Mid-Range Game 1: The Stormfather and The Nightwatcher

[Gamma Fiend]

So the fact that I am now a Shade right after the game ended amuses me to no end, especially considering my QF Game will also take place on Threnody. Some cameos may need to happen during that game....

[jaelre]

They wanted your panda! Unfortunately, it was the wrong game.

[Lightsworn Panda]

Well... GG. I killed a sharder all on my own! We could have won if I hadn't though...

 

You sort of Kamikazeed the sharder. That was a pretty random move.

[Aonar]

Well, that was interesting.

 

For a minute there, I thought the Darkeyes were going to win. Then Rengar switched sides...

 

That was a really fun game though, even with how insanely complicated it got. Kudos to the Darkeyes for holding together so well. Had Rengar's boon/curse (which was brilliant) not worked out, you probably would have won.

 

I thought about trying to respond to Jaerle's whistles, but I can't whistle for the life of me either. 

 

I'm a little sad I never got to use my PMs for anything overly useful, but Rengar's post about the Broken Spanreed really messed me up in that regard. I could have PMed a Merchant, but I couldn't PM a Noble. I could have faked PMing Maill, but it ended up being safer just to kill him. (Not that it did much good. )

[Claincy]

First up: this was fun Thankyou Rubix/Wilson for running it.

 

Gamma should definitely get the Chronic Back (Stabbing) Pain award.

 

Also, in terms of Can't Touch This....Claincy definitely wins. 4 days, accumulating 23 votes (I think). He would also get Most Lynchable, seconded by Alvron, at 18 votes.

Heh, seriously? So glad to know you guys care. I'm curious as to what proportion of those votes were sharders.
I'm going to guess that an ardent defended me at least 1 cycle then.

 

Also, fun fact. Take a look at my member title

 

 

And now we get to the discussion of the rules/mechanics.

 

While I enjoyed the game I cannot say that it is the kind that I would prefer to play. It was extremely difficult to judge anyone's motivations or to figure out what roles and alignments people have and in my mind this is the very core of Elimination games. The only people you could really learn enough about to try to figure out were those in your own doc and while it certainly could be said that we all should have been talking to eachother in the main thread more (excluding 17s) the way the rules work discourages this and it shouldn't be surprising that that didn't happen.

 

About the nightwatcher. *sigh* the nightwatcher is fun, don't get me wrong. But the boons and curses make it even harder to work out players roles and alignments through reason and manipulation as anything can change completely at any time. Beyond that the nightwatcher is very arbitrary and impossible to balance. While Magam's curse could have been a problem for him if the sharders weren't all working together to win as a team or if eventually they ran out of merchants to sacrifice as the game went it was more like another major blessing. Making the sharders able to kill a merchant and another every night (provided an ardent didn't block them) is far more powerful than any role in the game. On the flipside the darkeyes "blessings" were useless at best and counterproductive at worst. While I would certainly admit that it was the darkeyes fault that Ashiok's and Rengar's curses were incompatible like that the boons and curses they were given just about sealed the 17th shards victory.

 

I'm not railing against your game, just trying to provide constructive criticism and I will openly admit that I am to some degree biased by my personal dislike of chance and love of strategy and manipulation. I personally love the core game of reasoning, deduction and manipulation and I felt that this game stripped away a lot of that through too many layers or rules (some of which we could not even know about) and chance and restrictions on information. Some people may well prefer games that do that but I find it makes them more boring and more based on chance than skill.

If you think I am being a crotchety old elitist, let me know =P

 

One other comment. You made a ruling early that we weren't allowed to post lists of who was in our faction so as not to make it ridiculously easy to find the sharders. This feels like sticking a bandaid on a sword cut. It kind of works but it leaves things very unclear as to what we can do. Can we post lists of players in pm? In the dead doc? (Which I am guessing they did). Can we declare the allegiances of players one at a time or a couple at a time? If we can, how is that really any different to being able to post lists except for taking slightly longer and being more annoying. The merchants, darkeyes and lighteyes really need to work together to discover who the sharders are or they won't stand a chance, but this rule crippled our ability to do so and left it very unclear what we actually could do and I think this was a major part of why that discussion didn't happen. There was almost no communication in the thread because the main things we needed to say we couldn't. We were reduced to simply declaring a single faction as the most powerful and saying we should go after them and that, functionally, doesn't work very well. Honestly I am not entirely sure how this could be fixed, but it is a flaw with the way that the sharders are implemented.

