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Btw, Aman, once when you posted your thoughts on things, you included a small snippet of abruptly cut off text at the end. I looked at that and was like, was that just copy/pasted from a doc? But then I never said anything, and kinda kept forgetting about it or giving you the benefit of the doubt. That was one of maaaany mistakes I made :P But I guess the lesson there is be careful when copy/pasting from elim docs and look at what you just pasted before hitting post.

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Well, it appears that my unfounded gut read on Aman was perfectly viable.  -sigh-  Thank you, Logic.

I'm very much looking forwards to the QF you'll be doing, Hael. :D  This game was extremely well run and enjoyable.

9 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

On the note of completely ignoring things, did anyone else notice my constant omissions of Stick's existence? That was intentional. By avoiding talking about her and focusing on other players, I effectively made sure suspicion on her was a minimum. Be on the look out for players seemingly ignoring the existence of others. Yes, some people can be forgetful, but a connection like that might be very important to draw upon some day.

Yes.  Dead people noticed.  Being dead adds a level of clarity and perspective to your existence. :P

I would also note that inactivity, while comparatively not as bad as some games, definitely affected this game negatively.  If a few more players had been a little more active, I think this game would have gone better for the village.  Although Assassin definitely stepped up at the end, which I was very happy to see from one of the less active players.

Edited by Magestar
Effected? Affected? I never get this right.
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58 minutes ago, Nyali said:
 
 
 
 
 
 

Btw, Aman, once when you posted your thoughts on things, you included a small snippet of abruptly cut off text at the end. I looked at that and was like, was that just copy/pasted from a doc? But then I never said anything, and kinda kept forgetting about it or giving you the benefit of the doubt. That was one of maaaany mistakes I made :P But I guess the lesson there is be careful when copy/pasting from elim docs and look at what you just pasted before hitting post.

I'm relatively certain that only my first post came from a doc, and half of it was a personal doc I made when I was spectating (I didn't want the other spectators to see my analysis in case we were put on opposing sides and I needed to doctor it). That being said, this is definitely something people should look out for, and in general, players should be aware of the dangers of writing posts in docs. I personally always have a personal doc for games when I'm a villager, where I keep all of my information tables and notes, but I imagine that most players don't, so if you do use an eliminator doc to type up posts, make sure you're able to explain yourself if someone points out something like the above.

This, however, is a bit of a slippery slope. I would say never lynch a player solely for this reason. I'm relatively confident that El does the same thing regardless of her alignment, so that she can edit it on the go from any device. The point is, if you end up lynching a player for no other reason other than you think they're in a doc, I imagine they won't be too happy about it, especially if they're village.

With that said, onto the rest of my comments:

 

Throughout the entire course of this game, bandwagoning was a pretty solid issue. I won't go back and check every single cycle, but I it was definitely a reoccurring theme. I can't say for sure what the cause was. If I had to guess, it was partly a factor of time and effort, in that people could not or would not take the time to comb through what's happened and develop thoughts and feelings on their own. and thus simply followed whatever was trending at the time. While there isn't anything wrong with reading something a player says and agreeing with it, it's very important that you get a feel of the game and the players from your perspective, first, and try to avoid following specific people just because they seem to be putting in a lot of effort into the game.

One issue with bandwagoning is it allows the eliminators to manipulate the game from turns ahead. A part of the reason why I was able to avoid suspicion for so long was because villagers kept implicating themselves for me. I even repeatedly defended Doc because it was more likely that an eliminator would be in the tail end of a bandwagon rather than the forefront, which in this game, was clearly not the case*.

To use the first day as an example, El was voted on by three villagers within relatively quick succession for little-to-no-reasoning (at least one was because they "wanted to see if this player was right", which illustrates a previous point of mine). I'm pretty sure there was even a villager who used her lack of a defense as a reason to vote for her, when in truth she was just busy with real life. This brings me to the second issue with bandwagoning, and it's that it often occurs close to turn over or when that player is not present, which makes it difficult for them to defend themselves.

Discussion is probably the most important thing in these games, and I'd go so far to say that there can never be too much of it. I personally feel it is every player's responsibility to try to instigate discussion, particularly when the thread is quiet for prolonged periods of time. It is very important that people try not to rely on other players for this, because occasionally you'll end up seeing that the most active players are also the eliminators, which allows them to firmly direct the game.

Which brings me to another point. There are very few players who take the time to read through previous cycles and compare that information with new developments. A lot of times doing this will give you a much bigger, more clear picture of the game, and allow you to find eliminators. I'm relatively certain if people had done that in this game, it would have been more apparent that I was ignoring Stick, which once brought up, could easily have snagged you guys two elims in one fell swoop.

This connects to the statement I made earlier and annotated with an asterisk. If a particular line of thinking seems to be hurting you more than helping, look things over again and search for new explanations, rather than pursue that one until the end. I used people not doing this to benefit our team in two instances: implicating late voters, and implicating low-activity to no-activity players (for the lack of the kill on C3). If I had been a villager, I would have very likely had done this myself, but instead I continued to perpetuate those arguments because it worked best for my agenda, which is another thing villagers need to be on the look out for, and why activity is so dang important. Though I was a bit sad to be the only "active" eliminator this game, it was very easy to shield my allies from attention, and for them to continue to lurk in the shadows.

