Long Game 43: Under the Banner of Adonalsium

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

The Sand Lord is undeniably an attractive lynch. It keeps the power of one shard in check, and it gives the people who vote a charge of highly usful action-scanning investiture.

However, this seems awfully convenient. Information-wise, a Sand Lord lynch does not benefit the village, and we are running short on information because a no-lynch managed to occur on the first day.

More to the point... Doesn't each aspect of Autonomy go into a planet's doc? This suggestion sounds safe and innocuous, but it plays directly into Ruin's hands. It holds the power of a rival shard in check, and it prevents Autonomy's aspects from tracking the movements of Ruin as it destroys planets. Suggesting a Sand Lord lynch would make a great deal of sense for Ruin!Straw.

It feels like I may be focusing too much on Ruin. To put my cards on the table, I may even be a little bit jealous because I didn't get Ruin. But I earnestly do not believe that I am going out of my way to talk about Ruin. I am trying to understand Straw's suggestion, and the most logical explanation I can come up with for it is that Straw is Ruin.

Straw (@Straw), feel free to respond to these concerns.

[Droughtbringer]

5 minutes ago, Fifth Scholar said:

I’ve got another track meet, but once I get back I have something very important. It’s just a theory, but it could change the game. I’ll explain in more detail in 5-6 hours.

Serriously? You drop that then leave? That's just mean

4 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

However, this seems awfully convenient. Information-wise, a Sand Lord lynch does not benefit the village, and we are running short on information because a no-lynch managed to occur on the first day.

I mean, it is an information trade off. Lynching Sand Lord gives us each:

Quote

A player who burns a charge of Autonomy’s investiture may use their action during either Turn to scan another player on the same world as they are and learn what action(s) they took during that Turn.

This means that we are trading off Lynch info for a scans info. Both of them are useful, and the scan is more useful if we have a lot of people with it. So, although I'd prefer to go with a lynch this cycle, the Sand Lord lynch, if we have enough people on board, would be very useful.

[MonsterMetroid]

@Elbereth since you have a PM with Orlok what is your read on him so far? @Orlok Tsubodai what is your read on elbereth? 

Have either of you had a chance to look over Pyro's earlier comments? I would love to hear your opinions on my post on pyro earlier.

[Orlok Tsubodai]

Just now, MonsterMetroid said:

@Elbereth since you have a PM with Orlok what is your read on him so far? @Orlok Tsubodai what is your read on elbereth? 

Have either of you had a chance to look over Pyro's earlier comments? I would love to hear your opinions on my post on pyro earlier.

I’m sorry, Monster, but I’m really not well at the moment. I’d hoped to get back to the game today, but it doesn’t look like I’m up to it. I’ll respond to everything as soon as I can.

[MonsterMetroid]

Just now, Orlok Tsubodai said:

I’m sorry, Monster, but I’m really not well at the moment. I’d hoped to get back to the game today, but it doesn’t look like I’m up to it. I’ll respond to everything as soon as I can.

Don't worry about it man just get better  Sorry I keep harassing ya 

[Elbereth she/her]

1 hour ago, Droughtbringer said:

And I completely understand this, but it can be very hard to go against what everyone else is saying, and it feels like it you are too blatant about it you might end up dead.

But also, I agree that we need to act as more sure of our own alignments 

True. In fairness, until this game I understood that viewpoint far more. I like being tactful, and suggesting things gently, and trying to find the most optimistic possibility when figuring out what someone means. And those things serve me well pretty much everywhere, except here. Here, it's in my best interest to pressure people and see how they react. 

Meta, when he played, was an excellent player pretty much entirely due to being aggressive (also, not caring about his own death at all). He was very good at generating discussion D1, because he'd call out things that he didn't even believe, just to see how people would react. And it worked remarkably well. 

Anyway. I'm basically saying that I acknowledge that it's difficult, and am saying in general to do it anyway, because it helps the game immensely. 

1 hour ago, Magestar said:

If lots of other people vote for the Sand Lord I'm not just going to not vote for him just on principle.  Why waste a chance at a scan action? 

That's why I'm waiting for others responses.  I did give my opinion on it; it seems like it'd be effectively another no-lynch, which I condemn.  But I'm still not so opposed to doing it that I wouldn't if everyone else did.

