Killing Great Dragons, The end is coming Options

[Faelan]

Could be a good plan. If I get a good reading, rub out the diviner and continue. If I get a bad reading, give the mage some more detailed information on my original plan and set a counter-trap at the proposed time and location.

...and now you are starting to think a little bit like a GD. Add 50 levels of intrigue between you and it, and then fashion a real plan with a similar degree of separation, because the original is just a massive diversion, or is it? Like I said many posts ago, whole campaign not an end run, and both would still likely be suicidal.

[CanRay]

I'm still amazed they found a practical use for Lava Lamps.

Then was even more amazed at the military applications of Silly String!

[longbowrocks]

Then was even more amazed at the military applications of Silly String!

*Excited movements*
Tell us!
Tell us!

[Faelan]

You can use it to see tripwires from a fairly safe distance. You can also use a spray bottle of water on mist, but that requires you to be closer.

[CanRay]

Yep, spray the room with silly string, and it drapes lazily over the tripwires.

I saw some pics in early 2002 that showed an entire room just festooned with tripwires. I swear, it reminded me of when I got really hyper as a child with some fishing line (Note: Do not feed a hyperactive child chocolate cake with frosting that includes red dye!). Only these had explosives connected to it.

[Rubic]

Re: Divination

I could mathematically justify how divination does not interfere with cause and effect if I were a brighter mind, or at least more focused and had more spare time. Fundamentally, think of reality as a somewhat buoyant object within a fluid body. Every action creates some degree of x-dimensional wave (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) wave motion within the fluid body, and the intersections of those waves (regardless of their dimensional state) represents a given outcome (keep in mind, this is a gross over-simplification of explaining reality, alternate futures, and divination). Now, let's say that the somewhat buoyant object represents conventional, consensual reality. Each entity, depending on their actions, can steer this buoyant object to some degree, with the more powerful/important people creatures contributing more to the direction. A Great Dragon perceives the waves and calculates them, within a certain margin of error, to where the buoyant object will be at a given time. In seeing and predicting this harmonic outcome, and changing the position of the buoyant object, the Great Dragon prevents the original outcome, while not altering the extant motions and forces that granted the original calculation to begin with.

Similar mathematical theory has been generated to determine the velocity of a body in orbital motion, and the forces affecting it (direction of impetus being perpendicular to the force holding the object in orbit, etc., etc.). Also, as the one plotting against the Great Dragon, it will be your goal to steer the world to a position where that Great Dragon dies.

Re: Planning the death of a Great Dragon

Your best bet to survive would be arranging an outcome where the Great Dragon finds it in his/her best interest to sacrifice itself (ala Dunkelzhan), with the 2nd best choice being to arrange an outcome where OTHER Great Dragons find it in THEIR best interest in offing the poor sod; you might want to 'make nice nice' with Lofwyr.

[Christian Lafay]

You can use it to see tripwires from a fairly safe distance. You can also use a spray bottle of water on mist, but that requires you to be closer.

I love the odd stuff the Army teaches like that. I will always remember how to fix a bullet wound to a lung with a pop-tart. Though I also like walked with a weighted fishing line hanging from my barrel to catch ankle height wires.

[Fortinbras]

Re: Divination...could you help me out here Doctor?

Re: Planning the death of a Great Dragon
Never make a deal with a dragon.

I love the odd stuff the Army teaches like that. I will always remember how to fix a bullet wound to a lung with a pop-tart. Though I also like walked with a weighted fishing line hanging from my barrel to catch ankle height wires.

The guy who plays a rigger in my game is a former marine(marine corp retired, if you prefer) and taught me the fishing line trick.
We game out in a pretty rural part of Mansfield where there are a ridiculous amount of spiders so that has been worth it's weight in gold on the long walks from the house to the car in the middle of the night.

[Rubic]

Re: Divination...could you help me out here Doctor?

Try to think less wibbly wobbly and more Cthulu, non-euclidean thought (Escher type stuff). Alternatively, bistromathics. If you do not get that second reference, then you fail as a geek, and are hereafter sentenced to a life of fulfilling mundanity and social acceptance.

Re: Planning the death of a Great Dragon
Never make a deal with a dragon.

I never SAID to make a deal with a dragon. I said to arrange for particular outcomes. I also said to 'make nice nice' with Lofwyr. Making a deal is not the exclusive method of achieving these goals.

[Glyph]

You wanna kill a great dragon?

Get an unhinged street doc to implant you choc-full of C12 and sacs of toxins and cutter nanites, along with detonators tied to your biomonitor with a deadman's switch. Then, slather yourself with condiments, and get the great dragon to eat you.

