Anniversary Game 4/Anonymous Game 1: A Fresh Start

[Haelbarde]

I don't know if this was true or not, but I felt like as an eliminator team, we on the whole were in the eliminator activity golden zone - not inactive, being active enough to post here and there, enough to seem superficially active, without being active enough to truly affect too much, and not enough to be posting so much as to run into problems with being getting caught by our words. When I was doing my player read/summaries, I did the eliminators close to last. That honestly wasn't to avoid focusing on my buddies. It was because they weren't the easy ones - they weren't so inactive so as to be really quick to review all their posts, but they weren't so active and loud as to warrant immediate attention for a summary. It actually worried me near the end of that process when I realized I hadn't gotten to my buddies yet. I was honestly quite concerned, with all the difficulty you guys were having, that someone would remember the old favourite strat of searching for that golden zone of eliminator activity and uncovering all of us.

 

[BrightnessRadiant]

Huh, I didn't get anyone right but Seonid 

This was a fun game for the short time I played lol...thanks @Orlok Tsubodai and @STINK for running it and I hope next time I play an anonymous game, I have more time on my hands to fake my identity...and stay alive. xD

Congrats to the activity winners, y'all deserve it!!

[Megasif]

Hey everyone

I really enjoyed this game.

I'd like to thank the GMs for hosting and everyone else for playing. Fifth Scholar and Monster especially, as it was their first game and they contributed a lot to the activity level. Randuir, I enjoyed my back and forths arguments with you and liked allaying your suspicion of me somewhat.

And most of all, to the best elim team ever. That's right, it was a joy working besides Drought, Mage, Seonid and Hael  It was so upsetting when Elephant got lynched 

Village was playing well at points but we had to try hard tbh. Also, towards the end, I felt fatigue settling in. But everyone got through it. And well done Rae. I tried to sow last-minute doubt with my lynch but you unvoted too late  

Also we got rid of Joe rather quick as well. We couldn't really focus on killing the dangerous players as we were scared of the Scanner so we went PR hunting mostly. 

It was good. 

Edited March 2, 2018 by Megasif

[MonsterMetroid]

13 hours ago, Sart said:

I'm of the opinion that the Elim makeup should somewhat resemble the composition of the village.

You know I was originally of that opinion and several others about the team roles being what made the difference this game especially since I play RL mafia I never even considered that an inspector/Skybreaker could be elim. But now having had time to think about it and learn much more the differences between SE and mafia I'm more inclined to agree with Wilson, I dont think the roles were imbalenced or at least not outside the window of balance. I think one of the biggest differences were a combination of the anonymous accounts and the team makeups actually.

I don't know everybody on this list but as far as experience goes I think the teams experience was also fairly evenly distributed among the teams. However check out the kill order

Spoiler

C1.  L Dingo (Ornstein)

.         D Hyena (Devotary)

.         E Iguana (Sart)

C2.  L Swan (Araris)

.         E Octopus (A Joe in the Bush)

.         D Lion (Eternum)

C3.  L Tuatara (Straw)

.         E Gecko (Drake Marshall)

.         D Beagle (Steeldancer)

.         E Gorilla (Lopen)

C4.  L Meerkat (Hema Head)

.         E Penguin (Herowannabe)

C5.  L Weasel (1)

.         E Rhino (BR)

C6.  L Weasel (Arinian)

.         E Flamingo (some noob)

C7.  L Vulture (Bugsy)

.         E Falcon(Aonar Faileas)

C8.  L Axolotl (Alvron)

.         E Dragonfly (Fifth Scholar)

C9.  L Elephant

.         E Toucan(Randuir)

C10.                   L Albatross

.         E Scorpion(Jondesu)

C11.                   L Mouse

.         E Mint Heron (Khars oh wait yeah its Arraenae)

C12.                   L Kangaroo (1)

 

Or if we just focus on elim kills we get

Spoiler

.         D Hyena (Devotary)

.         E Iguana (Sart)

.         E Octopus (A Joe in the Bush)

.         D Lion (Eternum)

.         E Gecko (Drake Marshall)

.         E Gorilla (Lopen)

.         E Penguin (Herowannabe)

.         E Rhino (BR)

.         E Flamingo (some noob)

.         E Falcon(Aonar Faileas)

.         E Dragonfly (fifth scholar)

.         E Toucan(Randuir)

.         E Scorpion(Jondesu)

.         E Mint Heron (Khars oh wait its Arraenae)

 

 

Now I will preface this with a disclaimer that once again I don't know everybody who played in this game nor their reputations (aka dont shoot me if you are teh exception or I am way off the mark). But it seems to me that many of the villages R&R players either died early on or died soon after they pinched hit ( I dont have a reliable way to know when someone pinched hit so its a guess). This brings about an interesting change of power between the teams rather quickly, because there were so many players with so many reads and posts it is easy for the village to not notice a good suggestion, but the elims will immediately notice any good reads or more observant players. This isn't a problem it is part of the strategy right, but where it gets interesting is when you get a combination of different things happening at once.

First inexperienced players actually have a lot more pull because noone knows they are inexperienced and they can be manipulated by the elims through PM's,

Second the experienced players can get distracted by the inexperienced ones because of bad logic or just mistakes ( like I made when i got way too passionate defending myself against Ivory, which lead to the we got to save flamingo group, which lead to the PM (dis)trust group debacle which... yeah),

Third any good reads made by players are noticed by the elims but you have to convince the inexperienced players that somehow you aren't an elim because you need there votes.

Fourth when a player who made good reads dies the inexperienced players assume he died because his role (unless he is vanilla villager) and not because his reads, because the enemy team has a skybreaker.

And lastly the elims know who are their inexperienced players (heck they actually know who each others accounts are!) so they are able to guide, and train, and mentor them.

Now the list I laid out I actually don't consider most of them a problem they are just new factors that happened because the nature of the game that when we do it again have to be taken into account by all the players. I know that if I can play in the next Anonymous game I will be looking at people who dieds reads much more thoroughly and make sure to explain my arguments much more convincingly rather than just stating something.

I think the only things that I would suggest we change is

1). No revealing or suggesting who you are in thread and in ANY doc (elim doc included)

2). No revealing or hinting at experience level either

These two rules would ensure that an anonymous game would be solely focused on analysis and merit of posts and the elims would need to evaluate their ideas solely on analysis and merits of their ideas in the documents not on the less experienced immediately following the R&R (which would make the elims have a bit different experience too which is always fun and R&R players ideas should be able to be backed up by good discussion in a document anyways  )

Edit: just rereading my post I thought I would just reaffirm that I thoroughly thought this game was balanced and winnable by either team and it was fun so I'm not trying to complain or anything just making observations of how to maybe make it slightly better and the differences this format brings about.

Edited March 2, 2018 by MonsterMetroid

[Orlok Tsubodai]

This was a great game to run, and I'd like to thank everyone involved for making our inaugural Anonymous Game such a success. It was particularly good to see Fifth Scholar and Monster Metroid have such an impact in the game, despite it being their first games - a real advantage of Anonymous Games, and a reminder to us all to never underestimate new players!

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, just get a hold of Seonid, Alvron, Wilson or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list (and the GM PM group), but we'll be more than willing to help out in any way we can.  If anyone is interested in running an Anonymous Game, please see the conditions for running them here , and please PM me. Anonymous Games have a number of added complications for GMs, and I'd be very happy to pass on lessons learnt from running this one.

You can also post game ideas, ask questions, and get feedback from everyone over in our Art of Game Creation thread too. 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 working on.

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