Quick Fix 42: Alcatraz vs. the Watakotse Infiltration

[Elandera Compounder]

QF42 Aftermath: I like French Fries

Players, welcome to the wonderful world of talking to each other about the end of the game. As a handy primer, here are a few things you should know:

1. GMs have feelings.
2. You will spend the next few days or so trying to guess what everyone was really thinking and why. Just like you've done for the past five days.
3. You will be wrong most of the time.
4. I like French Fries.

Congratulations to the Free Kingdomers! You've rooted out all of the Liebrarians who threatened to infiltrate your ranks and take over Watakotse! Another land saved from the rule of people crazy about rules!

You know, I've never understood one thing: Why do all these megalomaniac dictators, secret societies, mad scientists, and totalitarian aliens want to rule the world? I mean really? Don't they know what a pain in the neck it is to be in charge? I've been running this game for five days and it's been crazy! Last minute actions, a gajillion PMs to read and then distribute every cycle. People are always making unreasonable demands of GMs. I think the Free Kingdomers are just saving the Evil Librarians from a ton of work. 

The_God_King has been lynched! They were a member of the Order of the Shattered Lens.

The Free Kingdomers have won this round!

Vote Count
The God King (3) - Kynedath, Striker, Rathmaskal
Striker (1) - The God King

Player List

Spoiler

1. Elkanah- Larry Lifehack Grandpa Smedry
2. Kynedath - Robben Peters Free Kingdomer
3. The_God_King Order of the Shattered Lens
4. StrikerEZ Free Kingdomer
5. CadCom- Azkaban Smedry Aydee
6. Feruchemical Skybreaker Free Kingdomer
7. Zillah - Elmina Château Alcatraz Smedry
8. Kidpen - Roychive Notalibrary Evil Librarian
9. Rathmaskal Free Kingdomer
10. Devotary of Spontaneity - Dr. Sader the Inoculator Dark Oculator
11. Butt Ad Venture - Alberga Hatm Bastille
12. DeTess Free Kingdomer

Document of the Evil Librarians
The Dead Doc
GM Spreadsheet

Edited February 3, 2020 by Elandera

[Elkanah Silent Gatherer]

Thank you so much for running this game @Elandera! It was soo much fun! 

I apologize to anyone I offended this game with my countless lies. Zillah having the translator's lens makes it so much clearer why she was so frustrated with my playstyle. I lied to every player this game and usually in multiple ways specifically so that the translator's lens was useless. What I didn't count on was how much extra work it would cause Elandera (sorry). I still don't know how you were able to deliver all of those messages.

If you are interested to go back through, you will find I lied in every single post except for the one Feruchemical Skybreaker asked me to write. Frequently the lies were in white text, so you can only see them if you highlight the post as you go. I did this to mitigate the chances of the truthfinder's lens being used on me. It went against everything I had worked for to not lie when I claimed to not be a librarian, but I guess it wasn't nearly as big a deal as I act like it was. 

I have never been this active in a game, and it may be a while before I can be so active again. I can say without hesitation that it was absolutely worth it to be so involved. It also helped to be in contact with as many players as I was, and I deeply regret not getting Devotary and Striker as in on the action as I had most other players. I loved how active everyone else was as well. I can't remember a time when we had the whole village vote when there were still more than ten players playing!

It has been so fun playing with all of you and I want to send an extra shoutout to @Feruchemical Skybreaker, @Zillah and @The_God_King! You all did really well for your first game and I hope you stick around for many more. It was an honor to work alongside you and against you. 

Finally (at least until I read the elim doc and the spreadsheet) I want to comment on the strategy I used. Lying to literally everyone was not as hard as I thought right up until cycle 3. That's when people started making PM's with others and double checking my claims. There were a few who wanted to lynch me over that because if I wasn't being honest about my role, there was no telling what else I was lying about. That was totally reasonable. What was the hardest thing was keeping straight who I told what. If I were to try this again, I would need to keep a detailed spreadsheet, as a couple of my lies would have totally sunk me had I not caught a liebrarian cycle 1. Suddenly the lies I told started to matter and further I was buying my own propaganda! I started to believe there was a windstormers lens available because I had lied about losing one! I thought that the eliminators knew I was grandpa despite me never having claimed that role to anyone until CadCom. (sorry). I was doing lens math based on my doubling of of certain lenses as Aydee. That became a problem and I went and reread every PM to screw my head back on straight. I recommend trying out this playstyle to anyone who can commit a substantial amount of time to the game, but would warn you against over committing. I think my next challenge will be playing a game wherein I don't lie. That seems like more of a challenge, although I won't know until I try.-with the exception of saying I'm village, even if I'm an eliminator.

