In Progress [LP CYOA] Tower

Which is what you do when you guard someone.

Honestly, we’re one heck of an irresponsible brat. Everyone here is doing their job except us and we’re looking to do someone else’s job for them instead of being the most useful where we can be.

Tlalli is fighting the monsters, the cat is guarding Liz, Liz is bait for the monster, Sophie is looking for more enemies and what are we doing? Looking for any excuse we can not to guard the one person that can see these things before they attack, who is totally unguarded at the moment.

Hey, I know what we can do! Let’s do the cat’s job! Or the monster hunter’s job! Let’s hide in the bushes and try and spot the things we literally can’t spot before they attack because we don’t have magic glasses. Anything but guarding the member of our team who is extremely important right now and vulnerable! Please! Anything but that!

 

To be fair, when the cat got its assignment, the situation was a bit different, and there was a safety net. The cat's job (as is Elizabeth's) is to delay the monster until the cavalry arrives. Seeing how Tlalli is occupied, the only cavalry left is us. So it merely depends on your assessment of the fight.

But I agree I wouldn' want to do the monster hunter's job. To free her up to do... what? I mean, what do we think she'd be doing more efficiently? Fight monsters? She is already doing that. Reinforce others? Is there any reason her and us would do any better with their roles swapped?

It kinda tastes like "I don't know what to do so you figure it out for me".

 

To be fair, Elizabeth has the best escape abilities out of anyone here, the shifter headed her way is already injured, and Elizabeth has a shiny orb which she is primed to use so that the shifter headed her way is even more crippled than it already is, so I think the safety net can do its job and take care of things and even if Bernard doesn't manage to kill the shifter, Elizabeth will still manage to escape.

The person who is defenseless at this moment is Sophie.

 

'ang on a minute, maybe we could just ask Sophie if she sees any more of them and plan according-like

 

My guess is that if she did see more of them she would already be yelling that information.

 

...with the exception of reptile bears. She is also a pre-teenage girl on stick legs.

Being the best runner isn't going to help you if you are trying to outrun a bear. Even a wounded one.

We have to make a call here, and hope we made the right one.

 

Just to be clear, Elizabeth is explicitly more agile than Tlalli in this swamp, she has an orb which explicitly weakens and slows down the already injured shifter, and she has a protector (Bernard). So I would say she has rather good odds of escaping, if she even needs to.

And we really should not overlook the fact that Sophie is by far the most vulnerable party member here.

 

yes: let's tell grandma to guard Sophie and cook tea while we dispatch the closest shifter, then dash over to the one running away and smash it, re-arrange the leopard's spots, fix Elizabeth's hair, leisurely stroll over to Sophie and grandma (suitably spruced-up leopard in one hand, Elizabeth in the other - smoking revolver safely gripped by our smiling teeth), take a sip of tea and say "not bad, but you can do better"

 

It sounds like we're spitting old taking points at one another at this point. Maybe now's a good time to take a break and let the less verbose of us voice their opinions? I'm not sure that they'll read the five pages of discuss we have produced.

===Poll===

==1st choice==
A - 3 (1)
B - 8 (10)
C - 8 (9)
D - 1 (0)

==2nd choice==
A - 6 (8)
B - 3 (2)
C - 1 (0)
D - 10 (11)
E - 1 (0)

Votes (open) Votes (close)

Lambchop19 A>B D>B>C
ERYFKRAD A>D B>D
Esquilax B D

A bear named spigot. B A
baud B>C C
Grimgravy B>C B>C>A
Life of the Party B D
Tigranes B D
Azira B>C A>C>B
asxetos B A>B
Nevill B D

CappenVarra C A
ItsChon C D
Absinthe C>D D
Egosphere C D
Kz3r0 C>B D>B
hello friend C D
Oscar C A
Kipeci C A

Baltika9 D>A>C E>A>C

===

 

BA

 

I'll flop to BD.

It's on Lambchop for chickening out.
and making me too

 

If we're playing bodyguard, then wouldn't it make more sense to pick a melee weapon? A slingshot isn't exactly great for close quarters, unlike a revolver or sword-club. Or brass knuckles ( just saying).

 

The fuck with all these D-votes? You guys just thinking Sophie wants the D when in reality she just wants to be left alone with her big glasses.

We should man up instead and do something.

 

Laxatives?

 

None of this would have happened if only we'd choose BOOTS.

We'd have a key position in the plan, a badass magical orb, and a kitty all to ourselves.

Remember kids, being a nerd is not fun! BOOTS over BOOKS!

 

and how do people expect Gavrilo van Wrinkle to shoot Franz Doppelganger if we don't let him play with guns from an early age?

 

Gonna quote lambchop again. Because for once he is entirely correct.

We usually start creating our own alternate realities (myself included) when we DISCUSS! too long. Simple objective facts.

 

Way too much talking. 2D is obviously the right choice and I'm not going to bother rehashing what was already said in the thread. Everyone else is living in a fantasy land in regards to how quickly we can get to Elizabeth, how much trouble Tlalli actually is in (remember she's old af in a profession where people die young, and she intended to go after the creature alone which implies she was prepared to handle any number of shape shifters that might come up), and how powerful we actually are when it comes to holding these things off.