The response follows my thought process, to some extent.  I was like, "Cool, free investiture!"  Then I was like, "No wait, that's not such a good idea.  It doesn't actually get anything done."  And then I was like, "Well, I'm gonna wait it out."

So yeah.  That.

Sure. That does make more sense. The important part, I think, is the "I condemn" bit - you read as essentially equivocal in saying "it seems like a good idea but could be like a no lynch" which put together doesn't really push you strongly towards either position. 

Regarding the Sand Lord, I'm undecided. I think theoretically, the lynch is more useful to the game, but in practise that may not be the case. I doubt that a number of action scans would be useful in catching Shards, though less so for Khriss/Hoid (given they may already have finished converting, and likely would abstain in doing so after lynching an aspect occurred specifically to avoid being caught). It could alternatively make Shards (at least, any who decide to go for their win con) less likely to take actions, which is both useful - as they're probably not advancing their win condition that way - and not, as investment roles could be helpful to the village. 

Also, thought I just had. This game is going to go on for a long time as is - going off of this cycle, Odium is apparently not killing, Ruin is destroying worlds, only Hoid has a charge of Odium's investiture unless anyone's already exchanged on Roshar, and Braize is gone. Plus there's a whole lot of protection floating around, some of which can protect from the lynch, which is our only reliable source of kills. And the Hoid/Khriss teams are small enough that outnumbering will take longer than in a usual game, and I'm guessing all the individual Shardic win conditions are difficult as well. Using the lynch to instead lynch aspects makes the game go on even longer. I'd rather not have that happen, personally. 

Given the above, I don't think a number of action scans have enough worth to merit a lynch at moment, and would advocate against lynching the Sand Lord for the moment. 

13 minutes ago, MonsterMetroid said:

@Elbereth since you have a PM with Orlok what is your read on him so far? @Orlok Tsubodai what is your read on elbereth? 

Have either of you had a chance to look over Pyro's earlier comments? I would love to hear your opinions on my post on pyro earlier.

Technically, faint village read. Rationally, neutral - I don't think there's anything in the PM that he wouldn't have said as an eliminator. 

I think it's interesting, and would be a good play for an evil team. I'm also fairly certain that even if evil, he'll be able to survive the lynch, and am not sure there's a particularly good way to resolve his alignment except for being lynched and then hit by either Odium/Ruin (which seems unlikely if they're not village, though Odium might be pleased that we're doing his work for him, which is not particularly useful either). Basically, I think it's worth consideration, but would rather lynch others who are more likely to actually die for at least this cycle. If he turns out to be Survival, we'll have wasted at least a cycle, and I think the first few cycles particularly ought to be about gaining as much information as we can. 

[Magestar he/him]

13 minutes ago, Elbereth said:

Sure. That does make more sense. The important part, I think, is the "I condemn" bit - you read as essentially equivocal in saying "it seems like a good idea but could be like a no lynch" which put together doesn't really push you strongly towards either position. 

Fair.  I typically view no lynch scenarios negatively, but I can see how it could've looked very passive.

The thing I'm wondering is how many people are there right now who have some sort of protection anyway?  Between shards, Kriss and Hoid, people who've stolen from Preservation, and people on Scadrial, I'm feeling like we've got a lot of protection going around no matter who we lynch.

But I suppose even a survived lynch could give us some decent info.

Maybe we should lynch someone besides Pyro, but I'm not sure who I really think we should lynch at this point.  Orlok might be evil but he's sick, Fifth might be bad but I want to hear what he has to say about that theory of his, I'm not feeling HH, so that leaves Drought, who I'm running on a gut read with.

And the Sand Lord lynch was never really viable, so I'm left with not a lot of options, from my perspective.

[Straw he/him]

@Drake Marshall I’m putting my vote on the Sand Lord until an actual lynch suggestion happens. The way I see it, we get more information from several free scans than we do from lynching a random player.

[DeTess she/her]

1 minute ago, Magestar said:

The thing I'm wondering is how many people are there right now who have some sort of protection anyway?  Between shards, Kriss and Hoid, people who've stolen from Preservation, and people on Scadrial, I'm feeling like we've got a lot of protection going around no matter who we lynch.

The shardic protection won't save you from the lynch, though Survival's ability will protect someone. Since preservation got released today, there are at most three charges of preservation going around (2 from N0+ hoid's charge). I don't know how many people are on Scadrial, but only people that got a charge during N0 can be in place to make use of it. 4 shards got released today, and we know Ruin wasn't in silverlight, so at least half the players aren't on Scadrial. Any number of the remainder might not have a charge to spare for an extra life.

That means that, even though there's a lot of protection going around, it's hardly perfect coverage.

[Seonid he/him]

Slight alteration to the rules as printed.

If Ruin attempts to destroy a world that has a Shard or aspect of a Shard invested in it, the aspect is destroyed or the Shard is divested, but the world is not destroyed. This is a change from the original, which indicated that if Ruin destroyed a world, it automatically destroyed aspects or divested Shards.

[MonsterMetroid]

Interesting... welp Ruins life just became hell haha

[Stick. she/her]

A scan action each does sound intriguing, and I will admit that I was one of the people who attempted to get one during Night 0 and failed.  However, I still think it's better for us to lynch somebody today.

1 hour ago, Droughtbringer said:

This means that we are trading off Lynch info for a scans info. Both of them are useful, and the scan is more useful if we have a lot of people with it. So, although I'd prefer to go with a lynch this cycle, the Sand Lord lynch, if we have enough people on board, would be very useful.

Thing is, the information we will get from the lynch will be genuine and publicly known. Whereas these individual scans will be subject to redirects amd roleblocks and the former can lead to a lot of confusion. I understand that Autonomy gets a free vote with each aspect but...yeah I think we should decide on a lynch target for today, and maybe lynch this aspect later. If we lynch this one now we may just get another one to deal with afterwards. @Seonid Can Autonomy put another aspect on a world where it previously had one but got lynched? 

Anyway, I am going to place my vote on Straw. I did say I was a bit suspicious of him last cycle but not so much, however I think that this lynch makes sense. I also just find some of the things you said in a couple of your posts really odd. For instance,

In this post he advises Auto to start placing aspects on Shardworlds:

Quote

Hmm. I’d advise Ruin to destroy Braize, and Odium should probably shatter a Shard in containment, just to make the Hoid faction sudden death win condition far harder to achieve. I would also advise Autonomy to immediately start making aspects on various worlds, as insurance against vote hammers.

And in this one from last turn seems off as it's sort of weird because he suggested Auto to do so and is then going against it:

Quote

It looks like Autonomy might be looking for control over voting, which it could definitely achieve if it makes a few aspects.

Addionally, his votes are also odd. Like this one:

Quote

@Magestar I voted on you because I think you’re Odium, however, if you’ll tell me what Shard you took investiture from, I’ll be happy to take my vote off you.

I mean, Mage could've easily lied about what Shard he took investiture from and I don't see why that was enough of a reason for you to take your vote off if you truly did think Mage was Odium.

Edited March 21, 2018 by _Stick_

[Seonid he/him]

Autonomy can put another aspect on a world where they previously had one, but it got lynched.

[Eternum he/him]

2 hours ago, Elbereth said:

Eternum, you said yesterday you were about to start reading through the thread and catching up - did you? 

Yeah, I did. 

Anyway, let's actually get into the game for once!

Now, this post appeared as I was typing this, but I have to talk about it.

8 minutes ago, Straw said:

@Drake Marshall I’m putting my vote on the Sand Lord until an actual lynch suggestion happens. The way I see it, we get more information from several free scans than we do from lynching a random player.

Lynch suggestions have happened, as far as I can tell, Straw. I would have accepted it if you had just said that you want Investiture, because that's more believable than voting on an Aspect of Autonomy just as a placeholder until something happens, but something just doesn't add up here. Why would you need an excuse for getting a free scan? Plus, you say you're waiting for a proper lynch while advocating pro getting scans via Autonomy's Investiture. It's just confusing.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Eternum

[MonsterMetroid]

@Seonidif autonomy is killed or shattered do their aspects remain?

