Long Game 37: Court Thread

[TheMightyLopen]

2 minutes ago, Orlok Tsubodai said:

My apologies, Lopen, but I'm not buying a scenario where you carried on playing the game without knowing your win condition, which makes me wonder why you don't want your win condition known. I'm unlikely to change my vote. I've been awake 16 hours on 3 hours sleep, and don't really trust myself to reevaluate, and think that your action over the last hour are indeed suspicious.

Don't worry about it. It's my fault really.

Anyways, Drake and Rand are I guess my biggest suspicions. If Drake is village, I might take a closer look at BR.

Everyone else...I don't really know. I'd suggest as many people as possible use PM's during the Night, both to get the inactives caught up and involved, and to get a better feel for others, so you can have a better start to the next Day. More people have to vote if we're gonna have any chance of winning(unless the Forest village does even worse than us ).

One thing that made me suspicious of Drake was his "analysis" of me that I was interested in self-preservation. It kind of read to me like he'd guessed I was some neutral role(there were only 4 Court members in the Zeta zone, so the elims likely guessed I was the Zeta), so when I died, he could say "oh, I was right that he just wanted to survive, which is why I was suspicious of him." That way he'd get less suspicion for lynching me. Similarly to how Elenion knew I was Odium in whatever LG that was, and used that as an excuse to push hard for my lynch, since he knew he wouldn't get any suspicion for it once I died.

[Aonar]

The day's over, people. Please wait, for a little bit.  

[Aonar]

Well crap. Maybe I'll finally get this and the backlog done tomorrow.  Hopefully. >>

---

Lopen has been lynched! They were Zeta! 

You have slightly less than 24 hours to get night actions in!

Also, a GM's note: Deepest apologies to Lopen, both for not making it 100% clear he was a village, and for missing his question. This one is officially on me. Feel free to kill me, when I get around to playing there again.  

[Eternum]

Oh well. Great job, guys. Also, Flash, you didn't exactly find the Zeta... You lynched them. Which is what you were trying to prevent from happening.

Regardless.

Hi! I'm the new Woods Medium. You can PM me 'n stuff, I think. You can't try to kill me though, unless I'm wrong and you can and this is a bad idea.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Eternum

[Burnt Spaghetti]

Oh come on.

*sighs*

Course. Why should i be surprised. Since when do lopen and i ever stay both alive very long in a SE game. Fated to never work together in SE. Sigh. 

[DeTess]

Okay, well, I guess the Zeta is no longer an issue. A shame about the miscommunication involved though, as I think Lopen wouldn't have done things that made him appear on people's radar if he'd known he was village.

So, since Lopen was village, even though he didn't know it, this lynch was a mis-lynch for analysis purposes. Also, because I'm curious, @Flash, where you correct about your suspicion of who was the Zeta?

[Steeldancer]

*MASSIVE FACE PALM* No i thought Budgie was the zeta. I knew Lopen was a possibility but my gut was telling me he wasn't. 

Sorry Lopen I dun messed up. You should have told us *sigh* 

Now I just feel kind of stupid. Not helping the whole "I want to feel helpful" thing. 

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

[Burnt Spaghetti]

1 minute ago, Flash said:

*MASSIVE FACE PALM* No i thought Budgie was the zeta. I knew Lopen was a possibility but my gut was telling me he wasn't. 

Sorry Lopen I dun messed up. You should have told us *sigh* 

Now I just feel kind of stupid. Not helping the whole "I want to feel helpful" thing. 

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

Lopen did say. I guess you just werent online at that point of the cycle.

If you want ideas for inactivity filters, talk to Haelbarde, heh. Its his hobby horse heheh. Think he had one in a game  that was like, if you didnt post a game relevant post each turn, youd die.  And it had to be a useful game relevant post. I intentionally didnt join

[DeTess]

4 minutes ago, Flash said:

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

In broad strokes, the two things I've seen to deal with the issue is an inactivity filter (someone that doesn't post for X cycles dies automatically), and mechanics that directly reward activity (LG30 had Honor that you could earn and that was required to get a role, for example).

[Steeldancer]

Just now, Burnt Spaghetti said:

Lopen did say. I guess you just werent online at that point of the cycle.

