Kasimir

The real question, Jean-Guy figured, was if it was the sort of punch you dealt out at the bar or the sort of punch that got spiked at parties. The sad thing was, even that was ambiguous. He was pretty sure at least one colleague back on Scadrial had found unwanted Hemalurgic spikes in his punch. Real fun at parties.

Obviously, you've caught me. I'm the Witness Ninjaed Edited to add: Probably? Still think some cases like Aimian or Booby Trap are a bit less likely to lead to Severe Injury, so would not be my first port of call. IDK if I'd agree with Severe Injury for Aon Sheo as a possibility, since that's the death Aon, so I'd consider that less likely as well.

[OOC: That and to be fair, the Witness issue. Since we know the Witness is in the game, reminder to anyone who is Village that it is crucial we muddy the waters as far as possible. Think Winzik/Reform Spy/Tineye/Merlin mechanic all over again - if we guess right but the Elims find the Witness, we're kinda screwed anyway.] Edited to add: It's the problem with this kind of games but a necessary balance factor, I think. Village wincon is conjunctive, Elim wincon is disjunctive. Gambling on IDing the Witness right can be rough (Elims got the Tineye/Reform Spy wrong in both my games, and I don't remember a successful Witness identification in the one time I played Murder in HK with my IRL group, but that was a group used to playing A:tR so I sort of feel there's a confounding factor there.) Still, important for us to remember we can't let our guard down - IDing Assassin + Method + Evidence is half the win. Witness must be successfully concealed, which means we, too, have to go for misdirection play.

Yes, but I basically believe that this game style is different enough from standard SE I think early game confusion on how this works is perfectly consistent with either alignment (or, which we're more interested in, Assassin/Not-Assassin.) Yes. But the caveat/the point I was making is just that since we only win if one of us IDs the Assassin + Method + Evidence correctly, there is no point guessing a Method + Evidence that doesn't even fit with the player you think is the Assassin - that's just de facto/prima facie wrong and a wasted guess that doesn't help us In terms of solving, we'd really be working out PoE from Araris's clues and failed solves and going from there. Can get behind it if someone else does it, though then fact-checking sounds necessary. Feels like a lot of work and I'd rather hit the ground running based off Araris's clues. I'm lazy today I think Edited to add 2: @xinoehp512 - Lazy counterproposal: Do it at least for your own and then share. People can agree/disagree so there's an honesty check here but it also helps split the work out. It's not really helpful to us because we know our own role but hey, splitting the work makes me happy Mine:

[OOC: Not sure how this helps. The actual Method and Piece of Evidence has to come from the original five the Assassin has. So this only makes sense as a guess if you think Xino is the Assassin, which opens a whole IKYK about whether Xino would pick it after what you've said. That's low value as a guess.] Edited to add: It's too early in the game for me to feel comfortable with saying this derp clears Archer

There was always going to be a murder. Jean-Guy Chrétien was a pragmatic enough guy, and figured that this attachment to the Silverlight Police Force wasn't going to do his career any harm. Get off Scadrial, see the Cosmere a bit. Still, he wasn't used to this idea, that they were just going to sit around and wait for the murder to happen, because apparently the Ja (good for him), had some sort of secret intel that was classified above Jean-Guy's head, and suddenly all of that meant that they were going to catch the perp after the murder, rather than do a sweep and stop the murder from happening in the first place. Sort of cold, if you asked him. But Jean-Guy had started to think the Silverlighters were plain kayana. Could never trust them, those people on Silverlight. Maybe it was something about the Cognitive Realm and the melting pot of worlds that made them hard to trust. And he was one to point fingers, what with how murders were handled on Scadrial. There was a reason the old classic joke back in the good old CSF was the Scadrian village that'd cordoned itself off after a murder happened and then slaughtered half their members trying to figure out who the killers among them were. Bemused, Jean-Guy thought to himself that at least they weren't living one of those jokes right now. [OOC: I think it'd be pretty much helpful/necessary to work out a matrix to visually check for consistency with Araris's hints as a first cut PoE, though undoubtedly we won't be allowed to share the results of that matrix - @Araris Valerian / @Devotary of Spontaneity? That's going to be a next cycle problem though.]

Praise the gods Edited: Done.

AFAICT: 1. @Ashbringer - Has said he's passing? 2. @Random Bystander - No news 3. @StrikerEZ - Technically next but I take it from the fact he's asking that he's passing/willing to pass 4. @The Known Novel 5. @Matrim's Dice 6. @Elandera 7. @Karnatheon 8. @Araris Valerian (unlikely) 9. @Szeth_Pancakes 10. @Kasimir Someone on this list is going to be capable of running so I'm not going to count anyone below me to stop tagging half the GM list. That being said, if it passes to me and Steel passes, and Xino is up for it, I'm willing to pass to Xino.

From what I can read in the rules, yes. Typically the killer and accomplices have to pick the killer's method and key evidence so they will need the time, resulting in a de facto cycle zero. Meanwhile the rest of us subsequently find out how bad Araris's clue game is... Or how awful we are at getting it Edit: Until they make the pick, there's nothing really we can do anyway!

Oh, sweet Reasonable. I admire your self-discipline I can't do it, I use weird inks so love having beaters. Makes sense to me though. This is why I've been considering reconfiguring my storage system, partly to get me to use/cycle pens more.

I am surprised Hreo didn't keep the Forensic Scientist and went with the Oracle. Makes sense, but my Scene of Crime team, damnit

Just be Jean Valjean and play the game in song >>

Yeah, was momentarily tempted but have passed on it. I do have an army of cheap Chinese pens for the office though. Beaters like Delike and Hero which I won't be upset if a colleague manhandles (as happened to my Delike previously.) You stop yourself? Fair. I think Nock Co.'s website expired, but are you referring to one of those cases that convert into stands? Oooh, that's an elegant solution if you have a lot in rotation. I know a friend uses the 100 pen chest from Toyooka Craft and still has pens not in it, I don't know how she has hoarded so many >> I guess I could consider getting a small canvas box or something from Muji and just stacking my pen cases inside. Not sure.

How do you all store your pens? I'm currently looking at redoing my storage system (scattered in pen pouches and in a pen cup at the moment.)

I need a break from SE but this is the one game I've been waiting over a year for, so... Signing up as Jean-Guy Chrétien, an investigator from Scadrial who has Seen Some Drek. Edited to add: I move that all accusations be prefaced with J'accuse in keeping with the theme of this game!

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It was alright as an experiment but also I recall players at that time raising concerns that it'd be too easy to guess, especially if I committed to trying to accommodate the concerns/preferences raised. As it turned out, it wasn't the biggest of problems but it's worth noting anyway. I don't think it'd be deeply problematic to do it again, but I will note that the GM has to hard-commit to saying that there is no guarantee anything will be taken into consideration, because again, if this is predictable from the onset, then the distro has a bigger problem, so this is no solution. I received responses from players willing to accept whatever RNGesus decreed, some who wanted to be Village, and some who wanted to be Evil. No especial concerns but one especially busy player wanted that to be taken into consideration and so I weighted against a distro with that player as Evil. Players are required to not speak of it, because if they do speak of what their answers were, again, potential meta-gaming there. What is worth noting is it couldn't account for Village activity woes, but to be fair, this system wasn't really designed to catch that.

