Long Game 49/Anonymous Game 3: Window to the Past

[I think I am here.]

Claps.

Great game. This was just awesome!

[Steeldancer]

Is it a coincidence that the first person who died was Straw? again? 

[MetaTerminal]

I... wow. I have a lot of thoughts, suggestions and praise to give on this, and I’m not really in a place to cover everything. I’ll do that later. But briefly: that was way too much fun. Congratulations to Wilson, Elbereth and Orlok for running an extremely successful and extremely enjoyable game.

Firstly; I was Ialai. This was my first proper SE game. I think I did OK, but I didn’t meet my final wincon. Luck and IRL business (and my cooperators) seemed to conspire against me over the last few turns. In the end I determined that it was best to prevent the Desolation - killing Tearim to cover all the bases - than to follow my own goals. That didn’t really work out, but that’s hindsight for you.

I’d like to thank those who helped me - especially whoever Liss was, since I ended up getting her lynched. Sorry. I don’t think it ever fully transpired that I set Adolin up completely and knowingly for the lynch, either. And sorry to Torol, for killing you via redirect. (Oops!) And to Szeth, for killing you. I might have missed some people.

If this sort of game were to be ever run again (after a long hiatus, as the GMs attempt to regain whatever semblance of sanity that they lost during the undoubtedly nightmarish rollovers), then I would love to be a part of it. Well done, everyone.

(Who did kill Straw? Do we know?)

Edited November 2, 2018 by MetaTerminal
Addressing the Straw death

[Furamirionind]

I was Liss.  (First SE game as well) I took the long shot with gambling on Aesudan's support rather than sticking with Wit and Adolin, being the safe options. I knew what I was getting myself into.  I also wanted to break away from the allegiance with Jasnah and the Kholins Liss had in the books... Which I found out was a mistake after Aesudan "betrayed" us for her wincons... And then I had to work with Jasnah...

...I am glad I didn't change my action to be to kill you this past turn, though I almost did after I was confused by your PMs.

This game was too much fun... too much... I think I will need to put time restraints on how much I am on SE in the future... It was awkward when someone from my work came up behind me and saw I was on a google doc titled "Women"... I still don't think I have heard the last of that.

As far as who killed Straw, the master spreadsheet (at the bottom of the post) says that was Szeth. Which I didn't expect.

I just wish I had been less obvious as to who I was, I didn't even think about that during the game.  2 people guessed who I was to me correctly, and at least one other said they were confident they knew...

Edited November 2, 2018 by Furamirionind

[Young Bard]

Ha. That was great. Many thanks to Wilson, Orlok and El for running this.

I was Darkness, which was great fun to be brooding and dramatic. I'll have to do RP more often in future games.

Congratulations in particular to the "Eliminators" of this game - you came exceedingly close and I thought for a while that you were going to succeed in starting the Desolation, which would have been interesting.

[MetaTerminal]

It’s interesting to see who everyone was. I didn’t guess anyone (unsurprisingly). I thought Wit was Rand for a while, though.

I was also very careful not to give the game away during the proceedings, although the fact no one guessed who I was (although I’m flattered by some of the guesses) probably indicates that no one knows me here well enough. If you ever see someone using Latin and complex run-on sentences, you’ve caught me. 

Even more wow. Looking at the spreadsheet just makes my head spin. It’s interesting to see just how close I and others came to fulfilling our wincons on multiple occasions - and I can’t help but smile reading the Beggar Feast doc and seeing everything from an outside perspective.

[Fifth Scholar]

All hail...Queen Ialai? That sounds so wrong  

Good on Jasnah and Ivory for finishing the Desolation-preventing work I’d started. I’d also congratulate Tearim, but he was kind of an Elim, so...yeah. But he did kill Klade, so I guess that’s a good thing. 

My identity-guessing skills are actually terrible, it seems.  Oh well. 

All the RP this game was excellent, and I hope it’s a trend that continues past this game. Special shoutouts to Wit, Sadeas and Szeth, all of whose RP I greatly enjoyed. 

I feel pretty good (as Adolin) that I attempted to kill most of the “elim” players this game, and as I mentioned in the dead doc, I was kind of shocked at how often I was correct. I would like to apologise to all the people I killed, though, especially Darkness (though I maintain that it was not my fault). 

Finally, thanks to @little wilson, @Orlok Tsubodai and @Elbereth for the considerable amount of work they poured into this game, and for keeping it balanced throughout, a difficult task with many moving parts. I greatly enjoyed this game, and even if it is unlikely that there will be another like it, I’m glad I was able to experience something this delicately complex at least once. 

[DeTess]

This was a pretty great game to be in. For the first bunch of hours it felt far more like a play-by-post RPG than a game of SE, which is not a bad thing, but it did mean I wasn't listening to my SE-instincts (yes, those are  thing now ) when they where yelling at me that Aesudan was evil.

Anyway, I'd like to give a shout-out to the players behind Aesudan and wit, as I really enjoyed your exchanges, as well as to the one playing Jasnah, who was far more on top of what was going on this game than I was!

Also, I shouldn't be forgetting the GM's, as this must have been a massive game to run with all the various gambits and the like going on.

[xinoehp512]

Wow, this was a fun game. Probably the best game I've ever played.

Being Ash was fun. I was even involved in a little intrigue, which was even more fun.

But I died of inactivity.

But then I came back!  

Then I became an elim. Which was unfortunate. Having my teammates die was also unfortunate. But at least I completed the win conditions that weren't causing the desolation.

I only killed two Kholins though, and one was in self defense.

Edited November 2, 2018 by xinoehp512

[CadCom]

Wow! that game was fun! I was Jasnah, and at the beginning of the game, I told myself that I had to get and keep allies, so I made sure that I balanced any manipulation with my attempts at honesty. Fortunately, I think that for the most part it worked. 

I do have a question for the GM's though. I was told at one point that I had an extra life, that I don't remember using. Did Klade have a Kill action that took care of extra lives as well?

[Straw]

Huh, I was killed by Szeth? That's weird. The turn before died, I had received the knowledge that my next win condition was to find and obtain the Black Sphere. I then made several inquiries, which led me to Renarin. Oddly, Renarin refused to respond, and I was warned by someone that Gavilar was searching for the Black Sphere. When I died, my working theory was that Gavilar and Renarin had conspired to kill me. However, this theory appears to be incorrect.

@Arraenae out of interest, why did you end up killing me?

@little wilson is there a list of all of the win conditions somewhere?

[Kidpen]

Hello everyone. I was Kelek V2. That was incredibly fun, especially once I got into it. I did, unfortunately, lose several turns to inactivity. It wasn't terrible, especially once people really started dying, but I did kind of mess up several people. Sorry about that. 

Thanks especially to the GMs for being generally amazing!

[CadCom]

Also, something is buggy with my company's internet access policies, because it's allowing me to look at the dead doc and the master spreadsheet, but nothing else. 

Edited November 2, 2018 by Cadmium Compounder

[Elandera]

This game was incredible! A huge thank you to the GMs for the work they put in to making this happen. I know it couldn't have been easy.

I was a bit apprehensive about being Torol Sadeas, mostly because I hated him so much in the book. Once we started, I very much enjoyed myself. Especially my conversations with Wit. @Steeldancer, I owe you several upvotes!

6 hours ago, little wilson said:

"Well. It seems my time here is done. Fear not: I'll be laughing at your spiritual essences once you all have been long forgotten. Especially you, Sadeas. No, not you Ialai. Your husband. I'm sure his spirit is around here somewhere. Might even be in this rock," Wit said, pulling the moss-covered rock out of his pocket and looked closely at it. It would make a strange sort of sense for Sadeas' spirit to take over something that looked so like him in his physical form, so Wit spoke to the rock. "Even though you're dead, I'm still laughing at you."

I'm so glad you included this in the write-up!

5 hours ago, MetaTerminal said:

And sorry to Torol, for killing you via redirect. (Oops!)

You're forgiven... mostly  The chances of that happening, and some of the other situations around it actually made my death funny. 

[+Ark1002]

Playing as Venli was fun!

[Hemalurgic Headshot]

I incredibly enjoyed playing this game. Being Tearim was an interesting experience, because at first, my wincons didn't quite make sense. But once the ball started rolling, and I joined the Sons, things got much more fun. Starting a Desolation is hard work. And if it weren't for you meddling Kholins, I would have gotten away with it too!

Congratulations to the survivors, and a big thanks to @Orlok Tsubodai, @little wilson, and @Elbereth for GMing! This was a very complex game that turned out very well, and like I said before, it was a lot of fun.

[Arrae]

3 hours ago, Straw said:

Huh, I was killed by Szeth? That's weird. The turn before died, I had received the knowledge that my next win condition was to find and obtain the Black Sphere. I then made several inquiries, which led me to Renarin. Oddly, Renarin refused to respond, and I was warned by someone that Gavilar was searching for the Black Sphere. When I died, my working theory was that Gavilar and Renarin had conspired to kill me. However, this theory appears to be incorrect.

@Arraenae out of interest, why did you end up killing me?

@little wilson is there a list of all of the win conditions somewhere?

I killed you for mentioning that you were looking for the Black Sphere. It wasn't in my win cons, but I decided that I should be proactive with my actions and book knowledge. I thought killing all the sphere-seekers might shift events away from canon, namely Gavilar showing Eshonai the Black Sphere.

@Orlok Tsubodai, @Elbereth, @little wilson, I heard how much you struggled with rollover. Thank you for running this game. I had a lot of fun with it, even if I did have to make some tweaks to Szeth's personality.

Sadly, this will be my last game for a while, at least until January. College apps are coming up and I need to focus on them. (You can take this as soft confirmation that I won't be in any anon games until January. Probably. All the paranoia in the dead doc trying to figure out if a player was me was fun to watch.)

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

So I had a 65%(80% actually, as I had a +15% to roleblock) chance of achieving my final win condition hour 8 by roleblocking Kelek, but rolled a 90. Hour 9, I would have succeeded again but Venli succeeded on a 20% chance to redirect the attack to Darkness. Exciting. At least we prevented the Desolation. I feel better about trying to murder Amaram knowing that he was evil, but I do apologise to my fellow Heralds for lying to them from hour 7 onwards and actively preventing their win conditions. 

9 hours ago, MetaTerminal said:

I’d like to thank those who helped me - especially whoever Liss was, since I ended up getting her lynched. Sorry. I don’t think it ever fully transpired that I set Adolin up completely and knowingly for the lynch, either. And sorry to Torol, for killing you via redirect. (Oops!) And to Szeth, for killing you. I might have missed some people.

Adolin did know that you set out to lynch him specifically, because I told him so. In return, you apparently told Kelek what my win condition was, though thankfully Kelek did not decide to out me in retaliation for sabotaging his win condition several times.

Edit: And apparently I also would have succeeded hour 10.5 if Klade hadn't successfully hid. The dice really didn't want me to be evil.

Edited November 2, 2018 by Devotary of Spontaneity

[Kidpen]

57 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

So I had a 65% chance of achieving my final win condition hour 8 by roleblocking Kelek, but rolled a 90. Hour 9, I would have succeeded again but Venli succeeded on a 20% chance to redirect the attack to Darkness. Exciting. At least we prevented the Desolation. I feel better about trying to murder Amaram knowing that he was evil, but I do apologise to my fellow Heralds for lying to them from hour 7 onwards and actively preventing their win conditions. 

Adolin did know that you set out to lynch him specifically, because I told him so. In return, you apparently told Kelek what my win condition was, though thankfully Kelek did not decide to out me in retaliation for sabotaging his win condition several times.

Tbh, I just kind of figured that that was the game, and you had helped me beforehand (including one cycle where I didn't show up just out of forgetfulness) so I figured I'd just go with it. 

[little wilson]

5 hours ago, Cadmium Compounder said:

I do have a question for the GM's though. I was told at one point that I had an extra life, that I don't remember using. Did Klade have a Kill action that took care of extra lives as well?

....oops. I even looked in the spreadsheet for that, but there wasn't anything that I could see. I'm pretty sure we lost a number of things by not notating it in the spreadsheet immediately after giving it, though nothing else was as serious as an extra life. The rest was mostly just broams and random items collected off corpses. So technically you're alive, but I'm not going to adjust the write-up since I like how it is. We'll just say that Klade didn't aim as well as he'd thought he did so you used Stormlight to heal.

5 hours ago, Straw said:

is there a list of all of the win conditions somewhere?

No, and I wouldn't reveal it even if there was. This is a game that could be run again and it wouldn't be the same every time. Not even with eliminators. Heck, it might not even have eliminators in some versions. This played out like it did not because it was planned like this but because certain players did certain things that led to this inevitable conclusion due to those actions. So a rerun could be very different if only a couple people did things differently/succeeded where they'd previously failed.

1 hour ago, Arraenae said:

All the paranoia in the dead doc trying to figure out if a player was me was fun to watch.)

Maill got to experience that too. It was highly amusing, seeing so many people assume he was in the game when he was actually in the spec doc watching these assumptions.

1 hour ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

So I had a 65% chance of achieving my final win condition hour 8 by roleblocking Kelek, but rolled a 90. Hour 9, I would have succeeded again but Venli succeeded on a 20% chance to redirect the attack to Darkness. Exciting.

Some of those rolls were just....insane. And some were almost heartbreaking. A person would fail being only a point or two off, and then I'd look at their RP points and they've got 5+ and if they'd just used a few of them, they would've succeeded.

That redirect was brutal. As was Klade's hiding while Adolin attacked him and he attacked Adolin. Both of those single actions ruined more than one win con completion.

The action that really killed me though was Ialai's second to last attempt at her win con. If I remember correctly, she had three players assisting and then Kelek put in his own personal protect rather than an assist. That hurt to see, especially since Kelek had the same type of win con so they both would've achieved it right then.

[Steeldancer]

I do love being neutral. I was a complete troll with you guys and that was fun. Besides when Fur really ticked me off, but apparently they didn’t lie to me? Well anyway I booped then with a rock so all is even. 

Some of that RP for Wit was really hard to do. Especially that story about the chull and the whitespine, I was working on that for like a day to get it right. But i feel it was worth it, because your reactions brought me great joy. 

[Furamirionind]

Well, I did lie to you... I lied to you about lying to you... (I think I really confused Ash by doing that as it was basically suicide) The beggars feast seemed amused at my idiocy for choosing Aesudan over you. : )
I then asked my allies to vote to ostracize me as I kept hearing rumors about people trying to kill me, and I wanted people to stop thinking about me... Which may or may not have been a mistake. : )

Wait, you mean you booped me with Sadeas' soul right? I was really nervous that there was a third person in the game trying to cause the desolation... But at least you had your priorities straight with what action to choose...

Speaking of the beggars feast, I am sorry that the "young love" "relationship" that Tearim and I had didn't last after the ostracisation doc... Though I might have been able to complete my 5th wincon if I had defended him to the others instead of turning on him... But I was too scared of the desolation.

[Rathmaskal]

Well played everyone.  Great, and crazy, game by the GMs.

I will say that my best contribution was redirecting Ialai onto Torol...  Got me a wincon fulfilled and created a rather humorous situation.

[Araris Valerian]

Thanks to Wilson, Orlok, and Elbereth for GMing! I had lots of fun, and unfortunately my death was my own fault :/. Lesson to be learned is don't try to kill Jasnah, ever. It's nearly as bad as making Wilson mad at you. I was Restares by the way.

[Kidpen]

1 hour ago, little wilson said:

The action that really killed me though was Ialai's second to last attempt at her win con. If I remember correctly, she had three players assisting and then Kelek put in his own personal protect rather than an assist. That hurt to see, especially since Kelek had the same type of win con so they both would've achieved it right then.

... 

Yeah, sorry about that. That was pretty much just me being an idiot. Although it was an accident, to be clear