LG 102: Aftermath - Sacrifice and Heartbreak

[Araris Valerian he/him]

When Junior Junior fled into the House, Leander took off in pursuit immediately, but as Aero made to follow, she noticed something lying on the ground near the Nameless Recluse's body. A small pistol with smoke rising from the barrel. Lacking a weapon, Aero grabbed the gun and made to chase after the others.

Doorways flashed by as Junior ran down a hallway in the basement. He'd thought that the twisting passages down here would make pursuit difficult if not impossible, but every time he paused to catch his breath, footsteps echoed distantly in the hall behind him. So Junior continued to run, and the sound of a heartbeat continued to grow louder the further he went.

Leander reached the end of a hallway. There had been no side doors for some time, and the door ahead of her was the only exit. Junior was in the room. She pushed open the door and saw him staring at the back of the room, not trying to hide. Leader stepped toward him, then froze as she realized what Junior was staring at. Seven bodies lined the floor at the far end of the room.

Aero entered a passage that she'd heard footsteps in. It was a long hall, but no doors opened on either side. A bit of light shone from an open door at the far end. She cautiously approached the portal, then stepped through and raised the gun in a smooth motion. The sight that greeted her shook Aero's concentration, and the gun wavered in her hand. Leander and Junior stood side-by-side, looking down upon... her friends. The bodies of everyone that had been lost or killed lay against the far wall. At that moment, Aero decided that she wouldn't add another of her friends to that row. She had a burning desire to kill with the gun, but she could control whose life she took. Aero Yee pointed the pistol at herself and fired.

The House was almost finished. The remaining two explorers had already been exhausted, and now they had the shock of another death to deal with. Their lives would be the final spark to fully Awaken the House. 

Leander, as if in a daze, picked the gun from the floor and pointed it at Junior. A distant voice screamed in the back of her mind, You're not a murderer! Don't do this! She shook herself. Junior was cowering on the floor at the end of the room. Thump-thump, thump-thump. Something was in her mind, controlling her. Then, all of a sudden, she could see it. A giant heart protruded from the wall above the row of bodies, veins spreading out from it into the walls of the House. Each beat of the heart was like a hammer-strike against her will, pushing her to shoot Junior. Leander's finger began to squeeze the trigger. With her final ounce of strength, Leander yanked her arm up right as the gun went off. The shot went straight through the heart, and a scream echoed in her head. The heart continued to beat, spewing some foul fluid onto the floor, but as she watched, the beating slowed, then stopped.

And then the House began shake. Dust rained from the ceiling, and after a moment a shower of stones fell, covering one of the corpses. She grabbed Junior by the hand, pulling him from where he'd curled on the floor. Whatever she'd just shot, it had apparently been holding the House together. Junior stumbled to his feet, and seemed to realize that the House was falling apart. The two of them made their way back down the long hallway, doing their best to retrace their steps.

The way back was treacherous, and the two survivors had to dodge falling boards and leap over holes that opened in the floor as they traveled back through the House. Whatever strange force that had twisted the hallways as they explored previous nights was gone, however, and it was a matter of minutes before they reached the foyer. There, at the far end, for the first time since everyone had entered the House four days ago, were the large doors, one already fallen to the floor in the collapse. Sunlight streamed in the opening, and both Leander and Junior were filled with a burst of will at the sight. They dashed across the carpet, through the doors, and into the open. A great crash sounded from behind, and they turned to see the House fall in on itself. Nothing remained of their adventure, and their friends, but a pile of shattered timbers and broken stones where the House had once stood.

---

Aero Yee @Aeoryi refused to kill her friends and was slain by the House! She was an Innocent Explorer

Leander @Elandera and Junior Junior @Just a Silvereye escaped the House with their lives! Congrats to them for winning.

Thanks to everyone who played the game, and to @CadCom for IMing so that I could run it.

I have a lot of thoughts about how the game went, what could be changed in a rerun, etc., but I'll need a while to compile them into a post.

Master Spreadsheet

Dead Doc

Player List:

Spoiler

1. @The Unknown Order as Keisser, a tardy veteran Innocent Explorer and first owner of the Smoking Gun
2. @Coffeecat as Coffee Cat, an insomniac feline Innocent Explorer accompanied by an Aviar
3. @Aeoryi as Aero Yee, a spook shooter Innocent Explorer who received the butler's gift
4. @Lego Mistborn as The Nameless Recluse Innocent Explorer
5. @Elandera as Leander, a paranormal investigator Survivor of the House
6. @Lord Spirit as Kirc, a clueless drunk Innocent Explorer
7. @Sart as Father Rhinehardt, an ageless priest Innocent Explorer
8. @Kasimir as Kanem, who's tired Innocent Explorer with metals and Lerasium
9. @Aeternum as Aven, who's quiet Innocent Explorer
10. @Just a Silvereye as Junior Junior, the local grump Survivor of the House

 

[Lego Mistborn he/him]

Hmmm... Aeo had no problem killing me though. JK no hard feelings, it was a fun run.

[Lord Spirit he/him]

9 minutes ago, Lego Mistborn said:

Hmmm... Aeo had no problem killing me though. JK no hard feelings, it was a fun run.

She got me killed too. lol, our team did to aeo and luck

[Sart he/him]

You know, I was feeling guilty killing TUO. Well, guess who had the gun Day 1? RNG just wasn't kind to me. That's unfortunate.

[Aeoryi she/her]

Congratulations @Elandera and @Just a Silvereye! You deserved to win far more than I did.

Unfortunately, going inactive/utr was really the only viable strategy in the FFA situation tbh

 

[Aeternum]

Cool game! Thanks Araris for hosting, and CadCom for IMing.

[Elandera she/her]

Thank you Araris! This was a fun game. I really enjoyed the premise and concept of a mystery scenario. Definitely worth a short return out of retirement. Good game, everyone!

[Throw TheLiving Silverware he/him/il/lui]

Thanks to everyone for playing, and especially to @Araris Valerian for GMing. It was really fun, even if I wasn't really active for a good part of it. 

 

 

Here's some RP to conclude my character's story. I had initially planned for him to overcome his trauma and, after he and the others defeated the elims, find himself able to trust other people again. Yeah, I didn't really think that through. Anyway, I tried to give it some kind of closure, even if it wasn't really what I originally intended.

***************************

Junior Junior fell to the ground and took a long breath of fresh morning air. 

Before him, the House was collapsing, its walls shattering into thousands of pieces. The windows broke, the proud halls fell on themselves, the roofs were torn apart. 

Then, silence fell. All he could hear was his breath and Leander's. 

He felt sick. How had he gone so low, he'd accepted so easily to kill someone so he could get out? He thought again of how he'd actes inside the House, how he'd been able to mutter Aero's name intending to kill her. He didn't understand why she had sacrificed herself for him after this.

Why him? Why, out of all the people who had entered, had he survived? Was this the way it worked, that the honorable ones like Aero and Kanem had to die so that wretches like him could live? Why was the price so high to pay?

He didn't want to look at Leander's face. He was sure he would only meet in her eyes the same disgust he felt for himself. He didn't know how he could face anyone again after this.

So he ran. He ran as fast as he could into the woods. He didn't know where his old cabin was, and he didn't care. There was no way he could stay here. 

The branches lashed his arms, his legs, his chest. He didn't feel it. His mind was fixated on a single thought:

Why would she sacrifice for me?

 

Spoiler

Yeah there was no way he could come out of that less broken than before

Sorry for such a depressing end

 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Alright, my thoughts. Starting with what worked. And I think the big thing that worked was the theming, roleplayed, and writeups. Even thought there wasn’t a ton of player RP, what was written was good, and I had a lot of fun doing the writeups. I also think scenario 1 would have worked very well if it had happened, though I can’t say for sure.

The N0 exploration worked decently well, I think. After watching how things played out, I would probably make player choice have a larger impact on things than it did, but otherwise leave the concept in place

As for what didn’t work, well, that’s related to the motivating concept for this game, which was to have an extra layer of information to solve for, with incentive structures for folks to be dishonest about said information. That was why scenario 2 existed (and I’ll note that S3 was the least thought out when writing the rules). I was hoping that in S1, elims could use the existence of S2 as a distraction, and in S2, players who knew the scenario could lie to indicate S1/S3 to get other players exed.

Instead what happened was we ended up in S2, and everyone was honest about their clues, so the asymmetry broke down. There was also very little PMing or alliance forming. I think this was due to player expectations and activity (which were related). I ended up asking for a few more players (which means folks that could give %100 effort), and while everyone was reasonably active, I think the effort of scheming about scenario info wasn’t something most players felt like they could put in (shout out to @Lego Mistborn, who I enjoyed watching behind the scenes). Of course, once S2 was outed there were only 2 cycles left, so at least things didn’t drag on where folks didn’t feel they had any agency.

So where does that leave things? Well, I think at some level these rules are fine as-is if all the players would be equally enthusiastic about all the scenarios. And that’s a little hard to patch; any mafia game breaks down if it doesn’t attract players enough to get them to engage. But I’d like to rerun this game at some point, and I can’t count on things being different in the future, so I’d like to work out a patch.

@Kasimir mentioned in the dead doc as a suggestion for S2 to give players individual and competing win conditions. I like this idea, but the only problem is that the framework of the game requires there to be an execution and a NK in S2, and no other killing methods. The win conditions would also need to be distributed at the start of the game, though that’s easy. If anyone has ideas for ways to win other than survival in S2, I’m all ears. The 4 main mechanics to engage with are the gift, exploration, execution, and the Gun, so any ideas probably need to involve one of those.

The other possibility is to scrap S2 as written and come up with something else. I’m open to suggestions on this end as well, since I haven’t put much thought into this angle. Whatever alternative needs to have a NK and an exe. And it needs to have different information incentives than S1 and S3. Those are strong constraints, but maybe someone has a good idea that I haven’t considered.

And that’s all! Thanks everyone for playing my game, I hope to play alongside some of you in the future, and I look forward to the next game I run.

 

[Kasimir he/him]

Thanks for running this Araris! Sorry for the late, back on the conference grind again.