If you want ideas for inactivity filters, talk to Haelbarde, heh. Its his hobby horse heheh. Think he had one in a game  that was like, if you didnt post a game relevant post each turn, youd die.  And it had to be a useful game relevant post. I intentionally didnt join

Yeah my phone shuts off at 8:45 in my time zone so I'm never on for rollover. Not feeling happy with my analysis abilities right now. 

[STINK]

Aight been fairly busy with RL but should be good for now so wassup my dudes

I promise to be more active and all that jazz

[Clanky]

Sorry for dissapearing. I was at work for 40 hours straight then as soon as I came home I passed out for 12 hours. But that should mean the last of my super busy time so I should be active for the rest of the game. I'll do a real post once I've caught up on stuff

Also does anyone have the lynch vote tally from last cycle? It would be useful to see that.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Clanky
Added bottom line

[DrakeMarshall]

Well then. Maybe I should have made it a tie after all.

Although, on the bright side, I guess that means zeta won't trigger anymore?

3 hours ago, Flash said:

*MASSIVE FACE PALM* No i thought Budgie was the zeta. I knew Lopen was a possibility but my gut was telling me he wasn't. 

Sorry Lopen I dun messed up. You should have told us *sigh* 

Now I just feel kind of stupid. Not helping the whole "I want to feel helpful" thing. 

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

I've thought about several different approaches for my own games. Inactivity policies are important.

Personally, I would use a straight inactivity filter sparingly. Thing is, they don't really encourage activity all that much. Because the only people they are going to target is total inactives. And, by definition, somebody who is totally inactive isn't going to respond to the threat of dying.

That said, there are some measures that I am likely to incorporate into at least one of my upcoming games:

1. Majority votes only count actives. Otherwise, inactivity can decide the outcome of certain votes, which ideally shouldn't happen.

2. Players can only take actions in a cycle if they've also posted a certain minimum amount. This is just a pretty simple deterrent to lurking.

3. Activity should be rewarded. This has been implemented to great effect in a number of my favorite games. The only downside is that it makes the eliminators even more motivated to kill actives, however they are typically going to target actives regardless.

4. Also I have an in-game mechanic about inactives. Only to explain exactly how it works I'd have to give spoilers on my stormlight game. Suffice to say that, while this particular idea is unlikely to actually have much of an effect, I still really like the idea of it.

 

I've considered making it so that the eliminators can, on a given night, trade their single kill against an active for two kills against inactives. But I have some real doubts about that one.

[Clanky]

So I think this was the final tally?

Lopen(3): Drake, Orlok, Flash

Drake(2): Lopen, Brightness

Flash(1): Randuir

If I'm wrong someone please correct me. I'll be doing a probably rather large analysis post in the not too distant future.

[DrakeMarshall]

Pretty sure that's correct.

[Clanky]

Thanks Drake,

So first I will respond to this post from Brightness about my previous actions.

Honestly most of it was just posting initial thoughts without much reasoning just to try and stay active in the game. I still stand by my reasons for voting initially for lopen even if I didn't explain it very well. My problem with Lopen was how he wasn't picking a side on anything he posted about. It doesn't appear as if I put that into words very well though from what I see in that post. (I'll be using the same numbering system as brightness did to respond to specifics)

4) Basically I wanted to treat the game as if the two threads that were combined were just one game and that we could help our people in the forest too. With that in mind voting for a forester makes most sense based on logistics, besides as long as people still vote with a reason or if someone really didn't want to vote for a forester/voted for an eliminatorish forester that would still give info.

5,6) (and all the other lopen stuff) So basically I felt that he hadn't taken a side on anything to do with lynches, He was Anti CC lynch (But said he supported the vote on shqueeves which was activity related), he didn't support  lynching a forester (which everyone seemed not to), and he didn't put out another candidate and ended the first day saying he'd prefer no lynch. Earlier he had talked about wanting to get a vote out early that day but hadn't voted despite posting several times prior to my vote on him. The flash thing just made his non-vote actions even weirder but was not the full basis of my vote. That was my lopen reasoning, lots of his actions make more sense given he didn't know his alignment. 

7) I will always speak up for the contribution crusade. It doesn't need to only mean lynching inactives all the time, but now isn't really the time to get into this as it isn't really relevent to this game.

I do still have to do a couple hours of work today so I'll come back with a post of my thoughts on some other people in a couple hours.

