Fifth Scholar

Hey Mat! I...have already forgotten why I quoted this, so maybe midnight!Fifth shouldn't be posting now. Ah well. I think it was your point on elim team size, which I generally agree with - six elims with power roles or a thug is what I'd lean towards. When I played SE (and presumably when Kas was around as well) there was the Meta Rule of 20% being a good size for Team Evil, which I've always agreed with, but it seems tougher nowadays since elim teams are closer to 25%; with this ruleset, though, I agree that six makes a lot more sense. Not necessarily; see my points to Mat above. Kas is also a consummate troll, so picking out his role distributions isn't something I'm going to try to do too much, but seven seems tilted a little too heavily in favour of Team Evil unless the village received a lot of Seeking and terminal Seeking power, which we have no evidence of yet. If three people die tonight, though, I might come around to your stance I see PM safety has taken as long of a hiatus as I have Also, welcome back, Pyro, as I hear you are returning as well. Will echo Striker's point on Coinshots. The Elims knowing you exist is a small price to pay for the information that comes from vigkills, and even hitting a few villagers is okay if their deaths yield information. I would be careful with the roleclaiming, though, as has been pointed out by others; even if the Seeker finds a villager, they don't need to form trust circles, especially with the Smoking mechanic for this game making it easier for villagers to slip in there anyway. (Elim Seekers starting these is also an enormous danger, as unlikely as that is, because they can pocket as many villagers as they want and kill them at their leisure. And it can be really hard to tell them from village Seekers. #AG4flashbacks) As regards your point on elim team size, see above. Seven mislynches sounds like a lot until you realise that with seven elims to lynch, it's only a 50% mislynch success rate for the Elims to win assuming vigkills aren't factored in. That's not too hard of a threshold to reach, and so I'd think six people with power roles or a thug continues to make the most sense. Coinshots should certainly be careful if we get closer to parity, but generally speaking they're the best resource the village has, especially around C2/3 when we're trying to crystallise information and reads. Killing a few pivotally suspicious players to get a good feel for the remaining pool of suspects is typically worth it from a purely utilitarian standpoint. And if someone is Seeked (Sought?) as evil, we should just lynch them. No sense relying on the Coinshot and letting possible elim Lurchers get in the way, as long as we don't let it kill discussion too much. I feel like I'm gonna be sad reading these threads and missing half the references until I get caught up on recent SE history. It seems like a fun time. Alright, midnight!Fifth is turning into 1AM!Fifth and we're only a page in, so I think I'll call it a night and catch up on the rest tomorrow. If you want me to prioritise me talking to / about you, please PM me. (And thank you to the kind soul who has already done so. ) As a final point, I will read / do RP as time permits - it makes me sad I can't participate reflexively as I used to, but college is annoying like that >>

Hey y'all! I, uh, completely forgot this was starting today and not tomorrow. So. Let me catch up on the six pages of thread (not bad at all for 24 hours ) and I'll try to throw a post together, though given it's midnight here, it might be more likely that I take a few mental notes and put something lengthier up tomorrow. Looking forward to jumping back into the games with you guys! And please send me a PM if I've not played a game with you at some point, as I'd like to get to know people better given that I've not been around here as a player in forever. (thank you for everyone tagging me telling me to post, mea culpa there)

If my SE experience / memory is anything to judge by, you're well on your way to becoming a millionaire. I can think of at least four examples off the top of my head (MR29 foremost among them). Poor Devotary.

Epic RP signup to perhaps be edited in, but I have not played a game in a year and we are fixing that, and an LG with the simplest ruleset of all should be a good way to go about it. Count me in as Iste Confessor, the village Scholar who's gotten perhaps a little too paranoid after his investigations into past incidents with Spiked. Not so paranoid that he won't do his part this time around, though...

Not as long as the Roshar doc for cycles 5-6. It's still a respectable 110 pages though.

Note to everyone: I realise the end of this writeup is a little incomplete. I'm going to be busy IRL through Thursday, but hopefully after that I'll get a decent ending up. Just didn't want to leave you guys hanging forever, as if there's anything we can agree on, it's that this game needed to end. Also something I wrote last night when my brain could not write more RP if it wanted to: Some final (12 AM) thoughts for y’all as I wrap up my time as a mod: Thanks to all of you for letting me hold this position for the two years I’ve had it, and putting your trust in me through some very interesting situations. It seems appropriate that my tenure here has begun and ended with an AG Shard game, so doing this writeup was a nice conclusion in that respect, and I’d like to reiterate my thanks to @little wilson and @Elbereth for letting me take it on, and for just being awesome GMs throughout this game. It would have been a lot more of a mess if they hadn’t been on top of it as they always are. To @Devotary of Spontaneity: Thank you for being the active mod this year that I couldn’t. Sorry to kill your character twice, but you wanted a redemption arc for him. So. If it’s any consolation, your living Shard game characters now have a much better shot at Cosmere domination than mine @Elandera and @Araris Valerian: You will both make great mods. Enjoy the ride ahead To everyone in the game: thank you for making this fun. Dealing with specific incidents and the general balance issues that sprang up around this game was not fun, but it was worth it to talk to you guys in the spec and world docs, and to laugh at your PMs back when I had the time to read them. To the C5/6 Roshar doc participants, and the C7 Scadrial doc people (who were mostly the same), I am especially grateful for you humouring me and my desire to play anagrams and shrekman and chess. I hope it’s a tradition that continues past this game. This is by no means a farewell, as I plan to hang around the community for a while yet, and I’ll be on the newly expanded game balance committee as well. So if you have game ideas, feel free to shoot me a PM on here or on Discord (though there’s a higher chance of me seeing the latter in a reasonable timeframe ). I look forward to murdering you all as a regular citizen in many a game to come, and also plan on fleshing out this writeup once I get the time. So if you have requests for your character, it’s not too late to send them in Thank you all, Fifth

PM someone on the committee and they’ll take a look. I’d be happy to help you personally

Al Funcoot straightened his cloak. A thin trickle of blood was running down his left arm where a stray dagger had caught him in the conflict—Caliex’s last attempt to reach “Mint” before being forcibly restrained had instead connected with his arm, and fencer though he was, he had not the agility to avoid the quick strike. The new crew leader had fortunately taken Caliex away before more harm could be done, but Funcoot saw in her eyes, and in the eyes of several around him, suspicion for Mint nonetheless. It was all but confirmed that she was an Obligator now, so he hung back, joining in the chorus of general condemnation, while darting his eyes side to side when he judged nobody would be looking. Grim nods passed between him and the others. They would do what needed to be done, when the time came. Just before the crew leader’s scheduled arrival, they would spring the trap. But not yet. They let Mint be bound, knowing her freedom was imminent, and their positions strengthened as Rae took her away. Varen was taken down by Ash, and still Funcoot waited. The blood continued to trickle, more slowly as the wound clotted, yet still running in a steady stream down his bare flesh. Olaf clenched his fist, allowing the red liquid to seep under his dirtied fingernails and spread around his hand. A bloodstained hand: that seemed accurate enough. He had murdered, or was complicit in the murder, of most of these men. Yet what did this pathetic group of skaa hope to achieve? The Lord Ruler’s might could not be tossed aside by a dozen, however committed. Power resided not in desperate groups of peasantry with no coherent plan, but with those who possessed the adequate means to seize it for themselves, or those who sought the already powerful. Funcoot had been forced to do the latter, bending his back to the obligators and helping them infiltrate this crew. It pained him, but he did it. He had experience acting noble—he had, after all, been one before—but nobility of character, he surmised, had long since been abandoned. It was a different nobility he sought, and it was not one the thieving crew would grant him. Those with the Lord Ruler’s favour, however? They would. And so his decision was easy. A new position, and he would begin magnifying his own strength without needing to appease those now above him. The false documents had been almost child’s play, especially given House Ffnord’s lack of rigour in monitoring family connections. But getting an Obligator to accept them was always going to be the challenging part; until now. He had three standing by, eager to help him assume the identity he had painstakingly crafted. An identity far more in line with his true self than the buffoonish Funcoot had ever been. An arsonist. A politicker. And above all, a broken idealist, an expert in using the systems he had once decried to gain ever more control for himself. Count Olaf of House Ffnord.

