CYOA - Out of the Dark

[ERYFKRAD]

Our thirst is sated, so maybe we should rest at the abandoned house and see if it clears our head some.

 

[Kalarion]

That grate concerns me, though. Being half-open implies it's sometimes closed. And would we be able to open it from our side if it's shut against us while we sleep? I wonder if now (or soon, at least) would be the time to reveal ourselves.

Look more thoroughly in the houses and terraces surrounding the entrance, with the intent of finding something to wear. If not, go with Eryfkrad's plan, at least for now. We probably have a little time at least, since the retinue went the opposite direction.

 

[hello friend]

It would help if we had some idea of how many there were. Let's creep closer, very carefully.

 

[Demo.Graph]

You crawl to the edge of the terrace and observe the soldiers. Two of them stand watching over the main road of the city, swords at ready. One of the leaves of the gate is closed, iron lattice rested in the ground. Another leaf is open enough for a man to pass, but a soldier stands close enough to it to kick it close. Two priests keep playing music and singing something a little behind the gate. A dozen soldiers stand around them in a half-circle facing the entrance. From time to time priests stretch out their arms in the direction of the city, in what you assume is a religious gesture, and guards do the same. You see about a dozen more soldiers who sit or stand in pairs and threes and seem to rest. Sometimes they go somewhere to the left, a place you cannot see and soon come back. But you're not sure that these are the same soldiers.

You creep backwards and go searching the nearby houses. They're as dark and dusty as the ones you've been in. The only difference are small areas around the entrances comparatively free of dust - it's probably swept away by a weak wind that breezes through the cave. Deeper in the buildings it's very dirty again. Clouds of dust rise up as you walk, and no traces could be seen besides the prints of your naked feet. You look for something useful, but the buildings are almost empty. You winkle out a small blueish stone, one that seemed to almost fall out from the wall by itself. It's glassy, unpolished and glows with an even pale light. You also find a cracked clay cup, a rotten bench, several broken shelves, an assortment of clay shards, wooden splinters and several bent nails so old they almost fall apart in your hands. You put the bluish stone and a couple of nails in the cup. You're sure that you can dig out a few more stones if you need them.

Tired, you lay one of the wider planks you took from a shelf near the entrance overlooking the gate and try to make comfortable. Sleep comes, in short uneasy bursts. The plank is itchy and isn't exactly soft, wind gusts tickle your naked skin and priests below keep jingling their metallophones.

You're awoken by some commotion below. Someone runs down the road tapping the stones by wooden sandals. You look out of the doorway. One of the priests, probably a young one, though his face is covered by a mask as well, runs to the gate. He exchanges a few words with the guards then runs behind the gate. Priests hastily finish their ceremony. The soldiers begin to form two lines on the sides of the pass, while guards open the gates, screeching iron upon the stony floor. You hear a sorrowful music approaching from the city.

What do you do?

Spoiler

Inventory added - a cracked clay cup with a pale bluish stone and a couple of old nails inside.

 

[baud]

I'm stumped. Making a runner seem like a bad idea, waiting for the cortege feels like we've wasted our time...

Maybe we should take (have taken) advantage of the fact that everyone's masked and knock one out and steal his get up

 

[ERYFKRAD]

knock one out and steal his get up

I honestly don't think our Tutankhamen here has the energy or strength to overpower people just yet.

Still someone is coming in, so let's just wait.

 

[Demo.Graph]

I want to spoiler so hard, it's infuriating.
Let me say the following.

OOC metainfo

I've thought about a possibility of people going murderhobo and it won't necessarily lead to a bad end.
You haven't managed to stumble upon the worst bad end.
Out of the 6 prepared "good" endings for the tomb at least 4 are still quite available.

edit: grammar brainfart

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I want to spoiler so hard, it's infuriating.
Let me say the following.

OOC metainfo

I've thought about a possibility of people going murderhobo and it's not necessarily would lead to a bad end.
You haven't managed to stumble upon the worst bad end.
Out of the 6 prepared "good" endings for the tomb at least 4 are still quite available.

Spoiler

Any ending is by definition bad because it means the stuff is finito.

 

[baud]

Ok, let's stay put for now.

 

[Kalarion]

These blue stones. Anything interesting about them? Any reaction from casual inspection (IE, what happens if we look into it etc)?

Honestly bros I am completely stumped. I re-read the entire playthrough just to see if I could figure anything we could sensibly do differently. The only thing I could come up with was to follow the processional deeper into the complex, and see what happened.

Murderhobo never occurred to me after looking at char sheet and seeing we currently have a (severe? Hard to tell without context) penalty to Str and Sta.

What we do have right now are a little bit of willpower and luck. Maybe instead of resting and observing everyone else's goings-on it's time to look at ourselves. Maybe that headache and almost panic-attack sounding incident from earlier needs to be confronted. Who are we? What do we know about the heraldry and actions of the processional?

