Quick Fix Game 1: Jeskeri Mysteries

[Claincy]

I think we can be nearly certain that at least one of the people who voted for Faidh is a MoM (I can't be bothered typing it out every time.)

 

From that list I think that Nepene has been the most suspicious and the lease helpful to us.

 

@el_warko, asking clarification on something that the MoM would already know is a rather simple ploy for a MoM to use to try to throw suspicion off themselves. It isn't a major thing but given the lack of evidence on the first day it was enough of a possibility to get you my vote. After that other suspicions would have become more demanding, but then you started voting for me out of "retaliation and spite". While that is understandable it is a very unhelpful standpoint for a villager to take, but would work perfectly fine for a MoM. So I voted for you. I am not doing so today primarily because you didn't vote for Faidh and as a result Nepene is overall more suspicious than you.

[Mailliw73]

MoM?

[Claincy]

MoM?

"Member of Mysteries". Because it just isn't worth constantly typing that out : P

[Mailliw73]

Gotcha. Return to your killings. Ignore the ghostly voice.

[RShara]

Hello everyone, Tempus here. As I'm having technical difficulties with 17th Shard, I'm posting here through R`Shara.

 

The lodge was silent. The six remaining members had each gone to their rooms. Asgren had been sacrificed by the cultists during the night - their body as the others, lying on their bed in a gruesome parody of sleep, stuffed with spare clothes. Ratel and Caan had discovered Nepene hunched over the body, placing the clothes inside, they said. Though Nepene denied it, a killer would, right? Caan, Ratel, and the Grey Pilgrim spoke against them, and Nepene was cast out.

Surely the killings would stop.

It was night, and Kai awoke suddenly. There was a figure standing over them, lost in shadows. No, three figures. Kai struggled to get up, struggled to move, but he had been tied. How had he been tied without awakening? "What is going on?" he cried, but he knew. He had been watching Ratel since Nepene had been cast out, and he knew. They were the followers of the mysteries. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw them. Ratel, Caan, and the mysterious Grey Pilgrim. "Where are the others?" he asked, trying to squirm free of his bonds, hoping for time.

"There are no others," said Caan, "You are the last." A dark liquid dripped from his hands, was spattered across his shirt. Impossible to see in the dark, no, he did not want to see. "And now the storm will stop."

Kai saw the flash of a knife, and no more.

Sacrificied : Asgren (Aspren)

Voted out: Nepene

Votes:

Nepene, 4 votes: Grey Pilgrim, Asgren (Aspren), Caan (Lord Claincy Ffnord), Ratel (Alvron)

Caan, 1 vote: Warkel (el_warko)

Asgren, 1 vote: Ratel (Alvron)

Abstentions: Nepene, Adolin_Dustbringer

Player Roles:

Members of the Mysteries: GreyPilgrim, Alvron, Lord Claincy Ffnord

Priest of Jesker: Luckat

I'll be starting a post-mortem when I can properly log on to the site.

 

Edited May 2, 2014 by RShara

[A Joe in the Bush]

Hm... We lost. I think we should have 20% Eliminators instead of 25%.

[Aspren]

Well, that was sudden. Good game, though.

 

We may as well have another quick game while Game 4 finishes. 

[GreyPilgrim]

Mwahahaha! Go Followers of the Mysteries!

But seriously. Good game guys. I have some feedback, but I'll save it for later.

[Tempus]

Alright, apologies about the technical difficulties this morning, however they seemed to be resolved, so here goes.


Post Mortem

I've run a good dozen games of Werewolf with my friends in the past, and participated in many more. When designing the ruleset for these short games, I wanted to replicate the core aspects of those games I'd played. Many of the design decisions I made sprung from those experiences.

My original choice was to give the players limited or exclusive information. In the game of Werewolf, a standard elimination game, you have three tools at your disposal. The first is asking for information. The second is offering information. The third is lying. By giving limited information, and display information with in-narrative lists involving deductive reasoning and reading comprehension instead of the more clear and obvious out of game descriptions (which I eventually resorted to), I created additional space for people to use these tools.

However, in practice, no one seemed to use them. It took until the third day before people began to request information about other players, and began to reveal information about themselves (or lie about it). The dynamic developed much more slowly than I anticipated, and this is probably a combination of people being unfamiliar with the format, people being unwilling to take risks with limited information, and the fast pace of the game events.

At one point, Nepene linked a post saying "We're basically voting at random, we have no choice but to lose". Of course, this was not true. There was no need to vote at random. There was a need for the Innocents to actively search for information about the other players - inactivity is most helpful to the Eliminators, in all cases. That's the core of the game. In a forum scenario, with the above factors, communication became more difficult.

