The OotS Thread II

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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by The Yosemite Bear »

this is order of the stick, plot ends are not tied up, but are stored away to be used as chekov's maxim guns.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by AniThyng »

SpaceMarine93 wrote:
By the way, what's the chance that Tiamat the evil five headed dragon goddess herself would come screaming for blood at some point in the story?
Tiamat is nothing if not coldly pragmatic about taking advantage of the tragedy, if we are to judge by how the IFCC placated her by promising to kill 5 good dragons for every black dragon that was killed. She might even have told the remaining black dragons to stay their claws and not go after V personally as part of the deal.

...Wow, that sounds oddly RL political now.

Assuming good dragons are Dragon's (of the 12 gods) domain, I feel a bit bad for him, seeing as he lost Azure City as well.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Solauren »

Actually, in traditional D&D, good dragons are the domain of Bahamut, the Platnium Dragon (also known as Marduk in some variants of the Babylonian pantheon).

Also, I can see Tiamat showing up eventually. Say, right after the IFCC has seized the gate via V, and she promptly starts tearing everything apart, to seize the gate for herself...
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by CaptainChewbacca »

So it looks like Familicide targets two kinds of people;

1. Blood relatives of the black dragon targeted.
2. Blood relatives of any blood relative of the black dragon.

I guess if Tarquin and Penelope had had a child, V would've killed Nale and Elan as well.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Narkis »

And their mother, and all her relatives, and all their relatives as well. All these deaths, from a single dragon-human pairing. And there were almost certainly more humans elsewhere related to that draconic family... V has earned himself a place among the world's greatest mass-murderers
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Solauren »

Wow. That really was one of those spells that needed DM clarification before you cast it........
I've been asked why I still follow a few of the people I know on Facebook with 'interesting political habits and view points'.

It's so when they comment on or approve of something, I know what pages to block/what not to vote for.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by FaxModem1 »

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0843.html

Holy crap on a cracker. So, is there recovering from what V's done?
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by AniThyng »

An interesting idea to me is that V has also probably provoked a ton of blood feuds across the Western Continent, as people who had relatives/co-workers/rulers/underlings die of "mysterious circumstances" jump to the conclusion it was the actions of their rivals (like Tarquin and Nale did). Granted this may not actually make much difference in a place so fractured and unstable countries change names every other year. Were it the appearently more stable North it would probably be quite the crisis.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Sharp-kun »

I wonder what would happen if you rolled a 20 on Familicide...
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by The Yosemite Bear »

six degrees of seperation when you think about it kiling 95% of a planetary population just because were all related
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Darmalus »

And V didn't get one solitary point of XP from any of it, either! The injustice of it all!
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Darmalus »

Missed the edit window. D&D genetics are weird. I'm still trying to puzzle out V's blood statement. Seems like it should have wiped out even more than it did, unless it requires a living connection in the kill chain.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Crazedwraith »

So if Tarquin had fathered a child on that last wife. Would Famicide wiped him out as well? And thus Nale and Elan also?

Maybe one of the limits on it is it only follows familial connections where the next connection is alive (until the spell kills them of course) otherwise wouldn't it just wipe out the whole species?
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by AniThyng »

The beauty of the current explanation in my mind is that V is clearly in a very panicked state and might be overstating things.

As I see it, the spell is sufficient to kill penalope, quite a few humans, the rather cultish draketooths and perhaps 1/4 of black dragons, but aside from that, doesn't quite go into the human population enough to really raise eyebrows. In a brutal land like the western continent everyone simply assumes random magic induced death is business as usual. Tarquin certainly didn't seem particularly concerned about it, aside from one of the victims being his wife.

I think it really goes so far in terms where you still need to be meaningfully connected to a black dragon family line. I mean, yeah I'm related to everyone one of you if you go far enough back, but the odds of me meeting my cousins in the street are not particularly high.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Eframepilot »

FaxModem1 wrote:http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0843.html

Holy crap on a cracker. So, is there recovering from what V's done?
In theory, yes. V didn't intend that sort of slaughter. (S)He probably thought that it would target only black dragons, which are supposed to be evil by definition. So it's more mass manslaughter than murder. Even the IFCC thought that they had only a 50% chance of getting V's soul after Familicide, so redemption is a possibility.