[DeTess she/her]

44 minutes ago, _Stick_ said:

Anyway, I am going to place my vote on Straw. I did say I was a bit suspicious of him last cycle but not so much, however I think that this lynch makes sense. I also just find some of the things you said in a couple of your posts really odd. For instance,

In this post he advises Auto to start placing aspects on Shardworlds:

And in this one from last turn seems off as it's sort of weird because he suggested Auto to do so and is then going against it:

Addionally, his votes are also odd. Like this one:

I mean, Mage could've easily lied about what Shard he took investiture from and I don't see why that was enough of a reason for you to take your vote off if you truly did think Mage was Odium.

Well, if you're going to summarize it like that...

It could be that Straw just changed his mind about how useful autonomy would be to the village, but this also looks like a (barely, but this is C2 with no deaths yet) decent enough case to lynch on. Let me quickly go through your posts against to see if I wouldn't rather lynch you, _stick_  .

***Soothing music plays while I read through stick's many posts ***

Hah, I've got you now, Stick! Or should I say Khrissala? If you actually are Khrissala, I really hope that remark gave you a fright 

5 hours ago, _Stick_ said:

Elim!Stick would never express suspicion on somebody without a detailed explanation with quotes and everything about why everybody else should immediately think the same. #ExpectDumbRemarksFromVillageStickOnly

Clearly this is you admitting guilt as you've followed up this post by doing exactly what you describe elim!stick would do if they'd seek to lynch someone!

Okay, in all seriousness though, apart from the post Elbereth already highlighted, I haven't seen anything that makes me suspicious of stick. She expressed suspicion of Straw before, so this condemnation isn't coming out of nowhere, and I don't think the voting is at a point where an elim would feel like interfering and attempting to lead a lynch. I'll vote Straw.

Edited March 21, 2018 by randuir

[Straw he/him]

27 minutes ago, _Stick_ said:

1. A scan action each does sound intriguing, and I will admit that I was one of the people who attempted to get one during Night 0 and failed.  However, I still think it's better for us to lynch somebody today.

2. Thing is, the information we will get from the lynch will be genuine and publicly known. Whereas these individual scans will be subject to redirects amd roleblocks and the former can lead to a lot of confusion. I understand that Autonomy gets a free vote with each aspect but...yeah I think we should decide on a lynch target for today, and maybe lynch this aspect later. If we lynch this one now we may just get another one to deal with afterwards. @Seonid Can Autonomy put another aspect on a world where it previously had one but got lynched? 

3. Anyway, I am going to place my vote on Straw. I did say I was a bit suspicious of him last cycle but not so much, however I think that this lynch makes sense. I also just find some of the things you said in a couple of your posts really odd. For instance,

In this post he advises Auto to start placing aspects on Shardworlds:

And in this one from last turn seems off as it's sort of weird because he suggested Auto to do so and is then going against it:

4. Addionally, his votes are also odd. Like this one:

I mean, Mage could've easily lied about what Shard he took investiture from and I don't see why that was enough of a reason for you to take your vote off if you truly did think Mage was Odium.

1. I also think that a lynch would be good. However, the only real lynch so far has been on me, and I’m not exactly inclined to vote for myself.

2. That’s a valid point, but I’m also failing to see what information the village gets from lynching me.

3. Yes, I made a bit of a mistake there. I then realized that Autonomy might not ally with us, and it’d be a bad idea to give one Shard too much control over the lynch.

4. Yes, Mage could have lied, but I wasn’t that suspicious of it and I was using as an attempt to make it so if it was discovered in the future that he had grabbed a certain type of investiture N0, the village could check it against his previous claim and then lynch him if it turned out he had lied.

[livinglegend]

35 minutes ago, Seonid said:

Slight alteration to the rules as printed.

If Ruin attempts to destroy a world that has a Shard or aspect of a Shard invested in it, the aspect is destroyed or the Shard is divested, but the world is not destroyed. This is a change from the original, which indicated that if Ruin destroyed a world, it automatically destroyed aspects or divested Shards.

That's a relief. I have been looking at potential game clocks, and if all ruin needs is to destroy the planets he was going to be the hardest to stop.

I really would love some investiture (at this point, of any kind). However, the aspects of autonomy seem to be our best hedge against ruin. The other option is giving Kriss shards to invest which I'm against for obvious reasons. 

I'm currently on mobile, but when I get back I'll post an updated risk assessment including each released shard for who can kill us the fastest. I believe that needs our priority. 

Important for now: I don't think we can allow autonomy more than three aspects, but we should keep around one or two to prevent an early ruin win.

[Eternum he/him]

I'll change my vote to Straw, because lynching the Sand Lord doesn't seem viable anymore. Plus, keeping Ruin at bay is a good idea, and Autonomy's aspects can help in that case.

[Hemalurgic Headshot he/him]

Here is my awaited analysis:

I had a startling thought, that @Droughtbringer also brought up earlier. Pyro might not be Survival. @MonsterMetroid also makes some very good points. Though Pyro did state Survival's win-con, it was probably the easiest of all of the Shards' win-cons to guess, due to Survival's nature. He does this before he reveals himself. 

Metroid then accuses Pyro of being Khriss. However, I think that Pyro is Hoid.

 One key point: Pyro suggests, using the premise of Survival, that current Shardholders pass their shards to him in order for them to keep their village win-con. He then claims that he will pass them back the next cycle. This catches my attention, because this aligns more with Hoid's win condition than Kriss's. By luring other players into passing him Shards, he then can take the opportunity to Fuse them together.

Additionally, being Hoid appears like holding a Shard. Hoid is immune to conversion and investment by Shards, and has charges of investiture from every Shard, and could burn them if needed to appear like Survival. And why would the real Survival counterclaim, like @Elbereth said, when this provides a convenient distraction?

@_Stick_ also makes some good points and has a nice collection of Pyro's posts in an earlier post this cycle.

Piecing together a charade of this magnitude might seem impressive for a new player, but Pyro has clearly been reading past games, and I wouldn't put it past him to think up something like this. I believe that lynching Pyro provides a good basis for information, something we did not get last cycle.

4 hours ago, randuir said:

There's two possible outcomes to lynching pyro as far as I can see. Either he dies, proving that he's not Surival, or he lives. Living doesn't prove anything, however, as Hoid started the game with a charge of preservation, and Khriss could have stolen a charge turn 1 (unless, @Seonid, there's  difference in write-up between survival's extra life and one gained from preservation's investiture). I'm not wholly opposed to lynching him to check, but if he's not survival, there's a decent chance he's got some of preservation's investiture to keep him alive anyway.

As Rand says, he lives or he dies, and if he lives, then we can press more suspicion. I feel this is a good course take: Pyro.

[DeTess she/her]

@Seonid, does the player starting with survival start with survival's win-con? And can you give an indication of how many shard-related actions need to be taken before someone gets overwhelmed by shardic intent?

Edited March 21, 2018 by randuir

[Seonid he/him]

 

1 minute ago, randuir said:

@Seonid, does the player starting with survival start with survival's win-con? And can you give an indication of how many shard-related actions need to be taken before someone gets overwhelmed by shardic intent?

PAFO on both of those questions

[DeTess she/her]

15 minutes ago, Hemalurgic Headshot said:

 One key point: Pyro suggests, using the premise of Survival, that current Shardholders pass their shards to him in order for them to keep their village win-con. He then claims that he will pass them back the next cycle. This catches my attention, because this aligns more with Hoid's win condition than Kriss's. By luring other players into passing him Shards, he then can take the opportunity to Fuse them together.

The one problem I have with this analysis is that fusing shards would make it impossible for him to return all of them to the original owners, and he'd get called out by whoever didn't get the shard back, likely resulting in either a lynch or offensive actions taken against him.

Edited March 21, 2018 by randuir

[Elbereth she/her]

1 hour ago, Straw said:

@Drake Marshall I’m putting my vote on the Sand Lord until an actual lynch suggestion happens. The way I see it, we get more information from several free scans than we do from lynching a random player.

As others have pointed out, lynch suggestions have happened, and without having done a vote count I doubt anyone has more than two votes on them at moment. I have a vote on HH. Actually, I'm just going to go through and do a vote tally: 

Straw (4): Fifth, Stick, Rand, Eternum
Pyro (3): Mage, MM, Headshot
Sand Lord (1): Straw
HH (1): El
Arinian (1): Bard

That's very much not a solid lynch, and even less a situation in which no lynch suggestions have occurred except on you. 

