MR71: Conclusion: The Closing Ceremonies

[Steeldancer he/him]

The Closing Ceremonies
"And so that's it for another summer Olympics. It really was the strangest 2 weeks, wasn't it?"
"And yet we still saw some absolutely fantastic performances from the various athletes. We saw underdogs rise, champions exceed anything done before, and so much more. We also saw quite a few embarrassments, and an odd number of athletes crossing between different types of events."
"We even had a few scandals here and there. But most importantly, we got to see some amazing athletes do some amazing things. Remember, even the very worst of the athletes here has worked extremely hard to be here, and is far better than most of us can ever hope to be. Truly incredible stuff. It really serves to remind you of what humanity can accomplish when we put our minds to it."
"...you think we can break cover now?"
"yeah I think we did a good job pretending to be Olympic commentators. Seems the guys had a great time too, though that one team absolutely slaughtered the other ones. But still, t'was a good time messing with the normal humans again."
"Took a lot of organization though. I wonder what what kind of game we'll play next time?"
~~~
Butterfly 200
Gold    Ostrich
Silver    Axolotl
Bronze    Swan

Hurdles 400
Gold    Scorpion
Silver    Gorilla
Bronze    Elephant

Fencing
Gold    Penguin

The game is over! The Results are as follows:
With the bronze medal, Team 3, with 54 points, congratulations to Ashbringer, Wandering Wizard, Lord Spirit, and I guess Wierdo was there! 
With the silver medal, Team 4, with 94 points, congratulations to KelsierApologist, Kasimir, Araris, and Karnatheon!
And with an absolutely spectacular performance, the gold medal goes to Team 2 with a whopping 171 points. Props to Experience, TJ, Aeternum/Stiltedmoth, and Shqueeves!
(please note I may have gotten some math wrong here and there, but I'm at least completely certain that these should be the correct rankings)
Thank you so much for playing! I have many thoughts, which have been hinted at, but I'll elaborate on them later. It's good to be back, and I'm glad this game went fairly well all things considered. 
Here are some documents for you to peruse, and I particularly recommend my Master Sheet, as you can see everything that happened in there. And some other statistics I felt like compiling (I was going to do more but I grew tired of math so what's in there is what you get lmao)
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Team 4
A Mostly Empty Spec doc with me rambling a bit
The Master Sheet

[Ashbringer he/him]

I wonder which team Swan was on…

Thanks for running! This was a very fun return game. I do to some degree have Thoughts but the mechanism was a very cool way of running an SElympics.

Also being a Referee for real was a very nice welcome back moment 

[Kasimir he/him]

Thanks for the game, Steel! I enjoyed the laidback chaos and it was honestly a fun switch from playing in a bunch of serious Elim games/work stuff at the same time. 

Shoutouts to @Araris Valerian, @Karnatheon and @KelsierApologist as fun docmates

32 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

was a very cool way of running an SElympics.

Next round, we can go SE meta: Dingo has a bonus to just not being remembered by the Village, Penguin will kill anything...  

For anyone who still wants your SE fix, keep in mind TJ has an extended sign-up currently open in which you can elect the Amyrlin Seat and also kill some nasty Black Ajahsses on the way, and Aeo is currently still trying to finalise a QF ruleset  

By the way, so do we do a logbook entry for the current body we ended the game in? We should right? @Araris Valerian ig? Because I think if not, TJ is going to be quite sad, he still has the only Kanga entry  

[Steeldancer he/him]

38 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

I wonder which team Swan was on…

Thanks for running! This was a very fun return game. I do to some degree have Thoughts but the mechanism was a very cool way of running an SElympics.

Also being a Referee for real was a very nice welcome back moment 

That's the fun part, I color coded the Master Sheet so you can at a glance determine which bodies belonged to which teams at which times. Incidentally it seems Team 4 was the only team who ever had Coral Swan

Edited February 24, 2025 by Steeldancer

[Kasimir he/him]

6 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

That's the fun part, I color coded the Master Sheet so you can at a glance determine which bodies belonged to which teams at which times. Incidentally it seems Team 4 was the only team who ever had Coral Swan

OH I MISREAD THE SHEET, LOL I ENDED THE GAME IN SWAN

This entire game has been Araris and I swapping bodies with extra steps, wild.

[OoklaApologist She/her]

2 hours ago, Kasimir said:

Shoutouts to @Araris Valerian, @Karnatheon and @KelsierApologist as fun docmates

Thanks, Kas! It’s been fun. 