All in all, well played everyone! and thank you again Elandera!

[DeTess Originator]

This was a fun game, and despite it's quick end it was rather close. The village started with only 3 mislynches (though Venture managed to get that up to 4 with their protections), so another cycle or so of holding out and the game would have gone the other way.

Anyway, here are some random thoughts: First of all, it was very interesting to play with a bunch of new players at once, because it can result in some surprising new insights. @Zillah's comment on my playstyle was especially interesting. my first response on that in the dead doc was:

Quote

Oh, also something from the thread I wanted to respond to:

“I’m going to go a bit outside the box and talk about DeTess for the moment. Majority of their posts seem to be centred a lot more around picking apart what others say and asking players questions rather than bringing to light new things.”

Going around and asking questions is my style of bringing things to light. Unprompted, the elims are unlikely to reveal themselves, so by looking closely at everyone’s posts and asking questions about motivations, I hope to figure out more about people’s alignments. I’m not sure how else you’d play the game, to be honest.

And though I still stand by this way of playing as being the best way for me to bring elims to light, I do now also wonder to what degree that particular playstyle contributes to my reputation as being a hard elim to spot.

Another thing that struck me while reading the elim doc was just how different the god king's tone of voice was between the thread and the doc.

13 hours ago, Elkanah said:

I think my next challenge will be playing a game wherein I don't lie. That seems like more of a challenge, although I won't know until I try.-with the exception of saying I'm village, even if I'm an eliminator.

I lie very rarely, if at all, when I play. Depending on how you define lying, this even holds when I'm an elim, as I almost never say things I don't believe are true on some level, even if it requires a bit of doublethink regarding my own alignment.

Anyway, as I said before, this was a fun game, and I'd just like to thank Elandera, as well as everyone else that played in it. In aprticular I'd like to give a shout-out to Zillah, the god king and feruchemical skybreaker, as you where all very active and involved, despite games like this tending to be a bit overwhelming for newer players.

Edited February 2, 2020 by DeTess

[Kynedath Envisager]

Great game everyone! I've had an absolute blast with this one. So many rules, so many cool opportunities. A bit too many PMs for my taste at some times, but by the end I got a bit more into them. 

I began the game with windstormers lenses, meaning I had no chance to get other lenses off of dead players. I used them as soon as I could, and they were destroyed by the elims at the same time. I was hoping to get a new lens after I lost that one but that didn't happen until cycle five I believe. Those were the couriers lenses at the end, so I only ever had the chance to take one action the whole game. I was surprised at that because of how many different lenses there were and how many items were in circulation. It didn't take away from my enjoyment, but I do wish I could have taken more than one action.

To all three of the new players, I loved playing with you all. You guys have so much promise and you're already fairly good at the game. I hope to see you around for many more games!

[Elandera Compounder]

4 hours ago, Kynedath said:

I began the game with windstormers lenses, meaning I had no chance to get other lenses off of dead players. I used them as soon as I could, and they were destroyed by the elims at the same time.

I'm so dumb. I just now realized that action to break the lens should have been blocked.... Yay for me breaking my own game! I am somewhat glad, though, as I think that lens would have actually caused way more balance issues in the end.

[Ed Venture Originator]

Wow! What a great game everyone! I mean seriously! It was great! @Elandera thank you so, so, so much for managing it all, even when things got crazy, like with multiple translator’s lenses!  

@The_God_King! Wow wow wow wow wow! You did more than amazing! You did absolutely fantastically! Much better than me in my first game!  Congratulations on a first game with us and I hope you’ll have a great time murdering with us again!

@Zillah, you did a great job too!  Congratulations on winning with Alcatraz!

And who could forget @Feruchemical Skybreaker! I hope that you too had a fantastic game! Thanks for contributing to the discussion!

[Zillah Forescout]

Thank you @Elandera for running this game and sending me all those PM’s even when it glitched out on you. (Gosh people talk a lot!)

I had a phenomenal first game with everyone,  and look forward to hopefully playing in the future and being less terrible at all of this. 

[Rathmaskal Gyorn]

Hey folks, great game.  That's definitely the most active I've ever been in PMs.  I'll come back on for some more thoughts later, but great game everyone.  Nice playing with a lot of people I'd never gotten a chance to play with before, including the three new players.  Great stuff by all of you.

Edit: Also should note, it seems I had rather insane luck with lenses...  Courier's to start the game, then Windstormer's and Tracker's on D2 and D3.

