Long Game 25: A Breath of Power

[Young Bard]

2 hours ago, AliasSheep said:

I'm sceptical of effectively forcing other players to give away their breaths. There might be numerous people who have strategies they're putting into place. The Returned would also be able to affect the vote, remember, so 1. it's possible for them to just steer the orange vote onto someone else they want dead. It could even be used to circumnavigate protection, now that I think of it, since giving away breaths isn't an action they have to commit to.  And 2. if the person in orange chose not to give away their breaths for any of the above reasons, they'd automatically become suspect, which could blur our reads on them. 

So yes, sceptical of the system. Partially outright opposed to it, but in places where the returned victim dying would really hamper us, I might be supportive of it. 

1. The same could be true of any lynch. This would basically be a lynch which saves peoples Breath instead of extinguishing it.

2. We're meant to be making the most suspect people give away their breath as it is. Them not giving away their Breath would (theoretically) just be one more piece of evidence against them.

15 minutes ago, twelfthrootoftwo said:

1. Bard's idea is interesting, but it has problems with potential WGGs - Returned attack one of their own members (or nobody), don't lose any Breath, and use their now-trusted attacked player to get someone else's Breath. Hard to aim, but goes through protection and comes with bonus trust. 2. From an enjoyment perspective, there's also a mayor-like aspect to it; IMO there's a difference between "Lynch this person" and "Get this person to kill themselves because if they don't we lynch them".

I found Meta's first post rather jarring compared to his usual playstyle.

1. That is a problem I realised a little bit after I posted, I have to admit. I've got something stirring in my brain as to how we could detect someone fake-claiming their lost Breath, but I can't figure it out. I'll have a fresh look in the morning.

2. I hadn't thought of that, which is a valid point. I'm trying to work out a les dictator-y plan, but I'm not sure how I could manage that. Again, I'll give it a fresh look in the morning. It does need a lot of editing for the plan to be feasible, though.

[Ecthelion III]

WHY?! WHY IS IT THAT EVERY SINGLE LG I DIE THE VERY FIRST TURN?!!?!?

(I had 8 Breath by the way. Also, if someone would be so kind as to lend me theirs, that would be great, but no one's going to.)

[Ecthelion III]

Oh yeah, the vote. Doctor, everything you've done sounds super suspicious to me.

[Magestar]

Well, I'm back finally.  Hi guys.  I'm running through the thread RN to try and get something going as far as theories go.

Also, I don't think that Bard's idea is a good one, for a number of reasons, including some that have already been stated.  I think a big issue is going to be faking breath loss, Returned or not.  Also, I am not personally a fan of giving away the one thing I can use in this game.   While I definitely like the line of reasoning Bard is using, I just don't think it's the best idea; The cons outweigh the pros in my opinion.

  Just realized I left this post hanging for about half an hour without ever clicking submit.  I am a little confused as to why either Doctor Or Meta seem suspicious.  Meta seems to be acting like Meta, and Doc does not seem to have done anything.

[Ecthelion III]

I for one am 100% supportive of Bard's plan, but that's because I'm the one who lost Breath. Meta

 

[Magestar]

Ecth, you have eight breath.  That's a pretty high number, IMO.  I see no reason for anyone to sacrifice to give you more.

edit; Shoot, I don't want this to be another game where you start gunning for me, Ecth.  No more Ecth fights.  Please don't take this the wrong way.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Magestar

[Ecthelion III]

I had 8 breath, BEFORE IT ALL GOT STOLEN

[Mark IV]

But, she did lose her breath, Mage. I can see why she would support Bard's plan.

 

EDIT: Yeah... ninja'd. What she said.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Mark IV

[Ecthelion III]

(I have nothing personally against you, Magestar. I really wanted you dead because you were Poison and I was Grass, so you could have one-shotted me.)

[Magestar]

Oops.  I misunderstood the rules.  Well, now I agree that Ecth should have some breath back... I don't really like that giving/taking breath gives/takes all of it.  I don't really want that to happen to anyone.  I was still thinking about the QF I was in last, where things like this took only one away, not all of it.  Sorry Ecth.

Also, I like Bard's idea a little more now, for some reasons, and a little less, for others.

(I understand that.  .  But you were arguing to lynch me before that?  Or am I remembering wrong?)

[Mark IV]

Ummm. I accidentally hid my post, so here it is again.

Well, I for one don't really agree with Bard's plan. Sure, I can see the benefits, but it almost never works out. I even tried it myself in LG20 (21? The AlethI war camps one). That one just succeeded because i was in possession of a shardblade, and so i couod guarantee that the secondary lynch was delivered upon. 

Secondly,  if, the orange voted person decided not to give their breath, then what?  You'd have decided the whole of the next cycle's discussion on the previous day turn.  Which is quite similar to killing the lynch discussion.

Thirdly, one point I do concurrent on is that faking loss of breath would be hard, for if you didn't really lose breath, the person who did could call you out. But, if the Returned attack one of their own, that could manage to lead the village astray.

But, since this is an early cycle, and I'd like to see what happens, I'll probably vote on someone in orange later this cycle.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Mark IV

[Bugsy]

Ect, your breath count is suspiciously high. I don't want to give an exact number, but I can promise that mine was lower by quite a bit. I doubt the returned would neglect to place a kill C1, however, so assuming there's no counter claim, I propose whoever is lynched with the primary lynch today gives their breath to Ecthelion 

[Ecthelion III]

Yes, my Breath count was high, but I don't know how that's suspicious since it was just RNG and luck. Unfortunately, this now means that one of the eliminators can survive for 24 turns.

I agree that it's a good idea for the lunch target to give their Breath instead of a second person.

[Conquestor]

Bard, your plan might work with some tweaks and let us not forget the breath lottery as well. If Ecth is telling the truth, we are in a huge amount of trouble. We could have someone get the breath scanner and find people with large amounts of breath, then lynch them. The idea is that the returned will probably have more breaths than villagers, eventually. 

[AliasSheep]

3 minutes ago, Conquestor said:

Bard, your plan might work with some tweaks and let us not forget the breath lottery as well. If Ecth is telling the truth, we are in a huge amount of trouble. We could have someone get the breath scanner and find people with large amounts of breath, then lynch them. The idea is that the returned will probably have more breaths than villagers, eventually. 

That is a good idea, but the key word is eventually.  Early on its possible that an eliminator could steal the breaths and still have a fairly low breath count (I know mine would be even if it got increased).  You'd have to be aware of the average breath count as well, and everyone sharing their breaths does not seem like a good idea in the least.

 

1 hour ago, Bugsy6912 said:

I propose whoever is lynched with the primary lynch today gives their breath to Ecthelion 

This idea makes a lot of sense to me initially, but I guess it would only work if the lynchee was village.  I suppose it is a good idea as far as salvaging as much as possible from a mistake goes.

[Araris Valerian]

I'm trying to work through whether or not it is a good idea for players to reveal that they have had their breath stolen. Of course, the eliminators already know who got targeted, so doing so can only help the village. The problem comes with the Potential Returned (I'm assuming that they don't know they have this role), since that role gets kinda ruined for anyone that reveals that they had their breath stolen. Since only one person can have their breath stolen, and the writeup confirms whether or not someone did get stolen from, it means that the eliminators can't fake-claim to get breath gifts from other players.

As for Bard's plan, I think we (as a community) already have a hard enough time locking in on one lynch target (not necessarily a bad thing). Trying to lynch two people in one cycle, and requiring the active participation of one of those members in their own lynch, doesn't seem like something we can organize very effectively. It also is somewhat against the spirit of the LG format, where players have 48 hours to respond to each cycle. Reducing that time by having two 24-hour lynches imposes a time commitment on people that they didn't expect when they signed up for the game.

In my opinion, if you are getting lynched, and are a villager, you can just pass your breath to the person that revealed that their breath was stolen. We don't need to bother with a second lynch to save that player. We just need to be wary of a WGG, since any system like that where we save the person targeted by the night kill is very vulnerable to that sort of strategy.

On a last note, I somewhat agree with Twei about Meta's first post. It struck me as off that Meta would try and explain the actions of another player so early and in such a trivial situation.

[Frozen Mint]

7 hours ago, twelfthrootoftwo said:

Returned attack one of their own members (or nobody), don't lose any Breath, and use their now-trusted attacked player to get someone else's Breath. Hard to aim, but goes through protection and comes with bonus trust. From an enjoyment perspective, there's also a mayor-like aspect to it; IMO there's a difference between "Lynch this person" and "Get this person to kill themselves because if they don't we lynch them".

Agree with the above.

I don't think there's enough information to warrant calling anyone suspicious yet, but that may be because I'm new and not familiar with everyone's playing styles. 

Also, if no one minds answering a newbie question, what does WGG stand for?

[TheMightyLopen]

I agree with most of the counter points to Bard's plan. I've actually thought of a similar idea in a past game where the village would ask a player to sacrifice themselves for whatever reason, but I don't think I pushed for the plan because I didn't think it was really in the spirit of the games(and I remember there was a good amount of resistance to that plan even just because I put it out there). However, him suggesting the plan makes me lean village for him. It's a helpful idea and even though it probably won't work out, I wouldn't think that an eliminator would suggest something like that.

