STINK he/him Posted October 20, 2023 Report Share Posted October 20, 2023 JNV Ok Matrim is gone so the list for me is JNV/Mark IV/Aeoryi and of those only JNV had someone else in the list be like yeah I like them so now I think that sadly they were only PMing me to stay on my good side while everyone else just left me to the wayside tragically Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoryi she/her Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 TKN I don't need to explain why do I (Also frustration you r also on the killist) On another note, I will probably be 70% more inactive don't expect more expect less thank you okay bye Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Unknown Ajah he/him Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 (edited) First of all, so fresh and so clean clean, fantástico new update. 19 minutes ago, Aeoryi said: TKN I don't need to explain why do I (Also frustration you r also on the killist) On another note, I will probably be 70% more inactive don't expect more expect less thank you okay bye I would rather you did but it's certainly not required. @Mark IV, sorry I took so long to respond. I actually wouldn't be opposed to that plan. I can kill JNV while we vote STINK and complain Frust. My complaint isn't quite recharged (I used it on Aeoryi), but I'm sure one of us has a free complaint floating around. Edited October 21, 2023 by The Known Novel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoryi she/her Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 5 minutes ago, The Known Novel said: First of all, so fresh and so clean clean, fantástico new update. I would rather you did but it's certainly not required. The kill role? Seems off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Unknown Ajah he/him Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 Just now, Aeoryi said: The kill role? Seems off. Well, I'll prove myself today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoryi she/her Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 Just now, The Known Novel said: Well, I'll prove myself today. I thought you said N4 was when you could use you ability? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Unknown Ajah he/him Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 3 hours ago, Aeoryi said: I thought you said N4 was when you could use you ability? Nope, d4. AKA today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoryi she/her Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 5 minutes ago, The Known Novel said: Nope, d4. AKA today. Okay, my bad. Uh... Get STINK for us, please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Unknown Ajah he/him Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 5 minutes ago, Aeoryi said: Okay, my bad. Uh... Get STINK for us, please. I'm voting STINK and killing JNV. I suppose I could go the other way around, but I'd rather the kill I have control over be on the one I suspect more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoryi she/her Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 8 minutes ago, The Known Novel said: I'm voting STINK and killing JNV. I suppose I could go the other way around, but I'd rather the kill I have control over be on the one I suspect more. E!TKn and e!Mark wins in this scenario. Why do you hate JNV and StINK again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STINK he/him Posted October 21, 2023 Report Share Posted October 21, 2023 JNV The Known Novel Ok so like I'm beating the bush here but your role claim was already kinda weird and now you just don't like me outta nowhere while @ ing Mark IV about working together or something like what are you cooking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Szeth_Pancakes he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Author Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is over! The turn is o— 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Szeth_Pancakes he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Author Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 Meet Me at Midnight "Well, well, well." He smiles at you from across the table, his trademark unnerving grin, the one that you know so well now, glinting in the light of the stained-glass windows. Wait- no, that's wrong. Okay. There's no table. The two of you are... how about: he's in your house, sitting on your couch, sipping at some tea. You turn on Community, Season 6 Episode 10, "RV Repair and Palmistry." This is when the show is really starting to dive deep into the meta stuff, with flashbacks that aren't really flashbacks, constant fourth wall-breaking, all that jazz. Abed's face scrunches up, and a title card flashes: One Week-- oh, wait, I guess now it's One And a Half Weeks Earlier. The Floral and Cochalis are talking. You hear the rest of their conversation from the previous iteration of the time loop, only now the scene continues, and they wander down into the basement. It's dark, creepy; you get the gist. It would be cold, only they're inside a giant tree hundreds of feet in the air. Trapped in what looks like a jail cell downstairs is a person. If you played the role of "Affected" in this game, you're that person, whoever they are. You're a Carnation scion; one day, your Floral took