 

I hope that gives you some food for thought. Good game guys, see you in future games

 

Edit: Actually, one more thought.

 

I am not, (and I don't think I ever will be) in favour of hidden vote tallies. There are 3 things players can use to puzzle out other players roles and allegiances: 1: What they say, 2: How they vote and 3: What the role actions do.

 

1) In this game barely anything that wasn't pure rp was said outside the docs. So practically we could only use this on the sharders of our own docs. Except for the sharders who, having access to all the docs could actually do something of any significance with this.

 

2) Hidden vote tallies means that we have no idea how people are voting and can do nothing to deconstruct their motives. I have no problem with voting being hidden, it has its upsides and downsides and I kind of like both hidden and in-thread. However, the actual vote tallies, in my opinion, should never ever be hidden as it takes away our best tool for reasoning, logic and deduction.

 

3) In a normal game we have some idea what happened, the vote tally shows the effect of vote altering roles and the writeup shows how each person died, or was protected. This game we only knew who died and especially with the plethora of roles and abilities, some of which we didn't, couldn't know existed. So we couldn't deduce anything through this either.

 

With all 3 of these techniques crippled or removed there was very little we could do other than try to use our abilities to best effect and hope for the best.

 

Again, apologies if I sound over aggressive, just trying to provide feedback/insight.

 

On a separate note: I am curious what happened in the final vote, if all the surviving non-sharders voted together we should have one the vote thanks to my worldsinging. Even if 1 of us didn't vote or voted for a different sharder we would have managed to win the vote.

Edited June 16, 2014 by lord Claincy Ffnord

[Sart]

See, this is why you shouldn't trust a man whose name is just "Smar(t) As(s)" spelled backwards. I somehow got into a really good position this game, since either the Darkeyes or Sharders were going to win late in the game. I would have betrayed the 17th shard, but when Rengar switched, it was smooth sailing for us. No offense, I think the 17th Shard should be removed from this type of game, and just have them be regular spies. GG everyone.

[Ashiok]

Didn't notice it till now

[Kasimir]

little wilson, on 16 Jun 2014 - 06:49 AM, said:

I'm not sure why the darkeyes went for you, but Gamma went for you because you were a Merchant, and he needed power for Silent Laughter (aka (S)Laughter).

Ha! That's what I suspected; that's why I tried giving Jerrek that initial hit when I was tabulating the kills. I suspected someone had gotten hit more than once, that it wasn't just me

Claincy: I did a vote simulation before the write-up when we were figuring out Rengar.

17s: 6 (4+ Rengar)

Nobles: 1

Darkeyes 1

Throw in your Worldsinging, and you remove 2 from the 17s bloc vote, and throw in 1 to your collective vote on Trahar. It would never have gone through, and I bet they voted for you too, which is why the write-up has Rengar killing you. Neither Khiriq nor Lyla could've voted since they went to the Nightwatcher, crippling your attempt to outvote the 17s.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Kasimir

[Wyrmhero]

I can say that a lot of the votes for Claincy were theoretically from the Merchants (so a maximum of 13 over two days). They voted for you on Days 1 and 2, but the lynch obviously never got through.

 

It was possible today that no-one died. As Kas has shown above, what would have needed to happen was for your to Worldsing Rengar's vote to Trahar (I'm not sure if that would've switched both of his votes or not), or at least cancel his and throw another. Then, if Lyla hadn't gone to the Nightwatcher, Magam couldn't have sacrificed her to kill someone. At that point, Artus could've killed someone with his action, or at least knocked a life off, and made the game a much closer race.

