Long Game 12: Shadows of Elantris

[little wilson she/her]

Considering I've had them all in my Kas' signature since the beginning of the game, and my name literally means those things, I think I win at it automatically?

You only have them in your signature because I told you about them. And anyway, the RP is the most crucial part. It was meant to be my entertainment for dying. I will not have my crown taken and not be entertained thoroughly beforehand.

[Herowannabe he/him]

4. Hreo, just curious: when you said in my role PM that you'd forgotten that Seonid was out of town and made me the Dula instead, does that mean I'd have been the Jindo before I traded with Seonid to become the Dula? o.O

Yep.

[Shallan she/her]

Do we get the master docs?

[Herowannabe he/him]

Do we get the master docs?

I posted links to all the docs and the master spreadsheet here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/32466-long-game-12-embers/?p=282115

[Lightsworn Panda he/him]

You can't get it that easy. It wasn't explicitly mentioned because it was RP-based and the game is over. However, if you really want it, it was a competition of who could exemplify the traits of Retribution, Justice, Strength, and Willpower the best, as chosen by the dead doc participants. Have at it, Wyrm.

 

I'll have you know that Pandas are Creatures of Great Emotional Fortitude, Judgement and Divine Retaliation! And I fearlessly infiltrated a nest of heathens to show them the light of Pan-Dareth, despite the incredible odds against me!

[little wilson she/her]

Wilson: It wasn't me who killed you! Don't kill me! It was all Burnt!

Me: How did I do this game; honest assessment? I want to know how I could improve. Wilson and Seonid, your input would be nice, as I was in a PM with both of you.

 

And now that I've read the Cultist doc, I'm free to say that it doesn't matter if Ghetti killed me. You attacked me first. And while I was willing to believe you were probably a Citizen there for a short period of time, when Seonid asked me if he could trust you, I told him there that you were probably good but that your passing the Seon in no ways exonerated you fully. So I was well-aware the entire time that you could be a Cultist. After the hit on Seonid, it really just got me more convinced that you were, even though I didn't continue arguing with you. You'd built up your argument about "experienced" players and "new" players in a way that couldn't be rebutted by an "experienced" player. So I ignored you until I could no longer kill Claincy. And then I killed you. Well. Ghetti. I killed Ghetti, but it was more because of you.

 

As for what you could've done to improve.... That's a hard question to answer, because while your first PM had me on guard, your second had me less so. The trolling didn't help you in the first PM. I'm always on guard around trolls. Trolling simply makes me wonder why a person isn't being straight with me, and that makes me wonder what they're hiding and why. I've very nearly killed (or actually killed) Aonar multiple times for his trolls. I have little patience for it in a game setting among players.

 

As for what actually made you suspicious. The hit on Seonid, definitely. I know you used his comments in the thread as substance for why the Cultists would know something was up with him, but his comments were few and far between and there were plenty of people who'd requested either a Seon or to have a Seon contact them, myself included. He had important information, but that important information didn't necessarily have to be role-based. It could've been information about any number of things: something a previous Seon contact said, an item he had, a suspicion he didn't feel comfortable making in the thread about someone, etc.

 

The fact that he got attacked the very next cycle after he said his contact would be protecting me told me all I needed to know about you. As for what you could've done with that to make me less suspicious: wait to hit him. Wait until he was a more believable target. How? Take out Kas or Neo. Both of them were confirmed good and doing a lot to help the village, either by being very vocal in the thread or by virtue of being the Veteran Elantrian. After a hit on one of them, going after a seemingly lower priority target like Seonid would be believable not due to his role, but due to the "belief" that he wouldn't be protected, because why would he be? Maybe that hit would've failed, but it also wouldn't have made you so obviously a Cultist at the same time.

 

Though I do understand why you guys went after him like you did. You needed to take out the Warriors to be sure to kill Meta. That makes sense. There were simply multiple ways you all could've gone about doing that, and I wouldn't have done it the way you did---not that that makes the way I would've done it any better. It's hard to be certain since it's a hypothetical situation, but I likely would've failed as well, since it was rather unlikely that the Cultists would win at that point, though it didn't get truly hopeless until Day 7, after the second attack on Seonid failed, you were down to three, and Meta had just gotten out of Elantris.

 

Also, since I noticed a bunch of comments about the pendant I had: I want to make it clear that I wasn't lying about that. There's no reason for me to lie about having received something from someone else if I didn't actually get it from someone else. As for why Orlok sent it to me: he guessed that I was a lover, if not involved in a love triangle. He knew that I'd eventually get hit, and he chose to save multiple people rather than just himself. He guessed correctly, and I'm greatly indebted to him, even if it turned out to be pointless in the end-game since we still all died.

 

And while I'm on that topic, I have a question to Meta: Why were the lovers not a priority in terms of protection on the last turn? You knew we Elantrians were going nuclear and killing practically everyone that hadn't been cleared. Anyone with even a chance at being a Cultist was going to die. The odds of the game being over were insanely high, which meant that you and the other Warriors weren't a priority since you guys can win regardless of if you survive or die. But the lovers (who had helped you find at least 3 eliminators, mind you), could only win by surviving. So what happened? Right now, I'm a little irritated about that. We talked about helping the Gyorn right at the beginning of the game, but we chose collectively to help the village instead. I'm not entirely certain we made the right choice now.

[twelfthrootoftwo]

Thanks to our two GMs for the great work, and well played to the Cultists and Pan-Dareth. (Whatever ended up happening to that panda?)

 

I'm a little pleased that we guessed both Seonid and Twei as the Jindo's, even though we didn't manage to kill either of you   I would like to note that the two of you did an excellent job.

We had help

 

And while I'm on that topic, I have a question to Meta: Why were the lovers not a priority in terms of protection on the last turn? You knew we Elantrians were going nuclear and killing practically everyone that hadn't been cleared. Anyone with even a chance at being a Cultist was going to die. The odds of the game being over were insanely high, which meant that you and the other Warriors weren't a priority since you guys can win regardless of if you survive or die. But the lovers (who had helped you find at least 3 eliminators, mind you), could only win by surviving. So what happened? Right now, I'm a little irritated about that. We talked about helping the Gyorn right at the beginning of the game, but we chose collectively to help the village instead. I'm not entirely certain we made the right choice now.

I won't presume to speak for Meta, but as one of the Warriors my input might have a place here.

 

1) The end of the game wasn't that certain. We could easily have been wrong about some of the soft-confirmed people (I'm particularly thinking about Wyrm here, but it's still true for the others).

2) Neo (and Meta, in a PM) both implied the Elantrians had some sort of protection power. I would have expected you, in particular, to use it, but as it turns out it was just miscommunication.

[little wilson she/her]

1) The end of the game wasn't that certain. We could easily have been wrong about some of the soft-confirmed people (I'm particularly thinking about Wyrm here, but it's still true for the others).

2) Neo (and Meta, in a PM) both implied the Elantrians had some sort of protection power. I would have expected you, in particular, to use it, but as it turns out it was just miscommunication.

 

1. Actually it was. There was maybe a 1% chance that the game wouldn't have been over. Yes, there were three soft-confirms that would've still been alive. Let's take a look at those three. Clanky had claimed Debtor and he had a poison vial. Claincy had just been killed and revealed as a Debtor. There was no way the Cultists would've started with two Debtors (and Claincy's death wasn't planned so Clanky couldn't have been claiming Debtor to absolve himself in light of Claincy's death). Clanky is obviously a villager. Sart's character started with a Seon. There is no way that the Cultists would've started with two Seons, considered how few Seons there were. Wyrm was a Dula who had paired me and Alv (well, Aonar paired me and Alv, but the point stands). Even if Kas didn't tell Meta who he paired, Meta probably knew. Alv and I both have rather large targets on our backs and it's absolutely believable that either of us could've been hit without the knowledge that we were lovers. If Wyrm had been a Cultist, I guarantee that Alv would've been hit on Night 3 to take me down rather than a direct hit on me. They wanted to kill me but figured that I'd be protected. Pendants and Warriors don't protect from Lover's deaths and Alv was a perfectly good choice for a hit as well (by virtue of him being Alv).

 

The only reason people weren't certain about those soft-confirms is because they'd come to rely too heavily on the Priest rather than their own deductive reasoning. In a game without a Seeking ability, all three of them would've been written off by that point as villagers, without a doubt. So yeah, it was obvious the game was going to end. And even on the 1% chance that it didn't, there would've only been one Cultist left and only three people that it could've possibly been. We still don't need a Priest at that point. We've worked out stickier situations in past games (and by "we," I mean the players collectively).

 

2. I'd hoped there was a protective ability, because you can bet that I would've used it. I'm sure there was somewhere in the city, but we hadn't found it yet.

[Kasimir he/him]

I want to preface this with the clarification that I'm a player who plays to have fun, not to win. As such, not winning this game doesn't bother me. (As you can tell from having chosen in the interests of Arelon instead of Lover!Kas back when making my decision, although that had really more to do with the Stack.)

 

At least for me, the point was less about whether or not there could still be lurking Cultists but rather, what sort of useful roles we could have to block those. At least if the call of who to save had been mine to make (in a nearby possible world where Seonid had been around for the opening, perhaps?), I would've preferred to save two Elantrians as compared to the Priest. My personal reading was that the Priest's usefulness diminishes: A. once the Gyorn and Odiv are dead, B. once the Village or at least the people making the call had decided to let off subtlety at the nearest bus stop and just fireball anyone who wasn't confirmed.

 

Once you flip the switch to go nuclear, there's no going back. As I saw it, if there was indeed more Cultists, who else would they be? Probably Wyrm, Clanky and Dow, right? Well, fireball them as well. We're already not hesitated to massacre most of the soft-confirmed, why suddenly require a Priest to scan the others when scanning with a fireball does just as well, if a little more permanent? There is, at least, no more principled reason to prefer a Priest scan. If there had been a remaining Cultist, numbers dictated it would have to be one more.

 

At least, that's the way I read it. Again, I don't care about winning. It's just that I think when you flip the button and decide to break up with subtlety, then you really should prefer to save two of the big guns (Elantrians) as compared to the Priest.

[Metacognition he/him]

Kas, those are some good points; ones that I hadn't really considered. As Twei pointed out, we were looking at it in a different light. The main reason we didn't protect Wilson or Alv though was because, as far as we knew, the Cultists didn't know about the Nuclear option. Unless we were wrong about Clanky (a distinct possibility), we figured that the Cultists would have still considered the game still on. Thus, if we wanted the best chance to block another kill, it was still more likely that they would continue to try to take out the Priest and the Warriors. The village hasn't shown much interest in going with the Nuclear option in previous games. I still get made fun of for doing basically the same thing in LG3 all the time, so, as an Eliminator, would you have really expected a bunch of people that typically don't even condone the killing of lurkers most of the time to all of a sudden switch over to, "Eh, let's just kill everyone." I wouldn't have. 

 

 

On top of that, yeah, those are some great points. So why wasn't I informed of them during the game? As Wilson pointed out, I was in contact with her during the last day and then I was in contact with Alv during the last night. They had plenty of time to bring these up and no one asked for protection, even though by then they knew that I was in contact with both of the warriors. It kind of sounds like you guys are looking at this from the position of hindsight and trying to blame your deaths on us for not protecting you. 

 

So sorry you died, but we did what we thought was our best chance to block another kill. 

Edited June 23, 2015 by Metacognition

[Sart he/him]

How I feel about the end of this game:

Pyromania!

[Haelbarde he/him]

What would I have done differently?

I would tried harder to fit all the Wheel of Time titles into that poem thing I wrote.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Haelbarde

[the winter system]

If you had been made Hoed, what would your 5 words be?

1. METHIONYLTHREONYLTHREONYGLUTAMINYLARGINYL…ISOLEUCINE 

2. LOPADOTEMACHOSELACHOGALEOKRANIOLEIPSAN…PTERYGON

PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS 4. PARASTRATIOSPHECOMYIA STRATIOSPHECOMYIOIDES 

PSEUDOPSEUDOHYPOPARATHYROIDISM

If you had been King/Queen, what would your inheritance rules have been?
"Give to Claincy." 

If you had been Dula, who would you have made lovers? 
Claincy/Wilson. Totally. 

[Paranoid King he/him]

I'm not in this game, but I think that someone choosing "/", "\", "-", "_", and "|" as their hoed words would lead to something like this:

 

 

\/\/ _             _     |-|  _    |  |   |       | \      |  /    |     |       |           \/\/ | |_  _     _     |\|

     |_            |_         |_|   \ /    |_    |  |     |       |     |       |                      |_    |_|

     |_            _|                             |_/     | \     |     |__   |__                  _|

           

 

Takes a bit of getting used to, but it's a very effective way of sending info.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Paranoid King

[Zas678 he/him]

As the resident Hoed, I can tell you what my words are!

 

Pain, Yes, No, Kill, Suspicious.

