[LP CYOA] 傳

[Smashing Axe]

C - Although I'm sure there's something I'm overlooking here.

 

[Zero Credibility]

I think with C we are both going to fall of the horse. Plus we might actually end up hurting her horse and that might lead to undesirable consequences even if we win.

But what the hell, somehow I still like it more then D - catching a whip with bare hands while standing on a rearing horse sound like a real longshot to me. Especially now that we have taken a sudden and unexplainable hit to our agility.

Voting C. But let's try not to kill the horse doing it.

Edit: Flopping to D. I still think it has a lower chance of working, but it also has a lower chance of completely backfiring on us as well. With D the worst thing we can do is lose a fight. With C the worst thing is losing a fight while appearing dishonourable before our hosts (even if there is no explicit rule against jumping on her horse) and hurting her animal in the process. With our luck we should probably avoid opportunities for critical failures like that.

 

[Tigranes]

We don't know enough about this tribe to tell whether they'd appreciate more that we actually win, even if a bit dirty - or that we gracefully bow out. After all, now that we've gone for the unorthodox approach we really should make sure our actions yield a net positive for the negotiations. I feel like we haven't scored enough hits for the crowd to make A look anything more than SHAMEFUL DEFEAT, but C seems rather.... risky.

Our best stats are 8 STR and 7 AGR; the sheer strength gives us an advantage if we succeed with C, but I don't know if our agility and luck is good enough for C or D. I suppose with C we could hope for some kind of general tumble where everyone falls down...

 

[Zero Credibility]

I suppose with C we could hope for some kind of general tumble where everyone falls down...

That might not actually be bad at all - that way we don't lose but we don't possibly upset them by winning over their princess either.

 

[Baltika9]

I suppose with C we could hope for some kind of general tumble where everyone falls down...

Probably, yeah. This is our first time doing something like this, so I'm not sure Tigerbro will be able to keep his footing perfectly, hell, he might even EPIC FAIL. Andyman might not take to us well.
D will really humiliate her, which she won't appreciate, I'm sure.

Then again, maybe they both will tumble, and since Tigerbro is a gentleman, he'll cushion her fall. Meaning she'll have to tend to our injuries at camp, since she's the shaman here.

We don't know enough about this tribe to tell whether they'd appreciate more that we actually win, even if a bit dirty - or that we gracefully bow out.

Judging by their reaction to the "dirty shoe" tactic, the crowd really appreciates "creative thinking." treave, did we catch the Khan's reaction to that?

 

[Baltika9]

Actually, I just noticed that B says "I attempt to surrender." I'm pretty sure Yunzi, with her temper, will take that as a personal insult and do something stupid, because "How dare you! I will kick your ass."
Like Julia back in the Epic LP, I think that we just need to give her enough rope to hang herself with.
Flopping to B.

 

[Kipeci]

I'm not sure how we humiliate her with D-- actually, I'm thinking we might not even be able to pull it off and will probably flip back to C. We're probably strong enough to pull her if we were able to grab hold of it, but whips hurt (especially in an area with as much sensory as the hand) and our endurance stat is average. Our agility is enhanced, though, so I think we could pull off some leaping since the white horse is right next to ours, anyway. At least, it doesn't seem likely to turn out badly as D does.

 

[Nevill]

Well, now that we jumped into the fray, we might as well see it to the end. The Duke will hate us no matter what we do - if the negotiations fail, he will pin it on our intervention, and should they succeed... well, I got a nagging feeling that he still would not appreciate our input, and take it as an insult instead ("Your diplomacy sucks. Here is how its done, by a 14 year old, to boot"). Or he might surprise us still and turn out a smart and wise person... naah, who am I kidding.

Yunzi has definitely shown that she's willing to do anything to win:

Since she's shown an obvious fondness for bending the rules, I definitely wouldn't put it past her to have fed something to the horse to make it more docile. I doubt that she's the Horse Whisperer here.

I don't think so, no. First, if these nomads are somewhat similar to their historical counterparts, they don't take kindly to cheaters (though, of course, they might consider that foreigners are another matter). Second - the princess did nothing so far that would indicate that she was a dishonest person. The trick she did with a whip was, in fact, a bold and daring move - should her hand faltered even a little bit, she would have hit the horse and suffer a humiliating defeat, on the eyes of the whole tribe, no less. This in not cheating, this is an example of thinking on your feet - something to admire, rather than abhor. Note that the other tribesmen approve of this kind of an unorthodox thinking, no matter where it comes from, as they were clearly impressed with your own trick with a shoe instead of calling you out on it. Whether they extend this trail of thought to something that is done prior to the fight to rig the tables is debatable, but somehow I doubt it. They are treating you somewhat fairly.

