Anniversary Game 7/Anonymous Game 9: From Embers, A Flame

[Condensation]

Ah. That's one of my favourite things to do.

So your pet peeve is PM unsafety?

[Mat]

5 minutes ago, Condensation said:

favourite

*favorite

I know I, for one, made no attempt to hide my identity... It was guessed by a few people (or... everyone who tried to, that I know of) but I denied it. Naturally. I don't think that convinced anyone though xD

Actually, Kas originally thought I was Araris, now that I think about it.

[Condensation]

3 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

*favorite

I know I, for one, made no attempt to hide my identity... It was guessed by a few people (or... everyone who tried to, that I know of) but I denied it. Naturally. I don't think that convinced anyone though xD

Actually, Kas originally thought I was Araris, now that I think about it.

You're excused. I've decided I'm British.

I don't think anyone guessed who I was.

Am I allowed to just straight up say it?

[Mat]

Just now, Condensation said:

You're excused. I've decided I'm British.

I can't really argue with that...

1 minute ago, Condensation said:

I don't think anyone guessed who I was.

Am I allowed to just straight up say it?

I don't think so. Though narrowing it down to a pinch-hitter makes it pretty clear  But still best to wait until after the pass voting is concluded.

[Condensation]

1 minute ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I can't really argue with that...

I don't think so. Though narrowing it down to a pinch-hitter makes it pretty clear  But still best to wait until after the pass voting is concluded.

Dang right you can't argue!

All right. I guess I'll wait to blurt it out.

[Araris Valerian]

26 minutes ago, Condensation said:

So your pet peeve is PM unsafety?

I don't know if pet peeve is the right way to say it. It would have been when I formed the opinion, but nowadays you open a PM and you basically get a roleclaim. The meta seems to have moved beyond my comfort zone in this way, but it's at least something I can pretend to grouch at people for.

I do think that being too open with roles PMs can put pressure on the rules/role distribution of a game (which seems to have happened in this game, to some extent). This is possibly a tragedy of the commons situation, where it is fun individually to roleclaim, but if everyone does it, some games start to break. The topic of PMs in general probably deserves a well-thought post in the Meta thread, where I'd be very interested to hear some of the newer players' opinions on them in general. Or perhaps a Google poll like Kas did about what players are looking for in a game.

[Condensation]

3 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I don't know if pet peeve is the right way to say it. It would have been when I formed the opinion, but nowadays you open a PM and you basically get a roleclaim. The meta seems to have moved beyond my comfort zone in this way, but it's at least something I can pretend to grouch at people for.

That's not what I've noticed. I have gotten some roleclaims, but I do not get a roleclaim for each PM. And I like to think I can act pretty trustworthy. Even though I've never been an elim. Maybe I'll get past Gears!

Edit: In games without an elim role, that is.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Condensation

[---]

*anxious illwei noises*

Edited January 25, 2021 by Illwei

[Araris Valerian]

Well, that's another thing. I'm seeing a lot of this from the outside, since my reputation is not conducive to roleclaims happening in PMs that I'm in. That's partly why I want to hear from the wider community on the topic, and I don't necessarily think this thread is the best place for that discussion. I will say that my recent experiences that stand out are this game (the spec doc has some comments on this, if you can find them), the last LG I played (where elim!Mist got a juicy roleclaim immediately after pinch-hitting), and that LG again (where we killed Illwei for knowing basically the entire role distribution after a few cycles).

[Kasimir]

18 minutes ago, Araris Valerian said:

I don't know if pet peeve is the right way to say it. It would have been when I formed the opinion, but nowadays you open a PM and you basically get a roleclaim. The meta seems to have moved beyond my comfort zone in this way, but it's at least something I can pretend to grouch at people for.

I do think that being too open with roles PMs can put pressure on the rules/role distribution of a game (which seems to have happened in this game, to some extent). This is possibly a tragedy of the commons situation, where it is fun individually to roleclaim, but if everyone does it, some games start to break. The topic of PMs in general probably deserves a well-thought post in the Meta thread, where I'd be very interested to hear some of the newer players' opinions on them in general. Or perhaps a Google poll like Kas did about what players are looking for in a game.

Partly agreed. We both used to be (still are I suppose?) on the PM safety camp and I've been known to ask players about to roleclaim to me to shhh. And to generally spend games turtling out and ignoring PMs. (For which Claincy killed me in the AG...) I changed my views, of course, and I'd like to think they're more nuanced now. IDK. I definitely think roleclaims were rarer in early SE days - I sent Wilson and El a single screenshot which explains my general attitude as a player, even now. But I also remember in AG2, we already had some idea C2 that the Smoker distribution was abnormal. (Though Maili was in the game, so....) But claiming just like that was rare. Exceptions: Wyrm the Tineye, etcetera, but not the rule. But then, in LG7, apparently y'all were claiming in docs after the first day? I think it took Gamma, me, and Ren forever to get to that stage because we were the House of Paranoia. I do think people seem overall more willing to claim now - I just also think that to be fair....we weren't exactly paragons of PM safety either, previously. It's just very egregious in this case because of the Shadesmar Eight.

I'm still not comfortable with claiming upfront and I only got bolder with claiming at the point I had placed Poisoner targets and stopped caring if I got killed as I figured that I'd like my targets taken out. I've always had a certain 'lolwhatever' streak about claiming if I feel it's strategic - hence that QF6 time where I casually roleclaimed in a PM group with Evil!Maili.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Kasimir

[StrikerEZ]

So, I definitely have a complicated relationship with claiming in PMs.

On the one hand, I’m very much all for PM safety. It’s important to not just go all crazy with who you claim to, and you should be strategic with who you claim to. Just because you’re PMing a friend doesn’t mean that they deserve to know your role right away. They have to prove themselves worthy of it throughout the course of the game.

On the other hand...I get into PMs with people I know and am friends with and spend about a cycle before I start thinking “Hey, what if I just claimed to them?” And that’s not always the best strategy.

Anyway, the point of this is that I think it’s important to be careful with who you claim to and how many people you claim to, but it’s also not necessarily a bad thing to claim either.

[Araris Valerian]

33 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

(For which Claincy killed me in the AG...)

I had a similar experience, although I’m not sure it was Claincy that made the call in my case.

34 minutes ago, Kasimir said:

I'm still not comfortable with claiming upfront and I only got bolder with claiming at the point I had placed Poisoner targets and stopped caring if I got killed as I figured that I'd like my targets taken out.

I was also considering claiming, but really didn’t want either of the players I’d poisoned to die.

[Ashbringer]

I have a... unique perspective on how widespread claiming with the Shadesmar Eight results in certain things, but I'll save that for later. Let's just say that I am a proponent of PM safety, and agree with Kas that some claiming is good, but having everyone end up claiming results in problems.

And we can officially say more people upvoted Solemnheart becoming Lamentation than upvoted Faleast crossdressing.

[little wilson]

I think we’re only missing one person’s votes at this point, and regardless of who they vote for, it won’t impact the winners of the non-Sanderson passes. We’re giving out 4 passes this year. Those winners are @Kasimir, @Gears, @TJ Shade, and @Ashbringer. Congratulations!

GM Spreadsheet

 

Post-Mortem

This game was, quite frankly, a disaster. Part of that is our fault as GM’s - we probably shouldn’t have included all the shards in the game (even though the idea seemed so fun at the time), and we definitely should’ve locked Honor to Roshar if we were locking Odium to Roshar, contingent on Honor’s death or Roshar’s existence. But a large part was due to things out of our control, and I don’t think it’s any secret that by the end, I couldn’t wait for it to just be over.

There’s a lot I could say here. Some of what I’d planned to say in my post-mortem I’ve forgotten. Some of the rest, I’m just not sure it’s worth re-hashing from the dead doc.

First, I don’t think this game should’ve been anonymous. I think some of the issues that happened could’ve been avoided if the game had not been anonymous. Not all of the issues, by any means. But at least one of them. I feel pretty solid about that.