Because consideration for other players is a focus of the moderators lately, I want to bring up a couple things in regards to this. It is up to us as a collective community to give players enough time to respond before they are removed from the game. While I understand that we cannot expect everyone to notice everything, that doesn't mean players should not be on the look out for something that may seem unfair. If you notice a situation unfolding that goes against this concept, don't just remain quiet. Say something, or else things are never going to get better.

On the other side of the spectrum, keep in mind that these games are just games. They should never be taken so seriously that it creates schisms in the community. Although these games are what initially brings us all together, I am confident that most people don't join them again and again simply for their mafia fix. While everyone might have different reasons, I would be willing to bet that it all boils down to community or sense of belonging. If you happen to be one of the few people who do only join these games for the games, we're not going to ask you to stop playing. But we are going to ask you to put yourselves in other players shoes, to actively try to understand what they're thinking and going through. There's absolutely nothing wrong with trying your absolute hardest every game, but it's very important that you recognize when you stepping on other people's toes or pushing their buttons. Every player is different, and in some of these games, there's an overwhelming number of them. That's a lot of lines to pay attention to and be careful of not crossing. But that's not an excuse to be careless. So long as you practice wariness, everything should work out fine.

If you're having trouble separating competition from the community, one tip I have is to stop concerning yourself with records. I know for me, that worked, as I felt a significantly less amount of pressure in each game and I no longer felt encouraged to attempt things I wouldn't otherwise.

And I think that just about covers everything.

Edited by Amanuensis
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I wanted to be like, super-active this game, but this was my first time playing as an elim, and I couldn't ever think of what to say it was so annoying. I wasn't really busy IRL or anything at any point. I'll certainly be a whole lot better next time tho. But well, it was fun :-) 

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Quote

This, however, is a bit of a slippery slope. I would say never lynch a player solely for this reason. I'm relatively confident that El does the same thing regardless of her alignment, so that she can edit it on the go from any device.

Not the case, actually - I write most of my posts on the Shard, even if I don't have internet and won't be able to send them immediately. The site usually saves them, and I just have to remember to select-all and copy the post if I want to go do something else for a while. The only time I don't is if I'm quoting from previous cycles, because I use a doc to hold the posts I want to quote and usually end up writing the post in there. That said, I do usually have a doc. (The MR18 one doesn't have much in it, as you might imagine. :P) It's also somewhat irrelevant in my case as my tablet doesn't copy over formatting from docs, so it'll never look like it came from one in any case. :P The point stands, though. (EDIT: You also seem to be assuming I have access to more than one device. Which is also really not the case. :P)

Edited by Elbereth
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Well, first off, I want to say that this was a pretty fun game. I didn't necessarily enjoy it all that much, but it was a well played game, I think.

Boy did I play horribly :P. I was involved in every single mislynch, and the one eliminator lynch we actually had, I wasn't on it. Heh. Around the later cycles, maybe you guys could see I was already giving up. Almost all my reads had been wrong.  My only consolation is that I called out Wonko, even if I didn't actually lynch him, and I remembered Stick was still here, although she never replied to my mentions...  

Do I get the honorary eliminator award guys?

Also, one thing i want to say...

On 12/7/2016 at 5:13 AM, Amanuensis said:

Because consideration for other players is a focus of the moderators lately, I want to bring up a couple things in regards to this. It is up to us as a collective community to give players enough time to respond before they are removed from the game. While I understand that we cannot expect everyone to notice everything, that doesn't mean players should not be on the look out for something that may seem unfair. If you notice a situation unfolding that goes against this concept, don't just remain quiet. Say something, or else things are never going to get better.

This... this was something that really bummed me during this game.

On cycle 5, after I've repeatedly stated that I was going to be unable to respond due to me taking my exams, I came out of my exams to find myself dead. Honestly, I was pretty bitter about that :P. Aman would know, seeing as I complained to him when I saw I had been lynched. I suppose I was especially bitter when I found out that Wonko, who I suspected but stopped pursuing because he's been saying he's too busy to respond, was an eliminator. I wasn't bitter at dying or being lynched by the eliminators. That was on par for an SE game. What I was really annoyed about was being lynched while I had absolutely no way of knowing or even defending myself. (This happened in QF19 as well, which, granted, I was an eliminator, but I was still unable to post any defenses :P)

At that point, I was muttering how 'consideration has no place in SE' to Aman.

Heh. Well, rant over. I've forgiven you guys, but I just wanted to share how hurtful a lack of consideration can be to others. I realize that sometimes being considerate might conflict with your win condition. Maybe being considerate might cost you the game. I'm just saying that if such ruthlessness goes on, the game becomes less fun. 

Welp, now with that out of the way, I just want to say again that this game was a good one, Hael, and thanks for running it. It was extremely unique not having roles for once, and well, it showed me how horrible I was at reading people :P. As Mage said, I'll be aiming for redemption in your QF!

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  • 2 months later...

Well, it's well and truly long past time we closed this game up. :)  

Congratulations to the Traitors.  A well fought victory.  This game just goes to show that you don't need roles to have a fun and enjoyable game as well as demonstrating the value of good discussion.  A lesson for all of us.  Many thanks and upvotes to Hael for running the game.


If anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get a hold of GammaWilson, Metacognition or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can.

You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone over here in our 
Art of Game Creation thread as well. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about!

For those wanting to play, 
MR20: With Ruin Beside Us is open for sign ups but will be starting soon so feel free to join in the fun.

Thanks again to everyone that played and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

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