 

Unfortunately, the true nature of the boons and their curses was a bit too difficult to figure out if you don't have the information ready to you. You couldn't have really known about how Slaughter worked, or that Rengar was lying about changing factions (well done on that, incidentally. Most impressed by how you managed to hide that). If that had been figured out, perhaps Rengar wouldn't have so easily gone to the Nightwatcher to ask for that... Though it seems to have worked out well for him.

 

Seems the Shard has traded away two Scadrialians for a Rosharian. I find it amusing that the two Sharders who died were from the same planet. Just seems unlucky.

 

Oh, and of course, I nominate Weiry for the The Weiry award, since his death can legitimately be said to be the first this game. His death was caused by Artus' Ghostblood ability. Unfortunately, Weiry was the Shamed Guard, who lynched Ace in response. Ace was also a Shamed Guard, and lynched Kas in return (along with the Shard encouraging people, and Jain stabbing him).

 

So my second question, Rubix, is what boon did the Shamed Guards and the Voidbringers ask for to get killed so quickly? Seems that we couldn't vote for anyone without tripping over a Voidbringer, and two of the Shamed Guards died within the first real cycle. Though considering Mon and Kas did that so-called Nuclear Tweet to reveal us all, and none of the others discovered disloyal people while they were alive, it seems that the best Voidbringer is a dead Voidbringer.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Wyrmhero

[FeatherWriter]

Yeah, I would agree that if the three faction game were to be viable, the 17S would probably be a good thing to remove. I like the idea of spies, but the fact that they could win on their own as a faction made things very tricky. I remember thinking from the very beginning that if I were 17S, that's where my loyalty would be. And so even when Sharders started coming forward as loyal to the merchants, I was tempted to try to take them out. I figured the best way for a faction to win would have been to cleanse themselves of all Sharders before moving on.

 

Edit: I think that the killing a loyal faction member is a good curse in order to kill a different member, but the problem was the double loyalty 17S thing. In this case the divided loyalty, as Claincy said, made it just a double kill. 

[Claincy]

I can say that a lot of the votes were theoretically from the Merchants. They voted for you on Days 1 and 2, but the lynch obviously never got through.

I...am going to take that as a compliment

 

Claincy: I did a vote simulation before the write-up when we were figuring out Rengar.

17s: 6 (4+ Rengar)

Nobles: 1

Darkeyes 1

Throw in your Worldsinging, and you remove 2 from the 17s bloc vote, and throw in 1 to your collective vote on Trahar. It would never have gone through, and I bet they voted for you too, which is why the write-up has Rengar killing you. Neither Khiriq nor Lyla could've voted since they went to the Nightwatcher, crippling your attempt to outvote the 17s.

Ah. The Nightwatcher, gotcha. If 1 of Lyla or Khiriq had voted with us we would have brought it to a tie. If they both did we could have got a little vengance on our way out. We still would have lost though, that much was inevitable at that point =P

[Kasimir]

Wyrmhero, on 16 Jun 2014 - 3:00 PM, said:

I can say that a lot of the votes for Claincy were theoretically from the Merchants (so a maximum of 13 over two days). They voted for you on Days 1 and 2, but the lynch obviously never got through.

It was possible today that no-one died. As Kas has shown above, what would have needed to happen was for your to Worldsing Rengar's vote to Trahar (I'm not sure if that would've switched both of his votes or not), or at least cancel his and throw another. Then, if Lyla hadn't gone to the Nightwatcher, Magam couldn't have sacrificed her to kill someone. At that point, Artus could've killed someone with his action, or at least knocked a life off, and made the game a much closer race.

Unfortunately, the true nature of the boons and their curses was a bit too difficult to figure out if you don't have the information ready to you. You couldn't have really known about how Slaughter worked, or that Rengar was lying about changing factions (well done on that, incidentally. Most impressed by how you managed to hide that). If that had been figured out, perhaps Rengar wouldn't have so easily gone to the Nightwatcher to ask for that... Though it seems to have worked out well for him.

Seems the Shard has traded away two Scadrialians for a Rosharian. I find it amusing that the two Sharders who died were from the same planet. Just seems unlucky.

