In Progress [LP CYOA] Tower

[Kz3r0]

By the way is hilarious that people here voted for a -1 retard as a way to gaining mysterious wisdom.
That would be a sacred fool, not a shaman.

 

[oscar]

Goat> Water-Bearer > Bull > Ram

I'm sick of running from these wimps

 

[Life of the Party]

The Novice Hunter meets the King of England:

Spoiler

 

[Absinthe]

Bull makes for a 3 int 4 cha character. How about no? Our protagonist would be a bona-fide moron if we did. It also puts us in a horrible position to develop, say, Astrology skill, which seems important here.

 

[Absinthe]

Voting tallies:

Initial tally:

Goat 1

Oscar Goat > Water-bearer > Bull > Ram​

Bull 6

Baltika9 Bull>Tiger>Ram>Fish
Kz3ro Bull
Lambchop19 Bull>Fish
Kipeci Bull>Fish
Zerafall Bull
ERYFKRAD Lion=Bull​

Ram 1

Egosphere Ram>Archer​

Archer 3

Absinthe Archer>Twins
Tigranes Archer>Ram>Fish
asxetos Archer​

Fish 5

Nevill Fish
Azira Fish>Archer>Virgin>Scorpion
Grimgravy Fish>Archer
Hello Friend Fish>Twins>Virgin>Archer
Esquilax Fish​

Twins 2

Baud Twins>Virgin
Smashing Axe Twins>Archer>Lion>Ram​

Lion 1

CappenVarra Lion​

Virgin 1

Life of a Party Virgin>Archer>Twins>Fish​

Runoffs/Conditional vote flipping

1st Runoff: (Goat, Ram, Lion, and Virgin eliminated)

Bull 7

Baltika9 Bull>Tiger>Ram>Fish
Kz3ro Bull
Lambchop19 Bull>Fish
Kipeci Bull>Fish
Zerafall Bull
ERYFKRAD Lion=Bull
Oscar Goat > Water-bearer > Bull > Ram​

Archer 5

Absinthe Archer>Twins
Tigranes Archer>Ram>Fish
asxetos Archer
Egosphere Ram>Archer
Life of a Party Virgin>Archer>Twins>Fish​

Fish 5

Nevill Fish
Azira Fish>Archer>Virgin>Scorpion
Grimgravy Fish>Archer
Hello Friend Fish>Twins>Virgin>Archer
Esquilax Fish​

Twins 2

Baud Twins>Virgin
Smashing Axe Twins>Archer>Lion>Ram​

2nd Runoff: (Twins eliminated)

Bull 7

Baltika9 Bull>Tiger>Ram>Fish
Kz3ro Bull
Lambchop19 Bull>Fish
Kipeci Bull>Fish
Zerafall Bull
ERYFKRAD Lion=Bull
Oscar Goat > Water-bearer > Bull > Ram​

Archer 6

Absinthe Archer>Twins
Tigranes Archer>Ram>Fish
asxetos Archer
Egosphere Ram>Archer
Life of a Party Virgin>Archer>Twins>Fish
Smashing Axe Twins>Archer>Lion>Ram​

Fish 5

Nevill Fish
Azira Fish>Archer>Virgin>Scorpion
Grimgravy Fish>Archer
Hello Friend Fish>Twins>Virgin>Archer
Esquilax Fish​

3rd Runoff: (Fish eliminated)

Bull 7

Baltika9 Bull>Tiger>Ram>Fish
Kz3ro Bull
Lambchop19 Bull>Fish
Kipeci Bull>Fish
Zerafall Bull
ERYFKRAD Lion=Bull
Oscar Goat > Water-bearer > Bull > Ram​

Archer 9

Absinthe Archer>Twins
Tigranes Archer>Ram>Fish
asxetos Archer
Egosphere Ram>Archer
Life of a Party Virgin>Archer>Twins>Fish
Smashing Axe Twins>Archer>Lion>Ram
Azira Fish>Archer>Virgin>Scorpion
Grimgravy Fish>Archer
Hello Friend Fish>Twins>Virgin>Archer​

Final tally:

Bull 7
Archer 9​

 

[Kipeci]

[1] Bull
[2] Fish

Fine with either if we have the implacability of high constitution, so long as it’s just not Archer mediocrity.

 

[Nevill]

Hello Friend Twins>Virgin>Archer

This is his vote.

Also, Kipeci's and Esquilax' votes are missing. As is Life of the Party's which is really hard to see.

Edit: And Zerafall's
Not sure if ERYFKRAD's count.

 

[Absinthe]

Urgh, I got distracted partway through counting votes. Fixed.

 

[CappenVarra]

to celebrate the occasion, doggerel
tempus fugit
forever furious
thorns of tyrant time
briefly bend and bloom
who emerges beneath that pregnant rose?
a miracle: a moron

 

[Life of the Party]

No love for the Virgin. Makes sense, I guess.

So it's just the Archer and the Bull? If that's the case, definitely the Archer.

 

[Nevill]

No, it's the Archer, the Bull and the Fish which are neck-and-neck. Half of the Bull voters have Fish as a secondary vote.

Here's the tally of raw votes as of the moment of this post.

Spoiler

ERYFKRAD - Lion>Bull???
CappenVarra - Lion

Baltika9 Bull>Tiger>Ram>Fish
Kz3ro Bull
Lambchop19 Bull>Fish
Kipeci Bull>Fish
Zerofall - Bull

Nevill - Fish
Azira - Fish>Archer>Virgin>Scorpion
Esquilax - Fish
Grimgravy - Fish>Archer
hello friend - Fish>Twins>Virgin>Archer

Absinthe - Archer>Twins
Tigranes - Archer>Ram>Fish
asxetos - Archer

baud - Twins>Virgin
Smashing Axe - Twins>Archer>Lion>Ram

Life of the Party - Virgin>Archer>Twins>Fish

oscar - Goat>Water-Bearer>Bull>Ram

Egosphere - Ram>Archer

Flopping tie.
Bull->Fish: Fish 8, Archer 6
Fish->Archer: Bull 7, Archer 9

 

[Life of the Party]

Okay, here's my order.

1. The Virgin
2. The Archer
3. The Twins
4. The Fish

 

[Absinthe]

No, it's the Archer, the Bull and the Fish which are neck-and-neck. Half of the Bull voters have Fish as a secondary vote.

3 Bull voters have Fish as a secondary vote, and 3 Fish voters have Archer as a secondary vote. Archers ultimately have 2 secondary votes to Twins and 2 secondary votes to Fish. It's mostly a Bull/Archer/Fish 3-way split though. The penultimate breakdown (see 2nd Runoff) was Bull 7, Archer 6, Fish 5. Although I must say, god damn, Bull would be legitimately stupid. We'd be an actual moron at 3 int. It would also fuck our ability to get an Astrology skill and probably turn the CYOA into a meme from the start. Whoever is voting Bull, reconsider. We can train a strength stat boost after chargen, but training our way out of -2 int and -1 charisma is going to be a pain, and I feel like it's just going to devolve into Hulk memes. It also wastes our +1 ranged weapons (Bull reduces dex), +1 stealth (Bull reduces dex), and +1 traps (Bull reduces dex and int) skills.

I'm partial to Archer myself because we can quickly build on that to be strong in whatever field we choose, and I like the fire mutability. Are people even paying attention to astra types?

 

[Azira]

Can I have a Goat Doctor, please?

 

[Absinthe]

Incidentally, the fact that our character sheer lists astras in the plural does suggest that we will be able to learn multiple astras, although I'm pretty sure high int and wis are recommended for that, since we will most likely want Astrology skill on top of our Astra Affinity (and Astra Proficiency) if we're going to dedicate effort into unlocking the secrets of other Astras.

 

[Baltika9]

The Bull Revolution is on!
For too long have the high-intelligence, high-wisdom, high-charisma melonheads dominated us!
Join the Revolution, comrades!

Bull makes for a 2 int 4 cha character.

Ahem. The Bull has 3 intelligence. Not at all developmentally impaired, just really dumb.

 

[Absinthe]

Fixed. Seems I missed that post when I double-checked Bull. At any rate, 3 int is also pretty terrible. Bull actually penalizes every single one of our starting skills (ranged weapon and stealth are dex-based, and traps is dex+int). Some of us are interested in trying out Traps skill for once, and some of us want to be developing Astrology skill and the like, which require decent mentals.

 

[Baltika9]

All of that is true, however, the Bull's stats have a character in them. So we're dumb. Fine. We haven't ever played as a dumb character character before (LARPing as our own Hive Mind always seemed like a step too far). We've always played high mental-stats characters and, honestly, I feel like a change of pace is in order. An absolute beast of a dude, who is a bit shy and just not very bright, but with a spark of common sense seems like an interesting character with a unique and fun story.

TL;DR: I know we like the vanilla-chocolate swirl, but it's okay to try a different flavor of ice cream.

And Tigranes, I always did like the Bull, but he didn't seem to have a chance. I saw the opportunity for a coup and took it.

Can I have a Goat Doctor, please?

Join the Bull Revolution, comrade!

 

[Absinthe]

We also haven't ever played as a trapper though, Baltika9, or a ranged combatant. We have played as a melee beast before, and a hard specialization into melee at the detriment of all else is going to be more of a rehash than a novelty in terms of what we get out of it.

Honestly I'm curious what kind of James Bond villain / Zhuge Liang super-traps we'll be making once we reach Traps 10. Don't you want to find out?

 

[Baltika9]

We'll have to agree to disagree, then. At the end of the day, I'm going for the Bull because I like him more than the distributed mediocrity that is the Archer, as Kipeci puts it.

 

[Nevill]

Bull is no dumb! Bull is grounded.

Who needs fancy-shmancy astrology; a man's thoughts should belong where he lives!

 

[Zerafall]

Part of what made Legend so good was the batshit insane shenanigans Jing got into because of his abysmal Luck. I chose Bull over Archer precisely because the statline is extreme, and because I think Treave can craft a fun story reflecting that. I also like the idea of this dumb, brutish goon becoming smarter as we go further along, honing his intellect with every new encounter. Sure, he'll never be the sharpest tool in the shed, but who's to say that he can't at least be decent?

Plus, I'm not really too interested in a trapper play-style or anything like that. I feel like we'd botch it with aplomb. And who cares about dumb wizard shit when you can cast FIST and or other melee instrument?

 

[Absinthe]

You and I both know there's no way our Archer is going to end up mediocre. And you will know how awesome Archer is when we level a godlike Traps skill for once. We're talking ginormous arrays of glorious deathtraps and misdirections while we troll the ever-loving shit out of our adversaries.

 

[Nevill]

Okay, to take the spotlight away from the Ox Farmer vs. Goat Doctor debate for a second.

Now that baud has compiled their version of a tallying program compatible with the forums (thanks, mate!), how about we automate the process a little? Our flipping-flopping tendencies make counting votes a mess, and mistakes are inevitably made. Not to mention it creates weird ties that resolve differently depending on how you count flops. Like currently if one counts Bull->Fish, you get one winner, but if you count Fish->Archer, you get another.

Can we institute a unified vote format? NetTally comes with a wiki, and anyone interested can read about it here:
https://github.com/Kinematics/NetTally/wiki/Writing-Votes

Basically, the choices at the end could be written in the following format:
[ ] Choice 1
[ ] Choice 2
[ ] Choice 3

And then the players can copy their preferred choice and vote like this by putting an "x" or "X" mark inside:
[x] Choice 1

(It needs to be on a new line, and the exact match, the "[x]" tells the program that it is a vote)

If there are multiple things to vote for, votes can be done in categories:
[ ] [CLASS] Adjutant
[ ] [CLASS] Doctor
[ ] [CLASS] Farmer

[ ] [SIGN] Tiger
[ ] [SIGN] Goat
[ ] [SIGN] Ox
and the players can "x" the ones they want. The program can count a winner in each category separately.

Finally, if we are talking preferences, there is a ranked vote, which means something close to flopping, except it isn't. Flopping means switching a vote entirely; ranked means assigning the vote a weight. Assigning the vote any weight at all props it higher than not voting for the entry. So one could vote:
[1] [SIGN] Tiger
[7] [SIGN] Goat
[2] [SIGN] Ox
and that would mean something akin to Tiger>Ox>>>>>Goat (>everything else), but without creating complicated situations with uncertain outcomes. At any point the program would know what the most popular consensus is. If you only want Tiger, just leave it at [1] [SIGN] Tiger

Ranked votes (numbers) should not be mixed with regular ones ('x'). The program doesn't know how to weigh an "x", though I suppose we could make it default to [1]...

This is something that needs to be prompted by GM themselves, since they are the only person capable of defining a standard for their vote. Tagging treave to take a look at this. Perhaps we can cast the next vote using this system, and see if it works better?

It should, in theory, eliminate the underlying cause for flopping:

Quest voting has the additional issue that all votes are explicitly non-anonymous, and fully visible to all users, and thus quite vulnerable to certain types of exploits, and to encouraging users to vote for non-preferred options simply to stop a least-preferred option from winning.

 

[Absinthe]

No need or point, really. I'm already writing my own lazy javascript that will not require people to adopt that weird standardized voting format.