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me

8 (16%)

me

2 (4%)

me

5 (10%)

help i'm trapped in a poll i don't know why i'm here i'm so scared someone please help

29 (58%)

me

6 (12%)

Total Members Voted: 50

[javierpwn]

I meant the area past the tube.

Did we visit it? I thought we didn't.

You must mean the place to the east of the upper floor where the Searchbots killed Ciro and Mili.
We still never explored it, and Chief still disappears.

[Elephant Parade]

I meant the area past the tube.

Did we visit it? I thought we didn't.

You must mean the place to the east of the upper floor where the Searchbots killed Ciro and Mili.
We still never explored it, and Chief still disappears.

Oh.

As I said, we need to explore it.

[javierpwn]

So.



I just noticed something- since !!!! rhymes all the time, we can clearly replace ? with Oric here.  Not exactly new or unknown, but I don't think anyone caught that yet.

The images also say Oric Screen. Then again,by his was at a point where Oric was originally going to have Wings, Proxxy was going to be Olexxa the Tech, and Oric was going to be hooked up to MANY life support machines.

Oric, sadly, does not have Wings.
He is not hooked to life-support
Proxxy isn't Olexa.
Cain isn't Odrak
It probably is just a revolutionary Angel, if not the Seraphim.

[RanDomino]

And who gets left behind?

Option 1- Nobody. We stick Goombess in the Passive Party and let her use Tattles and otherwise stay out of the way.

I like this.  Can we stick Slog in the Passive Party too?  He kind of already might as well be.

[laularukyrumo]

I also totally discovered a cheesy-ass combat trick we can do to decimate anything with no DR. It'll take two turns, unless we're either able to clone a spell or willing to separate the book.

Step one: Cast Windirection on enemy. It probably won't require a roll, since it's a beneficial spell.
Step two: Nuke them with Aeroblast for absurd damage, since they are now flying.

[GreatWyrmGold]

p.s. it's great how even polls get the weird consensus effect. Once a few votes outweigh the other options, it becomes a battle between that select two or three. Now the two party system makes sense. It's not a conspiracy. It's determinism.

It's a bit more complex than that. Want me to go into some slightly cynical, uncited, highly speculative suggestions of why bi- or monoparty systems will tend to form in political entities without processes which encourage minor parties or prevent overwhelming ones?

yes actually

Spoiler: Alright, then. (click to show/hide)

For all the adjectives I used, it's really pretty simple.
Once a democratic political system (ie, type of government--required for political parties to exist) is established, and political parties begin to form, some political parties (most likely a fairly small number) will tend to be more popular (and, hence, powerful) than others. These powerful ones will typically tend to write the rules to make it harder for little parties to reach the top; this cements an oligarchy. But even if commoners can't rise, kings can fall. Parties may fall due to changing attitudes, or to various catastrophes, or to party philosophies being demonized due to popularity in enemy nations (Example: Communists before and during the Cold War; while they were hardly a top-tier party, the same logic applies to such). Once they do, the smaller oligarchy of parties has no reason to let a new party into the top ranks to "replace" the old one; there is still this barrier. Eventually(and faster than it sounds, barring periods of stasis), there will only be two parties remaining; this is a fairly stable position. At this point, it is easy enough for one party to demonize the other and construe itself as the only reasonable alternative, not to mention trivial to stop other parties from reaching their heights. Smaller parties probably exist, but they don't achieve power because...well...they're third parties. If one falls, another will eventually rise in opposition to some group of policies that some significant chunk of people disagree with; perhaps two will rise, but if so, one will fall and we will be back to two. Two is stable.
There are two ways to avoid a two-party system. The first, easiest, and most common solution is for one party to take over the entire contry completely. House-name historical examples including the Nazi party in Germany, the Communist party in the Soviet Union, and whatever the leading party in North Korea is called. Barring strong ideological agreement with the leading party, this will lead to either a second party forming or a violent revolution (if attempts to form the former are prevented).
The second way is to take measures to avoid such a system, but this is harder than it sounds. Perhaps "harder" isn't the right word; you just need to know how, and get to it in time. Oligarchies of parties are hard to dislodge.
Maybe not so simple, then.

Considering TWoOtA is one of the only threads I post in at the moment, I'm tempted to sig it.  People seem to forget it so easily.

Sig it with a link to this thread. New blood is never a bad thing.

I also totally discovered a cheesy-ass combat trick we can do to decimate anything with no DR. It'll take two turns, unless we're either able to clone a spell or willing to separate the book.

Step one: Cast Windirection on enemy. It probably won't require a roll, since it's a beneficial spell.
Step two: Nuke them with Aeroblast for absurd damage, since they are now flying.

Congrats! You have found the intended use of that spellbook!

[Elephant Parade]

We'll run out of SP insanely fast. We can exploit potions if we get more empty bottles and find an SP fountain, though.

Also, weren't we going to combine the combine scrolls into an ultrascroll? Because we should do that.

[laularukyrumo]

Who's saying we can't just use the checkpoint to have everyone overheal after EVERY fight, and pass that spellbook around like it's thanksgiving turkey?

But yeah. These are the kinds of things we should be exploiting, or at least aware of, should the need arise. If NetHack has taught me ANYTHING, it's that it's worse to die with pebbles to your name than to have three amulets of life saving, a wand of death, and seven potions of full healing sitting in your inventory.

[Toaster]

We risk annoying the GM.  He hath given us a blessing- let us not abuse it too heavily.

[He prefers creative abuse of the rules- see Hero Tower and moving down ladders.]

[ShadowStrike]

Theorycrafting Time

Determinism or free will?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some minutes ago, I asked myself about what could be applied to tWoOtA: Radical determinism, moderate determinism, compatibilism, indeterminism, or if our will would actually have an influence in something, and I reached a conclusion: Our class and name choices give us an illusion that we actually have such a big influence on the way things happen, and the fact we can tell Ciro what to do also does the same.
Those things, definetly, aren't the illusions themselves. We had total freedom in some things, and slighly less freedom (but we still had a bit of it) in others.

However, a thing which everyone could notice lately, is the fact that we don't have time to do certain things without terrible consequences, which ends making us choose predictable options. I'm typing about Cain's transmissions, which gave us little time, which we had to spend in the underside (FFS also did (automatically) part of the micromanagement we forgot about, and that is essential to the story), and about what is happening now: We still can't visit DL2, and that's because we're bound to helping Ripriver before that. You can tell me that we don't need to do it, and that's truth, but we will (most certainly) do it, because going to DL2 before (even if we don't refuse helping Ripriver to do it) might lead us to losing Ripriver, and not being able to defeat/make peace with Ecco, afterwards.

Also, did you notice how when we stopped being pressured by the "meeting Cain before he's caught" task, we were already being pressured by the "help Ripriver recover his castle" task? Also, do you remember those moments when FFS told us about how many possible endings there are? I don't remember exactly how many (maybe 3), but there weren't many of them. One of them is the worse, and it is probably reserved to us, in case we decide to risk in situations like this, and do something else (that, even then, we can still be expected to do). There are also other ends, which are possibly related to wether we defeat Oric or the Seraphs, or both things. The end I mentioned before could also be used in the case that we can't defeat neither of those.

There's also the fact that, in the begin of the game, when we decided to let Riltia join us, and after we used the ladder shenanigan (which we HAD to use as an alternative), we met Betweenford, an angel, and were also between DL1 and DL2. We didn't know much about the warrens when that happen, and that lack of information didn't allow us to make a relation between that and anything else. However, now that I think of it, that little part of the game is just too coherent with everything else to not be part of a plan, a plan for the game which FFS had since the very begin.
Returning to the ladder shenanigan... here's another choice that we were free to do. However, there are some questions related to it: Wouldn't FFS be already expecting us to use a shenanigan to not fight Riltia? I mean, why would we kill a potential ally in a dangerous dungeon in which we're new? Just because a random statue told us to do so? Also, would the other option actually have such a big effect in the future, when we'd fight Oric or/and the Seraphs? I guess the fact that Riltia and Proxxy disappeared has to do with this.