I felt the Unsnapped issue was a problem. It doesn't matter if players will get burned by that assumption in a bigger game - the point is that the assumption pays off in the game that was played and allows an immediate softclear of four players at a shot. Players will get stubborn about the weirdest things. A distro that relies on players realising an assumption is a faulty one is flimsy. I appreciate that my Elim doc rant was understandably censored, but: But I didn't get a choice about whether to actually be dropkicked over the edge into another full mental health breakdown, and given the number of jokes about converting me, it seems no one at all internalised any lesson from QF59, so while I will be careful with my words, I am no longer offering others the courtesy of avoiding this either. I will first accept I had aggravating RL factors, including a lot of deadlines and my uncle passing away. (I can't say it was unexpected, but he took a sudden turn for the worse last week, and I think by the first half of the second cycle or the second half of the first cycle, I knew it was coming.) But the fact is, I think this was an eminently predictable outcome. I called it out as being predictable the moment I received my GM PM. I'm extremely angry that I called it out as a predictable outcome and received the response that my attitude was the problem, or that I was just outright wrong that this would be the result. I don't feel very happy about being vindicated. I feel tired and angry because nothing I said in QF59 appears to have stuck with anyone in the community, despite TJ telling me the QF59 doc was a 'traumatising read.' I sign up to play SE games because they are supposed to be fun. I don't sign up for SE games because I think getting panic attacks when Aman DMs me days after I've subbed out is fun. I don't sign up for SE games because I am down for crying for hours and blanking out on everything and self-voting because I'd rather die in the game and end my suffering than continue in pain. I'm not asking for an apology. I'm going back to my starting point: if this is an eminently predictable outcome of the distro, the fact I would end up breaking and it was only a matter of when, then I think we need to question those who contributed to the situation and decide where to go from here. Do we decide that the fault lies with the player? This is an attractive view for several reasons. For one, it demands the players take personal responsibility for everything that happens. We get to say, "That's rough, buddy," and put the onus on the player. For another, we don't need to put more burdens on the GM. GMing is an onerous task and things often don't go as planned. It is 'rough' to expect a GM to be able to predict the track the game may take. I certainly didn't expect a clash between Bip and Tani in my game, or Fifth and I would not have okayed an E!Tani distro. In this world, the solution is simple. I stop playing SE. I don't say this as a threat. I say this as the most obvious solution because either I accept at some point that I can't play point even when put on a team where I'm the only thread controller in an entire goddamned Village of thread controllers and hyperactive solvers and simply pray we don't get screwed ten ways to hell by them and that the Village self-cannibalises. I suppose hope is a strategy. Or I can't accept it, and I break repeatedly, until as this game has, all joy of playing SE is destroyed for me, and I leave. There is a slightly less catastrophic path, but no less tragic, where I simply don't play games where I won't be Village, or simply ask to be hard-locked Village in every single game. This path is in my view more detrimental to SE, because having a player who is basically confirmed Village in every game basically does that, with the overall result still being my leaving. I think this is a fairly plausible set of options given Archer already raised concerns about my struggles in QF59 from a meta balance perspective. Do we decide that the GM has some responsibility? This is a counterintuitive view if you think GMs have different styles. I think the better question is: does the GM have a duty of care? Or rather: what is the duty of the GM? In the first instance, to run a game that everyone considers fun. I don't doubt it's an especial blow to a GM if a player absolutely hates your game from the get-go. Should a GM know everything? No. Because one entailment of this view is that the GM has to be aware of anything that might set a player off, and that's fairly unreasonable. But here's my question: does a GM completely run blind? Or is it responsible to? Suppose a GM runs a player with a history of vanishing from the game C2 in a powerful balancing role that requires activity. If the player does in fact vanish and the game is broken, does the blame reside solely with the player? Should this not have been an 'eminently foreseeable issue'? A GM is the Game Master. A GM is not the servant to RNG, however attractive the thought is. Do you, as a GM, run two players with exceptionally bad histories together on a small, tight Elim team? What happens if they once again conflict and IM intervention is required? Is that another foreseeable incident that could have been averted? Or is that once again something for which the GM bears no responsibility for allowing, despite the fact it was eminently predictable? I think eminently predictable incidents pose an especial challenge because they demonstrate a failure of judgement, whether in terms of raw risk assessment, or having a generous threshold of harm, or simply not actually caring. And I bring this up because if your answer to any of the above is 'sad, but it's on the players', then I'd like to see your reaction when a perfectly avoidable break happens on your watch as a GM. If your response is that this should have been averted, then my question is: could this have been? Because I never objected to being Evil. I get it's necessary. I objected to being set up for a breakdown. What else could I have done? Could I have simply immediately pinch-hit out? I could agree with this. Certainly, I should have for my mental health, but I was concerned about abandoning Bip. In addition, half my concerns with that move was precisely what was played out in the spec doc - that I argued against those who urged me to pinch-hit out because players will simply infer from that that I'm Evil and in a distribution that expects me to wrangle a hyperactive Village. Either way you look at it, that's deeply screwed on two levels: it breaks things hard from the get-go, and it also means I can't pinch-hit out if I need it without meta conclusions being drawn. You could argue that what I need to do is to learn to stop caring. I would agree with this, but I'd point out that's the sort of thing that takes time and that is less likely to happen when I'm put into a situation specifically engineered (unintentionally, but nevertheless) to dropkick me over the edge of my breaking point. I took far less time to break this game than I did in QF59. I also point out that every single deeply negative game I've experienced when Evil is going to taint my view of the next Evil game, which makes a game like this all the worse psychologically. Some people develop a deep and intense fear of dogs after a single negative encounter. Psychology do be that way. I am not going to successfully work against every single bit of baggage if every other Elim game ends up slicing deeper into the psychological scars, convincing me that being Elim is a deeply unpleasant experience. I am deeply angry and disappointed with how the situation was handled, and especially with the fact that my concerns were blithely brushed aside as a me problem. I agree that it is a me problem. I suppose the panic attacks and eventual breakdown were a me problem too. I am making this post for two reasons: 1. I think the fact this game happened and was handled this way shows that people don't give a damn about what happened to me to QF59. I am laying it out here explicitly to make it clear that if it does continue to happen, I will be aware it is not the result of not knowing or misjudgement but a deliberate choice to disregard my welfare. 2. I want to open a conversation about GMing. As I said, I don't want an apology and I'm certain the GM and IM will say on their parts one shouldn't be offered, which I'm fine with. I want us to think about whether GMs have a duty of care, and the extent to which, as a GM, you are willing to consider a distro bad for welfare reasons, or even for reasons of dynamics (see: bad player histories), or just plain pragmatics (see: key balancer role being given to a habitual inactive.)

