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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    Flumph

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    Default Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    There is something that for the life of me I just can't understand. Why isn't the system protecting Kraagor's Gate a shell game? It seems like a shell game would be objectively superior to a gauntlet at accomplishing this task. Let me explain:

    If an intruder does NOT explore all the dungeons, they do not find anything, in both the shell game and gauntlet scenarios.

    If an intruder DOES explore all the dungeons, then:

    1. If it's a gauntlet, they find the entrance to the final dungeon immediately.

    2. If it's a shell game, they find nothing, realize they've been tricked, and start looking for the gate elsewhere. They may or may not find the entrance to the final dungeon. Even if they do find it, it won't be immediate, so they'll be slowed down somewhat.

    Now, #2 obviously provides more protection for the Gate than #1, right? So why on Earth did Serini choose #1? Sure, maybe a gauntlet honors Kraagor as a barbarian, but having his Gate protected by dungeons full of monsters already did that. Is an additional symbolic homage really worth compromising the defense of the Gate?

    It just doesn't make any sense to me.
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    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    The classic shell game has a serious vulnerability - if you catch the guy palming the ball, you can attack him directly to get your money.

    A metaphorical shell game has the same serious vulnerability. If you catch on, there is a very real chance that you can deduce the actual location of the thing you're looking for and head straight for it. And, if this happens, the target is inherently undefended. In which case going for a shell game guaranteed your defeat.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Gnoman View Post
    A metaphorical shell game has the same serious vulnerability. If you catch on, there is a very real chance that you can deduce the actual location of the thing you're looking for and head straight for it. And, if this happens, the target is inherently undefended. In which case going for a shell game guaranteed your defeat.
    Well, the target wouldn't be undefended in this case - there would still be a final dungeon anyway, it's just that in the shell game you don't get to open the entrance by doing anything. The entrance just doesn't open and you have to find it and force your way in.

    Now in the gauntlet version, that option still exists - you could find the location of the final dungeon and force your way in without actually running the gauntlet - except that there's the additional vulnerability that the final dungeon will open by itself if someone does run the whole gauntlet.

    Why would intruders be more likely to "catch on" in a shell game scenario than in this gauntlet scenario? Imagine a shell game in which everything is exactly the same as in this gauntlet, with one single exception: the tattoos do nothing.
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  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    One reason I've seen people kick around about this kind of thing (like, why have an entrance at all?) is the potential impact on divination magic and such. If there's a 'right' way in but it's extremely difficult or confusing, that'll still be the method divinations are likely to point them to. Though it's hard to say how much that's a real reason or influence; the potential vagueness of divination magic can be all over the place, and the gates are presumably enormously warded against direct divinations since they're otherwise so hard to find. Even Xykon and Redcloak seemingly needed a book of coordinates, and had to use a roundabout scry to figure out where Soon's gate actually was instead of being able to look for it directly.

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    ElfRangerGuy

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    As Serini explained it, the gauntlet would not be passable by anyone other than the most powerful of enemies, and even then it would take them a long time. Long enough for her to get help from her former allies.

    The only reason that it is failing now is she never expected it to be the only gate left, or that she would be the only member of the Scribbles left alive.
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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    I suppose Xykon would have had another true location in his Serini's diary, had it been a shell game.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Hot take: Serini is stupid. She was the Elan/Tarquin of her group after all.

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    Ogre in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Edric O View Post
    Well, the target wouldn't be undefended in this case - there would still be a final dungeon anyway, it's just that in the shell game you don't get to open the entrance by doing anything. The entrance just doesn't open and you have to find it and force your way in.
    And that final dungeon could have a thousand doors protected by high level monsters, where you're forced to go through all of the door and defeat monsters in each of them in order to get to the final room of that final dungeon.