[Fortinbras]

Try to think less wibbly wobbly and more Cthulu, non-euclidean thought (Escher type stuff). Alternatively, bistromathics. If you do not get that second reference, then you fail as a geek, and are hereafter sentenced to a life of fulfilling mundanity and social acceptance.

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey (Lesbian Spank Inferno) is a story telling tool. Rather than letting one's game devolve into competing views on M theory, you say 'This is my Timey Wimey spell. It goes 'ding' when there's stuff." The presumption being that the actual physics involved in the ability to see through the vortex of time and space are far more complex than can presently be understood, so metaphor is needed.
Some people hate this about Moffat. These people are silly.

I never SAID to make a deal with a dragon. I said to arrange for particular outcomes. I also said to 'make nice nice' with Lofwyr. Making a deal is not the exclusive method of achieving these goals.

Arrange for outcomes? Make nice with Lofwyr? Sounds like a making a deal to me.

[Rubic]

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey (Lesbian Spank Inferno) is a story telling tool. Rather than letting one's game devolve into competing views on M theory, you say 'This is my Timey Wimey spell. It goes 'ding' when there's stuff." The presumption being that the actual physics involved in the ability to see through the vortex of time and space are far more complex than can presently be understood, so metaphor is needed.
Some people hate this about Moffat. These people are silly.

Fair enough

Arrange for outcomes? Make nice with Lofwyr? Sounds like a making a deal to me.

And that is why you are not on the same level as a Great Dragon. In Disney's Aladdin, the title character gets a wish for free, why? Because he never actually wished for the outcome from the genie. Metal Gear Solid's mid-game twist, the initial impetus in Bioshock that you don't discover until halfway through the game... countless examples already exist of secret domination, shaping another's desires, of Xanatos and Batman gambits. Dealing with Great Dragons will, by nature, necessitate Xanatos Speed Chess, even if THAT is just a distraction from the direct approach.

DON'T make a deal, because deals will be twisted and broken. Make somebody want something, and make them certain that the outcome means nothing to you compared to what it means to them. And when everything is finally in motion, it'll be going like Tokyo Drift: if you're not out of control, you're not IN control.

[Fortinbras]

And that is why you are not on the same level as a Great Dragon. In Disney's Aladdin, the title character gets a wish for free, why? Because he never actually wished for the outcome from the genie. Metal Gear Solid's mid-game twist, the initial impetus in Bioshock that you don't discover until halfway through the game... countless examples already exist of secret domination, shaping another's desires, of Xanatos and Batman gambits. Dealing with Great Dragons will, by nature, necessitate Xanatos Speed Chess, even if THAT is just a distraction from the direct approach.

DON'T make a deal, because deals will be twisted and broken. Make somebody want something, and make them certain that the outcome means nothing to you compared to what it means to them. And when everything is finally in motion, it'll be going like Tokyo Drift: if you're not out of control, you're not IN control.

Wow. Just wow. That is just far too many video game and Disney cartoon references for one paragraph. And Tokyo Drift?!?! Really? Is that a film people saw much less remembered? We need to have a firm basis of communication so I'm going to do this... Aladdin = Faustus, Metal Gear = Merchant of Venice, Bioshock = Old Boy, Xanatos = Mrs. Havisham and Tokyo Drift = ... well I never saw it so I'm just going to say Hamlet because it's so nebulous it's applicable to anything.
Now I think I know about which you are speaking.

I'm going to throw another literary reference back at you, Gatsby. You can think you have everything lined up perfectly, and you can even do everything right, but the game is rigged. Those of immense power have set up a system in which you cannot win. All your well laid plans and strategies and well thought out ideas, even when executed perfectly, topple to the ground like stones thrown upon a barricade of wealth, privilege and power.

[Christian Lafay]

Since we are referencing media I'll throw in my two cents and assume that dragons think about meta-humanity along the lines of a Michael Weston quote, "Dealing with a trained operative is like playing chess with a master. Dealing with criminals, on the other hand, is like playing checkers with a three year-old: they like to change the rules". The dragon(s) can think and plan and scheme, but they are creatures usually set in their ways while the rest of us are so mind-numbingly chaotic that it's hard to predict a rigger launching himself in a Bust-A-Move with a satellite link from a rail gun straight at ya.

[Epicedion]

This is how it works:

Great Dragons are smarter than you. They're smarter than the GM. If you somehow manage to outwit your GM and kill a Great Dragon, your GM should rule that, in fact, your cunning plan didn't work for some new reason that neither of you had thought up beforehand.

