Long Game 53: The Fate of the Forum

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Congratulations to the vigilantes, the vote manipulators, and Aman who put the game out of reach within the first couple of cycles.  PMs definitely hurt us by allowing the eliminators to learn the naming mechanisms, especially as none of the spammers were particularly invested in PMs, but we still could have survived that. In particular, I definitely should have claimed Disciple as Gamma Fiend, overriding my fear that whoever had that actual role would counterclaim me. It turned out that multiple people had that same role, so I wouldn't have been obviously lying unless both Rae and Snip claimed.

I do believe the JOE role was mostly fine as it was, although possibly should have been changed to allow conversions either during the week or the weekend to give converts more incentive to actually use the role. As it was, the JOEs still would have won if we'd succeeded in our 75% chance to convert Steel. In a game where the spammers put up a better fight, the JOEs would definitely have a good chance to win with either side.

 

[Elandera]

This was an awesome game. Thanks Joe and Gaea for running it. Congratulations to the non-Joe village.

A few thoughts on things. I think JOE was on track to convert everyone, but we miscalculated the number of elims. I was still expecting two left, so when I noticed the game was done, it was a bit of a surprise. Overall, I don't think much should change regarding it. It was a fun mechanic that really didn't interfere with the game, other than making people think and try to extend it. @Lumgol, thanks for choosing me to convert first! Also, the PM announcing the JOE conversion was the best.

I agree with Devotary, though. A lot of the struggle was having to ignore the conversion in favor of other actions. If we could choose to convert either week or weekend, it would have been a little better to balance with other roles.

While I was sad to see PMs (and my original role) disappear, I fully understand the decision. Picking up Roleplayer was also a lot of fun, though I'm sad I didn't get to use the next role I was given (Arms Dealer). The change also made things a bit fun later in the game with my apparent sporadic roles.

@Fifth Scholar, I'll apologize again in return.  We had some interesting tunneling on each other. I was absolutely convinced for a while that you were a convert.

34 minutes ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

I decided to have Walin enter the game as Vashikaran. Was that a good, unbiased move on my part? I don't think so. I think it was necessary to give both the Spammers and the JOE's a fighting chance. But I don't know if I would have done it had none of the spammers been dead yet. What do you guys think? (Also, apparently The Storm guessed I had put him in as an elim)

I personally think choosing to put Walin in as Vashikaran was an alright move. I wouldn't have done it had the Spammers not lost two in the first cycle. I might not have given him Vashikaran, but I don't think the role impacted the game significantly enough to have warranted a change. 

[Furamirionind]

19 minutes ago, Elandera said:

the PM announcing the JOE conversion was the best

It confused me...

You said you got a PM saying you joined team Lumgol, so when I got a PM saying I joined team JOE, I thought it must be a rival convert role. Lol

---

As for the JOE thing, I apologize for not taking it seriously... Well, my suggestion (I think I posted it) that we lynch Steel was in part because he couldn't be converted.  I also didn't like the idea of someone I couldn't scan... Though now that I think about it, if actions targeting Steel also affect Sapphire, I probably could have scanned Steel by scanning Sapphire... didn't think of that, but was at my competition at the time, so I wont beat myself up to bad over it.

Anyway, I as a JOE, would have preferred that the eliminators win but I lose, than, what I saw as a fairly big risk to delay, convert, and then try to win. I as well thought there would be 2 more spammers.  Though if we had killed Walin and the game hadn't ended, I might have been more willing to pursue the JOE wincon... Just... Scanning is good...

Edited April 7, 2019 by Furamirionind
Added some comments on JOE

[DeTess]

2 hours ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

Fourthly, My thoughts on Walin.

I decided to have Walin enter the game as Vashikaran. Was that a good, unbiased move on my part? I don't think so. I think it was necessary to give both the Spammers and the JOE's a fighting chance. But I don't know if I would have done it had none of the spammers been dead yet. What do you guys think? (Also, apparently The Storm guessed I had put him in as an elim)

I don't think making Walin a spammer was a bad call. Our primary purpose here is to have fun, not to win, and adding in an elim when it seemed things where looking really bad for them allowed them to stay in the game a bit longer.

Something I've been thinking about wrt to the game as a whole was the whole role-claim thing. I think that's basically inevitable in a game with safe roles like this, even with PM's closed, as a lot of the roles could be proven by using them. Something very similar happened in an MR I co-gm'd last year. I think the best way to avoid this (apart from not running a  game with distinct village and elim roles) would be to allow the elims to perform several conversions. If at least half the elim team consists of converted villagers, you can't really trust anyone based on their role. Including more 'passive' roles would make it harder as well, as those can't be proven.

Edit: and @Alvron, I totally get being annoyed when someone votes on you for the wrong reasons (it's something that annoys me as well when it happens to me), so I already assumed your takedown of my wrong assumptions was motivated by that, rather than your alignment.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Randuir
grammar stuff

[Lumgol]

@Elandera, no problem! I had a feeling you'd make a great teammate  

[Mailliw73]

4 hours ago, A Joe in the Bush said:

Fourthly, My thoughts on Walin.

I decided to have Walin enter the game as Vashikaran. Was that a good, unbiased move on my part? I don't think so. I think it was necessary to give both the Spammers and the JOE's a fighting chance. But I don't know if I would have done it had none of the spammers been dead yet. What do you guys think? (Also, apparently The Storm guessed I had put him in as an elim)

Finally, My thoughts on the Game as a whole.

Like I said, this game was a hot mess, and was fun to watch. Some people were really excited about their roles, others were not. Lots of people laughed and had fun. Some people went inactive. It was a pretty average game for me. I don't think the game as it is can be rerun. Certain features certainly can. For instance, when the Spammers first got to their doc, none of them had roles. I assigned roles to the team, but they got to divvy them up as they saw fit. That is a feature that I definitely like, and will probably be keeping in some of my future games. 

Either way, thank you for playing in our game, and please go upvote xxGaea, Alvron, Little Wilson, and Steeldancer. All 4 of them deserve more upvotes than they got.

About Walin, I don’t actually support the decision without context. Almost always, a GM adding an eliminator to the game partway through because they’re losing upsets the balance of the game. It’s extremely important for the GM to remain unbiased even with immense bad luck on one side. That said, in this game, where Walin was supposed to be added from the beginning is different to me. There wasn’t a way to add him to either team without upsetting the original balance in some way (except maybe as a third party, but there was already the JOE and I don’t think joe wanted another neutral), so doing as was done this game, I agree with the decision. It’s extremely difficult and not something that should really be done in just about any context, but in this one instance, circumstances demanded a change and this one would benefit the game as whole better than any other option. 

About proving roles, that’s one thing I wish I had done differently. I decided to go back to an old!Maill move and make up a roleclaim; I didn’t realize how many people would actually claim back. PM safety was apparently not very emphasized recently. I do still advocate trust in games, but in this game, I wouldn’t have actually tried to prove roles if I were to play again as I think it detracts in a lot of ways from the fun of the game. It’s definitely not even close for impossible for an elim team to win in a game with proven roles, it just adds an extra obstacle. But for me personally, this game reminded me that I don’t enjoy proven village roles; even if they exist in the game, they don’t need to be claimed. 

Lastly, Wilson didn’t play this game, so where would I give her upvotes?

[Alvron]

7 hours ago, Fifth Scholar said:

Also props to @Alvron for his gambit during C3–if that had been successful, it would have turned the tables. 

4 hours ago, The Storm said:

As the resident gambit-taker, I also applaud Alv’s audacity in that tied lynch gambit. He could’ve converted Steel then, but decided to go big or go home.  that’s a gambit for the ages. 

Thank you, thank you.  *bows*  I figured I had a 75% chance of surviving so it was worth the risk even with all the bad luck we started with.  I take blame for that too.  I suspect the Gods of Luck and Chance did not like me changing my name so they dumped a big heaping of bad luck on my team.  Sorry team.  
If I had survived but not gotten the guess right, I would've claimed to have been roleblocked and with Steel converted, which he would've been if I survived, there wouldn't be a counter claim.  Would that have worked?  Not sure.  But at very least I would've survived the night and then forced the Elims to waste another day of discussion on me.  Plenty of time to get Steel up and running.

2 hours ago, Randuir said:

Edit: and @Alvron, I totally get being annoyed when someone votes on you for the wrong reasons (it's something that annoys me as well when it happens to me), so I already assumed your takedown of my wrong assumptions was motivated by that, rather than your alignment.

I figured you would understand but wanted to make sure as some people could see it as me using RL to influence the game unfairly.

8 hours ago, Steeldancer said:

My clone was unfortunately murdered by a spammer robot, so I got my laptop back at least. I’ll say something more relevant later. 

Alvbot gets his revenge!

You were very lucky Steel.  If I hadn't died you would've been Converted.  Your brag about being untouchable made you the ideal target.  Especially since you got two actions due to having two accounts.  Untouchable on main account and killing with Elephant.  Combined with Walin's roleblock and this game could've gone much more differently.

[A Joe in the Bush]

25 minutes ago, The Storm said:

Lastly, Wilson didn’t play this game, so where would I give her upvotes?

Orlok was busy enough that she ended up being the IM for the game in all but name. I went to her about Walin and about PM's.

Also, Alvron and Steel, that was funny to watch. Steel made a bad assumption, and never once protected himself during a day cycle. He would have been convertable even without a roleblock because of that.

[Steeldancer]

I was well aware of the fact that the conversion could occur during the day, I probably wouldn’t have claimed if Alvron hadn’t died. But he had, and I was aware of no other abilities that could touch me during the day. So I claimed. 

Real question is whether anyone figured me out before I claimed... I haven’t read the spammer doc yet, but I’m hoping no one did. 

Also, I didn’t have two actions. I basically could do nothing with elephant other than vote. 

Edited April 8, 2019 by Steeldancer

[Alvron]

8 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

I was well aware of the fact that the conversion could occur during the day, I probably wouldn’t have claimed if Alvron hadn’t died. But he had, and I was aware of no other abilities that could touch me during the day. So I claimed. 

Real question is whether anyone figured me out before I claimed... I haven’t read the spammer doc yet, but I’m hoping no one did. 

Also, I didn’t have two actions. I basically could do nothing with elephant other than vote. 

You claimed the same day I died.  If I hadn't been killed by the lynch, you would've been Converted that turn.

In the Spammer Doc, I did comment that it would've been funny if you were the Mutli boxer role given the whole clone thing you had going.

You, Steel, could've used your action to prevent others from targeting you and also used Elephant to kill if you were a Spammer.  You would've been albe to kill as that's a faction ability not a role ability.

[Steeldancer]

36 minutes ago, Alvron said:

You claimed the same day I died.  If I hadn't been killed by the lynch, you would've been Converted that turn.

In the Spammer Doc, I did comment that it would've been funny if you were the Mutli boxer role given the whole clone thing you had going.

You, Steel, could've used your action to prevent others from targeting you and also used Elephant to kill if you were a Spammer.  You would've been albe to kill as that's a faction ability not a role ability.

Never mind I just read the doc, totally forgot about when you died. Yeah, that was dumb lol. And I read that; BUT NONE OF YOU GUESSED ME MWHAHAHA even if I was dumb it all worked out fine. I think I had assumed that you had already used the conversion because you killed Maill. Figured he would be a better convert than kill. 

I noticed Rae commented that I sounded more Steel later at night. That is true, I tend to be a bit less surgical later at night. I also deliberately had Elephant and Steel interact with one another, as I assumed it would be suspicious if they never interacted. But overall it seems no one was on to me really, and that my only major screw up was assuming the conversion had already been used. And I won’t lie there was a part of me that was secretly hoping to be converted. Could have made all the same claims I did, but lied all the way through them. Its actually a bit terrifying lol. 

Oh, and I will note it is difficult to keep up 2 accounts, while not appearing to be the same person. Especially with my particular personality. 
Ok, now that I'm back on laptop, I'll just edit in my thoughts. 
My role claim was dumb, it appears. I got over confident, and would have totally deserved being converted. It also would have been fun to be converted, with my role always scanning as Troll and Elephant being confirmed village. 
My one thing with Elephant that I knew in the moment wasn't the smartest was my interaction with Alvron. I was too trolly with those votes, and that was a very Steel thing to do. But, I couldn't help myself. Again, the late at night= less surgical. Especially as I was primarily using Elephant on my laptop and Steel on my phone, and my laptop is easier to use. Other than that, I'm proud of how different they sounded. Turns out I do have different village modes; one very analytical, another one a bit more rambunctious/crazy. 
If I had been converted before I decided to pick up Vodiyehi, I would have indeed picked up temptation. Again, there was a part of me that was wishing that would happen. 
I agree that the PMs were a bit OP, although I didn't utilize them as well as I probably should have. I do wonder how long I could have kept up the charade, especially while trying to keep both accounts active. I probably could have just let Steeldancer slip into inactivity, especially with my RL schedule, but that wouldn't really have been honest. So, I'm happy with how it played out. That was a really fun game to play, Joe. Great job designing it. I would love to see more Meta games in the future. 

Edited April 8, 2019 by Steeldancer

[Young Bard]

Ha. That was incredibly fun - I definitely think that someone should run more meta games in the future (I don't know if Joe and Gaea have plans for it - with Joe's wrap-up it doesn't sound like it, but I hope so). Getting to play dress-up for a little while was fun. Part of me had a bit of RP planned for if @Fifth Scholar died and I was the last remaining mod/god character, which I'm a little disappointed I didn't get to see to fruition, though.  (They just had to vote and be active every cycle as well, so I wouldn't be tempted into nudging that particular ambition along... )

And yeah, that was just incredibly bad luck on the Eliminator's part - Roadwalker might have been relatively cleared after the Day 1 lynch, because usually 2 Eliminators up for the lynch is quite rare - frankly, I decided to kill them more a a partial inactive and a way of moving discussion back into what I saw as more useful territory than out of any genuine suspicion - it was just bad luck. It also put Devotary's vote in a much more suspicious light.

IIRC, this was @May I suggest The Only Joe's last game before they head out on their mission. I think I speak for the community when I say we'll miss you, and that we can't wait for you to come back in 2 years time. I remember your first game in LG29 when you seemed like you had a lot of potential, so decided to convert you to my team - I think you more than lived up to that potential, in that game and in every game since. Good luck.

[DeTess]

8 hours ago, Metabardnition said:

IIRC, this was @May I suggest The Only Joe's last game before they head out on their mission. I think I speak for the community when I say we'll miss you, and that we can't wait for you to come back in 2 years time. I remember your first game in LG29 when you seemed like you had a lot of potential, so decided to convert you to my team - I think you more than lived up to that potential, in that game and in every game since. Good luck.

I know that the rest of this is an important sentiment, with which I readily agree, but only LG29!? I thought Joe was way more of a veteran than me.  

edit: wait, no, I'm being dumb, that referred to drought. The sentiment still stands though.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Randuir

[Rathmaskal]

OK, I had a great time with this game (very unfortunate I was mostly afk for cycle 1, missed out on a lot of activity)

I really enjoyed the JOE mechanic.  I will note that when I received the PM notifying me I was converted, I was a bit...uh...overwhelmed.  Thought it was quite funny and definitely a good balancing act for what seemed to be a slightly stronger village.

I also enjoyed the fact that Eliminators had to be clarified...kind of.  The meta is strong with this one.

Overall, I would love to see this game (or a version of it) played again, if only to see whether or not the eliminators have a better shot at winning without some rather incredible bad luck on their part.

Edit: Oh, wow, just went back and read the last few posts from the final cycle.  Walin's role claim is terrific.  Literal LOL here.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Rathmaskal

[Furamirionind]

4 hours ago, Rathmaskal said:

Edit: Oh, wow, just went back and read the last few posts from the final cycle.  Walin's role claim is terrific.  Literal LOL here.

Hahahaha I hadn't read the last turn at all.  That roleclaim was genious.  Too bad it didnt save you, I think it deserved to.

Edit:

@The Storm Sorry for not sharing my role with you... granted, being a Seeker I hope that was understandable, especially as I was certain you would become the convert.

Reading the spammer doc, I am surprised Alv didnt put me on his list of likely seekers... I thought I was being a bit obvious about it in thread... though perhaps that was interpreted as a bluff.

I AM super disapointed though I never got to use the role to its fullest.  No one ever tried to lynch me, so I always had to scan the person i voted on, which as it was a 2 cycle step, meant that in C1, where I voted on Rae, the scan was basically a waste, and I couldn't change it.

I was planning on claiming that the person I vote on gets an extra life, and people that vote on me I can redirect them among others that vote on me... but I never had the oportunity to get anything from that claim. : /

Edited April 9, 2019 by Furamirionind

[Mailliw73]

5 hours ago, Furamirionind said:

 

@The Storm Sorry for not sharing my role with you... granted, being a Seeker I hope that was understandable, especially as I was certain you would become the convert.

I mean, you did? You didn’t tell me exactly how it worked, but the Analyst name wasn’t super vague haha. But I do get the distrust, even if I don’t advocate it. I was surprised I was killed instead of converted too, but it was Alv and Alv never is a predictable eliminator. 

[Fifth Scholar]

With a little over two months since discussion died down here, it’s time to close this game up. Many thanks to Joe and Gaea for this wonderfully meta game. Between the proselytising for various SE religions, and the username changes which many employed, it’s safe to say people enjoyed and engaged with the setting. Congrats to the actual Sharders for their cleansing of the forum, and to the Spambots for putting up a valiant fight against long odds in the shadow of the banhammer.

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Orlok, Alvron or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. 

You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. 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 thinking about. If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, A Joe in the Bush, or Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private.

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