Mid-Range Game 7: Eighty Splendid Suns

[Elithanathile]

Yeah, I'm going to back up Orlok here. Saying that the sword acts "exactly like slaughter" really isn't very helpful to my point of view, being relatively new to SE and all. I do appreciate you trying to balance the game though. I'm just worried it might backfire, as seen above, and everyone teams up versus discovery.

[Kasimir]

I believe I have already clarified what the sword does, by implication:
 

The unblockable insta-kill remains the same. Thank you.

Regicide is a Shardblade added to a player's inventory. It allows the wielder (well, technically any member of the Faction) to make an unblockable instant kill.

As in MR1, like Slaughter, this crunches through double lives, the delayed death of a Diplomat, and a role-block and a Resealer's protection.

There is a reason I was hoping to leave Slaughter as a threat and a warning, rather than actually having to go there. Alas...
 

[Adamir]

An open letter to Kasimir

 

I hope I'm not overreacting by my repeated insistence to not get murderized, but allow me to draw attention to the Elimination Games Etiquette Policy, Etiquette for GameMasters, Sections One and Three. Quote (emphasis mine);

 

1. Treat both teams fairly. This might seem like common sense, but it is easy for a GM to start favoring the underdog. Let your game progress naturally. Don't out players or make things difficult for one of the teams. You need to be as impartial as possible.

 

3. Don’t get power happy. In a way, the GM’s word is god in their own game. Don’t abuse this to make players play the way you want them to play. Your role isn’t to guide them as much as it is to provide structure for them.

 

While it all relies on interpretation, it is my belief that you are both favoring the underdog and attempting to direct players onto a linear path. If I did not have as much use to my team as a diplomat, I would resign at this stage - as is most likely, Discovery will kill me tonight, courtesy of Regicide, preventing me from even revealing my latest scan through removal of delayed death. You have rendered the role of Resealer useless, and have sabotaged your own efforts to turn this from a village-eliminator game to a faction war. Now, we will all focus on Discovery, because if we don't, Discovery will kill us all.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Adamir

[Paranoid King]

So I've been reading in MR1 about Slaughter, and apparently the curse that went along with it was that you have to start every sentence with an "S". Should the wielder of the sword in this game do the same?

[Zas678]

I feel like the reason why Kasamir did what he did is that this is a Sanderson ELIMINATION game. I assume that there were far too many people going for a more peaceful option (that of converting everyone to one team), which while allowing for more people to win, is a little more boring. Kasamir had threatened repeatedly that he would give them a sword if people weren't willing to play ruthlessly for their faction, and people apparently weren't, so he gave the Discovery members the sword. 

[Adamir]

For a moment, Zas, I assumed that anyone outside of Discovery would be outraged that their easy, unearned victory was snatched away at the last moment.

 

Seriously, though, we stayed within the mechanics. If this is what faction games are like, count me out of the next one.

 

Strikers before bribes,

Execution before conversion,

Destination before journey.

The Knights Sociopath must stand again.

 

This isn't directly against you, Kas; in my opinion, the natural human instinct is to help as many people as possible when it is an option, because this forum is a small community and you will have to talk to and have awkward conversations with the people you have assassinated. If they are Discovery, then you have an excuse - it was the majority over the minority, sorry I picked the majority. But when there is a faction transfer that occurs every cycle, wherein nearly everyone who isn't Discovery or an Arbiter can have a victory, are you really that surprised people chose to do the common good?

 

And there were people who followed your vision. At Kipper's provocation, our Strikers killed each other so as to prove that we were maintaining your vision. We spent the first few cycles trying to take out Arbiters. When we realized the threat Discovery posed, we created a temporarily, incredibly fragile alliance - and now we are getting beaten for making that alliance. I will gladly join any further games you create, Kas, so long as they are not faction-based. This isn't a criticism of you - it is a criticism of the format. The last faction based game I played on another forum ended up like this as well.

 

EDIT: I overreacted, sorry.

Edited July 15, 2015 by Adamir

[Araris Valerian]

How many people are left?

[dowanx]

We are mere players in the GM's world and that is how it should be.  

 

If the GM wants to do something they can do it without any explanation.  With the amount of sheer effort it takes to make and run these games I am a firm believer that the GM can and should do almost anything he/she wants.  When this happens the GM should get the respect that comes with making what must be hard decisions even if it doesn't benefit us personally.  They don't deserve to be quoted policies about Etiquette for GameMasters.  

 

If they GM wants to have my character stub his toe and die the most embarrassing death ever then by all means he/she should be able to do that with no reasoning needed.  If this happened I would NOT get mad or irritated.  The GMs that run these games do not get paid for our entertainment and I am sure that running one of these games is a full time commitment.