You might also ask "Hey, but what about the dices and the rolls?", and with a point. The problem is that rolls aren't actually as important as you might think they are. For example, let's say FFS decided to kill the whole party. He could simply summon a megabeast to do it. What would he do if he wanted us to get loot, feel that the danger is near, or give us a strategy based challenge (or even realize the game's mechanics (see: the spider we fought at the begin, in DL1))? He could summon something much weaker, such as a robot or a spider. He even could summon some powerful creature with a limited movement, which would be used to restrict our exploring options at some point, even if temporarily. Also, don't forget the following:
-In many moments, we don't know which attacks the enemy uses, and, if we're in a big trouble and FFS doesn't want us to die, he can, perfectly, make the enemy use a weak attack. He can also make it use a powerful attack to slay one of our plot-relevant characters, and allow us to kill the enemy with few more attacks after that.
-Events. All kinds of events and unpredictable (to us) conditions can happen to limit (or boost) the damage a specific enemy does on us. Do you remember those moments when enemies can, quite easily, cut characters in half? That doesn't make a lot of sense, when we compare those roll-less situations with what happens to the plot-relevant characters in mid of fights.
As you can see, FFS has several tools he can use to not allow rolls to have such a great influence on the game overall.

Basically, we are bound to specific endings, and, while it's truth that we have an influence on which of those will be the game's end, it's also truth that we've been too predictable to FFS, so what is going to happen isn't a big mistery to him.

Note:

p.s. it's great how even polls get the weird consensus effect. Once a few votes outweigh the other options, it becomes a battle between that select two or three. Now the two party system makes sense. It's not a conspiracy. It's determinism.

...wouldn't FFS be, already, expecting a specific result? Even if not, I'm starting to think that, whatever is the result of the poll, it won't have such a big influence on the game as I thought before. I mean, we could get a good-sided character, which could also be a demon. We could also get an arrogant character, which could also be called a "hero", and who wouldn't really help us with anything. Same "hero" could also be a greedy character, which wouldn't help us with anything, either.

--------------------------------------------------------------

...These powerful ones will typically tend to write the rules to make it harder for little parties to reach the top; this cements an oligarchy... ...the smaller oligarchy of parties has no reason to let a new party into the top ranks to "replace" the old one; there is still this barrier... ...Eventually there will only be two parties remaining... ...At this point, it is easy enough for one party to demonize the other and construe itself as the only reasonable alternative, not to mention trivial to stop other parties from reaching their heights...

So amazingly accurate... that is, exactly, what happens in the country I live in! There are two leading parties, and each of them tries to make the other become less popular, all the time. Fortunately, neither of them is able to do it effectively, which leads to stability (as you wrote). There are also the smaller parties, which have little to no popularity when compared to those two parties, and it is extremely difficult for a new party to be created.

[GreatWyrmGold]

However, now that I think of it, that little part of the game is just too coherent with everything else to not be part of a plan, a plan for the game which FFS had since the very begin.

Unless ffs somehow knew that his little project would become insanely popular and lied about his intentions in the OP, there's no way he had a plan since the very beginning. The old depictions of Oric and whatnot prove that he didn't plan things from the very beginning.
It's possible that he fit the past into a plan at some point along the way.

...These powerful ones will typically tend to write the rules to make it harder for little parties to reach the top; this cements an oligarchy... ...the smaller oligarchy of parties has no reason to let a new party into the top ranks to "replace" the old one; there is still this barrier... ...Eventually there will only be two parties remaining... ...At this point, it is easy enough for one party to demonize the other and construe itself as the only reasonable alternative, not to mention trivial to stop other parties from reaching their heights...

So amazingly accurate... that is, exactly, what happens in the country I live in! There are two leading parties, and each of them tries to make the other become less popular, all the time. Fortunately, neither of them is able to do it effectively, which leads to stability (as you wrote). There are also the smaller parties, which have little to no popularity when compared to those two parties, and it is extremely difficult for a new party to be created.

So it's not just the US. That makes me feel better.

[javierpwn]

Technically, we fought Betweenford in the DL2.
In the Void.

But if you consider the endless Void to be the metaphorical river that Betweenford is inhabiting. That makes Betweenford's literal interpretation of his name to literally BE THE VOID ITSELF(our metaphorical river)

[freeformschooler]

I think you're overestimating the level of GM control here. There's not three endings. There's eight endings, and even then, they're just general outlines based on all the combinations of major events that I could imagine happening between now and the end.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Do we have this tip yet?

[javierpwn]

Is there an ending for eating Oric's Star?

Ninja'd: Yes we have that tip