Long Game 87: Choose Your Own Manywar

[Mat he/him]

Thanks for running the game, Steel!

I agree the protect should be nerfed. Probably made to not be able to be used on the same player twice in a row— since I myself was a Returned, Wizard just protected me the entire game :P. However, I still liked how much potential I had to swing things and infiltrate in my own way; I don’t think anyone ever figured out I was Returned and I call that a win.

Well done to absolutely everyone who fakeclaimed to me, I bought it >>

Also this game: Another example of how I cannot for the life of me correctly read Archer, ever. Unless it’s VC analysis. But it’s too bad you never claimed to me :(.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Matrim's Dice

[Clanky he/him]

56 minutes ago, JNV said:

Thats what I mean honestly we made the right decision with the information we had but we didnt have the information we needed so we didnt have the chance and we talked ourselves out of every good option and Clanky stabbed us in the back it was very mean but were still friends right Clanky its a little frustrating honestly but what I really mean by never had a chance is that I thoguht we were friends Clanky you couldnt have waited a cycle you couldnt have done anything I thought we were friends and basically our chance at victory was founded on randomness and the generosity of people who are fundamentally opposed just because of action economy and time 

I forgive you and it might not be ok right now but it will be and I still consider you a friend just in a rough patch right now

That's fair, I probably could have waited but I have always been a coward. I didn't know that my research was going to end the game though, there had been turns where no new commands were researched so I didn't know if I would have to do both researches to end the game. I could've not researched and risked it but I had already lived longer than expected when everybody knew I had a kill and I was expecting to be a target for the execution next turn (and I didn't trust stick fully which was probably unfair of me). Long story short I'm making excuses for being a bad friend and I should have waited. 

Some other random thoughts

• It's always tough to balance a faction game and the cowardly elites make it so much harder. The addition of Araris made the cult win condition so much easier but you can't really make all the factions win cons based on the chance that a CE joins. So all in all I think the balance was done quite well.
• (from the dead doc: I was not trying to gloat when messaging stick and JNV last cycle. I was hoping that if they combined their breath that day and the Archer breaths would pass to the right player it would be enough to get them the breath they needed. If I just told them that there's a good chance the cult would end the game then they could try and move the lynch. I didn't have all the information to know that the win was guaranteed like people watching did) 
• Thanks for all the help kas, (even if you claim not to know how to play faction games) it was fun while it lasted! 

[Steeldancer he/him]

