Mid-Range Game 36: The Northern Wind

[Amanuensis he/him]

Ventyl is probably the safer bet then. But it's something to consider.

[Lumgol she/her]

Alright, after thinking for a while about whether this is worth it, I guess I'll confirm the claim that I'm the Navigator. There isn't really anything much I can do with the role at this point XD

[StrikerEZ he/him]

I’ve been thinking about this for most of the day, and even though I feel a little bad about doing this to Ventyl, I really don’t see any other good options. 

Edited July 20, 2019 by StrikerEZ

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

...and this also feels a bit too easy, but my instinct at this point is to just go with it. I trust a counter to this lynch less than I trust the one that I suggested, and I honestly don't have the energy to play devil's advocate against myself at this point. I'm glad we at least have a lynch that the eliminator team will have a hard time dropping a hammer on, with one probable inactive in their ranks.

We'll see how it turns out. Fingers crossed.

Edited July 21, 2019 by MrakeDarshall

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

It's a shame that we have come to this. I know I've been the one to say that we couldn't rule out the inactives, but I'd hoped we wouldn't have to make a blind stab. Ventyl. It's probably not even worth looking out for a counter-hammer at this stage.

[Young Bard he/him]

And that's the end of the cycle! Rollover will be up eventually.

[Young Bard he/him]

“It’s Second of the Sky. It has to be. What are the alternatives?”

Saluden spoke to the assembled crowd. Foreman Cole looked on - the whole thing seemed a bit theatrical for their tastes, but Saluden raised good points.

“Every other crew member has been seen elsewhere on the ship at the time of the sabotage, or else has stuck to their cabin and not left. The only person who has made their way around the ship is Second of the Sky. This is why they need to be imprisoned immediately.”

The crowd cheered, and the Foreman gestured at the guards to escort Second off to the brig.

“Excuse me,” Second intoned, speaking up for the first time since Saluden’s speech had begun. “But I don’t believe I’ve had an opportunity to defend myself?”

The foreman sighed, but reluctantly waved back the guards to let the man speak, with an impatient look at their watch.

Second smiled at the crowd. “Thank you. Mr Saluden here has raised a number of serious charges against me - if his word is to be believed, then I have been sneaking out nightly to sabotage various parts of the airship we’re currently on. It is a shame he does not have sufficient evidence to back up his claims.”

“Sufficient evidence? Who else could have done it?”

Second’s smile widened, as though he’d been waiting for the comment. “I’m glad you asked. Saluden used a process of elimination to conclude it was me, but in doing so he was forced to make a stretch. First, those with alibis. These people, indeed, could not be the Engineer. However, that is not to say they could not be one of the Engineer’s companions.”

The crowd looked between each other, now slightly more uncertain. Saluden opened his mouth to reply, but Second cut him off before he could start, eyes flicking between the foreman and the guards.

“On the other hand, that still leaves a number of candidates who could be the Engineer themselves. And here, Saluden makes a critical error. He assumes that those who so far appear to have stayed in their cabins are not, in fact, the Engineer.

“I ask you this. Can we be sure that these inactives are not, in fact, getting up in the night to do their mischief? Can we be sure that, while they have failed to show up for work, they may still get out of bed in order to follow their twisted calling by night? Saluden is misguided in his opinions - he believes that someone who is active enough to do their dark deeds must be active enough to be seen around the airship, but we know better. There is no dark and depraved strategy these people would not bend to.”

At this point, the crowd was nodding along, looking between themselves. Wasn’t it suspicious, they were asking themselves, that these people were hiding away, avoiding anything that could incriminate them?

One of the members of the crowd stood up - Second recognised him as Quill, one of his former opponents. “What about this Ventyl person? Very suspicious behaviour - we should lock them up to be sure.”

There was a chorus of agreement, and the Foreman reluctantly waved at the guards to go and get this Ventyl and escort them away. Maybe, finally, this could be over.

***

Mika Fergus climbed up to the top of the sky crane - carefully setting himself down where he wouldn’t be likely to fall off. From this height, it was possible to see most of the ship, and, when the clouds parted in the right way, part of the archipelago below them. 

Today wasn’t one of those days - a dark grey cloud was billowing across on the ship’s port side, preventing Mika from seeing a large portion of the ship below her. Then she smelt the smoke.

That was no cloud - that was the port engine below her going up in flames. Mika got up, half running, half climbing back down along the crane - as he was reaching the bottom he saw Second looking around near the bottom of the sky crane, opened up the control box to the sky crane, grabbed a handful of wires, and pulled them out of the box. The crane bucked beneath Mika, and Mika furiously hung onto the nearest pylon, before continuing their furious race down. He just got to the bottom just as Second pulled out another handful of wires - Mika turned around in shock to see the crane ever so slowly began to collapse down on top of the ship. He turned back to chase after Second, but they’d already disappeared.