Oh, and of course, I nominate Weiry for the The Weiry award, since his death can legitimately be said to be the first this game. His death was caused by Artus' Ghostblood ability. Unfortunately, Weiry was the Shamed Guard, who lynched Ace in response. Ace was also a Shamed Guard, and lynched Kas in return (along with the Shard encouraging people, and Jain stabbing him).

So my second question, Rubix, is what boon did the Shamed Guards and the Voidbringers ask for to get killed so quickly? Seems that we couldn't vote for anyone without tripping over a Voidbringer, and two of the Shamed Guards died within the first real cycle. Though considering Mon and Kas did that so-called Nuclear Tweet to reveal us all, and none of the others discovered disloyal people while they were alive, it seems that the best Voidbringer is a dead Voidbringer.

Correction: Weiry lynched no one. Weiry was silenced, and in any case, did not send in orders, so it would not have made a difference. Macen was killed by Binnt, the darkeyes Ghostblood, who indirectly instigated my death. (So, pretty ironic but not as ironic as Aonar's.)

But yeah, Shamed Guard and Voidbringers...they're just the roles that are death sentences...

Also, Claincy: I don't know why I'm saying this, but yes, we exchanged player lists, and we worked out player loyalties thanks to Rengar's intel, and the spy I saw on the day I died (as a Voidbringer.) It's just that there was no room for that in the tweet...

Edited June 16, 2014 by Kasimir

[Binnut]

I was about to write a post about the game, but then i read Claincys post and he about summarizes my thoughts. (And in a much better way)

It was a fun game, but it somehow puts a little sour taste afterwards when I know all these hidden things that I had no way of knowing of or calculating on. Rengars conversion was sort of the worst thing, since it was a curse on the rest of the Darkeyed rather than on him.

 

That said, I am thankful of Rubix (And Wilson) running this game, but I think the type was not really for me.

[Macen]

I think removing a win condition for the 17s would make it perfect. They know of each other, can't reveal each other, and can't win together. It adds an extra layer of subterfuge in behind the scenes. 

Also, I thought the dead tweet was a great idea - it kept the game interesting for the dead. We may consider restricting what the dead can say to be more cryptic. Maybe the GB sets a certain code type each night that they have to relay the information in - and restrict what they can reveal. Would add more talk about what we can say.

All around though, great game! I liked the idea of multiple factions.

I just think that the 17s had too going for them. They had access to all of the conversations, and little reason to ally with their normal factions over the 17s. The normal factions still had a shot though, so it wasn't too bad.

*EDIT* Also, what is a Forescout?

Edited June 16, 2014 by Macen

[Tulir]

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention that I loved was the first cycle had no death actions.  I know every game is different in terms of speed and stuff, but that was great.  It allows the first vote not to be completely blind, and I like that.

[Gamma Fiend]

Meh, it's been long enough. I'll say my curse has faded in intensity as my proximity to Kholinar has decreased. Some of it still leaks through, though.

Some free-speech game analysis:

I was initially blown away by the level of intricacy of this game. When signing up, I really had no idea what to expect. But when it started and right off the bat I was a 17S in three different documents, I quickly grasped the whole point off all the double-layered convoluted elements of the game. The whole Double Spy factor was evil-genius brilliant. It really made everybody second guess everything that was being said and done. It did lead to more discussion taking place in the Docs, and saved the thread for RP, which was perfectly fine for how it was set-up. As a 17S, I knew our only hope was to completely ignore our Dual-Win victories, but I'm sure more than a few of us were starting to second-guess that as a possibility as the Darkeyes started pulling ahead mid-late game.

Honestly, the only thing that did give us the edge in the long run were the Boons/Curses. Since everybody could have theoretically gone to the NW and tried receiving some sort of very useful boon, in different playthroughs with this model things could turn out very differently.

I do think it is worth noting that so far with all the of the Elimination Games, the ones that have had the most feedback/reactions about 'unpopular' mechanics are the one's that involve some sort of randomness/unpredictability (revelation of Uber abilities Game 2, the mystery item puzzle in Game 5, Nightwatcher, etc.). Obviously, for the flavor of this specific model, the Nightwatcher was a fantastic 'extra' thing for the game. But as some people have mentioned, it can be really hard to even try and account for anything remotely like some of the random things that can happen from those types of events.  This will definitely be something that future GM's should remember and take into account for future planning.

