Long Game 60: The Shadow Over the Forests of Hell

[Elandera]

Elbereth has been lynched! They were an Archaeologist!

Vote Count
Rathmaskal (1) - Xinoehp512, Devotary
Elbereth (3) - Rathmaskal

Player List

Spoiler

1. Xinoehp512
2. Rathmaskal
3. Fifth Scholar Dagon’s Will
4. Cadmium Compounder Necromancer
5. Araris Valerian Fort Folk
6. shanerockes Journalist
7. Amanuensis Government Agent
8. Butt Ad Venture Bodyguard
9. StrikerEZ Gravedigger
10. Elbereth/Ventyl Archaeologist
11. ILuvHats
12. Sart Criminal Fort Folk Dagon’s Will
13. Ark1002 Archaeologist
14. Devotary of Spontaneity

 

This turn will end Tuesday, October 22 at 6 p.m. PDT.

[Rathmaskal]

Guess there isn't much to say, is there?  Glad you decided to swap your vote over Devotary.  Now we need to focus on xino.  If El wasn't elim, it has to be xino!

[Elandera]

About one hour left to get in your actions!

[Elandera]

The turn has ended, and so has the game (finally). Stand by for the final results.

[Elandera]

Devotary of Spontaneity has been sacrificed! They were the Governor!

The game is over! The Great Old One, Dagon, has awakened! The Esoteric Order of Dagon has succeeded and Fort Innsmouth has been destroyed.

Player List

Spoiler

1. Xinoehp512 Fort Folk
2. Rathmaskal Deep One
3. Fifth Scholar Dagon’s Will
4. CadCom Necromancer
5. Araris Valerian Fort Folk
6. shanerockes Journalist
7. Amanuensis Government Agent
8. Butt Ad Venture Bodyguard
9. StrikerEZ Gravedigger
10. Elbereth/Ventyl Archaeologist
11. ILuvHats Founder
12. Sart Criminal Fort Folk Dagon’s Will
13. Ark1002 Archaeologist
14. Devotary of Spontaneity Governor

Document Links

Elim Doc
Dead Doc
Master Spreadsheet
Full Rules

Edited October 23, 2019 by Elandera

[xinoehp512]

Of course.  

Was there any way for the village to win that one, realistically?

[Elbereth]

Yes.  But after I died it did get a lot less likely, I think. 

Good game, all! That was fun. 

[Rathmaskal]

WOW.  Ok, I had this post typed up for RP purposes in the doc..., please enjoy:

The Deep One smirked.  “Rathinald here.” Little things like that always put these foolish villagers at ease.  Clearly no one with such a discernible personality tick like that could be dangerous. After all the years of destroying little villages like this, reaping the rewards of ‘catching’ the perpetrators, and then moving on, no one had ever suspected him.  No one had ever really been clued into the fact that no matter what happened, cults...disappearances...hauntings...Rathinald was always available, for a moderate fee befitting his professional status and record of success of course, to come in and save these poor villages.  The key was always making sure that it was ever so slightly different from village to village. With this one, he’d gone back to the old ways...the days of fire, blood, and fanatical loyalty. It had been years since he’d been able to enjoy a devoted cultist throwing herself on the fire to further his ends.  The fact that this woman had begun as a kindly old grandmother had made the flames so much more sweet and satisfying.

These villagers had proven slightly more annoying than his normal situation.  They’d actually come close to catching him this time around. He hadn’t planned on it, but he let himself fully indulge.  It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to completely destroy a village down to the last man, woman, and child.  This would be a stain on Rathinald’s name, but perhaps Rathinald had been TOO perfect. Perhaps the fact that Rathinald had always managed to save these villages had caused this suspicion.  This should remedy that. The Deep One Smirked. “Rathinald here.”

 

~~

 

So, please don't make fun of me too much for my 20 pages of raving madness in the elim doc.  This game was incredibly entertaining and challenging.  Thanks to Elandera for putting it on!

 

So, my thoughts:

• @ILuvHats - We did it!  Thanks for being around enough to submit those vote manipulations!  Those were clutch!
• @xinoehp512 - in response to your post that just ninjaed me, if you take a look at my rantings once the elim doc is out, you'll see that you had a very real chance of winning that game.  I (and Hats) had a lot of lucky rolls late in that game.
• @Devotary of Spontaneity - I played so much IKYK with myself trying to determine whether you'd take advantage of me giving you my entire strategy via PM...
• @Elbereth - great job coming in as a sub late in the game and surviving...and surviving...and clearly seeing that I was the elim from the start.  (And great timing on the ninja as I'm typing this line right as you post)
• @Sart - Thanks for being a great one-turn teammate!
• @Fifth Scholar - Great playing with you as elim.  Your sacrifice was quite timely and definitely gave me a fun bit of RP for my above post.
• To everyone else, hope this was a fun one!