When it comes to the discussion about the weapon, I think the consensus is clear that we want a ranged weapon. Baltika9 I change my vote to just C no flop, which means we're currently tied at 9-9 between the slingshot and the gun. The gun is superior to the slingshot imo because the upside is so much higher. We're tossing the sling shot at a moments notice once we get a bow, but the revolver will stay useful, even when we have a bow. One for long ranged quarry, the other for close quarters combat. All these people making decisions because they're psyching themselves out into thinking Treave is going to fuck us with bad rng just because we picked the OBVIOUSLY BEST option. Someone flop over to revolver please and let's finish this.

 

Revolver's probably best option for defense: We get to unload into anything that approaches Sophia, and it can fire multiple consecutive shots without before we need to reload. We already have a knife on us. I think the slingshot is a worse idea if we're just defending Sophie honestly. It doesn't pack the same firepower and we won't be able to continuously reload it while Sophie is under attack. So we'd get off maybe one shot, which won't hit as hard as the revolver does, before we'd end up in melee. I'd recommend brass knuckles or slingshot more if 2A were winning (sword-club is not within our skills, imo). The slingshot is better for fighting an enemy that isn't engaging us (letting us repeatedly fire pebbles with better aim, and lower risk of accidental friendly fire) or long-distance shooting (again, better aim given our superior familiarity with the slingshot). For an enemy that could be rushing Sophie, while we are protecting her, firepower and continuous firing (however brief) are higher value, since aim will typically not be the problem there.

 

This is incorrect, unless we had some stealthy vote changes. The two flops to 1B are coming from Esquilax and Lambchop, and my flop is the only one to 1C. This brings the total up to 10-8 after flops. Feel free to double-check my tally (in fact, if anyone can, please do so).
===
Actually, I think that we're overthinking the weapon choice and that Esquilax is right, and it won't have a tremendous impact on our effectiveness in this situation:

Yeah, you can argue that a novice will be bad with a revolver, but revolvers were made to be simple and it's not like the slingshot will have less potential for friendly fire at close range. In fact, a sharp pebble presents a greater danger to Sophie than to these thick-skinned shifters, whereas a revolver might hurt both of them equally. I mean, fuck, it's rocks vs. bullets, c'mon bros.

What I was trying, and evidently failed, to communicate is that taking down the wounded shifter was, originally, Tlalli's job. She won't be able to do so now and this is why I am agitating for us to get involved, not because I want hero or brownie points. In fact, our only job was to map the surroundings.

I understand that the second option is pretty much locked in, but I just wanted to clarify that point and the reason that I think we should be more proactive.

TL;DR: BD still leads, flop to revolver because bullets>rocks.

 

My bad. Before you edited it had me in the vote section as C>B which is what I put down so I figured the votes up top reflected what you had on the bottom.

 

CA

I prefer a gun over whatever else and I think that it’d be most efficient to dispatch the new one right in front of us. If we can gang up on the new arrival then we ought to be able to put it on the defensive and control where it can go/overwhelm it quickly so it can’t wheel around and fall upon Sophie due to the constant pressure from us. I’m not too worried for Elizabeth even though the other one is headed towards her because she has high mobility and Bernard is there to apply pressure to that one. I don’t think hanging around Sophie out of the way will contribute all that much to the fight versus being up close and personal to blast it away since we are relatively inexperienced with firearms and power in any case will drop with range, and supporting Tlalli so we can find and kill these suckers quickly is what we’re supposed to be doing here anyway.

 

I disagree. I think reacting to potential threats (D or E) as opposed to confirmed threats is the most unreasonable idea.

Adding conditional to second choice
B>C
B>C>A

 

Huh. 2A is not one vote away from tying 2D, and one flop away from leading it. LEt's grab a gun and help out gram-gram. She can then proceed with the original plan, while we help Sophie, if necessary.

 

If you only focus on what's before your eyes, you will miss a lot of things. The confirmed threats you are talking about are already under control. The real risk here is that of something happening to Sophie, who is, as we well know, completely undefended and unable to defend herself. You are also behaving as though our job is to win this fight. It is not. That is Tlalli's job and Bernard's job. Our job is to assist, see to our own safety, and avoid making life harder for the experts. Right now, the only real need I can see, is for someone to defend Sophie. Elizabeth is well protected and Tlalli can handle the shifter here.

I dunno about that. If an expert is busy fighting a monster, they generally don't want an amateur inserting themselves into their fight. We have to accept that our involvement would probably make the fight messier instead of easier for Tlalli. I don't think A will necessarily have the worst outcome (Sophie dying), but at the least I wouldn't be surprised if we end up aggravating our injury. I also think that given that she was perfectly ready to take on the shifter alone, Tlalli doesn't need our help.

Also, those weapon votes...

Treave: A dangerous monster is headed your way! Which weapon would you rather have? A revolver, or a slingshot?
Codex: Slingshot, of course!