The princess herself strikes me as too proud a person to resort to underhanded tactics. She reminds me of Kyrie more than Sekh, most likely because the former exhibited a similarly childish attitude. I suppose the reason behind her horse's calm behavior is that it knows its owner well, and they probably hold these matches often enoght for it to get used to them (how else Yunzi became so good at this?), while our horse is just nervous in the presense of a complete stranger with a grooming skill in the negatives. Either that, or Yunzi is indeed a qi user - which would still fall into 'fair game' territory.

With that in mind, let's review our choices.
A - we deliberately back down from the fight, unbeknownst to the tribe. After demonstrating their superiority in a satisfying manner, they will probably resume negotiations with a predictable outcome. You are back at square one, except that you've just made an enemy out of the Duke.
B - you throw a fight and let the tribe know it. This is a recipe for disaster, for I believe they would consider it a grave insult. What happens next is up in the air.
C - a 'smart' option. As much as I like bending rules in our favor, I would like you to consider the fact that you have continuously demonstrated your inability to handle horses, while Yunzi showed perfect control over her own. I am also afraid that you might hurt the animal by accident. This option has an equal chance of leveling the playing field or biting us in the ass.
D - the option I am most comfortable with. It implies perception, agility and strength stat checks (grabbing the whip will probably hurt like hell, so make that an endurance check, too), and we have those at average or above. My only worry is that Yunzi won't go for us, but will try to spook our horse once again, and we might not be able to prevent that. We are more than a match for her in direct combat otherwise. After that, if we don't manage to drop her, our best chance would probably be goading the princess into hitting our horse by accident.

Therefore, D.

 

[Azira]

treave, you have the Agility score for our character marked as 8 when it should be 7. I'll probably regret saying that, but fair is fair.

Honesty gain +1

 

[Nevill]

Factions:
Imperial Court: -10 (Neutral)
Ashina Tribe: +5 (Neutral)

treave, could you tell us the scale? Is it 0-100? What are the gradations?

 

[Jester]

treave, you have the Agility score for our character marked as 8 when it should be 7. I'll probably regret saying that, but fair is fair.

Honesty gain +1

Would Brofist for fair play, but cant so make it +1 to Justice (or Jester fool) arcana.

Btw to C

uses your horse as a stepping stone

It don't look like using your opponent horse is forbidden and it look like its is very close it should be easy jump (we are in hand reach). Course staying on top of it is another issue.
D should work to, if she will attack us not horse mby taunting would help.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm won around to the point that C, especially if it goes bad, may look too 'shady' for the crowd to really like - if it works well it may be spectacular but, well, Luck 1 + horse-hate.

D.

 

[m4davis]

D

 

[Baltika9]

I just realized: D will take her off the horse hard. As in, she may get seriously injured, because getting thrown off a horse face-first into the dirt fucking hurts, I should know, I did it. And that will piss off the locals more than anything else, harming their princess.
So, yeah, preferential vote B (since I still think bowing out gracefully will just enrage her even more and force her temper) and then C, over everything else.

 

[ScubaV]

D

 

[Esquilax]

But what the hell, somehow I still like it more then D - catching a whip with bare hands while standing on a rearing horse sound like a real longshot to me. Especially now that we have taken a sudden and unexplainable hit to our agility.

The Tiger sign gives +2 to Agility, but initially we were given 8. We might have an opportunity to bump up our stats in the future, though. If we're... lucky.



I think that Nevill made an interesting breakdown and I think he's absolutely correct. The whole point of the game here is to match our strength against our opponent's weakness. She's slightly faster than us, but we're much physically stronger than her - if we have the perception to anticipate the whip and we're fast enough to grab hold of it (and I think our character is), we'll be able to take it from her at the very least. Our physical strength is going to give us the edge in this contest, and D provides the best way to use that advantage to its fullest. I don't know if it will succeed, but it's definitely the option that makes the most sense.

Remember that Yunzi's horse is very comfortable with its owner. I am fairly sure that the princess could quite easily try and get the horse to shake us off if necessary. Sure, she'll be on the horse too, but she's far more comfortable with horses than we are, this is her wheelhouse. If we want to win this, raw power is the way to go.

 

[Baltika9]

I think that Nevill made an interesting breakdown and I think he's absolutely correct. The whole point of the game here is to match our strength against our opponent's weakness. She's slightly faster than us, but we're much physically stronger than her - if we have the perception to anticipate the whip and we're fast enough to grab hold of it (and I think our character is), we'll be able to take it from her at the very least. Our physical strength is going to give us the edge in this contest, and D provides the best way to use that advantage to its fullest. I don't know if it will succeed, but it's definitely the option that makes the most sense.

This came up earlier:

To clarify: just because the character is good at something doesn't mean that always picking choices that seem to play to his strengths will lead you to the best outcome in both short and long term consequences. This applies even if the character is, say, a genius. Sometimes it's better to be stupid, or at least pretend to be. I mean this in general, not in the context of this particular choice.

