Long Game 28: The Awakening at the House on the Hill

[Wonko the Sane]

Just now, Mark IV said:

Is it just me or is it funny how the discussion if the meta of lynching, rather than lynch discussion is causing ... Well... Discussion?

It's not funny. It's intentional.

I've long felt that the lynch gets too much credit as the be-all and end-all of Village tools for creating discussion. It may be the single best tool, but it's far from the only trick we've got.

[little wilson]

Khaos sat in a corner twirling one of her pens while the other called her a pottle-deep foot licker. She grimaced briefly at that thought. Nasty business, feet licking. You never knew what people picked up on their feet. Especially if they were like her, choosing to go bare on the foot everywhere. She suppressed a shudder.

She tried to tune out the group, discussing omens and traitors and other things but it was kind of difficult. Especially the traitor part, because they were acting like being a traitor was a bad thing. It sounded like fun to Khaos. Who wouldn't want to wreak a little havoc? Especially in a house like this. Imagine how much fun that would be! She wondered if she could find these traitors somehow. They were probably decent folk, being unfairly treated.

For now though, Khaos' eye caught on one of the other people in the room. A man she was pretty sure had referred to himself as The Hammer (ridiculous name, that, she thought). She slowly made her way over to him and sat down. "My pen has a message for you," she said, placing a blank piece of paper in front of him. She had a feeling he was looking at her like she was crazy, but she didn't bother to verify that as she placed the tip on the paper. She held her breath for a beat, wondering what it would write. You talk greasily; your lips grow foul. She barely contained her snort of amusement at her pen's sense of humor. She picked it back up and looked him in the eye, waiting to see what he would say. Let's see you call me crazy now, she thought.

[Seonid]

Just now, Wonko the Sane said:

It's not funny. It's intentional.

I've long felt that the lynch gets too much credit as the be-all and end-all of Village tools for creating discussion. It may be the single best tool, but it's far from the only trick we've got.

Stop it. Now you're making me want to build a game that doesn't have a lynch.

In more relevant news, I'm beginning to align with Jondesu. This is, essentially, a conversion game. Conventional wisdom is out the window. Day 1 lynches are almost always a good idea. But I'm questioning their usefulness here and now.

[STINK]

That reminds me that I should be able to RP tomorrow this guy's life has been planned out over this weekend

Also this post really has nothing substantial in it.

[Arrae]

@phattemer, are you here? Because I'm going to plop a vote on you if you don't respond within four hours. 

As far as the lynch or not to lynch question goes, more information is always better. Easier to catch an eliminator that way. For all we know, someone will state suspicion of someone D1 and then D5 completely change their tune, and we'll know that they aren't being consistent. Then, we'll have another person to interrogate. If we have the threat of a lynch

For that matter, until we catch an eliminator and/or we have a normal-sized eliminator team, I'm going to keep on exploring. It's much easier to catch five people among thirty-something rather than two. We can't win until we destroy the House and kill all the traitors, and we can't destroy the House until we kill at least one traitor. As long as the House is still alive, people can be converted.

[Bugsy]

Hello, everyone! I'm in APUSH, so I'll make this quick

My message said I was annoyed Locke was claiming finder's credit for my discovery. I thought that meant Locke had found the other one, but it didn't  

I'm having a hard time developing reads right now, since I only managed to skim the past 3 pages

[Clanky]

That is a lot of discussion for me to catch up on. Anyways it doesn't seem like we have much to go on at this point. With only two elims I don't really think there can be any chance at all of lynching them or even getting anyone to reveal themselves. But doing nothing doesn't help us either so I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'm going to pursue a lynch this cycle.

Otherwise there has been some discussion on whether we should continue exploring. I think the answer to that should be unequivocally yes. Here is why I see it that way:

1. We cannot win until we find and destroy the heart of the house
2. We cannot find the heart of the house without exploring
3. Every night we don't find the heart of the house gives elims another free kill
4. Therefore the more exploring we do the faster we find the heart and the more of us are still around to deal with it.
5. I don't think we will find the heart until a certain amount of omens have been found regardless of how many turns we spread the exploring out over

[Bugsy]

24 minutes ago, Clanky said:

That is a lot of discussion for me to catch up on. Anyways it doesn't seem like we have much to go on at this point. With only two elims I don't really think there can be any chance at all of lynching them or even getting anyone to reveal themselves. But doing nothing doesn't help us either so I'm still undecided as to whether or not I'm going to pursue a lynch this cycle.

Otherwise there has been some discussion on whether we should continue exploring. I think the answer to that should be unequivocally yes. Here is why I see it that way:

1. We cannot win until we find and destroy the heart of the house
2. We cannot find the heart of the house without exploring
3. Every night we don't find the heart of the house gives elims another free kill
4. Therefore the more exploring we do the faster we find the heart and the more of us are still around to deal with it.
5. I don't think we will find the heart until a certain amount of omens have been found regardless of how many turns we spread the exploring out over

We can't find the heart until we kill the first elim. It might be smarter to wait until we find one to explore more, but I really don't see that happening. 

[Wonko the Sane]

58 minutes ago, Arraenae said:

As far as the lynch or not to lynch question goes, more information is always better. Easier to catch an eliminator that way. For all we know, someone will state suspicion of someone D1 and then D5 completely change their tune, and we'll know that they aren't being consistent. Then, we'll have another person to interrogate. If we have the threat of a lynch

I get that, but I legitimately think that we will not gain any worthwhile information from this lynch. There simply aren't enough Elims. I follow your example with the fake-suspicion slip-up, but that's only speculation -- mistakes like that aren't something you should count on unless you are actively working to make them happen. And don't you think you're reaching a little if that's the best information you can imagine us getting out of this? I mean, we came up with an equally likely scenario with vote manip, and that would gain us about as much information. The vast majority of the information we get from a typical D1 lynch is completely invalidated by the conditions here.

58 minutes ago, Arraenae said:

For that matter, until we catch an eliminator and/or we have a normal-sized eliminator team, I'm going to keep on exploring. It's much easier to catch five people among thirty-something rather than two. We can't win until we destroy the House and kill all the traitors, and we can't destroy the House until we kill at least one traitor. As long as the House is still alive, people can be converted.

I agree, but I want to stress the normal-sized eliminator team comment. We are playing a dangerous game here -- deliberately increasing our enemies' strength simply to make them easier to find. I do not think the Village should risk an Eliminator team of larger than four or five members. At least until we've caught one, that is; after that, we'll need to look for the Heart.

30 minutes ago, Clanky said:

Otherwise there has been some discussion on whether we should continue exploring. I think the answer to that should be unequivocally yes. Here is why I see it that way:

1. We cannot win until we find and destroy the heart of the house
2. We cannot find the heart of the house without exploring
3. Every night we don't find the heart of the house gives elims another free kill
4. Therefore the more exploring we do the faster we find the heart and the more of us are still around to deal with it.
5. I don't think we will find the heart until a certain amount of omens have been found regardless of how many turns we spread the exploring out over

As Bugsy said, the condition to let us find the heart isn't based on the number of omens; we just need to catch an Elim first. It's true that every night we don't find the Heart is another kill for the enemy. But it's also true that every night we spend exploring before we kill one of them is, by definition, going to be a night on which we don't find the Heart -- and more than that, it's another 1-3 conversions to the enemy team. If we aren't careful, by the time we reach Aman's stage 2, we could have upwards of seven or eight Elims on our hands.

[Clanky]

Yep sorry I missed that. I thought it was that we just couldn't kill it until we kill an eliminator I didn't know it was also finding it. I still think it is best to explore rather than wait.

[Unodus]

I'm placing a vote on Ecthelion III to counter his unjustified "poke vote" on me before the rollover. I know he hasn't been online since to remove the vote, but I don't want any last minute vote withdrawals to leave me hanging- it's very simple to just log out of your account to hide the fact that you're lurking as a guest.

 

Exion, who has remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the exchange, adjusts his hat slightly and looks at the wall. Taking a pen, he dabs at the drying words on the wall.
"I don't think it's blood." He concludes, "It's wax."
"What's happened is very simple- someone must have stolen the wax seals from the desk and melted them through the ceiling. The reason they formed letters is because the same thief or an accomplice carved them into the wall beforehand in a way that we would not notice until the red wax dripped into the engraving. We can assume based on their message that their intent was to deliver a warning. The question therefore, is who did it? After all, it has to have been one of us who melted the wax in the first place- and we're the only ones here, right? So that means someone's found a way into the upper rooms and didn't tell the rest of the group, huh? I wouldn't be surprised if this place had a few secret corridors or two."
The Gambler notices a guy in red uniforms hand reaching for his belt out of the corner of his eye, and Exion instinctively reaches for one of the short swords at his side with a fixed glare at the nameless stranger,
"You starting, pal?"

Edited November 21, 2016 by Unodus

[Arrae]

Unodus, how was Ecth's poke vote on you "unjustified"? He put a vote on you for lurking, as can be seen here:

 

[Unodus]

because I did make a post?

ftr, I do have the game open in the background as a tab because I use chrome and opening it up every time it updates is a hassle

Edited November 21, 2016 by Unodus

[Ecthelion III]

I think about half of us should explore.

@jefrywlfersn What are your thoughts so far? I like talking to players who are on.

[jefrywlfersn]

i don't really know yet

[Straw]

@OrlokTsubodai@Doctor12Noticed you two were on and thought it would be good to have some discussion. Anything you two want to say?

EDIT: Hi Wonko. I didn't see you.

Edited November 21, 2016 by Straw

[Orlok Tsubodai]

I'd like to weigh in on the exploring conversation.

I'm firmly of the view that we ought to continue to explore. Firstly, Wyrm is a very experienced GM, and a cynic. I'd be willing to bet that Wyrm has balanced this game such that individual self interest in exploring won't overbalance the game against us.

I also believe that there will be a cap on the number of eliminators - it's too obvious an exploit to continue exploring until 15 players win through being converted to allow uncapped conversions.

[Straw]

I am going to check to see what players have not been on for more than 1 day.

[Jondesu]

Does someone want to provide a vote status/count? I'm on mobile so it'd be tough, but I don't actually know if anyone has more than one vote right now.

Wyrm, what happens if there's a tie? (Probably in the rules, but I don't remember.)

[Wyrmhero]

1 minute ago, Jondesu said:

Does someone want to provide a vote status/count? I'm on mobile so it'd be tough, but I don't actually know if anyone has more than one vote right now.

Wyrm, what happens if there's a tie? (Probably in the rules, but I don't remember.)

Tie vote means no lynch.

[Assassin in Burgundy]

*Sees that 19 people posted when I was gone*

*Throws up hands*

[Wonko the Sane]

24 minutes ago, OrlokTsubodai said:

I'm firmly of the view that we ought to continue to explore. Firstly, Wyrm is a very experienced GM, and a cynic. I'd be willing to bet that Wyrm has balanced this game such that individual self interest in exploring won't overbalance the game against us.

Or maybe he wanted to make a sort of gambling mechanic, where we had to decide just how much we want to explore, with too much or too little being dangerous.

24 minutes ago, OrlokTsubodai said:

I also believe that there will be a cap on the number of eliminators - it's too obvious an exploit to continue exploring until 15 players win through being converted to allow uncapped conversions.

I think I mentioned above that I suspect that Wyrm took a page out of the actual House on the Hill game, and gave each Elim a different win condition, so that they can work together, but only loosely. It solves your problem, adds an interesting mechanic to the game, and draws on the source material.

[Mark IV]

1 hour ago, Wonko the Sane said:

Ignore this text box. >.>

2 days ago, wonko said

Quote

I've been thinking about this as well. We have to weigh our chances both ways. The points you make are valid, but we have to consider the alternative. By not exploring, we make mislynches more likely, and we forgo valuable roles and items that the Elims will likely be accruing. That's another thing we need to figure out tonight -- how common and how powerful the roles are. If they don't gain us much on average, it's probably better to hold off. But it's possible that further exploration will give us the tools we need to root out a Traitor much faster.

 

 

1 hour ago, Wonko the Sane said:

Or maybe he wanted to make a sort of gambling mechanic, where we had to decide just how much we want to explore, with too much or too little being dangerous.

I think I mentioned above that I suspect that Wyrm took a page out of the actual House on the Hill game, and gave each Elim a different win condition, so that they can work together, but only loosely. It solves your problem, adds an interesting mechanic to the game, and draws on the source material.

 

Your honour, id like to note how wonko has turned around in his opinions. Though he doesn't outright say it in the first post, he seems to favour exploring. 

Now, he seems to be vehemently against it.  

This stark change happened over the course of a turnover.

 

Coincidence?  I think possibly! 

Thing is, I'd first like to hear what wonko says in response. I probably already know his response - it's not all that eliminatory. 

Secondly, why would an eliminator be against exploring? Perhaps he/she is planning for the future where they claim they were against exploring in the first place. Or they know something we don't. 

