Anniversary Game 8 / AN11: Back to Beginnings

[Kasimir he/him]

In what has to be the second-most absurd clarification I've had to make since Wyrm in LG74:

I entered AG8 without much of a game plan except to chill and have fun. I had a sort of weird concept of Kellehrt as a guy who basically worshipped a Wormmon expy, because I thought it would be loltastic to play it straight: a straight-up paladin type, but local farmer (sort of like Erik from LG6.) That didn't really work because I finally finished reading Solar Bones and the writing style more or less sank into me and wouldn't let go for a decent chunk of the game.

One thing led to another and I kind of just decided to run with that stream of consciousness writing style even for OOC posts. I had a few weird side ideas too, like that I'd pretend to be Jerric, a returning player who last played in LG6. (As it was, Wyrm said it was a bad idea - anyone who saw 'Jerric' and 'player from forever ago' would basically just assume it was me. But this was the game plan early on: even in my GM PM, I was talking about how to sign my Tineye messages to leave open the possibility I was Jerric, and I'd started to adopt Jerric's signature =) emojis.)

Somehow from that I figured - hey, why not just pretend to be this returning player called kel. (Kel because by old school SE rules, your character name had to be closely derived from your player name, so I worked backwards and got kel from Kellehrt.)

Because if players were going to go, "Hey, I've never heard of Jerric, it's probably Kas", then I might as well milk it and see if I could troll players into accepting the existence of a non-existent SE player :eyes:

Spoiler

This led to a bunch of hilarious but also absurd PMs where players would accuse me of being Kas and I would insist I had no idea why they thought I was Kas, and I was very clearly kel, a player of Fifth's gen who had returned to play SE. 

Axl absolutely did not buy this and the layers of PM trolling were glorious and the GMs just loved it  Of all the players I approached and attempted to scam, Axl was the only one who called me on it by actually checking the player spreadsheet ("FINALLY!" Fifth was yelling in the GM PM.) To which my response was, obviously, that I knew I'd gone on a trolling rampage in MR32 but the mods actually purging my records from the Archive memory was a step too far  Blatant kel erasure. Of course, kel wasn't on the spreadsheet - I'd checked too, to make sure I wasn't impersonating an actual player.

If it wasn't obvious, I really just had a bunch of shifting ideas and was winging everything. Who needed a CR when I could just go and troll everyone anyway?  

At some point, Fifth suggested I take the trolling up another notch by inventing games or play histories that didn't exist and if I did that, he'd back me up. So I invented a bunch of weird games, including MR38 in which I was a Senate Guard who'd gotten sussed heavily while trying to convince everyone Fifth was a Sith Lord because I'd yeeted Yoda D1. And some games with war pandas. And blatant kel trolling, I don't know, I'm sure I got very creative in my lies, RIP Fifth  But at least we successfully trolled Stick.

Thing was, I discovered close to the end of the game that some people had gotten confused and thought I was trying to impersonate a player from LG6 - Kal Dell.

This was extremely hilarious to me and made all the suffering worth it  

But then when I was backreading old games to enrich my personal play records, I discovered that in LG7, Gamma had referred to Kal Dell as Kel. No idea why - maybe it was a typo, because Kal Dell's characters before that had been Dellan and Kaldin, so there's not much room to derive Kel here. 

Does kel exist? I don't know anymore :eyes:

I thought kel was supposed to be just another adventure in trolling and now I myself am confused

But it was probably a typo. Probably.

And the accidental victims of kel trolling, who believed kel was real, and that kel was Kal Dell...

Well, RIP to them too

Because kel isn't real. 

Right? 

Edited February 5, 2022 by Kasimir

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

Because kel isn't real. 

Right? 

The true kel was in our hearts all along.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Hi,

Good game my friends 

Thank you to El and Fifth for running 

Also sick writeups. Both the current one by Kas and all of the other ones in this game.

Anyways, I don't really have a lot to bring to the table vis a vis the meta discussions following this game or other retrospective things. I died early and while I would like to think I was still fairly engaged in the dead doc a lot of my experience of the game was secondhand and at that point I was largely just along for the ride without being invested in any particular outcome. I think I like how El/Fifth is handling things and I'll leave it at that.

14 hours ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Oh… I also believe I am owed half of a grilled cheese, 5 queendoms, and an empire.

Plus a dull sphere, but… Kas, I think you can keep that.

Okay but you need to decide how to divide it up with Kas and Matrim.

Are you splitting the empire three ways Diadochi-style or am I giving the empire to one person?

5 hours ago, Kasimir said:

In what has to be the second-most absurd clarification I've had to make since Wyrm in LG74:

I entered AG8 without much of a game plan except to chill and have fun. I had a sort of weird concept of Kellehrt as a guy who basically worshipped a Wormmon expy, because I thought it would be loltastic to play it straight: a straight-up paladin type, but local farmer (sort of like Erik from LG6.) That didn't really work because I finally finished reading Solar Bones and the writing style more or less sank into me and wouldn't let go for a decent chunk of the game.