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Rath, how long after rollover did you submit a redirect action on me? One of the first time Hats prevented the lynch was just bad luck with my base failure chance(which really should have happened at least once to Hats, as a 20% failure chance over the last several lynches), but the other times were my fault. I kept forgetting that redirect actions resolve chronologically and not submitting my action immediately when the cycle opened.

[StrikerEZ]

This game was so much more fun once I died, honestly.

I'm still sad I didn't get to use my kills, but if I had, this game probably would've ended earlier. Which would be sad.

@Rathmaskal Good job at almost singlehandedly managing to keep your elim team alive. If it weren't for you, the game probably would've ended a lot sooner. Well, you, and the very lucky odds you had.  

[Elandera]

1 hour ago, xinoehp512 said:

Was there any way for the village to win that one, realistically?

Yes, though it may not have seemed that way toward the end. The village had a very good hold in the mid-game, but faltered a bit because of inactivity. This last turn was going to be decided a lot by RNG and the decisions of whom to target with abilities. Rath chose again to attack Hats, knowing there was a very good possibility he'd be redirected. That protected them from losing the vote manipulation role, and gave a 1/3 chance of hitting him with the kills, which only had a 25% chance of success. Very clever decisions led to the elim win.

21 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

Rath, how long after rollover did you submit a redirect action on me? One of the first time Hats prevented the lynch was just bad luck with my base failure chance(which really should have happened at least once to Hats, as a 20% failure chance over the last several lynches), but the other times were my fault. I kept forgetting that redirect actions resolve chronologically and not submitting my action immediately when the cycle opened.

He submitted the action basically right away. It was the first action submission that cycle. Also, RNG was a fickle mistress this game. It heavily favored the elims in some ways (like not making Hats fail), and in other ways, really favored Elbereth specifically. RNG did not regard you well, unfortunately. 

Speaking which, I'm going to add a few of my thoughts now. I had this conversation with El in the dead doc, but one of the biggest changes I'd make to the game is how much RNG played into the end result. I realize it probably made the players (especially villagers) fell like they didn't actually have control over the outcome of the game. I'd also probably make Mists of Releh a spellbook item that could be acquired like the rest of the items, or a role-specific ability.

I'd definitely change the insanity rules, as well. Poor Devotary took the brunt of the insanity this game, and I'm sure that didn't help you feel involved at all. I hadn't expected it to be so rampant, especially on one player alone. I enjoyed the general idea of insanity, but would probably change it to not insane for two cycles in a row, rather than turns. That way there couldn't be the issue that we ran into with Devotary, where the governor is discovered and targeted by the Deep One every night turn.

The Deep One mechanics are also something that would need adjusting. With the smaller player count, 1/3 of Fort Folk votes didn't play a huge role (at most, 3 votes were required from Fort Folk, and that wasn't for long), it also meant the Deep One felt a little too invincible. Having the Gravedigger killed so quickly didn't help with that.

Role-claiming and the rampant problem of provable, hard-clear roles was an interesting problem as well. This was that spot in the mid-game where it really felt like the village would have a landslide win. People were becoming cleared left and right once they figured out the Bounty Hunter role didn't exist or was inactive. The small player count meant sacrificing some of the balance for making sure the game didn't end as quickly as a QF with too many kill roles.

I would probably make the game a little less role-madness in favor of items and actions for everyone. 

A huge thanks goes to @Snipexe, who was an invaluable co-GM who put up with me. I tend to get a little over-excited and want to do all the things (just ask Fifth...  ). We developed the rules together after realizing last year we wanted a Lovecraft-themed game for Halloween. I just had a little more free-time to handle the minutia. So please, if you like the game and feel like giving up-votes for it, make sure to send them his way.

I also wanted to thank @Elbereth for stepping in to pinch-hit. You were a blessing for the village, and almost helped bring them victory along with Devotary and Xino. 

A huge congratulations to the elim team, @Rathmaskal, @ILuvHats, @Fifth Scholar, and @Sart. You all did a fantastic job this game, Rath especially. I know it felt a little hopeless for you at times, but your dedication to pushing through was fantastic. You definitely deserved the win for how well you played.

@Devotary of Spontaneity, thank you for sticking with this game, despite the constant insanity issues. 

There's part of me that is grateful for PM spying not being as rampant as I'd expected, but I am also sad the Worship action wasn't used more. You'll see in the full rules that there was a possibility for conversion if used.  Voice in the Crowd was also not used nearly as much as I had expected. 

Of course, thanks to everyone for playing. It lasted much longer than expected, but I do hope you enjoyed it. Please, if you have any suggestions for what you'd change, I'd love to hear them. What action/rules did you enjoy most? Which would you liked to have used more? Which did you not care for at all?

[Snipexe]

I agree with basically everything Elandera said. This was a really interesting game to run, especially when there were several times that I thought both teams had an easy victory. Overall though, I gotta give a shoutout to the elims, especially Rath, seeing as you managed to pulloff a really close game. 

A big thanks to @Elberethfor stepping in for Ventyl!

I'm going to be honest, I think this game broke just a tad with the slightly fewer number of players than average, seeing as it made things like insanity, wrath of the shades, and other RNG related mechanics have a much larger than expected impact. As Elandera said, I think if this game was to be run again, it would be best to reduce/modify some of these RNG related mechanics, making them less damaging to the village, and overall less impactful to the gamestate.

Also, having a redirect as an action available to everyone maaay have been a might overpowered/unbalanced, but it definitely made things significantly more chaotic.

Finally, a massive thanks to @Elandera for running this game with me. I would never have been able to do it on my own, and especially as IRL stuff ramped up significantly midway through the game (which incidentally is why the write-ups died off). So please send some upvotes her way.

[Fifth Scholar]

I very much enjoyed this game while I was alive—my only comment on balance would be the confirmed good roles, which Elandera already addressed farther up. The game probably would have been fine in this regard if it weren’t for the Government Agent, which really seemed to give the village quite a lot of power. I will say I had a mild panic attack when @Amanuensis and I had our intense 3-hour PM, and not slipping throughout that entire back-and-forth was very hard, especially since the conversation was moving quickly enough that I couldn’t talk to my team.  Once I figured out enough about his role, we made sure to kill him because getting that conversion off would have been fatal to our chances of ever pulling off a win with Rath alive, and the unassailability of Devotary, Sart, Araris and Venture made me sacrifice myself C3, which, despite our incredibly poor luck with the shades, did eliminate at least half of that group.  

That said, full credit to @Rathmaskal and @ILuvHats for the win. You two stuck in there to the end, and made my first elim game a ton of fun  Especially props to Rath for misleading the village for just long enough to whittle things down to parity, and trolling and planning your actions magnificently.

[Araris Valerian]

Great game everyone, and a special thanks to our GMs for the fun! I look forward to killing you all some more in the future.

[Rathmaskal]

11 hours ago, Elandera said:

Of course, thanks to everyone for playing. It lasted much longer than expected, but I do hope you enjoyed it. Please, if you have any suggestions for what you'd change, I'd love to hear them. What action/rules did you enjoy most? Which would you liked to have used more? Which did you not care for at all?

Actions?  I obviously had to use my role actions quite a bit, but Mists and Voice were both terrific actions I thought.  Whisper I wish I would have found a good use for, and I'm sure some people did.

I just finished reading through the spec/dead doc and rather enjoyed the conversation.  Love this quote from *checks colors* Elbereth:

Quote

it’s been less like SE and more like a battle of wits where everyone has near-complete information and the only question is what to do with it.

Made me think of The Princess Bride.

As for The Deep One clue, you say that the roles were assigned randomly...but the 'names' part of that definitely got some people (Devotary specifically I think) thinking about role distribution based on RP name...and it actually fit fairly well.

• Governor - Lord Ghent
• Deep One - Rahtinald Maskworth
• Archaeologist - Arr. K...
• Founder - Kill-sin
• Enansi - I'm assuming xino had Iron Will?
• (Yes, I realize I'm stretching the further down I get) Tim - the Enchanter Necromancer

If that wasn't the case, things were quite entertaining thing of it that way.

[+Ed Venture]

Wow...and here I was thinking that this game would never end! 

Great game Rath, Fifth, Hats, and of course, Sart! You all made a great Eliminator team! 