However, V will have to work for redemption now that (s)he knows the full extent of the horror. Acting like a True Neutral shouldn't be enough, in my opinion at least. And with that upcoming possession that may doom the world, I expect V's story to end in tragedy, more so than any of the other PCs.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by CarsonPalmer »

I have already known that the GITP forums are a cesspool, but I'd just like to point out one particular argument over there that irritates me-"Ooh, V's really evil now!"

No, not really. Familicide was exactly as evil as it was ten strips ago. The very action of murdering an indiscriminate number of innocents was evil, whether or not it happened to kill the Draketooths or Penelope.

I also tend to believe that redemption is in the works for Vaarsuvius. There's no rational basis for that other than the feel of the story. Miko never acknowledged guilt and so did not find redemption; Redcloak cannot acknowledge a mistake and so doesn't seem likely to find redemption but instead to ultimately come to a tragic end; it just seems that the overall trend of the story would be for Vaarsuvius to be redeemed somehow. He/she might have to die for it, though.

Those are just my thoughts, though.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Lord Zentei »

Crazedwraith wrote:So if Tarquin had fathered a child on that last wife. Would Famicide wiped him out as well? And thus Nale and Elan also?
I don't think so. Familicide was supposed to kill the family of the victim, and the families of said family members. The dragons were the family, the Draketooths were the family of family. Going for Elan and Nale would make it family of family of family, wouldn't it?
CarsonPalmer wrote:I have already known that the GITP forums are a cesspool, but I'd just like to point out one particular argument over there that irritates me-"Ooh, V's really evil now!"
Indeed. There are reasons I don't go there any more. These would include first the posters, second the moderators.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Simon_Jester »

Narkis wrote:And their mother, and all her relatives, and all their relatives as well. All these deaths, from a single dragon-human pairing. And there were almost certainly more humans elsewhere related to that draconic family... V has earned himself a place among the world's greatest mass-murderers
Although- how does that square with it not killing everyone? How many generations up and down the family tree of someone like Penelope does the spell go?
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CarsonPalmer wrote:I have already known that the GITP forums are a cesspool, but I'd just like to point out one particular argument over there that irritates me-"Ooh, V's really evil now!"
Indeed. There are reasons I don't go there any more. These would include first the posters, second the moderators.
...I'm not sure I follow. Granted there's some idiot children in there, but they don't seem that bad on average to me.

The moderators are a bit heavy-handed, but predictably so; if you can survive here you can easily survive there.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Lord Zentei »

Simon Jester wrote:...I'm not sure I follow. Granted there's some idiot children in there, but they don't seem that bad on average to me.

The moderators are a bit heavy-handed, but predictably so; if you can survive here you can easily survive there.
The majority of the posters are fine, of course. Alas, it's the minority destroys the experience. Leading to the second point.

As for the moderators, it's not their heavy handedness that annoys me, but their silly priorities. Sophism, petulance and all around dishonesty is a-ok, but bad words are not; they'll turn a blind eye to passive aggressive bullshit and frankly to some disturbing stuff being posted if only it's "polite", but are all miss-manners net-nanny over trivial crap. I'm not really concerned about whether I can survive there, but only on whether I like the overall moderation culture. Of course, I haven't been there for a couple of years, so perhaps things have changed.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Rogue 9 »

Lord Zentei wrote:
Simon Jester wrote:...I'm not sure I follow. Granted there's some idiot children in there, but they don't seem that bad on average to me.

The moderators are a bit heavy-handed, but predictably so; if you can survive here you can easily survive there.
The majority of the posters are fine, of course. Alas, it's the minority destroys the experience. Leading to the second point.

As for the moderators, it's not their heavy handedness that annoys me, but their silly priorities. Sophism, petulance and all around dishonesty is a-ok, but bad words are not; they'll turn a blind eye to passive aggressive bullshit and frankly to some disturbing stuff being posted if only it's "polite", but are all miss-manners net-nanny over trivial crap. I'm not really concerned about whether I can survive there, but only on whether I like the overall moderation culture. Of course, I haven't been there for a couple of years, so perhaps things have changed.
They have not. Nowadays I limit my participation to the 40k tabletop thread (which has some quality people who know their stuff) and not much else. I've had it out with the moderators time after time about their priorities, and the only answer anyone will ever get is that that's how it is and how it's going to be.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Dark Hellion »

The moderation of GITP is not exclusive to that forum but one I have noticed on numerous D&D forums. I think it really causes problems with the methodology used on such sites and is part of the reason why there are still so many new interactions being discovered in 3.5ed even after a decade of CharOp and other pursuits.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Simon_Jester »

Uh, how do you mean, DH? What's wrong with the methodology? I'd think it's just a matter of not every trick getting publicized on the larger net as soon as anyone finds it.
Lord Zentei wrote:The majority of the posters are fine, of course. Alas, it's the minority destroys the experience. Leading to the second point.

As for the moderators, it's not their heavy handedness that annoys me, but their silly priorities. Sophism, petulance and all around dishonesty is a-ok, but bad words are not; they'll turn a blind eye to passive aggressive bullshit and frankly to some disturbing stuff being posted if only it's "polite", but are all miss-manners net-nanny over trivial crap. I'm not really concerned about whether I can survive there, but only on whether I like the overall moderation culture. Of course, I haven't been there for a couple of years, so perhaps things have changed.
I never really noticed the mods as a problem, and while the idiots were annoying, I could deal with them.

Personally, I'm just as happy in an environment where I know there's a limit on how much the loudmouths can strut and beat their chests and flame without getting in trouble. Dishonest trolls aren't really more troublesome for me than insult-spewing trolls, and they're considerably easier to ignore while keeping a level temper.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Dark Hellion »

Simon_Jester wrote:Uh, how do you mean, DH? What's wrong with the methodology? I'd think it's just a matter of not every trick getting publicized on the larger net as soon as anyone finds it.
Lord Zentei wrote:The majority of the posters are fine, of course. Alas, it's the minority destroys the experience. Leading to the second point.

As for the moderators, it's not their heavy handedness that annoys me, but their silly priorities. Sophism, petulance and all around dishonesty is a-ok, but bad words are not; they'll turn a blind eye to passive aggressive bullshit and frankly to some disturbing stuff being posted if only it's "polite", but are all miss-manners net-nanny over trivial crap. I'm not really concerned about whether I can survive there, but only on whether I like the overall moderation culture. Of course, I haven't been there for a couple of years, so perhaps things have changed.
I never really noticed the mods as a problem, and while the idiots were annoying, I could deal with them.

Personally, I'm just as happy in an environment where I know there's a limit on how much the loudmouths can strut and beat their chests and flame without getting in trouble. Dishonest trolls aren't really more troublesome for me than insult-spewing trolls, and they're considerably easier to ignore while keeping a level temper.
The lack of intellectual rigor means that many ideas that have merit but don't instantly lead to advancement can be shouted down by fallacious arguments and without any moderation support there is no real way to fight back against any troll who wishes to just erect a wall of ignorance and drown the good idea with shit posts. So an idea that could lead to finding a trick down the road doesn't until the posters who dislike the initial idea lose interest in shitting on it.

Personally, I find insulting language to be easily ignorable compared to blatant intellectual dishonesty. I am a grown man I can deal with being called a fucktard but having to deal with the rampant disingenuous arguments that many of these boards allow really frustrates me.
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by CarsonPalmer »

Dark Hellion wrote:
The lack of intellectual rigor means that many ideas that have merit but don't instantly lead to advancement can be shouted down by fallacious arguments and without any moderation support there is no real way to fight back against any troll who wishes to just erect a wall of ignorance and drown the good idea with shit posts.
The reverse (its difficult to shoot down those ideas that are just dumb) is also true, and in the case of OOTS is perhaps more damaging. People can keep harping on moronic ideas and there's no real way to say "That's dumb, that's just not going to happen" (note that this didn't even require the ability to say "Hey fucktard, that's so fucking stupid, now die in a fire!", just the ability to be flat out blunt).
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Re: The OotS Thread II

Post by Bright »

Dark Hellion wrote:The lack of intellectual rigor means that many ideas that have merit but don't instantly lead to advancement can be shouted down by fallacious arguments and without any moderation support there is no real way to fight back against any troll who wishes to just erect a wall of ignorance and drown the good idea with shit posts. So an idea that could lead to finding a trick down the road doesn't until the posters who dislike the initial idea lose interest in shitting on it.
While I've only peeked into the official forums a couple of times, I'm having a hard time imagining what you're describing. Could you give an example of a debate that's gone wrong this way?
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