If your runner is in the business of living, he'll leave the dragons alone.

[Ascalaphus]

Again, breaking something like cause and effect is well beyond the suspension of disbelief most players are willing to extend to magic.

I disagree.

Either you need to completely reimagine, well, how time and fate work in your universe or divination is far more limited than is being presented here. And let's be honest, if any player started using divination the way it's being used here, the GM would beat him over the head with the rulebook. This isn't a RAW or RAI interpretation of divination because I can't imagine anyone actually playing that way (step up if you have), this is essentially a GM fiat argument that GDs have "Super Divination". And that's fine, play the game as you like. I don't think they have super-divination because it makes the game boring for the PCs. While the rules certainly give scope for GDs to have extra-special powers, and they should, this is not one that is included in the books.

I think that GDs do have Super Divination, and more stuff like it. I don't think it makes the game boring, because trying to kill GDs was never supposed to be what the game is about, that's just Longbowrocks' insane plan.

GDs aren't intended for direct confrontation, they're meant to stay back in the shadows, to be the secret mover behind a dozen layers of intrigue that eventually causes whatever your current mission is about.

Complaining that GDs aren't fair game is like complaining that Antediluvians in oWoD aren't fair game - the point of the game was never to confront them.

This is how it works:

Great Dragons are smarter than you. They're smarter than the GM. If you somehow manage to outwit your GM and kill a Great Dragon, your GM should rule that, in fact, your cunning plan didn't work for some new reason that neither of you had thought up beforehand.

If your runner is in the business of living, he'll leave the dragons alone.

Yes!

[Manunancy]

In my opinion going after a great dragon with any hope of sucess requires two things :
* getting enough firepower for the job. That usually means military grade, vehicle-scale weaponry
* getting enough information on the dragon' abilities and schedule to be able to actually bring the hardware close enough to do the deed

You're not sitting alone in the middle of an abandonned trash dump thinking and building stuff out of the trash - you're actively poking your nose around to get things and information the lizards knows can be detrimental to his health. Which brings you straight into the sort of areas he will keep an eye upon - he or his servants. That's going to jump the odds for showing up on his radar by an order of magnitude.

The hardware part is also likely to bring you to the attention of more intelligence services than is healthy, because the sort of hardware you'll need to take down a Great Dragon is the sort of hardware the power-that-be isn't eager to see dropping under the radar.

Note : even if you're playing tricks with random numbers and whatnots, there's still a constant in the whole deal that will probably emerge : there's someone - even if he can't dvine the specifics of who, when and how - who's out for his blood and far more seirous about it than his usual ennemies.

[Rubic]

I'm going to throw another literary reference back at you, Gatsby. You can think you have everything lined up perfectly, and you can even do everything right, but the game is rigged. Those of immense power have set up a system in which you cannot win. All your well laid plans and strategies and well thought out ideas, even when executed perfectly, topple to the ground like stones thrown upon a barricade of wealth, privilege and power.

I never saw Tokyo Drift, myself, but that line WAS in the commercials. Also, I understand about the Gatsby thing. "No plan survives an encounter with the enemy." And yes, those of immense power have set up a system in which you cannot win. That's not the point. The point is NOT to win. The point is to make THEM lose! Once the target has lost, any amount of winning is just gravy.

Since we are referencing media I'll throw in my two cents and assume that dragons think about meta-humanity along the lines of a Michael Weston quote, "Dealing with a trained operative is like playing chess with a master. Dealing with criminals, on the other hand, is like playing checkers with a three year-old: they like to change the rules". The dragon(s) can think and plan and scheme, but they are creatures usually set in their ways while the rest of us are so mind-numbingly chaotic that it's hard to predict a rigger launching himself in a Bust-A-Move with a satellite link from a rail gun straight at ya.

It might be hard to predict, but it can be easy to defend against, give or take. The best way to surprise your quarry is to remove the given assumptions from the field of play (i.e. personal survival, conventional warfare, that you even WANT it dead). Go zen, and realize that you shouldn't think inside the box, nor outside, but rather that the box is merely an illusion distracting you from the great splendor that is being a sneaky bastard.

[hermit]

I didn't really plan it out, but if telling the future is easier than finding out about the past or present, we have much bigger problems than Great Dragons here. I can always pay a mage to do divination metamagic on the dragon. He doesn't get any more defense than I do.

