Long Game 37: Court Thread

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

8 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

It wouldn't be because Orlok was my team mate, since Orlok was the one who put me in danger of being lynched in the first place. That's would be quite a few layers of IKYK, if we were going to play it that way, and if we were team mates it would have been vastly easier if Orlok never accused me in the first place.

You should be honoured that I suspect you of being so smart then. 

[TheMightyLopen he/him]

Okay, well, I don't usually do this, but in this case I think it should help you all understand my actions up to this point, so here's a public roleclaim. I'm Zeta. When the game began, I didn't know how I was aligned. My role wasn't colored, so I figured I was neutral. Only when my ability triggered did Aonar tell me I was village aligned, so before that, I was playing fairly passively. Budgie and Burnt knew I was Zeta, because I claimed to both of them N1. Burnt because why not, and Budgie because they're new and I wanted to help them be more involved. I imagine this is why they both said they're reading me as village, because at the time I told them I was neutral(I thought I was).

I have been honest with my opinions in case anyone's wondering. Anyways, hopefully that clears some things up.

[Orlok Tsubodai]

9 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

Okay, well, I don't usually do this, but in this case I think it should help you all understand my actions up to this point, so here's a public roleclaim. I'm Zeta. When the game began, I didn't know how I was aligned. My role wasn't colored, so I figured I was neutral. Only when my ability triggered did Aonar tell me I was village aligned, so before that, I was playing fairly passively. Budgie and Burnt knew I was Zeta, because I claimed to both of them N1. Burnt because why not, and Budgie because they're new and I wanted to help them be more involved. I imagine this is why they both said they're reading me as village, because at the time I told them I was neutral(I thought I was).

I have been honest with my opinions in case anyone's wondering. Anyways, hopefully that clears some things up.

Well. This is interesting. I can believe that you're Zeta, as that seems like a very simple thing to test. My issue is believing that you're village aligned. Would you give us the details of your win condition, and your win condition as laid out at the start of the game? I struggle to believe that you'd start the game without a win condition.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

5 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

Okay, well, I don't usually do this, but in this case I think it should help you all understand my actions up to this point, so here's a public roleclaim. I'm Zeta. When the game began, I didn't know how I was aligned. My role wasn't colored, so I figured I was neutral. Only when my ability triggered did Aonar tell me I was village aligned, so before that, I was playing fairly passively. Budgie and Burnt knew I was Zeta, because I claimed to both of them N1. Burnt because why not, and Budgie because they're new and I wanted to help them be more involved. I imagine this is why they both said they're reading me as village, because at the time I told them I was neutral(I thought I was).

I have been honest with my opinions in case anyone's wondering. Anyways, hopefully that clears some things up.

Hmm... Well that changes some things.

Well, if you are telling the truth, I suppose my analysis was actually somewhat accurate. Since you believed you were neutral, you were often acting in the name of self preservation.

Still, I have some questions about your explanation, if you wouldn't mind answering them.

Why wouldn't you ask the GMs what your alignment was? That seems like a really important game detail. I mean, from my GM PM, I'm pretty sure that none of them were color-coded. But if you were uncertain about your alignment, why not ask?

Also, why exactly did you learn your alignment once your ability triggered? In what context did your alignment as a villager come up?

Also, another point of concern... If MEB is evil, your claiming has put the village in some danger, as they could now cause a shadow dimension event every cycle, until one of you dies. If you are in fact a villager, are you sure that claiming is a good idea?

[TheMightyLopen he/him]

32 minutes ago, Orlok Tsubodai said:

Well. This is interesting. I can believe that you're Zeta, as that seems like a very simple thing to test. My issue is believing that you're village aligned. Would you give us the details of your win condition, and your win condition as laid out at the start of the game? I struggle to believe that you'd start the game without a win condition.

 

28 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

Hmm... Well that changes some things.

Well, if you are telling the truth, I suppose my analysis was actually somewhat accurate. Since you believed you were neutral, you were often acting in the name of self preservation.

Still, I have some questions about your explanation, if you wouldn't mind answering them.

Why wouldn't you ask the GMs what your alignment was? That seems like a really important game detail. I mean, from my GM PM, I'm pretty sure that none of them were color-coded. But if you were uncertain about your alignment, why not ask?

Also, why exactly did you learn your alignment once your ability triggered? In what context did your alignment as a villager come up?

Also, another point of concern... If MEB is evil, your claiming has put the village in some danger, as they could now cause a shadow dimension event every cycle, until one of you dies. If you are in fact a villager, are you sure that claiming is a good idea?

Yeah, so basically what happened was I thought that since I was a unique role, and the fact that my role wasn't colored, I was some kind of neutral. I did ask Aonar what I was supposed to be doing as soon as I got my role, but he never answered me. I guess he didn't realize I was asking what my goal for the game was and thought it was like, a rhetorical question since I couldn't actually use my ability, so he didn't think it was an actual question. At that point, I kind of felt like I was missing something, so I didn't want to ask the same question again and look like an idiot, but I guess that was just prolonging the inevitable... >>

Anyways, I thought maybe I was just supposed to survive, or that something would happen when my ability triggered. 

[Orlok Tsubodai]

14 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

 

Yeah, so basically what happened was I thought that since I was a unique role, and the fact that my role wasn't colored, I was some kind of neutral. I did ask Aonar what I was supposed to be doing as soon as I got my role, but he never answered me. I guess he didn't realize I was asking what my goal for the game was and thought it was like, a rhetorical question since I couldn't actually use my ability, so he didn't think it was an actual question. At that point, I kind of felt like I was missing something, so I didn't want to ask the same question again and look like an idiot, but I guess that was just prolonging the inevitable... >>

Anyways, I thought maybe I was just supposed to survive, or that something would happen when my ability triggered. 

My apologies, Lopen, but I'm not buying a scenario where you carried on playing the game without knowing your win condition, which makes me wonder why you don't want your win condition known. I'm unlikely to change my vote. I've been awake 16 hours on 3 hours sleep, and don't really trust myself to reevaluate, and think that your action over the last hour are indeed suspicious.

[TheMightyLopen he/him]

2 minutes ago, Orlok Tsubodai said:

My apologies, Lopen, but I'm not buying a scenario where you carried on playing the game without knowing your win condition, which makes me wonder why you don't want your win condition known. I'm unlikely to change my vote. I've been awake 16 hours on 3 hours sleep, and don't really trust myself to reevaluate, and think that your action over the last hour are indeed suspicious.

Don't worry about it. It's my fault really.

Anyways, Drake and Rand are I guess my biggest suspicions. If Drake is village, I might take a closer look at BR.

Everyone else...I don't really know. I'd suggest as many people as possible use PM's during the Night, both to get the inactives caught up and involved, and to get a better feel for others, so you can have a better start to the next Day. More people have to vote if we're gonna have any chance of winning(unless the Forest village does even worse than us ).

One thing that made me suspicious of Drake was his "analysis" of me that I was interested in self-preservation. It kind of read to me like he'd guessed I was some neutral role(there were only 4 Court members in the Zeta zone, so the elims likely guessed I was the Zeta), so when I died, he could say "oh, I was right that he just wanted to survive, which is why I was suspicious of him." That way he'd get less suspicion for lynching me. Similarly to how Elenion knew I was Odium in whatever LG that was, and used that as an excuse to push hard for my lynch, since he knew he wouldn't get any suspicion for it once I died.

[Aonar he/him]

The day's over, people. Please wait, for a little bit.  

[Aonar he/him]

Well crap. Maybe I'll finally get this and the backlog done tomorrow.  Hopefully. >>

---

Lopen has been lynched! They were Zeta! 

You have slightly less than 24 hours to get night actions in!

Also, a GM's note: Deepest apologies to Lopen, both for not making it 100% clear he was a village, and for missing his question. This one is officially on me. Feel free to kill me, when I get around to playing there again.  

[Eternum he/him]

Oh well. Great job, guys. Also, Flash, you didn't exactly find the Zeta... You lynched them. Which is what you were trying to prevent from happening.

Regardless.

Hi! I'm the new Woods Medium. You can PM me 'n stuff, I think. You can't try to kill me though, unless I'm wrong and you can and this is a bad idea.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Eternum

[Burnt Spaghetti she/her]

Oh come on.

*sighs*

Course. Why should i be surprised. Since when do lopen and i ever stay both alive very long in a SE game. Fated to never work together in SE. Sigh. 

[DeTess she/her]

Okay, well, I guess the Zeta is no longer an issue. A shame about the miscommunication involved though, as I think Lopen wouldn't have done things that made him appear on people's radar if he'd known he was village.

So, since Lopen was village, even though he didn't know it, this lynch was a mis-lynch for analysis purposes. Also, because I'm curious, @Flash, where you correct about your suspicion of who was the Zeta?

[Steeldancer he/him]

*MASSIVE FACE PALM* No i thought Budgie was the zeta. I knew Lopen was a possibility but my gut was telling me he wasn't. 

Sorry Lopen I dun messed up. You should have told us *sigh* 

Now I just feel kind of stupid. Not helping the whole "I want to feel helpful" thing. 

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

[Burnt Spaghetti she/her]

1 minute ago, Flash said:

*MASSIVE FACE PALM* No i thought Budgie was the zeta. I knew Lopen was a possibility but my gut was telling me he wasn't. 

Sorry Lopen I dun messed up. You should have told us *sigh* 

Now I just feel kind of stupid. Not helping the whole "I want to feel helpful" thing. 

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

Lopen did say. I guess you just werent online at that point of the cycle.

If you want ideas for inactivity filters, talk to Haelbarde, heh. Its his hobby horse heheh. Think he had one in a game  that was like, if you didnt post a game relevant post each turn, youd die.  And it had to be a useful game relevant post. I intentionally didnt join

[DeTess she/her]

4 minutes ago, Flash said:

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

In broad strokes, the two things I've seen to deal with the issue is an inactivity filter (someone that doesn't post for X cycles dies automatically), and mechanics that directly reward activity (LG30 had Honor that you could earn and that was required to get a role, for example).

[Steeldancer he/him]

Just now, Burnt Spaghetti said:

Lopen did say. I guess you just werent online at that point of the cycle.

If you want ideas for inactivity filters, talk to Haelbarde, heh. Its his hobby horse heheh. Think he had one in a game  that was like, if you didnt post a game relevant post each turn, youd die.  And it had to be a useful game relevant post. I intentionally didnt join

Yeah my phone shuts off at 8:45 in my time zone so I'm never on for rollover. Not feeling happy with my analysis abilities right now. 

[STINK he/him]

Aight been fairly busy with RL but should be good for now so wassup my dudes

I promise to be more active and all that jazz

[Clanky he/him]

Sorry for dissapearing. I was at work for 40 hours straight then as soon as I came home I passed out for 12 hours. But that should mean the last of my super busy time so I should be active for the rest of the game. I'll do a real post once I've caught up on stuff

Also does anyone have the lynch vote tally from last cycle? It would be useful to see that.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Clanky
Added bottom line

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Well then. Maybe I should have made it a tie after all.

Although, on the bright side, I guess that means zeta won't trigger anymore?

3 hours ago, Flash said:

*MASSIVE FACE PALM* No i thought Budgie was the zeta. I knew Lopen was a possibility but my gut was telling me he wasn't. 

Sorry Lopen I dun messed up. You should have told us *sigh* 

Now I just feel kind of stupid. Not helping the whole "I want to feel helpful" thing. 

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

I've thought about several different approaches for my own games. Inactivity policies are important.

Personally, I would use a straight inactivity filter sparingly. Thing is, they don't really encourage activity all that much. Because the only people they are going to target is total inactives. And, by definition, somebody who is totally inactive isn't going to respond to the threat of dying.

That said, there are some measures that I am likely to incorporate into at least one of my upcoming games:

1. Majority votes only count actives. Otherwise, inactivity can decide the outcome of certain votes, which ideally shouldn't happen.

2. Players can only take actions in a cycle if they've also posted a certain minimum amount. This is just a pretty simple deterrent to lurking.

3. Activity should be rewarded. This has been implemented to great effect in a number of my favorite games. The only downside is that it makes the eliminators even more motivated to kill actives, however they are typically going to target actives regardless.

4. Also I have an in-game mechanic about inactives. Only to explain exactly how it works I'd have to give spoilers on my stormlight game. Suffice to say that, while this particular idea is unlikely to actually have much of an effect, I still really like the idea of it.

 

I've considered making it so that the eliminators can, on a given night, trade their single kill against an active for two kills against inactives. But I have some real doubts about that one.

[Clanky he/him]

So I think this was the final tally?

Lopen(3): Drake, Orlok, Flash

Drake(2): Lopen, Brightness

Flash(1): Randuir

If I'm wrong someone please correct me. I'll be doing a probably rather large analysis post in the not too distant future.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Pretty sure that's correct.

[Clanky he/him]

Thanks Drake,

So first I will respond to this post from Brightness about my previous actions.

Honestly most of it was just posting initial thoughts without much reasoning just to try and stay active in the game. I still stand by my reasons for voting initially for lopen even if I didn't explain it very well. My problem with Lopen was how he wasn't picking a side on anything he posted about. It doesn't appear as if I put that into words very well though from what I see in that post. (I'll be using the same numbering system as brightness did to respond to specifics)

4) Basically I wanted to treat the game as if the two threads that were combined were just one game and that we could help our people in the forest too. With that in mind voting for a forester makes most sense based on logistics, besides as long as people still vote with a reason or if someone really didn't want to vote for a forester/voted for an eliminatorish forester that would still give info.

5,6) (and all the other lopen stuff) So basically I felt that he hadn't taken a side on anything to do with lynches, He was Anti CC lynch (But said he supported the vote on shqueeves which was activity related), he didn't support  lynching a forester (which everyone seemed not to), and he didn't put out another candidate and ended the first day saying he'd prefer no lynch. Earlier he had talked about wanting to get a vote out early that day but hadn't voted despite posting several times prior to my vote on him. The flash thing just made his non-vote actions even weirder but was not the full basis of my vote. That was my lopen reasoning, lots of his actions make more sense given he didn't know his alignment. 

7) I will always speak up for the contribution crusade. It doesn't need to only mean lynching inactives all the time, but now isn't really the time to get into this as it isn't really relevent to this game.

I do still have to do a couple hours of work today so I'll come back with a post of my thoughts on some other people in a couple hours.

 

[Elbereth she/her]

7 hours ago, Flash said:

As for the whole activity thing, the only thing I could come up with was using the "I WANT YOU" poster as a "I WANT YOU TO BE ACTIVE" thing. I thought about it all night, I also came up with several terrible ideas: a role that only kills inactives, a mechanic that the more you post, the less likely you are to die to a random kill thing. My best idea is one I'll be incorporating into my own game: rewarding people for being active. I'm really not sure how else to deal with the issue. In the end, people will still go inactive, and there doesn't seem to be much that we can do about it. 

That one's been brought up before, though it'd be hard to implement - I believe the form in whcih it was suggested was a kill role that can only kill the bottom half of the player list when sorted most to least active, or something similar. It's a possibility, though potentially a difficult one. It'd certainly create activity, though.  

3 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

Personally, I would use a straight inactivity filter sparingly. Thing is, they don't really encourage activity all that much. Because the only people they are going to target is total inactives. And, by definition, somebody who is totally inactive isn't going to respond to the threat of dying.

1. Majority votes only count actives. Otherwise, inactivity can decide the outcome of certain votes, which ideally shouldn't happen.

2. Players can only take actions in a cycle if they've also posted a certain minimum amount. This is just a pretty simple deterrent to lurking.

I've considered making it so that the eliminators can, on a given night, trade their single kill against an active for two kills against inactives. But I have some real doubts about that one.

Straight inactivity filters aren't meant to encourage inactivity, generally. Sometimes they do - PMing people the cycle before they're likely to die, for instance, can often get them to post if they've simply forgot. But the true point of them is so they're not irritating to other players, so that no player in the game has to bother with trying to deal with someone about whom you have no information. 

This tends to be the case unofficially anyway, if you're referring to ending the game, which is the usual case in which the majority of players is important. AG2 ended with more villagers than elims because most of the villagers were inactive. 

I like this, and can't remember having seen it before. 

I doubt that'd be used, honestly. Depending on how you define 'inactive', killing an active is far more useful to any evil team. 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

37 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

Straight inactivity filters aren't meant to encourage inactivity, generally. Sometimes they do - PMing people the cycle before they're likely to die, for instance, can often get them to post if they've simply forgot. But the true point of them is so they're not irritating to other players, so that no player in the game has to bother with trying to deal with someone about whom you have no information. 

This tends to be the case unofficially anyway, if you're referring to ending the game, which is the usual case in which the majority of players is important. AG2 ended with more villagers than elims because most of the villagers were inactive. 

I like this, and can't remember having seen it before. 

I doubt that'd be used, honestly. Depending on how you define 'inactive', killing an active is far more useful to any evil team. 

In some games, removing an inactive and letting their alignment flip might be good. I do wonder how that impacts the balance of the game though, as opposed to leaving inactives in-game with their alignments unidentified. Hmm...

What I'm referring to isn't really parity (endgame conditions), so much as game mechanics that specifically say "50% or more of living players must vote for this for it to happen." I was pleased to see that, in the case of the medium vote, Aonar put "50% of living, active players must vote for this."

I don't think it has been done before. I just remember, in some game (don't remember which), one of the players basically asked the eliminators, "please post something if you are going to submit a kill, so that we at least have something to work with." And I figured, that could be a rule.

I kind of doubt people would use it either, particularly since, in this case, I would be defining it as "total inactive," meaning they didn't post at all in the given cycle. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical about using this mechanic. That said, it's not a complete loss to kill two inactives, because it gives the village even less information to go off of then you normally get from eliminator kills (which, admittedly, isn't very much at all in the first place, due to the IKYK scenario it creates). Honestly, the main reason this idea has any appeal at all is because it may push the game away from prioritizing active people as targets as much.

Edited August 19, 2017 by Drake Marshall

[Elbereth she/her]

58 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

What I'm referring to isn't really parity (endgame conditions), so much as game mechanics that specifically say "50% or more of living players must vote for this for it to happen." I was pleased to see that, in the case of the medium vote, Aonar put "50% of living, active players must vote for this."

I kind of doubt people would use it either, particularly since, in this case, I would be defining it as "total inactive," meaning they didn't post at all in the given cycle. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical about using this mechanic. That said, it's not a complete loss to kill two inactives, because it gives the village even less information to go off of then you normally get from eliminator kills (which, admittedly, isn't very much at all in the first place, due to the IKYK scenario it creates). Honestly, the main reason this idea has any appeal at all is because it may push the game away from prioritizing active people as targets as much.

Ah, right. I can't remember the last time there was such a mechanic before this game, honestly, which is why I was confused. 

Sure. But, again, inactives don't tend be be counted for endgame majority, and eliminator teams can hunt inactives should they choose regardless. It does help them to some extent, in that the village gains no information, but even then hitting total inactives rather than semi-actives isn't a halpful strategy because they pose absolutely no threat.