As far as suspicions go, I don't really have much at this point, but I got a bit of an eliminator read from Conq's post. The way he said we were in "huge" amounts of trouble just struck me as off somehow. Also, and I'm not really saying this is alignment indicative, but when people have large amounts of Breath I assume they'll be using that to Awaken stuff, so the Breath scanners won't really be able to get an accurate account of how many Breaths a player has total(unless the Breaths in an Awakened object are included in the scan, but I don't think they are).

Anyways, I was planning on doing a bit of RP, but I had a bad headache yesterday and haven't even had much of a chance to go through the rules properly. I'm gonna try to get up some advice for Breath usage later tonight(hopefully) and then, if I've got the time, I'll try to do some RP (no promises on that though ).

Edit: Oh right. Frozen Mint, a WGG stands for Wounded Gazelle Gambit. It's where the eliminators attack one of their own while at the same time protecting that player so it appears that the eliminators were trying to kill that person(implying they're a villager). In this case, it would probably work like - an eliminator attacks one of their own and steals their Breath and then that player(the attacked player that is an eliminator) reveals they were attacked and then we get a player to give them their Breath, which would keep the eliminator alive and get a villager killed.

Edited August 21, 2016 by TheMightyLopen

[Bugsy]

Would a WGG work in this game, actually? As part of a QA spree I had with Elb earlier, I confirmed that a returned died immediately following the loss of their divine breath, so of there is a successful breath steal and the target doesn't immediately die, the target isn't a returned. 

[Doc12]

7 hours ago, Ecthelion III said:

Oh yeah, the vote. Doctor, everything you've done sounds super suspicious to me.

Pardon me,  but what? 

Colors, friend, but what have you against me?  Am I thus a target because i am a stranger to Idris? Am I to be persecuted for not knowing the traditions of the land? 

If you are to accuse an old healer, do it fairly and under the sun, that I might defend myself! 

Edited August 22, 2016 by Doctor12

[The Only Alex]

 

1 hour ago, Bugsy6912 said:

Would a WGG work in this game, actually? As part of a QA spree I had with Elb earlier, I confirmed that a returned died immediately following the loss of their divine breath, so of there is a successful breath steal and the target doesn't immediately die, the target isn't a returned. 

Yeah I'm thinking that assuming that Returned can't distinguish give up their regular breath and their divine breath that keeps them alive, WGG would be rather counterproductive, as it would only serve to insta-kill that person and reveal that those who voted for their demise probably knew something that the rest of us didn't, thereby casting suspicion on them. 

[Elbereth]

Although it doesn't make sense flavorwise, to simplify things, if a Returned has no Breath they'll die at the same time as anyone else drab in the Order of Actions. 

[Bugsy]

5 hours ago, Ecthelion III said:

Yes, my Breath count was high, but I don't know how that's suspicious since it was just RNG and luck.

I suppose that's true, I just wasn't even aware starting breath counts could be that high. I felt like the GMs would probably start people at lower breath counts to keep strong items from existing immediately, instead opting to give the lottery a bigger role. That was poorly expressed on my part, since I'm actually not suspicious of you right now. Sorry for the random thought 

2 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

Although it doesn't make sense flavorwise, to simplify things, if a Returned has no Breath they'll die at the same time as anyone else drab in the Order of Actions. 

Sorry everyone! My question was prompted by Bard's plan, because I was concerned that if a returned were about to be lynched, they'd give their breath away, and wanted to make sure that they would still show up as returned. Elb answered that in the writeup, it would appear that their death immediately followed the loss of the divine breath, so their status as a returned would still be obvious. Somehow I missed the second part of the PM that said the death would actually happen along with drabs to preserve consistency. My bad...

I'm going to start writing a summary of the rest of my QA. I asked quite a few questions, so it might take awhile, but I'll put it up sometime tonight.

[Ecthelion III]

45 minutes ago, Doctor12 said:

Pardon me,  but what? 

Colors, woman, but what have you against me?  Am I thus a target because i am a stranger to Idris? Am I to be persecuted for not knowing the traditions of the land? 

If you are to accuse an old healer, do it fairly and under the sun, that I might defend myself! 

I am no woman.

[Doc12]

5 minutes ago, Ecthelion III said:

I am no woman.

rust i got you mixed up with another forum member, I'm so sorry! 

 

Questions, was that meant to be lord of the rings reference? From your username, which has a very lord of the rings feel haha.