***

“This is not a drill. All personnel should make their way immediately to the starboard hangar for evacuation.”

The lights in the corridor flashed red as Mika rushed towards the hangar.

In front of them, the Foreman was checking off everyone on a list as they arrived, furiously counting heads and trying to see how many were left on board. There was still one engine holding the ship up, but the entire ship was sagging on one side, and drifting towards the ground at an alarming rate.

“Foreman, it’s Second - I saw them sabotage the Sky Crane. I-”

The Foreman just nodded, mouth grimly set as he looked around. “We know. We saw him take off with his compatriots after Striker sabotaged the engine.” The Foreman sighed. “Auseor, I’d suspected for quite a while, but Twi… they seem to have fallen in with a bad crowd. Still, there’s not much we can do about it now. Get on to the shuttle, you’re one of the last left.”

Mika made their way onto the completely packed shuttle, barely managing to fit between a window and an oversized gentleman who, judging by the smell, hadn’t had a shower in a week. As the doors closed and the shuttle took off, Mika watched as the ship they’d abandoned slowly drifted down and landed with a crash on the shore of one of Patji’s Fingers.

***

1 Month Later

“So the mission was a failure, then?”

Foreman Cole looked down, avoiding the eyes of the person standing in front of them.

“Well, not exactly, sir.”

“Your ship was destroyed before you even reached the island, and you failed to explore or collect a single Aviar, and lost those precious few we provided. How, exactly, do you intend to tell me your mission wasn’t exactly a failure?”

Cole’s boss gave him the shivers. They’d spent too much time playing at being a God, he thought. What was it the locals called them? The Ones Above? Really? That was bound to give anyone an ego trip.

“Well, there was… another task. The Doctrines prevent us from trading with primitive cultures without a certain level of technology. That may no longer be an issue.”

There was silence for a minute. “You mean… the crashed ship…”

“It’s on Patji’s shore, just waiting for some inventor to come along, take it apart piece by piece, and recreate it. It wasn’t the original plan, but this situation is salvageable. No pun intended.”

There was silence as Cole’s boss considered this. “Very well. You can see yourself out.”

Cole turned around, and fled the room.

---

Vote Count:

Ventyl(5): Drake Marshall, Striker, Devotary, Aman, Burnt
Alvron(1): Araris

Congratulations to the Saboteurs (Alvron, Devotary, Lum and Striker) for winning the game!

Docs:

GM Spreadsheet
The Underpass (Elim Doc)
Jail (Lynched Doc)
Hospital (Attacked Doc)
The Boardroom (Spec Doc)

Edited July 21, 2019 by Young Bard

[Amanuensis he/him]

And this is why I should always trust my instincts.

Good game everyone! And thank you Rand and Bard for running this.

[Stick. she/her]

Aw crem I knew something was off about Striker 

4 cycles. Good job elims. GG. 

[Burnt Spaghetti she/her]

Good job to the elim team for their flawless victory! 

I now remember why i stuck to pms in past games haha, id forgotten how bad i am at contributing in a thread usefully. That being said i did play the game entirely on mobile so that didnt help with things but yeah. I had fun though. It is good to be back and ill certainly be playing more games as long as my timetable allows

[StrikerEZ he/him]

First, thank you @Randuir and @Young Bard for running my first game as an elim! It was super fun! 

Could we get the player list so we can see what role everyone has? I’d like to know who the Navigator who basically soft cleared me was.  

2 hours ago, _Stick_ said:

Aw crem I knew something was off about Striker 

Mind telling me what set you off so I can fix it for my next elim game? 

Also, for what it’s worth, I was the one who sabotaged the Aviary. XD 

[Stick. she/her]

25 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

I’d like to know who the Navigator who basically soft cleared me was.  

I’m guessing Mark

25 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

Mind telling me what set you off so I can fix it for my next elim game? 

Every time you voted on me whenever you saw the chance to  

[StrikerEZ he/him]

27 minutes ago, _Stick_ said:

Every time you voted on me whenever you saw the chance to  

I figured an elim would be less likely to tunnel on someone than a villager, so I picked a target. Sorry you got lynched for it

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Good game everyone. I feel like I missed the most exciting cycle in the hospital though .

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Interesting.

I was starting to get paranoid about Striker after Stick flipped but contrary to popular sentiment, I absolutely did not see Devotary being evil. Something to remember; I think I have a better idea how to proceed in the future.

I appear to have forgotten one of my own rules. The rule is that anyone who slips the noose too many times is probably evil. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that I originally conceived of this rule because of Alvron. That was a nice touch, to make us second guess ourselves at the end, even if it was frustrating at the time.

Well played, elims.

Thank you to the GMs.

Until next time.

[shanerockes]

Good game all. I am kinda upset at myself cuz I wasn't much help but it was a good game to come back into SE. Thanks @Randuir and @Young Bard for running this game. Twas lots of fun.

[BrightnessRadiant she/her]

Eyooooo told you Striker was an elim from the beginning  guess that's what happens when you play with bffs haha

@StrikerEZ glad you got to finally be elim!! 

[StrikerEZ he/him]

27 minutes ago, BrightnessRadiant said:

Eyooooo told you Striker was an elim from the beginning  guess that's what happens when you play with bffs haha

@StrikerEZ glad you got to finally be elim!! 

I’m kinda glad you got hospitalized so early. You definitely would’ve got me lynched, which would’ve sucked.

Also, thank you! It was so much fun planning how to win and sabotage everything. 

[Elandera she/her]

Good game everyone! Congrats to the elims. I didn't really suspect any of you. Aside from a faint suspicion of Devotary for her vote on me. And don't feel bad about voting and killing me early. As I said last game, I didn't actually have time to play. It was for the best I died early 

Edited July 21, 2019 by Elandera

[Alvron he/him]

                 Burn it all! Muahahaha!


Devotary and Striker did all the heavy lifting for the elims.  Very well done and a hearty congratulations to you both.  I'm glad I got to see your first time being evil Striker.  You will be a force to reckon with next time.  And when Devot managed to get Stick lynched, the game was over as with three parts to go and four elims there was no way of stopping us even if I had been lynched last cycle.

Many, many thanks to both Bard and Rand for running the game.

Aman, as Fura says in the Spec Doc, the Puppetmaster role isn't really overpowered.  When the GMs do the balance, they do it expecting everyone to be active.  While an inactive villager isn't game breaking, an inactive elim can be.  Esp if they happen to have a role.  The loss of a vote and a voice can be devastating to the elims and that's if it's only one elim that's inactive.  While I agree that it was broken in your game it was only because we were able to have the inactive do the kill allowing the rest of us to focus on more important things.  Personally, I think the Puppetmaster role should be in all games for the elims but only for roles not for generic actions like the faction kill.  While this does have the unfortunate effect of encouraging inactivity among elims, it can also be a boon.  The first cycle of any game inactives are always called out and poke voted but then largely ignored.  Instead we could lynch an inactive on D1 where there is very little to go.  Not only would this give those that are active more time to enjoy the game but it would add another layer of strategy.  Do the elims bus one of their own inactives for village points or do they try and save them due to their role?  The kill roles can also target inactives if they have no suspicions of their own allowing them to contribute to the game without the guilt of killing an active player.  Typically inactives aren't counted towards parity win cons so killing them off doesn't help the elims but can hurt them.  Both discourage inactivity which I feels counters the elims having the ability to use all roles while the village can't.  Overall, I feel the Puppetmaster role, when correctly implemented, is a boon to the games.

[Amanuensis he/him]

My problem with the situation was less that Puppetmastering is a thing, but that it wasnt explicit in the rules. In LG30 it made sense because 2 elims were required to put in a kill action unless a villager was imprisoned. In this case, I had an entire cycle where I evaluated the game based on activity and it lead me down, what I thought at the time, as an incorrect rabbit hole of logic. It turns out I was right on both Devotary and you, but once it became a factor I had to reevaluate everything, and at that stage of the game it was an issue with how close you guys were to victory. From this experience the only thing I would recommend is for GMs to make it known from the get go.

It was honestly a very good game, and had I not locked my phone while on vacation and been able to be active earlier, I think things would have gone very differently. That's life and I'm not really upset with it, but it was a little disappointing on the fourth cycle.

Very proud of everyone this game though. When people could be active they did wonderfully.

Edited July 21, 2019 by Amanuensis

[DeTess she/her]

8 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

My problem with the situation was less that Puppetmastering is a thing, but that it wasnt explicit in the rules. In LG30 it made sense because 2 elims were required to put in a kill action unless a villager was imprisoned. In this case, I had an entire cycle where I evaluated the game based on activity and it lead me down, what I thought at the time, as an incorrect rabbit hole of logic. It turns out I was right on both Devotary and you, but once it became a factor I had to reevaluate everything, and at that stage of the game it was an issue with how close you guys were to victory. From this experience the only thing I would recommend is for GMs to make it known from the get go.

The main reason it wasn't in there was because we hadn't considered it untill alv asked it. I'm on my way home right now, and can probably share  the docs and my post-game thoughts in a couple of hours.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Randuir

[DeTess she/her]

Ah, it seems bard got all of the docs to view-only mode and shared them up top, so I now only need to write my post-game thoughts.

First is the big one. I messed up the game balance by trying to set the minimum time-to-victory if the elims went after the airship parts to be longer than it would take if they went after the villagers and played a perfect game, without taking into account the other end of the scale. This mean that going after the parts  was actually a far safer play than going after villagers. I also forgot to take into account that when the elims don't kill, the pool of suspects shrinks a lot slower. In this case, I think I should have given the villagers either a trapper or an additional engineer and it would have been a closer run. That having been said, the village very nearly turned things around C3, and if they'd gotten Alvron or Devotary there things could very well have ended in a village win.

There where also some minor communication issues on my part. The air-ship gas-bag was listed as destroyed in C1, and only when making the C2 thread did I realize that might communicate that it wasn't repairable, which was not the case. Likewise with the lynch happening first in the OoA, as I think Stick might have acted somewhat differently regarding her lynch if she knew that she wouldn't get her second repair on the bridge off if that had been the case.

If I where to run a game like this one again, I'd probably only keep the standard elim win-con, but keep the possibility for sabotage to temporarily turn off roles or get a chance at hitting a random person with a role. That way, there's less factors to keep an eye on when balancing the roles and stuff.

I'll probably have more to say when I think of it later, but for now I want to thank @Young Bard for helping me out with running the game, as well as everyone that chose to participate!

Edited July 22, 2019 by Randuir

[Furamirionind]

Oh, I thought I posted here already...

Great game everyone!

I say most of my thoughts in the spec doc, but I really wanted a Drake/Striker team, but at least it 50% true.

I've already said this on Discord, but congrats Striker on finally getting to be an elim! Being village is fun, but... It's not quite the same.

I must say though, if the elims were able to submit messages to the spec doc this whole time and just didn't, I'm a little sad.  It was a fun mechanic that I think was kindof underused... Not that we really would have been able to help the elims, but still. xD

Haven't read through the elim doc yet... but I have it open and... I know I've been talking about switching my main colour to something else, but idk if I actually intend to... @Lumgol did you take my colour? xD (I actually can't tell as the doc is locked, but it looks like it xD)

I am very happy I got at least 1 good monologue in the spec doc before the game closed xD

---

18 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

My problem with the situation was less that Puppetmastering is a thing, but that it wasnt explicit in the rules

Well, It's not something that is normally included in rules from what I have seen, yet elims ask about it almost every game. Perhaps this is something we should either start including, or as village, start asking ourselves.

As village, it's important to understand what rules the elims have to follow, and if we don't know something, we should ask. In my games, I have a tendency to post walls of questions to the GM about just about anything I can think of. Even if it seems unimportant.

18 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

In this case, I had an entire cycle where I evaluated the game based on activity and it lead me down, what I thought at the time, as an incorrect rabbit hole of logic. It turns out I was right on both Devotary and you, but once it became a factor I had to reevaluate everything, and at that stage of the game it was an issue with how close you guys were to victory.

Well, I think you made a bad assumption. You are a great analyzer, but I think at some point people become too good at things. I got that impression from the last time we played.  You know you are good at this game, and seem to assume, to an extent, that you are/should be right because of it. While there isn't anything inherantly wrong with that, it can cause people to make mistakes like this.

18 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

From this experience the only thing I would recommend is for GMs to make it known from the get go.

I would also highly recommend GMs include their ruling on this in the original ruleset, but not because of anything to do with this game. It is a common thing elims ask, and something that villagers should be asking. (I for one, will be asking about this in future games)
Because of the frequency of this question being asked, it would be helpful to have in the beginning.

---

Since I don't have an alternate colour to use, I'll put this in Italics (and maybe bold? idk):

This game has now been added to the SE Stats Sheet, so that should now be up to date* for those interested.
As the sheet is still being worked on, stats and such can be found on the pages "DataTest Formula Test" and "DataTest MainTest". Though both of these pages are subject to a name change.

If you see any issues with how this game is recorded, feel free to PM me so we can get it fixed.

*Up to date meaning this game/recent games have all been added. There are still quite a few (10-20 I think) older games that haven't got their info input yet.

Edited July 22, 2019 by Furamirionind
added link to Stats Sheet, added footnote

[Amanuensis he/him]

38 minutes ago, Furamirionind said:

Well, I think you made a bad assumption. You are a great analyzer, but I think at some point people become too good at things. I got that impression from the last time we played.  You know you are good at this game, and seem to assume, to an extent, that you are/should be right because of it. While there isn't anything inherantly wrong with that, it can cause people to make mistakes like this.

I saw that comment in the doc and was going to ask what you were referring to. Unfortunately excessive confidence (AKA arrogance) is one of my biggest character flaws at this point in my life, and while it is something I'm conscious of and am trying to work on, it can still surface in moments of high stress. That day was very bad for me, was dealing with some personal family things and wasnt able to get any genuine rest due to noisy neighbors and a bit of a heat wave. I shouldn't have just given up like I did, and will make sure it doesn't happen again.