 

[Elbereth]

7 hours ago, Flash said:

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

That one's been brought up before, though it'd be hard to implement - I believe the form in whcih it was suggested was a kill role that can only kill the bottom half of the player list when sorted most to least active, or something similar. It's a possibility, though potentially a difficult one. It'd certainly create activity, though.  

3 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

Personally, I would use a straight inactivity filter sparingly. Thing is, they don't really encourage activity all that much. Because the only people they are going to target is total inactives. And, by definition, somebody who is totally inactive isn't going to respond to the threat of dying.

1. Majority votes only count actives. Otherwise, inactivity can decide the outcome of certain votes, which ideally shouldn't happen.

2. Players can only take actions in a cycle if they've also posted a certain minimum amount. This is just a pretty simple deterrent to lurking.

I've considered making it so that the eliminators can, on a given night, trade their single kill against an active for two kills against inactives. But I have some real doubts about that one.

Straight inactivity filters aren't meant to encourage inactivity, generally. Sometimes they do - PMing people the cycle before they're likely to die, for instance, can often get them to post if they've simply forgot. But the true point of them is so they're not irritating to other players, so that no player in the game has to bother with trying to deal with someone about whom you have no information. 

This tends to be the case unofficially anyway, if you're referring to ending the game, which is the usual case in which the majority of players is important. AG2 ended with more villagers than elims because most of the villagers were inactive. 

I like this, and can't remember having seen it before. 

I doubt that'd be used, honestly. Depending on how you define 'inactive', killing an active is far more useful to any evil team. 

[DrakeMarshall]

37 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

Straight inactivity filters aren't meant to encourage inactivity, generally. Sometimes they do - PMing people the cycle before they're likely to die, for instance, can often get them to post if they've simply forgot. But the true point of them is so they're not irritating to other players, so that no player in the game has to bother with trying to deal with someone about whom you have no information. 

This tends to be the case unofficially anyway, if you're referring to ending the game, which is the usual case in which the majority of players is important. AG2 ended with more villagers than elims because most of the villagers were inactive. 

I like this, and can't remember having seen it before. 

I doubt that'd be used, honestly. Depending on how you define 'inactive', killing an active is far more useful to any evil team. 

In some games, removing an inactive and letting their alignment flip might be good. I do wonder how that impacts the balance of the game though, as opposed to leaving inactives in-game with their alignments unidentified. Hmm...

What I'm referring to isn't really parity (endgame conditions), so much as game mechanics that specifically say "50% or more of living players must vote for this for it to happen." I was pleased to see that, in the case of the medium vote, Aonar put "50% of living, active players must vote for this."

I don't think it has been done before. I just remember, in some game (don't remember which), one of the players basically asked the eliminators, "please post something if you are going to submit a kill, so that we at least have something to work with." And I figured, that could be a rule.

I kind of doubt people would use it either, particularly since, in this case, I would be defining it as "total inactive," meaning they didn't post at all in the given cycle. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical about using this mechanic. That said, it's not a complete loss to kill two inactives, because it gives the village even less information to go off of then you normally get from eliminator kills (which, admittedly, isn't very much at all in the first place, due to the IKYK scenario it creates). Honestly, the main reason this idea has any appeal at all is because it may push the game away from prioritizing active people as targets as much.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Drake Marshall

[Elbereth]

58 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

What I'm referring to isn't really parity (endgame conditions), so much as game mechanics that specifically say "50% or more of living players must vote for this for it to happen." I was pleased to see that, in the case of the medium vote, Aonar put "50% of living, active players must vote for this."

I kind of doubt people would use it either, particularly since, in this case, I would be defining it as "total inactive," meaning they didn't post at all in the given cycle. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical about using this mechanic. That said, it's not a complete loss to kill two inactives, because it gives the village even less information to go off of then you normally get from eliminator kills (which, admittedly, isn't very much at all in the first place, due to the IKYK scenario it creates). Honestly, the main reason this idea has any appeal at all is because it may push the game away from prioritizing active people as targets as much.

Ah, right. I can't remember the last time there was such a mechanic before this game, honestly, which is why I was confused. 

Sure. But, again, inactives don't tend be be counted for endgame majority, and eliminator teams can hunt inactives should they choose regardless. It does help them to some extent, in that the village gains no information, but even then hitting total inactives rather than semi-actives isn't a halpful strategy because they pose absolutely no threat. 

[Aonar]

Night's over. Please hold, while we figure out how many people you killed.  

[Aonar]

“In the wake of Zeta’s death, all was quiet, at first…”

---

Michelle walked the halls of the court alone. She fiddled absent-mindedly with the blinker stone that had been given to her in the wake of Ecth’s death, using it to light her way in the dark. She still wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but it definitely didn’t make his passing any easier. This wouldn’t be the first night she couldn’t sleep.

Scratch.

A faint sound came from one of the halls behind her. Probably one of that Diego guy’s robots. It was odd for them to be active so late in the day, though.

She picked up her pace, nonetheless, hurrying towards the hastily set up girls’ dorms. After a few moments, she began to feel slightly foolish. The Court didn’t seem to be the safest of places, with the Forest infiltrators about, but she was far from where those killings had taken place. This area was well-secured, and she was safe.

Scratch.

Without meaning to, she looked behind her. Closer than she’d thought, a dishevelled student stood--no, floated-- in the hallway, knife hanging loosely from their fingers. Looking down, eyes unfocused, they reached up to scratch their face. The skin looked red and raw along their jaw, as if this was something they did constantly.

“Wh-wh-who are you?” Michelle stammered, backing up.

The other student didn’t seem to hear her. “I don’t know what to do with myself anymore, now that he’s gone...”

Michelle stopped, now suddenly worried for an entirely different reason. “What? Who?”

“They’re telling me nothing matters, anymore. They want me to hurt, for failing.” They scratched their face again, otherwise hanging limply in the air.

“I’m sure that’s not true. Just put the knife down, okay? We can find some help?”

“I think they just want to take their pain out on someone. Anyone. I think I agree with them.”

Michelle took an involuntary step forwards, reaching out. “Does this have to do with the Forest? Are they threatening you?”

“And you know what?” They looked up now, suddenly cognizant; a feral smile spreading across their face. “I think I’m going to start with you.”

Michelle’s blinker stone flared with light as she clutched at it, falling back, and then everything went dark.

---

“Michelle wasn’t the only one up that night…”

---

Small Large had just finished crossing the newly constructed bridge when he realized something was wrong. He didn’t know what; all he was certain of was the subtle tension of his power working, trying to reorder the world to ensure his will. Given that he always wanted to be alive, and rarely cared about much else, this was worrisome.

“Come out come out, however you are. I’d rather not be kept waiting. I could use some sleep.”

“Hello Small.” A figure stepped out of the shadows, cloaked and hooded.

“Ah, it’s you. That’s a relief. Something’s wrong. You should wake some others; get people on the alert.”

“Is that so?”

“Hmm?”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.” The hooded figure stepped closer, shifting to reach for a sword.

“Wha-- Oh. Ah. I see. Has it come to this? How did they get to you?” Small looked towards the Court, mentally leaning against his power, trying to force an observer to appear. None came, and before he received an answer, a sword had separated his head from his body.

---

When morning came, in addition to the mutilated bodies of Michelle and Small, Tarek was found, stabbed to death in his bunk.

---

Michelle has died! She was a Student!

Small Large has died! He was Making Everything Boring, and a Medium!

Tarek has died! He was a Student!

Player list, countdown, etc, hopefully coming in the morning. I just want to get PMs out and call it a night before it's too late and I only get 5 hours of sleep again. Really didn't want to extend the backlog. >>

[Eternum]

Woah. Woa-ho-hold on a second. This isn't OK.

Well, at least it was a good idea for us to lynch Sif, I suppose.

This doeesn't seem to be going well, for both Wood and Court.

[A Budgie]

Definitely not. It sounds like at least one of those deaths (the first for sure) was from the Zeta changed alignment.
Tarek sounds like an elim/something a little more normal, given that it was only a stabbing.
Not so sure about the Medium kill however. There weren't enough people from the court sent to the Nightmare Zone for that many changed people, I'd've thought. So probably again an elim kill.

[Steeldancer]

Well then that's that's lot of people  dead. Yikes. and why in the world would the elims kill stink? Wasn't he neutral? do we need to elect a new medium now? 

Also im not running for medium, for the reason below. 

I'm going to be inactive for this day cycle. I'm going to Cedar Point with my family, and there will not be much opportunity to hop on.

[Shqueeves]

Guys, i feel awful. I promised to be active yesterday now that the wedding is over and i wasn't. I'm sorry. Let me make sure I'm all caught up, then I'll probably voice my suspicions