Mid-Range Game 40: A Defiant Rebellion

[Elkanah]

Hey all, Great game! I though for sure we had lost when I died! There were two things I totally lost track of though. I completely forgot about the light lines. Roleblocks OP. That helps us a lot even though the elims ended up with three at one point. The other I just realized was my only condolence was that the elims had to choose whether to kill someone or use my 63 chits to buy a gun... which was totally false as they could take both a role action and a buy action. 

GG elims! I don't know if there was any way you could have played that better! 

Thank you for GMing @Elandera, and also for giving me a reason to read this book! I tend to stick to just cosmere, but I'm really reconsidering that now as I'm halfway through Starsight. 

For anyone worried about the codes, most of them were Xinoehp correcting my spelling XD. The code is based on the US keyboard. For each letter you would type, just shift your fingers down one space. thus, 'q' becomes 'a'. 's' becomes 'x'. For the bottom row, you move to the top of the next column e.g. 'b' becomes 'y'; 'm' becomes 'i' and 'p' becomes 'q'. 

I might add more thoughts later, but we'll see.

[Abstrusity]

For anyone wondering about my codes, they were mostly a series of links buried in my posts to images of a script used in a video game and a cipher for understanding said script. In the future, I'll probably use a lot of white text.

[Araris Valerian]

@Elandera Thanks for running this game!

@Fifth Scholar and @Abstrusity, it was a pleasure to scheme with you both. The only thing that would have made it better was actually winning.

@Sart I appreciate your support of me during Cycle 3 . Otherwise the last few cycles would have been rather less interesting.

@xinoehp512 Props to you for insane guesses as to our identities. You never gave any hint as to your role in thread, and your accusations of me prior to your reveal seemed very unlinked to a scan. I was convinced that a Elkanah was the engineer, actually, which I why I tried to have you lynched. I didn’t want to force the engineer into outing me until we had a greater lead.

General thoughts on the game:

Mechanic wise, I think the chit/pistol combination heavily favored the elims. Especially since killing a player granted a share of their chits. Had it not been for Xino forcing our hand, we probably would have won from the 3 extra kills from all the pistols. This contributed to another minor problem; the game was somewhat short. We were somewhat close to winning at the end of cycle 3. That cycle could also have been made less difficult for us if we had preempted Xino by claiming to have seen him sending in the kill. Of course, given the hidden village vote manip, this didn’t work out, but with slightly different kill targets, we’d have been fine.

I did greatly appreciate a positive incentive to remain active in this game, as opposed to an inactivity filter. (One problem, which came out of my analysis, was that half of the players working to get all the chits were elims) If I Gm a game, I will probably try and incorporate something similar. Maybe allow players to privately set their own activity expectations pre-game, and then reward them for holding to that.

I liked all the possible roles, and think that we could play again with the same distribution and have it be pretty balanced. The Bountiful Gunner reveal skewed things quite heavily in our favor, and without that (and Xino being crazy good), eventually one of use would have died, giving the village a place to work from.

The setting was a bit awkward to RP in, largely because (for those of us who had actually read the books), we still didn’t see much of the DDF society. Still, it was fun to defy the Defiants.

Overall, I had lots of fun. I don’t usually play MR games anymore, but this one had a nice pace and reasonable activity from everyone. Hope to kill (and be killed by) all of you again in the near future!

[Elandera]

Thanks everyone for playing! It's time for some of my thoughts.

The chit system definitely heavily favored the elims in this game. In retrospect, I would not have made them trade-able. The reward system and collection system was enough.

Role distribution was also slightly in the elim's favor. Had it not been for @xinoehp512's incredible luck in scanning the elim doing the attacking, the elims likely would have won because of their access to roleblocks and vote manipulation.

As for the second-to-last round, targets were all the difference between win and loss for either team. The two village roleblocks targeted the same elim (Fifth), and not the one who was submitting both kills. Unfortunately, Abstrusity targeted the Vici Warrior (Striker!Coda) with one of the kills. Had Abstrusity targeted Zillah and Rath, elims would have won.

This is probably the closest game I've GMd so far. Thank you all for making this a great game. Activity was good. Sorry I started failing with the write-ups. The last week of the game was rough for me personally, so write-ups were not my priority.

I thought I had more thoughts, but I can't think of them at the moment. Anyway, well-played everyone. And huge congrats to Xino for probably the best scanning record ever.

[Elandera]

Another thread to close up. Thanks everyone who played this game and made it enjoyable, even if you hadn't yet read Skyward. Congratulations again to the members of the DDS. You did a great job finding and rooting out the Disputers. To those who were the Disputers, you also did a great job this game, especially Abstrusity for surviving until the last. That is true defiance.

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!