Mid-Range Game 43: Death Comes As The End

[DrakeMarshall]

Wow that was a heck of an ending. Figured it might be one of the writeup characters who was in plain sight, but for some reason I didn't think it could be the narrator  Serves me right. The writeups in this game were unreal, and to juggle all the aspects of an SE game whilst consistently producing at least one awesome writeup for each cycle is certainly a feat. Thanks for running this game! 

I was a bit concerned that an eleventh hour kill from the village might throw a wrench in our plans. I figured I'd be the one to get killed, though, if anything. If one of our kills had also been blocked, it might have turned the tide of the game. @StrikerEZ you very nearly succeeded in making that happen. Very well done. I didn't see it coming at all, either; I thought MysticLotus was the only villager with a kill left. Apparently the dice were particularly bloodthirsty, and both sides ended up with an unexpected number of kills held in reserve.

@Mist you also gave me quite a scare a couple of times there. Your reasoning about me giving reads was pretty valid and is a tell I will pay more attention to in the future, although I obviously loudly decried the reasoning as spurious before now  I had a minor freak-out for a second when you questioned the timeline of my scan claim, which I hadn't actually screwed up, but for a hot second I thought I had, and I almost said something that would have outed me in response.

I hope the living and the dead will forgive my occasional tendency towards irresponsible driving when permitted to have influence over a bandwagon.

My eliminator compatriots, you all did a killer job 

A cracked glass dagger joins my collection of knives from SE. Good game, all.

[Araris Valerian]

@Kasimir Thank you again for running this game! It was very fun reading all the RP throughout the whole game. My one regret is that I sent a nicely worded RP PM to Orlok, for which I was promptly murdered.

[StrikerEZ]

2 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I was a bit concerned that an eleventh hour kill from the village might throw a wrench in our plans. I figured I'd be the one to get killed, though, if anything. If one of our kills had also been blocked, it might have turned the tide of the game. @StrikerEZ you very nearly succeeded in making that happen. Very well done. I didn't see it coming at all, either; I thought MysticLotus was the only villager with a kill left. Apparently the dice were particularly bloodthirsty, and both sides ended up with an unexpected number of kills held in reserve.

I'm really proud that I was able to figure out two of the elims in that cycle, despite how little I'd been paying attention to the thread and my overall inactivity (compared to what I would normally like to do). Obviously, if the game hadn't ended last cycle, I would've gone for your lynch next cycle. At that point however, I'm not sure if I would've been able to catch Burnt or Orlok. I would've been able to go to the cellar though, and maybe block a kill at some point. And maybe I would've gotten another kill item as well. It would've been fun to start getting active in this game, which I was trying to at the end there. Either way, it was still so much fun to play this game!

[Lahilt]

@StrikerEZ good job with offing me it was a good way to end

@Kasimir awesome writeups! I have to go back and read the ones that I hurriedly skimmed. I enjoyed reading what you thought about my playing in the spec doc. I sent in my kill action this morning during my break at work otherwise I might have missed it.

Killers It was great to play with you all. @DrakeMarshall for all your heavy playing and strategizing. @Orlok Tsubodai and @Burnt Spaghetti did a good job of staying under the radar. 

 

[+Lotus]

Wow! The only person I remotely suspected of being a elim was Lahilt

Great job!

[Kasimir]

2 hours ago, Lahilt said:

@StrikerEZ good job with offing me it was a good way to end

@Kasimir awesome writeups! I have to go back and read the ones that I hurriedly skimmed. I enjoyed reading what you thought about my playing in the spec doc. I sent in my kill action this morning during my break at work otherwise I might have missed it.

Killers It was great to play with you all. @DrakeMarshall for all your heavy playing and strategizing. @Orlok Tsubodai and @Burnt Spaghetti did a good job of staying under the radar. 

 

Well, good job managing that, especially during your work break, you salvaged the cycle back from where Striker had gone  It was a single-handed game-winning move.

5 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

@Kasimir Thank you again for running this game! It was very fun reading all the RP throughout the whole game. My one regret is that I sent a nicely worded RP PM to Orlok, for which I was promptly murdered.

TBH, I don't recall Orlok actually ever mentioning your PM, and he was not involved in the decision to murder you... which probably just makes it worse, I assume  

Edited July 15, 2020 by Kasimir

[Araris Valerian]

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

TBH, I don't recall Orlok actually ever mentioning your PM, and he was not involved in the decision to murder you... which probably just makes it worse, I assume  

I guess that makes me guilty of not following PM safety. Maybe if Orlok had mentioned my PM, I wouldn’t have died, since I have never been a scary player when given a PM role. I probably have some sort of record for least PMs among long-time players.

[Orlok Tsubodai]

7 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

I guess that makes me guilty of not following PM safety. Maybe if Orlok had mentioned my PM, I wouldn’t have died, since I have never been a scary player when given a PM role. I probably have some sort of record for least PMs among long-time players.

Forgive me, Araris. My involvement with the game was pretty minimal due to some serious issues in my personal life.

[Araris Valerian]

7 minutes ago, Orlok Tsubodai said:

Forgive me, Araris. My involvement with the game was pretty minimal due to some serious issues in my personal life.

You are fine, and I hope that things are on the upswing for you. I would much rather you kill me and have more time to get IRL matters better in hand.

[Vapor]

Towards the beginning of the game, I mentioned the rope and world hopper, and I was right about Lahlit 

[+Lotus]

Man, reading through the spec doc I should have gone with one of my thoughts and killed Drake on that final round.

I thought drake’s post was weird, but I didn’t act on it.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Lotus

[DrakeMarshall]

Yeah, if I'm being honest I've never been anything other than utterly bad at not triggering people's inner alarm bells when I'm evil. That's kinda why I go with the higher profile options, things where I can hopefully get people to act in a certain way despite their better intuition. It almost didn't work, and Kasimir was quite right to say we were very nearly too overconfident, but hey I do what I can and hope for the best 

Woulda been interesting to see what would have come next if the game was still happening, though. I'd be dead soon one way or the other, of course, having staked a little too much on the game ending sooner, but I daresay both sides would still have quite a few tricks left up their sleeves.

[Kasimir]

So, a few quick thoughts as per the promised post-mortem:

• I feel like the item distribution table could have been further optimised, given how RNGesus demanded blood across the course of this game. It would've been better to not need to nullify the results of an entire roll (C2: Lahilt obtained the kill role, and basically everyone except Vapor, Windrunner, and someone else ended up with kill items) - even if that was a pretty obvious break in the game. But I don't feel strongly about this since if you're rolling with RNGesus, then you have to accept clown results if RNGesus feels like trolling you and the players. And nullifying C2 was the fairly obvious call to make. Secret drop rates could have been increased, I think.
• My stronger feeling is that the kill item balance issue really came down to - as Drake put it - how utterly bloodthirsty RNGesus was. Players were searching in rooms other than the Kitchen - RNGesus just didn't favour them strongly enough to pick up better protection. People did hobo in the Kitchen for a bit, and that was protection central  And the Growlery-goers could have hogged role-block items, which could be as swingy. Ultimately, this had the potential to become a RNGesus role madness game, which it kind of ended up being anyway.
• Nullifying the results of an obviously unbalanced call is okay, but I would not want to be intervening all the time. I think the line is to draw is to do it across the board, by taking an entire re-roll, rather than re-rolling for a single player.
• I think 4 Eliminators turned out fine for these numbers. I could go as low as 3, in light of the issue with the inactivity filter, and given the number of roles and items floating around. But I think that cuts things a bit close. People were worried about the hammer potential, and I think they could have risked a hammer and won a tad earlier, but Elan and I were counting on the communication issue to hobble a hammer. That being said, not having a doc is definitely a pain for the Eliminators  
• I do think two aspects of the Eliminators needs to be adjusted. First, I've realised that using the inactivity filter as the criterion for a kill doesn't really make sense, since the logical implementation of the rules just means that the kill passes from a filter-killed Eliminator to the next. I would probably lower the definition of an inactive Eliminator to one cycle of inactivity. And in a smaller group (maybe not even then!) I think the Eliminators should meet one requirement - whether it be getting a RNGesus item from a Room, or the death of one particular role - before being allowed to hammer. (Or, I suppose I could go for a random distribution but keep an eye out for a spread of timezones...)
• Switching off Room-locked targeting is the only decision that makes sense, barring something like Alvron's Burrow Baron game where people can hobo in the corridors, or a secret passage mechanic. It would be nice to make Room-locked targeting work, but ultimately, this was not the game for it.
• The meta for this game was a bit refreshing - especially with regard to the reasoning processes that went on during the final cycle. Part of it might be because I haven't been in the community for a while. Part of it, IMO, might be because of the active player demographic at the end. It's an interesting scanner gambit to watch in play, though I admit the GM part of me was going, "Hah! You think I would give y'all a scan ability?"  
• Refusing to let items be transferred seems to me to be the correct decision, since I would actually be giving people with Secrets cosmetic role-flavoured abilities. Which, whoops, only Orlok and Araris had. Oh well. This does leave me with difficulty deciding what information to give on the lynch. I am reluctantly fine with revealing all items, demarcating the single-use ones, and, I suppose, asterisking secret items - or marking them out in some way. I was actually willing to clarify about Araris's role if anyone had asked. No one did. A heads-up that roles could be acquired might be helpful for players, past C2.
• Striker Kalebane, the Terror of GMs, and the Shield of the Lynch did not break this game. I will be forever grateful  

[Wind]

Kasimir, are you going to do another game like this any time soon?

[StrikerEZ]

9 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Striker Kalebane, the Terror of GMs, and the Shield of the Lynch did not break this game. I will be forever grateful  

Maybe I just broke it without you even realizing it? 

[Arrae]

I'll admit I really only kind of skimmed the writeups for this, but it's interesting seeing how the narrator's accent fell away toward the end. It was so strong at first and here it's nearly gone. I suppose that's the point, since the jig is up and his audience is dying soon.

[Kasimir]

12 hours ago, A Windrunner said:

Kasimir, are you going to do another game like this any time soon?

Depends. If you mean RP-centric, then - I tend to encourage RP as a GM, but there are other games which will also be RP heavy. A look at the SE games GM spreadsheet will indicate which ones might be upcoming (from the looks of it, the WoT and KKC game are likely to be heavier in RP - @Elbereth would likely know more.) Burnt and I are at some point scheduled to run an "any action allowed" RP-heavy Very Weird game based off Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express which we are still trying to sort out and have been since last year  But we won't be ready to run that anytime before the end of the year, and we're not the highest on the queue list  

If you mean items-based with RNGesus and rooms - then much less likely. I have some ideas kicking around in my head, but at this point, I am most likely to next run a Midsommar-flavoured more-or-less vanilla game, though that will be after I've had the chance to recover from this one  

11 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Maybe I just broke it without you even realizing it? 

...Suddenly the near-C2 Red Wedding becomes clear... 

4 hours ago, Arraenae said:

I'll admit I really only kind of skimmed the writeups for this, but it's interesting seeing how the narrator's accent fell away toward the end. It was so strong at first and here it's nearly gone. I suppose that's the point, since the jig is up and his audience is dying soon.

I'd love to say it was intended but probably a good chunk of it was due to increasing time pressure. I did intend to have the accent fall away more subtly, but I admit I was taking less care towards the end. That being said, I did intentionally seed hints and inconsistencies since early on for the careful reader so the reveal wouldn't come completely out of left field. Unreliable narrator is always a tricky trope to pull off well.

[+Lotus]

Will the next game be a Quick Fix?

[Vapor]

Ooh yeah do you know?

[Straw]

3 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Will the next game be a Quick Fix?

Yep, it's run by Elbereth and I think she has approval, so it should go up soonish.

Rules (might be slightly different)

[Mist]

Great game!

Oh yeah, I should post here.

Good job elims. I was originally going to trust Drake there. Yay for no reception! 

Once a tell is revealed, it no longer is helpful.

Yay activity! Village reads I deserved! 

[Elandera]

Another thread to be locked! Congratulations to all of the Killers this game for winning the day and slaughtering the guests at what should have been a nice dinner party. Thanks to Kasimir for GMing. This was a fun game to watch, and I'm sure even more entertaining to play.

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!