Mid-Range Game 62: In The Shadow of Ash

[Araris Valerian]

10 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

Technically, there was a slim chance the village could’ve pulled a victory out of this. If the votes came down to 1-1 for TJ and Aman and Aman got exed, TJ would snap. And if TJ got vote manip, the game would have gone on.

I’ll take note of that

Yeah, I figured that one out, but it required Aman to attack me instead of TJ, which would just be an unnecessary risk.

[Stick.]

But howww cuz you used up your Atium C3-C4 so you would have died right? Then it’s parity so how would the game have gone on still. I am missing something 

Edit:

I got it, sneaky little clause about village vote manip in the elim wincon >> 

Edited March 4, 2023 by _Stick_

[Araris Valerian]

Yeah, I kinda take issue with that win-con in that the village would win this game 50% of the time with an outnumber win con. And also the presence of so many ways to deal with the NK means that parity could break in favor of the village.

I think having it like it is prevents a whole bunch of cycles where there is just a die roll to determine who dies, but there should be more nuance with this rule set.

Not to take away from the elim win here. They structured their play around the defined rules (and I killed them over the clarified rules ) and we all knew what we were signing up for. This is just some feedback for a potential rerun.

[The Wandering Wizard]

12 hours ago, StrikerEZ said:

I just realized I forgot to shoutout Wiz as winning with the team. I just fixed it. I am so sorry Wiz. My brain is fried right now.

It's fine and I didn't see it until afterwards anyways

This was a great first pinch hitting experience and I'll be glad to pinch hit somemore when I convince myself not to play

I'll be more careful in my lying next time, Araris

[Araris Valerian]

43 minutes ago, The Wandering Wizard said:

I'll be more careful in my lying next time, Araris

That’s the spirit!

[StrikerEZ]

1 hour ago, Araris Valerian said:

Yeah, I kinda take issue with that win-con in that the village would win this game 50% of the time with an outnumber win con. And also the presence of so many ways to deal with the NK means that parity could break in favor of the village.

I think having it like it is prevents a whole bunch of cycles where there is just a die roll to determine who dies, but there should be more nuance with this rule set.

Not to take away from the elim win here. They structured their play around the defined rules (and I killed them over the clarified rules ) and we all knew what we were signing up for. This is just some feedback for a potential rerun.

Yeah, the wincon was weird. But it was designed to make it so that the outcome of the game didn’t come down to essentially a coin toss, you know? Which would’ve happened with you and Aman if the rules hadn’t been phrased that way, so my worries were at least valid. I do think it’s not the most ideal way to do it, but I’m unsure how else to handle it. What would you do?

[Araris Valerian]

Just now, StrikerEZ said:

What would you do?

I mean, I would do a coin toss .

As far as what actually should be done, that's a harder question, and one I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on. The "official" outcome doesn't really matter that much, because everyone's done what they can do; there's no more game left to play, at least in terms of the mechanics. I think as a community we aren't so fixated on who wins for it to be a big deal either way.

With that in mind, whatever is done should reflect the spirit of SE in another way. Perhaps, pending agreement by the living players, some sort of RP duel, to be judged by the GM/IM/impartial spectators, might be fun. Or some other random contest.

[StrikerEZ]

9 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I mean, I would do a coin toss .

As far as what actually should be done, that's a harder question, and one I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on. The "official" outcome doesn't really matter that much, because everyone's done what they can do; there's no more game left to play, at least in terms of the mechanics. I think as a community we aren't so fixated on who wins for it to be a big deal either way.

With that in mind, whatever is done should reflect the spirit of SE in another way. Perhaps, pending agreement by the living players, some sort of RP duel, to be judged by the GM/IM/impartial spectators, might be fun. Or some other random contest.

I say we should make it be a rock-paper-scissors duel. They submit their choice to the GM, and the GM reveals who beat who. And if there’s a tie, then the game ends in a draw.

[Kasimir]

40 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

As far as what actually should be done, that's a harder question, and one I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on. The "official" outcome doesn't really matter that much, because everyone's done what they can do; there's no more game left to play, at least in terms of the mechanics. I think as a community we aren't so fixated on who wins for it to be a big deal either way.