    This place IS the final dungeon. Your remark is just that there should have been decoy positions beforehand, with fake puzzles that are pointless to solve. And to that there there is a meta answer: the bad guys would eventually reach the final dungeon, so the author decided it wasn't worth the time to go through all the decoys that might have delayed them. Especially since the author gave to the bad guys Sereni's journal, so access to a lot of informations about the actual position of the final dungeon.

    Quote Originally Posted by Edric O View Post
    Now in the gauntlet version, that option still exists - you could find the location of the final dungeon and force your way in without actually running the gauntlet - except that there's the additional vulnerability that the final dungeon will open by itself if someone does run the whole gauntlet.
    It's not an additional vulnerability. It's the door.

    You're arguing that "protection at the decoy + protection at the final place" is better than "protection at the decoy + zero protection at the final place".
    I'm arguing that "double protection at the final place" is even better, since the probability that the enemy shortcut the first half is zero.

    There is not an "additional vulnerability". It's the one and only door to the final place, and it's protected as much as possible.

    Quote Originally Posted by Edric O View Post
    Why would intruders be more likely to "catch on" in a shell game scenario than in this gauntlet scenario? Imagine a shell game in which everything is exactly the same as in this gauntlet, with one single exception: the tattoos do nothing.
    Except for divination. Or for human flaw, let's say for example that the bad guy find track the position of the final dungeon (and not any of the decoys) using some mistake made by the architect (like putting too much info in their personal journal).

  9. - Top - End - #9
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    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    Hot take: Serini is stupid. She was the Elan/Tarquin of her group after all.
    Three points: first‚ there has to be an entrance. Maybe for maintenance‚ maybe to observe the inside of the rift somehow‚ or simply to be able to form a "last line of defense" close to the gate if need be. Otherwise‚ they would simply have buried the gates in thousands of tons of riverin-lined dimensionally-locked rock. Since there has to be an entrance‚ and that Mindrape or other divinations can reveal it‚ the intended entrance has to be as difficult as possible. Having a "shell game" means you can find the ball in the dealer's pocket. Having a gauntlet means even if you know where it is (as the OotS figured out quite quickly)‚ you still have to fight everything.

    Second‚ this was a tribute to the group's barbarian. A hidden entrance is not what Kraagor would have liked. The Scribbles probably didn't think it would ever come down to a last Gate‚ and if protecting the world can double as the most ultra-fitting metal tomb ever‚ young Serini would go for it.

    Third‚ Serini wasn't an illusionist. She cannot cast high-end illusions to hide an entrance. Even if she could‚ Draketooth already did it‚ and much better. If something is a big enough threat to the gates‚ better not allow them to bypass two gates the same way. The Scribbles had five different ways to protect their gates. An invader had to have a pure heart‚ to resist microscopic assaults‚ to invade a city and beat ghost-paladins‚ and to see through epic-level illusions. What was left? Well‚ mundane skills. Trapfinding‚ persistence‚ and pure physical might. If a would-be invader was to attack Kraagor's gate after Draketooth's‚ they are likely to think of a shell game and give up after a dozen doors to find another entrance‚ only to find there is none.
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  10. - Top - End - #10
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    I mean, tribute or not, building one of the last bastions of hope as a game of challenge is exactly the thing Elan and Tarquin would do.

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    RangerGuy

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Not everything has to be 100% optimized. It is okay to occasionally have a personality.

    An epic-level rogue building an uber-dungeon full of endgame monsters in order to hide one of the world's cosmic keystones - with the reasonable expectation that her other epic-level friends won't all collectively get themselves wiped out beforehand - is already a very secure approach. The traps that force you to run the whole gauntlet increases that security. And then you enter the final dungeon, which has additional traps and safeguards on its own.

    Serini has already made this dungeon a rock-solid deterrent to all but the most powerful enemies. The fact that these specific enemies (some of the most powerful in the world) are able to overcome those deterrents is overshadowing how effective this would be in all other circumstances. If this system is already safe in 99.99% of cases, I don't see any value in an argument over whether Serini is "stupid" for not cutting out the homage to Kraagor to make it 99.995%.