If we do end up revealing ourselves my only suggestion is that we have the blue stone we found in plain sight as we do so. No good reason, just a feeling that identifying ourselves as having passed through the complex might be helpful. And maybe the stones have some significance (though the impression I got is that they're basically a lighting system, like streetlamps).

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Murderhobo never occurred to me after looking at char sheet and seeing we currently have a (severe? Hard to tell without context) penalty to Str and Sta

Yo maybe we should do some pushups now while no one's looking.

 

[hello friend]

If we struggle to remember, I'm sure we can determine whether the robe of the recently dead guy that was just interred was significantly different from that of the other priests. We could head back and take his fresh looking clothes, and hope not to get locked out. Perhaps there'll be a guard posted on the other side, or perhaps a passerby will hear us knocking and wailing, or perhaps we'll catch the tail end of the procession on the way out. It's risky, but I like our chances better than just walking up as we are right now. We could pretend we got lost or fell behind the rest. Quickly, now.

 

[Demo.Graph]

we currently have a (severe? Hard to tell without context) penalty to Str and Sta

3d6 rolls have median roll result of 10. It's the same for edge exploding dice (referenced in OP). There's a slight chance to have a very large result with exploding dice, but 50% of your rolls would still get 10 or less.
Assuming equal stats, you have 50% chance to overroll your opponent. -2 to roll decreases success chance to ~25%.

An offtop about dice rolling

Exploding dice means that if you roll maximum or minimum, you add another die and roll again. Keep adding dice as needed. E.g. roll 3d6, on 18 add another die, if it goes 6, add again, repeat.
I've recently made a script for rolling exploding dice and ran it few million times (just because). Then I've realized that vanilla exploding dice leave gaps in the results. E.g. with ex3d6 you can't roll 18, 24, 30, etc., because when you roll, say, 18 on 3d6, you're forced to roll another die that would add at least 1.
If one wants to have an unbroken sequence, additional dice should be dN-1. A distribution inside 3d6 in this case is still normal, the upper tail becomes a bit less heavy (irrelevantly so for all gaming purposes).

Also, I haven't seen a distinction in tabletop media between "exploding tails" (e.g. 'roll 3d6, if 18 keep rolling for 6s, if 3 keep rolling for 1s') and "exploding dice" (e.g. 'roll again for each 6 or 1'). And more specific distinctions, like "exploding tops" ('if 18 roll for 6s') and "exploding bottoms" ('if 3 roll for 1s').
Though I guess codex is all about exploding bottoms anyway.

+/-1 roll adjustment on 3d6 gives different probabilities on varying differences of stats. E.g. if you have stat that is equal to difficulty, +1 to roll would increase a chance for success from 50% to 62% (+12 pp). If stat difference is, say -4, +1 to roll would increase your chance of success from 9% to 16% (+7 pp).
It might seem "harder to balance", but actually rolling vanilla 1d20 (or any other plain dice) in compounding manner gives the same result (e.g. you roll for attack several times). So 3d6 (or other normal distribution dice) simply decreases a necessity for multiple rolling attempts.

And since I'm lazy I prefer to make less rolls, so 3d6 it is.

Arguably, I'm also autistic, since I've spent few hours making script to check it all.

 

[Kalarion]

Then I've realized that vanilla exploding dice leave gaps in the results. E.g. with ex3d6 you can't roll 18, 24, 30, etc., because when you roll, say, 18 on 3d6, you're forced to roll another die that would add at least 1.
If one wants to have an unbroken sequence, additional dice should be dN-1.

Interesting. What do you think of FASA's old method with Shadowrun (re-roll and add all 6s, rather than only after a perfect 18)? It's another way to keep an 18 in the possibility space. Although I suppose it would also move the bell curve sharply to the right over standard exploding dice.

+/-1 roll adjustment on 3d6 gives different probabilities on varying differences of stats. E.g. if you have stat that is equal to difficulty, +1 to roll would increase a chance for success from 50% to 62% (+12 pp). If stat difference is, say -4, +1 to roll would increase your chance of success from 9% to 16% (+7 pp).

Not knowing our starting Str/Sta was what I was referencing with "lack of context". But as we discuss it, maybe that should have been one of our points of focus to start with. We have this tantalizing hint that I completely missed when reading (and re-reading...) through play:

You move it with all your strength and it budges a bit.

I wonder now if we should have been concentrated on determining our physical/mental limits first. Part of the "problem" (for me, at least), is that you're not giving scripted choices. I am at my absolute worst outside the box. Hence my taking multiple re-reads to come up with new ideas. Guiderails of some kind not only make me more comfortable, but also sharpen my focus and thinking.

None of which is a criticism, I'm really enjoying the mental strain of trying to come up with our own options based on what we're given. Hopefully your autism won't allow you to abandon this CYOA until the final and complete end. NG+ included

 

[Demo.Graph]

What do you think of FASA's old method with Shadowrun (re-roll and add all 6s, rather than only after a perfect 18)? It's another way to keep an 18 in the possibility space. Although I suppose it would also move the bell curve sharply to the right over standard exploding dice.