Quote

In this game, both the Jedi Knights and the Desann Reborn can challenge another player to a duel once in the game. That is, between the two of them, the Jedi Knights can agree to challenge another player to a duel, or the two Desann Reborn can agree to do so. Once either player uses this mechanic, their faction no longer has access to it. If the player challenged to a duel dies, then this will not count to the once a game limit. No duel will happen then.

To call for a duel, the player must send the order in to the GM. This is a free action. The duel will then begin in the next cycle, with both of the duelists posting in a separate Duel Thread I will open. No other player is allowed to post in the Duel Thread, and neither of them are allowed to vote or be voted on in the standard cycle thread. Duelists are also immune to all actions, including the kill and the exe, and cannot take any actions themselves. (Reasonably, it’ll take an utter madman to want to get in between two beings brawling with lightsabers, much less execute them.)

At the end of the cycle, each player may send me their lightsaber combat style option for each phase of the duel, per RP post made in the Duel Thread, with a maximum of six possible phases. Making an attack RP post (more on this in a bit) that the opponent has not responded to allows them to submit a combat option for the final, seventh phase.

[...]

Edited to add: To be less facetious, I've mentioned in LG91 that I've come up with a more compact version of the dueling mechanic and while it'll still resolve as a coinflip in some cases, I think it combines RP, fun, and gives player agency stronger weightage and have been considering having endgame ties resolve that way in my games going forward.

I have thoughts about this game but I am not in the mental state or condition to be really able to fairly talk about this without getting extremely angry all over again.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Kasimir

[The Wandering Wizard]

1 hour ago, Araris Valerian said:

With that in mind, whatever is done should reflect the spirit of SE in another way. Perhaps, pending agreement by the living players, some sort of RP duel, to be judged by the GM/IM/impartial spectators, might be fun. Or some other random contest.

RP Duel would be really fun! At least I think since I was in one and it would be fitting I think.

[Kasimir]

• I felt the Unsnapped issue was a problem. It doesn't matter if players will get burned by that assumption in a bigger game - the point is that the assumption pays off in the game that was played and allows an immediate softclear of four players at a shot. Players will get stubborn about the weirdest things. A distro that relies on players realising an assumption is a faulty one is flimsy.
• I appreciate that my Elim doc rant was understandably censored, but:

But I didn't get a choice about whether to actually be dropkicked over the edge into another full mental health breakdown, and given the number of jokes about converting me, it seems no one at all internalised any lesson from QF59, so while I will be careful with my words, I am no longer offering others the courtesy of avoiding this either. 

I will first accept I had aggravating RL factors, including a lot of deadlines and my uncle passing away. (I can't say it was unexpected, but he took a sudden turn for the worse last week, and I think by the first half of the second cycle or the second half of the first cycle, I knew it was coming.)

But the fact is, I think this was an eminently predictable outcome. I called it out as being predictable the moment I received my GM PM. I'm extremely angry that I called it out as a predictable outcome and received the response that my attitude was the problem, or that I was just outright wrong that this would be the result.

I don't feel very happy about being vindicated. I feel tired and angry because nothing I said in QF59 appears to have stuck with anyone in the community, despite TJ telling me the QF59 doc was a 'traumatising read.' I sign up to play SE games because they are supposed to be fun. I don't sign up for SE games because I think getting panic attacks when Aman DMs me days after I've subbed out is fun. I don't sign up for SE games because I am down for crying for hours and blanking out on everything and self-voting because I'd rather die in the game and end my suffering than continue in pain.

I'm not asking for an apology. I'm going back to my starting point: if this is an eminently predictable outcome of the distro, the fact I would end up breaking and it was only a matter of when, then I think we need to question those who contributed to the situation and decide where to go from here.

Do we decide that the fault lies with the player? This is an attractive view for several reasons. For one, it demands the players take personal responsibility for everything that happens. We get to say, "That's rough, buddy," and put the onus on the player. For another, we don't need to put more burdens on the GM. GMing is an onerous task and things often don't go as planned. It is 'rough' to expect a GM to be able to predict the track the game may take. I certainly didn't expect a clash between Bip and Tani in my game, or Fifth and I would not have okayed an E!Tani distro.

In this world, the solution is simple. I stop playing SE. I don't say this as a threat. I say this as the most obvious solution because either I accept at some point that I can't play point even when put on a team where I'm the only thread controller in an entire goddamned Village of thread controllers and hyperactive solvers and simply pray we don't get screwed ten ways to hell by them and that the Village self-cannibalises. I suppose hope is a strategy.