    As OvisCaedo pointed out, there are also potential reasons this could be more secure than a complete decoy, such as divination magic or the psychology of your enemy. If you create an obvious path that is guaranteed to lead to the treasure, but make that path insanely difficult and tedious to complete, there are circumstances where that's safer than just making a total decoy. If you can get your opponent to accept the terms of the fight and commit to it, you might be able to predict their behavior more effectively. If you stonewall them and don't give them a "path of least resistance," there's no telling exactly what they might do. And you really don't want a team with the power of Xykon and the ingenuity of Redcloak to reject your terms and do something you aren't expecting.

    But hey, calling Serini stupid because she uses a slightly unconventional strategy when we don't know the baseline assumptions is a recurring event on this forum, so I shouldn't be terribly surprised.
    Last edited by Ionathus; 2023-03-30 at 12:42 PM.

  12. - Top - End - #12
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    And I think the main point is that if it's a shell game, then it means that there's a method to get to the gate that does not require running through all the dungeons. That's a vulnerability. I'm not sure how "figure out that the dungeons are a red-herring and find the secret real hidden entrance to the gate" makes it more secure than "Nope. There is actually no way to get to the gate except by physically entering every single final room in every single one of these dungeons, and surviving".

    A few of us (myself included) have proposed ideas like "why not just have the gate buried under tons of rock and the dungeons don't lead to it at all"? But as a few other people have pointed out, to whatever degree divination spells can be used, while they may not be able to tell you exactly where a gate it, or how to get there, they presumably can tell you what *wont* lead to a gate. And to me, that's a completely satisfactory rationale. If someone can use divination and discover that the dungeons aren't the way to get to the gate, then Serini has expended all of these resources for nothing. A potential gate seeker will just start doing other things, like digging around the area looking for the gate. And will find it, and with no real cost or difficulty except time.

    By requiring the dungeons to be traversed to get there, it requires that anyone reaching the gate must be powerful enough to fight their way through all the dungeons. That's a much higher bar than "anyone with dig/passwall spells and time".

  13. - Top - End - #13
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye View Post
    The only reason that it is failing now is she never expected it to be the only gate left, or that she would be the only member of the Scribbles left alive.
    Yep.
    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    Hot take: Serini is stupid. She was the Elan/Tarquin of her group after all.
    Given that she was hot for Girard, yep.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
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  14. - Top - End - #14
    Pixie in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Firstly, sentiment. She built it for Kraagor, just with her own twist.

    Secondly, divination spells may have revealed the real location of the Final Gate if it was a true shell game.

    If it was a true shell game Redcloak could ask a divination spell something like "Will I find the Gate through one of these doors?" and the answer would be "No". Whereas with this set-up, the answer might be "Yes", or at least "Maybe" depending on how strictly the spell interpreted the question.

    Redcloak may not be able to directly request the actual location from his deity, but Serini seems to think that more vague divination spells would at least give some response.

  15. - Top - End - #15
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Precure View Post
    Hot take: Serini is stupid. She was the Elan/Tarquin of her group after all.
    Not so hot a take, IMO.

    Serini's poor judgment has been one of the most consistently portrayed aspects of her character. I posted the same thought on the main thread: Her defenses being "clever" but not very rigorous is very much in line with her accidentally revealing the secret to V when she could have avoided it just by giving a rough approximation, and not realizing how pointless it was to keep the secret anyway, since The Order wasn't exactly about to speed-clear all of the dungeons to beat TE to the gate in the first place.

    Or how she was hoping for her team to get back together and come to her rescue after she was the one to come up with the "Hey, how about we promise to never talk to each other ever again?" plan.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
    But hey, calling Serini stupid because she uses a slightly unconventional strategy when we don't know the baseline assumptions is a recurring event on this forum, so I shouldn't be terribly surprised.
    It doesn't exactly help that when said baseline assumptions are revealed, then tend to validate her critics.
    Last edited by BloodSquirrel; 2023-03-30 at 11:07 PM.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
    Not everything has to be 100% optimized. It is okay to occasionally have a personality.

    An epic-level rogue building an uber-dungeon full of endgame monsters in order to hide one of the world's cosmic keystones - with the reasonable expectation that her other epic-level friends won't all collectively get themselves wiped out beforehand - is already a very secure approach. The traps that force you to run the whole gauntlet increases that security. And then you enter the final dungeon, which has additional traps and safeguards on its own.

    Serini has already made this dungeon a rock-solid deterrent to all but the most powerful enemies. The fact that these specific enemies (some of the most powerful in the world) are able to overcome those deterrents is overshadowing how effective this would be in all other circumstances. If this system is already safe in 99.99% of cases, I don't see any value in an argument over whether Serini is "stupid" for not cutting out the homage to Kraagor to make it 99.995%.

    As OvisCaedo pointed out, there are also potential reasons this could be more secure than a complete decoy, such as divination magic or the psychology of your enemy. If you create an obvious path that is guaranteed to lead to the treasure, but make that path insanely difficult and tedious to complete, there are circumstances where that's safer than just making a total decoy. If you can get your opponent to accept the terms of the fight and commit to it, you might be able to predict their behavior more effectively. If you stonewall them and don't give them a "path of least resistance," there's no telling exactly what they might do. And you really don't want a team with the power of Xykon and the ingenuity of Redcloak to reject your terms and do something you aren't expecting.

    But hey, calling Serini stupid because she uses a slightly unconventional strategy when we don't know the baseline assumptions is a recurring event on this forum, so I shouldn't be terribly surprised.
    It gets better. As someone pointed out in the main comic discussion thread, most groups going after the gates would have trapfinding skills. That would quickly lead them to the backstage and/or to to disarm the marker traps, meaning that doing anything other than powering through actually leads one only to further delays, despite those action usually being objectively the right idea.
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  17. - Top - End - #17
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    Goblin

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    The problem with the Tomb being a shell game is that trying to win at it it's a COLOSSAL undertaking.

    If you see a shell game done with three cups, well, its tempting to give it a go if you don't know how the game works.

    If a street punter whisks the ball through five hundred cups, that's a very different matter.

    No seriously dangerous invader is gonna play the Monster Hollow shell game before doing a whole bunch of divination and closely examining the rest of the canyon with a panoply of spells and hell, probbably smacking everything with a pickaxe to listen for voids. The comic actually covered why making the Hollow a shellgame would be counter-productive: There's no incentive to play it before searching every rock and stone of the canyon 100 times over!

    If I have a budget of a million gold, spending 900,000 of the gold on a completely pointless megadungeon that serves as nothing but a timewaster and could be bypassed by someone standing back and saying "Look this is so obviously a big trap designed to get us killed, there are CR20 monsters in here" will mean I only spent 100k on the actual dungeon defense!
    Last edited by Bacon Elemental; 2023-03-31 at 06:48 AM.
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    There is a lot of very bizarre nonsense being talked on this forum. I shall now remain silent and logoff until my points are vindicated.

  18. - Top - End - #18
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by KillianHawkeye View Post
    As Serini explained it, the gauntlet would not be passable by anyone other than the most powerful of enemies, and even then it would take them a long time. Long enough for her to get help from her former allies.

    The only reason that it is failing now is she never expected it to be the only gate left, or that she would be the only member of the Scribbles left alive.
    Yeah, but this doesn't answer the question of why, after you clear all the dungeons, it teleports you to the actual Gate, when it could just... not do that. Or teleport you to someplace horrible instead, even.

    Even if Serini needs access to the gate for some reason, she could just make it so you also need one more tattoo, which has to be manually applied and which only she knows.

    Yes, sure, a powerful enough enemy could still see through that and brute-force it somehow, but it wouldn't add any vulnerabilities and would have some risk of stalling attackers for a very long time if they guess wrong about what's going on.

    (Of course the story reason is that that would be boring, but.)


    Quote Originally Posted by Bacon Elemental View Post
    No seriously dangerous invader is gonna play the Monster Hollow shell game before doing a whole bunch of divination and closely examining the rest of the canyon with a panoply of spells and hell, probbably smacking everything with a pickaxe to listen for voids.
    Except that the actual attackers are doing just that.

    Either way, regardless, the point is... the actual gate is already located somewhere else, that's a given, and Xykon and company have failed to discover it. Its anti-scrying defenses held. It's just that after they go through every dungeon they'll be teleported to the actual location.

    So why not just... not do that? Like, build everything exactly as it is now, but either have no teleport to the final gate at the end, or have the teleport require a passphrase or tattoo or other thing that only Serini knows?

    I don't see how it would make the defenses any weaker.
    Last edited by Aquillion; 2023-03-31 at 07:27 AM.

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    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Aquillion View Post
    Yeah, but this doesn't answer the question of why, after you clear all the dungeons, it teleports you to the actual Gate, when it could just... not do that.
    Currently the correct way to get to the gate is 'explore the dungeons', adding a trick ending to it not only makes it not really a gauntlet but changes the correct way to find the gate to 'find Serini and ask her'.

    Xykon is well able to use any number of tactics to either retrieve Serini from any afterlife she inhabits or to determine that she is still alive and so use his knowledge of her to draw her out (as he has done previously) - and nearly any similarly powerful entity would be able to do likewise.

    This ignores that with an answer of 'figure out the trick' he could decide to bypass it by conscripting a whole army of goblins to excavate (as she initially used Dwarves to), or even find those Dwarves and conscript them, or develop an epic spell to help his search or whatever.

    Allowing a straightforward one can access what is being protected by 'doing thing X' is sometimes the safest method of protecting something.

    For instance if Serini said that 'also with all the tattoos you need a seven digit code I have memorised and never written down and this needs to be spoken aloud in halfling' then the gauntlet becomes pointless the correct way to get the gate is 'find Serini' - and sufficent divination is likely to return that answer.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bacon Elemental View Post
    No seriously dangerous invader is gonna play the Monster Hollow shell game before doing a whole bunch of divination and closely examining the rest of the canyon with a panoply of spells and hell, probbably smacking everything with a pickaxe to listen for voids. The comic actually covered why making the Hollow a shellgame would be counter-productive: There's no incentive to play it before searching every rock and stone of the canyon 100 times over!
    Sure, but...so? If the entire point is to be a timewaster anyway (powerful enemies will eventually defeat everything and move on), then the shell game method is the BIGGER TIMEWASTER.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    What is more dangerous?

    Fighting through a hundred dungeons filled with deadly monsters or setting up a dig site to search for the gate under a hill?

    If you fight through a hundred dungeons, that means you're expending resources and spells to do so and an eventual ambush can come up after you've tired yourself clearing a bunch of tough monsters. As Serini stated, she never expected to be the last Scribbler standing and was hoping that she would be able to help her team get over their hatred of each other so they could work together in the case of someone attacking them.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Resileaf View Post
    What is more dangerous?

    Fighting through a hundred dungeons filled with deadly monsters or setting up a dig site to search for the gate under a hill?
    The problem is that the case for the existence of gauntlet preventing someone from setting up the dig site is not as strong as it could be.

    "Helps fool divination magic" is an answer, but it feels more like a post-hoc justification than a really, really solid reason. It's workable, but it's not impervious to scrutiny.

    Case in point: it relies on the attackers getting a very, very specifically worded answer to their questions which we don't have a good reason to expect they would get. Why would "Defeat the dungeons" be the answer a divination gives if "Dig here" is also a possible way to get to the gate, and would be faster and safer? And what if instead of asking "How do we get to the gate?" they ask "Where, specifically, is the gate?".

    If you think about it from the other direction- You have a gate whose location is set, you need to prevent a bad guy from access it, but you also might need to access it yourself- then it's hard to see how you would arrive at Serini's scheme with forward-thinking logic.

    On the other hand, if you assume that Serini came up with the idea for the gauntlet first because it just seemed like a neat idea, then worked out how to make it access the gate, it's pretty believable as something someone like that would come up with. I have enough experience with real-world engineering projects to recognize how often that sort of thing happens.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Resileaf View Post
    What is more dangerous?

    Fighting through a hundred dungeons filled with deadly monsters or setting up a dig site to search for the gate under a hill?
    The danger level is largely irrelevant, only the time given. Given the way resources work in D&D your window to perform an ambush on low-resource foes is pretty small, and you're better off messing with them when they're doing something non-combat related (and the Clerics, Wizards, etc. have likely prepared a bunch of utility spells, actively reducing their combat prowess).

    Quote Originally Posted by Resileaf View Post
    As Serini stated, she never expected to be the last Scribbler standing and was hoping that she would be able to help her team get over their hatred of each other so they could work together in the case of someone attacking them.
    Didn't Serini also state that the Scribblers should have zero means of communicating with each other, this making the point moot anyway?

    The entire moral of this story is that Serini isn't half as clever as she thinks she is, and her paranoia has left the world one step away from destruction.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Didn't Serini also state that the Scribblers should have zero means of communicating with each other, this making the point moot anyway?
    Correct. They cut off all contact and swore to never interfere with each other. No "just checking in" or anything like that.

    However, Serini herself cheated by taking monsters from Dorukan's dungeon, and Dorukan+Lirian cheated by leaving an opening in Doru's Cloister spell so they could still have romantic times together. And considering Girard's paranoia, I would be shocked if he didn't also cheat in some manner.
    Last edited by ZhonLord; 2023-03-31 at 10:49 AM.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZhonLord View Post
    Correct. They cut off all contact and swore to never interfere with each other. No "just checking in" or anything like that.

    However, Serini herself cheated by taking monsters from Dorukan's dungeon, and Dorukan+Lirian cheated by leaving an opening in Doru's Cloister spell so they could still have romantic times together. And considering Girard's paranoia, I would be shocked if he didn't also cheat in some manner.
    We know that Girard was on good enough terms with Serini that the "Blow up Soon Kim" trap in the desert was set to alert her as well as his clan, but not much else on that front
    Quote Originally Posted by ActionReplay View Post
    Why does D&D have no Gollum? Why it does. You just can't see him. He is wearing his precious at the moment.
    There is a lot of very bizarre nonsense being talked on this forum. I shall now remain silent and logoff until my points are vindicated.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by ZhonLord View Post
    Correct. They cut off all contact and swore to never interfere with each other. No "just checking in" or anything like that.

    However, Serini herself cheated by taking monsters from Dorukan's dungeon, and Dorukan+Lirian cheated by leaving an opening in Doru's Cloister spell so they could still have romantic times together. And considering Girard's paranoia, I would be shocked if he didn't also cheat in some manner.
    I could see Girard sending someone to make sure the others weren't cheating in direct violation of how they're not supposed to spy on eachother.
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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Sure, but...so? If the entire point is to be a timewaster anyway (powerful enemies will eventually defeat everything and move on), then the shell game method is the BIGGER TIMEWASTER.
    Yeah but the point is by putting it behind the megadungeon, you guarantee that no amount of snooping around Backstage or Frontstage or anywhere in Monster Hollow will reveal an alternative path. No divination short of "Give me the exact location of Kraagor's Gate to the meter", which I seem to recall being a question that the gods won't answer ( And won't let anyone who would answer, find out), will tell you to do anything but go into the dungeons. Find The Path will just point you into a new random dungeon each time et cetera. The idea isn't "Which wastes more time" but "Which is more resistant to being circumvented." (We're assuming that there has to BE a back way in somewhere, that is not keyed to one specific person)

