Straw he/him Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 Thanks to El and Wilson for both GMing and dealing with my 72 message GM PM. It's interesting that no one ever broke out. I'll be curious to see GM thoughts on the game. Activity Tracking A few graphs: Spoiler 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Furamirionind Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 Couple preliminary thoughts: Thanks El and Wilson for running this game. It was a lot of fun. It was really strange, the power in the game was overwhelmingly elim until like, 4.2/5.1, at which point it basically flipped. Due in large part to Araris. It was always my plan to go into naming, however I really didnt think it was going to be such a contested field. I figured 4/5 people might put EP in it, with maybe 2 focusing it. Due to this, I figured if I could get a single elevation semi-early on in the game, if it was naming, I'd basically be set all game, even if I didnt get my pipes. I did end up getting my pipes though... Getting roleblocked on the same turn I was elevated was very annoying, as all I wanted to do was to have some fun with wind... when I was roleblocked again, I was very sad. :'( though I quickly became quite amused by it instead, hence all the jokes about staying roleblocked. My plan was to attack Bard with wind, as I flipped on whether or not he actually was an elim too much in that game. Now it seems my attack wouldnt have worked anyways, however what ended up happening was I WAS ROLEBLOCKED AGAIN because I was on the streets. >> Also, I think half of my problems this game were just from the fact I've pulled several all nighters over the past 2 weeks... I tried to edit my spreadsheet on a particularly bad day, and I ended up putting all my stuff in 4.2 rather than 5.2... and that really messed me up. *sigh*. Anyways, I played pretty poorly this game, though I AM really proud of my spreadsheeting. I made 4 pages of analysis on fields, then started doing massive amounts of PMing to gather info, and was able to infer a ton of stuff. Did that stuff help me at all? Well... no... it didnt... but I still knew stuff before I died, so I'm happy with that at the very least. XD Mostly im just proud of calling Araris focusing Naming, though honestly maybe that actually wasnt too difficult of a call. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Coda Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 So I did basically nothing. Alright. This was fun, though I feel that I didn't understand anything at all. Maybe next KKC run I'll be less confused. Good job everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemalurgic Headshot he/him Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 The University was put in lockdown after the massacre, as it was called by most. Students were sent home, authorities prowled the campus, and the Crockery was emptied. Under normal circumstances, the widespread release of largely unstable people would be met with alarm and protest, but the Crockery discharge paled in comparison to the Massacre on the Horns. This discharge was in part due to the surprising amount of nobles that had been admitted to the Crockery; their houses came calling once news spread and demanded they be released. This was how Onur walked out of the Crockery, after spending most of a year inside the padded cell. He left walls covered in scrawled notes, arranged in a fashion that only he would understand. His whole life, it seemed, was left on those walls. The Onur before this incident would have scrambled to save those notes, to hoard their knowledge; the Onur now walked slowly behind his parents' steward to the carriage, determined and different. He could remember, now. And he had some questions that needed answering. Thank you, @little wilson and @Elbereth! This was a crazy game, and you guys put so much work into it. I'm just a little sad that I got put out of commission so early on . For the thread: I continued to do RP through the GM PM after my insanity. It provides some basis for the change that has come over Onur. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devotary of Spontaneity Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 I severely underestimated how valuable the early rounds of submitting EP would be for eventual Mastery. Going to Imre early allowed me to get a bodyguard and nahlrout, which would have been helpful had the game continued to prevent me from being dead. I'm a bit disappointed that nobody completed my three other contracts. Sympathy appeared to be an unpopular field, and nobody was brave enough to publicly support the Chandrian. I assumed nahlrout would protect me from plum bob lashings, but apparently that was not the case? I do feel like the plum bobs were a bit too strong. Starting with one confirmed Skindancer, you can force them to give up 1-5 teammates with no prior suspicions. It didn't matter in this scenario since Araris told me he had been planning on killing all the Masters anyway, but an item so quickly creatable probably shouldn't be this powerful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Furamirionind Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 4 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said: and nobody was brave enough to publicly support the Chandrian I almost took that one. The only reason I didn't was because I was already trying to accept 5 other contracts, and didn't have a ton of motivation to RP. @Young Bard I took a contract to give someone a hug, so I used my action to hug you the turn you were expelled. I meant to RP it in thread, but RP was a struggle for me this game. Perhaps I should have gone back to the tried and true Memoirs, but I didn't. @Karnage Ooooohhhhh, I'm so sorry for focusing so hard on you. I should have been able to figure out you spied on my PMs and that's how you knew of what I'd done. So the only PMs you spied on were me asking Araris and Lopen if they were in Imre, which I can tell you, is not the fishing-est thing I did this game : P 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
little wilson she/her Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 27 minutes ago, Furamirionind said: So the only PMs you spied on were me asking Araris and Lopen if they were in Imre, which I can tell you, is not the fishing-est thing I did this game : P Certainly not. Pretty sure that award goes to PMing Araris and jumping straight into saying he's Namer as if you knew for sure he was. And then lying and saying you'd used School Records on him. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Araris Valerian he/him Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 16 minutes ago, little wilson said: Certainly not. Pretty sure that award goes to PMing Araris and jumping straight into saying he's Namer as if you knew for sure he was. And then lying and saying you'd used School Records on him. I was rather concerned both that Fura had fooled me so easily, and that it was possible to have enough information to make such a guess. Although it turns out the elims actually knew my elevations, so I was really just trying to be too careful (and failing epicly), if there is such a thing in SE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Furamirionind Posted May 22, 2020 Report Share Posted May 22, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, Araris Valerian said: I was rather concerned both that Fura had fooled me so easily, and that it was possible to have enough information to make such a guess. Although it turns out the elims actually knew my elevations, so I was really just trying to be too careful (and failing epicly), if there is such a thing in SE. You were good. It was actually just an educated guess, not something I could confirm without you at all. I was just tired of knowing more about the Physicking, Linguistics, and Alchemy than I did about my own field. As there had been 2 elims killed (presumably through naming) I figured a decent powered Namer was out there, and I had already narrowed down the field significantly by asking people like Burnt and Elkanah for their Elevations. You being the Namer in question fitted made my life easy, filled the most naming slots and generally made sense as to my profile of who the Namer killing elims was. Due to this, I just decided to go for it. You easily could have had Elevations in R&L, Sympathy, or Arithmatics as well If anyone cares at all, this is what my resulting spreadsheet looks like:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12IGQ8KANfJr-fe1599EnyI8XYxWQts56Gqumw9NywpA/edit?usp=sharing I was fliping between Bard going into sympathy or R&L, so I'm somewhat happy with that guess as well. xD Edit: I spent many many hours trying to automate and statistify (made up word) data in it... but I didn't succeed and the result is what you see. The failed stuff I ended up deleting. Edited May 23, 2020 by Furamirionind 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burnt Spaghetti she/her Posted May 23, 2020 Report Share Posted May 23, 2020 This was a very fun game to play! I'm honestly just very surprised to have come out of all of that alive. And with an untouched gram (that sabotage would've hit my bloodless). my luck this game was crazy o-O outside of the bad luck of pm choice, but eh the evils are always fun to chat to I enjoyed taking a different approach entirely to what i did the last times with this one. Being a cealdish commoner was actually pretty fun- I won 20 talents from the gambling den But scattershotting the EP into everything made things pretty interesting. I'm very surprised i got that first naming elevation but with later getting artificery and alchemy, those are two fields i'd never previously considered, and didn't really have any interest in. When i got the artificery elevation Id literally just been wishing i hadn't put ep into that field cause i didn't want it. Well, turns out i actually really love that field now >> Even if i was just handing wards to evils >> But it was really interesting to play with a field i'd never have actively tried for. And i bonetarred! IT HAPPENED! The first bone tarring of KKC games! Yay! Sorry araris and Dev xD I guess it wasn't necessary after all but I didn't exactly know there was a master namer going nuclear Figured was the best shot at hitting masters i had Had a tonne of fun rping through this game too. I often find it hard to get motivation to rp in games, but the way this encourages it and rewards it, means everyone is rping which makes rping so much easier. Its hard to rp when few others are. Its cool seeing how the game develops from run to run. I think the changes made between 33 and this one were good decisions. Really liked the spreadsheets too! I'm excited to see how this ruleset develops in the future when it inevitably is run again (It better, because its my favourite ruleset that I've played to date.) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elandera she/her Posted May 23, 2020 Report Share Posted May 23, 2020 (edited) Little Wilson, Elbereth, this was an amazing game! Hats off to both of you for organizing and running a game with such complicated rules. I completely take blame for misunderstanding the rules and totally messing up my chances at elevation. Also, I didn't realize how close I was to possibly making master until after someone had already snagged the spot. Thanks for being patient through my questioning and blundering. It really was a great game. 23 hours ago, xinoehp512 said: Well, I *almost* got Master... if it hadn't been for Elandera's vote on me in 3.2 I would have made it before dying. *sigh* Sorry about that... My reads were really off this game until it was too late. Also, sorry to Burnt. I'm glad none of my efforts to get you suspended/killed worked. Great game, elims. You all basically had me thoroughly fooled. Edited May 23, 2020 by Elandera 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
little wilson she/her Posted May 23, 2020 Report Share Posted May 23, 2020 GM Thoughts I’d been dreading this game, even with the improved spreadsheet. I’d been on paid furlough for 5 weeks, though, and when El (I think jokingly) suggested we run this, I was like “Oh sure why not, I don’t have anything better to do.” And then signups went up and I was like “What have I just done.” But I had lots of time, and we worked on the spreadsheet and everything was going to be fine. And then the worst thing happened: my boss called me up on the second to last day of signups to say that I could come back into the office and start working again. So there I was, heading back into work, with this game about to start, knowing that rollovers are massive, I don’t get out of work until 6:30 PM, and the writeups are supposed to be posted at 9, and the spreadsheet crashes on my phone almost the second I enter so I can’t help with rollover until I’m off work and….oh dear goodness what have I done??? And then Elkanah went to Imre and practiced at The Eolian. He sent a PM to us, thinking about his inevitable performance and said something like “The stage fright is so real. The immersion aspect of this game is nothing short of spectacular.” And I couldn’t stop grinning. That’s why I built this game - to immerse players in the world of KKC and the University. To make it feel like you were really there. And even if only a couple people feel that way each game, I’ll keep running it regardless of how much of a time commitment it is. I love watching people interact with this ruleset and just have fun with all the possibilities. And you know what? I’m pretty happy with the way this game turned out. It’s still broken, but I think it’s less broken. Let’s start with my thoughts about Imre. Contracts This is the first time the contracts have really been used. We copied over two of the contracts from LG33, and the rest was history - almost everyone who went to Imre either added at least one contract or accepted one. Or both. I loved seeing both the mechanical contracts and the RP contracts - though, like Devotary, I’m sad no one picked up the Chandrian essay contract. I was so hoping to see an essay denouncing Tehlu and promoting the Chandrian. (I showed it to Aonar, and I think if he’d been playing, he would’ve accepted it and written that essay. Maybe next time.) The one issue with the contracts (outside of the lack of automation importing them into the Imre tab from Player Input and the spreadsheets and the lack of text input boxes in the player spreadsheets) was the contract tuition reductions. No one placed a contract for more than 3 talents. In fact, most talents had rewards for less than a talent. This was something I hadn’t anticipated. We definitely need to change up the tuition reduction tiers to have more in the less-than-a-talent range, since every single contract placed in this entire game fell into the first tier of reductions. Devi’s Not much to say here, since she only got used once. People are rightfully worried about going to her, but….I’m wondering if it might be possible to introduce a less problematic moneylender on top of the gaelet. So people who want big rewards now can go to Devi, and people who just want a little bit extra can go to someone who won’t completely extort them. Maybe if you want less than 2 talents, you can go to the moneylenders for an interest rate of 15-20%, and then Devi is still 4 talents or more, with the 30% interest rate. And if you want to put up collateral, you can only do that with Devi? Basically, I know a few people were interested in the moneylender aspect of the game, but either couldn’t do the 4 talents (because they were Ruh) or didn’t want to deal with the astronomical 30% interest rate. And I can’t really blame them for that. I wouldn’t want to deal with that either, but I would like to see the moneylenders be used more. It’s another interesting aspect of the game. Also, mild comment here - Devotary was one who went to Devi’s, and partly used the money borrowed to hire a bodyguard. That bodyguard was the only reason she survived the game. The Eolian I liked adding in the practicing feature. I think that’s a good feature. I also liked the changes made to the musical base stats, particularly for the Ruh. Most of the Ruh couldn’t have failed their performance roll - Striker, Hael, CadCom, and Elkanah were all guaranteed, and Fura would’ve had a hard time losing. Kynedath was 50/50 but he pulled it off. It wasn’t just the Ruh that had chances of getting the Pipes either - Burnt succeeded (she submitted something and then rolled high naturally, so her stat was comparable to Kynedath’s, who didn’t submit anything and rolled mediocre) and Karnage would’ve if he’d gone to The Eolian the turn he went to Imre - he wasn’t able to buy an assassin like he’d been planning to and didn’t up doing anything there, but I rolled just to see what he would’ve gotten and he rolled high enough. Walin, Rover, HH, and Lum were all within decent striking distance, and then a few more could’ve succeeded with stellar performances. All-in-all, I feel like the Eolian mechanic is just about perfect. The Loaded Dice Only a few people tried their hand at gambling, but I think in general, this worked well. Burnt ended up winning twice, and Devotary lucked out. Some others got really close - there was one turn where the number I rolled for one person was one of the numbers another had bet and vice versa (I briefly thought about fudging those rolls and swapping them so both players would win). It was sad seeing people lose, but that’s the risk of gambling. Not everyone can be a winner, sadly. Even if I’d like everyone to be a winner. And now. Onto the University. Tuition/DP/Horns We’ll need to adjust the Master DP so it’s more dependent on starting player count. 5 DP works when there’s over 20 players, but if there’d been less than 20, having 45 DP to spread out among only a few voted on players would’ve been problematic. Also need to adjust certain tuition reductions - I already mentioned contracts, but nahlrout is another one. The nahlrout reduction is a little higher than it should be, I think. Plum Bobs Devotary and Bard are both right about this. The particular use we saw in this game I think was fine. However, that’s because Devotary only had a single elevation in alchemy, so there was a 30% chance Bard would fly into a rage after the first question, a 40% chance he’d fly into a rage after the second, and so on. This might need to be adjusted so it’s over 50% for the second question on the first upgrade. And the higher upgrades will also need to be tweaked. I shudder to think what would’ve happened if Devotary had been an El’the with 3 elevations in Alchemy when she’d used that on Bard. >> So yeah. Plum bobs are broken, but they didn’t really break this game. But they could’ve. Badly. That will be fixed. Lodging I really like the addition of The Windy Tower, but everyone and their dog used it. This is not surprising. However, it indicates that it should be more expensive. Possibly switch The Golden Pony and The Windy Tower so The Golden Pony drops to 6 talents and The Windy Tower jumps to 9? Would The Golden Pony be more attractive if it subtracted a full DP rather than just one vote? I’d really like to get the lodgings on more equal footing, and I think we’re close-ish right now. Sympathy I like the changes to sympathy and think the field as a whole rivals the others now. However, I feel like there are some OP problems with Malfeasance Protection, particularly at the 3rd and 4th levels. We didn’t get to see the 4th level used, but just what I saw at the 3rd level has me a little concerned. For example, Bard used malfeasance protection on Lopen that last turn. Lopen got hit with Fae Loe, the Horse and Four’s explosion, and Araris’ nuclear naming. If Araris hadn’t specifically stated that he was subverting protection items and actions, that malfeasance protection would’ve saved Lopen, despite everything that hit him. A part of me wonders if instead of downgrading all negative effects of all actions, maybe it should only downgrade the worst? @Young Bard - I think you’ll have the best insight into this: do you think that would nerf Sympathy too much and make it less appealing, or would it be okay? Naming We got to see our first ever Master Namer! This was exciting. It was even more exciting to see the nuclear attack Araris came up with to end the game. Had Araris not died to the Horse and Four, he would’ve gone insane, having rolled a 10 on his insanity roll and then having the +9 from the names IP bonus and the using 4 names at once IP bonus. Ridiculous. As for my thoughts. I don’t really have much to add that hasn’t already been said by Araris, Hael, and some others. Naming is understandably attractive due to the creativity inherent with it. Not necessarily OP, at least not when it’s just a single name being used, but all three games have ended due to naming. That’s not really a problem, but it adds to the concerns the Skindancers have to deal with. Which brings me to: Skindancer Balance: The Seemingly Unfixable Problem On the one hand, I think they actually had a better chance this game than either of the others? On the other hand….I’m not sure that’s saying much. The Skindancers have a choice of two nigh-impossible win cons - either kill all the students (or get them expelled/insane before they can get any elevations) or destroy all the fields. The first is more manageable than the second, but compared to the Students win con of expelling the Skindancers, the Students definitely have an easier job. And how do you destroy all the fields when there are 9 fields and less than 9 Skindancers? Fixing the second win con is easy - they don’t have to destroy all the fields. Only the arcane ones. I think I’d include Physicking in this, just to push it over half. Rather than destroying 9 fields, they only have to destroy 5. That’s far more reasonable. Still hard, but not completely impossible. The first win con is a little harder. I’m not even sure it needs to be fixed. It’s possible that the Skindancers could’ve potentially pulled it off this game, though it’s difficult to say given that Stink, the Skindancer Namer, went inactive after Hael died. I’ll say that I’m glad the Skindancers ended up with 7 on the team. That wasn’t intentional. We initially rolled for 6, but we didn’t know Walin and Rover were twins living in the same house. In 1.2, Rover ended up seeing the Skindancer doc on Walin’s computer and we had a bit of a worry there - do we start the game over? Do we kill Rover? Do we kill Walin? Killing Rover didn’t seem right - it was one of his first games. Killing Walin also didn’t seem right - that would unfairly punish the rest of the Skindancers. So do we make Rover evil too? But Rover’s a Vint, and Lopen’s a Vint, and we can’t have two Vints on the team, especially not now that their Ruh is about to win his Pipes. In the end, we made Rover evil, but switched him from Vint to Aturan, and RNG’d a village noble from Aturan to Vint - Araris got that honor (we pretended we messed up something in the spreadsheet so he wouldn’t guess that we were mid-game balancing for something - we lied to Araris to cover up a lot of mid-game balancing now that I think about it). So the Skindancers had 2 nobles, 3 Yllish Commoners, a Cealdish Commoner, and a Ruh. A very good spread, while we were still figuring out if the classes were balanced properly (I think they very nearly are, so being a troll and having a team of predominantly nobles or Ruh or Cealdish is a very real possibility for next game ). And because we increased the prices of grams and bodyguards, that meant that protection was much less common this game, so the sabotages had a higher chance of going through, even in the late game. All of this worked in their favor toward that first win con. This is why it’s hard to say for sure how things would’ve played out if all the Skindancers had remained active. Even expelled, Stink could’ve worked together with Bard to make it so Bard could target attending students. The two of them could’ve stopped Araris, even if the team was worried about protection against a sabotage - they’d thought Araris had a bodyguard (he didn’t), so they never attacked him. I’m inclined to just keep the balancing on elim percentage and protection cost for next game just to see how the first win con looks, balance-wise. Particularly given the biggest changes that will be made to the game. The First of the Big Changes - Order of Actions We realized partway in that the Order of Actions was very problematic. With the current OoA, a PC Master who submits orders to elevate someone and file DP could go insane and their actions are then lost, because elevations and the Horns happen after offensive actions (if the PC Master cracks naturally, they could elevate a player, but still lose their filed DP since the Horns currently happens last). The turn Straw was sabotaged and Karnage took his place as Master Linguist, Straw had filed DP and was trying to elevate someone. He couldn’t do either with the sabotage. But Karnage hadn’t submitted anything for this, and we didn’t want to just leave the Master Linguist blank, so we ended up having an NPC Master fill in for Straw after Straw cracked and then Karnage took over after the Horns. That was a weird rollover. And then there’s the messiness of the last turn. Technically, Araris died in the Horse and Four while simultaneously doing the Massacre on the Horns. And Lopen, Karnage, and Experience were simultaneously escaping the Horse and Four’s explosion and dying in the Massacre. That’s….a problem. Regardless, by moving elevations to dead-last and bumping the Horns up earlier (before kills, sabotages, assassinations, and insanity), I think most of the problems can be fixed. And with this order of actions, a number of things would’ve been different this game: Lopen wouldn’t have become the Master Arithmetist when he did, since he would’ve lost some EP from being on the Horns. Burnt probably wouldn’t have been expelled, even with her roll of 98 (since not only would Rath have been alive to spread out the NPC Master’s DP, all the PC Masters filed DP against either Devotary or Elk). The Second of the Big Changes - A Semi-Proper University Application System Hael made this suggestion in the dead doc. We expand the pre-game submissions so they’re more like an actual, real-life university application process (though to a significantly less intense degree). Instead of just allowing musical submissions to increase a player’s character’s musical ability, we allow essays/RP to make it more likely you start with EP in a field of your choice (or even a starting elevation in that field!) and art submissions that would give players a starting item. Players would only be able to do one of these submissions, but it increases the interaction with the ruleset and expands one of the things I love about running this game: the pre-game submissions. Additionally, this could give the GM’s a rough idea of how people are sort of planning on playing before the game even starts, so we can balance accordingly - if we know these 7 players are all wanting to go into Naming, having all 7 be Skindancers probably isn’t the best distribution. This makes it so everyone can go into what they want to go into - which is one of the best things about this game, I think - but still keeps teams well-balanced. I think that’s basically all my thoughts. This game was a blast, and now that we have a spreadsheet that cuts rollovers down to 4-5 hours with 2 people as opposed to 12-18 and 3 people…? Well. Let’s just say that I’m far more interested in running this game again. And again. And again. Thank you everyone for playing. You were all great, whether you were RPing in the thread, RPing in your PM because you were insane (dear goodness, HH’s RP in his PM was some of the best in this game it was so very good), trying your best to drop your tuition to nothing, creating amazing contracts, or just asking questions about abilities or mechanics. It was all wonderful. Despite my initial dread, I’m really glad we ran this game right now. You’re all the best. 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Straw he/him Posted May 23, 2020 Report Share Posted May 23, 2020 21 minutes ago, little wilson said: Plum Bobs Devotary and Bard are both right about this. The particular use we saw in this game I think was fine. However, that’s because Devotary only had a single elevation in alchemy, so there was a 30% chance Bard would fly into a rage after the first question, a 40% chance he’d fly into a rage after the second, and so on. This might need to be adjusted so it’s over 50% for the second question on the first upgrade. And the higher upgrades will also need to be tweaked. I shudder to think what would’ve happened if Devotary had been an El’the with 3 elevations in Alchemy when she’d used that on Bard. >> So yeah. Plum bobs are broken, but they didn’t really break this game. But they could’ve. Badly. That will be fixed. Yeah, I was just about to make a post with some thoughts on abusing Plum Bobs, so I might as well just put them here: Code words: This would probably get a GM veto, but I'm curious if you'd be allowed to match multipart answers to code words. For example, making a huge list of every possible Skindancer team along with a codeword for each, and asking them to say the codeword that best matches their knowledge of the elim team. Ideally, that would force them to out the entire elim team. Specifying: I'm curious about the exact questions Devotary asked, and I was thinking about what specifications you'd want to put on certain questions to maximize the answer value. For example, I think the best way to figure out if someone was a Skindancer and if they are, extract some useful info would be the following question: "Out of the living, unexpelled, non-insane players, excluding yourself, how many players do you 100% know are Skindancers?" Ideally, this would result in them either announcing the number of Skindancers and confirming that they're a Skindancer, or clearing themselves. Another thing that I think would be interesting would be using the following question when asking a player who the other Skindancers are: "Out of the living, unexpelled, non-insane Skindancers, excluding yourself, which Skindancer represents the greatest threat to the Students?" 34 minutes ago, little wilson said: The Loaded Dice Only a few people tried their hand at gambling, but I think in general, this worked well. Burnt ended up winning twice, and Devotary lucked out. Some others got really close - there was one turn where the number I rolled for one person was one of the numbers another had bet and vice versa (I briefly thought about fudging those rolls and swapping them so both players would win). It was sad seeing people lose, but that’s the risk of gambling. Not everyone can be a winner, sadly. Even if I’d like everyone to be a winner. Out of interest, how many Cealdish Commoners and Edema Ruh gambled? Do you think that giving them better odds ended up being a good buff for them? Also, I'm curious as to how Cealdish Commoners ended up doing in general. I was either at the University or insane for the whole time, so I didn't really get to use any of their special stuff. Hearing more about any of social classes would be interesting, since I know you changed them a bit. 39 minutes ago, little wilson said: Lodging I really like the addition of The Windy Tower, buteveryone and their dog used it. This is not surprising. However, it indicates that it should be more expensive. Possibly switch The Golden Pony and The Windy Tower so The Golden Pony drops to 6 talents and The Windy Tower jumps to 9? Would The Golden Pony be more attractive if it subtracted a full DP rather than just one vote? I’d really like to get the lodgings on more equal footing, and I think we’re close-ish right now. I kept on thinking during the game that the Windy Tower seemed kind of OP, hence why I stayed there whenever possible. I agree on switching them, but I almost think that the "mid-tier" lodging shouldn't really give a benefit, or if it does give a benefit, it should be minimal. I'm not sure if you mean that it would subtract two votes, or if it would subtract a DP after masters assigning DP and stuff? IMO, the big benefit to the Golden Pony was that it stopped you from getting DP due to single votes, so the second option would be more of a nerf than a buff. 43 minutes ago, little wilson said: Tuition/DP/Horns We’ll need to adjust the Master DP so it’s more dependent on starting player count. 5 DP works when there’s over 20 players, but if there’d been less than 20, having 45 DP to spread out among only a few voted on players would’ve been problematic. Also need to adjust certain tuition reductions - I already mentioned contracts, but nahlrout is another one. The nahlrout reduction is a little higher than it should be, I think. I'm curious about how you feel about how much the Masters ended up influencing the vote. A lot of times, it felt like it was very random, but that might be just player bias. Regarding tuition, I know you've mentioned that the 200 words thing ended up making posts unnatural. While I'm not sure how to fix this, I definitely agree that it was a thing that happened. BTW, you should totally make it a multiplier of a reading ease test result and a word count. Time to make people pull out the thesaurus! I'm also curious about how you felt about RP being worth 10x as much as game discussion. As a Cealdish Commoner, there were a lot of terms where I had to focus my time on RP rather than discussing the game, since I needed to reduce my tuition. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: Skindancer Balance: The Seemingly Unfixable Problem On the one hand, I think they actually had a better chance this game than either of the others? On the other hand….I’m not sure that’s saying much. The Skindancers have a choice of two nigh-impossible win cons - either kill all the students (or get them expelled/insane before they can get any elevations) or destroy all the fields. The first is more manageable than the second, but compared to the Students win con of expelling the Skindancers, the Students definitely have an easier job. And how do you destroy all the fields when there are 9 fields and less than 9 Skindancers? Fixing the second win con is easy - they don’t have to destroy all the fields. Only the arcane ones. I think I’d include Physicking in this, just to push it over half. Rather than destroying 9 fields, they only have to destroy 5. That’s far more reasonable. Still hard, but not completely impossible. The first win con is a little harder. I’m not even sure it needs to be fixed. It’s possible that the Skindancers could’ve potentially pulled it off this game, though it’s difficult to say given that Stink, the Skindancer Namer, went inactive after Hael died. I'd been thinking about this a bit during the game, and definitely agree with you that they're nigh-impossible. I love the idea about destroying the Arcane Fields, but it does feel like it's kind of railroading the Skindancers into those fields. I also feel like it could mess with students who just want to go into those fields because they sound fun, since you're essentially designating some fields as suspicious. With the first win con, i was thinking about what'd happen if the Skindancers managed to kick everyone out of the University. I feel like if the Skindancers were stuck with few offensive field abilities, they'd have a long road to success, and could even lose, which doesn't feel fair. They'd have to go and get rid of all the expelled students, which could be really difficult if those students had defensive items. They'd then have to go and target every single insane person, since they need them dead, not just insane. I'm curious about how balanced changing the win condition to dead/insane would be. It feels like it's a nicer parallel to the students, and stops the Skindancers from having to retarget everyone. If the Skindancers have managed to drive everyone else insane, I feel like they deserve the win at that point. Then again, this is counterbalanced by the Students not having many ways of getting rid of Skindancer masters. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: The First of the Big Changes - Order of Actions We realized partway in that the Order of Actions was very problematic. With the current OoA, a PC Master who submits orders to elevate someone and file DP could go insane and their actions are then lost, because elevations and the Horns happen after offensive actions (if the PC Master cracks naturally, they could elevate a player, but still lose their filed DP since the Horns currently happens last). The turn Straw was sabotaged and Karnage took his place as Master Linguist, Straw had filed DP and was trying to elevate someone. He couldn’t do either with the sabotage. But Karnage hadn’t submitted anything for this, and we didn’t want to just leave the Master Linguist blank, so we ended up having an NPC Master fill in for Straw after Straw cracked and then Karnage took over after the Horns. That was a weird rollover. Part of me is oddly happy that I caused some sort of issue for you two. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: Naming We got to see our first ever Master Namer! This was exciting. It was even more exciting to see the nuclear attack Araris came up with to end the game. Had Araris not died to the Horse and Four, he would’ve gone insane, having rolled a 10 on his insanity roll and then having the +9 from the names IP bonus and the using 4 names at once IP bonus. Ridiculous. As for my thoughts. I don’t really have much to add that hasn’t already been said by Araris, Hael, and some others. Naming is understandably attractive due to the creativity inherent with it. Not necessarily OP, at least not when it’s just a single name being used, but all three games have ended due to naming. That’s not really a problem, but it adds to the concerns the Skindancers have to deal with. I'm kind of curious: how powerful is Naming on average? There are big flashy power displays, like Araris nuking everyone, but is it a linear scale? Naming seems like it's the most flexible field, so I'd be kind of surprised if it also gave that much power to people. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: The Second of the Big Changes - A Semi-Proper University Application System Hael made this suggestion in the dead doc. We expand the pre-game submissions so they’re more like an actual, real-life university application process (though to a significantly less intense degree). Instead of just allowing musical submissions to increase a player’s character’s musical ability, we allow essays/RP to make it more likely you start with EP in a field of your choice (or even a starting elevation in that field!) and art submissions that would give players a starting item. Players would only be able to do one of these submissions, but it increases the interaction with the ruleset and expands one of the things I love about running this game - the pre-game submissions. Additionally, this could give the GM’s a rough idea of how people are sort of planning on playing before the game even starts, so we can balance accordingly - if we know these 7 players are all wanting to go into Naming, having all 7 be Skindancers probably isn’t the best distribution. This makes it so everyone can go into what they want to go into - which is one of the best things about this game, I think - but still keeps teams well-balanced. I think that’s basically all my thoughts. This game was a blast, and now that we have a spreadsheet that cuts rollovers down to 4-5 hours with 2 people as opposed to 12-18 and 3 people…? Well. Let’s just say that I’m far more interested in running this game again. And again. And again. Thank you everyone for playing. You were all great, whether you were RPing in the thread, RPing in your PM because you were insane (dear goodness, HH’s RP in his PM was some of the best in this game it was so very good), trying your best to drop your tuition to nothing, creating amazing contracts, or just asking questions about abilities or mechanics. It was all wonderful. Despite my initial dread, I’m really glad we ran this game right now. You’re all the best. This sounds very interesting. I hope you look forward to me making MSPaint drawings for free items. Quote I’m really loving this 3?-way RP. It works wonderfully. If you're talking about me, Burnt, and Hael, then yes, that was fun. However, it was a bit awkward sometimes, due to time zone differences. Quote Straw: “Something interesting that I just realized is that most Vintish noblemen will be unable to stay at the Gray Man, and are therefore unable to just sit in Imre all the time.” This is very intentional. I know. I was commending your good game design. My thoughts on Linguistics: I went 100% into Linguistics, because why not? I ended up finding Linguistics to be a fairly odd field, in terms of ability power. You get abilities randomly, so which abilities you get first matters a lot. So, here's my rating of Linguistics abilities: Mysterious Bulletins: This ability felt fine to me. I never ended up using it, since I had nothing useful to say and I wanted to minimize Skindancer information, but it has nice synergy. Linguists could use the ability to send their findings about lies or PM spy results. It's also very nice flavor. Hand Delivery: In my opinion, this is by far the weakest Linguistics ability. The only abilities that allow PM spying are Bribe the Messenger, which is another Linguistics Ability, and Wind. I doubt that people would use Wind to PM spy rather than using it to roleblock or attack someone, so that's also pretty unlikely. All in all, it just ends up being a pretty useless passive, since it probably only protects you from one ability, and that ability is from your own field. Bribe the Messenger: While I never ended up having the opportunity to use this, it feels good to me. I doubt anyone would get that much info from PMs, but it's still a useful tool. I'd say it's far better than Mysterious Bulletins, but not as good as Linguistic Analysis. Linguistic Analysis: This ability was nuts, and I could have done some seriously broken stuff if I had been allowed to get more than two uses out of it. By scanning players with reads, you can essentially get their alignment, and that's not even taking into account players doing "I am not a Skindancer" and stuff like that. Every time I was elevated in Linguistics, I was just praying for this ability. I'd be curious to hear any GM thoughts on how powerful they thought this was. I think it'd be interesting to either have a set ability progression for Linguistics, to encourage people to stick with it and also make the power spikes less random or to change Linguistic Analysis and Hand Delivery to be more in line with the power level of the other abilities. I'd also be curious to hear what other Linguists thought about this field. Also, note to the GMs: I'm not saying this much stuff because I disliked the game or anything, it's more that I'm bored and have been thinking about this stuff for quite a while. Also, once again: thanks for running the game! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devotary of Spontaneity Posted May 23, 2020 Report Share Posted May 23, 2020 A lot of this overlaps with Straw, but I don't feel like deleting things. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: Maybe if you want less than 2 talents, you can go to the moneylenders for an interest rate of 15-20%, and then Devi is still 4 talents or more, with the 30% interest rate. And if you want to put up collateral, you can only do that with Devi? Allowing the Edema Ruh to borrow money without collateral would be useful, but I know that I wouldn't have gone to Devi had there been a cheaper option since I only needed two talents for nahlrout. Perhaps have Devi charge interest on a scale based on how much money is borrowed, with higher rates for lower withdrawals? Maybe 1-4 talents at 30%, then having lower rates for future intervals. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: So yeah. Plum bobs are broken, but they didn’t really break this game. But they could’ve. Badly. That will be fixed. A guaranteed three turn roleblock bypassing nahlrout protection if the target goes into a rage helps make plum bobs less powerful, though that's meaningless for Masters. Being forced to submit all your questions at once somewhat helps weaken plum bobs. A modification where going into a rage isn't announced until after all questions are answered, but once the subject goes into a rage they're allowed to lie and/or refuse to answer questions is kind of a drastic fix. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: Possibly switch The Golden Pony and The Windy Tower so The Golden Pony drops to 6 talents and The Windy Tower jumps to 9? Would The Golden Pony be more attractive if it subtracted a full DP rather than just one vote? I think having The Windy Tower not being in the top two most expensive lodgings is a good way to reduce the power of Vintish nobles. Perhaps putting The Windy Tower up to 9 talents, then increasing The Golden Pony to 10 talents while upgrading its ability to subtracting a DP, or one vote if only one vote is cast? That second part might be difficult to do in a spreadsheet but -1 DP is only better than -1 vote if at least three votes are cast on someone. 1 hour ago, little wilson said: The first win con is a little harder. I’m not even sure it needs to be fixed. It’s possible that the Skindancers could’ve potentially pulled it off this game, though it’s difficult to say given that Stink, the Skindancer Namer, went inactive after Hael died. If Lopen and/or Experience had survived, would the Skindancers have won as the only players left in the University? Or would they have had to slaughter the inhabitants of the crockery one by one while Burnt and I tried to blow up their lodgings? Especially if Naming allows for targeting inside the University it would still take a while for the Skindancers to actually get rid of all potential threats. Perhaps the Skindancers win if a cycle ends with no current threats? 1 hour ago, little wilson said: Regardless, by moving elevations to dead-last and bumping the Horns up earlier (before kills, sabotages, assassinations, and insanity), I think most of the problems can be fixed. Would putting the Horns first mean that all actions could be roleblocked that turn if someone ended up being lashed, and actions targeting University students would automatically fail if the submitter got expelled? Or would the DP be assigned first, and then have the effects still take place at the end of the turn? 3 minutes ago, Straw said: Specifying: I'm curious about the exact questions Devotary asked, and I was thinking about what specifications you'd want to put on certain questions to maximize the answer value. The specific questions I asked were 1.Which living, unexpelled player is most likely to be a Skindancer? 2. Did you receive a GM PM this game telling you that you were a Skindancer? 3. Excluding the person you gave as an answer to question 1, which living, unexpelled player is most likely to be a Skindancer? 4. How many living, unexpelled Skindancers are there left in this game? 5. Do any Skindancers currently have the ability to kill sane University students? Definitely far from ideal, especially as only a second level Alchemy student. I'm pretty sure village!Bard could have proved his innocence without me having to waste a question, and the GMs might have allowed Bard to get away with a non-answer for the first question like 'No one living, unexpelled player has a greater chance of being a Skindancer than every other player'. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Straw he/him Posted May 23, 2020 Report Share Posted May 23, 2020 38 minutes ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said: If Lopen and/or Experience had survived, would the Skindancers have won as the only players left in the University? Or would they have had to slaughter the inhabitants of the crockery one by one while Burnt and I tried to blow up their lodgings? Especially if Naming allows for targeting inside the University it would still take a while for the Skindancers to actually get rid of all potential threats. Perhaps the Skindancers win if a cycle ends with no current threats? Yeah, this is one of the things i mentioned in my post as well. As it stands, they have to kill everyone, so they have to double tap all the insane people if they don't have naming. They also have to deal with breakouts along the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elbereth she/her Posted May 24, 2020 Author Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 Quote Hael made this suggestion in the dead doc. We expand the pre-game submissions so they’re more like an actual, real-life university application process (though to a significantly less intense degree). Instead of just allowing musical submissions to increase a player’s character’s musical ability, we allow essays/RP to make it more likely you start with EP in a field of your choice (or even a starting elevation in that field!) and art submissions that would give players a starting item. Players would only be able to do one of these submissions, but it increases the interaction with the ruleset and expands one of the things I love about running this game: the pre-game submissions. Additionally, this could give the GM’s a rough idea of how people are sort of planning on playing before the game even starts, so we can balance accordingly - if we know these 7 players are all wanting to go into Naming, having all 7 be Skindancers probably isn’t the best distribution. This makes it so everyone can go into what they want to go into - which is one of the best things about this game, I think - but still keeps teams well-balanced. I'm not sure what I think about this. Or... I think starting with EP in a field of your choice sounds like a good idea, and gets the game going faster / allows us to do distribution. I'm not sure about a starting elevation, nor some people having EP and others not, because one of the things I really like about this game is that the whole idea is that everyone starts on basically equal footing and can go in whatever direction they want from there. Quote Code words: This would probably get a GM veto, but I'm curious if you'd be allowed to match multipart answers to code words. For example, making a huge list of every possible Skindancer team along with a codeword for each, and asking them to say the codeword that best matches their knowledge of the elim team. Ideally, that would force them to out the entire elim team. Yeah that's 100% a no. Quote I'm curious about how you feel about how much the Masters ended up influencing the vote. A lot of times, it felt like it was very random, but that might be just player bias. Regarding tuition, I know you've mentioned that the 200 words thing ended up making posts unnatural. While I'm not sure how to fix this, I definitely agree that it was a thing that happened. BTW, you should totally make it a multiplier of a reading ease test result and a word count. Time to make people pull out the thesaurus! I'm also curious about how you felt about RP being worth 10x as much as game discussion. As a Cealdish Commoner, there were a lot of terms where I had to focus my time on RP rather than discussing the game, since I needed to reduce my tuition. Mm. It was pretty random between who got what punishment - that's perhaps something to look into, I suppose. That said, generally when people piled on one person the reason they didn't get expelled wasn't the Masters' DP but instead that they were dead/insane/a Master already. So that should be fixed, at least. I'm not precisely sure about the balance between PC Masters' DP, NPC Masters' DP, and player votes. I think it's something we should leave for the present, but keep an eye on in the next iteration to see if that's right once the OoA is fixed. Yep. I don't know of a better system than 200 words that doesn't introduce bloat in other ways (any game related discussion = lots of short posts, total word count = incentive to be long winded + harder for the GMs, anything else introduces lots of GM bias), but I definitely disliked people saying 'well that's my 200 words, I'll be back to post the rest of my thoughts later' and similar. I definitely like RP being worth more than game discussion - it's one of the things that makes this game so RP-centric, which I love. That said, I wouldn't be opposed to doubling the worth of the game discussion, so it's only 5x as much, just to make that give you a little more. Quote I'd been thinking about this a bit during the game, and definitely agree with you that they're nigh-impossible. I love the idea about destroying the Arcane Fields, but it does feel like it's kind of railroading the Skindancers into those fields. I also feel like it could mess with students who just want to go into those fields because they sound fun, since you're essentially designating some fields as suspicious. This is true, but I think it should be fine - first, people want to go into those fields anyway and I doubt that Skindancers going in will stop them, which then gives Skindancers plenty of cover. Secondly, it isn't as much of a railroad if their other win condition is reasonably balanced enough to go for it. That said, if it proves to be problematic in a future run, I could see switching to needing to destroy 5 fields total of the Skindancers' choice. Quote With the first win con, i was thinking about what'd happen if the Skindancers managed to kick everyone out of the University. I feel like if the Skindancers were stuck with few offensive field abilities, they'd have a long road to success, and could even lose, which doesn't feel fair. They'd have to go and get rid of all the expelled students, which could be really difficult if those students had defensive items. They'd then have to go and target every single insane person, since they need them dead, not just insane. I'm curious about how balanced changing the win condition to dead/insane would be. It feels like it's a nicer parallel to the students, and stops the Skindancers from having to retarget everyone. If the Skindancers have managed to drive everyone else insane, I feel like they deserve the win at that point. Then again, this is counterbalanced by the Students not having many ways of getting rid of Skindancer masters. Okay, one, while it's technically true that the Skindancers have to kill insane students, in practicality that isn't the case - the same way as 'kill all villagers' means 'kill enough villagers that they have no way to stop you from winning at that point'. We wouldn't extend the game once every Student was dead or insane. I think changing the win condition to reflect that would be fine, since it's essentially true in the first place. I think that at least for the moment, killing expelled players is still a requirement - they're helped there by the fact that sabotages on expelled players are automatically kills, which goes through protection a lot faster, especially with the changes to protection we made this game. (And we made a mistake too - Elandera's bodyguard cost 30 talents because of a mistake we made in telling her that, but should've cost 60. Grams were a little more common because of adding Rover, but even then one only got stocked every few turns.) With almost certainly being masters at that point, I don't think getting rid of the expelled players would be a problem, but it'd be enough of a challenge that they'd still have to go through with it. More generally, on their win conditions: I just don't know. I honestly have no idea if the kill-all-students win con is balanced or not. My worry is essentially that late game, the villagers are so OP that the Skindancers can't compete with their few remaining players - seriously, in the last couple of turns everyone was an El'the and there were several PC Masters. The power curve of the game is such that for most of the game it's fine, but I think that endgame is potentially too difficult for Skindancers at present - even without Araris, Burnt could make Bone-tar. We had at least two other El'the with at least one level in Artificery, which meant several Grams and Bloodless floating around. We didn't have any Sympathy El'the students, but if we had then Malfeasance protection would've been a pain to deal with. Etc. I also didn't particularly like how the elevations completely dried out at the end, so my tentative thought would be to have some system in which fields aren't guaranteed to have elevations so they're spread out over a longer period of time. Quote I'm kind of curious: how powerful is Naming on average? There are big flashy power displays, like Araris nuking everyone, but is it a linear scale? Naming seems like it's the most flexible field, so I'd be kind of surprised if it also gave that much power to people. I think it was maybe a little more powerful than it should've been this game on average, but the main counteracting factor is the high IP risk more than anything else. You can do a lot, but the more you want to do the shorter your life out of the Crockery will be. I think in general where we need to be careful isn't just Wind - which was pretty well balanced - nor 4 names, where you can do ridiculous things because you're nearly guaranteed to go insane (and I'll note that what Araris wanted was a little more powerful than what we ended up deciding on, too - it originally only subverted Fae protection and also blocked Fae roleblocks). But there are times when things that people want out of 2 names are more suited to 3, I think, and we need to be careful that 2 names (which is only a +3 IP, so a 1/12 chance of going insane) isn't too powerful. 1 hour ago, Straw said: My thoughts on Linguistics: I went 100% into Linguistics, because why not? I ended up finding Linguistics to be a fairly odd field, in terms of ability power. You get abilities randomly, so which abilities you get first matters a lot. So, here's my rating of Linguistics abilities: Mysterious Bulletins: This ability felt fine to me. I never ended up using it, since I had nothing useful to say and I wanted to minimize Skindancer information, but it has nice synergy. Linguists could use the ability to send their findings about lies or PM spy results. It's also very nice flavor. Hand Delivery: In my opinion, this is by far the weakest Linguistics ability. The only abilities that allow PM spying are Bribe the Messenger, which is another Linguistics Ability, and Wind. I doubt that people would use Wind to PM spy rather than using it to roleblock or attack someone, so that's also pretty unlikely. All in all, it just ends up being a pretty useless passive, since it probably only protects you from one ability, and that ability is from your own field. Bribe the Messenger: While I never ended up having the opportunity to use this, it feels good to me. I doubt anyone would get that much info from PMs, but it's still a useful tool. I'd say it's far better than Mysterious Bulletins, but not as good as Linguistic Analysis. Linguistic Analysis: This ability was nuts, and I could have done some seriously broken stuff if I had been allowed to get more than two uses out of it. By scanning players with reads, you can essentially get their alignment, and that's not even taking into account players doing "I am not a Skindancer" and stuff like that. Every time I was elevated in Linguistics, I was just praying for this ability. I'd be curious to hear any GM thoughts on how powerful they thought this was. I think it'd be interesting to either have a set ability progression for Linguistics, to encourage people to stick with it and also make the power spikes less random or to change Linguistic Analysis and Hand Delivery to be more in line with the power level of the other abilities. I'd also be curious to hear what other Linguists thought about this field. Hm. I wouldn't be opposed to having abilities in a specific order ala Alchemy or Artificery, though I do kind of like the randomness aspect - and having that scale would only make the power curve for late game even more pronounced. I'm really happy with how Linguistic Analysis happened this game, honestly. I'd note that the second time Bard was scanned as lying, it was only due to one singular lie (unfortunately ), which wasn't his reads list - he just had to be very careful about phrasing. It's powerful, maybe too powerful, but I'm not sure how I'd change it unless we go with the being-an-El'the-ability notion. Similarly, I'd be open to suggestions on how to change Hand Delivery to make it better - I agree it's a little weak, but I don't know how I'd make it better. Also, honestly, part of the perk of getting elevated in Linguistics is that you get a second general action period to use on whatever you want, so I'm not too concerned. If we were to scale progression.... I'm not sure, but I think we might tie it to level rather than rank? Because I don't see a way to split up the abilities into levels, nor do I really want to. So for posterity (i.e. our future selves ) I'd do: Linguistics: First level - Hand delivery (it'd definitely have to be buffed in this case though) Second level - Mysterious Bulletins Third level - Bribe the Messenger Master - Linguistic Analysis Archives: First level - Omen Recognition Second level - School Records Third level - Fae Lore Master - Banned Books R&L: First level - Argumentum ad Nauseam Second level - Proficient in Hyperbole Third level - Persuasive Arguments Master - Law of Contraposition Anyway. Something to think on. Quote A guaranteed three turn roleblock bypassing nahlrout protection if the target goes into a rage helps make plum bobs less powerful, though that's meaningless for Masters. Being forced to submit all your questions at once somewhat helps weaken plum bobs. A modification where going into a rage isn't announced until after all questions are answered, but once the subject goes into a rage they're allowed to lie and/or refuse to answer questions is kind of a drastic fix. ...I kind of like that drastic fix, actually. So you could be sure of the answer to the first question, but increasingly less sure of the truth of others. That... could work. Quote I think having The Windy Tower not being in the top two most expensive lodgings is a good way to reduce the power of Vintish nobles. Perhaps putting The Windy Tower up to 9 talents, then increasing The Golden Pony to 10 talents while upgrading its ability to subtracting a DP, or one vote if only one vote is cast? That second part might be difficult to do in a spreadsheet but -1 DP is only better than -1 vote if at least three votes are cast on someone. Yeah, agreed that the Windy Tower shouldn't be in the top two. The spreadsheeting wouldn't be too awful on that, but my inclination is potentially to switch the Golden Pony and the Windy Tower but add another lodging on top (Hael suggested something very expensive which gives -1 IP, and I kind of like that). Either way, I think -2 votes could be reasonable for the Golden Pony. Quote If Lopen and/or Experience had survived, would the Skindancers have won as the only players left in the University? Or would they have had to slaughter the inhabitants of the crockery one by one while Burnt and I tried to blow up their lodgings? Especially if Naming allows for targeting inside the University it would still take a while for the Skindancers to actually get rid of all potential threats. Perhaps the Skindancers win if a cycle ends with no current threats? As addressed above, they'd have to kill the expelled players but not the insane ones. Anyway - I think this game went really well! We got the rollover not including the writeup down to about 2 hours between the two of us, which is fantastic - there are still some things I'd like to do to the spreadsheet, and Hael and I are seriously considering just straight up coding it for next time, but this version was a massive improvement and we made far fewer mistakes all of which were pretty fixable. I'm very happy with how this game went, and I'm excited to run it again in a year or two! (low key want this to become an annual midsummer thing but also no) 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Furamirionind Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 Wait, I just realized I was sabotaged... For some reason I thought I went insane from wind, which wasn't even possible... Was I just attacked as I claimed Namer? Namers are scary, though I felt pretty comfortable claiming it as I thought I wouldn't pose a big threat to people, obviously not being the Namer killing everyone. Lol 3 hours ago, little wilson said: The Second of the Big Changes - A Semi-Proper University Application System Hael made this suggestion in the dead doc. We expand the pre-game submissions so they’re more like an actual, real-life university application process (though to a significantly less intense degree). Instead of just allowing musical submissions to increase a player’s character’s musical ability, we allow essays/RP to make it more likely you start with EP in a field of your choice (or even a starting elevation in that field!) and art submissions that would give players a starting item. Players would only be able to do one of these submissions, but it increases the interaction with the ruleset and expands one of the things I love about running this game: the pre-game submissions. Additionally, this could give the GM’s a rough idea of how people are sort of planning on playing before the game even starts, so we can balance accordingly - if we know these 7 players are all wanting to go into Naming, having all 7 be Skindancers probably isn’t the best distribution. This makes it so everyone can go into what they want to go into - which is one of the best things about this game, I think - but still keeps teams well-balanced. I really like this idea. I always like rolling elim, but I was really scared of it this game as I didn't want to sacrifice my Naming for my team... Lol Granted, after seeing this game, I'm not sure it would be a bad idea to throw multiple elims into Naming in the future... xD Next time this is run, I'm going to try to convince my team to go half/half on Physicking and Naming... That sounds like a fun elim composition xD 1 hour ago, Straw said: Out of interest, how many Cealdish Commoners and Edema Ruh gambled? Do you think that giving them better odds ended up being a good buff for them? Also, I'm curious as to how Cealdish Commoners ended up doing in general. I was either at the University or insane for the whole time, so I didn't really get to use any of their special stuff. Hearing more about any of social classes would be interesting, since I know you changed them a bit. IIRC, all the Edema said they weren't planning on gambling in the Edema PM... 3 hours ago, little wilson said: Lodging I really like the addition of The Windy Tower, but everyone and their dog used it. This is not surprising. However, it indicates that it should be more expensive. Possibly switch The Golden Pony and The Windy Tower so The Golden Pony drops to 6 talents and The Windy Tower jumps to 9? Would The Golden Pony be more attractive if it subtracted a full DP rather than just one vote? I like the concept of the Windy Tower, but it is really powerful. Lol I think if the price on the Golden Pony was to drop, it would serve as a good "neutral" option as it also makes spreading votes less dangerous. Especially in the mid/late game this game, when a single person just threw a vote on someone else at random, it was a bit frustrating as a single person can get someone roleblocked or expelled. Even me when Devotary, myself, and someone else was up for the lynch and I went to spread votes out (I just realized I voted on 2 elims there ), I don't think I should have singlehandedly had the power to diminish the power of the lynch like that. Making it remove a full DP (assuming before Masters place DP) I think would be really good, as it means that people will at least have to get 2 people voting on someone to definitely get stuff to happen. 1 hour ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said: A guaranteed three turn roleblock bypassing nahlrout protection if the target goes into a rage helps make plum bobs less powerful, though that's meaningless for Masters. Being forced to submit all your questions at once somewhat helps weaken plum bobs. A modification where going into a rage isn't announced until after all questions are answered, but once the subject goes into a rage they're allowed to lie and/or refuse to answer questions is kind of a drastic fix. I really like that last idea, and would make having a plumb bob used on you super fun as you can potentially screw the user over once you're enraged... though if that was the case idk if people would go for plumb bobs as only the first question actually definitely gives you good info? 21 minutes ago, Elbereth said: seriously, in the last couple of turns everyone was an El'the Hmph. : P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Straw he/him Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 4 minutes ago, Furamirionind said: IIRC, all the Edema said they weren't planning on gambling in the Edema PM... I ended up counting it and here were the stats: Bard x1: Cealdish Commoner Burnt x2: Cealdish Commoner Coda x2: Vintish Nobleman Devotary x1: Vintish Nobleman Elandera x2: Aturan Nobleman Hael x1: Edema Ruh Lopen x2: Vintish Nobleman Rover x2: Aturan Nobleman Hael lied cuz he's an evil Skindancer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walin he/him Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 Wow, there was a lot to this game. It was a blast for a comeback to SE, though I think I'll be too busy to join the next game(s) without slipping into the same level of inactivity I was in this game. With being an elim and reading a doc that was *that* long and had additions every day, as well as not having many ideas for RP nor much experience with analysis, I wasn't very active in thread (as per usual, though I think I tried harder this game). Nor in PMs for that matter, lol. I was a bit salty at getting killed the turn after I became a Master, thus not being able to use those newfound powers, but it was funny and (obviously) a good thing for the village. And at the same time, in Mafia anything goes, and you can be killed or sabotaged at any moment. The mechanics were all fun; Naming (as expected) was extremely popular, so I stayed clear of that to get as much elevation as I could, picking Alchemy at the beginning (but even more than that, with an elim team, planning for specific fields and abilities means going into just one field). I thought about some potential RP things I could do, like hinting I was going to Imre despite never going there, going insane as an Alchemist and blowing up several areas--Green Rover and I thought about distributing bone tars to all the Skindancers so we could blow everything up simultaneously, but that obviously didn't happen. Thanks for the game! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrikerEZ he/him Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 @Elbereth @little wilson and anyone else talking about the skindancer wincon problem. What if they don’t have to specifically sabotage the arcane fields and one other one, but any five fields they choose. Solves the problem of nine fields being too many fields to go into without forcing the elims to go into certain fields. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elbereth she/her Posted May 24, 2020 Author Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 I did suggest that, but you can be forgiven for not reading my monster of a post closely enough to notice. Quote This is true, but I think it should be fine - first, people want to go into those fields anyway and I doubt that Skindancers going in will stop them, which then gives Skindancers plenty of cover. Secondly, it isn't as much of a railroad if their other win condition is reasonably balanced enough to go for it. That said, if it proves to be problematic in a future run, I could see switching to needing to destroy 5 fields total of the Skindancers' choice. I like the flavor of destroying the Arcane fields more, but I agree that any 5 fields might be more feasible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrikerEZ he/him Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 11 minutes ago, Elbereth said: I did suggest that, but you can be forgiven for not reading my monster of a post closely enough to notice. I like the flavor of destroying the Arcane fields more, but I agree that any 5 fields might be more feasible. Ah yes, maybe that’s where I got the idea from in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haelbarde he/him Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 8 hours ago, little wilson said: Fixing the second win con is easy - they don’t have to destroy all the fields. Only the arcane ones. I think I’d include Physicking in this, just to push it over half. Rather than destroying 9 fields, they only have to destroy 5. That’s far more reasonable. Still hard, but not completely impossible. I'd maybe do Archives rather than Physicking - Skindancers would want to remove Fae Lore/Omen Recognition, plus Banned Books would presumably still allow students to learn skills from Sympathy, Archives, and Alchemy. 6 hours ago, Straw said: Out of interest, how many Cealdish Commoners and Edema Ruh gambled? Do you think that giving them better odds ended up being a good buff for them? Also, I'm curious as to how Cealdish Commoners ended up doing in general. I was either at the University or insane for the whole time, so I didn't really get to use any of their special stuff. Hearing more about any of social classes would be interesting, since I know you changed them a bit. I only gambled once (the 3 drabs left over after I purchased two nahlrout and paid for the attempt for Talent Pipes). If not for being a skindancer, I'd have spent probably a lot more time in the Imre, and would have gambled each time I think. I'd also have interacted with the contracts more as a result too. 7 hours ago, Straw said: Linguistic Analysis: This ability was nuts, and I could have done some seriously broken stuff if I had been allowed to get more than two uses out of it. By scanning players with reads, you can essentially get their alignment, and that's not even taking into account players doing "I am not a Skindancer" and stuff like that. Every time I was elevated in Linguistics, I was just praying for this ability. I'd be curious to hear any GM thoughts on how powerful they thought this was. Provided it's not taken to the extent of "I am not a Skindancer", I don't think it's a problem - it just means that the elims have to take more care with what they write. Even with a suspicion list, using phrases like "based on their posts, I would read them as village" would let you avoid being picked up as lying about reading a skindancer buddy as village. Or you just RP a blatant lier every turn. 6 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said: If Lopen and/or Experience had survived, would the Skindancers have won as the only players left in the University? Or would they have had to slaughter the inhabitants of the crockery one by one while Burnt and I tried to blow up their lodgings? Especially if Naming allows for targeting inside the University it would still take a while for the Skindancers to actually get rid of all potential threats. Perhaps the Skindancers win if a cycle ends with no current threats? If it got to the point where no Student could target any skindancers, I think the GMs would potentially do things to speed up the game, such as roll in advance for any breakout attempts, while getting the Skindancers to put in the order of sabotages, and if the result is enough turns for them to master and destroy all fields, end the game, otherwise skip to the person breaking out, etc. I'd imagine you'd keep playing it out until all namers/alchemists were dead (provided the namers/alchemists alive seemed to be aware of how they could effect the skindancers). 5 hours ago, Elbereth said: I'm not sure what I think about this. Or... I think starting with EP in a field of your choice sounds like a good idea, and gets the game going faster / allows us to do distribution. I'm not sure about a starting elevation, nor some people having EP and others not, because one of the things I really like about this game is that the whole idea is that everyone starts on basically equal footing and can go in whatever direction they want from there. I figured everyone could put in EP before the game starts, (unless choosing to start in the Imre?). But the thought with initial elevations (particularly if these elevations are not shared publicly) means that you'll have some players who'll reach max level sooner, making the elevations otherwise less contested, and also would allow you to potentially choose specific fields and specific abilities to be in the game - either to apply some sort of balance to the game, or to help encourage people to try things they otherwise wouldn't. If this was influenced by the 'application' process you still then gain the benefit of player choice. 5 hours ago, Furamirionind said: Wait, I just realized I was sabotaged... For some reason I thought I went insane from wind, which wasn't even possible... Was I just attacked as I claimed Namer? Namers are scary, though I felt pretty comfortable claiming it as I thought I wouldn't pose a big threat to people, obviously not being the Namer killing everyone. Lol I'm assuming that the skindancers figured that Araris was likely using wind to protect themselves, or had picked up protection (given they were a noble), so as a namer you would be important to take out still anyway. I think Lopen was buying an assassin that would have targetted araris, so he'd have likely been attacked the following cycle as part of a double tap. 5 hours ago, Straw said: Hael lied cuz he's an evil Skindancer. Hey... I didn't lie, so much as never commented on my plans in the PM 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elandera she/her Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 7 hours ago, Elbereth said: And we made a mistake too - Elandera's bodyguard cost 30 talents because of a mistake we made in telling her that, but should've cost 60. I won't argue against the discount. Just chalk it up to Athdara's charm. At least it wasn't needed in the end, and having the extra talents (because affording a 60 talent bodyguard would have been basically impossible for me) wouldn't have made a big difference in my game play. Though the contract I threw up may have been for several more talents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Straw he/him Posted May 24, 2020 Report Share Posted May 24, 2020 48 minutes ago, Elbereth said: Yeah that's 100% a no. ITT: El bullying me. 50 minutes ago, Elbereth said: Mm. It was pretty random between who got what punishment - that's perhaps something to look into, I suppose. That said, generally when people piled on one person the reason they didn't get expelled wasn't the Masters' DP but instead that they were dead/insane/a Master already. So that should be fixed, at least. I'm not precisely sure about the balance between PC Masters' DP, NPC Masters' DP, and player votes. I think it's something we should leave for the present, but keep an eye on in the next iteration to see if that's right once the OoA is fixed. IMO, it'd be a bit better if the NPC Masters DP distribution was weighted proportionately. I'm not sure why they'd treat some student with one complaint the same way they'd treat someone with 20 complaints. 1 hour ago, Elbereth said: Hm. I wouldn't be opposed to having abilities in a specific order ala Alchemy or Artificery, though I do kind of like the randomness aspect - and having that scale would only make the power curve for late game even more pronounced. I'm really happy with how Linguistic Analysis happened this game, honestly. I'd note that the second time Bard was scanned as lying, it was only due to one singular lie (unfortunately ), which wasn't his reads list - he just had to be very careful about phrasing. It's powerful, maybe too powerful, but I'm not sure how I'd change it unless we go with the being-an-El'the-ability notion. Similarly, I'd be open to suggestions on how to change Hand Delivery to make it better - I agree it's a little weak, but I don't know how I'd make it better. Also, honestly, part of the perk of getting elevated in Linguistics is that you get a second general action period to use on whatever you want, so I'm not too concerned. I think that a consistent power curve is preferable to random power spikes. Yeah, that makes sense. For Hand Delivery, it might be interesting if it didn't prevent from spying, but instead allowed you to open PMs with people that allowed them to respond, regardless of whether they're at the University or expelled. Ex: instead of making a PM called "LG65: T4M1: Burnt and Straw" you'd make one called "LG65: T4M1: Burnt and Straw (Hand Delivered)" or something. It might make more sense to have the GM make them in that case, and/or limit the number of them you could make. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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