One thing led to another and I kind of just decided to run with that stream of consciousness writing style even for OOC posts. I had a few weird side ideas too, like that I'd pretend to be Jerric, a returning player who last played in LG6. (As it was, Wyrm said it was a bad idea - anyone who saw 'Jerric' and 'player from forever ago' would basically just assume it was me. But this was the game plan early on: even in my GM PM, I was talking about how to sign my Tineye messages to leave open the possibility I was Jerric, and I'd started to adopt Jerric's signature =) emojis.)

Somehow from that I figured - hey, why not just pretend to be this returning player called kel. (Kel because by old school SE rules, your character name had to be closely derived from your player name, so I worked backwards and got kel from Kellehrt.)

Because if players were going to go, "Hey, I've never heard of Jerric, it's probably Kas", then I might as well milk it and see if I could troll players into accepting the existence of a non-existent SE player :eyes:

This led to a bunch of hilarious but also absurd PMs where players would accuse me of being Kas and I would insist I had no idea why they thought I was Kas, and I was very clearly kel, a player of Fifth's gen who had returned to play SE. 

Axl absolutely did not buy this and the layers of PM trolling were glorious and the GMs just loved it  Of all the players I approached and attempted to scam, Axl was the only one who called me on it by actually checking the player spreadsheet ("FINALLY!" Fifth was yelling in the GM PM.) To which my response was, obviously, that I knew I'd gone on a trolling rampage in MR32 but the mods actually purging my records from the Archive memory was a step too far  Blatant kel erasure. Of course, kel wasn't on the spreadsheet - I'd checked too, to make sure I wasn't impersonating an actual player.

If it wasn't obvious, I really just had a bunch of shifting ideas and was winging everything. Who needed a CR when I could just go and troll everyone anyway?  

At some point, Fifth suggested I take the trolling up another notch by inventing games or play histories that didn't exist and if I did that, he'd back me up. So I invented a bunch of weird games, including MR38 in which I was a Senate Guard who'd gotten sussed heavily while trying to convince everyone Fifth was a Sith Lord because I'd yeeted Yoda D1. And some games with war pandas. And blatant kel trolling, I don't know, I'm sure I got very creative in my lies, RIP Fifth  But at least we successfully trolled Stick.

Thing was, I discovered close to the end of the game that some people had gotten confused and thought I was trying to impersonate a player from LG6 - Kal Dell.

This was extremely hilarious to me and made all the suffering worth it  

But then when I was backreading old games to enrich my personal play records, I discovered that in LG7, Gamma had referred to Kal Dell as Kel. No idea why - maybe it was a typo, because Kal Dell's characters before that had been Dellan and Kaldin, so there's not much room to derive Kel here. 

Does kel exist? I don't know anymore :eyes:

I thought kel was supposed to be just another adventure in trolling and now I myself am confused

But it was probably a typo. Probably.

And the accidental victims of kel trolling, who believed kel was real, and that kel was Kal Dell...

Well, RIP to them too

Because kel isn't real. 

Right? 

I knew you were Kas almost instantly, and even then, your trolling made me search through all accounts on the shard for this "Kel" you were impersonating.

And you know what? Kel is a registered account on the shard!

Not only that, but there are like eight more accounts who could conceivably have a nickname of "Kel."

You made me check each and every one of those accounts and verify that none of them had a history with SE.

Well done, sir.

The fact that "Kel" technically did play in LG7 makes this so much better  You know I get a kick out of it when the thing you pretend for trolling turns out to be true.

Oh, also.

Speaking of identity trolling yes I am Drake we both knew you knew I was Drake but I wasn't about to give the game up early mmkay I gotta respect the anonymous game at least a little especially after it was so clearly in shambles so the point is you clearly won our bet so I will be posting nothing but memes in the main thread of my next SE game.

Edited February 5, 2022 by DrakeMarshall

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

3 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Okay but you need to decide how to divide it up with Kas and Matrim.

Are you splitting the empire three ways Diadochi-style or am I giving the empire to one person?

@Kasimir @Matrim's Dice

[Kasimir he/him]

16 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Are you splitting the empire three ways Diadochi-style or am I giving the empire to one person?

Keep your empire; the fact you have to post nothing but memes in the main thread of the next game is good enough for me  Who knows, maybe I'll join you. We could turn the thread into the next prequel meme-off :eyes: (Also I really wasn't betting, I was just trolling Eiwlil so  )

16 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

And you know what? Kel is a registered account on the shard!