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

Hey, @Steeldancer, didn't you see, we had 1041 points at the end there. I said it once and I'll say it again, Blatant point erasure. Thanks for the game though.

Thank you @Walin, @SpiritOfWrath, @Aeoryi,  and eventually @TheRavenHasLanded for being fun docmates when you could make it. We'll get em next time.

Looking forward to reading the other docs though.

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

Steel, your assumptions on how much I understood this game were severely exaggerated. I assumed we couldn't join events we didn't belong to (why is "being able to join event type" part of the role description when they can join anything?), and even when somebody did I thought that was a special case. Also, only some of the events were random????

Can we get the real rules pretty please?

[Walin he/him]

Thanks for the game! It was a lot of fun. I haven't played SE in a while, and this was a good one to come back to.

...I really thought that I would be active this time around, but my time management skills still have not improved whatsoever. Old habits die hard. Anyway, it was a lot of fun seeing the writeups and hanging out in the team doc. Last place wasn't so bad!

 

[Experience he/him]

Wow, had a ton of fun with this ruleset @Steeldancer, thanks for running! And all my teammates, but @|TJ| especially, *high five*. Was not expecting to win that at the end lol

Some thoughts on how the game played out. I think the major downside to this rulset is thread activity. Most of the game, at least for our doc, we had plenty of activity within the doc, but there wasn't much to talk about in thread. It was actually worse to talk in C0 as it let other teams know that your body was inhabited so we ended up just not posting C0 at all I believe. That is slightly helped by the need to vote, but you don't want to say anything really gave-solvy at all in thread unless you are going for a gambit to try to convince people you are/are not a strong spirit which I don't think happened. This resulted in it actually being better to just post once a turn with your votes, or maybe twice with a fake vote early on to try to trick other teams, but then all other posts were just about pokemon and other things that don't actually relate to the game. So adding some way to make it so that the different teams have to interact in thread in order to solve the game in some way would help massively I think. 

I'm not sure if PMs would have helped much, but I know if there had been open PM's I would have been trying to get info about bodies and lying about our bodies within PMs. It would have added more activity amongst the teams, but not in the thread so I'm not sure if that's the right solution.

Another problem is the fact that if you get kicked out of a body you can't post in thread. When this happened to me, I'm going to be honest (and it was likely also compounded by the fact that it was the last turn of the game) I just stopped playing and I did not read the last turn's thread at all. I put in an action and wrote like two lines in the doc and that was it because I couldn't actually do anything else at all. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, but maybe it could be something like you are booted to a body that isn't inhabited but you don't get any medal points that body gets that round or something. And even if you can't vote, I think you should still be able to post in thread, especially if there is something added to the game to make gamesolving in thread more necessary. 

Other than that, I am interested in seeing what the full rules were and how the percentages and the like were decided. I really loved the strategy of the game and would be interested in another rerun in the future. 

[|TJ| he/him]

11 minutes ago, Experience said:

Wow, had a ton of fun with this ruleset @Steeldancer, thanks for running! And all my teammates, but @|TJ| especially, *high five*. Was not expecting to win that at the end lol

LET'S GOOOOOO! Heheh, yeah I really enjoyed scheming with you and the rest of my doc mates.

We didn't even know there was a Coach role smh and even though we saw the results of a Sabotage, we did not have this role at all either >> 

Thanks @Steeldancer, this was a fun chill game to return to and I do add to all those voices that said there needs to be something that incentivizes thread-activity more, as well as Stranding further reducing the activity needs a solution. 

THANK YOU FOR THE ADVERTISEMENT @Kasimir, and yes if you need a villager-y solving fix (OR even an evil killing fix), the sign-ups for my game is open! 

It's good to be back!

[Steeldancer he/him]

Here are the Complete rules (I think)

I will admit I wasn't entirely sure at the beginning of the game how I was going to handle people trying to enter events they weren't really supposed to. Given the nature of the setting, I felt allowing it was appropriate, just with a very minimal chance of winning, and a hidden exhaustion mechanic for people who got too greedy. Winning was determined through 2 levels of RNG, which is the stats, then the actual winner, which is all listed in the master sheet

[Experience he/him]

6 minutes ago, |TJ| said:

LET'S GOOOOOO! Heheh, yeah I really enjoyed scheming with you and the rest of my doc mates.

We didn't even know there was a Coach role smh and even though we saw the results of a Sabotage, we did not have this role at all either >> 

Huh, and there was a Reporter too? lol 

I wonder if only getting athletes the entire game after the first round and getting medal points is what gave us so many more points...