Yes. Here, few million rolls in Python.

Exploding everything increases both median and average, especially the average. It's not a normal distribution anymore, more like a lognormal one. IRL it's not a proper way to represent "generic random events" (like shooting dispersion), but might be good for some things (oil well lifetime productivity decline, scale of specific findings while prospecting mineral deposit, IIRC saturation of some chemical processes).

	avg	median
3d6	10.50	10
exploding edge 3d6 + d6-1	10.51	10
exploding all 3d6	12.59	11

I'd say that exploding all dice is okay for settings with a high wow factor (superheroes and the like) and audiences who like to physically roll many dice (teenagers).
It's kinda inconvenient for "realistic" settings, since median result shifts to 11. So "base stat for ordinary humans" moves from clean autistic round 10 to odd 11.

Part of the "problem" (for me, at least), is that you're not giving scripted choices.

Tremble, mortals, and despair!

Hopefully your autism won't allow you to abandon this CYOA until the final and complete end.

So far it's easier to do than the Piratez one, because I don't have to adhere to a self-imposed bar on photoshopping.

 

[Demo.Graph]

You wait in the doorway. The music comes closer. The burial procession returns in the same order, only the stretcher now is empty, and the soldiers walk on the sides of civilians.

Soldiers in the front of the procession had passed the gates, saluting their comrades offhandedly, when you notice a commotion. The large bald priest has stopped before the gates and is arguing about something with a masked man in richly-clad red-white dress-coat. Small group of expensive looking priests and nobles gather around them while the main procession stands at a respectful distance. The music and singing stops.

They gesticulate and argue for some time, sometimes addressing people around them theatrically. You hear scraps of their words, the language seems unfamiliar.

Finally they seem to reach a conclusion, though the large priest doesn't seem to be happy about it. On a signal, priests from the main procession resume their singing. The noble takes some vial out of his pocket and uncorks it. Large priests begins chanting and swinging his lamp, the book in his other hand again. The noble tilts the vial slowly. Dark liquid begins dripping on the cave floor. Light in the lamp pulsates abruptly illuminating the cave with a golden light. Pain pierces your head, splitting temples in half. Nausea clenches your throat, vision falters. You see yourself from the side, petty naked thing surrounded by the dark and shimmering possibilities. Words flood your head, the ones you know, the ones you don't know and some that don't exist. You hear fate quickening, see it balancing on the tip of the needle looking for what should and what shouldn't happen and see the record of events that is being written.

A tiny brown bird falls from the ceiling. With a chirp it crashes into the lamp, forcing the priest to cry in surprise, flutters its wings fearfully and...

A) dashes to the doorway you're in. You instinctively catch it. (+1 Luck, +1 Dexterity, receive Mark of Shimmering Debt)

B) dashes back to the ceiling and disappears in predawn pink light flowing from a crack in the wall. (+1 Perception)

 

[hello friend]

A) We're lucksmaxxing, boys

 

[Kalarion]

A. Agreed.

 

[baud]

I'm wary of the Mark...

I'll go B

 

[ERYFKRAD]

B

 

[Demo.Graph]

Unless someone else votes, I'll roll the dice in ~12 hours. Then we'll see whos lucksmaxxing.

 

[Nicebrain]

A

 

[Demo.Graph]

A it is.

Next goal for this LP - attract 77th post of Nicebrain.



Edit: goal failed

 

[Demo.Graph]

A tiny brown bird falls from the ceiling. With a chirp it crashes into the lamp, forcing the priest to cry in surprise, flutters its wings fearfully and dashes to the doorway you're in. You instinctively catch it. It's warm and fluffy and its heart beats like mad. Its heart beats like pain that pulses in your temples. Shimmering white clouds your vision until only the bird remains.

Vision returns in a snap. Pain disappears. Every muscle in your body pulses with life and power. You feel as if you're eighteen again.

You look below. People from the procession had scattered. Some are looking at the ceiling. Several priests spin around themselves with their arms raised and chant. The large priest barks the orders waving his lamp. The noble stands quiescent looking at the vial. Dozens of soldiers run up the stairs to the terraces, generally in your direction. It seems they haven't seen you yet.

What do you do?

A. You show yourself, head raised proudly, the bird outstretched in your hand.
B. Release the bird and hide in the house. You think you saw a hatch to the higher floor in a back room.
C. You do something else (specify).

Current character sheet

Stats
Strength ?/+3, empowered
Stamina ?/+3, empowered
Dexterity +1/+3, empowered
Willpower +1/+3, empowered

Luck +2
Mark of Shimmering Debt

Inventory
- A cracked clay cup with a pale bluish stone and a couple old nails inside.
- Scared and tiny brown bird.

 

[baud]

A

Taking refuge in audacity