Alright, here goes. I realise Truthwatcher might not be awake to respond to or see this, but here’s my reasoning in response to his points. If you want to go to a good fabric store, I recommend Reap What You Sew, a quilt shop with a convenient location in nearby Tathingdwen, and a friendly proprietor. Vote Tormander instead so we can rob the house Orlok seized control of. I am gonna say that this is not far from my suspicions, and I’m definitely considering Straw bussing you in addition to Vapor or Eternum as inactive fourth eliminators. I will agree that Mint should have had the good sense to include at least one or two Elims in her suspicions list, which is why I’m leaning Vapor/Straw as the fourth elim over Eternum. An obvious hammer at the end of D5 onto an eliminator, when hammering onto anyone wouldn’t have guaranteed an elim victory, seems like a pretty foolish move for an Elim to make; there was no need for elim!Lotus to put Mint at risk when Devotary was a perfectly good mislynch which she was already uninvolved in. I think Lotus was trying to say this, but probably didn’t want to reveal if she had a PM with Devotary, which I understand. Villager-villager PMs are one of the few pieces of information the Elims don’t have access to, and there was no need for the public to know if the two were PMing when Devotary had already flipped village, and the hammer was fairly clearly devoid of malicious intent. I just think that Lotus’ behaviour is utterly devoid of evil intent when she could have easily secured an Elim victory at multiple points, and was being pushed fairly obviously as an alternative to Mint by yourself and Ash last cycle. Not really? Outed eliminators (and I would consider you decently outed, given your vote on Lotus last cycle) rarely receive defence from teammates, as that ties them closer together. Consider Mint, who basically wasn’t defended for four cycles straight—the lynch just kept getting deflected elsewhere because she and her teammates kept quiet and let discussion slide off her, until we finally committed to killing her last cycle. It’s another reason I’m not eliminating Straw from my suspect pool despite his attacks on you this cycle, as it could be very effective distancing.

We’re definitely robbing House Tormander. More seriously, this clarifies a lot. It looks like we have two easy lynch targets in Truthwatcher and Ashbringer, as the Elims would have hammered if one of those votes was innocent. The fourth elim is probably the non-voting Straw or one of Eternum/Vapor who wasn’t on to switch back from Mint, but our lynches should be fairly clear the next two rounds. I really don’t see a reason for anyone to suspect Lotus at all.

@Straw, even if you’re evil, I’d like you to put down a vote now. If we’re going to lose this by a hammer, I at least want the hammering Eliminators to be distinct from villagers voting last-minute.

I mean, there’s little to be offered besides self-defence; I’d do the same in her position (in fact, I did, two cycles in a row )

I think a far more likely explanation for last cycle is Devotary contacting Lotus through PM, convincing them that she’s a villager, and going for the last-minute hammer onto Mint to save Devotary. Due to timing, this was obviously largely ineffective, but I don’t think it’s profitable to suspect Lotus at this point on the basis of that alone. If last-minute voting indicated eliminator behaviour, Devotary would have flipped evil. Maybe it’s an impermissible inflexibility in my reads, but I still can’t see Striker as evil. Lotus I’m inclined to trust, as she seems naturally set up for a mislynch, which means I’ve left room for two villagers in [Eternum, Vapor, Ashbringer, Mint, Straw, Truthwatcher]. Currently I’m leaning Eternum and one of Truthwatcher or Vapor, which is bad because that means in the world I’ve constructed (Elims Straw/Ash/Mint, which...makes a surprising amount of sense), we already have three votes placed on people who are, in my estimation, probably village, and one by a misguided villager who may not rejoin us. The only question is therefore which of the people in that pool I’d like lynched. I’m loath to divide the votes again, and am quite tired of unintentionally saving Mint, especially if she’s just going to use her survival to keep pushing my mislynch, so I’m keeping my vote where it is unless there’s a hitherto unforeseen pool of support for a Straw or Ash lynch and literally everybody currently on Mint or Lotus switches off. It also helps that she’s the person I feel by far the most discomfort towards. Whatever happens, we need to get the pool of votes down to two people or fewer, as if there’s a three-way contest, we’re handing the Eliminators a victory on a silver platter. Ultimately, that’s why I think Mint needs to finally die, as she appeared to be trying to do just that with her vote on me.

Alright, a bit bleary and tired, but evidently we were wrong about Orlok putting in five Elims. I guess this cycle we really are definitely at LyLo, as 3/22 is too low even accounting for the absence of village power roles. I’m going to sleep but am putting a vote on Mint until I can re-examine both last cycle’s lynch, and my suspicions in general. Good night.

Devotary of Spontaneity Frozen Mint We are literally begging for a hammer right now. @Eternum I see you viewing the thread. Is this a more acceptable vote for you? @Straw please no, we do not need another situation like C3 where the Elims would probably just hammer everyone viewing the thread right now needs to say something. I feel like half the players just have a hammer vote saved in the text editor and are waiting to push it