Long Game 83: The Survivor

[Kasimir]

11 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Edit: I had PM fun too Kas  

Fair enough, I will add you to my list

Thanks for the fun PM and DM, Ash, and yes, the etiquette is that it's okay - we don't stop living-dead players from having OOG PMs, but you have to be really careful about what you say in them. I've had one or two living-living ones continue as well, but in those cases, we absolutely Do Not Talk About The Game.

You're right that this is the right game to RP and chill in but I just found myself incapable of doing nothing but that. I was really bored and disengaged. Probably doesn't help I'm still suffering from a lot of a creativity block at the moment, spanning...three years by this point. So I just said I was going to solve since solving made me happy.

[Ashbringer]

14 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

Fair enough, I will add you to my list

Thanks for the fun PM and DM, Ash, and yes, the etiquette is that it's okay - we don't stop living-dead players from having OOG PMs, but you have to be really careful about what you say in them. I've had one or two living-living ones continue as well, but in those cases, we absolutely Do Not Talk About The Game.

You're right that this is the right game to RP and chill in but I just found myself incapable of doing nothing but that. I was really bored and disengaged. Probably doesn't help I'm still suffering from a lot of a creativity block at the moment, spanning...three years by this point. So I just said I was going to solve since solving made me happy.

Yeah, I've had my fun of OOG DMs (mostly with Quinn), but I'm more used to being the one without information instead of the one with it. Hence why I was hesitant to actually badger you to stop analyzing and chill, because, well, I could tell how close or not close you were to being right and that was a bit too close for comfort. Plus if you're doing village analysis as a non-villager you're not just doing it for the pattern.

Writers block can be an oof, and I definitely can understand the "fine, I'll do it myself" moments when it comes to doing analysis... MR56 or otherwise. Do what makes you happy so long as it lets you sleep at night! ...don't read into that.

And hey, LG74 and AG8 writeups/writings were great!

[Kasimir]

1 hour ago, Ashbringer said:

Yeah, I've had my fun of OOG DMs (mostly with Quinn), but I'm more used to being the one without information instead of the one with it. Hence why I was hesitant to actually badger you to stop analyzing and chill, because, well, I could tell how close or not close you were to being right and that was a bit too close for comfort. Plus if you're doing village analysis as a non-villager you're not just doing it for the pattern.

Writers block can be an oof, and I definitely can understand the "fine, I'll do it myself" moments when it comes to doing analysis... MR56 or otherwise. Do what makes you happy so long as it lets you sleep at night! ...don't read into that.

And hey, LG74 and AG8 writeups/writings were great!

Yeah, to be fair, my #1 rule for this game was to do whatever made me happy.

As it turned out, serious analysis so soon after the MR and AG8 did not make me happy so I have to admit with no guilt at all I just did everything in PMs and off-the-cuff. 100% genuine low effort attempts. No backreading (minus the Bip re-eval, which was fast because it was just checking what Archer said), no link analysis, light vote analysis, without bothering to look too much at progression. The spreadsheet did take work but I needed the practice anyway and as a non-Villager, I could afford to get bogged down in item mysteries, though it did make Bip and Karn look more sus so that was good  

I don't think I even had reads lists at that point besides a one-off attempt: the running tally in my head was always a coarse-grained sus/not-sus binary.

[Haelbarde]

Te etyc aruetiise parjir!? The filthy traitors won!?

Haar'chak! Damn it!

...

Kandosii, kandosii! Nice one, well done!

Par ni, nuhur r'oyacyir jorhaai'r Mando'a o'r ranov'la'jorhaa'r. For me, good times lived speaking Mando'a in private messages.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Haelbarde

[StrikerEZ]

So, now that some people have had time to give their thoughts and I've had time to sleep, I think I should give some GM thoughts.

First off, I am really glad that so many of you really enjoyed playing this game. I am really sorry that I couldn't keep up with the writeups. My life kind of exploded into business as soon as this game was about to start. I'm still finding it hard to make myself even want to go back and write them because I feel bad about having left them undone. 

If I'd known how busy I was going to be during the runtime of this game, I probably wouldn't have ran it. But the stress didn't come from the game itself, just the combination of the game and real life. And there were plenty of times where this game brought me a lot of happiness just from watching the elims strategize or reading the absurd amount of Kas PMs or seeing something crazy go down in the thread.