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

3 hours ago, The Unknown Flame said:

Hey, @Steeldancer, didn't you see, we had 1041 points at the end there. I said it once and I'll say it again, Blatant point erasure. Thanks for the game though.

Thank you @Walin, @SpiritOfWrath, @Aeoryi,  and eventually @TheRavenHasLanded for being fun docmates when you could make it. We'll get em next time.

Looking forward to reading the other docs though.

To answer your question from day two, yes I was the previous Weasel and I did upvote your post  

Twas a fun game and thanks to @Steeldancer for running it and to my doc mates, we did our best with what we were given!

I do agree with Experience that open PMs would make the game more fun and more engaging as since there wasn't pressure to be exed being put on people, we would just vote and then disappear and maybe change them near the end. 

But I did enjoy the game and I did fall prey to the hidden exhaustion which I thought might exist  

[Steeldancer he/him]

Eh I was going to wait to post my thoughts on the game but whatever. I've got time now and I'm thinking about it. 

So, I'm going to be comparing this a lot to the original rule set and my experience with that, because a lot of the changes I made were in response to my experience with running that game (QF 36 I think it was). 

So, what went well? Well I think the basic rule set actually ended up working really well. I did have to make a few adjustments under the hood during the game, but nothing was game breaking, and really the game came down to exactly what I said at the beginning. The team who body hopped the most overall won (consult the Master Sheet to see the statistics). Last game also didn't see any stranding really so having it happen... Twice? This game was interesting. I know there some concern regarding activity regarding that, but I designed the Strong Spirit to be a semi-kill role, an ace in the hole to deny a body to another team. I did like how that worked out mechanically. I was also VERY happy to see a lot of the roles and mechanics I worked into the game being used. I was disappointed that the officials didn't get used more offensively outside of the one turn where Indigo Weasel was knocked out. I mean honestly, Amber Vulture was cheating pretty much every time and nobody ever decided to check them, but I'm glad at least the indigo Weasel thing happened because it was hilarious from my end. The first coach ability was only used once by Ashbringer, and I'm not sure anyone ever hopped into albatross to get a ridiculous amount of information that had been building up all game. But it was all there, waiting to be discovered. And from what I understand, these mechanics were fun and people enjoyed them, so yay. 

Now what didn't go well? Thread activity. Now, going back to QF36, in that one I gave one day of document access and then cut everyone off, and forced them to use thread and a complicated PM mechanic that tied PMs to items on bodies. This was VERY complicated. So for this one, I decided to cut the PMs, and allow doc access the entire time. This led to an awkward situation where sharing information in thread was actively bad for strategy, and since there was no point in working together for any reason discussion was dead. Frankly, I didn't take this into account when building the game. I added the vote system figuring it would be a good way to keep people engaged, but evidently that was not the case. If this rule set gets a third iteration (which again would have an entirely different setting than NYC or the Olympics, no idea what), then I'd probably move more towards adjusting this a bit. I'm thinking having each team have a slightly different win condition, which opens the way for cooperation/sabotage. Also, having PMs tied between 2 bodies, rather than being able to float around on items, making that easier to manage. This would I think make thread use and engagement a lot better. If I had had a way of fixing it during the game I would have, but the issue was so baked into the rules that it wasn't something I could really fix, so I apologize about that. 

Regardless, I hope everyone had fun. 

I felt pretty good mentally about running the game, so my current plan is to continue to stick around unless my mental health decides to take another nosedive. 

I'm currently starting to brew a Warhammer LG, so... Look forward to that eventually? I imagine I'll rerun these rules as well at some point, (with a Co-GM who's better at math hopefully), though I'll have to have some inspiration for what the setting of the next body hopping incident would have to be. 

Edit: I just did have a thought about the strong Spirit and stranding. I guess an alternative option to having it strand a person out of a body entirely, would be to instead have it knock the person into another random empty body. This would still allow the role to be powerful without also making the victim be completely cut off for a turn. 

Edited February 24, 2025 by Steeldancer

[Kasimir he/him]

1 minute ago, Steeldancer said:

The first coach ability was only used once by Ashbringer, and I'm not sure anyone ever hopped into albatross to get a ridiculous amount of information that had been building up all game.

We did use it  Polly scanned Alb during the Opening Ceremony, and after a few failed hops, Karn went into Alb and discovered that what Polly had found was a Reporter. I recall we were unlucky in that we knew most of Alb's scans already, and at that time, we thought we'd hop back into Alb sometime.