Thirdly, I have to leave now, and I'll be on in another 9 hours. So, yeah! But guys. 

@Wonko the Sane please do respond. 

[Arrae]

@phattemer, you still haven't shown up yet, so have a vote. Phatt.

@Unodus, are you saying that before Ecth placed his vote on you you made a post?

[Doc12]

Hello! I'm back! And I have been compiling a massive post to make up for my absences :D.

On 11/21/2016 at 5:03 AM, Straw said:

First! I demand the blood of a duck.

So firstly, I find @Straw to be acting erratically. Sure, I haven't seen much of his playstyle, but, I'm just confused as to what he's trying to achieve. Trying to throw out an 'ignore me' vibe? He has also been poke voting a lot, which he has justified earlier by saying he wants to get inactives to post. Still, I'd just continue to watch him, I guess?

On the subject of poke voting, Rae, Elenion and Straw have been the main poke voters, actively jumping on lurkers and inactives. It's still day one, so I'm going to see if the trend continues on day 2, I guess. I am all aboard on lynching inactives, but as other players have said, lynching inactives is a good way to avoid having to give your reasons. So I'd like you guys to at least give your thoughts on other players, even though you might not be lynching them?

Also, @little wilson has spent all, or almost all of her posts posting RP, which while fun to read, isn't exactly contributing much. Elenion posts RP too, but he makes both RP posts and discussion posts, so could I ask Wilson to discuss a little more? I'm sure there are other players only posting RP, but Wilson is the most glaring example, considering she's played many other SE games before and has no excuse for not discussing anything. 

On 11/21/2016 at 5:05 AM, Magestar said:

Second.  What the heck?

And, just to be clear, we now definitely have two Elims?

Mage's post strikes me as a liiitle suspicious. I, like Wonko, believe that Wyrm might have given the eliminators different win cons, and not necessarily a way of contacting each other. Someone before me has pointed out that Omens can grant roles, and someone has said that the writing on the wall might denote a PM role. I find myself thinking that the eliminators themselves might not necessarily know who the other is, and might have to find each other. Thus, Mage could be an eliminator who was turned last night, and was confused when he didn't get a contact for anyone else, thus asking this question. He also hasn't been posting anything, thus I'm hoping he gets on to clear my suspicions. 

@Magestar, you haven't posted anything since the start of the cycle. Care to defend against this?

 

21 hours ago, Jondesu said:

Doc's lurking is reaching the point of suspicion to me. He might be getting caught up in figuring out his new role as an Elim, if he was turned, though there might be plenty of other reasons potentially. For now, though, Doc until he provides some defense.

@Jondesu also has been a little weird, especially this post. Up to now, from what I've seen both in previous games and ongoing games like MR18, Jondesu has been a passive player actively hedging on day one lynches. Up to then, he has been quite active in discussion, but refused to vote. So I find his sudden vote on me...slightly confusing? It's a little inconsistent with what he has been saying so far. Currently I want to hear Mage's explanation more, but Jondesu, what do you have to say to that?

20 hours ago, Haelbarde said:

I don't think that the day 1 discussion is ever about trying to get one eliminator to defend another. It's about learning how players view the game, because the eliminators have a different perspective, which starts as soon as they are eliminators. It's about making it harder for the eliminators to hide and not contribute opinions. It's about providing information that can be analysed once a player has died.

Edit: We poke and apply pressure to do all that. I don't think there's any excuse for there not to be discussion this cycle. Day 1 isn't about reacting to discussion. It's about making it, and that's something everyone has to contribute to.

And Haelbarde makes a very good argument for what day one lynches are about, and rebuffs my thinking that a day one lynch is not helpful. And I must say I really like this argument. Nothing much to note here, just saying that this has given me a new perspective on the lynch

On the topic of inactives, there are still a lot of players who aren't really saying anything. Assassin in Burgundy has been fairly active, making comments on peoples' posts, but himself hasn't posted anything of note. Daniyah, Jefry, Seonid, Wonko and Bard have given reasons why they may not be as active as usual, but at least Wonko and Bard have still been trying to participate. @The_Lady_of_Chaos, @JUQ, @phattemer, @Nathan and @Darkness Ascendant have been silent. 

I'll probably be able to make another post at around midnight, my time, so let's see if things have changed by then

Edited November 22, 2016 by Doctor12