 

That being said you need to realize that the GM is here to try and give an enjoyable experience for ALL of the players.  They are not making these rulings out of spite or to help a friend win.  Yes it is frustrating to have rules change on you, but we are mere players in the GM's world and we should respect the world creators decision without criticism.  The GM's motivations are the only pure ones in this game and the GM deserves our thanks and respect.

[Adamir]

You know what - you're right. I overreacted. I can't keep hiding behind the 'I had a bad day' shield, so I'll come out and say it - I was wrong. Regicide does not break the game. Discovery has three lives left, probably less if we lynched one of them last cycle.

 

That gives them three kills, but all those kills mean is bargaining power. The best they can do is say something along the lines of 'If Faction A lynches Person from Faction B, then we won't kill someone from Faction A.' It gives them a chance, while keeping things fair. Regicide doesn't break the game. Regicide balances the game.

[dowanx]

The Discovery have 4 potential lifes left.  I didn't see anyone die from the lynch in the write up so unless Zephrer got hit last cycle I don't see a lynch happening.  Can someone from Glory confirm their lynch target?

[Seonid]

Honestly, discussion died halfway through the cycle in the Glory doc, and we didn't have a clear lynch target.

[Zas678]

So, let's figure out one for this round. 

 

These are the Discovery members, right?

 

Zephyr

Paranoid King

Alvron.

 

Do any of them have 2 lives? Or do each only have one life?

 

And if I was a GM, and I was choosing someone to hold the sword, I'd probably choose Zephyr. Paranoid King has been out in the open too long, Alvron is a really old player, so I bet that they would come under suspicion first. 

 

Or it could've been done randomly, and we have no idea who has it. We'll see what happens.

[neodymium]

I believe that Zephrer still has two lives.

[Adamir]

Has anyone else not received their doc link? I have no idea which faction I am in at the moment - I might have been bribed last cycle, but haven't got my doc to check. Anyone from Heritage, is my name in your doc?

[phattemer]

Zeph is still in our doc, so there's another point for him having it. Right now though, I'd say to get Alvron, since he is A. dangerous B. lynchable (not lunchables, those are different) and C. One life-d

[neodymium]

Has anyone else not received their doc link? I have no idea which faction I am in at the moment - I might have been bribed last cycle, but haven't got my doc to check. Anyone from Heritage, is my name in your doc?

 

You are indeed in Heritage.  

[phattemer]

Heritage! Yay!! History! Vases! Stamps!

[Adamir]

 

You are indeed in Heritage.  

In that case, could someone from Heritage send me a doc link? I don't want to bother Kas any more than I already have.

 

On another note

 

Ode to not getting a Shardblade to the spine - or why Discovery shouldn't murder me.

 

Allow me to state

My intention to explain

In two short haikus

 

We know who you are

Everyone knows who you are

My role is useless

Edited July 15, 2015 by Adamir

[Kasimir]

I have clarified this issue in several of the docs, so I will do so here as well.

First, I have made many mistakes in this game. One of them was not balancing this game to be played as a Village-Eliminator game. I had assumed that this game would be played as a straight-up Faction game, following how MR1 and MR5 had been played. In not considering that the players might have reason to play this as a Village-Eliminator game, I failed. I broke the most basic rule of game design, which is not expecting players to follow a particular style of play.
 
I have, I hope, attempted to cleave to this rule when designing most of the roles. And players have surprised me--often pleasantly--by using their roles in extremely creative ways. But I did not question the most fundamental assumption and balance for it, which is a problem. This game was therefore simply not meant to be played as a Village-Eliminator game. I have had several exchanges with players in the dead doc over this. To summarise my stance on the matter in a very simple way, it is like this: balancing a Faction game is very different from a standard SE game. One thing GMs should ask themselves when it comes to balance are: does each Faction have equal chances of winning? But there are other dimensions in which a game can be balanced. One of them is in parity of retaliatory capacities.
 
I mean that quite bluntly: in the dead doc, we have discussed and pointed out several missteps Moderation made when being ganged up on that led it to its present state. I say this very honestly when I claim that Discovery has played a near-perfect game but has simply been hamstrung by its inability to retaliate when Factions gang up on it. Any other Faction has in theory the capacity to retaliate. Discovery does not. That was an imbalance that become increasingly apparent to me as the game wore on.
 
I did not intervene because of this imbalance. As far as I was concerned, if the three Factions intended to turn on Discovery and then on each other, that was perfectly fine. The line I have drawn and will always draw in this game is at that of the Mega-Faction. This game was not built to deal with being forced into the mould of a standard Elimination game. As a game-designer, it was short-sightedness on my part. That was my first mistake.
 