Two, the AG should be a simple ruleset. El’s got more to say about that, I think, but yeah, I think the AG should strictly be the simple ruleset from LG1. Maybe even bringing Tyrian Falls back - or another town on Scadrial. And then we could save the super complex games like the Shard games or KKC for a midsummer thing, every other year (not reserved like the AG, though - they’d still need to work their way through signups as usual).

Three, morning rollovers are generally a bad idea for me. Lesson learned there. No rollovers before 10 am. Maybe not even before 11 (I type this while giving a giant yawn).

Okay. Onto the rest.
 

What to Fix

Before I get into this, I want to say something: the main thing that brought the game to the state it was in by cycle 4 was out of our control. This was the cohesiveness of the eliminator team. I’m not sure why the team struggled with synergy, but outside of a couple hours here and there throughout the game, they struggled to work together. Communication and leadership were their biggest issues. 

Communication was a two-part, double whammy for them. First, they didn’t always communicate what was going on in their PMs, and second, they didn’t use PMs very much. Heron!Prudence had opened a number of PMs with different villagers and Gecko, and Gecko was just starting to use them when Heron!Prudence was shattered (this move was unintentional - if they’d known they were targeting Prudence, they wouldn’t have done it). When Lion!Prudence was able to take charge, the elims didn’t really request any PMs. Rhino ended up in a variety of PMs, but only really used the ones with the neutrals, and by the time they started using others, they’d picked up suspicion for the blocked N2 kill.

In this interim time while the OCs weren’t using PMs, the village was. They were coming together. They were getting roleclaims right and left. Had the OCs been using PMs, there’s a good chance they would’ve been included in at least some of these roleclaims and the trust circles that were starting to form. Because they weren’t, they got left out. Also because they weren’t, they didn’t really realize how much was going on in PMs and how bad the open PMs were. They didn’t feel any need to shatter Prudence, so the village was able to continue using PMs while the OCs continued to not use them.

This was a problem because the longer PMs were up, the more the village was able to coordinate. Shard games, as seen with this game, are often mechanically solvable. I’d forgotten just how much until the village started doing so in this game. We’d even cut out a number of the scans that have been in past games, but that clearly didn’t make much of a difference, since even with the few available scans they had, the village found out plenty of info.
 

This is the first big thing to fix for the future - removing the scans. I think in future, the only scan will be Ambition’s.

Another fix I like is that Cultivation can only temporarily unshatter a shard. The dead doc suggested Cultivation only being able to unshatter each shard once, but that wouldn’t have fixed the issues this game, since Prudence was only shattered the once. I think temp unshattering is probably better - that Cultivation can target a shard and make them whole for a cycle, and that’s it. Assuming they can retarget (because I wouldn’t be opposed to combining the two and saying it’s a temp unshatter that can only be used once per shard), they have to wait until the shard is shattered again to target them.

Another idea we’ve had is to remove the PM Shard completely, and make it so the only PMs available in the game are Prudence’s investiture, seons, spanreeds, the PM creation items, and Shadesmar (with Shadesmar being more limited than what it currently is in this game).

The last fix (or at least, the last fix I’m mentioning - El has others) is about the shards. First, I’d like to change some of the investiture abilities so they’re identical. Couple that with no longer telling people which Shard is investing in you, but only what you can do with the investiture, it makes it much harder for people to prove what Shard they are by investing in someone, since Shards can mimic each other.

I feel like the combination of those will fix a number of the breaks we saw or started to see in this game - though I’m uncertain if any of these fixes would’ve changed the outcome of this game, all things considered. They certainly would’ve helped and the OCs wouldn’t have been in as dire of a position as early as they were.
 

The Dumpster Fire

To anyone who reads the dead doc, you’ll see two monologues from me. Both of these monologues have to do with playstyles and how I feel the meta should regard certain playstyles/how the community should react to certain playstyles.

The first monologue was about Penguin (Stink) and the general reaction to many players regarding Penguin. This ties back into the discussion Fura brought up in the meta discussion thread back in December - that we as a community should not allow others to be bullied into changing their playstyles when the playstyle is just annoying  to others rather than an active problem.

