Long Game 76: At the Forests of Madness

[Mat he/him]

Our minds were burned with something which will never let us breathe easily again…

Typical Threnodite drama.

Philico crouched in the Forests of Hell, keeping the Elder Things at bay as he had done for the entirety of the trip. While the power and corruptive force of the Things had driven Danforth and the others past insanity into something else, where they were held captive by the whims of the Things, Philico lassoed that power and kept it in check. Controlled it. Made a… Connection with it, so to speak.

He could breathe just fine, too.

His accomplices, however, were doing worse than not breathing easily, that is not breathing at all. One by one Philico had watched them die… Vonne from a stray Spell that Fade himself had cast, then Fade for being seen killing in the night, and most recently Danforth- caught up in his own glory and too far gone to show any symptoms of insanity. It was just a process of elimination for the expeditioners.

But Philico…

Philico still lived. And hopefully still would, when this all was over. It had to come down to just one other. The one called Azmine. He had come to Philico earlier in the trip, confiding to be an Expert in the behavior and aggressiveness of the Shades. It would be tough to kill that one. Easier, now that Philico had stuck a knife through Silence Montane’s throat- a feat only possible because of poison he had so callously slipped into her drink the day before- but still difficult.

Philico grinned. This… would be a challenge. He liked a challenge.

The grin turned to a giggle.

Philico paused.

Perhaps he was a bit crazy after all.

Shaking his head, Philico rose from his resting point. He had to pay a visit with the expeditioners’ favorite professor.

*   *   *

As he crept through the underbrush, surroundings completely encased in shadow, Philico was again glad he didn’t see like humans did. Or didn’t, in this thick of darkness. His steps were silent, leaves not even making a sound.

A few moments later, a small light appeared in between some trees, inside of a tent and illuminating only the form of it. Approaching a bit closer, Philico could see the shadowed forms of two people inside, in hushed conversation. That horrible reporter, Starlingo, and William Dyer himself.

Once Philico got within a few feet of the tent, a sharp whine pierced his head suddenly, as if a high-pitched siren went off in between his ears. The Elder Thing within him shriveled up and screamed a silent plea of pain. The pendant was doing its work.

Philico gritted his teeth and stepped forward, carefully positioning himself so as not to be in the beam of light steadily shining from inside the tent. He couldn’t have Dyer spotting him prematurely- or at all, if possible.

Philico paused right outside of the corner of Dyer’s tent, and reared back his foot, planning to deliver a swift kick with the hope of breaking the pendant. Perhaps the whine was messing with his thinking, though, because that was a terrible idea- a fact which he caught mid leg-swing. He needed something… better. Far better.

Still being as quiet as sleeplessly possible, Philico turned so his back was to the tent and began to weave a little something out of himself. Hordelings sewed together to form a dark and evil shape, a different, more natural evil than his own from the Things. Not that it was natural, just… more so.

Philico sent the Shade imitation forth, ripping open the tent doors and grabbing Starlingo by the hair. She didn’t have time to scream. To her, he was sure, it felt like the very spirit of existence was being stolen from her body when in reality nothing was happening. But suggestion was a powerful thing, especially on this planet. When you thought a Shade was eating your soul, a Shade was eating your soul.

Dyer futilely tried to wave Philico away, but he held fast. Any moment now, Starlingo would collapse, thinking herself dead… perhaps she would be dead…

The whine suddenly grew to a screech. Philico screamed, a feeling like a nail being pounded into his head shook his whole body. He recoiled, his Shade self rigid and unmoving as he writhed on the ground. Philico never would have attacked directly if he had known that Starlingo had the pendant, if he had known the pain that would come. Briefly, Philico saw Dyer also on the ground, hands to his ears.

Starlingo then began to chant, a ritual that sounded ancient and made-up, but with the power that filled the air it clearly wasn’t. Philico’s Shade section moved to cover Dyer, encasing the man in pitch black hordelings. His scream was drowned out by the energy that vibrated existence as the spell finished. It was as if the world was a mirror that someone had just shattered.

Philico fled.

The pain was too much, but he managed to dissipate into hordelings and blanket away, about two hundred yards out from the tent. There he took human form once more. Panting as he watched Dyer’s tent. They’d never be able to see him from here, if they had survived.

What in the name of Adonalsium had just happened?

“I see you, Philico. You cannot hide from the magics that gave you power.”

Philico cursed. Starlingo had survived after all.

“Sally?” He said, trying to sound natural. “I was just-”

“You killed Sally with your Shade,” Starlingo said. What? That doesn’t make any sense. “This body is sustained by a sacrifice. A life taken to the void.”

Philico tried to make sense of what had happened, but he was truly at a loss. Who was he talking to? Or what? Had the Evil taken control of Starlingo’s body, coming back to taunt him?

He scrambled back, suddenly afraid of the reporter. She continued, speaking in a crazed voice that rose high above the trees.

“As I have been marked with an Elder Sign, I mark you, Sleepless One, for death. I will have your lifeforce, and with it, the knowledge how to use this gift.” She raised her hand, and a symbol branded on it glowed in the night. She smiled, but there was no warmth within.

Oh no you don’t, witch. My lifeforce isn’t done with me yet.

Philico split in two, one horde rushing towards Starlingo and the other fleeing back to the main camp. Simultaneously he encased Starlingo as well as swept into his tent, snatching up the leftover Fenweed and rushing back out into the night. Quintus poked his head out of the tent. “It’s Philico!” he said aloud.

Azmine and Szeth emerged from theirs as well. Philico was long gone before they could give chase, leaving them staring at each other in the darkness, knowing they were at long last safe.

Philico’s hordelings burned at Starlingo’s touch, some getting fried completely and falling to the ground as dead as anything else the Elder Things touched. Starlingo fell to the ground, screaming a mantra of life and death and starlight that Philico ignored. He then left her on the ground, hordes reconveining, rushing back into the heart of the Forest. Towards to Perpendicularity.

He was done with Threnody, but he had unfinished business here. Threnody likely wasn’t done with him. The Elder Things were both a nuisance and an ally, but their influence only went as far as the planet they resided on. When he left, they would leave him.

He thought back to Starlingo, shrieking on the ground as she tried to eat Philico’s life.

Yes… Perhaps that was for the better after all.

---

*   *   *

---

Did I fool anyone? 

Whew, what a game. There's lots I could say here... I could point out how the ruleset seemed village favored; how not a one of us was caught outside of mechanics (Araris and I through DtH, Vonne through a Spellbook misfire, Quinn through Insanity [or the lack thereof]) and probably some other things I'm forgetting. And I guess by saying this I'm pointing it out anyway :P.

But honestly? I don't care, because I had a blast this game. @Araris Valerian, @Quintessential, and @vonnegut were awesome teammates and so fun to work with. I made more elaborate and last-ditch plans then any other game, ever- except maybe LG72- but even then I'm not sure. And though they didn't work, though RNG really hated me this game, it probably was one of my favorites, up there with the aforementioned LG72 and MR42, my first. So thanks to @Elandera, @The Unknown Order, and @Devotary of Spontaneity for making that happen.

Now, that's not to say I wouldn't change some of the rules around a bit for a (re)rerun  I do think Discover the Hidden needs a downgrade if it's still gonna be made available to everyone. Danforth not going insane ended up being more of a crutch, which was something I wasn't expecting, so I might change that too. The Spellbook was our own error, so that's fine. Overall I thought it was a pretty good balanced game- it did come down to the wire, after all- but the little bit about all 4 of us being killed through mechanics one way or another is a statistic that exists  The village does deserve some more wins, but they've taken 3 out of the last 4 LGs, so maybe it's time the elims got one back 

Thanks to all my PM buddies for making it fun, too. I very much enjoyed your roleclaims. Along with narrating basically everything you said to me into the elim doc  Which, by the way, is 82 pages. That's what you get with me/Araris/Quinn 

Speaking of which, I need to read the dead doc. I hear it's shorter, but I don't expect it to be too much shorter, that'd be disappointing. I may comment on some of those things idk.

Final thoughts would be 1) I need to stop losing elim games via mechanics, we're up to at least 3 now xD and 2) I need to survive more games, too. Only lived through 5 smh.

Off to read the dead doc...

8 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

Also, this game marks the first time I read my GM PM too fast and missed my role (I saw Silver Bones but not Shade Expert). Some of my mild pessimism in the elim doc would likely have been mitigated had I not made that error :/. Despite it being very much my fault, I do think GMs should post all elim player and role info in the elim doc before the game starts, since a game could potentially get rather imbalanced by someone making a similar error.

It's kind of funny though- the game might have gone worse for us if you had read it right. We probably would have had you protect one of us submitting the kill, meaning that me or vonne would have been scanned even earlier- I think both of us were scanned N1  So it all works out.

Edit: Read the dead doc and commented on things, but lost it all trying to edit it into this message :P. I approve of all the mechanic changes though, and it was nice to see that was a big discussion point early on.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Matrim's Dice

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

3 hours ago, Matrim's Dice said:

Did I fool anyone? 

You fooled me for a turn because I got you and Books' alignments mixed up 

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

Good game everyone! Anyone know when the next sign ups are going up?

[Mat he/him]

1 hour ago, The Unknown Order said:

You fooled me for a turn because I got you and Books' alignments mixed up 

I meant when I said that there was one more elim, but hey that’s good too  

[The Unknown Medallion he/him]

4 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Good game everyone! Anyone know when the next sign ups are going up?

No, but you can ask in the Gm signups thread, I'm sure they'd be grateful to have someone other than me pestering them about it.

As for the game, I was super busy towards the end, but I enjoyed helping all the same. My thanks to @Elandera for doing most of the work. @Devotary of Spontaneity, luckily, you didn't need to talk much, but you provided some great insight.

To the rules, most of my opinions are reflected in the doc, something that I would like to highlight: The elims were almost guaranteed to lose a person to shades this game. Nearly all of them died to mechanics that weren't shades because they got lucky that a village crossover (Dannex) took the hit from them. That means five mechanics that could have caused elim death, four of which happened. That's what I wanted to say about shades, now I'll talk about Danforth and Dyer. The proposed solutions to Danforth are very interesting and I agree with all of them, but if those changes were made, Danforth would just be a more powerful Dyer. I don't know what changes would be made to Dyer if anything, that's up to someone who's smarter than me, but I wanted to point that out.

[dannnex male]

First of all, GG elims. Very well played, but bad rng was your downfall. =P 

Second of all, I’m reading through the elim doc and uhh

Quote

Apparently Archer tried to ship Illwei and Dannex in his PM with Az? Lol

I would very much like some context for this XD

[Illwei]

1 hour ago, Dannex said:

I would very much like some context for this XD

There legitimately isn't

[Ashbringer he/him]

Silence Montane was glad it was in poor taste on Threnody to burn their dead.

Well, she didn't need to use that name anymore, did she? Her face shifted, turning into what had become AraRaash's standard appearance. He wasn't a very good kandra, was he? He'd only gathered a few new faces... although the White Fox was quite a catch. 

"Alright, time to go," she - he? -  said, sealing the wound in his throat with a thought. "Shades aren't as fun as I thought. And we couldn't find one of those... well, who knows."

And no Eldritch Apocalypse, Faleast thought. Right.

"Yeah... seeing what those did to Philico, maybe not the best idea. Though we did get them close. Not out, but close. That was the plan, right?"

If Lamentation wanted a look at the Elder Things, he got it. We didn't get much besides the face, unfortunately... should have tried to get one of those Spellbooks.

"Maybe," AraRaash said. He was thinking. Thinking in his little place, where Faleast couldn't see.

So where next?

AraRaash giggled. "Wherever the world takes us... and I have a hunch as to where it's going next."

They hadn't accomplished much on Threnody. An Evil was marked, and Lamentation had seen enough... but AraRaash had a few other ideas in mind.

 

 

Lamentation set down his glass. So the Sleepless had been their last culprit. This task was complete.

Silence's Waystop was in a bit of disarray. William Ann had put up a valiant effort trying to run the place herself, but she had just gotten the unfortunate news of the death of her mother. Silence had prepared for this, of course, but she had an... aura of invincibility around her. One that fooled many a visitor, and even more so her own children. It was a... sad sight, at that. A lamentable one. And one Lamentation had seen play out, over and over, even with this very pair... no matter which one of them was first to pass, the reaction between mother and daughter was quite similar.

Lamentation sometimes wondered what that loss felt like. For all of his might, he could not break the barrier into his own memories from before his first rebirth, and his memories between then and his Ascension were... not entirely unpleasant, but nothing he felt attached to. That was what made him what he was. A Shard of Mourning, with nothing to mourn... he knew the concept well, and there were... regrets, of his. But looking at the sheer look of anguish on the faces of William Ann, and Sebruki barely holding herself together... he knew something was missing. A last piece, perhaps. His sifting through Ambition's shattered form had found a few bits and pieces he had no analogue for. Perhaps there were yet more.

His thoughts turned to his Harbingers. They had done well, if they had been unable to 'survive' their encounter with the dark. Someone asked him, for drinking money in exchange for a story. He absentmindedly paid the man. Faleast was holding together well, but AraRaash... he was hiding things from his Twinmind. Intriguing things. Ambitious ones, at that...

"Earnest? You don't want to hear that same old story again, do you?"

Lamentation nodded, half to himself.

Perhaps it was time. Time to go... back. Nebulousness served him and his Harbingers well, but it was time to solidify, to strengthen. The Elder Things had given him a few ideas on Evil... Good was well taken care of as well. He could initiate a cycle now.

And it was time to correct one of those regrets of his. 

[Archer he/him]

Wooooooo! Good game, all. 

-Always nice to see your name mentioned 252 times in the elim doc. And only half of it was discussion of when to kill me! 

-This game was phenomenal. Thanks, GMs and IM, who I see also single handedly filled out the dead doc. And made a nifty post count chart! 

-Nice note, Gears. Sorry I had to divert credit away from you for a bit. 

21 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

 

@Archer, I loved your RP character this game. Thanks for the smiles!

-Thank you, and thank you to everyone who RPed with me in PM's (Dannex, Jondesu, and the elim team). RP PM's are something I've wanted to do for a while, and they had the potential to dissuade PM spying on me if I'd avoided breaking character with different people. It was a fun way to actually interact with RP characters. 

4 hours ago, Dannex said:

I would very much like some context for this XD

-"Oh there you are love! I haven't seen you all week, it's like you've been avoiding me. Perish the thought! I heard that you're impressively well educated! So tell me, are you shipping Sam and Professor Lenn as much as I am??"

I am reliably informed that Azmine ghosted this hook because they didn't want to RP. :P. 

 

Some random quotes from the dead doc I like:

"I got a PM from someone named “Archer”... I’m going to respond to it?  And just act casual?  -Vonne

I am pleasantly surprised to learn that you were faking your hesitation to engage. My expectations for your next game are only slightly diminished by this gem:

"Um.  Survived execution?  That’s a thing?" -Vonne

 

"Archer is too easy to pocket smh" - Quinn

"Great, keep him alive XD" -Mat

Yes, please do. I'm an easy mark, no need to ever kill me. Useful idiot, that's meee 

 

And then there's the quote wall of Mat jinxing himself:

"What would be really bad is Szeth going insane tonight oh my goodness that would be bad XD" 

"I hope there isn’t an Elder Sign Pendant floating around"

and my personal favourite 

"Heh I hope Archer doesn’t scan me tonight -_-"

 

Some game notes:

-There was little in game reason not to have Dyer claim, catch an elim if someone falsely counter claims, or coordinate the scans if not. With a village Silence, that would have been able to seriously hinder NKs until Silence was found. I tried to avoid mayoring, going so far as to just coordinate in thread instead or not at all other times, but it'd have been nice if there was something that disincentivized that otherwise effective strat. 

-I liked having random item distribution. When Flyingbooks made their Surveyor claim, I was already more inclined to believe Quinn because they'd been on more consistently doing trustworthy things like sussing Araris (which seemed more meaningful than it was), but also I thought the GMs may have given a pendant to an elim to be trolley. The Fenweed Posion seemed like an elim item though. Or maybe that was just a lucky assumption. 

-Upon reading the dead doc I was reminded that this is a 15 person game.... Mat said 16 at some point, people corrected him, but I think I internalized the wrong number. Also, Masks aren't passive? That's useless. A lot of items weren't worth spending an action using when spying and scanning were options. 

In the last two cycles, the elims started making strategically terrible suggestions to me, but I was like, it's okay guys. I don't know how the rules work either. I won't sus you for it. *facepalm*

-In a similar vein, I've read SfSitFoH, but it's been so long that I've forgotten... everything about it. So when Mat said Silence is thematically conf town, I believed him. Why would a trustworthy fellow like him lie about a thing like that? 

-There's things I regret missing, and tweaks that can be made, but overall, this was a solid game. Well done. 

[Mat he/him]

5 minutes ago, Archer said:

And then there's the quote wall of Mat jinxing himself:

Yeahhh I should have just shut up xD I caught the first and last ones after they happened (hard not to :P) but forgot about the second.

5 minutes ago, Archer said:

In the last two cycles, the elims started making strategically terrible suggestions to me, but I was like, it's okay guys. I don't know how the rules work either. I won't sus you for it. *facepalm*

Hey, I'm pretty proud of my 'math' from D5  Seemed believable, right? 

But yeah me trying to get you to double vote was definitely this :P.

6 minutes ago, Archer said:

-In a similar vein, I've read SfSitFoH, but it's been so long that I've forgotten... everything about it. So when Mat said Silence is thematically conf town, I believed him. Why would a trustworthy fellow like him lie about a thing like that? 

For what it's worth, that was my assumption before the game started, including the part about flavor-wise village Silence. Maybe I need to reread that too. But I thought that Silence was like a generally morally correct human, right? Like doing the wrong things for good reasons kind of deal. Though Devo had a point about the Elder Things not caring who they possessed.

[Elandera she/her]

Time for some GM Thoughts!

First of all, I wanted to give a shout out to the elim team. Despite so many odds stacked against you, your teamwork was incredible. You came within a cycle of winning multiple times, even if you didn't quite see it. I also want to apologize to you all. I probably shouldn't have run this game, considering how much time I had available (represented in my lack of RP writeups starting so near the beginning). I made it work (barely), but I couldn't pay that much attention to the elim doc or PMs in general. Especially in the last week or so.

22 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

I do think GMs should post all elim player and role info in the elim doc before the game starts, since a game could potentially get rather imbalanced by someone making a similar error.

This is a very good point, and I would recommend this to any GM. I normally try to fill in the gaps after about the first 24 hours or so, but it would be so easy to list that information when creating the doc in the first place. This goes back to my available time over the course of the game.

Now on to the rest.

If you think this game was imbalanced, you should see the first run.  I really like the insanity rule in general, but the amount of influence it has on the outcome of the game is staggering. One different roll and the game could have tipped a completely different way. So while I do believe the player actions had a much bigger influence on the endgame than in LG60, it still isn't where I wanted it.

Anyways, I'll get to more of that in a bit. I'm basically going to go through all of the rules and comment on how I think it worked and what needs changed for a future run, because I do love the setting and the core mechanics of shades and insanity, but it all needs refinement.

Professor William Dyer (Governor in LG60)

Spoiler

The major change I made this game was making the double vote a passive thing. Devotary was the governor in LG60 and had the worst luck with RNG I've ever seen. But outside of that, the problem with the governor was that the vote was passive. Any vote they cast was automatically doubled. That made it way to easy to discover the Governor and open them up to the Danforth(Founder) manipulation. I do believe that was the right move.

In this game, Archer chose to reveal their role early, which made it effectively useless. They couldn't risk using it because it could be manipulated by Danforth, but I don't think that was a mechanics issue.

Aside from the power it gave Danforth (which I'll address). So of all the roles, I think this is the one I am most content with how it landed.

34 minutes ago, Archer said:

but it'd have been nice if there was something that disincentivized that otherwise effective strat

Ninja'd by Archer... smh. Making the role useless by claiming was supposed to be what disincentivized it. Obviously not enough. So I guess that is something that needs changing about this role. I'm not sure what, though.

I guess I could make Danforth and Dyer identical but just oppositely aligned. That way claiming Dyer could be sus since both do the same thing.... 

Danforth (Founder in LG60)

Spoiler

This is one role that has serious issues. I'd forgotten how key not becoming insane had been in LG60 for the discovery of the Founder. That led to Quinn basically being discovered only because she hadn't gone insane, and had no other way to prove a reason why. This was discussed in the dead doc, but I would definitely make it so they can go insane, but have the ability to keep taking actions and vote in secret. I'd also change the failure chance to closer to 10%, rather than 20%. Quinn, I think, was tied to taking actions that she knew could fail without consequence, like scanning PMs she knew didn't exist.

Then again, I might not keep the failure chance at all. I do believe giving Danforth vote manipulation is a little OP when paired with Dyer. Had Archer doubled a vote and Quinn moved that doubled vote, it would essentially give elims an extra three votes. In the future, this vote manipulation needs to go.

Overall for Danforth, it would probably work better to make their role the ability to keep acting/voting even when insane.

Silence Montane (Bodyguard in LG60)

Spoiler

First of all...

Silence. Is. Not. Confirmed. Good.

I intentionally changed this from the confirmed good Bodyguard role in LG60 because I wanted to way further away from having alignment-specific roles. Too easy, especially in recent meta of PM Unsafety, to confirm people and out the elims by mechanics alone (which was already a problem).

There was a really high possibility of me making Silence an elim. Mostly because Silence could protect from crossbows and shades. It would be way more useful for the elims than the village.

This role worked decently well, but I would still make it so they can't protect the same target two turns in a row, though. Ashbringer had the freedom to just keep protecting themselves all game. They could only be stopped with fenweed (when Matrim wasn't insane anymore), and that happened the turn they chose to protect someone else.

Surveyor (Archeologist in LG60)

Spoiler

I was sad this wasn't used more since it wasn't used basically at all in LG60. I was interested in how the transfer of items could be used in a meta where PMing is more involved. Though it wasn't used a lot, I do think I'd change the items.

For reference, the Spellbook replaced both the item Necronomicon and the action Mists of Releh in LG60. I didn't make that change until I was done adjusting the Surveyor. On a rerun, I'd remove Hidden transcript from the list and replace it with the Spellbook. Having more opportunities for Mists of Releh could have made a big difference for both teams.

I would also probably replace the Pendant with Silver Dust, especially since it wouldn't hurt to have an elim Surveyor.

Scribe (Journalist in LG60)

I don't think this role really needs adjusting. Please let me know if you disagree. It was a good change, though, to have it be an NA role, rather than a neutral.

Shade Expert (Necromancer in LG60)

Spoiler

This is another role I'd overhaul. It received an overhaul from LG60 and I don't think it worked. The Necromancer could get a PM from a dead player that was less than 100 words, couldn't reveal elim identities directly, and had a high chance of insanity. It was fun, but definitely unwieldy. Having it shift to a shade protection role works really well for the elims, but that's about it. Azmine didn't want to use his role, or reveal it, because it would seem suspicious. Why would the village need protection from Shades, after all? Not only that, but Silver Dust and Silence were things. That's a lot of shade protection for the entire game.

A few ideas I have for this one would be to make the role a smoker. In the setting, they'd be able to manipulate shade movements to conceal what a player is doing (like the magic trick idea of misdirection). Another would be to give them a night action scan (since I want to make Discover the Hidden a day action scan), with the setting being they know how to keep from attracting shade attention. I'd love input on this one.

Iron Will and Silver Bones

These are two others I probably won't change. I would definitely do distribution of them differently, though.

Discover the Hidden (i.e. My Biggest Regret)

Spoiler

Since removing Mists of Releh as a free redirect action, Discover the Hidden suddenly became the only useful thing for players to do at night. That meant scans galore. I also realized very quickly I'd left out a phrase from the LG60 rules about the scan failing when the player goes insane. That was fixed because of a piece in the Scribe's role (thank goodness), but I also knew this was still too powerful. Combine that with having a player that could prove their village alignment (glaring at you, Archer...), and suddenly mayoring was a real thing. Elims had their hands tied more than once in what actions they could take, and getting caught via a scan was inevitable. This is one reason I am considering making the Shade Expert a smoker, giving them a Surveyor, or giving the elims Pallid Masks (since they didn't end up with any through RNG). 

In the end, though, I think I'm going to take this away in favor of replacing it with a role (making the Shade Expert a scanner). That many scans flying around is bad for a lot of people who can take role-specific actions.

Speaking of which, I had fun with this action in only letting people see the target of a scan if they were scanning each other.

Listen at the Door

I think I'd get rid of this as well. It was useful for the first couple of turns, but eventually people stopped PMing a whole lot, or just sharing what was in their PMs because they knew it'd get spied on. With Hidden Transcripts still in play, I don't think this would be very useful.

Voice in the Crowd

This was used once, I believe, and only so Matrim could try to vote on Szeth without being discovered. I don't think this is a bad action, but it's just not as appealing as the other actions. If I remove LaD and DtH, this would stay, I think. Mostly to help give Dyer plausible cover for their own manipulations.

Spellbook

Spoiler

Already mentioned above, I'd make this one of the items available to the Surveyor. Only having one wasn't quite enough, though it did have the potential to be useful for the elims. Speaking of which, I think this is something I'd change about the Spellbook. I would make it a specific redirect, rather than a random redirect. Having the random target on top of the insanity chance really doesn't make the item as useful as it should be. Vonnegut should have lived much longer.

Crossbow

Spoiler

 

I am content with this one as well. Especially with the other changes to the rules, I don't think having more than one crossbow would be necessary. But that depends on the number of players.

I am also content with the rest of the items. As for distribution, it was almost entirely random. I think the only thing I tweaked was making sure the crossbow ended up with the village. Everything else, though, could have gone either way.

 

Insanity

Spoiler

 

This is another major problem area for these rules. I still love the idea of having insanity as a mechanic, but it needs to not play such a major role in the endgame. I considered changing it from the original version in LG60 to once you go insane, you can't go insane at all, but I don't think that would work. I think making a temporary/conditional immunity worked well to keep things like Devo's perpetual insanity of LG60 from happening again. Changing DtH to a day turn, so Unforgettable Horrors is the only thing that causes insanity might be a good change.

But I'm stumped on how to keep this while still fixing it. I'd love suggestions.

 

Unforgettable Horrors

I think this triggered once the entire game. If I make it the only thing that causes insanity, I might bump the chance back up to 10% like it was in LG60. But overall, this is the least broken part of the insanity stuff.

Wrath of Shades

In LG60, I had a few more kill roles (see all of the neutral roles in LG60) that would help divert the Shades away from the elims. The mechanic itself works, I think, but the protections around it need adjusted.

---

tl;dr

This game was much better than LG60, but still needs some major work. It mostly worked out, but the elims were really hobbled the whole game.

EDIT:

32 minutes ago, Archer said:

The Fenweed Posion seemed like an elim item though. Or maybe that was just a lucky assumption.

Szeth also had Fenweed Poison. It would have been just as useful for village if it weren't for the rampant scans being used as the crutch for finding elims.

33 minutes ago, Archer said:

Also, Masks aren't passive? That's useless.

Masks were passive though? There was just only one in the game. 

Edited May 17, 2021 by Elandera

[dannnex male]

Just now, Elandera said:

Scribe (Journalist in LG60)

I don't think this role really needs adjusting. Please let me know if you disagree. It was a good change, though, to have it be an NA role, rather than a neutral.

I think anonymous messages shouldn’t count as an action. With a ruleset like this where’s there’s so many actions anyone can take, there was almost always a more useful choice. I didn’t send a single message the entire game.
 

I actually think this ruleset was almost perfectly balanced. It’s very RNG influenced, but I think that’s a good thing, as most of the RNG only comes into play when a player chooses to take a risk. You have to do a lot of risk-taking, weighing pros and cons, and that’s a very good basis for a ruleset imo. 

Regarding Danforth, I actually really liked that he slowly gets mechanically revealed as the game goes on. It makes him a sorta time-bomb for the elims. They have to make use of his ability as much as possible before he gets revealed. It’s like a race against RNG. 

I think we should run this game again, almost exactly the same. Then if the same problems come up, we change things. This ruleset has potential to be a heavily rerun game imo, but I think we’d need more data before we start changing major things. But if this ruleset became a sorta “standard” for LGs, I wouldn’t be surprised. 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

16 minutes ago, Dannex said:

Regarding Danforth, I actually really liked that he slowly gets mechanically revealed as the game goes on. It makes him a sorta time-bomb for the elims. They have to make use of his ability as much as possible before he gets revealed. It’s like a race against RNG. 

I agree... kind of. The problem was really more that there were multiple such mechanics in this game. There is certainly something to be said for an elim role that has a very high likelihood of being revealed toward the endgame. Also, and I said this in the dead doc, I think we as a community need to think a bit harder about choosing to include vote manip roles in our games. I'm not sure if they are standard on other mafia sites, but they seem rather prolific here, likely due to the Rioter/Soother roles in the OG rules. An elim with vote manip essentially allows them to end the game a turn earlier than otherwise, which is often compounded by village inactivity. Given that we've had somewhat smallish games recently, I'm not sure that we need mechanics to make games end even faster. Also, the recent trend has been for more elim victories, and I think including vote manip in an elim team needs to take this into account. In my 4-game elim streak just a few games back, I think at least two of them ended with some sort of combined vote-manip and hammer to end the game prematurely.

[Mat he/him]

9 hours ago, Dannex said:

I actually think this ruleset was almost perfectly balanced. It’s very RNG influenced, but I think that’s a good thing, as most of the RNG only comes into play when a player chooses to take a risk. You have to do a lot of risk-taking, weighing pros and cons, and that’s a very good basis for a ruleset imo. 

I don't think that's a good thing, personally :P. Maybe I'm biased though. You said most of the RNG comes into play when a player chooses to take a risk; actually that wasn't true- it only happened in the case of vonne's death. All the other times we were scanned or just narrowed down, which we had zero influence on. And I guess you could claim that taking the action to scan is RNG and a risk, except for that it's an action and like every single action in the game technically had a 'risk' of going insane, so you could just replace that with "as most of the RNG only comes into play when a player chooses to take an action."

9 hours ago, Dannex said:

Regarding Danforth, I actually really liked that he slowly gets mechanically revealed as the game goes on. It makes him a sorta time-bomb for the elims. They have to make use of his ability as much as possible before he gets revealed. It’s like a race against RNG. 

The point isn't just using the manip though, and the manip is most useful in the endgame. I don't think we needed a time-bomb in this game. Basically what Araris said; it's a fun mechanic on its own but coupled with everything else was a bit... much.

9 hours ago, Dannex said:

I think we should run this game again, almost exactly the same. Then if the same problems come up, we change things. This ruleset has potential to be a heavily rerun game imo, but I think we’d need more data before we start changing major things. But if this ruleset became a sorta “standard” for LGs, I wouldn’t be surprised. 

I disagree here, if 4/4 elims get caught via mechanics I don't think a rerun would change anything there. Everyone would scan, all the elims would get caught like that, Danforth would be caught via insanity if they weren't already scanned. There wouldn't really be a difference.

THAT being said, @Elandera I really like your thoughts post, I can tell you put a lot of work into it and I appreciate that. Nothing can change that, despite the outcome, this has been one of my favorite games I've played.

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

39 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

I don't think that's a good thing, personally :P. Maybe I'm biased though. You said most of the RNG comes into play when a player chooses to take a risk; actually that wasn't true- it only happened in the case of vonne's death. All the other times we were scanned or just narrowed down, which we had zero influence on. And I guess you could claim that taking the action to scan is RNG and a risk, except for that it's an action and like every single action in the game technically had a 'risk' of going insane, so you could just replace that with "as most of the RNG only comes into play when a player chooses to take an action."

I happen to agree with Mat on this one. If I hadn't gotten lucky with the RNG, we would have wasted a turn lynching me, then Books, and THEN Quinn. The endgame would have been totally different if that dice roll had gone the other way and I hadn't gone insane. I wouldn't say that the village win depended on this, but it most certainly played a big part in the outcome of the game.

[Mat he/him]

1 minute ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

I happen to agree with Mat on this one. If I hadn't gotten lucky with the RNG, we would have wasted a turn lynching me, then Books, and THEN Quinn. The endgame would have been totally different if that dice roll had gone the other way and I hadn't gone insane. I wouldn't say that the village win depended on this, but it most certainly played a big part in the outcome of the game.

Heck, I was thinking that if the redirect with the Spellbook had hit a villager- vonne wasn't suspected at all, and that would have been a massive swing in the ratio and very well could have changed the outcome of the game. Guess we'll never know  But the Spellbook mechanic by itself isn't a bad thing, that one really was just bad luck.

[Jondesu he/him]

Fun game! Thanks @Elandera for running it, it was a good rule set I think, just happened that the mechanics allowed the Elims to end up caught partially by luck and partially by design. Mostly luck probably.

@Matrim's Dice, I wouldn’t exactly say you fooled me, but you did have me a little worried at least. I was fully prepared to continue searching for one last Elim even though I knew it was unlikely.

[Elandera she/her]

Another successful victory for the village! Congratulations go to the Expeditioners for holding off the return of the Elder Things! I do love this ruleset and hope to run it again someday with more tweaks. Maybe then it'll be balanced.  Thanks to everyone who played and made it such an enjoyable experience, and to The Unknown Order for helping me run this. It's complicated to attempt alone.

As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Devotary of Spontaneity, Elbereth, Araris Valerian, or myself, or post in the GM Signups & Discussion Thread. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. 

You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about. If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Amanuensis, STINK, Sart, Fifth Scholar, Straw, Haelbarde, and Young Bard) would be more than willing to help you out in private.

Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!