Or I can't accept it, and I break repeatedly, until as this game has, all joy of playing SE is destroyed for me, and I leave. There is a slightly less catastrophic path, but no less tragic, where I simply don't play games where I won't be Village, or simply ask to be hard-locked Village in every single game. This path is in my view more detrimental to SE, because having a player who is basically confirmed Village in every game basically does that, with the overall result still being my leaving.

I think this is a fairly plausible set of options given Archer already raised concerns about my struggles in QF59 from a meta balance perspective.

Do we decide that the GM has some responsibility? This is a counterintuitive view if you think GMs have different styles. I think the better question is: does the GM have a duty of care? Or rather: what is the duty of the GM? In the first instance, to run a game that everyone considers fun. I don't doubt it's an especial blow to a GM if a player absolutely hates your game from the get-go.

Should a GM know everything? No. Because one entailment of this view is that the GM has to be aware of anything that might set a player off, and that's fairly unreasonable. But here's my question: does a GM completely run blind? Or is it responsible to? Suppose a GM runs a player with a history of vanishing from the game C2 in a powerful balancing role that requires activity. If the player does in fact vanish and the game is broken, does the blame reside solely with the player? Should this not have been an 'eminently foreseeable issue'? A GM is the Game Master. A GM is not the servant to RNG, however attractive the thought is.

Do you, as a GM, run two players with exceptionally bad histories together on a small, tight Elim team? What happens if they once again conflict and IM intervention is required? Is that another foreseeable incident that could have been averted? Or is that once again something for which the GM bears no responsibility for allowing, despite the fact it was eminently predictable?

I think eminently predictable incidents pose an especial challenge because they demonstrate a failure of judgement, whether in terms of raw risk assessment, or having a generous threshold of harm, or simply not actually caring. And I bring this up because if your answer to any of the above is 'sad, but it's on the players', then I'd like to see your reaction when a perfectly avoidable break happens on your watch as a GM. If your response is that this should have been averted, then my question is: could this have been?

Because I never objected to being Evil. I get it's necessary. I objected to being set up for a breakdown.

What else could I have done? Could I have simply immediately pinch-hit out? 

I could agree with this. Certainly, I should have for my mental health, but I was concerned about abandoning Bip. In addition, half my concerns with that move was precisely what was played out in the spec doc - that I argued against those who urged me to pinch-hit out because players will simply infer from that that I'm Evil and in a distribution that expects me to wrangle a hyperactive Village. Either way you look at it, that's deeply screwed on two levels: it breaks things hard from the get-go, and it also means I can't pinch-hit out if I need it without meta conclusions being drawn.

You could argue that what I need to do is to learn to stop caring.

I would agree with this, but I'd point out that's the sort of thing that takes time and that is less likely to happen when I'm put into a situation specifically engineered (unintentionally, but nevertheless) to dropkick me over the edge of my breaking point. I took far less time to break this game than I did in QF59. I also point out that every single deeply negative game I've experienced when Evil is going to taint my view of the next Evil game, which makes a game like this all the worse psychologically.

Some people develop a deep and intense fear of dogs after a single negative encounter. Psychology do be that way.

I am not going to successfully work against every single bit of baggage if every other Elim game ends up slicing deeper into the psychological scars, convincing me that being Elim is a deeply unpleasant experience. I am deeply angry and disappointed with how the situation was handled, and especially with the fact that my concerns were blithely brushed aside as a me problem. I agree that it is a me problem. I suppose the panic attacks and eventual breakdown were a me problem too.

I am making this post for two reasons:

1. I think the fact this game happened and was handled this way shows that people don't give a damn about what happened to me to QF59. I am laying it out here explicitly to make it clear that if it does continue to happen, I will be aware it is not the result of not knowing or misjudgement but a deliberate choice to disregard my welfare.

2. I want to open a conversation about GMing. As I said, I don't want an apology and I'm certain the GM and IM will say on their parts one shouldn't be offered, which I'm fine with. I want us to think about whether GMs have a duty of care, and the extent to which, as a GM, you are willing to consider a distro bad for welfare reasons, or even for reasons of dynamics (see: bad player histories), or just plain pragmatics (see: key balancer role being given to a habitual inactive.)

