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7 minutes ago, Straw said:

Well that was a fun game! :P

I had a lot of fun altering my speech, but no one seems to have noticed.

I mean... I never would have guessed you were Swan, but I don't think I've played with you enough to feel like I know your speech pattern.
I caught Devotary and CadCom (to an extent) because I know them much better than the average SEer.

I also thought Kas was Rath... But as Rath wasn't in the game, I feel kind of fine about that guess xD

The only other person here who i think I might have even had a chance of guessing is Bard, but I didn't interact with them enough. : /

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Alright, for those of you (like me) who just skim the dead doc for references to myself, let me explain a few things. 

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The reason this was blackout? There really wasn't one. At least not with the rules as they turned out to be. The original iteration of this game had the Soul Forger as an eliminator, with a neutral Thief role. The Soul Forger would have had access to four anonymous accounts, and could post from each of them. It would have been a one-person elim team. After some wise advice from the balance committee (Thanks @A Joe in the Bush and @Fifth Scholar), and seeing some of the low player counts at the LG, I decided it would be wise to make it a more standard elim set-up. By then, though, I'd been so excited about it that I'd posted more than once about it being anon/blackout. So blackout it remained.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the rules themselves played out. As I said more than once in the spec doc, it was a series of unfortunate events for the village this game, compounded by a lack of activity (I was not quiet about that in the doc, either. Sorry about that. I really do love you all :D). 

A huge congratulations goes out to @DeTess. You did a fantastic job becoming trusted by some key players in the game. @Hemalurgic Headshot and @Furamirionind also played very good games at staying under the radar. Fura, thanks for sticking around, even though you've not had the motivation. Focusing on yourself is definitely more important than a game.

Thanks to @Kasimir, for enduring my ramblings in the dead doc. It was good to have you in there, even if it meant a loss for the game.

Oh, and congratulations to @Haelbarde. RNG really wanted you to be the Soul Forger. We were all rooting for you in the dead doc :D. You had good strategy overall, clear up until you trusted the wrong person.

Oh, Fura! Art dies with the person who holds it. Sorry I kept PAFOing you on that.

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1 hour ago, Furamirionind said:

I mean... I never would have guessed you were Swan, but I don't think I've played with you enough to feel like I know your speech pattern

I just kind of threw in a ton of random quirks (two spaces after sentences, emojis before periods, british spelling, votes in the forum text colorer instead of BBcode, and no contractions or abbreviations.

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Part of me reads the spec doc, and takes pride in how no one was certain of my alignment, even when there were so few people for them to choose from. But then I remember that I only made a handful of posts throughout the entire game, didn't PM, and only posted one attempt at analysis.

Sorry. Mobile's a pain. 

Anyway I disagree. It did make it difficult to figure out your allegiance and if the Village had more room to play in, I'd probably have bit the bullet and suggested a terminal Seek on you. The point is that deliberate (undeliberate) inactivity in your case, is a fair Eliminator tactic. This game is an illustration of where that's effective. 

If anything, I'd put the onus on Villitage. There are ways to counter inactivity as a strategy. Contribution Crusaders, as Bard calls them. The Wyrm Inquisition, as I prefer. Or a kill role going Meta and killing inactives to flush people out into activity. It's not great but it's not terrible either.

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13 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Sorry. Mobile's a pain. 

Anyway I disagree. It did make it difficult to figure out your allegiance and if the Village had more room to play in, I'd probably have bit the bullet and suggested a terminal Seek on you. The point is that deliberate (undeliberate) inactivity in your case, is a fair Eliminator tactic. This game is an illustration of where that's effective. 

If anything, I'd put the onus on Villitage. There are ways to counter inactivity as a strategy. Contribution Crusaders, as Bard calls them. The Wyrm Inquisition, as I prefer. Or a kill role going Meta and killing inactives to flush people out into activity. It's not great but it's not terrible either.

I quite agree with this. Activity can never be guaranteed from anyone. Life happens. We understand.

@Furamirionind, you were, by no means, the least active player in the game. Had you been the only lesser-active player, it wouldn't have been an issue. Village would have been around enough to look at all the players more and hopefully glean something from your content. As Sart once told me as an elim, village activity was not my responsibility. Their lack of effort (still love you all, even with lower activity :D) is not your fault. There wasn't a ton, compared to your usual contribution, but there was enough there to provide hints.

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@Haelbarde, you lied to me! You weren't village at all! :P 

Oof, this game. The final result might not show it, but this really came down to the wire in the end, and some very minor changes could have changed the entire game. A good example would be @Young Bard redirecting my action on the only cycle I didn't submit the kill, and that final cycle could have gone a lot of different ways.

So, first of all I'd like to thank @Furamirionind and @Hemalurgic Headshot for joining me on the elim team. You all did a very good job (yes, even you Furami. Real life happens but despite that you kept posting when you could find the time and energy to do so). I'd also like to thank @Elandera for running the game and writing a bunch of enjoyable write-ups.

I've also got some other game-thoughts. First, my act of pretending to be a new player was something I'd decided on in advance, and was not at all influenced by my alignment. I've been rather busy these past months, and hoped that acting like anew player would keep people from expecting too much from me, leaving me free to contribute exactly as much as I had time for. That having been said, I'm now 2/2 on perfect elim games for my first games, so... :D

Regarding how things went down in the end, @Haelbarde, what spurred your decision to kill falcon? I'd like to think it was my expertly engineering the situation to make it look like falcon tricked me into joining the hammer, but that's giving myself way too much credit for how things went down.

I might have more thoughts later for now, I'd like tot hank everyone I haven't thanked yet for making this a pretty enjoyable game!

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It's honestly taken me this long to respond because I was pretty angry about the conclusion to the game - without the village being active for me to interact with them, it was hard to do much in the last cycle or two (@Elandera - I wasn't given much choice on who I could trust... It's not like trusting inactives would have made things any different - it's not like they would have voted with me) (@Kasimir I would have probably murderised inactives if Elandera had actually given me permanent night kill immunity), and I was pretty angry with Weasel too - I felt emotionally manipulated by their sharing of life being hard for them, which I don't think is okay, particularly for eliminators. Say you will be/have been busy, apologise, then move on. I had otherwise had a kill order in on Weasel for most of that last cycle.

@DeTess I'm pretty sure I never said that I was village. You take that back. :ph34r:

(I don't actually recall if I did or not, but I'm pretty sure I didn't claim to be village. Not my style)

After I was guilt tripped out of killing Weasel, my thoughts were as follows. I wasn't sure if I trusted Swan, probably thought they were evil but they were bascially guaranteed to not have been putting in the kill or the sooth, so low priority. Mouse was probably getting lynched, although they then claimed to have a protect item in the end, so I figured they weren't a good option to kill once the lynch shifted - well done with that. I think I'd actually had the kill on Albatross for most of that, but then the hammer came. I figured if the hammer was happening, it was the eliminators doing it, and my very sleep deprived self (I stayed up until the end of cycle at 3:30 am local time because I knew there'd most likely be a hammer) had to decide in the moment between putting a kill on Falcon or Dingo. In the end, with no time to think about it, I went with Falcon as Penguin and Dragonfly had been suspicious of them and Falcon had been saved from a lynch in the past, while I had more of a non-read on Dingo. 

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@Haelbarde what would you do In my position? 

I had no motivation to do anything this game. But I tried.

I could have just gone 100% inactive. Would you have preferred that?

I WANTED TO DIE. so please. I would have loved for you to kill me.

I tried to get my faction to bus me. I specifically said in thread I wanted to die. Will you fault me for telling the truth?

I'm sorry I ruined the game for you. This is the third game in a row. Three strikes.

Edited by Furamirionind
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1 hour ago, Haelbarde said:

 and I was pretty angry with Weasel too - I felt emotionally manipulated by their sharing of life being hard for them, which I don't think is okay, particularly for eliminators. Say you will be/have been busy, apologise, then move on. I had otherwise had a kill order in on Weasel for most of that last cycle.

If you feel that way, then there's little I can do about it, but I disagree that Furami did anything wrong. If he'd tried to leverage his situation into trying to get some respite from the lynch or whatever, sure, but he did the opposite, stating that he'd be completely okay with getting lynched/night-killed for reasons unrelated to the game. If I'd been a village striker, I would probably have submitted a kill there as the worst-case was hitting a villager that'd indicated they wanted to step out of the game.

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1 hour ago, Haelbarde said:

It's honestly taken me this long to respond because I was pretty angry about the conclusion to the game - without the village being active for me to interact with them, it was hard to do much in the last cycle or two (@Elandera - I wasn't given much choice on who I could trust... It's not like trusting inactives would have made things any different - it's not like they would have voted with me) (@Kasimir I would have probably murderised inactives if Elandera had actually given me permanent night kill immunity)

The build of the Soul Forger is something I would change in hindsight. Along with my original plan to have had that role be the elim faction with four accounts came a longer survival ability. The Forger would not have been out of the game until all Marks and the main Forger body were dead. Unfortunately, you had the poor end of some last-minute rule changes. 

The village activity was also one of my biggest problems this game. You were placed in a very tough position, and the loss of big village players early was absolutely unhelpful. The Striker was taken out super early (before being able to act), as was the village manipulation. The Rememberer, who could have added more blocks/protections/kills was inactive and then dead.

Also, personally, I think that if any player no longer feels up to playing for any reason, they should inquire about a pinch hitter. I largely agree with DeTess's statement that Fura pushing to die because of circumstances wasn't in and of itself bad, but I think a pinch hitter is a better way to resolve it than sacrificing yourself.

I should have offered a pinch hitter, but as it was my first time GMing, and with no co-GM, I was focused on other things.

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@Elandera Honestly, it was fine. A different player would have used the other abilities, and if I had actually been attacked at any point during the game, I'd have immediately followed that up with my own kill. Just for whatever reason the eliminators didn't target me, and the striker unfortunately died. You just got stuck with me who didn't think it was worth sacrificing safety to use the more fun abilities.

@Furamirionind Oh, to be clear, you didn't ruin the game for me - I had a lot of fun that last cycle or two trying to work everything out. And while I was angry at you, I didn't have a good reason to be, and I'm certainly not upset about any more

The post that got to me was this one, rather than this post the cycle before. Those two posts are both fine, and there's little difference between them. For some reason the first one got to me and caused me change my actions while the second didn't, but that's certainly not your fault.

I think the main reason for my reaction was my lack of sleep anyway - I had stayed up all night till 5:30 am to be online for the end of cycle and the posting of results, which is something I never do. My sleep deprived brain then had to react to the game suddenly ending, and a player I had felt sorry for had ended up being an eliminator, so my brain decided to be unreasonable and leap to anger. It's just taken me have a week to actually confront that feeling and realise it was silly because I'd been trying to ignore it. But that's all on me, and not at all your fault. So sorry if I took out any of that on you.


Other thoughts - I tried to 'pretend' to be in a US time zone by trying to only post while the east coast would reasonably be awake. I referenced waiting for the west coast to wake up early in the game in hopes of implying I was east coast too. Don't know if that worked though. I tried also to avoid using my signature style of vote tallies. That was annoying because it was annoying not being able to compile the information I would normally include in such things. I mostly gave up with all that in the last cycle though.

Thanks everyone for the game, and thanks for running it @Elandera - I really enjoyed all the writeups!

Edited by Haelbarde
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“Aren’t we missing someone?” asked the head arbiter.

“Hmm?” The emperor had developed quite a talent for ignoring the droning of the head arbiter. The man liked to hear himself talk, even if no one else was listening.

That part where @Elandera presciently figured out how many pages I'd add to the dead doc out of sheer deceased boredom :P 

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  • 7 months later...

It's well past time for this game to be closed up. Very well done to Elandera for managing her first time GMing so well despite not having a co-GM and it being anonymous! The writeups were absolutely excellent as well - I always love Emperor's Soul settings, and they seem to routinely come with great writeups. Congrats to Tess, Fura, and HH for squeezing a win out of the game, and I hope to see you all playing again soon!

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, Araris Valerian, 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: 

Edited by Elbereth
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