[LP CYOA] 傳

[treave]

A smart strategist knows when to take the initiative, when to wait for the enemy's move, and when to place himself as a piece on the board. There are times where you surprise the enemy with bold moves, and yet there are also times where you pretend to play to their expectations to turn the tables on them. Knowing when to feign recklessness and when to hold back are vital to camouflaging your true intentions. Mastery of tactics is desirable on the field, but without combining it with a long term strategy, a grand plan will be doomed to failure. The paucity of information is no excuse for the lack of a plan - though a good plan cannot answer for all eventualities, it should be able to offer a solution for the most crucial ones; those that dictate whether you meet victory or defeat.

Legend has it that a Chinese general once asked Sun Tzu three questions, which illuminate the nature of strategy and the art of war.

How can I be victorious?
Know your enemy, and possess the will to act upon that knowledge.

How do I obtain knowledge of the enemy?
If information is scarce, create the opportunity to obtain more, through baits, feints and all manners of tactics. At the same time, be aware of what you are teaching the enemy, for knowledge flows two ways.

What if I cannot know a single thing about the enemy?
You cannot fight what you do not understand. Thus, do not engage.

***

This should be useful. Again. It can apply to other fields than just war, so keep this in mind for when the inevitable happens some chapters down the road.

 

[TOME]

Not the adjutant. Unlucky sword user

 

[treave]

It's a genre staple. Worry not, I won't turn him into a walking black-hole of angst.

 

[Jester]

Scholar and Doctor sound like best backgrounds, but if they cant win I will flop to rogue.

Main good points of Ean was his honourable behaviour, charisma, combined with wits and huge amount of luck. So Adjutant is outclassed by one of most entertaining people of codex playground and judging by his luck being screwed by faulty equipment, stray arrow or accident with man cannon is highly possible with is always annoying (except for man cannon this thing always is awesome).

Farmer would be good if he wouldn't be totally retarded, usually such people in games are likeable due to charismatic lines and/or interesting personality and person of intellectual ability of vegetable will not get that no mater what we do.

 

[Azira]

C'mon people, vote for Doctor Goat! It'll be grolious! Max out pressure points and herbalism and to heck with no social skills!

Heck, our mentor has even vowed to kill one person for each one he cures! What could be better?

 

[Kipeci]

I would love going for Dog Doctor, but there's no way the option for Doctor will win and I would really hate for us to go with Rogue.

 

[treave]

I'm thinking the rank description should be something along these lines.

Rank 0 - You are entirely unskilled. Best not to attempt it, if you know what is good for you.
Rank 1 - You have a basic grasp of this skill; at least you know it is about, if not what you should be doing.
Rank 2 - You understand what you should be doing, but you are not very good at doing it.
Rank 3 - You have finally become competent at this skill. Congratulations.
Rank 4 - You are as adept at it as any average practitioner of this skill. In other words, you are mediocre.
Rank 5 - You have a better-than-average grasp of this skill. This is the first step on the path to mastery.
Rank 6 - You have an even better understanding of this skill now. Excellent.
Rank 7 - You now possess a level of skill that would leave most practitioners in awe.
Rank 8 - You are now a bonafide master of this skill, a level few can achieve.
Rank 9 - You are a master among masters, taking the skill to the limits of human potential.
Rank 10 - You have elevated your mastery of this skill into the realms of the divine. Even the gods would be jealous of your prowess.

 

[Jester]

Rank 10 - You have elevated your mastery of this skill into the realms of the divine. Even the gods would be jealous of your prowess.

kinda regret that yodelling, lovemaking or cleaning isn't skill possible to acquire would be hilarious for me with this description especially first one.

 

[treave]

With Drinking 10 you would be guzzling entire taverns out of business. The whole of China will learn to fear your beer belly. The God of Wine, they call you; and in the centuries to come, little statues of your visage will adorn every tavern in China, set in a position of honour where drinkers offer incense before a bout of boozing.

--END--

 

[Kipeci]

What rank is considered the base rank so that there can be some subtraction from the dodgier points? I think you said something earlier about how the Ox Farmer would rank at 0 Intelligence somehow, so that'd be around rank 4 intelligence for a character without any modifiers for intelligence?