I have some thoughts about the overall balance of this game. I think letting players use as many actions as they possibly can was a fun idea that I really should have just scrapped. I think no more than 2 actions per turn would've been ideal. I did the as many actions as possible thing because I felt super limited by the actions economy in LG73 (which this game is inspired by), but I think I went way too far in the other direction.

I'm not sure how I feel about the elim stockpile of steel thing. On the one hand, it was a fun idea to let the elims stockpile up their kills and even boost them a couple of times. On the other hand, it could've left them super vulnerable to being leeched. Which I guess isn't too terrible, but it just felt a lot more unstable than I was expecting it to. I also should have decided how exactly the elims would get their hands on the steel vials before the game started. It just completely slipped my mind. And then I said one thing that I hadn't completely originally intended and had to stick with it. In a rerun of this game (whether by me or someone else), I'd want the elims to have to grab a steel vial from their stockpile. Or just give them a normal kill.

Another thing I think I would change is how open PMs are. I do think it's always fun to have PMs open, but I've started to gain a different view of PMs from the GM side as I've GM'd more games. I think that having PMs being unlimited and always open really detracts from the health of a thread. Those last few turns had only one page of posts in them because everyone was either talking in the PMs or in the thread. In a rerun of this game, I'd probably limit PMs to items and a PM creator role (not like Prudence level though ). I do think that the existence of freely open PMs in this game mostly hurt the elims, even if they managed to pull out a win with the help of TJ PM spidering with Kas. They also super lucked out with Araris being the one that Mat/Kas went to to tell about Bort being scanned.

And that brings me to my final point. I think this game has finally convinced me that I don't like alignment scanners. In a rerun, I'd get rid of the Investigator and replace it with that PM creator role I mentioned earlier. I think that having someone that can easily just find out who an elim is without having to put in any of the work is not that fun. And it seriously hurts the elims' chances by a lot. The elims this game managed to play it to their advantage, but they were seriously helped by the fact that Archer started off with the Hrovell and decided to use it on JNV. If Archer or Karn had been the one to be scanned by JNV, things would've been much worse for them.

Oh, also, one last thing, I think I might want to try and nerf bendalloy somehow. It basically became like...the most useful metal in the game. I'd also want to get the OoA sorted out much better, because there was a lot of confusion there.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with how this game went, just wish I'd noticed some of these problems beforehand. Once again, thank you so much everyone who played. You guys always make this so fun for me.

[Kasimir]

This did not need to be used, but on N3, I was preparing for death and to embrace death, which probably says a lot about how into the wincon I am.

Kas Death RP submission:

Spoiler

Death comes for him in a flurry of bullets, accelerated no doubt by steel. Kavar dodges, throws himself low, and curses to be caught out. He has a little iron, a little steel, but the armoury has been tight about the vials issued, but he is not defenseless.

Never defenseless.

One of the bullets strikes a glancing blow to the ceramic shoulder plate of his body armour, and Kavar feels the shudder of the impact all the same. He burns iron, pulling the bullets off-course, yanking them roughly into the bulkhead and walls.

In the old days, they used obsidian and volcanic glass. These days, it’s modern, and toughened ceramic and fabric weaves. His knife is in his hand as he crouches, ready to fight back.

Ne’ta orar, they’d called him, back in the day when he fought with other squads that weren’t Pyrehawk, back in the good old days when it was Wyhe and him and sometimes Jahin and Gamm against the world, or so it felt like.

Stars, it felt like forever ago.

He follows the tracery of blue lines, but the aruetiise aren’t stupid, either. All of them aren’t carrying metal on them, but they have ammo, which means Kavar can find them. It’s just a pain to, in this world of blue light.

For want of anything better, he spies a storage bin, and scuttles behind it. Cheap thing, won’t do much against them. But breaking line of sight usually isn’t a bad idea, and it’s nice to have something between hm and the traitors who have come hunting him.

Probably shouldn’t have gotten up and in their faces like that.

But that’s the way of it, and Vahn’alor had given him a job, find the saboteurs, destroy their caches, secure the contraband, and Kavar’d be damned if he didn’t do his best to get it done.

He grips the knife and waits.

And remembers.

 

§

 

Mira is young, and wide-eyed as he folds the fingers of her hand around the knife.

Wide-eyed, she tries swinging it, and he grabs hold of her wrist to stop her. “Careful, cyar’ika” he cautions. “This is a weapon. You must always be mindful of where it is, and what you are doing with it.”