Stink's playstyle was not a problematic playstyle, and I think if people had given him more of a chance, they would’ve realized that the mimic/bumblebee playstyle shows actual promise. The problem is that despite people quickly realizing what he was doing, many wrote it off as low effort and annoying. While they kept this statement of annoyance out of the thread for the most part, they didn’t hesitate to mention it in PMs or on the Shardworlds. And sometimes, the views about the way he was playing were told right to his face (like when Lion didn’t like the way he was playing and refused to approve PMs for him because of it).

Stink is one of the chillest SE players we have, so he didn’t realize this was going on until he died. Because he’s so chill, the grievances people voiced aren’t going to affect his chillness in future games. But watching this happen was particularly stunning to me, given the conversation in the meta discussion thread.

To quote the end of my monologue:

Quote

We’ll never actually be a community that accepts all non-harmful playstyles until we stop mentioning our annoyances with the way others play, when those other playstyles aren’t harmful. We won’t actually be that accepting community until we’re standing up for our fellow players when others do get annoyed with the way they’re playing. And we can’t claim to be the accepting community we think we are when those things aren’t happening.

Stink as a player might not care about this, and I know that if this game hadn’t been anonymous, people probably would’ve shrugged and continued on without saying anything about his playstyle. The reason this happened is because it was anonymous so no one knew who Penguin was when he first started to post. Which tells me that the only reason we accept certain somewhat chaotic playstyles that aren’t harmful is because of who is doing them. If it’s a new player, they can get hit with the grievance - with it being annoying. They can feel pressure to change.

This isn’t how it should be.
 

But moving past Penguin, there’s the other issue. The flipside to this one. We should strive to accept all non-harmful playstyles. 

What should we do about harmful ones?

I am, of course, speaking about Dingo. My other monologue. I think everyone basically knows what happened there. Blackmail.

Here’s the problem: no one really did anything. Outside of the neutrals and Ostrich, no one really cared enough to try to convince Dingo to stop. When Elephant first mentioned it to the thread, some people said hey maybe don’t do that. When Dingo doubled down the next turn and threatened Elephant in the thread there was a bit bigger of an outcry, but no one really defended Elephant. No one defended the community. No one defended the idea that blackmail is a major detriment to a person’s enjoyment of the game.

Not until Gorilla stepped up and convinced people to. Even then, there were people who were doubtful about the genuineness of the defense. They felt like it was a ploy by the neutrals to get them to remove a nearly-confirmed villager. Some felt like it was an appeal to emotion and they were being manipulated by Gorilla, another neutral.

Here’s the thing: the alignments shouldn’t have mattered there. Whether Elephant was neutral, evil, or village, that was the time to take a stand against harmful playstyles, and honestly, I’m glad that a stand was taken. The votes on Dingo and that stand are not sad. The only sad thing is that the village waited so long to do something about the blackmail that it was too late in the turn for Dingo to defend himself.

Don’t apologize for taking that stand. Apologize for not doing something earlier. Apologize for not saying something the turn before, when everyone was fixated on Ostrich while a villager was threatening a neutral and that neutral had said so in thread and no villager did anything to stop it. Apologize for that. But don’t apologize for doing something about something harmful that was happening in the game. That’s the wrong message to take from this.

 

And that leads me to what will probably be the last thing I have to say in this post-mortem.

Chaotic playstyles. Dingo mentioned in the dead doc that he likes to play chaotically. That’s fine; a lot of people do. Chaos playstyles aren’t inherently problematic, but they can cause a lot of problems, especially in Sanderson Elimination.

See, I mentioned this in the QF50 aftermath thread but I’ll reiterate it again here. This community is about prioritizing fun over aggressively competitive play. It’s about focusing on the overall fun of the community rather than your own personal fun. This often leads to people having a lot of fun in the games, because everyone is having fun.

Throwing chaos in is fine, so long as you remember that these games are social. This is something I was talking to Kas about recently. He mentioned that chaotic players tend to struggle with walking the social line - How do you remember while you’re having fun that you’re also a part of a community?

When you’re wrapped up in levels of chaos, it can be hard to remember that there are other players. There are other people out there being impacted by what you are doing.

I’m reminded of one of the most chaotic SE players we’ve ever had: Gamma Fiend. He doesn’t play anymore and hasn’t for years, but Gamma loved chaos. As an example, in LG4, he was a villager and I was an elim. He knew I was evil, and he knew the game was broken and the elims were gonna lose, but we got into a bit of a pinch and needed to ditch our sword for a cycle or two. So we passed it off to Gamma and he held onto it for us. Just helped us out a bit. It didn’t impact the course of the game at all - though a lot of villagers were really angry with him after the fact. He didn’t care. He saw a way to help out the losing side and help them have a bit more fun when they were being utterly crushed and he took that opportunity. 

Because while Gamma liked chaos, he also knew that SE is about social interactions. It’s about other people. It’s not about him and the chaos he can create to add to his own personal fun in the game. It’s about how the chaos he creates will add to the fun for others. Will it increase another’s fun? Or will it decrease that fun?

I feel like that’s something that’s missing in many of the current chaotic playstyles. The games aren’t just about you, and playing chaotically shouldn’t be just about how you feel about that chaos. You need to remember that there are other people, and how your particular brand of chaos is impacting their enjoyment of the game.

If your chaos is adding to that enjoyment, awesome. But if it’s detracting from it, you should probably change it up.

-

It’s almost 1 am and I’m tired. I’m glad this game is over. I’m glad people had fun, and for those that struggled there in the middle, I think most of them were able to scrape together some semblance of fun over the past couple cycles and I’m glad for that too. I wish I could say that I’m glad I ran it, but that would be a lie. I am glad I get my mornings back though - that I get to recover from any sleep deprivation. Maybe my resting heart rate will drop back down to healthy levels again. I’ll cross my fingers.

[---]

I want to say that I'm sorry about how I behaved with my Shard, and I'm sorry that I hurt people with it.

I'm not going to say that I was the worst option for Prudence. I originally had that in this statement. I don't think I made the absolute best choices I could have made, but it's hard to look at things objectively when you're in the middle of things, and as I said before, the only thing I can do now is try and make sure I don't make those mistakes in future games. The best I can do now is try and be more self aware of my actions in the future, as they were quite hypocritical, in more ways than one.

--

I would also like to ask something: If I ever say anything in a PM with you, or in the thread to you, or anywhere to you, and it really bothers you, or hurts you, please let me know.
I have a hard time trusting people on what they say in the middle of games when the whole point of the game is about lies and manipulation and whatnot, but I also can't correct my actions if I don't understand I'm doing something that is hurting people.
A lot of what I say are jokes. Especially in PMs, probably at least 75% of what I say is completely intended as a joke, and I apologize if it doesn't come off that way.

[StrikerEZ]

24 minutes ago, little wilson said:

 

I think we’re only missing one person’s votes at this point, and regardless of who they vote for, it won’t impact the winners of the non-Sanderson passes. We’re giving out 4 passes this year. Those winners are @Kasimir, @Gears, @TJ Shade, and @Ashbringer. Congratulations!

GM Spreadsheet

 

The link links to the first post, which hasn’t been edited yet.

In other news, congrats to everyone who won a pass! Hope you can fend off everyone who’s gonna be asking you for your passes.

[---]

4 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

The link links to the first post, which hasn’t been edited yet.

(if you look at the link then there's the spreadsheet link hidden in the middle of it for some reason :P)

[StrikerEZ]

4 minutes ago, Illwei said:

(if you look at the link then there's the spreadsheet link hidden in the middle of it for some reason :P)

Huh?? I don’t even know what this means.

[---]

4 minutes ago, StrikerEZ said:

Huh?? I don’t even know what this means.

smh I'm too hard to understand :P. If you copy the link, then you'll see that after the last / it says:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SB6Jou9qtagWDVfD2Bir4vXp4fG2In6lQe0GPXix0JM/edit?usp=sharing

Which- I don't understand quite what happened here :P. but yeah :P.

I'll just uh

nvm

Edited January 25, 2021 by Illwei

[Haelbarde]

58 minutes ago, little wilson said:

Here’s the problem: no one really did anything. Outside of the neutrals and Ostrich, no one really cared enough to try to convince Dingo to stop. When Elephant first mentioned it to the thread, some people said hey maybe don’t do that. When Dingo doubled down the next turn and threatened Elephant in the thread there was a bit bigger of an outcry, but no one really defended Elephant. No one defended the community. No one defended the idea that blackmail is a major detriment to a person’s enjoyment of the game.

Not until Gorilla stepped up and convinced people to. Even then, there were people who were doubtful about the genuineness of the defense. They felt like it was a ploy by the neutrals to get them to remove a nearly-confirmed villager. Some felt like it was an appeal to emotion and they were being manipulated by Gorilla, another neutral.

 

Just wanted to give my perspective on the events as they unfolded.

If I'm reading things right, this was  Elephant's initial post about the threat from Dingo on Day 5. Lion responded immediately about not antagonising the neutrals, based on the Night 4 discussion about trust groups. Later on in the cycle, Elephant votes on Dingo, and makes one more comment about it here.

Not being privy to any communications in PM or docs about anything going on, it seemed like Dingo had made the threat, but Lion and Elephant had said it was a bad idea, and it looked like that was that - Elephant's follow up comments seemed more jokingly referencing a single event rather than an ongoing thing. On top of that, in my mind, Dingo didn't have a credible threat. Yes, they were Ruin, but while Ruin could destroy planets in a way to help Autonomy, choosing to destroy planets Autonomy had already visited isn't stopping Autonomy from winnign. Of course, Ruin's investee has a kill, but to use that against Autonomy would require finding someone with out a shard (non-trivial), that you can trust (harder), and that you could convince to attack Autonomy (to my mind, practially impossible). 

Trying things is fine, but I'd hope that once you get a little push back from people, you'd back off and leave it at that. So as of Day 5, given the available info, I didn't see the need to act further. 

Day 6 then, Dingo suggests the idea of threatening the neutrals for info again. Axolotl and Lion again are quick to say they're not okay with that (although they don't specifically address blackmail). But no votes are placed on Elephant, or any of the other neutrals. So again, to my mind, there's no credible threat to the neutrals, and again players have said no to the idea, and no one has supported Dingo's idea. To me, based on what's been in thread, we have a villager tunnelling on an idea they've had that no one else is interested in persuing, and they've said as much. From a spectator's point of view, it doesn't seem so different from when you've a player who's had a bad gut read on you the whole game, repeats it a bunch, but nothing happens about it because the rest of the thread doesn't really agree.

So when we get Gorilla's message about the blackmail, this is the first we're hearing about any threat to Gorilla, and it's the first indication to appear in thread that there's a credible threat associated with it. This, combined with the neutrals seeking support via PMs, is what communicated that something actually dangerous was happening. I assumed that based on this response, that Dingo must have made on going threats in PMs or docs, or had made their threat credible by claiming a kill item or some such thing. And from there we have the large response from everyone in thread to the issue. 

---

Now, having now read the Nalthis C5 doc, the comments came on very strong, and I can very much see why Elephant felt like the threat was credible. Best I can tell from Taldain C5 is that there were in fact threats happening in PMs too as I can't see where Gorilla is threatened in thread or in doc. 

I guess my point with all this is I don't think that what was observed in thread prior to Gorilla's post C6 warranted any stronger a reaction than "Hey, threatening people for intel is not okay". And sure, no one said that specifically, but some players did discourage Dingo from going after neutrals further. Without access to the docs or PMs, there wasn't reason for anything else to be done - if intervention was needed, that to me is a place where the GMs should highlight what is going on to the IM, and have the IM message Dingo that what they're doing isn't okay. 

When hints of the seriousness of the blackmail came to thread, I still think (as I expressed in thread) that it was an over the top response to have lynched Dingo - we should be able to have a discussion in thread, and explain why blackmail is bad for the game, and for SE culture in general. As Axolotl pointed out, our lynching of Dingo had our actions being in the same ballpark as what Dingo was - immediately excluding someone from playing for a mistep before they could explain themselves and potentially apologise. And as seen in the dead doc - had Dingo been able to get on and respond, they would have apologised, and we could have moved on with the game without needing to lynch Dingo for what they'd done. 

 

[Quintessential]

5 hours ago, little wilson said:

Before I get into this, I want to say something: the main thing that brought the game to the state it was in by cycle 4 was out of our control. This was the cohesiveness of the eliminator team. I’m not sure why the team struggled with synergy, but outside of a couple hours here and there throughout the game, they struggled to work together. Communication and leadership were their biggest issues. 

If only I hadn't died C1...  

Out of curiosity, who were my fellow elims? I know Plum was Ash and I'm pretty sure Taupe was Lotus, but who were Scarlet, Fuchsia, and Coral?

Also, @Condensation now that all the votes are in I suppose it's fine to say that my original guess for you was Pearl Chameleon, but I have no idea whether that's actually right lol

[Straw]

18 minutes ago, Quinn0928 said:

Out of curiosity, who were my fellow elims? I know Plum was Ash and I'm pretty sure Taupe was Lotus, but who were Scarlet, Fuchsia, and Coral?

The elim team was Swan (Devotary), Ostrich (Joe), Crocodile (Quinn), Rhinoceros (Ash), Octopus (Mist), and Gecko (Lotus).

[Ookla-son-son-Ventyl]

Hello! I didn’t really pay attention to anything after life Night 6, so I have no clue how we got to this situation, but I’m happy we won! Also, congrats to the four pass winners! I hope you enjoy them and make some crazy non-Sanderson games! (If you ever don’t feel up to making a game, I could be persuaded to make one in your steed... ).

Anyways, if you hadn’t guessed by Elbereth saying Dingo had a chaotic playstyle, I was the humble Niru Drash. So, I’ll be quick with my points and say I’m very sorry towards Elephant. To make this post easier for me to type out, I’ll just paste my rant in from the dead doc. Some of my opinions might be controversial and whatnot, but these were thoughts I had after my death.

Spoiler

First off, I definitely know that I took the whole blackmail too far. I admit this; I am the mainly the one responsible for this whole situation. However, I do not think all parties handled it in a good way. This outcome was not the best, this is partly due to the unfortunate timing of things happening in my real life not letting me be able to respond for most of the turn. As the first day of the turn, I was only on at the beginning and unable to get back on because my family was having a movie night. Then today, we went out for a family breakfast, which I did not check the Shard before going to. I didn’t get home until around 10:40ish CT, and I didn’t check the Shard until 11ish. 

 

I think though, that every person involved could’ve done something better to avoid the outcome. Obviously, I could’ve not blackmailed Elephant from the get go. Elephant could’ve talked to me about how I was ruining (no pun intended) their experience instead of voicing to the thread what was happening in the Nalthis doc, which started the outcry that leads to me being removed. The moderators could’ve stepped in in the Nalthis doc, while I was still on, to tell me that it’s not considered good form to blackmail in SE, something which my relative newness had not yet informed me of. Of course, this would’ve never happened had I not started blackmailing in the first place.

 

Anyways, I disagree with you, Wilson. I don’t think removing me was the best way to go about this. Sure, it’s an effective way to go about it. But, you want to know what my first thought was when I saw the writeup. I felt like I was being targeted by the moderators, for doing something I would’ve readily apologized for. My next thought was, “I’m sick and tired of being lynched when I can’t defend myself. I honestly don’t know why I still bother playing this game.” So, you said earlier that you tried to make the writeup as unbiased as possible. Well, I’m going to be blunt. You definitely failed at that. All in all, I can only say that I’m disappointed in both myself and everyone involved in this. 