 

I ended up using Morse, and I used Pain, with Bolding for dots, and underlines for dashes. So something like this:

Pain Pain Pain                     Pain Pain Pain                                Pain Pain Pain

 

It was pretty easy to write (I ended up translating it on a website, then putting it in Word and find-replacing dots with bolded Pain, dash with underline Pain). But I found the real trouble was translating BACK. People see something, see it's in code, and are like- eh, I'll let someone else translate it. I only posted a handful of times in the Elantris thread, cause I knew no one trusted me, and it didn't seem like people translated often when I posted there. The cultissts got a lot of my morse though, and translated it pretty quickly. Looking through the doc, by the time I died, I posted Pain about 1363 times Yes/No questions were WAY easier. 

[Mailliw73 he/him]

I'm a bit bummed that I missed a lot of this game. SInce a lot happened while I was gone, I don't think I'll read through it all, but up until I died, I really did enjoy this game, so thanks, Hero and Tulir! 

[Orlok Tsubodai he/him]

This was great fun to watch - and play, albeit briefly! There is a strange irony in giving away my pendant in the first day cycle and dying in the first night cycle - although I am still happy with what I did with it - and even more so given the love triangle Wilson found herself in - rather than the more likely pair.

Anyway, Hero and Tulir, thank you both very much for GMing this, and for keeping the Elantris PM doc up to date for us spectres - it was always great fun to read the progress in unlocking Elantris!

[The Honey Badger he/him]

That was a very fun game, the GMs were very on it, every cycle. I loved all the mechanics and rules. I would love to play another game by these rules again. 

[Kasimir he/him]

Just for amusement.

Remember when I said the Lovers had a code?

No code is complete without a help-sheet

[Seonid he/him]

Ok, I need one of these Forum SE banners, like the new one Mail is sporting. Anyone know where they come from?

[Mailliw73 he/him]

Ok, I need one of these Forum SE banners, like the new one Mail is sporting. Anyone know where they come from?

You have to make an offering to the secret god of Photoshop.

[Herowannabe he/him]

Ok, I need one of these Forum SE banners, like the new one Mail is sporting. Anyone know where they come from?

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/5627-sanderson-style-elimination-general-rules/?p=273079

 

 

That was a very fun game, the GMs were very on it, every cycle. I loved all the mechanics and rules. I would love to play another game by these rules again. 

 

Why Thank you! I'm glad to hear it!  

 

I'm currently working on version 2 of the rules, now with added Balance! While I'm at it, are there any requests/suggestions for version 2 of the rules?

 

Right now there is one MAJOR change I'm making, and I'm curious whether it will be well received or not. Elantris Rules 1.0 had a LOT of vote-manipulation roles, probably the most of any game to date. However, they barely saw any use. The current metagame strategy seems to be don't use vote manipulations if you're a villager or you know that your target is an eliminator. So with ER2.0, I'm thinking of dropping most of the vote manipulation stuff in favor for a coin earning/spending/investing mechanic. It felt appropriately thematic, since finances played such an important role in the politics in the book.

 

Thoughts? Opinions?

Edited June 24, 2015 by Herowannabe

[the winter system]

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/5627-sanderson-style-elimination-general-rules/?p=273079

 

 

 

Why Thank you! I'm glad to hear it!

 

I'm currently working on version 2 of the rules, now with added Balance! While I'm at it, are there any requests/suggestions for version 2 of the rules?

 

Right now there is one MAJOR change I'm making, and I'm curious whether it will be well received or not. Elantris Rules 1.0 had a LOT of vote-manipulation roles, probably the most of any game to date. However, they barely saw any use. The current metagame strategy seems to be don't use vote manipulations if you're a villager or you know that your target is an eliminator. So with ER2.0, I'm thinking of dropping most of the vote manipulation stuff in favor for a coin earning/spending/investing mechanic. It felt appropriately thematic, since finances played such an important role in the politics in the book.

 

Thoughts? Opinions?

No "Safe Priests." Either make there just be one or make them not be safe. Also, Korathi Pendants should be removed. 

[Herowannabe he/him]

No "Safe Priests." Either make there just be one or make them not be safe. Also, Korathi Pendants should be removed.

Both of those already addressed. The Korathi pendant will still be around, but very different than in the first game.

[phattemer]

I don't know, I LOVED the safe priests!

But the coin mechanic sounds great, a similar thing is working fine in QF8