 

[treave]

The ranking I gave was just for skills. Stats start at a base score of 5, and we can subtract or add from there. You'll only find two combinations reaching a stat of 0 - Dog Adjutant and Ox Farmer, and those will get something different from the regular low-stat narrative quirks (stats at 1 - 3). For intelligence, I'm not limited to the either/or threshold that Fallout had, so there'll be varying degrees of retardedness based on how low the Int score sinks.

 

[Tigranes]

Are we seriously going for an Adjutant? Come on, we've already played the King's right-hand Ean and the Prince's right-hand Dio. It's also boring as hell compared to Ox Farmer or Goat Doctor or whatever.

treave vote is pretty close, don't close it up too quick. I refuse to believe all the Farmer & Doctor & Rogue voters would prefer Adjutant. I'm happy to flip to any of the first three, I think they're all fun choices.

 

[treave]

You still have about 10 hours or so, and a good part of the most excellent voting and flip-flopping action takes place during that particular time period if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, we'll see how things are when the deadline arrives.

This being a rather open world, it'll be more akin to the early chapters of the previous LP where you get choices on where to wander and bump into events, and that applies for all characters. This also means that picking a Scholar or Adjutant doesn't mean you'll be tied to the capital working for the Imperial Court. Things will open up by the end of the first chapter.

Of course, it's understandable if one prefers the eccentric, awkward-as-hell, creepy apprentice healer over the dashing, loyal, cursed swordsman. To each his own.

 

[Jester]

With Drinking 10 you would be guzzling entire taverns out of business.

Why out of business? Usually people pay for drinks i think, although getting bioware Blackwind could be tempting.

set in a position of honour where drinkers offer incense before a bout of boozing.

Awesome in certain extraordinary way remind me of Achaia book about forgotten inventor of wine.

Of course, it's understandable if one prefers the eccentric, awkward-as-hell, creepy apprentice healer over the dashing, loyal, cursed swordsman. To each his own.

It made you laugh did it not? Come on eccentric people are funnier look at some of codexians... pure win.

 

[Jester]

Not the adjutant. Unlucky sword user

They are quite popular in Japan... funny way to write emo sword user with troubled past btw . :D

 

[Boxer]

pig farmer
snake rogue

 

[Baltika9]

Are we seriously going for an Adjutant? Come on, we've already played the King's right-hand Ean and the Prince's right-hand Dio. It's also boring as hell compared to Ox Farmer or Goat Doctor or whatever.

treave vote is pretty close, don't close it up too quick. I refuse to believe all the Farmer & Doctor & Rogue voters would prefer Adjutant. I'm happy to flip to any of the first three, I think they're all fun choices.

Dude, the Adjutant can be way more than another Ean. We could be the Prince's master of intrigue, taking care of unsavory deals and shady politics. Or perhaps we could be more like his governor, assisting in administering the realm. Sure, we can go the military badass route, too. That's the awesome thing about the adjutant: there are just so many possibilities.

 

[Tigranes]

We could be the Prince's master of intrigue, taking care of unsavory deals and shady politics.

You mean Dio?

That's the awesome thing about the adjutant: there are just so many possibilities.

Every role has many possibilities, the Doctor for example isn't going to go pre-med and start his residentship for the first 30 updates. The Adjutant is the only role that in many ways (character, environment, etc) overlaps so much with the previous LP.

 

[XenomorphII]

C'mon you sissies. Farmer! We can be a martial badass (and hopefully we can avoid dying like a dog).

Edit: Plus with a farmer start we have to actually work our way into power, which I think would be lots of fun and give us an interesting view of things once we get there.

Edit2: I should clarify that by working our way into power as a farmer I mean going from a nobody peasant to becoming a bodyguard/general of somebody important. Not becoming the warlord ourselves (unless of course at some point we find a very trustworthy smart guy somewhere to compensate for our probable ability to be easily tricked and used).

 

[Baltika9]

So what? It just seems like a very interesting and flexible storyline.
And no, not Dio. I was thinking more along the lines of Varys (minus the eunuch part) and Littlefinger.

 

[Esquilax]

C'mon you sissies. Farmer! We can be a martial badass (and hopefully we can avoid dying like a dog).

Edit: Plus with a farmer start we have to actually work our way into power, which I think would be lots of fun and give us an interesting view of things once we get there.