2 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

I'm thinking having each team have a slightly different win condition, which opens the way for cooperation/sabotage. Also, having PMs tied between 2 bodies, rather than being able to float around on items, making that easier to manage.

Makes sense to me!

2 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

I felt pretty good mentally about running the game, so my current plan is to continue to stick around unless my mental health decides to take another nosedive. 

Let's hope it doesn't, not so much SE-wise as because mental health nosedives aren't great, but also take care of yourself first!

3 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

I'm currently starting to brew a Warhammer LG, so... Look forward to that eventually?

For the Emperor!

[Steeldancer he/him]

7 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

We did use it  Polly scanned Alb during the Opening Ceremony, and after a few failed hops, Karn went into Alb and discovered that what Polly had found was a Reporter. I recall we were unlucky in that we knew most of Alb's scans already, and at that time, we thought we'd hop back into Alb sometime.

Makes sense to me!

Let's hope it doesn't, not so much SE-wise as because mental health nosedives aren't great, but also take care of yourself first!

For the Emperor!

OH right you did, you just scanned non athletes every single time. Hilarious

[Ashbringer he/him]

1 hour ago, Steeldancer said:

was disappointed that the officials didn't get used more offensively outside of the one turn where Indigo Weasel was knocked out. I mean honestly, Amber Vulture was cheating pretty much every time and nobody ever decided to check them, but I'm glad at least the indigo Weasel thing happened because it was hilarious from my end.

For those who missed it:

Weasel was a Cheating Swimmer, initially under control of Wandering Wizard (my teammate). I was in Beagle, who claimed LG92's Referee, but really was an Official, who could disqualify people who did crimes.

TUF strong-spirited out Wizard D1, commented on my being a Referee, and then tried to cheat with Weasel and I busted him for it 

 

But the reason I then swapped out of Beagle was, in large part, activity. Wiz and I were fairly active, Lord Spirit somewhat less so, Weirdo... kind of disappeared. Meanwhile, Spirit was our Saboteur (who for a while I thought was a much better variation of Official, because while they could be caught as breaking the rules, it didn't rely on the target breaking the rules - but then I learned that the Sabotage only lasted a single turn), and Weirdo was our Strong Spirit, and neither really moved. So Wiz and I had to move a lot between some roles that I would have liked to keep on hand.

Not sure how much that's an issue with the game versus just the woes of having an inactive team (which I've been there... I tried to grab Dingo this run but it never ended up working).

1 hour ago, Steeldancer said:

Edit: I just did have a thought about the strong Spirit and stranding. I guess an alternative option to having it strand a person out of a body entirely, would be to instead have it knock the person into another random empty body. This would still allow the role to be powerful without also making the victim be completely cut off for a turn. 

I like this change a lot, and I agree with a lot of your other points. Some method of thread engagement would be good.

One other thing perhaps - less rules being hidden might also be helpful. I know I at least had several misunderstandings about how certain rules even worked (such as auto-actions of uninhabited bodies, the Sabotage, and point values) and if there's not a particular reason to keep things hidden, it might be nice to know them ahead of time.

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

2 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

One other thing perhaps - less rules being hidden might also be helpful. I know I at least had several misunderstandings about how certain rules even worked (such as auto-actions of uninhabited bodies, the Sabotage, and point values) and if there's not a particular reason to keep things hidden, it might be nice to know them ahead of time.

I would like to second this. A statement when you decided people could join events they weren't explicitly allowed to would have made a world of difference.

[OoklaApologist She/her]

Questions:

1. How much mechanical advantage does the coach give?

2. What's an Official? Our team never got one

Edited February 25, 2025 by KelsierApologist

[Karnatheon he/him]

GG everyone. To my team, I just want to say I had a great time chatting in the doc. We had a strong start Day 1, and then things went downhill from there. This game was a fun one to be my first game back to SE, so thanks Steel for running it. 

[Elandera she/her]

Good game everyone. As a reminder, please log out of the anonymous accounts as soon as possible. Feel free to sign the guest log in the messages of the last account you were in if you wish before you go. I will be changing passwords soon.

[OoklaApologist She/her]

Thanks for the reminder!

[Steeldancer he/him]

6 hours ago, KelsierApologist said:

Questions:

1. How much mechanical advantage does the coach give?

2. What's an Official? Our team never got one

The official basically could disqualify any cheaters if they caught them. That's what happened to Indigo Weasel lmao