Luckat, the Priest, was dealt a bad hand. The first person they investigated was Joe, who was eliminated first day. As the only player who could act without significant risk, their role exists primarily to get things started - they are the numbers that you begin with in the Sudoku so to speak. However, it wasn't until day 3 that they were able to make a move without exposing themself to risk. One thing that did occur, was luckat very subtly informed everyone there were three Eliminators (by design or by accident, I do not know). As a result, everyone assumed this fact for the first 70 hours or so of gameplay. No one picked up on it being significant, however. For luckat and the Eliminators, they were NOT aware that the Innocents were unaware of their numbers until later.



Questions:

Were any players (other than the eliminators) in PM contact with each other in the first two days? Did any players attempt to question each other over PM?

The game was setup so that players needed to interact very directly to win, but most players were hesitant or frustrated doing so. Would you as a player prefer more indirect interaction (abilities, information and notices mediated through the game master)?

Would mid-game surprise events be a welcome addition to the game, or a detraction?

Any other thoughts on the progression/format of the game?

Edited June 15, 2016 by Alvron

[Aspren]

I was in contact with Joe during the first cycle. He then got voted out.

In the second cycle I contacted both Aonar and Alvron. Aonar was then also voted out.

In the third cycle Luckat contacted me.

 

I'd welcome additional information gathering roles for the most part, but I think this quick game did well with having only two roles. I definitely think that giving more information through the write-ups would be a good idea. The Tineye role from the previous games could help with that, without making the game much more complicated.

 

Mid-game events sound like a good idea. Especially for the quick games.

[Nepene]

I wasn't pming people.

 

The cop role is not very effective without a doctor. That's a big issue. They can't claim and stop stuff, and the game was short so they didn't get much utility and didn't impact our probability of victory that much. As it is, 3 mafia vs 9 townies leaves us with an extremely low chance of victory, with or without info.

 

In terms of, the primary information gathering methods being questioning people and lying- that doesn't have a very good success rate. Some people are better at hiding, some people are better at finding mafia, but it's rarely an especially high level ability, especially when you don't know the people well. We aren't close knit enough to be able to instantly identify other players and so mistakes got made, like with my lynching. People did interact very directly with me, and they thought I was a cultist. Mistakes happen. So I'd in general prefer both a game which was setup so both sides stood a similar chance of winning and where towns had a reasonable amount of information so they could make informed guesses. Less information favors the mafia side, and this game was already heavily biased in favor of them.

 

And less information doesn't really favor people asking questions. Initially I thought this was a no reveal game, due to the format, and so we had no ability to see the results of our actions. I doubted our ability to see mafia was above chance with that, and as such, didn't have much hope.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Nepene

[Gamma Fiend]

Was definitely an interesting quick little game. As I was killed pretty early on, couldn't participate much, but it was still fun to follow along.  I kind of liked what you were going for with the lack of lists and putting it in the write-up instead, but I do think it initially threw people off. Most, I think, because mostly we weren't expecting it like that, and were used to the format we've used in larger games. Because I initially thought all votes were going to be completely private, so I was kind of surprised when it showed up in the first write-up like that. That's not a bad thing, it was actually an interesting twist we had to adapt to.

The slow start probably did help the Cultists, as they were able to get good momentum going, but now that we know that's how these games will work, we can adapt and adjust our strategies going forward.

All in all, I think this was a pretty successful game game. I really only slightly suspected Caan, and that was just mostly a gut feeling, so the other Cultists did a good job avoiding suspicion. And I think with the limited information and the newer style of game play, the Innocents still did a good job, I'd say.

[Lightsworn Panda]

Right... So when's the next one going to start? Where do you sign up? I'm new to Sanderson Elimination.

[Claincy]

Good game

 

I was in contact with el_warko a minimal amount during the final cycle and in contact with the other members of the Jeskeri mysteries.

Who, as it turns out, still suspected me after.

@Nepene, I wouldn't say your death was much of a mistake. The only innocent who voted for you was Aspren. We all piled on to ensure your death and our victory

 

I think this setup might favour the MoM, but not by much. The numbers are fairly standard from my werewolves experience and I have seen such games go either way. The big thing that killed it for the townies was that their wasn't nearly enough communication. (Something I naturally had no intention of rectifying.) The townies really need those open floor debates to sort out who the MoM are, this is the disadvantage of 24 hour cycles in that there are very limited times when several people are on to have a decent discussion. While this makes things harder they certainly could have made a much larger discussion within that time frame and in future games will hopefully do so.

 

I actually kind of like the pure werewolves experience, with few or no roles. (Yeah, I get the irony in that statement. I like complicated ones too.) I feel that sometimes people use the roles as a crutch and rely on whoever has them to find the antagonists. This isn't everyone, and it isn't all the time but the villagers were talking about as much as they usually do in the other games and that simply doesn't cut it in a game with fewer roles. Proper discussion/debate is much easier in person, but still possible online.

 

 

Would mid-game surprise events be a welcome addition to the game, or a detraction?

Depends on the type of event. It should be something that mixes things up and changes peoples perceptions but doesn't give an advantage (or at least a major one) to either side.

[Mailliw73]

I, too, died early and didn't have any communication outside the thread. Good move, Spiked, taking out the experienced players early. I enjoyed the simpler aspect of the game, and i did like the way the votes were hidden in the write-up, it could just be a bit more obvious, but overall i enjoyed what part i played.

[Claincy]

I, too, died early and didn't have any communication outside the thread. Good move, Spiked, taking out the experienced players early. I enjoyed the simpler aspect of the game, and i did like the way the votes were hidden in the write-up, it could just be a bit more obvious, but overall i enjoyed what part i played.

It worked, but if the game had gone on much longer it could have bit us hard when people wondered why Alvron and I hadn't been killed yet. Killing off the most experienced players can be very effective but it can also point a spotlight at you.

 Fortunately we killed enough people before that happened.

[Tempus]

Great comments. So, from the feedback I'm getting, many people like the lack of direct information and the narrative clues, but at the same time felt a little frustrated by the difficulty in retrieving this information, and the lack of having specific things to share with each other seems to have crippled communication a bit because the villagers did not see the incentive in communicating until too late. Many of you expressed favourable reception to the idea of mid game events, and the speed of the game was mentioned as well.

 

So, possible adjustments to discuss:

 

- Give out or allow players to choose specific powers. Rather than have the powers yield certain actions, the power could offer extraneous information to the narrative. This would give the players unique information that they would want to share, and want shared with them, without giving them extra game mechanics or actions to deal with.

 

Example: A player gains the extra power of detective skill, and gets an extra bit of narrative to the murder scene where he discovers a small clue no one else noticed, such as a torn piece of fabric which could belong to players A, B or C. 

 

Example 2: A player has the ability to accurately judge the voting process, and gets to see the player votes as a list (like the second and third cycles) while others players are left with narrative only (like the first cycle).

 

 

- Have an introduction period. The first cycle is always a bummer, especially if you're killed. If the first cycle has a special event, but no murder or no lynching, it would provide extra opportunities for information (or misinformation!), and extra time to get your feet wet before the killings start.

 

- Mid-game events. In the current game, I had originally planned a midgame event to resurrect the first lynched player on day 3 (so they would feel less bad), but it was discarded to keep the first game simpler. That was the original narrative basis behind the 'send people out into the snow' mechanic, justified by the idea that 'these people aren't killers, and will choose the least violent way to lynch people'. I had also considered other events, triggered either semi-randomly or to balance things, for example...

 

I had considered an event each to occur if the eliminators should get down to one member early (the event would cast false suspicion), and an event to occur if the eliminators should follow an ideal path (like they did in our game) to help reveal them.

 

I had considered a midgame event to introduce a new mechanic or player ability mid-game.

 

I had considered NOT including a seer player role, and instead revealing one hint per day for a random chosen player as part of the narrative for everyone to chew on, turning it a little further away from a game, and a little more towards a murder mystery RP.

 

 

 

I should note, the quick fix games are still designed to be quick, and less RP heavy. The narration will never go behind about four or five paragraphs, to make the cycles easy to digest and respond to.

 

 

As for new games, Rubix will be running a Quick Fix game on the 12th so signup for that should start soon - it was developed independently from this Quick Fix game, though it has similar rules, and it will probably not be incorporating any changes from the discussion in this game. The next Main game run by bartbug should begin shortly afterwards.

 

 

As well, with the change of moderating staff, I will no longer be organizing the Quick Fix games, so those will be organized and setup by Metacognition, Gamma, and littlewilson. I'll still be around though, and I'll be pointing any further quick fix game masters to these notes so that they get a good basis for what worked and didn't work in the past, so feel free to post any ideas or comments on the above for posterity!

Edited May 3, 2014 by Tempus

[Metacognition]

I plan to lock this in the near future, so if you have anything else you'd wish to add (suggestions, feedback, compliments, etc.), by all means. 

 

On top of that, if anyone would like to try their hand at running one of these Quick Fixes, either say so here or PM Wilson, Gamma, or myself. We'd like to start building a GM list so we can keep these running in the future. 

 

Tempus, if you'd like to run more of them, you're more than welcome to do so and I hope you do, as I think you've done a wonderful job with this one. 

[Tempus]

There are many GMs waiting for opportunities at this point, Metacog, so it seems unlikely I will be running another one soon. If ever there should be a Quick Fix game with no GM however, consider me the fallback scenario.