With that said, I really did love playing this game. The multiple-win conditions and the whole faction v faction mechanics were great, and many upon many kudos and compliments to Rubix and Wilson for running the game so smoothly. This game type will definitely be a nice Standard-Model for anything even remotely similar, and I guarantee it will help influence/spawn countless amazing other games.

Once again, great job with everyone involved. It was a real hoot.

[Ashiok]

Sharders loved the game, everybody else had issues with the sharders... Right?

[Kasimir]

I don't know, I honestly did love the game. It's quite a switch from your usual Elimination style standard, with Villagers v. Spiked. My only regrets are: 1. I missed most of it , 2. This is really going to ruin me for future games as I've had almost no experience in a standard Villagers v. Spiked game!

[Sir Jerric]

The biggest difference I saw in the game was the lack of secure communication. If we had been allowed to PM at will, this would have felt more like the other elimination games, as we sought to sort out who to trust or who not to trust within our own factions. I can see why PMs were removed, but I do wonder if adding the PMs back in while removing the Sharder win condition might make a good game. Then a weapon like Magam's would be quite undesirable, though.

I don't know, really. I'm quite new to these types of games, so I doubt I'm in much of a position to be providing feedback. =)

[Claincy]

I don't know, really. I'm quite new to these types of games, so I doubt I'm in much of a position to be providing feedback. =)

I disagree. The feedback you can provide will be different and it probably won't be as detailed or focused on rule balancing as some of the older players, but we certainly aren't just trying to cater for "old hands" here and the perspective of newer players is very useful to future GMs. What worked well for you? What was fun? What wasn't fun? What was confusing? All of that and any other insights you have can be very valuable and really, Sanderson Elimination is pretty young still, some of use have experience playing werewolves or mafia irl before this and Meta has played it online elsewhere. But the way we are running games here is still pretty new and constantly changing

 

tldr; Your feedback == useful.

Yeah, I basically always use equivalence signs nowadays, = is an assignment dangit! =P

[jaelre]

On this note, the main thing I suffered is the fact that lack of information was compounded: you didn't know who voted for whom, you didn't know the role of the dead, not even that of the lynched one, you didn't know the abilities that were around in the game. That made me feel as if voting was more of a game of chance than an exercise in my (I'll admit little) analytical abilities. I understand the game is based on this, but my feeling is that the more the game progresses the more information one should have, and it just didn't feel this way.

 

The nightwatcher, while it was for sure a source of enjoyment, was difficult to gauge in scope. I think the main thing that should be changed is that some part of it should me made public. Especially any game changing mechanics, Rengar's faction change, f.e. Not the persons involved, but whatever shifts the game, or breaks the rules. Or maybe make the curse more explicit, and maybe add some kind of role seeking ability. The idea in general though is very sound, and it can lead to very interesting scenarios.

[Ashiok]

Also, on the subject of the NW, some of those curses were either beneficial or WAY out of proportion... 

[little wilson]

The curses were actually pretty symmetrical. It was simply the way they interacting with other things or the people who requested them that made it seem like they were disproportionate.

 

I'm guessing you're referring mostly to Slaughter, but any kill item would've had that curse, regardless of who asked for it. You get the item,so now you can kill people, but someone on your team dies every time you use it.  Admittedly, it's best held in the hands of the Seventeenth Shard, but every time Gamma used it, he was wrecking his chances of winning with the Merchants, if anything had happened to the Sharders.

 

I think you're also referring to you and Rengar's boon/curse pair as well. These are best looked at separately. Rengar asked for someone to change loyalties. In return, he changed loyalties. You asked to kill someone. In return, someone on your team died (it just happened to also be the person who you'd asked to kill).

 

In terms of the other curses:

 

Tulir asked to grave rob to find the roles of the dead. In return, he had to state the name of the person robbed and their role somewhere in his post the next day (although it didn't have to be as obvious as he chose to make it).