Like I said before, D can seriously injure her, which is definitely a huge diplomatic penalty. We're the Han lapdog, she's the Tengrii Priestess/Princess.
Falling off the horse seated hurts a like hell, being yanked off a moving horse while standing on top of it, yeah, painful as fuck. And if we steal the whip, what are we going to do with it?

 

[treave]

treave, could you tell us the scale? Is it 0-100? What are the gradations?

Yeah,

-100 Sworn Enemy
-75 Hated
-50 Disliked
-25 Shunned
0 Neutral
+25 Accepted
+50 Liked
+75 Loved
+100 Idolized

Bear in mind that these are faction reputations. They do influence the members of the faction, but it is possible to befriend or make enemies of lower ranking members while retaining your reputation with the faction as a whole.

This came up earlier: Like I said before, D can seriously injure her, which is definitely a huge diplomatic penalty. We're the Han lapdog, she's the Tengrii Priestess/Princess.
Falling off the horse seated hurts a like hell, being yanked off a moving horse while standing on top of it, yeah, painful as fuck. And if we steal the whip, what are we going to do with it?

As for your earlier question, you are too busy fighting to go looking at the khan. At any rate, the whole point of this match is to... knock your opponent off a horse. If the tribe gets angry at you winning legitimately in a match their princess challenged you to by knocking her off a horse... uh, why would they?

 

[Kipeci]

I'm personally assuming that these horse nomads are no strangers to falling off of a horse at some point or another. The problem I see with D is that it's more focused on endurance, which we have no particular skills at, while the other option focuses more on the agility that we're decent at. Bros, the horse is right next to us; if she uses turkic horse magic to make it bad and try to upset us, at least it'll throw her off balance, too (as opposed to the set-up of only our horse trying to dislodge us). We should be doing better if we close the distance, anyway.

I flop to C.

 

[Esquilax]

I'm personally assuming that these horse nomads are no strangers to falling off of a horse at some point or another. The problem I see with D is that it's more focused on endurance, which we have no particular skills at, while the other option focuses more on the agility that we're decent at. Bros, the horse is right next to us; if she uses turkic horse magic to make it bad and try to upset us, at least it'll throw her off balance, too (as opposed to the set-up of only our horse trying to dislodge us). We should be doing better if we close the distance, anyway.

I flop to C.

What do you base this on? I figure that it would be based mostly on strength to pull the whip and agility to catch it; am I correct here, treave? Also, we're more than "decent" at Agility - 7 indicates a lot of talent.

Keep in mind that jumping horses isn't just a tactic that only we can use. In fact, it would be very clever of her to jump off towards our horse as we try to reach hers, at which point her stallion might buck us off, causing us to lose the match. The whole point of D is that it allows us to use what we're best at against what she's worst at (physical strength).

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Any idea of using strength against her speed falls kinda flat if she'll let go of the whip when we grab it.

 

[Esquilax]

Any idea of using strength against her speed falls kinda flat if she'll let go of the whip when we grab it.

Then she loses the whip and we end up taking it from her. How is this bad for us? We know that she was using the whip to startle our horse, so we have an idea of where she'll be aiming it, we just need the opportunity to grab it.

However, if we actually end up winning the match, we might end up having to marry her. Maybe taking a dive isn't such a bad idea here, our guy doesn't strike me as the type to settle down just yet.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Uh, sure, she loses the whip, but that does not seem like a big shake-up, the way things are going. Maybe we should direct the other shoe at her, with a bit more force.

 

[treave]

What do you base this on? I figure that it would be based mostly on strength to pull the whip and agility to catch it; am I correct here, treave? Also, we're more than "decent" at Agility - 7 indicates a lot of talent.

You would need perception to see the whip, agility to intercept it, endurance to withstand the pain, and strength to pull it. You are rather confident of being able to predict the whip and withstanding the pain because you're frequently punished for the misdeeds you and the prince get up to. Sure, it still hurts, but you can anticipate the hurt.

Then again, one of the hallmarks of your character is confidence, so...

 

[Baltika9]

Okay, we get the whip. Now what? It's a serious question, do we even know how to handle one, treave?
Sure, we can flail it around and try to capture her, but with our lack of skills, well, it will do us more harm than good.

At least in C, we're at a clear advantage: there's only so much room on the horse, and in close quarters it's all down to strength. An average fourteen year old girl stands no chance against an average fourteen year old boy in a strength contest, good luck against Tigerbro's 8 STR.

However, if we actually end up winning the match, we might end up having to marry her. Maybe taking a dive isn't such a bad idea here, our guy doesn't strike me as the type to settle down just yet.

I wouldn't mind getting him a hawt Mongolian waifu.