Time to read through the docs! This'll be fun.

[Elandera]

2 hours ago, Rathmaskal said:

As for The Deep One clue, you say that the roles were assigned randomly...but the 'names' part of that definitely got some people (Devotary specifically I think) thinking about role distribution based on RP name...and it actually fit fairly well.

Roles were randomly assigned.  But yes, some happened to fit their RP names fairly well. 

As for the Deep One clue, it was created after Rath was chosen as the Deep One. The italic half is an adjusted HP Lovecraft quote, and the rest is an adjusted SFSitFoH quote. The bold word is the hint.  

Quote

I wonder at the vast conceit of those who desire to wake the Ancient ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams at the request of mere mortals. Still, I wonder more at the Deep One, who may yet succeed at calling their names and rousing Them from slumber to wreak a wrath on mankind. That was the end of all. Names. Names do not carry weight for most in the Forests. Though for some, the right ones mean everything.

 

2 hours ago, Butt Ad Venture said:

Wow...and here I was thinking that this game would never end! 

Same, Venture. Same.

Though I'm glad we switched to 24hr turns at the end... otherwise there would have been a lot of wasted time.

[Rathmaskal]

9 minutes ago, Elandera said:

As for the Deep One clue, it was created after Rath was chosen as the Deep One. The italic half is an adjusted HP Lovecraft quote, and the rest is an adjusted SFSitFoH quote. The bold word is the hint.

Yes!  It would have been a travesty if I didn't get the clue when I knew I was looking for myself...  Glad I at least had that as a possibility.

[Furamirionind]

I missed the first elim!Fifth game? :'(

[Sart]

While I had a lot of fun, there was one thing I was really disappointed by. The Criminal's win condition was nearly impossible. First, I had to survive til Night 5. In a game with only fourteen people, that isn't very likely assuming normal kill patterns. Secondly, my action had a 20% chance of failure. 0.8^5=0.32768, which meant that even if I survived til Night 5, I only had a 33% chance of actually having my win condition then. Third, not everyone started out with items, and items were consumable goods. That made my win condition even harder. Fourth, I had a 10% chance of going insane every night, which reduced the chance of my stealing action succeeding to 70%. 0.7^5= 0.16807. That meant I only had a 1 in 6 chance of accomplishing my goal on Cycle 5, as long as RNG didn't interfere. Plus, I had to dodge any and all action scans. After doing the math, that's why I decided to self-sabotage. I knew there was a better chance of me winning if I was a confirmed villager, than as a thief with a ridiculous win condition.

[Elandera]

42 minutes ago, Sart said:

While I had a lot of fun, there was one thing I was really disappointed by. The Criminal's win condition was nearly impossible. First, I had to survive til Night 5. In a game with only fourteen people, that isn't very likely assuming normal kill patterns. Secondly, my action had a 20% chance of failure. 0.8^5=0.32768, which meant that even if I survived til Night 5, I only had a 33% chance of actually having my win condition then. Third, not everyone started out with items, and items were consumable goods. That made my win condition even harder. Fourth, I had a 10% chance of going insane every night, which reduced the chance of my stealing action succeeding to 70%. 0.7^5= 0.16807. That meant I only had a 1 in 6 chance of accomplishing my goal on Cycle 5, as long as RNG didn't interfere. Plus, I had to dodge any and all action scans. After doing the math, that's why I decided to self-sabotage. I knew there was a better chance of me winning if I was a confirmed villager, than as a thief with a ridiculous win condition.

That is something else I'd change in the balance of things. The win-con was created for a game of at least 20 players. We forgot to adjust your win-con to better fit the new player count. 

(Somehow the middle of my post was deleted, so I'll type it again.) You do bring up a good point about probability, though. In the future, if I didn't remove the criminal entirely, I'd give them more protection against insanity. The mask would have made things a little easier in not being tracked. And had the archaeologist been active, there should have been more items available.

I do apologise, Sart, that you got the bad end of this deal. Hopefully the one-day conversion to elim and eventual win helped make up for that.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Elandera

[Elbereth]

It's well past time for this game to be closed up. Many thanks to Elandera for such a lovely game - I had great fun in it, even if I only pinchhit, got extremely lucky, and then died.  Well done to the eliminators for managing to scrape out a victory, and especially to Rath for being an excellent Deep One. 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, 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!  

Edited May 23, 2020 by Elbereth