+iny ©at people

wait wait wait no hold on. autobalance -- that's like fairness/punishment sort of, right? that means you're yet another god of justice! we can't have that!

we challenge you to a duel!

no, what wheat said, ask how for more information on how this game works, and ask if wax could maybe just delete all the knives

We aren't trying to cause trouble here but this is a very specific rule nobody told us about and I don't see why creating an completely useless object is such a crime.

Wait, so if every other god now has a [God's name] killing knife, doesn't that mean we could create a Frog-Crimes killing armed nuke, and take out every god whenever we want to as a suicide ploy? Neat!

"Whoops. Well, what's done is done, so there's no use getting bent out of shape about it. Our name is Frog-Crimes, we're a young collective full of vim and vigor and poor impulse control. Apologies for having so recklessly summoned you, but now that we have, what do you plan on doing?"

I think we should treat Wax with politeness.

And pump them for all the information we can get, but. Y'know. Politely.

We aren't trying to cause trouble here but this is a very specific rule nobody told us about and I don't see why creating an completely useless object is such a crime.

It is a rule we were told about already.

Willful ignorance is not an excuse. At least take responsibility for your mistake.

We aren't trying to cause trouble here but this is a very specific rule nobody told us about and I don't see why creating an completely useless object is such a crime.

It is a rule we were told about already.

Willful ignorance is not an excuse. At least take responsibility for your mistake.

It's not though.
We were told that "some actions cause admin intervention".
We weren't told what those actions were, so had no means to avoid doing it apart from not trying to make the same object we did before.

The idea we were warned about in the past was to give the cats a knife that could kill a god, not one in our personal zone, which is something we were allowed to do before with no warning or difficulty. The fact that admin intervention could occur isn't a surprise, the fact that this specifically (creating a prank object bound to ourselves, which even Wax has stated is basically completely useless) caused it to happen is.

It's clear that this was triggered by a very specific type of action that we could easily have been informed about, but weren't. We have never been warned against "the creation of magical items bound to a specific entity" at all, at best we got a vague warning that "some things are things we shouldn't do" and were also provided with an expectation that we'd be warned before crossing those lines.
Wax should take responsibility for their actions too. If there are such easily delineated automatic responses and they are invested in those not being triggered, it's probably a good idea to tell people what they are.

(kitet's going to explain more about this as we go but honestly y'all have been riding the line for a long time and a knife that literally kills a god should kind of be an obvious no. asking wax for more info is absolutely allowed, of course, but like

please don't fucking infight and make this personal among suggesters, it's not cool and stresses us all the fuck out)

Ride or die, you either ride, or you die.

FROG-CRIMES: oh, uh. Whoops.
FROG-CRIMES: why didn’t you give us a warning that making a dumb knife would cause this to happen? You’ve warned us before.
WAX: well, you just answered your own question. I warned you before, like, an hour ago. You tried this with the Zone of Tranquility thing, remember?
WAX: not like I haven’t noticed how close you’ve come to breaking things multiple times before, but never close enough for me to give more official warnings.
FROG-CRIMES: … cool. We really would have appreciated more specific warnings.
FROG-CRIMES: Anyway, sorry, we’re not very well coordinated. You see, we’re a collective-
WAX: yeah, I know. That doesn’t actually excuse anything.
WAX: I’ve seen plenty of collectives with their acts together. You’re not one of them.


FROG-CRIMES: Well, this isn’t all bad, because now that you’re here, maybe you can help us with something?
WAX: what could you possibly need help with.
FROG-CRIMES: You see, Grind and Rein won’t ally with each other, which means our TCPs are going to end up being forced to fight each some of their friends just because Grind doesn’t like Rein because of something outside of the game, he won’t even say what.
FROG-CRIMES: So we can’t pick who to ally, and personally we’re trying to make this a peaceful session because we think it’s unfair that the TCPs have to fight for reasons that dont involve them.

WAX: … i don’t think you understand what the point of this game is.
WAX: i made this game to teach the other gods in my pantheon how to make hard decisions.
WAX: and you’ve been doing nothing but trying to circumvent the rules because you want the other gods to make hard decisions for you.
WAX: and- and trying to fundamentally change the game, and changing the win condition- I don’t understand what you think you’re trying to do.
FROG-CRIMES: Look, we just… yeah, we don’t know what to do in this game! We just started existing, which, we hear, won’t continue if we end up losing!
FROG-CRIMES: So can you help us?
WAX: listen. Carefully.
WAX: you are not the first collective to play this game, and you are not the first collective to fail to manifest your physical form.
WAX: while this game is meant to train and test existing gods, it also makes sure i'm not letting any collectives who don't know what they're doing into our pantheon, or anyone else’s pantheons, for that matter.
WAX: secondly, I’d tell you to ask another player, but I know for a fact you’ve been doing that and just ignoring half of what they tell you.
WAX: that, and, now that I’m here and the Autobalance is activated, everyone else knows something happened. It won’t take a minute for them to figure out it was you.
WAX: Do you think any of them are going to ally with you now?
FROG-CRIMES: ……………………
WAX: here’s a little bonus detail that’ll make this extra ffffffun, though.

His voice drops, to what you can only describe as horrifying. Even with your collective strength, there is something utterly terrifying about it, in a way that feels inescapable. You have never felt such fear in your life.

WAX: when i join the game, it’s my duty to ally with the team that currently has the least members.
WAX: you know what that means, right?
FROG-CRIMES: … y-you’re going to ally with us?
WAX: whether I like it or not, which, I really don’t.
WAX: I’ll give you a minute, though, because I’m sure you’re about to start getting some very confused calls about personalized knives.
WAX: maybe you can turn this around just enough to join one of the current teams, and then you don’t have to pair up with me.
WAX: but I doubt it. I’ve seen how you handle talking to the other players. Now that I’m a player too, though, I can’t watch anymore.

He straightens up a bit, and his voice returns to normal. You feel some of your confidence come back...

FROG-CRIMES: … why is ANY of this necessary?
WAX: hm?
FROG-CRIMES: Why did you HAVE to come into the game? Why do you HAVE to balance out the teams?
FROG-CRIMES: We didn’t tell you to do any of this, you can’t blame us.
FROG-CRIMES: You better hope we can’t ally anyone, cause if you join the team opposing us, we’ll throw you down.
WAX: haha! That’s funny. You were JUST telling me you didn’t want your TCPs to fight anyone.
WAX: that attitude’s gonna get you far, kid.
WAX: tell me when you make your 5th TCP.


-END OF CALL

Woah.
Um.

Woah.

SPAWN Love TCP. Call Wax back and tell him that you want no-one else because he is the best and that you think he is really pretty

Well that went well! I wonder why our benevolent Leader seems to think that we wouldn't want him on our team though. He seems nice! We should absolutely flirt with Wax

Spawn: Doctor

*Slams 'I NEED HEALING' voice line

Also,

Ribbet: Before you cats leave, we have to make you guys a new friend. So hold up for a second.

Preemptively send a message to every other player:

"Sorry about the knives and also the autobalance. You're justified in hating us now. We're kind of the worst. Please call if you have a solution to our mountain of problems-- else assume they're going to pretty much eat us up, and try and enjoy your game despite us."

We need some damage control but where do we even start? Maybe with a 5th TCP? Can we even trust ourselves not to make something absolutely stupid?

(no)

Can we try and manipulate our stupid choice to be something slightly positive?

Can we try and be nice to Wax.

I'm going to be frank here, I don't know how to even begin to salvage this.

I still can't recommend siding with Rein, even though it may seem like the easy way. But Grind is pretty much completely out. If he allows us in the alliance now, it means Wax joins Rein. And personally I find that pairing very frightening.

I think the best thing we can do is just stay with Wax and do everything in our power to ensure Rein is taken out of the game.

Spawn: justice-type
Name: Irony

Might as well round out the abstract types.

Spawn: Wax

That'll show em.

seconded, also put spawned wax tcp in a sexy clown costume

Spawn: Poison dart frog.

For a supposed frog deity, our TCP team isn't particularly froggy.

No, no, bad attitude. Don't apologize to anyone, don't do the self-deprecating thing. That doesn't help anything. (@kilozombie)

>Tell Wax: "Respectfully, sir, you're wrong. We're not trying to get the other gods to make decisions for us. We've already made our decision - in fact, it's one of the few things we've been able to find relative consensus on: We do not want our TCPs getting hurt over some other god's personal grudge. We're supposed to be a god of justice, right? Making the TCPs fight over some issue that doesn't even have anything to do with them - that's injustice, right there, and we aim to stop it. All we're trying to figure out now is how."

(That's more or less true, right?)

No, no, bad attitude. Don't apologize to anyone, don't do the self-deprecating thing. That doesn't help anything. (@kilozombie)

>Tell Wax: "Respectfully, sir, you're wrong. We're not trying to get the other gods to make decisions for us. We've already made our decision - in fact, it's one of the few things we've been able to find relative consensus on: We do not want our TCPs getting hurt over some other god's personal grudge. We're supposed to be a god of justice, right? Making the TCPs fight over some issue that doesn't even have anything to do with them - that's injustice, right there, and we aim to stop it. All we're trying to figure out now is how."

(That's more or less true, right?)

That's totally what I'm down with. Including "self-deprecation won't get us anywhere".

If Wax doesn't like what our plan is because it's not an intended part of his game then he made a bad game. If passing the test of being a good god includes overruling the will of your subjects to make them fight proxy wars for you then the test is wrong and I wouldn't be sad to mess up his game.

Maybe he'll think it's stupid and immature (in fact, probably he'll think it's stupid or he wouldn't have made the game this way) but if he wants us to learn to make hard choices I think the one that will probably lead to us failing to survive the end of the game because it's the right thing to do and give our creations their own autonomy is a hard choice we're choosing to take.

I wouldn't actually tell him the things I wrote in his post though. He'd just kickban us faster.

A Wax TCP is very tempting but I don't want it to look to other people like an attempt at flattery.
Also if we make another cat are we going to want to delay our diplomatic cruise?

Will it even be a TCP based on Wax (the god)? What if we get stuck with a wax-type, meaning the material?

Delaying diplomacy will likely end up starting the war even if we must spawn the fifth TCP we should send the other 4 out and spend time with the new one back at base.

>SPAWN: Honesty

slit all three of my throats, who the hell told wax to eat our heel even!?

No, no, bad attitude. Don't apologize to anyone, don't do the self-deprecating thing. That doesn't help anything. (@kilozombie)

>Tell Wax: "Respectfully, sir, you're wrong. We're not trying to get the other gods to make decisions for us. We've already made our decision - in fact, it's one of the few things we've been able to find relative consensus on: We do not want our TCPs getting hurt over some other god's personal grudge. We're supposed to be a god of justice, right? Making the TCPs fight over some issue that doesn't even have anything to do with them - that's injustice, right there, and we aim to stop it. All we're trying to figure out now is how."

(That's more or less true, right?)

That's totally what I'm down with. Including "self-deprecation won't get us anywhere".

If Wax doesn't like what our plan is because it's not an intended part of his game then he made a bad game. If passing the test of being a good god includes overruling the will of your subjects to make them fight proxy wars for you then the test is wrong and I wouldn't be sad to mess up his game.

Maybe he'll think it's stupid and immature (in fact, probably he'll think it's stupid or he wouldn't have made the game this way) but if he wants us to learn to make hard choices I think the one that will probably lead to us failing to survive the end of the game because it's the right thing to do and give our creations their own autonomy is a hard choice we're choosing to take.

I wouldn't actually tell him the things I wrote in his post though. He'd just kickban us faster.

i agree with this whole post except the part where we don't say any of this to wax. i mean it's literally a wargame, and you know what they say in wargames? "the only winning move is not to play." i mean there's essentially 0% chance of "winning" in the classical sense here to my estimation anyway.

i also would like to cast a, likely pissing in the rain, vote against spawning a tcp right this instant. (i'm pretty sure there was no Spawn A Cat prompt anyway!)

most importantly, i feel it is time we throw away the pretense of being a god of justice and shift our domain to crimes, which is more in line with our actions and name