Edited March 5, 2023 by Kasimir

[|TJ|]

I think the simplest solution to the problem is to just drop a PM to players with aversion to evil play before the game begins. "Are you okay to play evil in this game?"

And we're all honest people here, everyone here is with integrity so it's obvious that the reply will be honest and not "nope" every single time. And the player could give a reasoning to the GM, which could explain to satisfactory conclusion why it's not a good idea for the said player to be evil in that particular game. IIRC, El did this to Kas for her BT game. 

[Amanuensis]

9 hours ago, |TJ| said:

I think the simplest solution to the problem is to just drop a PM to players with aversion to evil play before the game begins. "Are you okay to play evil in this game?"

And we're all honest people here, everyone here is with integrity so it's obvious that the reply will be honest and not "nope" every single time. And the player could give a reasoning to the GM, which could explain to satisfactory conclusion why it's not a good idea for the said player to be evil in that particular game. IIRC, El did this to Kas for her BT game. 

My idea was that when players sign up, the GM/IM preemptively send players their PMs (sans role/alignment, which can be edited into the first message later) and ask if there's any anticipated problems before sign-ups end and the distro is finalized.

[Stick.]

Yeah, Kas did this when GMing that anon conversion bodyhopping game (LG85?) - PM'd the players during signups to ask if there were any RL/mental health things that could potentially affect their play and should be taken into account while deciding the distro + what their preferred alignment was

[Kasimir]

20 hours ago, _Stick_ said:

Yeah, Kas did this when GMing that anon conversion bodyhopping game (LG85?) - PM'd the players during signups to ask if there were any RL/mental health things that could potentially affect their play and should be taken into account while deciding the distro + what their preferred alignment was

It was alright as an experiment but also I recall players at that time raising concerns that it'd be too easy to guess, especially if I committed to trying to accommodate the concerns/preferences raised. As it turned out, it wasn't the biggest of problems but it's worth noting anyway.

I don't think it'd be deeply problematic to do it again, but I will note that the GM has to hard-commit to saying that there is no guarantee anything will be taken into consideration, because again, if this is predictable from the onset, then the distro has a bigger problem, so this is no solution. I received responses from players willing to accept whatever RNGesus decreed, some who wanted to be Village, and some who wanted to be Evil. No especial concerns but one especially busy player wanted that to be taken into consideration and so I weighted against a distro with that player as Evil.

Players are required to not speak of it, because if they do speak of what their answers were, again, potential meta-gaming there.

What is worth noting is it couldn't account for Village activity woes, but to be fair, this system wasn't really designed to catch that.

[DrakeMarshall]

Obviously, I didn't play this game (although I followed it in a lurkerly fashion and I am sad my bro Kas suffered) but what I am actually here to say is that LG85 was an anonymous game. Even if the anonymity provided by anonymous games is relative (some of y'alls are scarily good at IDing people even when they're anonymous ) it is a factor that I think makes it easier to just ask a player what they honestly prefer, because even if a player is known to have a preference you might not know who is even playing in the game which adds a layer of obscurity.

That said, I think I agree that you could do something similar in a non-anonymous game without it causing anything terrible to happen.

I'd be lying if I said I put much thought into my distros in games I've previously ran which were given unto me from on high by the sacred number gods and unerringly followed but it could be fun to try and do something more with it it's not like I don't already have games on file deconstructing most other major aspects of the game

edit: more generally, I think there is a duty of care with GMs setting up games to consider foreseeable outcomes, because that's kind of what planning a game is is "trying to foresee the outcomes and make it something fun" ... you don't need to plan things to have fun of course quite a bit of fun is had without a smidge of planning but the GM kinda wears the "person who actually sometimes plans for things" hat some fraction of this is also pretending to have planned things you absolutely didn't but that's neither here nor there

I think people generally agree that this duty of care exists for the design and balance of game mechanics, for example. If you are going to go off the beaten path and make your own setup you really should look where you're going

what qualifies as foreseeable will necessarily depend on the GM to some extent

in short, different GMs are good at different crem

but yes I think this is basically the goal

and thinking about the distro is one part of it

Edited March 17, 2023 by DrakeMarshall

[Elandera]

Another great game for the elims! Congratulations to the Spiked for their victory, and great game to the villagers.

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!