{"id":37755,"date":"2017-03-28T23:11:30","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T03:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37755"},"modified":"2017-03-29T02:02:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T06:02:10","slug":"nan-o-war-ch5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37755","title":{"rendered":"Nan o’ War CH5: A Miner Complication"},"content":{"rendered":"

On returning from the set of Sister Act 3: Wait There Was a Sister Act 2?<\/em>, I stop in to the tavern and the Suspicious Man asks:<\/p>\n

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That’s a good question! In no particular order:<\/p>\n

An explanation, an apology, two hours of my life, a day’s vacation, a medal, and your shifty ballsack hanging off my new vessel’s prow like a pair of fuzzy goddamn dice. What I am going to settle for is my money. <\/em>I’m in it for the piastres, so quit flaking and hand over the dough.<\/p>\n

And he does! The full, reasonably large amount. Suddenly I’ve got some actual capital to work with. I’m now blessed with enough to buy a boat, get out of town, and find me some content that isn’t fundamentally<\/em> weird and broken.<\/p>\n

Hm.<\/p>\n

Well, I dunno. How about another one first?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That’s right–I’m turning around and signing up for another mission. You might think that’s berserk, given the pimento chili nightmare that was my last nundertaking, but there’s a reason for it. Allow me to explain one significant deviation between the standard Mount and Blade <\/em>design and Caribbean!<\/em><\/p>\n

Questing in Mount and Blade <\/em>is not designed with efficiency in mind. First, you have to find someone Generally one of the lords, who move around constantly.<\/span> with quests to offer. Mostly they won’t have one for you, so prepare to trawl the countryside for a minute or two. Eventually you’ll come across some errand on a scale of time-wasting ranging from insultingly menial (delivering a letter) to simple and lucrative (collecting taxes). Having failed or succeeded, you return to your employer Assuming they’re not captive on the other side of the continent by the time you’ve finished, which, yes, isn’t uncommon.<\/span> and collect your reward.<\/p>\n

Here we have 'With Fire and Sword,' wherein the king of Poland asks me to deliver his mail. Complete this quest twice and you can buy the cheapest good in the game.<\/div>
Here we have 'With Fire and Sword,' wherein the king of Poland asks me to deliver his mail. Complete this quest twice and you can buy the cheapest good in the game.<\/div><\/p>\n

So you get some guaranteed money and XP for completing missions, but the time spent doing that is dwarfed by the time spent riding around looking for lords, riding around accomplishing the objective, and then riding around asking every aristocrat you run into if they’ve seen your questgiver anywhere. Then you generally have to ride around looking for some other quest.<\/p>\n

This isn’t as aggravating as it sounds. This riding around <\/em>block on your schedule is still spent engaging the mechanics; I mean, riding around <\/em>is just the base medium through which the game is conducted. While roaming you look for more quests, buy supplies, check out the scene in local towns, fight patrols, trade goods, and build up your warband. You’ve got a month or more to complete most quests, so what tends to happen is you get a bunch of quests and plan an efficient route to hit all of them, lending a touch of structure to your character’s journey. Quests exist as a diversion and source of rewards, but more than that they’re a way to keep you bouncing around the environment scoping out opportunities.<\/p>\n

This brings me to Blood and Gold–<\/em>which, to be fair, does seem to have some <\/em>similarly-designed quests. It’s just that apparently, it also has a questgiver in a fixed location in every town who will give you unlimited missions and teleport you to and from their instance immediately. If Mount and Blade’s <\/em>quests encourage structured roaming, this quest structure encourages me to park my ass in this tavern until I stagger out with a solid gold wardrobe and muscles the size of panthers.<\/p>\n

Hit me, Spishy.<\/p>\n

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So…escort mission. I’ve got to take this demo guy to three separate locations in an enemy mine, he sets them up the bomb, we get outie? Sounds borderline reasonable. We’ll take it!<\/p>\n

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Now, it’s my understanding we’ll be escaping back the way we came. I’d like to introduce a tactical consideration, if it’s not too bold. Rather than light a fuse, walk, light a fuse, walk, light a fuse, walk, then run backwards past all those other fuses before that first bomb goes off, <\/em>why don’t we<\/p>\n

just<\/p>\n

do that plan, sure, fine, that’s great. No better place to go for a sprint than an enemy-infested booby-trapped tunnel. Right, guys?<\/p>\n

So how's thugging? Is there really this much market for thuggery in this small colonial community?<\/div>
So how's thugging? Is there really this much market for thuggery in this small colonial community?<\/div><\/p>\n

So, are each of these other legitimate freelance specialists ALSO getting paid 7,000 piastres, or…? Because I’m just saying, this mission seems like it could get real expensive if the boss expected to pay, I’m going to say any of them<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You know what, I think I’m seeing where the light-the-fuses-first thing is coming from. The aggressive recruiting. The improbably high promises of payment. The mobs of disposable labor. I’ve stumbled into some kind of fucked-up syndicalistic Caribbean(!) Hooverville<\/a>, and as that first fuse sputters to its terminus inches from my bloodied nostrils, my last cogent thought will be of Blackbeard breastfeeding an old man. You know what, guys, I’m having a second–whoa!<\/p>\n

<\/div>
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The demoman–he’s booking it! I can’t actually keep up!<\/p>\n

<\/div>
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There’s a blink. Two guards spawn, I hear simultaneous gunshots, my demoman dies, he is dead, what?!<\/em><\/p>\n

I just failed the mission!<\/p>\n

It’s not–okay.<\/p>\n

It’s not actually that I couldn’t <\/em>have done anything to prevent that. I suppose all I had to do was–one instant after the two guards popped out from thin air–fire my flintlock pistol on the run from long range and hit, uh, both of them.<\/em><\/p>\n

This wouldn’t happen to be a salt mine, would it?<\/p>\n

At this point, I’ve got a choice. I can give you two more posts of trial and error. Alternately, I can give you two words of fuck it. <\/em>Having tendered due and sober consideration:<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

Fuck it.<\/p>\n

<\/div>
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Now, I know that you, like me, have a healthy interest in 18th-century naval technology. So you will share my disappointment when I inform you that wind direction doesn’t seem to have much of a bearing on travel speed. At a glance, my vessel travels across the open ocean much like–you’ll forgive a fanciful comparison–a horse traveling on an overland map. What is it about this game that’s pirate-themed, again?<\/p>\n

<\/div>
<\/div><\/p>\n

Ah, right. The pirates.<\/p>\n

NEXT MONTH: HORNBLOWER UP IN THE MOTHERFUCKER<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On returning from the set of Sister Act 3: Wait There Was a Sister Act 2?, I stop in to the tavern and the Suspicious Man asks: That’s a good question! In no particular order: An explanation, an apology, two hours of my life, a day’s vacation, a medal, and your shifty ballsack hanging off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}