    Ultimately, the reason why any of these Gates are anywhere accessible at all (Half of Azure City could have been wiped out in a heartbeat if an assassin shot at the lord of the city and missed!) is the plot, as far as I can tell from what's actually been said in-story. But since the one universal convention in every gate design has been "Must be a relatively simple way to access the Gate (lirians is in the open forest, Dorukan's has a ward and a locked door on it, Soon's is in a room in a castle, Girard's is sealed in a thin plaster and lead sheathe in an open part of the pyramid)", it feels fair to assume that there's some unstated in-narrative reasoning. "Make the assumptions that mean the plot works not the ones that mean it doesn't" and all.


    Now is Serini's dungeon design perfect? No, absolutely not. It would probbably, for example, have been an equal tribute (And a much greater challenge) to have each dungeon lead directly into the next with no breaks and no possible retreat through one-way teleport traps, then at the end of THAT is a single mark that when you backtrack brings you to wherever the Gate is. But I dont think "I can imagine a better design" is inherently a criticism of the Tomb.
    Quote Originally Posted by ActionReplay View Post
    Why does D&D have no Gollum? Why it does. You just can't see him. He is wearing his precious at the moment.
    There is a lot of very bizarre nonsense being talked on this forum. I shall now remain silent and logoff until my points are vindicated.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by BloodSquirrel View Post
    Case in point: it relies on the attackers getting a very, very specifically worded answer to their questions which we don't have a good reason to expect they would get. Why would "Defeat the dungeons" be the answer a divination gives if "Dig here" is also a possible way to get to the gate, and would be faster and safer? And what if instead of asking "How do we get to the gate?" they ask "Where, specifically, is the gate?".
    Rich has been very vague about how divination magic works in his world (and rightly so, since that way only leads to madness and enternal internet dissection - hopefully of the divinations!). But it's entirely possible that due to the gates and rifts themselves, you may not be able to ask direct questions like "where is the gate?" or "what's the fastest way to the gate". But perhaps more specific (20 questions) style questions like "Are these dungeon doors the way to the gate?" may work.

    So even if you ask a question like "can I dig to find the gate", you may get a "yes", but trying to ask where to dig would become more problematic. So now you're presented with say 200 doors to try versus an infinite number of places and directions you could try digging. Now the doors seem like a better choice.

    Again. We have to assume that anyone with access to any divination, upon encountering the hallow, would spend as much time on divination as possible to determine if the doors actually lead to the gate. If the immediate answer is "no", then they'll spend all their time elsewhere. But if the answer is "yes", and all their other questions about where it's actually located, or to try to figure out some way to bypass the dungeons is indeterminate at best, you'll eventually just try the dungeon doors.

    I also speculated in another thread (I think? I lose track) that such things may actually work in some sort of metamagical way based on intent. So if someone designs something and they create a route to get somehwere, then divinations somehow latch on to this and that becomes the "correct" way to get there. So as long as Serini does provide that there is a means to get there, and the intended means very specifically is "explore every single dungeon", then that is what all divinations on the subject will reveal (at most).

    Quote Originally Posted by BloodSquirrel View Post
    If you think about it from the other direction- You have a gate whose location is set, you need to prevent a bad guy from access it, but you also might need to access it yourself- then it's hard to see how you would arrive at Serini's scheme with forward-thinking logic.
    Maybe. But if you had that criteria, you might come up with a trigger for opening the gate that would be the same trigger (so no additional ways to get it), but that you would have automatically, but anyone else would have to go through a ridiculous amount of effort to obtain. The solution here does that perfectly. Since she's the one who stocked the dungeons, she automatically has explored every single one. But once stocked, anyone else receiving the same trigger condition has to fight through every single room of every single dungeon.