Edited to add: To be less facetious, I've mentioned in LG91 that I've come up with a more compact version of the dueling mechanic and while it'll still resolve as a coinflip in some cases, I think it combines RP, fun, and gives player agency stronger weightage and have been considering having endgame ties resolve that way in my games going forward. I have thoughts about this game but I am not in the mental state or condition to be really able to fairly talk about this without getting extremely angry all over again.

Added + all filter functions have been fixed and I have lost the will to live after staring at the state of the filter >:(

Yeah I'd agree on this. Not declaring this made things tricky with our vague warnings not to play. We tried to remind players they are not obligated to carry their teams even when dead but I definitely know this isn't very viable. If I ever run a flipless no-death set-up again, I'm thinking of a smaller group, more aggressive, and in a QF format (though IDK if that'd be too brutal on everyone, so maybe just MR.) And not blackout.

So I conflated the comments when trying to theorise about Bookwyrm's death. But, you know, sure. I'm done. I'll PM Araris his role. Kasimir I don't particularly care because I was going to have to ask for a pinch-hitter for RL reasons I'd rather not go into anyway, so cleaning me up simplifies the issue.

I'm not really interested in doing so when you've made no argument. I've laid out my suspicions, and I'm going to go work on my deadlines. If I'm right, that's good enough for me and I'll take that, and say 'I told you so' after all this. I'm going to point out though that TKN mentioning I'm low engagement is kind of rich given I've spelled out more of my thought process than he has, and I've stated right before starting this game that it comes at a busy period for me. In that light, I will be absolutely fine if you want to vote me for wanting to have healthier boundaries between my actual life and SE, and I can relax in the dead doc and focus on my backlog

Doubling the pressure. Early Mat vote that stayed camped, clear thread lurking, and low thread tempo seemed to point to a cycle where the Elims weren't feeling pressure at that point in time, with Fadran potentially fitting the profile. Acknowledged as well that I felt I could read Fifth better given time, agreed with Stick that Ash was not showing his Village meta but felt it was the sort of thing also visible given time to get into the game since Ash had specifically flagged he was busy. So I doubled the vote to see what came out of it. Then rollover happened and I wasn't able to juggle two games or to really work out how I felt about the EoC options so I just threw my hands up in the air. Mat also made a point that the Fadran observation felt like it came from TMI given the number of games Fadran has played and I felt he had a point. Fadran observation: