Quick Fix Game 26: Stop the Madness

[Lemonelon]

Based on no one dying on 4th cycle, I strongly believe that we will get a random/scapegoat death this cycle of no one votes for the lynch. I suggest we don't lynch anyone this round to see if that is a valid theory  

[Sami she/her]

Whoops it seems my post was deleted, so I'll simply say I'm pretty much an uninteresting vanilla villager 

[Herowannabe he/him]

I updated the list above. Thanks everyone. 

Edited September 14, 2017 by Herowannabe

[Alvron]

Well, isn't that interesting.  If we ignore the lynch deaths as they were caused by us, then we have a pattern.  

Cycle one Wilson was killed 
Cycle two no one died
Cycle three Steelrunner was killed
Cycle four no one died

My current theory is that the Doll is responsible for the deaths.  It kills on one cycle and then passes to someone new on the next.  If I'm right, we should have a kill this round.
Other current theories I am considering are more end game.  

The Doll needs end up in the hands of the Scapegoat.  Since not voting clearly isn't killing the Scapegoat, something else has to happen.  Or maybe Aman is being kept alive by his Lover.  It's possible that they act as a counter to the Scapegoat death.
or
The Doll needs to pass between all living players until everyone has been in possession of the Doll at least once.  I suspect that you can only hold the Doll once.

I'm leaning more towards the second option myself.  Either way, we need to lynch the Holder of the Doll sooner rather than later.  Rebecca has already had it so is unlikely to get it again if I'm right about only holding the Doll once per game.  The cycle 3-4 Holder is also likely cleared so they really should claim.  I suspect that there is a new rule given to Doll Holder(s) that they can no longer claim to have been given the Doll as that would make it fairly easy to kill them.

[Lemonelon]

I too am vanilla village- hoping to have a moment of clarity soooon

[Jondesu he/him]

I’m a normal villager as well, and I don’t currently have the doll. I wouldn’t be opposed to letting myself be lynched while I had it to determine the result, though.

[A Budgie she/her]

Normal villager, and I don't have the doll.
The no-eliminator idea could certainly be possible, or at the very least they can only kill someone once every two cycles. Which is kinda weird, but certainly possible, and could work to make us think there's no elims.

[Haelbarde he/him]

Adding my voice to the number of village roleless. I can't help but wonder if this game has an arsonist....

Anyway I'm going to be at a camp for the next 2.5 days, with limited internet. I should be able to be on at least once a day though and keep up to date, and maybe post/PM if need be.[/colour]

Edited September 15, 2017 by Haelbarde

[Young Bard he/him]

Hero, you first asked people to start claiming to help information in Cycle 3. They've had more than enough time to do so - the fact that it hasn't happened suggests to me that people either don't intend to, or aren't paying attention in the game. Personally, if I were a scanner role, I probably wouldn't reveal myself unless I felt I had some piece of information I felt would be helpful to the the thread from my scans. And, supposing they were a player that scans dead players (something I think must happen in a game where roles or alignments aren't revealed - it's just too difficult to have anything to go by otherwise), we can't really help them if we're not killing anybody. With the high level of inactivity in this thread, even killing inactives at this stage could provide both incentive for players to be more active, potentially driving discussion and revealing information, as well as potentially allowing more information about roles and the game as a whole to be given to a dead-player scanner.

All that in mind, I'm going to vote for Roadwalker. They haven't posted since Cycle 3, and of all the posters in the early cycles, I found the tone of their posts to be strange and suspicious. Plus, they've publicly claimed a vanilla villager, so there's no particular harm in lynching them even if they are a villager. I'm willing to swap to another lynch candidate if there's a particular reason why Roadwalker isn't a good lynch candidate (Hero, I'm particularly looking at you in case I try to lynch a Lover...)

That said, here's everyone who hasn't posted in this cycle - I understand if you're busy, but at least let us know if that's the case - I believe Jondesu is the only one who specifically said they would be busy (except for Hael just now), unless I forgot about someone, in which case, I apologise:

@Darkness Ascendant, @Straw, @Julio, @Roadwalker, @Megasif, @DroughtBringer, @Sony, @Mark IV, @BrightnessRadiant, @Dani, @RippleGylf, @Ecthelion III, @Rebecca, @Amanuensis (Aman, I know you said you were keeping quiet because you didn't feel you had any new information to provide, but I wonder at this point if the same isn't true of all of us, so perhaps it's still worthwhile picking your brain for any leftover crackpot conspiracy theories you might have and join me in my crazy speculations... )

Sorry that this is later than I intended to post - I was distracted by RL events. Hopefully people will still have plenty of time to respond to this post.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

I'll be claiming vanilla as well. @Seonid Mark claimed vanilla to me as well.

Could people PM me with their thoughts and things? Communication is key to this game.
So next cycle we should be getting the sporadic elim kill maybe idk.

and @The Young Bard I thought we didn't need to vote on someone?

[Young Bard he/him]

Just now, Darkness Ascendant said:

I'll be claiming vanilla as well. @Seonid Mark claimed vanilla to me as well.

Could people PM me with their thoughts and things? Communication is key to this game.
So next cycle we should be getting the sporadic elim kill maybe idk.

and @The Young Bard I thought we didn't need to vote on someone?

We don't need to. I think we should, for the reasons I outlined in my post.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

1 minute ago, The Young Bard said:

We don't need to. I think we should, for the reasons I outlined in my post.

We shouldn't till someone does come forward with the role then, preferably in PM.

Methinks they're one of the inactives, and if they are, killing more peeps won't help since they won't be scanning them.\

Of course assuming there is a role like that (This *is* my first blackout)

Edited September 15, 2017 by Darkness Ascendant

[Young Bard he/him]

5 minutes ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

We shouldn't till someone does come forward with the role then, preferably in PM.

Possibly. Or, possibly, it might be better for them to say safe and not risk being targeted, and claim when they have actual useful information to divulge along with just their role. And that wasn't the only reason I voted either.

8 minutes ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

Of course assuming there is a role like that (This *is* my first blackout)

There have been three games (one of which was a rerun) I remember where information wasn't divulged in the writeup about the role/alignment of a player - MR10, LG26, and MR19 (MR10 rerun). In all three of those games, there has been some sort of scan role (in fact, I believe it was multiple in all of these cases) to reveal the role and alignment of these players. At a certain point, players need a base amount of information to go off in order to progress and maintain interest - something which just isn't possible without a scan role of some kind.

[Elbereth she/her]

Cycle is closed! 

[Elbereth she/her]

QF26: Stop the Madness, Cycle 6

The sun broke over the Red Herring and there was a feeling of tentative hope in the air. Each guest was accounted for, which meant the madness might have finally stopped.

Toward evening, the hope was dashed. “I don’t think it’s done yet. I think it’s laying low, hiding. It’ll still kill us,” a voice shouted. Instead of the shouts of agreement he expected though he got side glances and motions for him to keep his head down and mouth shut.

Going from table to table he was meet with the same resistance. “Fine, if none of you will do it, I will!” he shouted. Pulling out a dagger he plunged it into the Silver fellow who had been much too silent for his comfort.
 

---

Roadwalker was lynched!

Player List
1. Haelbarde - Horatio Heatherlocke
2. Darkness Ascendant - Necrosis Jones
3. Sami - Aleta Nebrask
4. Straw - Straw
5. Lemonelon - Adelaide
6. Flash - SteelDancer
7. Eternum - Nero
8. Julio - Taklon Nalkot
9. Roadwalker - Lawrence "Silver" Arthur
10. _Stick_ - Stick
11. King Cole - Turtle
12. Megasif - Shaa Locke Haums
13. Droughtbringer -
14. Sony - Sony
15. Majestic - Lion Shadow
16. A Budgie - Budge
17. Seonid - Erodaan Qadri
18. Alvron - Jace Blood-Axe
19. Little Wilson - Temperance Owen
20. Arinian -  Irvin Thyme
21. Mark IV - Mark
22. Herowannabe - The Heron
23. Jondesu - Remart
24. The Young Bard - Shadow
25. BrightnessRadiant - Rani
26. Dani - Yiferian
27. RippleGylf - Ripple
28. TheMightyLopen - Usopp
29. Ecthelion III - Cyrus
30. Rebecca - Jayne
31. Amanuensis
32. Rubix

 

Edited September 15, 2017 by Elbereth

[Young Bard he/him]

Bugger.

I suspect the rest of the thread will be less than satisfied with me saying this now, but I had the Doll in Cycles 4 and 5. (No, I don't know why I received the doll on an even Cycle, not an odd one. My personal suspicion is that there may be multiple dolls - one that passes on odd cycles, one that passes on even cycles.) My reaction to having the doll was basically a scattergun approach - try everything, and see what happens. The results? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a single thing did anything to activate the doll, or make it do anything at all. I asked around a dozen questions, basically all of which were answered with a PAFO in all but name by El (remind me to post their responses after the game is over. It's an amusing read in the number of ways El can tell the questioner nothing and be so gleeful about it... ). I also submitted actions to - kill a player, scan a player, revive a player, pass the Doll to someone else (Alv, since they asked so nicely ), and activate the doll. I was informed that my submission of all of these actions were successful, but was not informed as to the status of the action itself. However, it's fairly easy to see that experientially, all of these actions failed. In Cycle 5, I knew I had one cycle left to try and activate the doll if that was my goal, so I came up with a crackpot theory that the doll might require some sort of sacrifice from the lynch or something similar for it to activate, based on the vaguely creepypasta/horror vibe I was getting from some of the writeups, hence why I voted on Roadwalker, as an attempt to make them some sort of 'sacrifice' for the doll. And... nothing. The doll passed on this cycle, without, to the best of my knowledge, ever activating or doing anything but sit there.

Bugger.

The one thing I never got the opportunity to try was for a Teacher to try and target me with their action - that could be a balanced mechanic - you can give a vanilla villager a role, but you also have a risk of targeting the doll holder, in which case the doll is activated, and, presumably, bad things happen for the village. The only flaw in that plan is that my understanding of the teacher role is that they can only submit their action once. I'll be interested to know if anyone became a Teacher in Cycles 3 or 4, when the old Teacher used their ability, which might help to make this theory a bit more valid (I see this as feasible because there appear to be a lot of roles which shift from one player to another in these games - the scapegoat is one, the doll holder is another. Perhaps the Teacher is a third.) If that's the case, I would recommend the Teacher choose someone to provide with a role, but be confident that that player isn't a doll holder. Perhaps I'm biased in saying this, but I believe Rebecca and I might make good candidates, because I agree with - whoever it was, I've forgotten (sorry) - that previous doll holders are unlikely to receive the doll again. I'd also prefer if you'd claim to someone who can pass on the fact that there's a new Teacher to the thread so I could help to confirm my theory, which could be of help to the thread as a whole. Or any other role we don't know about, for that matter. In this, I agree completely with Hero.

But... that still doesn't settle how Wilson and Flash died, which is a large part of these whole games. I wonder if the doll being an 'evil doll' as Lopen put it was a bit of a misnomer - the only thing that seemed to point to the doll being evil is it provided me with a vague feeling of unease. (I can't remember the exact term used, but it was something along those lines.) Certainly, nothing pointed in the PM to it being related to the killings (not that there were any killings while it was in my possession, but my point remains), so I assume that there's another role, possibly being passed around either after a set number of cycles or on the death of a player - that is very obviously evil and therefore nobody's willing to claim it. It may have ended up with an inactive or inactives these last couple cycles, hence why there was no kill. But, there are as many holes in this theory that I could pick apart, and create a new theory without those holes. Except, that theory would also have holes in it, and I'd end up in a really long train of thought that gets away from the point, I think. The point being - having had the doll, and trying to use it and utterly failing as an item of evil, I believe it can't possibly be that, and the thing causing the killings is basically separate from that. At least, not in its current state - who knows what it will be like when it activates. (I don't. Trust me. I tried to work it out. )

...This post is more disorganised than I'd like it to be. But, I'm also exhausted - it's been quite a long and tiring week. If people have questions, tomorrow is the weekend (thankfully), so I should have plenty of time to answer them then. For now, I'm going to bed.

[Julio]

Also, sorry about not posting more consistently. The cycles seem to open late my time, and then close before I get around to doing anything in the morning. 

That being said, I'm a normal villager. And I'm very very confused as to what's happening, and no longer have any legitimate theories, as someone was lynched and nobody died of anything other than lynching. Of course, it is definitely possible that there's just an eliminator that's being VERY sneaky. 

[Herowannabe he/him]

Thanks for your explanation @The Young Bard- I admit I was pretty irked when I saw that you voted for roadwalker at the end of the cycle- I was about ready to raise a mob and get you lynched over it just to get you out of the game, but now I understand your reasoning. However, is there really any reason that you couldn't have explained all that WHILE you still had the doll?  it would have been helpful. 

It could be that if you get the doll you have two cycles to kill someone and if you don't then the doll kills you. Since you lynched RW then the doll would have been appeased and you wouldn't have noticed anything.

Also, in response to something you said last cycle, my continued efforts to get people to reveal info has most certainly been successful. We had probably a half dozen players reveal in the time since I posted that list. 

 

Anyway, I will update that list as soon as I can (unless someone else wants to do it first), but I don't know when that will be since I am going out of town for the weekend. I'll probably have cell service, but I don't know how much free time I'll have. I'll do what I can.  

oh and for what it's worth, I don't have the doll this cycle. 

[A Budgie she/her]

I think it's certainly possible the 'evil' doll is just a distraction. Or that there's two, with one having nothing special about it.
I'll think more on it later.

[Rebecca she/her]

14 minutes ago, Herowannabe said:

It could be that if you get the doll you have two cycles to kill someone and if you don't then the doll kills you. 

Except that I didn't kill anyone, and I'm still alive. Then again, it could be what A Budgie was saying, and I had the one that didn't do anything.

[Megasif he/him]

24 minutes ago, A Budgie said:

I think it's certainly possible the 'evil' doll is just a distraction. Or that there's two, with one having nothing special about it.
I'll think more on it later.

This. I'm thinking along similar lines as budgie. Or at least the first part of it. We should try to think of the doll as a secondary elim right now. In that it is inactive as of Bard's holding it last cycle. Makes me think of an elim role getting passed around that some people have mentioned. But then is there a rule that stops them from claiming that they had such a role. Honestly it makes me doubt we have something like that when I think about it in those terms. It would be difficult to contain an info fallout unless there are some extreme rules preventing people from claiming. I mean the doll is the same in a sense, and people have been claiming so...

It's hard right now because there haven't been any kills so we have nothing to go by and compare to earlier kills. I think the key is in the first few cycles. I will 'soon' proceed to reread them and see if I can find anything. 

Though the bit about the inactives having the kill role (whether a second doll or something else) is quite possible.

[Elbereth she/her]

Note: due to me being in a new timezone, I'm apparently bad at converting.  The next cycle will actually end four hours later, at what is actually 9 a.m. MDT.  Here's the new countdown: 

[Sony]

I'm just a normal villager. 

Although I haven't posted in a cycle or two, I have read all the posts, and there's just nothing much to go on right now. I do like Budgie's idea where there could be two dolls being passed around, where one does something, and the other does nothing.

Oh well... Hopefully, we can figure out more throughout this cycle.

Here's a spider lenny for now:

/╲/( ͡° ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ͡°)/╱\

[TheMightyLopen he/him]

12 hours ago, The Young Bard said:

Bugger.

I suspect the rest of the thread will be less than satisfied with me saying this now, but I had the Doll in Cycles 4 and 5. (No, I don't know why I received the doll on an even Cycle, not an odd one. My personal suspicion is that there may be multiple dolls - one that passes on odd cycles, one that passes on even cycles.) My reaction to having the doll was basically a scattergun approach - try everything, and see what happens. The results? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not a single thing did anything to activate the doll, or make it do anything at all. I asked around a dozen questions, basically all of which were answered with a PAFO in all but name by El (remind me to post their responses after the game is over. It's an amusing read in the number of ways El can tell the questioner nothing and be so gleeful about it... ). I also submitted actions to - kill a player, scan a player, revive a player, pass the Doll to someone else (Alv, since they asked so nicely ), and activate the doll. I was informed that my submission of all of these actions were successful, but was not informed as to the status of the action itself. However, it's fairly easy to see that experientially, all of these actions failed. In Cycle 5, I knew I had one cycle left to try and activate the doll if that was my goal, so I came up with a crackpot theory that the doll might require some sort of sacrifice from the lynch or something similar for it to activate, based on the vaguely creepypasta/horror vibe I was getting from some of the writeups, hence why I voted on Roadwalker, as an attempt to make them some sort of 'sacrifice' for the doll. And... nothing. The doll passed on this cycle, without, to the best of my knowledge, ever activating or doing anything but sit there.

Bugger.

The one thing I never got the opportunity to try was for a Teacher to try and target me with their action - that could be a balanced mechanic - you can give a vanilla villager a role, but you also have a risk of targeting the doll holder, in which case the doll is activated, and, presumably, bad things happen for the village. The only flaw in that plan is that my understanding of the teacher role is that they can only submit their action once. I'll be interested to know if anyone became a Teacher in Cycles 3 or 4, when the old Teacher used their ability, which might help to make this theory a bit more valid (I see this as feasible because there appear to be a lot of roles which shift from one player to another in these games - the scapegoat is one, the doll holder is another. Perhaps the Teacher is a third.) If that's the case, I would recommend the Teacher choose someone to provide with a role, but be confident that that player isn't a doll holder. Perhaps I'm biased in saying this, but I believe Rebecca and I might make good candidates, because I agree with - whoever it was, I've forgotten (sorry) - that previous doll holders are unlikely to receive the doll again. I'd also prefer if you'd claim to someone who can pass on the fact that there's a new Teacher to the thread so I could help to confirm my theory, which could be of help to the thread as a whole. Or any other role we don't know about, for that matter. In this, I agree completely with Hero.

But... that still doesn't settle how Wilson and Flash died, which is a large part of these whole games. I wonder if the doll being an 'evil doll' as Lopen put it was a bit of a misnomer - the only thing that seemed to point to the doll being evil is it provided me with a vague feeling of unease. (I can't remember the exact term used, but it was something along those lines.) Certainly, nothing pointed in the PM to it being related to the killings (not that there were any killings while it was in my possession, but my point remains), so I assume that there's another role, possibly being passed around either after a set number of cycles or on the death of a player - that is very obviously evil and therefore nobody's willing to claim it. It may have ended up with an inactive or inactives these last couple cycles, hence why there was no kill. But, there are as many holes in this theory that I could pick apart, and create a new theory without those holes. Except, that theory would also have holes in it, and I'd end up in a really long train of thought that gets away from the point, I think. The point being - having had the doll, and trying to use it and utterly failing as an item of evil, I believe it can't possibly be that, and the thing causing the killings is basically separate from that. At least, not in its current state - who knows what it will be like when it activates. (I don't. Trust me. I tried to work it out. )

...This post is more disorganised than I'd like it to be. But, I'm also exhausted - it's been quite a long and tiring week. If people have questions, tomorrow is the weekend (thankfully), so I should have plenty of time to answer them then. For now, I'm going to bed.

Firstly, where'd you hear the Teacher can only use their action once? I'm guessing it's because you heard about someone having a Moment of Clarity and they can only use their role once, but they said their role was the ability to detain someone once, not Teach.

Secondly, I'm the Teacher, and I can't Teach anything.  Here is everything I know about my role. 1 - I can't vote until I have a Moment of Clarity. 2 - That's all.