Mira frowns at him, and he recognises the same frown Ailys wears when deep in thought. “Why?”

“This is your first lesson,” Kavar says, and thinks back to when he was a boy, kneeling in the grass, as his own father gave him his first lesson with a knife. How the lessons they learned were passed from generation to generation, from Aral to Aral. How tradition became greater than one’s own self, how family and bloodline and clan endured in this world, even if little else did. “How to use a knife.”

Mira nods. This she knows. The child’s rhyme, the tenets.

Ba'jur bal beskar'gam,
Ara'nov, aliit,
Mando'a bal Mand'alor—
An vencuyan mhi.

But sometimes, Kavar struggles to explain it the way Ailys does. The way the lesson of the knife matters, the idea of cutting away at everything extraneous. The way it does not matter if it is unfinished, the way it has been cut here, and so must end here.

The way that any son or daughter of his will learn to use a knife and shoot, to defend themselves, to stand with confidence in this world, proud in their heritage as part of Clan Aral.

He corrects her grip. “You must hold it firmly, with confidence,” he says. He himself had held on too loosely, and his father had struck the knife from his grasp. “If you do not, the knife will bite you. It will slip in your hand when you cut, or when you strike.”

If only they knew, like the knife, to hold on, to be sure.

If only.

 

§

 

Wyhe finds him in the old bar, on his fifth glass. Just enough to send a comfortable numbing haze around his brain, a sense that he can control what’s happened, the memory of falling as his father threw him, the world rushing around him before he remembered to break his fall; that feeling of loss of control, the memory of flight, everything off-kilter.

“Fierfek,” Wyhe grumbles, glaring at him. “Of all the places, you’re drinking your way through this bar in the arse end of Elendel?”

“I can’t do this,” Kavar mumbles, resting his forehead against the glass. “Shab’, Wyhe. I can’t. I don’t know the first thing about being a father.”

Wyhe sighs, and relents, and comes over to him. Grips his shoulder. “Get a hold of yourself, man.”

“Kad’ika,” Kavar whispers. “That’s what she always called me. I don’t know, vod. I really don’t know.” The alcohol fog, at least, blunts the edge of the dark panic nicely.

He’d never felt that way, even as a man alone in hostile territory. Even in the thick of combat. It was the sort of thing you trained for, drilled for. You could lean on your training and know that your training and your squad would have your back, just as you had theirs.

But there was no training for this, and no maps. Only himself, and Ailys, and Kavar feels woefully inadequate to the task that has been set before him.

“You do,” Wyhe says, and Kavar leans into that utter certainty, into that artlessness. “You just love them more than air and water and light. From there, everything else comes naturally.”

“You say it like it’s that simple, vod,” Kavar whispers.

Wyhe works away the glass from him, and Kavar can’t bring himself to fight it. “Of course it is,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

§

“Buir, where are you going?”

And the word still brings a sudden rush of unexpected joy into his chest, the memory of Mira’s first steps, the memory of her first word (“buir,” always ever “buir”, and he and Ailys fight good-naturedly about which of them she was referring to), first this, first that, first everything, before duty called, and kept calling, and then there were gaps in that knowledge, firsts that Kavar misses, and that erode into a whole chain of missing dates, missing spaces.

He sets down his duffel and hunkers down to catch her in a tight hug.

“Work,” Kavar says. Because there’s always another tour, always another op. Because the Confederation never seems to run short of enemies, or trouble areas that demand Mistborn deployment. (“Are you sure?” Ailys asked him, last night, over the kitchen table, and he knows what she’s really asking is why, and Kavar doesn’t want to say that it pays well, that it’s all he knows how to do, that freelancing pays well but is feast-or-famine, and that’s not the sort of instability he wants to inflict on Ailys and Mira, because Ailys will say it doesn’t matter, and Mira needs a father who’s actually there, and they’ll fight, and Kavar doesn’t want to, so instead they sit there, holding each other’s hands over the kitchen table and their pleading is silent and already the first cracks between them are beginning to grow.) “I promise I’ll be back soon, okay?”

Mira frowns at him. “You said that the last time, buir.”

“Shhh,” he says, stroking her hair. “I know, cyar’ika. Sometimes duty demands these things of us. I promise I’ll settle it faster this time, okay? And I’ll call you and Lys’buir whenever I can.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

 

§

 

The lesson of the knife, Kavar thinks, crouching behind the storage bin, holding the knife.

How to let go. How to hold tightly.