 

Jaelre asked for the dead to hear him whistle, and for him to hear them whistle right back. Essentially, communication with the dead (since he used morse code in his whistles). In return, his curse was that his communication with the living was hindered. He now had to speak in limerick, everywhere.

 

Aonar asked for PM's. He got them. But he couldn't use ERNSTL in them. (He could've gotten around this one with 1337, but he chose not to make it easy for you guys).'

 

And I think that's all of them. But anyway, the curses were proportionate to the boon. They were symmetrical. The way they worked with other things that were happening in the  game? Not so much.

 

I'm not saying the curses didn't affect the way this game played out. They did. They hit the darkeyes hard. But that wasn't entirely the curses' fault. Here's a little scenario of what very well could've played out if Aonar hadn't died:

 

First, Aonar had two lives. He would've kept those with his loyalty transfer. He also could PM. Additionally, he knew about Slaughter. He could've alerted the Merchants left, letting them know to protect themselves. Twei still had her protective potion (although using it would've made it so Gamma was also protected). He could've done a group PM (yes, he had the ability to; he simply chose not to) and opened up a secure line of communication between the Darkeyes, Merchants, and Nobles, two of which still had their Ghostbloods at that point, and one of which had their worldsinger still. It wouldn't have been hard at that point to convince Sarams to start working with the Darkeyes instead. And if they could've worked out Rengar? He was a big portion of the voting power, and he only had one life. Kill him (or even silence him) and the Shard would lose their lynch power in a huge way.

 

Granted, with Aonar switched sides, Gamma would've gone after him with Slaughter, but if he can't feed the sword, he can't kill. And even if he could feed the sword, the Darkeyes Ardent was still alive and could've protected Aonar.

 

Aonar's death was the turning point in the game. From then on out, it became very difficult for anyone else to win, but again that wasn't entirely because of the Nightwatcher curses. Hence, I'm thinking Ash should take the Doh! award (and don't be offended by that Ash. We've all made mistakes. It's what we learn from them that matters ). 

[Ashiok]

Well, what I am saying is that my boon was Aonar dying.

My curse was Aonar dying, knowing what Rengar had done (made him loyal) AND being denied access to the Dead Doc.

Gamma got a kill and then another limited kill.

Rengar's boon was Aonar losing his sharderness. His curse was that he lost his allegiance to the darkeyes and could only win with the sharders, a faction that was currently WINNING. 

That doesn't seem very even.

[Gamma Fiend]

It appears that the downsides from those curses were bad because of the current situations that played out in the game. But ANYBODY could have asked for a kill weapon that would have had similar repercussions. For your boon you asked to kill somebody specifically. So in response, you died.
From how Wilson worded it, whoever would have asked for the same boon "Kill X player", then they would have died too, I'm assuming.

Same with Rengar's boon. He asked for somebody else's allegiance to be flipped around, therefore his allegiance got switched. The same thing would have happened had anybody else asked the same thing. It was just the particular play-through of this Game that the curses seemed to give an advantage to the 17S, but that was mostly because we were by large the only people who actively took advantage of it.

If a Merchant asked for a Noble to have their allegiances switched to the Merchants, then that person would have became a Noble. (At least how I understand it). And the fact that my kill item had technically two curses. There was the obvious 'S' sentence one, which was noticeable. I was just extremely careful of how I had to speak going forward. It nearly inhibited me from being able to participate in any type of serious discussion.
But the lesser seen curse was the fact I had to feed it with people I was loyal too.
That set-up does favor the 17S though, in this game type. But it completely killed any chance I or Wyrmhero would have had for getting my alt-win. And my kill item didn't even give us the win, it was Rengar's curse that did it.
But I do honestly think Rengar's boon/curse was probably the fairest one made the entire game. Take somebody off their team and put them on yours? Okay, now you're on the team they were on.

With all of that said, though. IF a game of this type were to ever run again, now that people know how the curses and all of that work, it will be a lot more even for everybody else since they know what to expect/ask for. But that's the point of this Sub-forum still being relatively new, we're still trying out tons of different ideas to see what works and what doesn't, and what people enjoy or not.