training time of her skills is 31.

We, in contrast, were 18, and get three actions per turn. Yet the total training time of our skills, based on what I can tell, was 44.

What the fuck happened? What was Dominic doing that made him so unimpressive, comparatively? Did he suddenly change from having 1 action to 3 actions a month or two before he turned 18 or something?

If not, he really should have been skilled in a lot more areas already, or have reached ratings in 4's of some of his skills. What the hell was he doing all that time?

 

[Captain]

Honestly, I think the big problem is that we started off too weak. Yes, you heard me.

An example: Ezti is 16, and gets only one action per turn. Yet the total training time of her skills is 31.

We, in contrast, were 18, and get three actions per turn. Yet the total training time of our skills, based on what I can tell, was 44.

What the fuck happened? What was Dominic doing that made him so unimpressive, comparatively? Did he suddenly change from having 1 action to 3 actions a month or two before he turned 18 or something?

If not, he really should have been skilled in a lot more areas already, or have reached ratings in 4's of some of his skills. What the hell was he doing all that time?

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Personally I think Dominic having 3 actions a month to start with was the problem. It makes it far too tempting to try to game the system.

 

[Seventeen]

What the hell was he doing all that time?

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What do teenage males usually do with their time?