you downstairs and forcibly injected you with some sort of shimmering black, oozing substance that he called "Midnight Essence." Since then, your reality has disintegrated, shattering into a thousand disparate pieces. You have become aware that you are not real, in the strictest sense. That you're a figment of the Narrative, to be used by it and discarded as necessary. You're learning all this now, as I'm telling it to you. The only thing you've done before this is murder Matrim. All you can remember is that insatiable bloodlust, the profound desire to break things- and people- that comes with mixing Whimsical Investiture into midnight essence then gluing the whole mess haphazardly to someone's spiritweb and hoping it sticks. That desire hasn't arrived yet, fortunately. (This is still a flashback, of course. But your heightened awareness of the Narrative has made you come unstuck in time, experiencing the story in the same order as the readers. (You're still a reader, too. Don't forget that.)) You must be confused right now. Good. It turns out that the fourth wall is load-bearing. If you break it down, the rest of the story's structure comes with it, and you're left with... whatever this is. Me, talking to you, but it's not really me and it's not really you and is this even set in the cosmere anymore? You, or the Affected, if you're a villager, blankly stare(s) at Cochalis and the Floral as they talk. You/it try/tries to make out their words, but they refuse to take hold in your mind. A symptom of the Midnight Essence, you/it presume(d). Cochalis gets angry, throwing his hands up in the air; the Floral frowns, readying a needle of Midnight Essence behind his back. The Floral tries to surprise Cochalis by slamming the needle into his arm, but he misses, and Cochalis darts out of the room, running upstairs. It's midnight now. I told you to meet me here, remember? They/you tried to kill (execute- that sounds more civil, doesn't it?) you/it, but it didn't work. As soon as the axe, or guillotine, or whatever your weapon of choice is, split your/its head in two, you/it reached out, rewinding the Narrative. But there's no narrative to rewind anymore, is there? You/it won. They/You can't remove you/it anymore-- there are only two of them/you left. Removing someone takes three complaints, and that's the only way to truly kill an Affected-- by appealing to a power above the Narrative; in this case, the very foundation of the game itself. You/they didn't figure it out, though. That's unfortunate. Is it my fault? Was the "COMPLAIN" in big red letters in the third iteration of Day Three not enough? Is it the IM's fault, for removing the barrier to complaints and turning them into a part of the game, making it impossible to stage the use of complaints as a revelation? Perhaps this game wasn't as thought through as I had presumed it was. Oh, this is the Aftermath, by the way. You've probably figured that out by now. So, you may be wondering, what's the point? What's the end of the story? There isn't one, as far as I know. You'll have to make your own. ----------- [Frustration was removed using complaints! He was a Non-Affected Fighter!] [Aeoryi was killed in Real Life! They were a Non-Affected Mindmage!] The Affected have won! Congrats to @JNV and @The Known Novel. I know this was a... weird experience, to put it mildly. I'll give you more context & insight into my thought process in my GM notes later, but I have homework to get done and writing this writeup has made me feel like I'm going insane. Meet me at midnight! - Szeth *** Docs: Spoiler Midnight Whimsy writeups - Google Docs LG## — Midnight Whimsy Rules - Google Docs LG97: Lair of the Affected - Google Docs LG97: The Cognitive Realm - Google Docs ~LG97 GM spreadsheet~ - Google Sheets Players: Spoiler @The Known Novel - Cain Abbel: Affected Experience: Not Affected Matrim's Dice: Non-Affected Protector Araris Valerian - Whamsy, who ran into a wall really hard one day, “WHAM!” and now thinks he’s a shard: Not Affected Aeoryi - AMBITION, who ran into a wall really hard one day and now believes she is a shard. DeTess (removedNot Affected Devotary of Spontaneity - Calephor, a Mage of House Azalea: Not Affected Archer - Aschu the Blessed: Non-Affected Fighter @JNV - Jellin: Affected @Mark IV - Mark: Not Affected Frustration (removed Non-Affected Fighter @STINK: Not Affected 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 I wish I could say I had a good experience this game. Truth is I didn’t, but I guess they all can’t be fun. I have a lot I could say about the game design, but I’ll choose not to and trust that Szeth / the IMs know what I would say. GGs to JNV for pocketing me, but I can’t say I approve of TKN’s elim play there. I don’t believe the inactivity was completely unintentional and I think that’s overly scummy, but what can you do. Sorry to Araris again— if it’d been a normal game, I would have v read you cause TKN would have died, so maybe that’s consolation? Glad I correctly read Archer, Aeoryi, and Frustration, at least by the end. So it wasn’t a complete me failure. I just didn’t have enough to work with. Also, shoutout to the new site version having a billion more emotes lol For a second I thought the old ones were gone but the code still works. Too bad I don’t remember all of those. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Unknown Ajah he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 Firstly, sorry. Secondly, Woo-hoo! Thirdly, thank you to @Szeth_Pancakes for this confusing game and @Elandera for doing a great job moderating some of the more difficult aspects of this game. Great job to the village, you deserved this win, but we need these low active elim games to keep us in check. 3 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said: I don’t believe the inactivity was completely unintentional and I think that’s overly scummy, but what can you do. I'm sorry if this was a source of your discontent, but I would like you to know that I definitely didn’t make a conscious decision to be inactive. The end of football season just wasn't a good time to play SE, and I definitely underestimated my busy-ness. Even when my life cleared up a little, it was just really hard to engage like I would have liked to. I don't enjoy winning games via inactivity, and I'm sorry you lost to it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elandera she/her Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 Time for some brutal truths (sorry Szeth). Had I known Szeth's plans for RP, I absolutely would not have signed off on the rules. Calling complaints an out-of-game mechanic caused irreparable harm to the overall village chances. The village would absolutely be a lot more hesitant to use that kind of tool, even after IM clarification. We had even intentionally changed some of the wording to that rule to make it more inherently a game mechanic. Additionally, I didn't think complaints from a single player stacked on a single target. I personally don't think it should have been possible, as that would (and did) make it yet another easy elim kill tool. I should have been more insistent on clarifying this point. The elim strength was definitely a problem. We decided early to only have two elims when the standard team size would be three or four. It's quite possible we should have gone with a single elim since the player count could have had two elims standard using the 20% base. For future GMs, I do not recommend such active RP. I know what Szeth did was intended to be fun and meta, however in the blackout setting where players were unaware of that possibility, it pulled attention away from the elim team on onto the GM (in both complaints and votes). There is also a difference between RP and game-influencing behavior. GMs need to make sure their fun does not interfere with the game itself, and I do not believe that balance was achieved in this game. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNV Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 Im not going to say this wasnt fun because like being evil is always a bit fun but it does feel like winning was undeserved I guess cause like I dont know it never felt like there was a path to village victory like ever and yeah sure picking up a bit of trust early certainly didnt hurt but like given how no one picked up on the whole evil time loop thing like I even explicitly mentioned it to Aeoryi at the end there and nothing like I dont know how the village is meant to find out any of this stuff in time for it to matter like full honesty our elim play this game was awful like both of us fully skipped out on N2 I dont think we really had much of an influence on our own victory 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kasimir he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 (edited) 39 minutes ago, JNV said: Im not going to say this wasnt fun because like being evil is always a bit fun but it does feel like winning was undeserved I guess cause like I dont know it never felt like there was a path to village victory like ever and yeah sure picking up a bit of trust early certainly didnt hurt but like given how no one picked up on the whole evil time loop thing like I even explicitly mentioned it to Aeoryi at the end there and nothing like I dont know how the village is meant to find out any of this stuff in time for it to matter like full honesty our elim play this game was awful like both of us fully skipped out on N2 I dont think we really had much of an influence on our own victory I'd add that my view was that I never considered it realistic for the Village to figure it out. I expected that if the Village were to break the loop, it'd be through sheer frustration-complaining, something like us frustration-exeing Archer in MR56 after circling aimlessly from fliplessness. In that sense, the point was to give the Village enough room by design to be wrong that they could plausibly get there. (I'm not going to comment about the changes between RAS and what happened in the game as my view is that it's not my job to, and that's Elan's job ) Edited October 22, 2023 by Kasimir 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Archer he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 GG elims. I really like the evil doc format, I'm going to steal that for future games. This game had issues. After I was dead long enough to be emotionally detatched from the game, I started liking the concept more, but I still feel the execution made for a frustrating village player experience. -Breaking