 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this could’ve ended better. I think Hyena made a good point in what they’ve said this turn. The village should’ve waited for me to get back online, yet, few did. I’ve stated my displeasure at being removed while inactive before, and I’m sure multiple people had guessed at my identity before this, but the fact that no one thought, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t kill this guy for a meta/playstyle reason while he’s not online to defend himself and/or apologize?” Is honestly something that makes me want to stop playing this game. I think some of the problem arose from this being an anon game, too. People couldn’t have been sure that it was me who was Dingo, though I’m not sure if it would’ve changed the outcome. Ugh, this is just a terrible situation that highlights the problems of online games. If I’d been online, I would’ve apologized and stopped the blackmailing, and then I’d still hopefully be alive. 

 

Sorry about that last paragraph being so much of a rant. 

One more thing, Wilson. I think this  “Kill him. Stat. Show him you’re not okay with this. It’s not that hard." - little wilson. Is not okay. What you are saying here is basically the same as reacting to violence with violence. All that does is create more amonosity. Which I think it has indeed down. This may just be conflicting ideals, but I generally try to be more pacifistic when problems arise. Whether this is a result of me trying to be a good person or my non confrontational personality, I can’t say, but regardless, I disagree with your views on this matter. I’m not saying you shouldn’t punish a player, but to encourage the players—even if not directly—to not give me time to get back online and defend myself, is irresponsible as a moderator in my opinion. Sure, you can take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I think just because I was the spark that lit this flame doesn’t mean my thoughts on the matter are irrelevant. If I had been given time to get online and apologize, which I most definitely would’ve done, this whole situation would’ve ended with a nice ribbon instead of a piece of bloody sinew. 

 

If you think I’m trying to not take the blame for this, know you are wrong. I accept that I caused this issue, but I was not the one that caused it to end the way it did. If i’d been here to see that my actions were causing this much trouble, I would’ve stopped and apologized. Hell, I’ve been the victim of a similar case where I was essentially being bullied by another player, if you or Elephant had simple told me that what I was doing was making the game less fun, I would’ve stopped right away. You did not, however. So, yes, I am to blame for the issue arising. But I should not be blamed for being discontent with how it ended, that falls on you, Wilson. When I submitted the action to destroy Nalthis, you had the perfect opportunity to step in and tell me that what I was doing was not acceptable. You did not, however.

Alright, that’s a long one, so read at your own volition.

[Elandera]

Good game everyone! Though I mostly checked out after I died, it was still interesting to observe when I was around.

@Araris Valerian, I had you pegged from the moment you asked for no PMs. I so desperately wanted to give you all the PMs as a result (not just one-on-one PMs with everyone either), but I didn't want to put in the work for all of those combinations and felt somewhat bad for making the GMs have that many PMs as well (though I know they'd have been on board completely with the trolling). Then the elims killed me before I could give into the chaotic voices in my head.

@Illwei, thank you, Nu!Pru/PruTwo for guarding Prudence and keeping it alive, but I'm reclaiming it. As OG!Pru, I'm staking my claim. I'd like it back now.  

6 hours ago, little wilson said:

Heron!Prudence had opened a number of PMs with different villagers and Gecko, and Gecko was just starting to use them when Heron!Prudence was shattered

I opened all those PMs because I was suspicious of Gecko and wanted a chance to talk with them myself, but felt it wouldn't be prudent to just open a one-on-one with them and me alone. Part of me wishes I'd just claimed, but like many older players (mostly Araris), I hold to PM safety and don't like mass roleclaims. It's hard to break that ingrained distrust of everyone. Unfortunately, the elims killed me () before I could do much in the way of subtle info-fishing. Luckily, Gecko still died early enough for me to be satisfied there.

Congrats to the village. You all did a great job working together and getting rid of Odium's circle. I look forward to the next year of more backstabbing games and fun!

[Mat]

Congrats to the pass winners!!! What will it take for you to give one to me  

I'm happy to say that I managed to guess nearly everyone correct that I attempted to guess (admittedly with help), but the ones I couldn't were Sart, Elandera, Eternum, xino, and Books, I believe. So good job to them for staying anonymous  

I don't really have any other thoughts about the other issue than what I said as Axolotl. But I do regret calling out Stink so hard in the beginning of the game.

@Kasimir I really do think we're fated to cage-shuffle-squat at the beginning of every game, anon or not. It's happened every single time