Actually, given his warp fate type power, I wouldn't be so sure the dragon doesn't have any power to defend against divining. Just, you don't.

I always ask myself that.
The only possibility I can think of is that sympathizers for extremist causes have largely been filtered out based on shallow reasoning which is frequently incorrect (color of skin, etc). More people are filtered out by the fact that this requires planning, and folks with that level of bloodlust can get caught pretty fast. Another thing that filters people out is that this is practically a suicide run. You'll most likely be successful, but you probably won't make it out.
This is a much more solid plan than shooting the president in the face, but nobody tried that until the 16 president (US president). Ok, they did try and fail on the seventh president, but apparently nobody learned from that.

Or maybe those more perimeter security structures - patrols, cameras, ElInt, plainscloths agents looking for suspicious people - are a lot more competent than you give them credit for. And since I imagine it hard to just buy a mortar and ammunition even in the States, maybe that's enough to foil that cunning plan?

And by using divination, cause and effect breaks down. If something would happen based on the results of your divination, then it is the result of cause and effect. If you try to avoid that happening, nothing is based on cause and effect any longer because the timeflow has been messed with.

Of course it still is caue and effect. It just adds another variable. Time travel would be messy there, divination, not so much. And time travel is a no-go in SR. It's the same with certain real world experiments that acelerate particles past light speed (which disintegrates the particle into radiation, but has the disintegrated radiation apear before the particle is launched b a few nanoseconds; and yet the universe hasn't exploded). To paraphrase Douglas Adams: The universe is built on the principle of cause and effect, though those don't always happen in chronological order. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Thanks, I thought those were future tech. Actually, I still think they're future tech, but whatevs.

Haven't been since the 90s. Current systems are very effective against slow moving projectiles, and medium effectiver against fast things like missiles. Supposedly, the Israeli Iron Dome system can reliably intercept RPGs and short-range missiles, too.

Eh~ maybe. I group this in the same category as "magic affecting me without any link".

That's good for you. The rules don't.

If I get a bad reading, give the mage some more detailed information on my original plan and set a counter-trap at the proposed time and location.

Assuming you have the same level of ressources the dragon has (and a totally reliable mage who will do everything for you and never betray you), that's a much more decent plan than your previous ones.

Metal Gear = Merchant of Venice

What? If anything, it is Lear II.

[longbowrocks]

Great Dragons are smarter than you. They're smarter than the GM. If you somehow manage to outwit your GM and kill a Great Dragon, your GM should rule that, in fact, your cunning plan didn't work for some new reason that neither of you had thought up beforehand.

There have been plenty of smart people in the past, but that's never saved anyone from an idiot with a gun who didn't like what they said. How many billions of people does a dragon need to keep track of if he wants to be certain that no one will try to kill him?

[hermit]

There have been plenty of smart people in the past, but that's never saved anyone from an idiot with a gun who didn't like what they said.

You really overestimate the influence and comeptence of assassins, especially the disgruntled citizen type.

How many billions of people does a dragon need to keep track of if he wants to be certain that no one will try to kill him?

That's projecting your own irrational hate of "anything that's bigger than your character" onto everyone. I doubt any given GD is hated (personally or for hat he stands for) than the US president. And curiously, most presidents don't seem to be assassinated by some Mr. Smith with no plan and a rusty shotgun.

[PoliteMan]

I could mathematically justify how divination does not interfere with cause and effect if I were a brighter mind, or at least more focused and had more spare time. Fundamentally, think of reality as a somewhat buoyant object within a fluid body. Every action creates some degree of x-dimensional wave (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) wave motion within the fluid body, and the intersections of those waves (regardless of their dimensional state) represents a given outcome (keep in mind, this is a gross over-simplification of explaining reality, alternate futures, and divination). Now, let's say that the somewhat buoyant object represents conventional, consensual reality. Each entity, depending on their actions, can steer this buoyant object to some degree, with the more powerful/important people creatures contributing more to the direction. A Great Dragon perceives the waves and calculates them, within a certain margin of error, to where the buoyant object will be at a given time. In seeing and predicting this harmonic outcome, and changing the position of the buoyant object, the Great Dragon prevents the original outcome, while not altering the extant motions and forces that granted the original calculation to begin with.

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey (Lesbian Spank Inferno) is a story telling tool. Rather than letting one's game devolve into competing views on M theory, you say 'This is my Timey Wimey spell. It goes 'ding' when there's stuff." The presumption being that the actual physics involved in the ability to see through the vortex of time and space are far more complex than can presently be understood, so metaphor is needed.
Some people hate this about Moffat. These people are silly.

You're gonna have to explain how that justifies this,
"The initiate enters a mild trance state that reveals glimpses and flashes of what the future may hold—almost always couched in enigmatic symbolism and metaphor appropriate to the diviner’s magical paradigm and cosmology."
giving the GD complete foreknowledge of complex future events, such as the fact that on August 21st, at a randomly determined time which may or may not occur depending on a random number generator are going to hack local aircraft and military units, with orders to both directly attack/crash into the GD and cause a critical meltdown in a local nuclear plant.
There's a shorter answer though. You wouldn't let a player do this with Divination, even though a PC could easily get 20+ dice on this test. It would ruin the game, they'd make a fortune on the stock market on the first run. The dragon isn't using divination, it's using "super-divination". That's fine for some games but it's not RAW and it's not going to be true for GDs in many games.

Great Dragons are smarter than you. They're smarter than the GM. If you somehow manage to outwit your GM and kill a Great Dragon, your GM should rule that, in fact, your cunning plan didn't work for some new reason that neither of you had thought up beforehand.

GDs have been outsmarted by humans before. Celadyr was outsmarted twice before TranSys joined NeoNet. Ryumo didn't predict the comet's effects and got blindsided by the new emperor. The Azzies regularly compete against multiple GDs and regular dragons without any apparent loss of power or position. Yes, GDs should generally be smarter and more powerful than PCs, that shouldn't equal Schrödinger's Armor, especially not if your PCs with 6 ranks in Devious Machinations.

I think that GDs do have Super Divination, and more stuff like it. I don't think it makes the game boring, because trying to kill GDs was never supposed to be what the game is about, that's just Longbowrocks' insane plan.

GDs aren't intended for direct confrontation, they're meant to stay back in the shadows, to be the secret mover behind a dozen layers of intrigue that eventually causes whatever your current mission is about.

Complaining that GDs aren't fair game is like complaining that Antediluvians in oWoD aren't fair game - the point of the game was never to confront them.

Yeah, GDs aren't really meant for direct confrontation. However, if it's something the PCs want to do, and LongBow seems to, then the PCs should have a shot. If you want GDs to have "super-divination", that's fine for your game. I don't, I like the principle in SR that everything can be killed, everyone is vulnerable. I don't think, per RAW, GDs have "super-divination".

And while I like oWoD, it's so different from SR that comparisons aren't any more applicable than D&D, where you can kill everything (yes, they even stated Cthulu).

[longbowrocks]

Of course it still is caue and effect. It just adds another variable. Time travel would be messy there, divination, not so much. And time travel is a no-go in SR. It's the same with certain real world experiments that acelerate particles past light speed (which disintegrates the particle into radiation, but has the disintegrated radiation apear before the particle is launched b a few nanoseconds; and yet the universe hasn't exploded). To paraphrase Douglas Adams: The universe is built on the principle of cause and effect, though those don't always happen in chronological order. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I believe strongly in chaos theory, which is an extreme application of cause and effect. It was determined from the beginning of the universe that I would be here today, and eat frosted mini wheats for breakfast (a very sugary wheat cereal). This was born of the progression of cause and effect. Then again, I guess the dragon performing the divination is part of cause and effect, and so its actions based on the result would already be accounted for. Alright, nevermind then.

Assuming you have the same level of ressources the dragon has (and a totally reliable mage who will do everything for you and never betray you), that's a much more decent plan than your previous ones.

Actually, this part of the plan fails if he doesn't betray me. I was counting on him betraying me, and intending to exploit the resulting trap that I imagine would be laid.

[hermit]

Actually, this part of the plan fails if he doesn't betray me. I was counting on him betraying me, and intending to exploit the resulting trap that I imagine would be laid.

The trap you know nothing about. Right. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

However, if it's something the PCs want to do, and LongBow seems to, then the PCs should have a shot.

If his GM agrees. If it's something a player wants to do and the GM doesn't, it won't happen.

[longbowrocks]

You really overestimate the influence and comeptence of assassins, especially the disgruntled citizen type.

Well, there's that, but how many of Einstein's thoughts were ever dedicated to "How can I survive today without any these people killing me?"
In addition to minds that are preoccupied (with managing a corporation or what have you) there's also the fact that there are too many possible threats to do more than a background check of your immediate vicinity when you're famous, or especially controversial.

I doubt any given GD is hated (personally or for what he stands for) more than the US president.

I don't think any U.S. president has ever personally razed a city with his fiery breath and deadly magic. That nets you a couple grudges.