In Which Ileosa Arabasti Grows Savvy to the Conventions of her Genre
Next Post »
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 729
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Not wanting to screw dudes isn't a phobia, let alone an extremely uncommon one!

Permalink

Most women don't seem to have any trouble with it?

Permalink

I really don't think you should force yourself to sleep with people you don't want to.

Permalink

It seems intuitively like I should, since I'm good at it and it's worked for me in the past? Is there a trope-logic reason why I should expect seducing Toff Ornelos to be less likely to work than it looks, or is this just you being Good and not wanting me to suffer through anything no matter how trivial or worth it?

Permalink

I don't want you to suffer through anything but also I don't - for context, if you could magically get all the benefits of seducing Toff Ornelos without having to do it, but you had to give up, say, the face cutting thing, would you rather do that or get the benefits by seducing him?

Permalink

It's hard to bring myself to want either, but... I'd rather give up the face cutting?

Definitely a close thing.

Permalink

I don't want you to suffer through anything but also I don't think this particularly trivial for you, or particularly worth it.

Permalink

Oh, come off it! 

This whole time you've been saying that "even though it takes some fun out of the job," I should quit everything that I do for fun, if it isn't fun for someone else, because that's what makes me more likely to win in the end. Now I bring up something which would take some fun out of the job, and doesn't really hurt anyone else, and now you're up in arms? 

What gives?

Permalink

At the end of the day, even if you do everything on the Overlord List, your odds of winning are better but that doesn't make them good. Like I've said, the heroes tend to win in the end. Some of the Overlord List rules, if you follow them, improve your odds of getting a redemption arc in the epilogue, or, if there's a Greater-Scope Villain or Man Behind the Man I haven't met yet, improve your odds of a survivable Heel-Face Turn in the third act - although others very much don't. I'm least conflicted about the things which it wouldn't hurt you to implement and would make you more effective while also harming others less. I'm more conflicted about the things which hurt you to do, but make you more effective while hurting others less, and the things which don't hurt to do and make you more effective without hurting others less. I'm not conflicted about things which hurt you to do and might make you marginally more effective without doing less harm to others, because those are just terrible. How could I feel happy about you doing something you hate when I don't expect it to help you in any lasting way?

Permalink

Ah.

Thank you for sharing your view, and thank you for trying to look out for me. 

But I'm not planning for failure, here. I'm still trying to win.

Sixty-five?

Permalink

65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

Permalink

It's already the plan to doctor or destroy any public floorplans that there are for Castle Korvosa.

I might set Togomor on hunting down and silencing retired servants from administrations past, although maybe that's an easier excuse for Paizo to give as to why the players can't find this information than it is a strictly optimal optimal use of Togomor's spells and time.

Sixty-six?

Permalink

Sci-fi trope:

66. My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.

Sixty-seven is cloaked in sci-fi terms but is more broadly applicable than that:

67. No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.

Permalink

A full-scale emergency? You'll run out your minute buffs chasing mundane rats.

And if my guards were instructed to treat every delayed check-in or whatnot as an emergency instead of as possibly-an-emergency, a possibility which grows in their minds the more the delay deviates from what they've come to expect, they'd stop doing that and instead start doing the other thing.

Permalink

Is that why in the sixth and final installment of CotCT an adventuring party is able to take your castle room by room like a dungeon with six floors?

Permalink

If you switch sides, I'll appoint you seneschal of the castle and you can rework our security.

Permalink

Has anyone told you that you the sitting monarch doesn't appoint the seneschal of Castle Korvosa?

Permalink

Oh, people have been bikeshedding about that all year.

What's sixty-eight?

Permalink

68. I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.

Permalink

Do you have to spare anyone who's saved your life in the past?

Permalink

If you're being even less honorable than the guy advocating for having less honor than Evil Overlords usually do, that's probably a problem. 

Permalink

What if someone only saved your life because they didn't know who you were and wouldn't have if they did, or they saved your life as a side-effect of saving their own life, or as a side-effect of some other selfish action or act of misdirected altruism, or what if they saved your life because they're literally cooperatebot? You don't want to have a reputation for cooperating with cooperatebot, people might mistake you for one.

Permalink

What's "cooperatebot"? 

Permalink

I don't know what cooperatebot means either, so it should be fine if you use out of character knowledge and just assume that in-universe we're using less compact terminology... did I say something funny?

Total: 729
Posts Per Page: