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Mid-Range Game 36: The Northern Wind


DeTess

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Just now, Amanuensis said:

I saw that comment in the doc and was going to ask what you were referring to. Unfortunately excessive confidence (AKA arrogance) is one of my biggest character flaws at this point in my life, and while it is something I'm conscious of and am trying to work on, it can still surface in moments of high stress. That day was very bad for me, was dealing with some personal family things and wasnt able to get any genuine rest due to noisy neighbors and a bit of a heat wave. I shouldn't have just given up like I did, and will make sure it doesn't happen again.

It happens to everyone. : )
It's understandable, I had a very similar reaction to getting lynched LG56 due to similar reasons.

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I think if I were asked again what I thought before you put up the ruleset for the game, there is one major thing I'd recommend that Rand hasn't included in their GM thoughts - the Engineer role is just too powerful, for two reasons. First, it meant that anyone who wasn't an Engineer functionally wasn't meaningfully contributing to the game more than a vanilla player was, because any impact their role might have had was drowned out by what was going on with the engineers at the time. Second, it unbalanced the game slightly.

There are two ways for a game to be unbalanced. The first is whether it is biased towards one team over another. For this game, I'd say it was slightly biased towards the Elims, for the reasons Rand mentioned, but I don't think it was unbalanced in this way any more than a lot of games are. By contrast, I think the second type of balance is much more to do with how much both sides have the ability to recoup from their losses and make a comeback. In a well-balanced game (as an example, I'll take the Tyrian Falls games, which are in many ways still the standard that a lot of games here are based on), when an Villager dies, that's bad for the village, but that damage is likely mitigated by the new information that's learned from the death, and enables the village to make better guesses about who the Elim is in the future. And when an Elim dies, that's really bad for the Elim team, but with luck and skill they can turn it to their advantage if they've been able to distance themselves in the thread in the right way up to that point (that being said, in a standard mafia game, the longer a game drags out, the more likely it is to favour the village - normally, that's just something that has to be taken into account when creating the rules.) Another role that I love as a GM is the SK role - in a Village/Elim/SK situation, it's kind of auto-balancing for everyone except the SK themselves - the SK ideally wants to make sure that the Villagers and Elims are both neck on neck and so are at each others throats and aren't spending too much time actively looking for the SK.
[tangent] The SK role itself is usually quite badly unbalanced, but you can get away with that simply by virtue of how fun being an SK is, so the SK is also the perfect example of when it's completely OK to ignore balance in favour of other factors like fun. [/tangent]

By contrast, taking a look at Cycle 3 this game - as of 5 minutes before the end of the cycle, the lynch was a three way tie between Alv (Elim Engineer), Stick (Village Engineer), and Devotary (Elim Vanilla). Stick ended up being lynched, which was more or less the end of the game for the villagers, though they didn't 100% realise it yet (though quite a few people guessed). By contrast, if Alv had been lynched, it would have meant the villagers won the game. Only one part would have been sabotaged, and the bridge would have been restored. Assuming Stick wasn't lynched or murdered soon after, it would then have taken another 9 cycles for the Elims to have won via airship parts, by which time the village could easily have found the remaining Elims and lynched them.

Functionally, it just means that neither the Elim team nor the Village team had the ability to bounce back from defeat - once they'd lost their sides Engineer, there was almost nothing they could do to stop themselves from losing the game.

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I meant to do this awhile ago, but got kinda distracted and then I got busy. But now that I have some free time, enjoy this:

~

First of the Dawn stood on the prow of the ship, watching the water below far below her. In the distance, she could just make out the first island of the Pantheon. It was quite beautiful, being up this high. Kokerlii squawked from her shoulder, ruffling his vibrant feathers. It seemed he agreed with Dawn. 

 It had been painful at first, knowing she was stopping the one chance she would probably ever have of getting to see the Pantheon. After the death of her father, that had been her one goal in life. To see the islands he had cherished so much and had worked so hard to protect.

But it was her turn to protect the Pantheon now. She couldn't let this ship reach the islands.

She snuck back through the bowels of the ship, tools carefully stored in a belt around her waist. It was quiet as most of the crew was sleeping. Kokerlii would tap her shoulder every now and then, warning her of people walking through the halls. She'd managed to avoid the rest of the crew's suspicion so far, she couldn't risk getting caught now, not when her mission was almost complete. Not when the Ones Above were threatening her islands.

She finally reached the room which held the panels meant to control and maintain the port engine. The engineers must've been taking a break watching the engine, which was fortunate for Dawn. Pulling out a hammer and the schematics for the engine, she began to work.

With each swing, the ship began to move slower and slower. Finally, there was a loud boom as part of the engine exploded and the ship seemed to drop for a moment before the starboard engine caught it. Dawn picked herself up off the ground, crawling to the door to avoid the smoke that was coming from the engine. Kokerlii had flown out of the room during the chaos, and was waiting for her outside. She gathered him up, then began to ran towards the shuttles. She found Second, Twi, and Auseor waiting for her. They urged her on as the ship began to descend faster and faster. They quickly shut the door behind her, and launched the shuttle off. 

The others began to congratulate themselves for pulling off the mission. They'd have to hide from now on, but at least they'd have a significant amount of money from the SITC now. 

Dawn watched out the window as the Northern Wind crashed onto the shores of the first of Patji's Fingers. Her heart longed to be landing on those shores, stepping out onto that magnificent beach, and finally living up to her father's dreams. Wiping away the tears, she laid down across a couple of the seats in the shuttle. If she had to stay on the mainland to protect the Pantheon's, and her father's, legacy, she'd do it.

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Out of curiosity, if I'm reading the rules correctly, could the village all decided to visit the hospital and stay there permanently? Given it wasn't an action to visit, I don't see why they couldn't. 

Anyway, ignoring puppeteering, if the eliminators join the village in visiting the hospital, no one dies (no Elim kill, no sabotage, and no lynch), and the game goes on for ever, or the eliminators don't visit, get a kill and a lynch but then it's obvious who they are, for the village to then go and lynch. 

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5 hours ago, Haelbarde said:

Out of curiosity, if I'm reading the rules correctly, could the village all decided to visit the hospital and stay there permanently? Given it wasn't an action to visit, I don't see why they couldn't. 

Anyway, ignoring puppeteering, if the eliminators join the village in visiting the hospital, no one dies (no Elim kill, no sabotage, and no lynch), and the game goes on for ever, or the eliminators don't visit, get a kill and a lynch but then it's obvious who they are, for the village to then go and lynch. 

I suppose if literally everyone agreed to visit the hospital it would be possible, but the village would still lose 3 members for every elim they lynched (elim-forced lynch, elim-kill and the elim kill during the cycle everyone decided to return to lynch the elim), so I don't think this would have ended up being a particularly useful way to try and 'solve' the game.

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  • 9 months later...

It's well past time for this game to be closed up, with nearly a year since the last post. :P Many thanks to Bard and Tess for this fantastic game - we so rarely get First of the Sun games, and this one is both that and a sci-fi game. Makes me nostalgic for my first game, LG15. Congrats to the Saboteurs for winning, and see you in the next game! :) 

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Fifth Scholar, Devotary of Spontaneity, 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 (Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, Stink, Elandera, or Sart) 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! :ph34r: 

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