    She, on the other hand, only needs to wait for one dungeon to be cleared (perhaps by the hogboglins nearby), and then wander in the single now empty dungeon, and open up the portal to the final dungeon and inspect the gate (if needed). It's actually a pretty decent way of doing this.

    The only flaw I can see is that if this portal opens up for more than just her somehow (it's still unclear how that works) then she becomes a vulnerability as well. Anyone who can find and capture her can just carry her with them, clear just one dungeon, and use her to access the final dungeon. If this is the case, then ironically, Xykon could have finished this up years ago if he'd stopped to capture her after attacking, and just questioned her.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Rich has been very vague about how divination magic works in his world (and rightly so, since that way only leads to madness and enternal internet dissection - hopefully of the divinations!). But it's entirely possible that due to the gates and rifts themselves, you may not be able to ask direct questions like "where is the gate?" or "what's the fastest way to the gate". But perhaps more specific (20 questions) style questions like "Are these dungeon doors the way to the gate?" may work.

    So even if you ask a question like "can I dig to find the gate", you may get a "yes", but trying to ask where to dig would become more problematic. So now you're presented with say 200 doors to try versus an infinite number of places and directions you could try digging. Now the doors seem like a better choice.

    Again. We have to assume that anyone with access to any divination, upon encountering the hallow, would spend as much time on divination as possible to determine if the doors actually lead to the gate. If the immediate answer is "no", then they'll spend all their time elsewhere. But if the answer is "yes", and all their other questions about where it's actually located, or to try to figure out some way to bypass the dungeons is indeterminate at best, you'll eventually just try the dungeon doors.
    This is more or less what I was talking about- it's plausible, but it's very noticeably post-hoc, and doesn't stand up to determined scrutiny. For example: divide the canyon in half. Ask whether the place to dig is in one half. If the answer is 'no', ask for the other half. If it's 'yes', divide that half into half, and repeat the process until you've narrowed it down to a 10' square.

    Would Serini have thought of that? Probably not. That's the kind of thing V would have done. Which is why "Serini didn't think this entirely through" is such a powerful force multiplier when it comes to explaining her defenses. It's entirely in-character.

    It's kind of like when Roy asked the Oracle which gate Xykon was going to next. If you had to figure out why he wouldn't get a correct answer beforehand, and presupposed some sort of metamagical reason involving Soon's gate you'd have been completely wrong. Instead, it was just Roy overlooking a possibility while trying to phrase all of the loopholes out of his question because of his past experience with the Oracle and his lawful nature.

    Quote Originally Posted by gbaji View Post
    Maybe. But if you had that criteria, you might come up with a trigger for opening the gate that would be the same trigger (so no additional ways to get it), but that you would have automatically, but anyone else would have to go through a ridiculous amount of effort to obtain. The solution here does that perfectly. Since she's the one who stocked the dungeons, she automatically has explored every single one. But once stocked, anyone else receiving the same trigger condition has to fight through every single room of every single dungeon.
    Or just have the portal require a password, which only Serini knows. It isn't the specific mechanism people are questioning here, it's the idea behind the scheme.

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    Default Re: Why ISN'T it a shell game?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Didn't Serini also state that the Scribblers should have zero means of communicating with each other, this making the point moot anyway?

    The entire moral of this story is that Serini isn't half as clever as she thinks she is, and her paranoia has left the world one step away from destruction.
    Sure, that's what she said at first, to make everyone stop fighting and agree to set up gate defenses where they wished. Doesn't meant she intended to make that reality forever. It's not like she kept that part of the deal anyway, she remained in contact with Girard at least long enough to make a bet on how long it would take for Soon to break his oath. Seems likely that she intended to get in contact with the other Scribblers over time as well.

    In any case, we literally have her in 1278 saying that she was hoping to make the other Scribblers get over their petty squables, so clearly she herself believed she would get in contact with the others.
    Last edited by Resileaf; 2023-03-31 at 01:53 PM.

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