There was nothing about using my role in any way. I'm just as vanilla as most everyone else, except I can't vote. I thought someone would notice the fact that I haven't voted at all, since typically I vote every Cycle when I'm playing, but I get the idea that not a lot of players are paying attention, so I figured I'd just reveal myself in thread to try and clear up any misunderstandings about my role.

[Young Bard he/him]

12 hours ago, Herowannabe said:

Thanks for your explanation @The Young Bard- I admit I was pretty irked when I saw that you voted for roadwalker at the end of the cycle- I was about ready to raise a mob and get you lynched over it just to get you out of the game, but now I understand your reasoning. However, is there really any reason that you couldn't have explained all that WHILE you still had the doll?  it would have been helpful.

Hmmmm... Yes. It probably would have. In a way that would have ended with me dead, and my attempts to activate the doll unfinished. I had wondered if the activation of the doll would alter my win con - and if it did, being lynched so I wasn't able to play to that win con probably wouldn't have helped.

12 hours ago, Herowannabe said:

It could be that if you get the doll you have two cycles to kill someone and if you don't then the doll kills you. Since you lynched RW then the doll would have been appeased and you wouldn't have noticed anything.

This is quite possible. I just looked up Flash's votes in Cycles 2 and 3, Cycle 2 they didn't vote, and Cycle 3 they voted to lynch the doll, which also counted as a no vote. Wilson, in Cycle 1, voted for Roadwalker, who wasn't lynched in favour of Eternum, unless I missed her changing her vote. Except Rebecca didn't try to lynch anyone, and they're still alive. I'm thinking Budgie's theory that there's a good doll that does... nothing, or nothing malevolent, and a bad doll, that means you have to kill someone or it will kill you, is plausible. So, if you received the doll on Cycle 5, you have nothing to worry about - it might even do something benevolent like protect you from the lynch. If you got the doll this Cycle... Perhaps not so much.

12 hours ago, Herowannabe said:

Also, in response to something you said last cycle, my continued efforts to get people to reveal info has most certainly been successful. We had probably a half dozen players reveal in the time since I posted that list. 

We've had half a dozen people claim a no-role rather than an actual role. Which, lets us know something about the distribution, I suppose, but not so much about whats going on in the game itself.

18 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

Firstly, where'd you hear the Teacher can only use their action once? I'm guessing it's because you heard about someone having a Moment of Clarity and they can only use their role once, but they said their role was the ability to detain someone once, not Teach.

From Cycle 3, DA's post:

Quote

• Teacher; something some of you know. May or may not be real, who knoowss??? become normal villager when reach a "Moment of Clarity"

I took this to mean that they could only do their thing once, before they became a normal villager and weren't able to Teach multiple times. The rest is basically new information to me. Thanks!

53 minutes ago, TheMightyLopen said:

Secondly, I'm the Teacher, and I can't Teach anything.  Here is everything I know about my role. 1 - I can't vote until I have a Moment of Clarity. 2 - That's all.

There was nothing about using my role in any way. I'm just as vanilla as most everyone else, except I can't vote. I thought someone would notice the fact that I haven't voted at all, since typically I vote every Cycle when I'm playing, but I get the idea that not a lot of players are paying attention, so I figured I'd just reveal myself in thread to try and clear up any misunderstandings about my role.

Huh. Interesting. And, sorry, that must suck... :/ If you do vote, is the vote just not counted, or is there a penalty applied against you?

So, all of these roles need something to activate them. Including, apparently, the Teacher role. Which is strange, seeing as I'd hypothesised that the Teacher might be the Activator. Hmmm... The other thing to consider is whether its the same something or different somethings that activate all the roles. I just don't know.

Also, I'll go digging around in previous Cycles, but didn't someone claim in PM's that they'd become a Magistrate role, that then got announced to the thread? I'd kind of assumed, perhaps prematurely, that that was down to the Teacher. Unless that's yet another hopping role that got passed after a certain amount of cycles or on death...