Mid-Range Game 60: Overexposure

[Mat he/him]

Thanks for running the game, Archer! Your writeups were a delight. Glad I gave myself a second wind before I was murdered

I thought the balance was pretty good; the extra life opportunity obviously didn’t come into play though (which imo was better balanced anyway, but I’m biased ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) I am curious, though— did anyone get their coin date? Ever? xD

I don’t have much to say about the variable rollover times since the window was basically the same hours I couldn’t be online, but the one day I was there during the time frame it made the stakes feel higher to me. I imagine it was worse for the elims and wouldn’t be opposed to anyone calling the mechanic an elim nerf. In that way the extra life makes sense, I suppose.

Conq, Shining, Mark— excellent analysis. Impressive showing in those later cycles! And xino I think had a perfect voting record, so nicely done there as well. 

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

Thank you for running the game, Archer! I loved all your writeups.

Balance wise, everything seemed pretty balanced. 

The largest problem with rollovers was people waiting to put in their actions until the last minute, forgetting to, or planning on doing it later as they didn't have time then, but would later, but that would have been after the rollover. Which is why the variability was there, to make people warry about how much time they would have to vote and submit actions, and I liked it. I would play another game with variable rollover again.

 

[Conquestor he/him]

It was a great game and congrats to the elim team for being able to hang on for so long! We got pretty lucky near then end, but I think we would've lost if we didn't get Illwei when we did. 

[Shining Silhouette he/him]

Thanks for the game, Archer! Personally, I thought the rollover times were a fun twist, I just wish I had been less busy towards the end.

Finally got my first win after three losses

Also, @Matrim's Dice, the cycle you died, I switched between protecting Mark and you like three times and then at the last second switched back to Mark so I was kicking myself when you were attacked

Edit: Also, the writeups were AMAZING, made me smile each time :P.

Edited October 20, 2022 by Shining Silhouette

[Stick. she/her]

Good work village  Kinda ran out of options there

[Illwei]

Sorry, I had two 12 hour shifts on the cycle that i died and didn't have time to come post in thread or even submit an action at all. Sorry team.

[Archer he/him]

GM Thoughts:

-Shining, Wiz, and Mark sent one or two PMs per round, but no one else did. I banked on lower levels of PM safety making the need for an elim scanner low, but I think everyone got scared off by the PM rule. Which was interesting because people with even/odd roles could have gone crazy in their off cycles. The PM rule would have been really hard to keep track of if PMs were busier though, so I’d caution future GMs against it. Instead, I’d suggest a hard cap (eg 10) and have players self-police. (Shoutout to Mark for counting his own PMs!)

-I’m glad Araris convinced me to name the range of dates available instead of keeping it secret. The range was big enough that it still would have been special if someone had hit it, which was the goal of the exercise. I probably wouldn’t run the mechanic again because even if someone had gotten their date right, it was a small reward for a large-ish amount of work. Alternatively, I would have played hotter-colder or higher-lower or had a cooperative element.

The optimal elim strategy would have been for the person submitting an action every round (Devo) to submit the kill every round too, which would free up both of Illwei’s actions for coin guessing every time, maximizing their odds of getting it.

-Shoutout to Xino who watched over Conq every single round. There was a time when Devo had submitted a roleblock on Conq that he would have seen, but it was changed to Sil I think.

-There was also an almost-interaction of Devo roleblocking Sil and killing Mat(?) and Sil protecting the kill target- but they’d have been roleblocked from doing so, oo la la! But order changes scuttled that too.

-By the way, the elim roleblocker was a trap role because there was a good chance they’d get caught by all the scanners. The village protection and elim self-protection being both Odd was also on purpose, to give Illwei the chance to frame Sil if they suspiciously survived a round. All the vote manip being village was also a trap for meta-gamers.

-Surprisingly, based on how the game came down to an elim blunder and getting to a cycle away from 1v1, I think it was pretty balanced. I agree that that C3 late rollover really helped the village by giving them the chance to back off a mix, so that needs to be considered. It was partially balanced by the commonness of people failing to get their actions in on time. I expected people to paranoidly submit their actions as early in the cycle as they could, but what happened instead was a bunch of non-submissions. Same with voting. People were more lax than I expected about the deadline, so its use as a motivational mechanic has its limits.  

-I liked that variable rollover times gave me schedule flexibility as a GM. I recommend them for future use.

-Organizing your player list by the OOA is a good idea.

-Thanks to everyone who complimented the writeups. An unexpected plot emerged and I just rolled with it. There’s an Easter egg in the Gaston one where the police chief says he can’t read and that points to the wording of the protection role Sil had about them having influential connections in the police department that keep them safe.

-Again, thank you all for playing. Cheers!

[Mark IV he/him]

I know it's been a long time since the game ended, but I'd still like to finally post my thoughts on the game. 

Firstly, Archer, excellently run game, Loved playing it, especially after such a long break. I won't be playing any games for another few months, so I'm glad I can take a break with a good taste in my mouth.
The twitter segments of the writeups were all very amusing, and honestly, my second-favourite part about the rollover (right after finding out if we'd lynched an elim, of course ).

I'm somewhat surprised people read me as village, given how I voted and that my reasoning was usually somewhat insubstantial. But, maybe that's because I didn't used to say much of anything before, so I'm not used to saying stuff... Conq, I'm curious what Devo said to you in her PM that made you come close to being suspicious of me - in the sense that I'd already expected you'd be suspicious me. (I mean, to be honest, I think I'd have voted for me :P)

Illwei's death was really a stroke of luck, especially given the first 2 cycles. The vote swings during the rollover danger zone on C3 was honestly amazing and hilarious at the same time. Though, it'd have been nice if rollover wasn't around 2+ am for me XD. If Illwei hadn't been lynched that cycle, I think most of the village might have turned on itself, given my suspicions of Mat & Shining, Conq's suspicions of me (?) and Mat and Mat's read on Shining. 

Conq's suspicions were really on point throughout the game.

My whole reason for believing Shining was village turned out to be unfounded. XD
After I hinted in thread that I thought Shining had an extra-life role, he role claimed in PM and I thought there'd be no way an elims would have an extra life. Idk why I thought this, given there's been so many games with elims with extra lives, but it just came off as very villagery. Glad I believed you, Shining, but idk if it was wise. 

There's probably some other things I wanted to say, but I don't remember anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well played to the Elims. If things had played out a little differently, I think you'd have had the upper hand by the end of it. I honestly hadn't suspected Illwei or Devo (until I spoke to Conq). 

Well done to the Village.

Thanks again, Archer, for hosting the game. 

I'll see you guys again in a few months, hopefully. 

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Congratulations to the village for winning, and thank you to Archer 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!