How to recognise when something unfinished had to end, was ended. How to make the cut, and to say, “It is enough, it has ended here.”

He remembers tears in Ailys’s eyes, but also the steel, on the day she told him it had to end, that they were hurting each other more than they were helping.

The fire in Mira’s eyes when she told him it was her own time to leave, her own time to see the cosmere and the wonders it had in store. The increasingly distant and infrequent transmissions from Mira.

Kneeling on the grass, folding Mira’s fingers around the hilt of the knife. Teaching her, adjusting her grip.

This is your first lesson.

The lesson of the knife.

Let go.

Hold on.

Don’t look back.

 

§

 

Motir ca'tra nau tracinya.
Gra'tua cuun hett su dralshy'a.
Aruetyc talyc runi'la trattok'o.
—Vode An

Submitted this to Striker and Experience; fortunately or otherwise this did not need to be used.

[Sequence]

I'd say my first game of Sanderson Elimination went pretty well. Even though I didn't participate a ton, it was a lot of fun. Thanks everyone.

[StrikerEZ]

2 minutes ago, Sequence said:

I'd say my first game of Sanderson Elimination went pretty well. Even though I didn't participate a ton, it was a lot of fun. Thanks everyone.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I'd love to see you stick around and play even more games! And you can always talk even more in future games. I know from my own experiences that it's often hard to talk a lot when you're first starting.

[Steeldancer]

I low key forgot about this game after I died. 

I sent in some death RP that reveals how my character narrowly avoided death, and I have some more RP that I'll post within the next day or so. 

Ill express some annoyance that I was targeted when I expressly was trying to focus on RP... And even more so that I pulled a dumb dumb and didn't realize I could have protected myself and nabbed the pewter vial I was eyeing up. 

[Kasimir]

20 hours ago, |TJ| said:

Dropped him off at Mira's, hoping they'd reconcile and he'd be there around more for his kids like he wanted. Mira does bake some mean cookies though, I might have to return here.... but uhh not before gauging how Kavar feels. Angry? Disappointed? Betrayed? Well, if it gets him the life what he wanted, then it's alright. But for now? Well, Roshar's a whole new world. 

Bro.

Am I.

Did I.

Did I screw up my RP this badly :|

Mira is his daughter bro >>

[|TJ|]

1 hour ago, Kasimir said:

Bro.

Am I.

Did I.

Did I screw up my RP this badly :|

Mira is his daughter bro >>

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH what? >>

Quote

He'd made his own choices, and his share of mistakes. Ailys had left first. After that, it was Mira who had walked out of his life. With Mira, it was no sudden decision, though perhaps it had not even been sudden with Ailys: it had been hurried nights, between deployments, it had been arguments swiftly hushed when Mir'ika came into the kitchen, it'd been a thousand and one signs he should have read as clearly as the star-clad sky above his hometown, as trail signs laid down by Aral scouts for the main force to follow.

With Mira, it had been distant transmission after distant transmission, growing briefer, colder; his own transmissions sometimes hitting the answering service or going unanswered altogether. He knew she was slipping through his fingers and maybe that was the point, he thought. You gave your children life but you could not live it for them, and Mira'd decided she was better off without her buir in her life. And the knowledge still cut him, like a knife: the knowledge that maybe there was no way to make things right, that Mira'd made her own choice, just as Ailys had, so many years ago.

Kad'ika. He was a knife, had always been. Maybe that was the problem. He'd been a knife first, and a father and a husband a distant third.

I don't remember your earlier RPs, but tell me this doesn't look like you're talking about your two exes here >> Clearly looks like a couple growing apart smh :P. 

[Kasimir]

2 minutes ago, |TJ| said:

You gave your children life but you could not live it for them, and Mira'd decided she was better off without her buir in her life.

I'm going to invite you to re-read this again  

[|TJ|]

2 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I'm going to invite you to re-read this again  

smh that's one small line in a huge post I totally interpreted the opposite way, I didn't give importance to it :P. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by |TJ|

[Kasimir]

Just now, |TJ| said:

smh that's one small line in a huge post I totally interpreted the opposite way, I didn't going to give importance to it :P. 

smh what's the point of me doing subtext if you're just going to make my character go all-out Targaryen >>

judging u bro

what is this betrayal 

[|TJ|]

1 minute ago, Kasimir said:

smh what's the point of me doing subtext if you're just going to make my character go all-out Targaryen >>

judging u bro

what is this betrayal 

aaaaaaa not Targaryen smh  See, you can read my post and it'll still make sense if Mira is his daughter. "Reconcile and be there for his kids" could both mean for Mira, so it's fine :P. 