the meta of GM PMs being truthful sources of info discouraged analysis by making it pointless to ask questions. -Breaking the meta of moderation tools not being for in-game use was a dangerous precedent. -The GM wrongly assumed that players would bet on the game being balanced and question aspects that don't make sense, rather than assuming it has flaws. -Making the exe useless led to village frustration. Style notes: -The role of items was hard to figure out. They're all weapons but they have defensive roles. Them having different degrees of usefulness is a set up to make someone mad that the item they expected to protect them didn't. -Including votes on the GM in the writeup made it seem like they were killable. Making complaining against the GM burn your complaint did the same. -I'm leaning towards thinking the elims had too much of an information advantage. A more engaged team could have done a lot more damage with what they knew we couldn't figure out wasn't true. Thanks for helping, Elandera. Thanks for the attempt, Szeth. How about we never do that again. :P. PS If you highlight text, the site now prompts you to do a selective quote instead of grabbing the whole post, which is amazing. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Unknown Ajah he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 2 hours ago, Archer said: GG elims. I really like the evil doc format, I'm going to steal that for future games. Referencing the rave doc style? That was an early attempt to get myself engaged. Didn't really work, but I'd agree it does have a nice aesthetic. I'd also recommend a grey dead doc, it has a similar dreary look that I quite like. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Araris Valerian he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 Not too much to say that hasn’t already been said. @Matrim's Dice, I was looking for your village tell of tunneling, and it didn’t come out until you went after me . I’m not sure that if we’d exed TKN again instead of me that we would have figured anything out though. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 30 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said: Not too much to say that hasn’t already been said. @Matrim's Dice, I was looking for your village tell of tunneling, and it didn’t come out until you went after me . I’m not sure that if we’d exed TKN again instead of me that we would have figured anything out though. I’m trying to suppress that tell, it’s not supposed to be helpful >> But yeah, I think it was worse because I didn’t really have anywhere else concrete to go :P. I mean, we did exe TKN, it just didn’t do anything. If we had figured out how to kill him I at the very least would have village read you which would have been useful and we might have been able to PoE our way down to JNV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Araris Valerian he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 38 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said: I’m trying to suppress that tell, it’s not supposed to be helpful >> But yeah, I think it was worse because I didn’t really have anywhere else concrete to go :P. I mean, we did exe TKN, it just didn’t do anything. If we had figured out how to kill him I at the very least would have village read you which would have been useful and we might have been able to PoE our way down to JNV. Maybe. I would likely have gone after STINK next. JNV had been more open with me in a PM than I would have expected an elim to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeoryi she/her Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 45 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said: JNV had been more open with me in a PM than I would have expected an elim to be. I agree. Hands down JNV got me good. Pocketed me. Also, the PM I received for being IRL killed was probably one of the most weird things ever. Uhm- yeah... I'll put it in a spoiler box for those who want to see it: Spoiler [Real Life: You open your computer, then go to the 17th Shard, wondering if the next cycle has been posted yet. It hasn't, but it looks like you have a new message. You click on it, and-- Thunk. You turn around, then blink-- once, twice, trying unsuccessfully to process what's standing in front of you. It vaguely resembles some sort of spider, but instead of small and squishable, it's taller than you; it barely fits in your room. Spanning half of its body is a mouth full of jagged, pointed teeth. It roars, sending spittle flying onto your face, and your throat finally manages to emit a high, strangled scream.] You have been killed! I also sort of threw thrice (with exing exp, Araris, and not giving investiture to mat), but shhhh.... As for the rules, I think they could've benefited from more players. More players means more time for the village to figure out the elims' weak point, and it also would've helped with figuring out the two sides to the game. But this game was certainly an experience, and I sorta liked it, even if no one else did. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Experience he/him Posted October 22, 2023 Report Share Posted October 22, 2023 It was fun watching all of you suffer 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts