>>351215
Some people skim through things when they don't feel like reading the whole thing. Having some parts stand out does help.

>>351219
yes, people skim, but you BOLD THE WRONG PARTS. you are bad at it okay? you make the worst parts bold and reading JUST the bold parts results in confusion!

>>351221
People don't just not see the other parts. They don't focus as much as they would if they read in detail, but they absorb enough knowledge to get the general idea of what's being said. HIghlighting certain important points can help draw attention to them, but it's important not to overdo it.

This really isn't worth getting aggravated about. I don't really understand why it's so irritating to you, but I'll cut down on the bold text. Now let's stop making a mess of things.

bold is cruise control for cool

>>351255
Even with cruise control you still have to steer

Important question: What, exactly, is the task we are meant to help with? How did Victorious phrase it in his mind?

>>351356
to get back the sword.

>>351357
Yes, but what apart from that? To get it away from the Scavenger Lord's army? To get it back for the Summer Elves?

>>351359
Damn good question. If we automatically shutdown and wipe once the task is complete, it becomes exceedingly important that we delay completion of the task until after we've managed to somehow wriggle our way out of that particular bit of spell. For that, knowing exactly what the task is becomes vital.

>>351361
If it's something like "retrieve the Mortal Blade", then we can avoid it simply by making sure Victorious doesn't get his hands on it. Normally, I'd say it's his people's rightful duty and he should have it back, but...

>youaredead.png

I'd like to say something here.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" is not a suggestion. If you wanted us to run away, you have to say so.

Also what the hell were the rest of you thinking? 9 people wanted to stick around in a situation where we had no idea what was going on, no idea if we could do anything about it, and were quite possibly in a shitload of danger? Did you idiots really think that the huge thorny black vines were harmless?

tentacles are rubbery. they did not look like vines. and a situation with no info means you try things. not run away in terror and hope they get better.

also EVERYONE went full retard. even the ones that wanted to leave. and what the hell was Voice of Regret going on about?

Re: People were just being inquisitive

That excuse doesn't fly when we were invading a necromancer minion's mind and were already discovered. There's more than curiosity involved when you react to getting grabbed by a shitload of thorny vines with "Oh, what is this stuff?" instead of "AAAA RUN AWAY". And you know what, the quest update itself had AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA in it, which should've been a goddamned indication that the situation was NOT FUCKING SAFE. How obvious does it have to be?

Someone's probably going to wonder what just happened. The answer is: you done goofed. Well, not all of you, but enough of you.

I should explain myself.

Normally, quest protagonists are their own people, and take suggestions with their own particular pinches of salt. With the Crown(s) of Wisdom in this quest, however, the suggesters directly are the role they play, or as directly as possible. So, while I usually run /quest/'s suggestions by picking what makes sense to the protagonist, in this case I decided - and previously established, with the puzzle - that the crown runs directly on majority rule. This is, of course, a flawed system, but that's the point: the crown itself is formed from the fragments of a broken, dead creature of chaos, and is supposed to be flawed. I figured it was appropriate, and in this case, you have reaped the downsides. You chose, by majority, to persist in facing down whatever it was that was controlling King Studious' reanimated body and imprisoning his soul.

You tried to free the undead the way you freed the slaves. Fair enough, on the face of it, but the reason you can command the bonds on the living slaves is because you are Fae (or a bit of one), which they are designed to obey. The force commanding the undead, however, is necromancy. One is Fae glamour chaos-twisty-monster-making magic, the other is evil-deathy-death-from-beyond magic. I think it's not far-fetched or obscure for the audience that Enchantment and Necromancy could be different forces, to put it in formal terms - they may both get you minions, but that's where the similarity ends. So necromancy, unlike wild fae magic, has power over the dead; dead things like you. Since I actually had a previous character shouting about you being dead and having been killed, I think I hinted at that clearly enough.

Still, I figured this whole thing wasn't obvious, so I did make a post showing that what was behind the undead's slavery wasn't the same as what you'd tackled previously. Still, you persisted, but I thought the image I'd used wasn't too great, making it look too passive, so I continued on with a post of the necromancy-tentacles actually assaulting you. The majority of votes were still to stay, however - with the intent of doing different things, but still to stay. And staying was not the right choice. Staying is seldom the right choice when faced with evil magic tentacles in a setting established as having lovecraftian madness monsters.

So: you made a mistake. You lose the opportunity to talk to Studious. Sorry.

if you shown some cracks or something on the crown in the second picture it would make it obvious they could hurt us. as is it looks like ineffective flailing.

I'm ok with it as a DM decision. It would be silly if the "CHARGE! FULL SPEED AHEAD" approach was consistently successful.

(Recklessness didn't even work all the time in TTGL, which literally ran on rule of cool.)

>>352770
There is no movement. We were being grabbed.

So what, now we're a zombie ...crown? That doesn't even make sense. Where was the mention of how fae magic is specifically not necromancy? I agree with the outcome, but justifying it based on some tl;dr we didn't read? They were big black spiky fuckin' tentacles, some voices were ass fuckin' stupid, end of explanation. You don't have to additionally chide us for not knowing the particulars of how zombie magic differs from fae magic. We are not actually spirits trapped within a magic diadem who would deserve such a chiding, having extensive knowledge of that universe's physical laws.

>>352769
You don't even need to explain. First time, we got a puzzle. Second time, we got some very very threatening images. We were warned, some people decided to be stupid anyways.

>>352775
It turned out to be MOST of the suggestions that were stupid. This is a recent trend across the board that has been worrying me. Where are these new stupid people coming from? Are they really stupid or posting bad suggestions on purpose under the guise of stupidity?

>>352786

Yes, it must be new posters coming to the board. It's not possible that the the existing posters are becoming stupiderrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I lIeK pIe

>>352769

Well, my only gripe with the whole shindig is that (as far as my, admittedly liberal, counting skills can tell) a majority of us wanted to talk to Studious before trying to delve into that hoary be-tentacled nether-realm that was keeping his soul bound.

But eh, it's all good. We've got enough irons in the fire without adding Studious' woes to them. Speaking to him might have explained some things (assuming we could get him to explain himself), but it's not like we're not in the habit of rushing blindly and blithely into things without thinking about them and their greater implications ANYWAY.

You know, I don't think it was ever mentioned that we could have run away.

Or done anything, really.

In fact, I'd guess that most of those "stay" responses were really saying "oh noes it's grabbing us, fight it off" rather than "don't run, we must stay and kill it, FOR HONOR AND JUSTICE".

Yeah, looking back at the votes, the only people who actually wanted to stay were myself and that tentacle fetishist guy.

>>352839
>that tentacle fetishist guy.

That's called irony, jim.

So how's your arm, Jukashi? Getting better, I hope?

>>353432
what happened to jukashi's arm?

>>353687
Tendonitis, I believe.

for a second there I read and thought boneitis

>>353689
Not boneitis - boneidleness!

*ba-dum-tish*

To leave humour aside a moment, though, my arm is still not so great. It's sort of settled into a low level of discomfort that doesn't seem to be going away, so it's beginning to seem like I'm stuck with it.

I apologize for slacking on updates, but I can offer the excuse that I've returned to college this year, so I'm still settling all that.

What are you majoring in?

>>353706
Ah. That's... kind of depressing. I'm glad you're doing mostly alright, at least.

Want me to get some pictures for you? I can't draw, but I can search the Internet.

>>353707
We don't use the same academic language here, but my main course is anthropology.

>>353714
Thanks, but s'aright.

Okay.

Because I haven't quite said it directly, I still think the necromancy thing was unfair. Even if there were hints as to which option to choose, there weren't any as to what our options were. It wasn't presented as a choice between "staying" and "going"; the only way we could have answered correctly was if someone correctly guessed which new function to use (which we did) and the majority, without knowing it was an option, agreed with it.

>>353771

If I may also speak directly, then, I'll say that it was not so much about knowing what option to choose and more about knowing what option to not choose. I had established previously that the crown was a broken thing, enslaved, and weak; against the Hand, in a situation in which it had an actual advantage by nature, in which it could perceive a path towards success, it still had to struggle to attain some manner of victory, by trickery and guile.

As the push was made to do the same thing against the necromancy, I indicated first that in this case there was not a system in place that could be worked through; it was just a mass of thorntacles, no puzzle or anything involved. There was nothing to talk to or figure out or outwit. I thought maybe that was unclear, however, so I went with another clue showing that whatever it was that was there, it was definitely overpowering you and nothing you were trying was working. Still the majority vote was to try somehow to fight.

The punishment was not for failing to flee, but for insisting on pushing onwards when there was no chance of success.

it's mostly a difference between "oh god it grabbed us get it off" and "heh it ain't so tough kill it"

simply, no one knew we COULD flee, that once we entered into this realm we had to win to leave.

>>353773

Why would you think you couldn't leave, though?

I think what we've got here is a failure to communicate. After crowntentacles.png, there are four (arguably five) votes for AAAAAAAA. If those posts were intended as votes for running away, then fighting wasn't the majority decision. Because there's no way of knowing what those posters meant, however, they were excluded from the tally. Next time, let's at least post things like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA RUN AWAY!"

>>353774
Matrix rules. If someone's grabbed you in the net, you can't escape until you pry them free.

I think everyone would find that if they looked at the reactions to that final chance, it was STILL "heh we can take it". It wasn't "Oh god we can't run so let's fight".

Anonymous 2011/10/09(Sun)19:19 No. 43982 ID: 2563d4
File 131821314239.png - (78.62KB , 640x480 , this-is-why-scellor-have-such-bulked-up-wrists.png )

>>353770
>With all these artists getting hurt
>>353706
>my arm is still not so great

"What, another one? Do we have to send a relief shipment of quoddles down there or something?"

I think Jukashi is the first artist to have gotten his arm hurt actually. You're such a trend setter!

I'm not sure about AAAAAA votes or anything, but the people saying stay definitely seemed to mostly be of the "Heh, we can take it" type to me.

I'm curious though, since you said that punishment was met out for not knowing what the wrong thing to choose was rather then not knowing the right thing, if there were things we could have done at that point other then RUN AWAY that could've worked. Like trying to turn to Studious for help or other unnamed things?

>>353784

The crown probably wouldn't have gotten broken if you'd asked Studious for help, yes.

I've noticed a number of suggesters seem bad at knowing when they're in over their head, or overall fond of charging headon into situations.

>>353772
>If I may also speak directly, then, I'll say that it was not so much about knowing what option to choose and more about knowing what option to not choose.
That's the same thing. Again, the it's not that the correct choice wasn't hinted at being correct, it's that the correct choice wasn't hinted at being possible.

>The punishment was not for failing to flee, but for insisting on pushing onwards when there was no chance of success.
We weren't insisting on continuing to fight instead of fleeing. The votes were mostly split between "get us away from it" and "get it away from us"; most of the people who said to fight were panicked and would most likely have fled if they had thought it was possible. If it had been presented as "Continue or flee?" instead of "AAAAAAAAAAAAAA" before the votes were categorized, the outcome would have been different.

I can't be sure of that, of course, but nearly everyone seemed of the mind to escape.

>>353774
Why would we think we could leave? We were dealing with previously-unknown magical effects with almost no explanation. And some of us did manage to guess it was possible, but it wasn't confirmed until it was too late.

>>353780
Let's see how it went.

>>/quest/346371
>Oh god ABORT INVESTIGATION!
No ambiguity here.

>>/quest/346374
>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa
Seems like a clear "get away" reaction to me.

>>/quest/346383
>HOW IS IT RAPE WE HAVE NO HOLES AAAAAAA
Same here.

>>/quest/346399
>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Same here.

>>/quest/346412
>AAAAAH! KILL IT WITH FIRE!
This one suggested to fight it off, but still seemed panicked. It appears to be a "get it away" reaction more than anything.

>>/quest/346437
>AAAAAAAAAA!
>KILL IT WITH MIND LASERS!
As above.

>>/quest/346440
>NO, USE MIND SCREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Slightly more ambiguous, but still looks like he wants to get away.

>>/quest/346446
>I would like to add another vote for AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Again, screaming panic.

>>/quest/346447
>I vote instead for FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Again, screaming panic, again.

>>346451
>BURN THEM
>BURN THEM ALL
Aggressive and confident. That's one semi-clear "stay and fight".

>>/quest/346503
>Hi there! How are you doing? I'm guessing you're the primordial force of death, or something along those lines. How's that working out for you?
Okay, my vote could be counted as "stay". I'll admit that.

>>/quest/346710
>IT'S RAPING OUR SOUL!
This does not sound like someone who wants to stay.

>>/quest/347075
>runrunrunrurn
That was pretty clear.

>>/quest/347212
>oh murr, bring it on.
>can't rape the willing.jpg
That's another obvious "stay".

>>/quest/347275
>Wake up.
I don't know about this one. It's sort of like fleeing, so he'd probably have chosen that if he thought it was an option.

>>/quest/347398
>HACK AND SLASH!
Well, that's pretty clear.

>>/quest/347587
>...aborting sounds sensible and reasonable (reduced for length)
That's another "flee".

>>/quest/347754
>[give it a couple seconds, then if nothing interesting happens, wriggle our way out]
This one confuses me. It depends on how long "a couple seconds" is in rape-time.

So out of all those, we have:

3 direct "flee" votes
1 "wake up"
1 "wait a bit, then leave"
6 people who just panicked
3 people who panicked and wanted to fight it off
2 people who just wanted to fight
1 person wanted to talk
1 person wanted tentacle sex

It depends on how you categorize them, but there were over a dozen people who expressed discomfort with the situation, and about five who didn't. If the option to flee had been apparent, I believe it would almost certainly have been chosen.

>>353782
what is a quoddles?

>>353827

First description of quoddles, in ITQ 5:
>>340227

(I wonder if the Scellor made them.)

>>353844
Thanks.
And, dawww!

can we try eating the fragments that keep the chains of each individual we meet? I think we could gain in power by doing so.