Edited February 2, 2020 by Rathmaskal

[Elandera Compounder]

I start with a major apology to @Devotary of Spontaneity, @Kidpen, and @The_God_King. You did wonderfully, considering how broken the mechanics were this game. I procrastinated (surprise, surprise) and didn't take nearly as long as I should have to consider the balance of distribution. I really should have gotten rid of Bastille in favor of more fickle protections (Windstormer's Lenses). There were entirely too many scans and ways to become easily trusted as a villager, but not so easily as elims. Not having a Shaper's Lens helped a little, but not nearly enough. @StrikerEZ's use of the Oculator's Lens was a huge part of getting so many people cleared, which really should not have happened.

To explain why I had so many scan mechanics for those who haven't read the books: A major premise of the book is about information. "The Librarians control the information... They control what gets read, what gets seen, and what gets learned. Because of that they have power." One of the biggest points Grandpa Smedry makes about why he prefers the lenses he does is that they are the ones that provide information. So, naturally, I wanted information-gathering to be a major point of the game. But in doing so, it became very, very broken. 

Also, sorry @Zillah. Your role as Alcatraz was pretty much useless. I created the role when I was building more dangerous lenses for village (firestormer's lenses, and the like). I took those out fairly quickly, but forgot to adjust Alcatraz's mechanics.

The Truthfinder's Lens was a trouble. @Feruchemical Skybreaker, I'm sorry you got stuck with that one. It was a fairly unique mechanic, as far as SE goes, and I was not entirely sure how that would work. When we finally figured it out, it was broken. On top of that, though, is the absolutely game-breaking mechanic that could be. As was pointed out quickly, it would be easy to get people to just say their alignment and get them scanned. Thank you all for not doing that en masse. If someone chooses to do this mechanic, I'd put a lot more restrictions on what can and can't be revealed as a lie.

@CadCom, sorry about D1 action results. I hadn't considered what I'd do if you tried to duplicate a lens that didn't exist in the game. The delay alone, though, probably made it obvious they didn't exist. 

@Kynedath, RNG hated you. Between the lack of actions and a lot of the game being in PMs, it was not an easy game for you.  @DeTess, you were another one RNG did not really like. Sorry to both of you!

But RNG loved @Rathmaskal. So many lenses to one person. Along with Striker, your use of the Tracker's Lens was essential to the village win.

I was surprised at how many people relied on PMs this game. I'd constantly wake up to dozens of new messages. It was mostly surprising because of the Translator's Lenses. Y'all were surprisingly open considering there was PM spying. Had RNG given the Translator's Lenses to the elims rather than Alcatraz, they'd have easily been able to figure out most of your roles within the first two cycles.

TGK, FeruSky, and Zillah: You three did amazing for your first game. I hope my broken game doesn't deter you from joining us again in the future!

Knowing there were three new players led me to take some special steps with the role/lens distribution. I think it was the most brand new players in one game we've had in a long while. I knew I wanted one new player on the elim team. In a game of 12 players, I didn't want a full third of the village to be new players facing down a team of veterans. I also wanted to make sure one of you got into a courier's lens PM with an older (village) player, hopefully providing a way to get some help along the way. I may have been messing with things a bit much, but I didn't feel right putting them with an elim right away. If they found their own PMs that way, cool, but I didn't want to start that.  I'm also glad the third new player got the Translator's Lenses, so they could see more of the behind-the-scenes interactions common in SE. It was a lot, but it worked out, I think.

@Elkanah, reading all of your white text was so much fun. I encourage anyone to go back and find all the hidden gems in his posts. 

Another mechanic I would have changed a lot was @Butt Ad Venture's role as Bastille. The auto-protect, though nice for village, created a huge problem for the elims. It blocked two of their kills and gave the village a pretty much confirmed villager right away. That's never good. Venture, though, did well with the role while he was still alive. Then you all had to go lynching Bastille...  

Also, to everyone, thank you so much for playing and being active! We had 100% activity through the entire game! Every living player made at least one post every cycle. I'm so proud of you guys.  

In the end, I'd make some major changes to the distribution. When I built the game, SE was usually getting 15-20 players per game. My original balance was for around 18-ish. Cutting that down to 12, which meant cutting down the elim team, was a bit more unbalanced than I expected. Having one elim die C1 didn't help, but it left the elims in a very bad position. I should have eliminated most of the roles, going to basically just lenses. Aydee shouldn't have been in the game, Alcatraz should have been change drastically, and the scanning lenses needed to be nerfed. 

Despite the problems, I hope you all had fun! I enjoyed the troll-ish write-ups. They were all based on the writing style of the books, most of them using a quote and adjusting it somehow to fit the game. If you haven't read the series, I highly recommend it. You don't have to be the YA age to still laugh a lot at the book.

[Zillah Forescout]

I had so much fun with the translators lens! I spent way too much time playing detective and piecing together who was who in every one. It helped that @Elkanah used the same opening line for 3/4 of their PM’s!

special thanks to @Kynedath for convincing me to join! So worth it!

[StrikerEZ Mistborn]

I really enjoyed playing this game, even though I wasn’t as active as I would’ve liked. @Zillah @The_God_King @Feruchemical Skybreaker it was really fun playing with you guys, and I hope to see you in more games in the future!

Also, sorry to the elims I guess for accidentally leading to clearing a bunch of people.

[Kynedath Envisager]

@Elandera rng may not have liked me but I still enjoyed the game thoroughly. I was expecting our and utter chaos but the lack of actions made it surprisingly calm on my end. I was put back into analysis mode which was welcome.

@Zillah it was absolutely my pleasure to bring you to this wonderful world of SE! I'm glad I could convince you to join and I hope to see you in future games as well. Just wait until you're an elim, there is so much more scheming!

[Zillah Forescout]

Just a general question: about when should I be looking for signups for then MR that’ll follow this game? 

[Elandera Compounder]

10 minutes ago, Zillah said:

Just a general question: about when should I be looking for signups for then MR that’ll follow this game? 

We're working out the details of who's running both the next MR and LG. Hopefully sign-ups will be posted within the week. 

[Rathmaskal Gyorn]

Hey folks, more detailed thoughts.

@DeTess: I enjoyed our PM, including the occasional notes you'd put in for the next holder of the courier's lens.  Honestly, the PM is where I started getting a strong village read on you.  You're always just a bit too unreadable in thread

@Elkanah: Again, really good PM.  I appreciated your insight on a few things (including completely shooting down my initial read on Kynedath).  I also found your last few posts extremely entertaining.  Of all the games I've played, I don't think I've ever seen a villager lie as much/deliberately as you did this game and still become relatively trusted.

@Butt Ad Venture: I need to reevaluate how I view your playstyle.  I was definitely one of the leaders of your mislynch unfortunately, and looking back, I don't think it was that warrented.  I was trying to find elims by looking for my own tells.  Glad you were able to get your protects off though!

@Zillah: I apologize, I didn't get an opportunity to interact with you very much this game.  I think you played well.  Looking forward to seeing you in future games.

@The_God_King: Similarly, I didn't get an opportunity to interact with you very much this game.  What I will say is that it wasn't anything you did that caused you to get on my radar for the last lynch, it was more related to the tools we had available to us as villagers.  Unfortunate for you that once you were the last elim and most of the village was already cleared.  Hope to see you continue into future games!

@Feruchemical Skybreaker: The last of the three new players.  I think I interacted with you the least.  I hope you enjoyed the game and I look forward to playing/interacting with you more in future games!

@Devotary of Spontaneity: Sorry you didn't get to be a part of the Courier's lens any longer than you were...  When I realized, "Hmmm, I don't really have an opinion of Devotary either way." at that point in the game, I was convinced you had to be an elim.  Not sure if that was a valid assessment of your play this game or if you just had less time to devote to this game.  Things could have been a decent amount worse for the village if I hadn't recognized that and/or there was more than one elim left after lynching you.

@StrikerEZ: Glad you were able to keep a healthy level of suspicion of me even at the very end.  Also glad you didn't decide to attempt a giant swing in the lynch vote

@Kynedath: Nice playing with you this game.  I was especially relieved when I was able to effectively clear you.

@CadCom: Alas, even you had to die eventually.  Great playing with you again.

@Kidpen: Well, you didn't make it very long. 

@Elandera: Thanks for putting on the game!  Your writeups were extremely entertaining (Need to go make sure I submitted sufficient upvotes), as were the occasional snarky comments in PMs.  I'm also curious if you decided what you were going to do if one side of a courier's lens was broken.  That could have been a fun mechanic.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game.  It's at least mildly unfortunate we didn't get to see this game exactly as planned, but this game did remind me that I need to read the Alcatraz books (I think those and Legion are the only ones I haven't read yet)...I'll have to get on that.

Looking forward to the next game!

[Elandera Compounder]

Time to close this one up, too. Thanks everyone for playing! This has to be one of my favorite games that I've run simply because of the Alcatraz style I could use in the write-ups. Congratulations again to those who defeated the Liebrarians (sus lot, they were). You all played fantastically, especially the Librarians who had the game stacked against them with mechanics. I hope to run this again in the future and fix some of that.

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Devotary of Spontaneity, Elbereth, Araris Valerian, or myself, or post in the GM Signups & Discussion Thread. 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, STINK, Sart, Fifth Scholar, Straw, Haelbarde, and Young Bard) 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!