1 hour ago, _Stick_ said:

Thing is, the information we will get from the lynch will be genuine and publicly known. Whereas these individual scans will be subject to roleblock and redirects, and the former can lead to a lot of confusion. I understand that Autonomy gets a free vote with each aspect but...yeah I think we should decide on a lynch target for today, and maybe lynch this aspect later. If we lynch this one now we may just get another one to deal with afterwards. @Seonid Can Autonomy put another aspect on a world where it previously had one but got lynched? 

I'll note that I'm decently certain it's a vote with each aspect per each action Autonomy has, which is two extra votes as a reasonable maximum. Which isn't great, but isn't infinite, either. 

1 hour ago, Eternum said:

Yeah, I did. 

(This is in response to my question of whether he actually read through the thread yesterday when he said he did.)

Given that, why did you say a page or two ago you have no idea what's going on? Other than non-villagers, you have just as much idea as anyone else. 

42 minutes ago, randuir said:

Well, if you're going to summarize it like that...

It could be that Straw just changed his mind about how useful autonomy would be to the village, but this also looks like a (barely, but this is C2 with no deaths yet) decent enough case to lynch on. Let me quickly go through your posts against to see if I wouldn't rather lynch you, _stick_  .

***Soothing music plays while I read through stick's many posts ***

Hah, I've got you now, Stick! Or should I say Khrissala? If you actually are Khrissala, I really hope that remark gave you a fright 

Clearly this is you admitting guilt as you've followed up this post by doing exactly what you describe elim!stick would do if they'd seek to lynch someone!

Okay, in all seriousness though, apart from the post Elbereth already highlighted, I haven't seen anything that makes me suspicious of stick. She expressed suspicion of Straw before, so this condemnation isn't coming out of nowhere, and I don't think the voting is at a point where an elim would feel like interfering and attempting to lead a lynch. I'll vote Straw.

I noticed that, too, and decided it wasn't worth pointing out.  I do think it points slightly towards villageness, though, as if she were self-aware, elim!Stick would notice the irony and probably avoid it. 

37 minutes ago, livinglegend said:

That's a relief. I have been looking at potential game clocks, and if all ruin needs is to destroy the planets he was going to be the hardest to stop.

I really would love some investiture (at this point, of any kind). However, the aspects of autonomy seem to be our best hedge against ruin. The other option is giving Kriss shards to invest which I'm against for obvious reasons. 

I'm currently on mobile, but when I get back I'll post an updated risk assessment including each released shard for who can kill us the fastest. I believe that needs our priority. 

Important for now: I don't think we can allow autonomy more than three aspects, but we should keep around one or two to prevent an early ruin win.

Could you clarify those reasons anyway, even if they're obvious, and tell me why a single invested Shard is dangerous enough that it isn't worth the side effect of everyone on the world getting charges from it?

More generally, I'm wary of this post because it's fairly clearly drawing focus onto Shards and thus away from Hoid/Khriss. And while the Shards are clearly more interesting to talk about - look at Orlok's data of relative mentions - that only means we need to be more careful not to ignore the conversion teams. 

@Hemalurgic Headshot, thank you. That was far more useful than anything else you've said this cycle. I was going to point out the same that Rand did, which is that Fusing Shards would get noticed pretty fast, and so that's a fairly unprofitable gambit for Hoid in my opinion. Also, would you justify your claim that lynching him is a good basis for information? As I see it, pretty much any other player is more likely to give useful information from this lynch than Pyro's. 

I'm not yet removing my vote on you, but am much more likely to do so now once I consider my other options. 

[Magestar he/him]

I'm going to take my vote off of Pyro, but I'm not going to put it on Straw just yet.  I'm only sorta seeing his lynch?  My gut is telling me he's not evil, but my gut's been wrong before.  I've got an event going till the time I'd normally go to bed, so I'm gonna see where things are at when I get back, maybe place a vote, and then that's probably the last thing I'll do this cycle.

Edit;

Oops.  Pyro.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Magestar