Oh, absolutely - I just wanted to make sure it was blatantly obvious kel didn't exist and then insist that kel did in fact exist

16 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

The fact that "Kel" technically did play in LG7 makes this so much better  You know I get a kick out of it when the thing you pretend for trolling turns out to be true.

This is true  I admit I did laugh for two solid hours when certain players who shall remain unnamed thought kel actually did exist and that I was trying to be Kal Dell, and then it took on extra layers of loltasticness when Gamma actually did call Kal Dell 'Kel'

16 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I knew you were Kas almost instantly, and even then, your trolling made me search through all accounts on the shard for this "Kel" you were impersonating.

wonderful =)

u r strong & wise & i m very proud of u

Edited to add:

16 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Speaking of identity trolling yes I am Drake we both knew you knew I was Drake but I wasn't about to give the game up early mmkay I gotta respect the anonymous game at least a little especially after it was so clearly in shambles so the point is you clearly won our bet so I will be posting nothing but memes in the main thread of my next SE game.

I maintain a lot of it was on people being obvious, to be fair. I feel like I could've given people a bit more of a chase if I hadn't been hit by the migraine though I was slipping back into my regular speech patterns in some PMs - maybe not you but some people at least had been confused by it. Orlok pegged me D1, which was pretty expected, sounds like you did as well, I'm going to assume Axl absolutely did, not sure about Scorp, Falcon did but I trolled her to the point she was screaming at me...IIRC Stick just called me Kas so I'm assuming she did too.

Cham thought he did; I confused things for him a bit. So I did try  

But all around - Vulture and Hyena were dead obvious once they started posting, you were, because of our PM and your thread behaviour, Axl's voting philosophy was so uniquely identifying the only thing that confused me was his activity patterns, Scorp just gave powerful Devo vibes C1...

Gorilla, Zebra, and Alb were the players who kept flummoxing me. A good number of people were pretty clockable by C2.

Like people kept @ing me for spending more time guessing player identities than looking for Spiked, but at the same time, I wasn't going out of my way to do that, people were just really being this obvious about who they were and it really wasn't just me.

Also yes since I'm on this topic - I really don't understand why that's supposed to be AI with Falcon @ing me for it D3. This is an anon game - at least some of the fun is supposed to be in identity guessing. And @Archer - legit the main reason I was more dedicated to the kel thing this time was I felt bad about our clash in AN10 and tried to be less obviously me. This...did not work out as well, but also as much as it was a bit of derailment, I feel like pretending to be someone else or using the anonymity aspect to swap playstyle and identity troll is part of the fun of the game so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited February 5, 2022 by Kasimir

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

3 hours ago, Kasimir said:

I maintain a lot of it was on people being obvious, to be fair.

Oh, it very definitely was, yeah 

 

Now that I give it a bit more thought, part of it may also be that having a game be both an AG and an AN puts it in a bit of a weird spot.

Anniversary Games, as the name suggests, have a strong connection to the history of SE. And they are also the games where older players are quite a bit more likely to show up.

Anonymous Games are... Sorta the opposite, in theory? They try to let you have a game that doesn't need all that history. If you want to of course you can talk about past games you were in or make statements about player metas, but it makes it somewhat easier to let that stuff to fade into irrelevance.*

So maybe we get put in a bit of a weird spot when it's a game that's explicitly about history but also... not?

Idk.

I'm not wholly sure where I'm going with this. I'm not sure if it means it's actually more important that AGs have the opportunity to be anonymous and give people the option of dodging history as much as possible, or if it means anonymous games should actually try to be brand new games that aren't reruns of anything and if those are the games you should be encouraged to try out if you want to evade pesky things like reputation. But I think the result we got this game is not really unexpected.

I would be curious if anyone has thoughts.

 

*Assuming you are a good actor which some of us just aren't, myself probably included 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

3 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I'm not wholly sure where I'm going with this. I'm not sure if it means it's actually more important that AGs have the opportunity to be anonymous and give people the option of dodging history as much as possible, or if it means anonymous games should actually try to be brand new games that aren't reruns of anything and if those are the games you should be encouraged to try out if you want to evade pesky things like reputation. But I think the result we got this game is not really unexpected.

I would be curious if anyone has thoughts.

Obviously the best course of action is to have 2 Anniversary Games each year, one anonymous and one not!

[Elbereth she/her]

1 minute ago, Araris Valerian said:

Obviously the best course of action is to have 2 Anniversary Games each year, one anonymous and one not!

To be fair, that's very very vaguely what having a mid-year game that switches off between Shard and KKC is? (Which to be clear is the very tentative plan starting with KKC next year) KKC definitely doesn't need to be anonymous, though, it's got enough going on already. >>

 

But I'd say that the AG is also in some ways a good place to have an anonymous game because you're less likely to have just the same set of players you're usually playing with - older / less active players will come back, and thus you'll have a weirder and wider set of identities to guess.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I do think that it would be nice to have room for a non-anonymous Tyrian game every now and then though, because I can't both RP as Aralis and pretend to myself that I'm being subtle about my identity at the same time.

[Kasimir he/him]

49 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I do think that it would be nice to have room for a non-anonymous Tyrian game every now and then though, because I can't both RP as Aralis and pretend to myself that I'm being subtle about my identity at the same time.

Sure is nice to have a legacy Tyrian character

I really wish there were more Tyrian runs. They're not the most shiny game on the market but they're comfortable and I liked the amount of setting engagement and RP they traditionally produced. Not sure about this one. I'm definitely disappointed in myself for not RPing as much as I could but I chalk some of it down to the constraints of Solar Bones as a writing style. 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Kasimir
justification

[StrikerEZ he/him]

48 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

To be fair, that's very very vaguely what having a mid-year game that switches off between Shard and KKC is? (Which to be clear is the very tentative plan starting with KKC next year) KKC definitely doesn't need to be anonymous, though, it's got enough going on already. >>

Can I volunteer my Radiant University game as a Sanderson version of KKC?

Also I do like the idea of the AGs being not anonymous. I don’t know if that’s something we for sure don’t want to do though.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

2 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Obviously the best course of action is to have 2 Anniversary Games each year, one anonymous and one not!

SMH why didn't I think of that before?

[Ashbringer he/him]

I’d like more Tyrian Falls games and/or adjacent games. They’re fun to play and are pretty easy to join in on. Non-anonymous ones would also be nice for newer players / doing RP. Plus I’d feel a little better about breaking a nine-year curse 

I do feel like it would be a little weird to run one, as I don’t know how I’d handle something that holds so much… esteem? reverence? in the world of SE, or whether I should work to “put my own spin” on the roles/flavor or just run it how it is. 

Although more insane distros would certainly come…

[StrikerEZ he/him]

25 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I’d like more Tyrian Falls games and/or adjacent games. They’re fun to play and are pretty easy to join in on. Non-anonymous ones would also be nice for newer players / doing RP. Plus I’d feel a little better about breaking a nine-year curse 

I do feel like it would be a little weird to run one, as I don’t know how I’d handle something that holds so much… esteem? reverence? in the world of SE, or whether I should work to “put my own spin” on the roles/flavor or just run it how it is. 

Although more insane distros would certainly come…

I mean, I'm planning on running a version of Tyrian Falls with a few more of the Era 1 metals added, like gold and electrum. I've been calling it Tyrian Falls+. Is that close enough?

[Kasimir he/him]

4 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

Anonymous Games are... Sorta the opposite, in theory? They try to let you have a game that doesn't need all that history. If you want to of course you can talk about past games you were in or make statements about player metas, but it makes it somewhat easier to let that stuff to fade into irrelevance.*

i tried rip

But yeah I get the point and I think you're right that there's a curious tension there. I'll be honest that making the Tyrian AG an AN does kill some of the buzz for me because as you point out, there's a whole layer of history to the Tyrian AG and in the past (again, pre-LG20, leaving out AG3 where I just didn't sign up because I felt bad about missing LG20 and that I shouldn't sign up for more SE games.) Prior to that, I signed up for AGs because of the history, because of my investment (having been involved in the AG Village that did not break the curse), because it's a simple ruleset that allows the setting to breathe and shine, with room for RP, and most importantly, because my friends and bros would inevitably sign up and I wanted to be there and chill with them, with a side of game solving. I think by 2015, it was clear you weren't always going to be in a game with your friends but the AG was the one time that was the most likely to happen.

In a way I did feel a bit more disconnected as Salmon Meerkat, too. I don't know, just thinking aloud. Maybe that's why I was picking up on identities. It wasn't just people doing stuff, it was me wanting to reach out and reconnect and hoping to find people I liked chilling and playing with. I do think it's no accident that most of the people I flagged the fastest were either incredibly obvious or people I had some form of strong connection to. (Sometimes strong connection just means brawling in a game ig  )

Anyway.

Some more thoughts/comments, partly disconnected because I'm tired and I don't have the energy to:

• I do think it's on me that I didn't RP as much. As I said, I was having difficulty connecting to Kellehrt and burned out a bit earlier than usual but this one was just a combination of multiple factors including trying to shoulder more analysis than I was prepared for out of guilt and then realising N3 I was likely to be dead soon and resolving to pyrehawk my way through the rest of the game. Interested in whether others have tips on staying engaged with RP for a character that doesn't quite do it for you as I remember also hitting RP troughs in previous games. Don't know if this just is a dry season for me or a sign of overcommitment all over again.
   
• It's odd I say this because I kind of liked Kellehrt's arc and the symmetry, just felt that I was often too stressed/tired to do him justice and the fact I was committing to a Solar Bones writing style absolutely did me no favours as that required more deliberate effort than I typically put in when writing up RP.
   
• I'm gonna skip emotional manipulation thoughts as I think there's a decent place in the meta thread for them.
   
• Expectations. So. I'm not always Village anchor as a niche and it's not my natural/preferred play niche. I'm usually more what I term an Instigator archetype, that comes out of being a popular NK target. I go into a game expecting to die very early and just drag the thread kicking and screaming into discussion, do my best to throw things, and just die early. Part of this is a result of a pre-LG20 mindset where I do tend to die very early apart from that game where Araris saved me (and then proceeded to balance the scales like Thanos by NKing me N1  ) - I am aware my time is limited so play more recklessly/aggressively and try to leave the Village in a better position on my death than before. I usually can't and have never done Village anchor games back-to-back because that's incredibly tiring and stressful. I'm happy to acknowledge that's partly a me problem - as Ada and I were saying, guilt, perfectionism, and overcommitment are one hell of a set of mutually reinforcing complexes. But I also think there's an element where you can't help but feel responsible because players will, like it or not, sheep you. That realistically as much as I beg to be challenged or to have that sort of robust discussion, once I end up as anchor, I will get sheeped to some level, and then I have to be responsible for more than just me. Part of this might just be shrugging and saying "too bad" to players who want to sheep rather than taking on responsibility. But I also think that tacitly assumes that this knowledge doesn't at all exert pressure on anchor players, and as I mentioned in-game, I think this just ends up being very bad as a value proposition for the Village.

Actually you know what soddit I'm tired. So I feel like maybe part of why it can feel so hard to approach the issues from this game is because a lot of it feels very abstract. Like hoo boy we're talking about communal norms! So I want to switch tacks a bit. I want to talk about what would have made my issues with the game less severe for me - what people could have done to make the game better for me. Then I will evaluate what I'm talking about and ask whether that's a reasonable set of expectations to have, and then finally ask if we can derive some form of general norm from this. Maybe this can get discussion going.

A lot of this is going to be raw, and I apologise for it, because as I said, I'm tired, and I have exams next week so if I don't use the patch of time today, I'm probably just not going to show up to the discussion at all. So best effort basis. I will do my best to be careful with my phrasing. Still, this is going to be very 'thought scratch table' level. But hopefully my underlying thought process will at least be evident.

I. What could players have done to make the game less frustrating for me/to help me?

Spoiler

• 1. People actually challenging or looking at what I say rather than taking it at face value

I felt frustrated a lot in the game as I felt I was taking a lot of flak from other players for appealing to PMs as grounds for my reads, yet people didn't want to engage with that at all (even by just saying they think it was bad reasoning or that my reads of the player weren't good - and why.) They just basically didn't like the PMs but accepted my reasoning at face value anyway.

I think that if a player tries to use private rather than public grounds of reason, they should expect to be challenged for it! It should be no different from you saying, "Well, I know my GM PM says Village, so I'm Village." Private grounds of reason inaccessible to me gives me no reason to particularly Village read you or to take your word for it. (Also, Villagers, too can lie - I was definitely embarking on the lying spree of my life in this game.) I think it's worth sharing your thoughts, even if you have to say "Honestly, I just got a good read of them from PMs" or "Honestly, I just have a good gut read." Gut read claims, too, are based off private grounds of reason - I'm not you. How would I know what you genuinely feel or what your gut says? Why do PMs have special status? I think it's good to mention these things because it's back to the same logic class issue of showing your working - even if I don't understand your working, or even if I have reason to challenge your working or disagree with your working (and I should, because I should be trying to solve the problem too!) - at the very least, I have the knowledge you are trying to solve this and I can try to read something about your perspective.

I do not for a second think I would have revised my judgements of Beagle as swiftly without at least two to three players challenging me on Beagle. If people had just said 'lol ok' about my supposed PM read on Beagle, it would have been disastrous. The Village thrives on discussion and challenge, in order to prompt re-evaluation.

Spreading out to a higher level of engagement across the Village would generally be more helpful as well in reducing the pressure - you are not an anchor if there are multiple anchors!

• 2. Accepting/creating an environment in which we can productively disagree

At some points in the game, it felt as though it was better to just avoid engaging with some players rather than to disagree because the discussion would get high temperature and unproductive for everyone. I agree with Archer in that sometimes, you're just going to disagree about the correct way to read the situation/evidence and it's probably a sign you need more data, e.g. from a flip.

My disagreeing with you doesn't mean I'm going to shrek you - it just means I think you have a wrong read of the situation. If the Village does not have a broad set of views, we end up moonwalking collectively into bad decisions because no one says "Hey, wait a second." Disagreement isn't personal - or usually shouldn't be; it just means I think your reasons are bad ones, not you personally. 

I can disagree with you and still think you are a Villager; though sometimes I do disagree with you and think that your thought process seems to come from a Spiked perspective. But the point I'm driving at is that disagreement isn't bad. It's very vital to keeping the Village alive and in the game. After eight years in SE, one of the slowest lessons I had to learn was that despite disagreeing with Araris about nearly everything, that doesn't always make him Evil. (I know right, this only took me eight years...) He just has a different read of the state of play, and that's fine. Him doing him and me doing me helps the Village when we both are Village and I wouldn't have it any other way. I could say the same of Archer, and that's more or less my view of Illwei despite not understanding what Illwei is doing most of the time.

If I feel that I can't disagree with a player in a productive or constructive way, then I have little incentive to interact with their arguments. This is a net loss for everyone as this can potentially result in exclusion of that player.

These were my main two bugbears across the course of the game. I did feel at least a little annoyed by the activity level but also understand that activity variance is perfectly normal - not everyone is going to be hyperactive and that's okay.

II. Are these reasonable asks/expectations?

Spoiler

• 1. I feel that desiring to be challenged on what I say is mildly to moderately reasonable in theory and unrealistic and more complicated in practice. In practice, people do like to outsource the legwork to other players and sort of go "Yeah, okay, you know what you're doing I guess." Which is reasonable in a large game given limited energy and attentional resources. That being said, I think it's reasonable that if you dislike PM reasoning, you challenge that as grounds, or at least - since you are not relying on it for your own reads - you identify where you disagree, rather than wholesale following the read of...someone who is claiming to use PM reasoning. (I lied, of course, but.) You can't have it both ways. If PM reasoning is bad or problematic and my reads are based off it, then you shouldn't be following my reads.
   
• 2. I do think it's reasonable to ask why reasoning drawing on PMs should have special status as compared to gut claims, or "I know I'm a Villager" claims, or player meta claims. Player meta is not necessarily always private - sometimes, more than one player is familiar with the meta in question, but I think often enough, it does boil down to a private claim because more than once, I've had to blink and just take on faith that someone claiming to know X's Evil meta is actually correct.
   
• 3. I think it's at least important to have a conversation about how we can create an environment in which we can reasonably disagree. I think some of this is going to boil down to a player's particular tendencies: an aggressive player and an anxious player in disagreement is a recipe for disaster. But I feel that some of this also boils down to norms and expectations: that players should have a reasonable expectation that they won't get shrekked for the mere fact of disagreement with another player. Similarly, players should have a reasonable expectation that it is possible to disagree with another player without causing an explosive situation and unproductive discussion. So there are two dimensions here. The problem here is that I do regard this as a fairly major communal norm: we do have very strong anti-mayoring norms. This might have been a concern in early SE through - probably LG12, but the anti-mayoring consensus has only become stronger since LG4 and the Pahn Kahl lockdown. Perhaps part of the issue is communicating that these are powerful norms that exist because of painful experience, and making sure that people are comfortable relying on this. I am aware we have had disagreement problems at various points of SE, with players who have been historically known to react very poorly to disagreement. I think part of this does tie in to the guidelines in Etiquette about disagreement, but I'm not sure what more can be done. This feels in part like a player level problem than a meta level problem.

III. Are these generalisable to broader norms?

Spoiler

• I am not very sure. I think that the more I look at these, the more I think are not really norms per se: they are specific "these are what people could do that would have helped" sort of asks. But maybe they are a decent starting point for conversation about our expectations anyway.
   
• #3 from the previous section really encapsulates two layers of expectations: how can we ensure that community norms are robust and properly communicated (such that people feel they can rely on them), and how do we encourage or uphold norms about productive disagreement (insofar as I think the ones in Etiquette do apply here?)

IV. What should I do?

This section is more me musing aloud about some of what El and Fifth have said from my perspective in the game. Sort of a "what could I have done better" section, as well as highlighting some issues that arise.

Spoiler

• 1. I think one issue is that norms often conflict - we can't always uphold norms simultaneously when they demand different things of us or pull us in different directions. For instance, AG7 brought about the consensus that information should, as far as possible, be shared with the Village and anonymised. Otherwise, players feel excluded from game-solving. There's also a powerful norm from earlier games (cf. AG3 et al) about not unnecessarily outing players. Information is often (or at least sometimes) given in trust, and players can feel very angry (and in my view, rightfully so) about getting outed against their will. Anonymised info sharing, for instance, attempts to thread the needle between nonconsensual outing and information sharing (and thus inclusion.) Given that the problem of how to solve conflicting norms is a live problem in the philosophy of science and epistemology, I don't expect to have an answer to this for the thread. But I do think this adds an extra dimension to the question of what should be done or how players in positions of trust (or groups) should act.
   
• 2. Fifth's rejoinder is that the issue isn't just of negotiating the norms but one of manner. I take the point - perhaps it's just best to challenge when a player draws on private reasoning or to brusquely highlight/lampshade that people can't have access to that, and spend most of the time focusing on public grounds of reason. I don't think the issue is simply one of private reasoning, and my exegesis of Fifth's post-mortem is that his point is it is a combination of the known information asymmetry and appeal to private reasoning. I think part of this does feed into my questioning about private reasoning in Section II, as well as highlights that at several points, I find myself returning to whether being a consensus Village trust or in a trust PM is supposed to exacerbate those problems, and I think the current answer I'm leaning towards is yes. But then this draws us back to the question of expectations once again.
   
• 3. A second paragraph on Fifth's rejoinder - that it's best not to even draw on private grounds of reasoning in the first place. I do read this as a 'companions in guilt' response since it accepts provisionally a basic duty to challenge but also points out that private grounds are problematic anyway and shouldn't be defended. I'm hesitant on this point for reasons previously discussed, also in Section II. Perhaps the correct response here is that meta points are in theory accessible: if I don't believe what Maili says about Wyrm's Elim meta, I can go back and study Wyrm's games. But if I don't believe what a player says about PM grounds, I have fewer sources of recourse apart from PMing the involved players myself. I think this might be on to something - it's a theoretical attempt at drawing a distinction, though in both cases there is a powerful theoretical sense in which I can resolve the asymmetry, but this nonetheless leads me to the conclusion that our positions are broadly-speaking similar: that the arguments shouldn't decisively hinge on or be about private reasoning (though this does raise questions about what to do if you are a Seeker scan target trying to defend the Seeker who scanned you.)
   
• To be clear, I think that private reasoning deserves challenge and should be challenged because it should not be exempt from the same standards we visit upon public reasoning; Fifth thinks that private reasoning can exclude and therefore it is problematic when employed. I think we overlap where we think that lynch discussion therefore should not be hinging on private reasoning, or having private reasoning as being central to the lynch discussion. I think this is the correct way to handle such a situation, which is to make the discussion focus on public reasoning, to mention private reasoning where necessary, highlight where it is flawed (Archer didn't say this but I agree with him on this), and to move on and focus on the public grounds of reason aspect.
   
• 4. I don't know what to think with regard to El mentioning that trusts don't tend to last that long if public or they end up dead very fast. Just off the top of my head, the PM group with Stick, Tani, Maili (ouch), and Quinn remained fairly stable throughout LG74, with Quinn being the first to die, while Tani/Connie only died near the end of the game (penultimate Day.) Aonar was basically an immovable fixture in LG4, but this game isn't a very good explanation of what to do though, so let's move on. Wilson and Claincy survived decently long in AG1, and Meta's trusts in LG7 and LG12 were both very long-lived. Kaddar and Luckat both stuck around quite a while in MR4, and there was a Rhino-Dragonfly-Lion-Vulture coalition in LG79 that was very persistent because it had three Thugs; arguably it was not outed very much as a trust and the informational aspect was not especially highlighted. AG7 had yet another trust group that stuck around for fairly unhealthily long. The one thing I think that stuck out to me as being different is my emphasis on who the contacts were and who people could go to with information if they wanted to. Maybe if so, it's better not to formalise the structure/info nodes as that just creates the sense that there is a trust and line of succession in people's eyes when it was really more a collective reading group - that's one issue that cropped up in LG6 when Awes wanted to create a diffused structure to collect claims.
   
• 5. I think it's worth being careful about when to apply pressure and which player you are applying pressure to. A significant part of this game is about applying pressure and having pressure applied to you, but indiscriminately applying pressure can result in being unable to improve your reads. Players often don't respond to pressure in the same way, and at times, applying pressure makes an already-volatile situation worse.

kel's 2p I guess.

59 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I do feel like it would be a little weird to run one, as I don’t know how I’d handle something that holds so much… esteem? reverence? in the world of SE, or whether I should work to “put my own spin” on the roles/flavor or just run it how it is. 

To be fair, I think that's why AG6 was Horneater Falls. It was the Tyrian rules but it just didn't feel right to use the Tyrian setting since that was Meta's. Also why I did Fallion's Tears instead. I don't know, I guess personally I wouldn't name Tyrian homages Tyrian Falls but I think it's cool if you want to get in on the action you know? The game is a tradition, yes, but traditions have to be reinterpreted and passed on and it's not just players who have been around since the beginning who get to run one, or it'd be a very small set of people who could.

IDK I guess I'm just saying there's no reason not to go wild. It's a tradition but it shouldn't be a sacred relic that we bring out every year and only the Chosen One can touch it or something. That's how traditions ossify or die.

Besides if you're into insane distros, that's probably the best continuation of the Tyrian legacy  

Edited February 6, 2022 by Kasimir

[Ashbringer he/him]

1 minute ago, Kasimir said:

To be fair, I think that's why AG6 was Horneater Falls. It was the Tyrian rules but it just didn't feel right to use the Tyrian setting since that was Meta's. Also why I did Fallion's Tears instead. I don't know, I guess personally I wouldn't name Tyrian homages Tyrian Falls but I think it's cool if you want to get in on the action you know? The game is a tradition, yes, but traditions have to be reinterpreted and passed on and it's not just players who have been around since the beginning who get to run one, or it'd be a very small set of people who could.

IDK I guess I'm just saying there's no reason not to go wild. It's a tradition but it shouldn't be a sacred relic that we bring out every year and only the Chosen One can touch it or something. That's how traditions ossify or die.

Besides if you're into insane distros, that's probably the best continuation of the Tyrian legacy  

Hmmm... that's fair. I feel like I can find a spin, and while I've got a lot of complex games I definitely need some simpler ones.

Would running Faleast Falls be too on the nose? Faleast is another of the ashmounts 

[Kasimir he/him]

5 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Would running Faleast Falls be too on the nose? Faleast is another of the ashmounts 

I mean, if you want to, why not?  

You're the GM, if players judge you, just make sure they die very painfully in the write-ups :eyes:

*Once again, this should not constitute legal GMing advice, Kasimir is not responsible for any damages, screaming, or temporary discorporation that might result, please seek a qualified SE lawyer.

Edited to add:

5 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Hmmm... that's fair. I feel like I can find a spin, and while I've got a lot of complex games I definitely need some simpler ones.

That's right, you have to give me a chance to sign up for more games from you beyond just MR53  

Edited February 6, 2022 by Kasimir

[Experience he/him]

Well, it was really fun to be able to pinch-hit as rhino and do a bunch of analysis, even if that analysis was terrible xD. 

Really amazing write-ups btw. 

I don't have much to say, other than I was quite surprised when the game ended after dingo died. 

[Chartreuse Penguin]

I shall have the last laugh meme, so here you go. The Final Meme (PMs Edition):

Spoiler

yes that's technically two memes but they use the same material hence they count as one

 

[dannnex male]

On 2/4/2022 at 7:01 PM, Elbereth said:

A curse shattered.

 

Zebra burned iron.

 

Zebra pulled.

i'm literally tearing up this is so good wtf

i tried to write my own ending rp like 3 times and couldnt make it work

and you just did exactly what i wanted to do and did it beautifully

broooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
kas you madlad

 

can't even think about the game rn this writing is just awesome
agh i kinda wanna read through every single tyrian falls game to date  and try to assemble a comprehensive canon now aghagahghaghaghaghaghagha

[Mat he/him]

14 minutes ago, Dannnex said:

can't even think about the game rn this writing is just awesome

This was totally me  It'll pass

[Kasimir he/him]

2 hours ago, Dannnex said:

kas you madlad

I looked for your RP but couldn't find it, but you were the best person placed to counter Scimon Tlag anyway - Ellie has too small a write-up presence and not any RP that I can recall that I could draw on. Besides, you frustrated Ash enough during the game so it's reasonable you do it in the finale as well

There are actually a bunch of small logic errors in the write-up which frustrates me but I also feel bad asking if El will let me re-edit it, so whatever, everyone can live with Edeis, Mouse, Dragonfly, and Freddie running around a little  

Accidentally fridging/ignoring Dyring's character arc is more annoying because I'd forgotten Axl had given him that arc. But I was dead by that point, and I'm not GMing this game, I just pinch-hit the write-up last minute (two hours before 'rollover' on zero sleep), so I will forgive myself for utterly forgetting that he had that arc to resolve :/

I promise I do not fridge your character arcs as a GM because your RP matters to me :|

2 hours ago, Dannnex said:

agh i kinda wanna read through every single tyrian falls game to date  and try to assemble a comprehensive canon now aghagahghaghaghaghaghagha

There's an interesting history, yeah. Some people revive legacy characters. I think Araris has always been Aralis. I've made a new one each time, as has Wyrm. Hael has his Heatherlocke author clan. That's off the top of my head.

[dannnex male]

28 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I looked for your RP but couldn't find it,

yeah i never posted it
every attempt ended in failure, couldn't get it to feel right. 
closest I got was this post where i mentioned wanting to write it. 

[Kasimir he/him]

1 minute ago, Dannnex said:

every attempt ended in failure, couldn't get it to feel right. 

Fair enough man, sometimes it do be like that!

[Araris Valerian he/him]

35 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I think Araris has always been Aralis.

Yeah, I was Aralis until the AGs stopped being Tyrian. Then I was Arenta in Fallion's Tears, and I feel like she's an honorary Tyrian character. Not sure what I'll do moving forward, but I'll definitely switch things up at least a bit to stay "anonymous".