The Farmer background is easily my favourite, but I hardly see this character as the sort of person with the ambition, let alone the intelligence to maneuver into power. This is why I love the Pig or Rabbit sign to go with our burly, uncouth bro: because there is a force more powerful than cunning, intelligence, or ambition - dumb fucking luck. As our beloved idiot maneuvers his way through court intrigue, every assassination attempt against him will mysteriously fail as arrows miss him by a whisker and our would-be murderer ends up drinking the wine that he attempted to poison us with. We'll be sitting there, delightfully oblivious to it all.

Are we seriously going for an Adjutant? Come on, we've already played the King's right-hand Ean and the Prince's right-hand Dio. It's also boring as hell compared to Ox Farmer or Goat Doctor or whatever.

treave vote is pretty close, don't close it up too quick. I refuse to believe all the Farmer & Doctor & Rogue voters would prefer Adjutant. I'm happy to flip to any of the first three, I think they're all fun choices.

Eh, I think the completely minmaxed options aren't very fun. A guy who's an Ox/Farmer combo is basically a fucking vegetable, and a Goat/Doctor is probably slightly below Rain Man levels of social skills. This would be fun for about one update. Personally, if I were going for a minmax combo, there's nothing better than going Goat/Scholar; the background reminds me a slight bit of Shulgi's, plus we'd max out INT, which should give us a lot of interesting things to do as a seeker of wisdom.

I like the Pig/Farmer background because I want a combat badass in a martial arts LP, and we've never played a character who's dumb before. Sure, we've made dumb decisions, but we've never made an actually stupid character, so this would be treading new ground. Wuxia Forrest Gump (3 INT would probably make us borderline retarded), a kind-hearted fool blessed by the gods, seems like an angle that we've never went for in these LP's.

Alternatively, we could go Monkey/Farmer for a completely badass fighter with merely below average INT. I'm somewhat reluctant to go after a really talky character like the Rogue: this is a martial arts LP, so I want ass-kicking. I just think the other backgrounds are all more interesting, Adjutant included. There's a sense of mystery with the Adjutant - I want to know why the Emperor would choose a disastrously unlucky person to serve as his heir's right-hand. It's an interesting set-up.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm fine with mixing it up a bit with the signs, yes. I just want us to be out of the court and in the pubs, pigsties, roadside scuffles and whatnot.

I'll go with Pig Farmer, though does not mean Adjutant wins again?

 

[Baltika9]

Flopping to

Farmer.

 

[Jester]

The Farmer background is easily my favourite, but I hardly see this character as the sort of person with the ambition, let alone the intelligence to maneuver into power. This is why I love the Pig or Rabbit sign to go with our burly, uncouth bro: because there is a force more powerful than cunning, intelligence, or ambition - dumb fucking luck. As our beloved idiot maneuvers his way through court intrigue, every assassination attempt against him will mysteriously fail as arrows miss him by a whisker and our would-be murderer ends up drinking the wine that he attempted to poison us with. We'll be sitting there, delightfully oblivious to it all.
Alternatively, we could go Monkey/Farmer for a completely badass fighter with merely below average INT. I'm somewhat reluctant to go after a really talky character like the Rogue: this is a martial arts LP, so I want ass-kicking. I just think the other backgrounds are all more interesting, Adjutant included. There's a sense of mystery with the Adjutant - I want to know why the Emperor would choose a disastrously unlucky person to serve as his heir's right-hand. It's an interesting set-up.

It would be ironical if adiutant meant to be assassin magnet, no one gonna kill emperor with him around. Body double would be similar to.
As for farmer being person who try to manipulate or annihilate him would be more interesting, i can see scene when we would be given report by our underlings why plan didn't work out.
I think that we wont be seeing much politic with farmer because why he would be there? Battle only character he is great but low charisma and intelligence will stop us from getting there, because i don't think that people will invest points there.

I like the Pig/Farmer background because I want a combat badass in a martial arts LP, and we've never played a character who's dumb before. Sure, we've made dumb decisions, but we've never made an actually stupid character, so this would be treading new ground. Wuxia Forrest Gump (3 INT would probably make us borderline retarded), a kind-hearted fool blessed by the gods, seems like an angle that we've never went for in these LP's.

Prefer kindhearted people who knows whats going on, chance for nice death scene with person they helping or getting to actual propagator.

Personally would like to play more or less average person.

 

[treave]

Hodor? Hodor Hodor. Hodor.