My second mistake was simply this: picking a ridiculous place to draw the line. There were two reasons I threatened to throw Slaughter to the Discovery Faction. First, because of the reputation Slaughter had elicited from MR1. The idea of Discovery being given an unblockable instant-kill, I figured, was extreme enough that it would be enough of a disincentive to steer people away from breaking the game by meta-gaming the win conditions. Unfortunately, this was not the case and I had to deal with the recurring Mega-Faction plans. (This is not new; members of Moderation can confirm that I've had to rule this out on prior occasions.)
 
The second reason was simply like this: I do not like rail-roading. Past a certain point, I have figured it to be extremely ineffective. My tossing in Slaughter would have been my casting up my hands in surrender and saying, "Fine. You want to play this as a standard Village-Eliminator game, I'll oblige you and I'll forcibly rebalance the game for this."
 
This was the second mistake. Once I drew the line, there came a point when I had to confer with Gamma and we had to agree that I had to actually do what I'd threatened to do so, or risk being simply utterly ineffective as a GM by throwing out pointless warnings that got consistently ignored.
 
I regret the two mistakes that led to these circumstances. These two, I take responsibility for, and I apologise for.
 
To lead to the main clarifications I am making this post for:
 
1. It would be unreasonable and foolish of me to expect people to not go for the Mega-Faction at this point. As I have clarified, by the point I threw in Slaughter, it should be pretty clear that I withdraw all objections to any Mega-Faction plans. This is me forcibly rebalancing everything for it to be a standard Elimination type game. Tldr; if you want to Mega-Faction, so be it. I'll run with it.
 
2. A number of people have asked me if I'm aware this paints a huge neon target on Discovery's heads. Yes. I am aware of it. This will not be a problem.
 
And honestly, there's no need to worry. I have expressed at many trying points during this game that I believe it very unlikely that I will intend to GM a game again. More vociferously, I have informed the dead doc that I do not intend to run a Faction game ever again, and that I fully intend to castrate myself if I ever run a Faction game again.
 
So, y'know, that's pretty fine with me.

[phattemer]

I can just put the link in here, right? Since there are permissions?

It occurs to me that Gmail was not needed, since keeping the links in PMs is done anyway and one can change "anyone with the link can edit" to "anyone with the link can view"

Edited July 15, 2015 by phattemer

[Adamir]

Once again, Kas, sorry - I was a bit way too hard on you. I am not saying I would do any better; promote me to GM, and I would run the shortest, most boring and most unbalanced SE game of all time. The Eliminators would wield weapons of mass destruction, and the Village would number two players and their cat. Any faction game I run would be even worse; they would be unbalanced to the point of absurdity, consisting of a daycare center in one corner, an ant farm in the second, and the three hundred Spartans in the third.

 

Yes, there were a few mistakes - but those mistakes were probably miles less severe than what most of the people in this game would have done. And for the ones I've found, they were a hard choice between two different mistakes. For example, the inclusion of the Diplomat. There were two choices here - no investigative roles and let this be a faction war, but Discovery gets a massive advantage. Or include them, reducing their overall strength but promoting the idea of a VillagerElimination game. You chose a middle ground I wouldn't have even considered a possibility - one real diplomat, and one fake. While you weren't perfect, you were better than most of the people here. Stop beating yourself up with your 'I will castrate myself if I run another faction game' speech; I think I did enough of that ranting at you earlier this cycle. ;P

Edited July 15, 2015 by Adamir

[Orlok Tsubodai]

I think as players, we ought to offer Kas a collective apology - I can only imagine how much work being a GM must be, and for us to distort his game to the point where he no longer wants to ever again run a faction game is awful - so from me at least, can we say overwhelmingly, sorry.

[Adamir]

I believe I have expressed my desire to apologize, both in-thread and in-PM, but for what it's worth, sorry. I agree with Orlok - everyone still in the game has a part of the blame.

[Seonid]

Except, of course, the Discoverers. And Araris, who hasn't been on in almost 2 cycles.

Joe expressed distaste with the idea of just letting everyone be bribed over, so I doubt that he shares any blame.

I certainly do, though. And since my offenses were public, my apology should be as well.

So I publicly apologize for my part in this drama.

Now that that's over with, back to your regularly scheduled plotting/slaughter.

[Adamir]

This is probably sabotaging my own faction, but, well... Kas put too much work into this for us to just turn it into a regular SE game. I would like to request that we do not make mega-factions, and resume faction warfare after we have eliminated Discovery.