[FULL] OOC: Dichotomy's Age of Worms Redux [FULL]

[TiCaudata]

This is kind of dragging along here in my opinion. I actually don't think it is really Di's fault either. Maybe we should formulate a plan that involves what we want to do in a big holistic sense to make it easier on Di when he gets to a point where it is a choice between pushing us a little further than we have described or waiting a day for us all to post again.

Here is Llyr's general plan: Travel through the passages in a logical fashion while trying to map out the area as best he can. He will stay close to Kota who will stay close to Brannak. If combat comes up he will assist in healing unless we look more out-gunned than we have to date, at which time he will cast a spell.

oh yeah, on an unrelated note my mouse doesn't suck so much anymore.

 

[worthley]

Is it possible the mouse problem was operator related?

 

[o3caudata]

no.

so i'm checking out of the hotel now, and that may mean no access or relatively intermitent. if i get access, i'll jump back on and let you guys know how often etc, otherwise Di, feel free to take control.

 

[Dichotomy]

um.... wtf why did dav leave? and why didn't the completely reasonable and generally cautious Alexis at the VERY least suggest that maybe someone should accompany him? i'm just confused, was there some OC discussion off-board? Are we quitting or something?

Well, I must have made an error. Here's how I had been viewing the events in the IC thread:

Llyr suggested waiting to get an animal companion. He also mentioned helping Dav search, but, I think I made it clear he couldn't, as he needed to be "uninterrupted" during the 24 hours.

Viktor concurred in resting.

Though he expressed that resting seemed odd, Brannak agreed at stated that he was taking first watch.

Dav then noted that he could search the halls (I took the cue from Ti's OOC post), but that he wasn't going to do it while next to death.

With that, Alexis and Llyr healed people up, having decided OOC that the group would be waiting until Alexis would have her spells back. After being healed, Dav went to go comb the halls.

The error I must have made was likely two-fold I suppose.

First, despite the fact that Alexis was there, I didn't have her say anything about having Dav go off alone because I wanted to avoid using Alexis as a DM mouthpiece (the same reason why Dav himself didn't say anything). Generally, I went under the assumption that, just as it appeared that Brannak saw no more threat in the labyrinth, Dav and Alexis could agree.

Second, I presumed from the fact that none of the players able to go with Dav (other than Alexis, as noted above) at the time had said anything about it, that no one would be going with him. I thought that was correct, given the fact that Ti had explicitly mentioned it, but then could not do so.

I apologize for my error. How should we fix it?

 

[michael_noah]

I think I've realized my mistake here. It seems that I gave the impression that Brannak thought there was nothing to worry about, and that no precautions needed to be taken. This was clearly not the case, since he's not an idiot. He also does whatever I tell him to do, so it's my fault.

The reason I did this, that is, rushed, didn't spell out exactly what he wanted to do, etc. is that I was under the impression that the "rest" period would be uneventful, and that spending a lot of time posting plans about it would be wasteful. I think I thought this because we were talking about whether we would wait 24 full hours, using all our healing, that it would take Dav 15 hours to search everything, etc.

What I suppose I should do in the future is try to recognize the fact that I am being subliminally influenced and counteract it. What can't happen is that we can't assume that any time we formulate a long plan all will go well, or that any time the DM asks what we want to do next->something dangerous is on the horizon.

For this situation, I think two things should lead us to a solution.

1) We should not arbitrarilly save Dav (or... whatever, maybe he just snuck out with the diamonds).
2) While it was not obvious that we wanted an ingenious plan to constantly keep everyone in the party safe, it is obvious that the characters would have been somewhat intellegent about their movements, etc.

Solution: At some point, something happens... Either someone is close by and sees it happen, or someone is slightly less close by, and, within a few moments notices that Dav has stopped searching, and is instead scandalously manipulating the dead wolf.

 

[o3caudata]

well, from my perspective it's silly for anyone to think that this place presents no more danger. we all witnessed the birdmen use secret doors to inflict sizable damage on us. obviously i entrusted alexis to Di, and in doing so allowed him to play her as he saw fit. The problem i see is that he simply disregarded her. I understand the desire to avoid using her as a mouthpiece, and can obviously understand that having a dialogue between the NPC and pseudo-NPC is difficult and cumbersome. So i certainly don't 'fault' Di for it. I think it may evidence that we should consider not having Di play PC's if/when we are unable. It creates more work and stress for him in maintaining a story, and in developing the plot. Especially considering he's already responsible for a semi-permanent NPC.

I don't know that there's much to be done though. I can tell you that i think, were i to have played alexis, she would have lobbied to keep us all together. She had expressed reservations, on multiple occasions, about splitting up, and i think it's consistent with her past behavior that splitting up isn't something she would support. It doesn't seem realistic to say... nevermind.... but it's frustrating, even more so if it leads to a delay in the game, because dav dies or something... which seems likely.... cause it's stupid to go out alone....

 

[TiCaudata]

"Kota! You Bastard!" Llyr viciously turns on the rogue and starts stabbing him with... Wait, this is the OC thread...

Pointlessly saving Dav is indeed not a great idea. Tough to know what we are going to do instead though since we now know that something is out there molesting corpses. If the rest of you are out there checking up on him from time to time, we would get to know about where he was when the poopie hit the propeller, as well as anything he had found already, and how long Llyr is going to keep praying (as a side note, what kind of subterranean animals am I shooting for here so I can start thinking about making a new companion). The other option involves someone being with him all the time right up until whatever happens happens... Any volunteers? You might get to make a new character!

For mechanics, we could just go back and edit the posts and pretend stuff happened differently.

That's all I got right now, I think someone beat me though...

 

[o3caudata]

ok, so this is messy and screwed up. my take is that Alexis would be with dav. I totally understand Di's perspective, i think, and it's too bad that the ambiguity of the PC's wasn't ironed out before Dav took off. So, i guess i'll volunteer to be with Dav.

If Di agrees that I would have had Alexis try to stop him and that she would have been successful, and is ok with it, we can rewind. Again, it's easy for me to see why Di wouldn't have had Alexis say anything about it, so i don't fault him for it at all.

 

[TiCaudata]

Well if o3 were to say "Alexis would have absolutely said XXX at this point." We could use that as a square one for a backtracking. Is it messy? You bet. Does it work? Kinda at best. Is it 'metagaming'? About equal or maybe slightly less than most other options I can think of. I am pretty sure that we can all accomplish the mental exercise of saying "We don't know what is going to happen.". Beyond that, Alexis saying that Dav shouldn't go ought to open dialog and potentially, the outcome of the whole topic.

This does go against my earlier statement about saving Dav, but I see it more of us adjusting the outcome of a certain action. It's like we are all Scott Bakkula or something, maybe the paradox will just eat us alive. Wait, that's Mage.

Across the board though I guess if I am going to get impatient about a slow pace, I ought to get better about trying to lay out a plan. This time it was extra weird since Llyr is praying and that's his plan more or less regardless. I suppose if Alexis was to raise a stink about that too, we could all just explore while Dav searches. Or we could all just wait for the praying and then all search. Tough on the timeline, but not so bad on the logistics.

So is a hard reboot since the perfunctory search feasible? Anyone have other ideas?

 

[worthley]

I say we just go with Dav starting without us as we were resting, and then whatever happened happened. We pick up where we are now, with Dav gone for a long time, and Llyr still praying. Alexis, knowing it would have been stupid to take off like that thinks it's best to wait for everyone else to be ready, as there is nothing we could do to save Dav, after being gone this long.

I think this doesn't step on anyone's toes, and we don't go backwards for a few days.