[Ashbringer]

See this is why you guys aren't getting AraRaash's backstory yet 

[Kasimir]

12 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

See this is why you guys aren't getting AraRaash's backstory yet 

Given TJ's reading comprehension skills and ability to construct crack theories, I'm not surprised >>

Smh bro @|TJ| >>

[|TJ|]

1 minute ago, Kasimir said:

Given TJ's reading comprehension skills and ability to construct crack theories, I'm not surprised >>

Smh bro @|TJ| >>

I - Shhhhh >>

[Kasimir]

2 minutes ago, |TJ| said:

I - Shhhhh >>

I'm cool that your loyalties are ethically challenged. You're still my bro and we don't choose our bros, we only back them up.

I'm cool that you murdered my bros Fifth, Drake, Mat, Aman, Ash - it's the curse of being a neutral; you watch your bros die as your murderous bro kills your other bros and you can't do anything to save them even though you should've died for them.

BUT WHAT IS THIS TARGARYEN CRAP BRO, WHAT >:(

THIS IS ONE BRIDGE TOO FAR MY DUDE >>

[|TJ|]

3 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

BUT WHAT IS THIS TARGARYEN CRAP BRO, WHAT >:(

There is not a single indication in my post that Mira is his wife SMH, there's no Targaryen crap going around, let it goooo smh

[Kasimir]

49 minutes ago, |TJ| said:

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH what? >>

Spoiler

 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Kasimir

[Walin]

Wow, that was fun for the 1 cycle I got to stay alive. Glad to see the Villagers won. Wait, the Elims.

Well played, everyone! After briefly reading the dead doc's ending cycles, I concluded that we played well for the information available to us. Go Village! Elims did super well and the hammer->openwolfing was hilarious. My only complaint was that I wasn't an Elim and thus get to take part in the spoils, but alas. I was merely a medallion-Mistborn. 

[Experience]

Okay, lots of IRL stuff and I really need to just post my thoughts or it'll never happen.

Great job elims for winning. 

TJ is a very scary elim, Kas is still a great player when not-village (congrats on Thief win)

I think I very well might enjoy GMing more than playing, even though playing is quite fun. I just really enjoy seeing everyone interacting from the inside. (If anyone ever needs a co-GM, just lmk). I also went with the tactic of only reading the rules once two weeks before the game, and then defaulting to asking Striker anytime anyone had a question. Def an interesting tactic at GMing. Honestly don't really recommend in the future, as it would have just been easier to read the rules again but I was feeling lazy lol. Also, for anyone possibly rerunning the game in the future, almost all of the balancing goes into choosing what items are put in the stockpile everytime it is restocked.

For some reason @StrikerEZ wouldn't let me add 5 steel and 3 knives one of the nights, but it was still a blast GMing the game with you! :P. Also huge thanks to @Devotary of Spontaneity for being such a great IM!

[StrikerEZ]

3 hours ago, Experience said:

Also, for anyone possibly rerunning the game in the future, almost all of the balancing goes into choosing what items are put in the stockpile everytime it is restocked.

Yes, this. In hindsight, I really should've planned better and set up some sort of RNG system for what items would get added to the stockpile when new ones were added. Just another thing to add to the list of changes to be made in a rerun. Whether it's done by me or someone else.

3 hours ago, Experience said:

For some reason @StrikerEZ wouldn't let me add 5 steel and 3 knives one of the nights, but it was still a blast GMing the game with you! :P. Also huge thanks to @Devotary of Spontaneity for being such a great IM!

Alas, I felt doing that would be a bit much for a game where there were already so many kills.

Also, yes, can definitely attest to Devotary being a great IM.

And I just want to apologize to everyone about the lack of writeups. This spring break somehow ended up being a bit busier than I thought it would be. Not to mention that my mental health kind of took a nose dive at times this week for no reason. And that all just combined to create a huge lack of motivation to actually go back and create new writeups, especially since I spent most of the creative power I did have available to me this week on the aftermath writeup. Anyone who did death writeups, remind me (either in PMs or on Discord) and I'll edit those back in with Devo's help. 

[Thaidakar the Ghostblood]

sorry it took me a while to get to this, but this was FUN! even if I died right at the beginning lol.