Alright its time for a full on essay's worth of game thoughts. 
This game is by far the most complex game I've ever run. It had 3 weird, distinct mechanics I've never seen before. 
1. The Faction choosing. Any of you who have been in the community for at least a year know this idea has been bouncing around my head for a while. The idea of shifting factions interests me for many reasons, and this was the final culmination of that idea. Originally it was going to be a singer game, but Hallendren and the manywar caught my interest for a potential setting, which sent the rest of this into motion. 
Honestly, it didn't turn out too bad, thanks mostly to Devotary. I would have done things slightly differently, but the way Devotary ended up distributing it ended up with only a few small issues, which I'll get into. 
2. Awakening Discovery. This mainly came about as a way to pace the game, make breath worth something, and help shift the game in interesting ways. The discovery was utilized well, but I found pretty much no one bothered to awaken anything at all. This gets into the third item, but I kind of wish the awakening system had been explored more. Perhaps the game was just too fast paced? I'm not sure. 
3. The Breath Economy. Technically I stole the heightening system from... LG5 I think it was? With a few tweaks to make it work better in this game. 
The thing is, I thought there was going to be a lot more breath gain in this game than there ended up being, which actively messed with the Adjuncts. The thing is, people died really quickly. 3 deaths a cycle is fast, even with 17 people. That meant there wasn't as much breath flowing into the game as I was counting on, and there was no way anybody would have ever been able to hit the 10th heightening. We had 2 people hit the 6th, but my ideal was by the end of the game for someone to be able to hit the 9th and discover the final command, Destroy Evil. So basically, it really should have been more like 1-30 or even 1-40 breath, with the Adjunct action doubling that. It would have made that a lot more doable. 
The biggest distribution problem was Matrim. He should not have been in the Edgli faction. It was already a faction that didn't need to do much, but that made it so it needed to do nothing at all to win. But, it is what it is. 
The other big problem was a little loophole I left in the rules. When I wrote the rules, I wrote them so that none of the primary factions could win with each other. But, the way I worded the Revolutionaries' win condition left an edge case where the Infiltrators and the Revolutionaries could win together. I didn't consider it an issue, because of how complex it would be to actually win together, but I should have closed the loophole. I'm glad the players were able to work things out on that end, but I'm still a bit annoyed about it. 
Another weird thing: I included the Infiltrators to force docs to not be able to trust absolutely, but that ended up pushing the game mostly into PMs. PMs are a lot harder to manage and look over than documents, which made GMing and keeping track of everything a bit more of a headache. Especially when Kasimir and Fifth were making ungodly numbers of PMs. I'd probably change the infiltrators in some manner to help that. I think it was ok, but the docs didn't end up as essential as I thought they'd be. 
Serial Killers! I didn't think they'd actually be able to win with the primary factions, nor did I think the Doves were going to be able to win. But once Araris hopped factions to the Cult of Colors, that made that possible suddenly. Speaking of which, that was literally perfect. I'm glad the RNG gave the role to Araris, and I'm also really happy that the role got used to cause such an interesting ending. 
Looking at the primary factions, I feel like I should have given them some more Oomph. The infiltrators had both information and a kill. Now, what might have been a more interesting set up, would have been to have the Revolutionaries have the kill, the infiltrators have information, and then give some edges to the Doves and Hawks as well. Maybe a protect for the Doves and a bunch of awakened items for the Hawks? I'm not sure, I'd have to think about it more. 
And yeah, Edgli needed to be more interactive. Changing the protect would have been one way to help it, but I'd have to think about it more. Having Matrim in there was one problem, but they probably would have been able to find a returned fairly easily. Honestly it probably would have been better to have them be one of the win condition ideas I saw thrown around, like some sort of alignment changing faction, or something else. Just keeping someone alive was too simple. 
One more thing. 
Devotary is the best. The number of times she came in clutch for some reason or another was not insignificant. Please go give her an upvote somewhere because Devotary rocks! 

Alright, basically, this was a real learning experience for me. I tend to like to run mechanically unique games in unexplored settings, and this was kind of the most extreme of these. I don't think I'll be running another faction game anytime soon, they're hard to balance. And tie up all loose ends. And if I do, I'm certainly not letting players choose their own factions again. It was a fun one time thing, but... well good old RNG is probably more reliable, especially in games as complex as this one. But outside of a faction game, I hardly see another place that kind of mechanic could actually work? Certainly not in a normal V vs E game. So, IDK. I'm not even sure when I'll be running another game, but I promise will not be this experimental. 
I think that's about it. Thanks for playing another Steel game! Until next time I come up with some weird mechanic...

Edited July 19, 2022 by Steeldancer
added some thoughts about Edgli faction

[Ashbringer he/him]

Sorry Adjuncts - I didn’t want to leave myself Breathless and didn’t have time to figure out a way to pass just 30, and thought Araris was waiting to change over. I would have the next turn though 

I’m glad not telling Sart I was a 2nd Spy paid off though. At least a little.

More thoughts when I’m not eating dinner. But I had fun!

[Mat he/him]

1 hour ago, Steeldancer said:

The biggest distribution problem was Matrim.

Heh, even so my C1 claiming basically got everyone off my back for the rest of the game and Stick claimed to me pretty quick. So if I hadn’t been Returned the same end result probably would have happened. If I hadn’t been Returned, who knows.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again— I like the pure survival role and the openness it allows for. But I understand why people would want it changed.

[Luckspren she/her]

This was fun. Being the last in my faction, in my second game ever, in a game this complicated, was... a bit much, but I feel like I have some idea what I'm doing now.

Enjoyed playing with y'all, especially Bard and Stick. I'll be doing it again!

[Young Bard he/him]

Thanks to Steel and Devo for running this, I really enjoyed coming back to SE again. Picking your own faction is such a fun idea, I'm amazed noone's done it before - but I'm sure more people will in future.

It was really fun being able to speak with old friends again (Kas, Fifth, Stick), as well as meet new faces (Luckspren, JNV). Luckspren, you did great for your second game, it was nice being docmates with you (and Elan, too).

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Congratulations to the Cult of Colors, Royalist Doves, and Followers of Edgli for winning, and thank you to Steeldancer for running the game!

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, Elandera, or StrikerEZ, 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, Archer, and Kasimir) 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!