little wilson

Well, I can honestly say I didn't expect Kipper to be the Inquisitor, though I hadn't entirely written off the possibility. I probably would've suggested going after him after Manukos and OmeGaster, since by then, risking a Pewter spike conversion to keep the game from dragging on any longer would've been worth it. I'm sad that Aman died so early. *Shakes head at Aonar* I was really looking forward to working with him. And his emotional allomancy plan worked beautifully. (And I return the high five you gave me from the grave, Aman ) Oh, and Jon: I didn't soothe you because I suspected you. On the contrary, I thought that soothe would go through because I'd decided to soothe you back when the vote was much closer, and then when I placed the order, I just didn't change my decided-on target. So....yeah. And then because I was worried about offensive smoking, I went back and looked at a couple of your recent posts and realized that you were probably evil. I do kind of feel bad about the way that kill happened with no warning, but at the same time, that's what made me confess to Rand the next night, which in turn lit a fire under his butt to figure out who the Coinshot was so he could survive.

Or higher. You have to be at least a Re'lar to make that.

Oh, and Steph. Why does a Vintish noblewoman need to vote twice when only the first vote reduces tuition? Why not let someone poorer take advantage of the sacrifice?

El asked me specifically about that yesterday, so I would clarify with them again because I think that might be different now.

Not entirely true. Most of the fields you're referring to, like Alchemy and Physicking, only give you skills based on how many times you've been elevated in that specific field. If you're an El'the, but you've only been elevated once in Alchemy, sure, you can make bonetar, but don't expect it to have the risks associated with a third elevation. It has the first upgrade risks because you've only been in Alchemy for a short period of time. The vast majority of the fields are like that: the more you dedicate yourself to that field, the more powerful you get. If you spread out, you'll have more options available to you, but the power will be lacking. There will be far more risks associated with those abilities because you only have a cursory knowledge of the subject. I may only be a Cealdish Commoner, but if you want to get the tuition reduction, I'm staying at the Golden Pony, so I can take two votes and not have to worry about the Masters. Just don't do more than two.

Well, Mark was scanned so there's a Seeker in the game. But since we've heard nothing from the Seeker since early in the game, I think it's safe to say that they're inactive.

This is correct, but I just want to point out that you don't need 5 EP in a field to elevate in it. You could put a single EP in a field and be elevated with that, particularly if you're the only one going for that field.

Well. I didn't "catch" it. I sort of GMed the first run, so I'm rather familiar with the rules of DP and the Horns, both of which kind of sucked to handle, since very little of either was automated. >>

Since I never responded to this earlier, let me do so now: I think you're the Inquisitor. You've been on my list of Inquisitor suspects for a number of cycles, and I've mentioned that. I still hold to my theory earlier in the game that the Inquisitor is a relatively new player. I do not think they are brand new, because giving a brand new player that kind of important role is too much of a risk, since you don't know how active they'll be or if they'll even be active. Take Spartacus, for instance. Had she been the Inquisitor, the game would never have gotten underway. My list of suspects is thus: Hemalurgic Headshot Manukos OmeGaster In that order. Silverblade, Bugsy, DA, Mark, and Mage all went inactive for a bit while the Inquisitor maintained activity. Yitzi has proven his roles. Len and Kipper both do not make sense for the actions the Inquisitor has made. Arinian's claim led to the death of Hero. Figberts claimed an easy role to verify (though I don't think he's actually verified it yet). OmeGaster and Manukos have both been borderline inactive, but I believe both have been active enough to continually place orders. OmeGaster is last on my list because he's brand new and he was attaching himself at the hip to Lopen while Lopen was alive, and I don't really see an Inquisitor who has converts like Rae and Hero (at the point in time when this happened) doing that. I could be wrong, which is why he's on the list. Manukos is the one I think may have actually been inactive during a full cycle when the Inquisitor made a conversion. I'm not 100% certain about that, but I remember both Lopen and I were hesitant about the possibility of him being the Inquisitor. Which leaves HH, who's been active the entire game, yet contributing very little. In fact, it wasn't until after I mentioned being suspicious of him as the Inquisitor when he became a little more active and started voting more, and I wonder if that may have been in hopes that I would stop being suspicious of him. Then there's Hero trying to make me rethink my thoughts about HH being the Inquisitor when I told Hero (who had most definitely been converted by that point in time) that I was strongly leaning toward HH being the Inquisitor. If it's not HH, I'd look at Manukos. But honestly, I really think it's HH. EDIT: Also, in regards to killing discussion, discussion's been killed for a few turns now, most particularly the previous day with Hero's lynch, when I brought forth relevant information and said we should discuss it. Despite having a full day to discuss it, no one but Yitzi and I said anything at all about it. The thread was dead silent for 23 hours. I don't think it's my duty to make sure discussion takes place. Particularly if few others are going to do so. So sure, this bandwagon might be killing discussion, but discussion gave up the ghost over 96 hours ago and I'm not to blame for that.

One thing to keep in mind: even NPC Masters cast DP. It's just RNG-based on everyone who has DP through the votes. So if only a single complaint is cast the entire day, and that student isn't staying at The Golden Pony (which subtracts a full DP), all the Masters would end up placing their DP on that one student, and that one student would be expelled. However, if 4-5 students have complaints filed against them, the Masters would be split amongst all of them, randomly. There's still a chance someone could get expelled since it's an RNG doing the work, but it's generally a little more difficult. Basically, the only way to fix the results in terms of punishment is through the guaranteed expulsion. Everything else is chance. Keep in mind that death is incredibly hard this game for either alignment. You and Burnt were both outed skindancers (Maill might've been as well), and it took the village a bit to finally kill both of you. It actually took the village risking insanity both times (and Wonko did go insane to finally off you). So while I agree that there are certainly more than 4 Skindancers, 6 might be too many, simply because of how hard it is to kill. Yes, that's something that hurts the Skindancers as well, but the Crockery is basically death, given how low the chances of breaking out are. Also, the Bloodless won't be in circulation nearly as much this time around since they cost rather substantially more, so sabotages are much more likely to go through. I'm not one of the current GMs, but as one of the previous GMs, I know the answer to this as well. The first is yes. The second is no. Those in the Crockery are in a state of limbo where they can do literally nothing besides hope that they roll high on that breakout die. They're technically still players in the game, in that they can be targeted by players outside the Crockery, but they themselves can do nothing unless they breakout.

There aren't many that can be guaranteed to not be the Inquisitor. Yitzi is one of those, though, because he clearly used his power to save me when I was attacked by the spiked, and the spiked couldn't have had a Lurcher type power (since Uber Iron was a redirect). Mark was scanned as a Soother and was using his soothing before he went inactive. The Inquisitor has been active in the time since Mark has been gone, and Rae also tried to pin Mark up as the convert, which she wouldn't have done were he the Inquisitor. He is another I would say is guaranteed. I've proven myself as a vote manipulator and have contributed to the deaths of every spiked up to this point, plus I was attacked by them, so I think that unless you want to be really paranoid about me, it can be said with some level of certainty that I'm not evil, though it's technically not 100% guaranteed. I do not believe Arinian is lying about having snapped, particularly with Hero's death and spikiness. However, he technically hasn't proven his Lurcher powers, so he is also not guaranteed. Still, I feel it's a pretty strong certainty. Figberts claimed snapped Rioter to both Lopen and the thread. I feel like he's telling the truth. And that's basically everyone who is unlikely to be the Inquisitor. One additional note: Kipper is either a Thug or the Inquisitor, but I currently believe him to be a Thug. Lynching him wrongly would lead to the Inquisitor getting a Pewter spike, which I guarantee he would use to convert.

Why doesn't everyone just claim now? I rather doubt the Inquisitor was given two abilities to kill, so even if he has an additional conversion, he still won't be able to actually use it unless he gets a convert. Therefore, publicly knowing who is regular and who is Misting shouldn't cause any issues. Also, about the votes, if he does have an additional power, it's probably a vote manipulation ability, so don't get lazy thinking that just because there are three votes, that it's locked. If he can move or soothe two votes, that's all it takes to cause a tie/force a no lynch.

You realize that by upvoting that, you're reducing D1 discussion to just the talk of what fields everyone is going into and how to use those fields, right?

Whelp. I suppose HH? I believe he's the Inquisitor, and he's claimed Regular anyway, which means that even if he's not the Inquisitor, his death won't cause a new spike for the Inquisitor to use to convert. And now that the Inquisitor's passed up his chance to convert using Lopen's spike, he won't have another chance unless we lynch a Misting.

I was going to say that that couldn't be possible since I attempted to soothe Rand on the same cycle that the Inquisitor used Uber Iron to redirect Aonar, but I guess if you're going to paranoid enough to think that I could be the Inquisitor, you'd just say that I obviously knew Rand was smoked so I wouldn't have even had to soothe him at all. Though why I'm sacrificing literally every single person I've just converted is beyond me. Ah well. Paranoid theories. >>

No. Not at all. I think all of the fields could appeal to either alignment. There are simply some that would generally appeal less to Skindancer. Physicking and most of the arcane fields I would think are of about equal appeal to both alignments, due to their versatility and potential for damage to the other team. A village Physicker would be most interested in the protection and roleblock aspects of the Physicking powers: protecting either yourself or another person from Skindancer sabotages, or roleblocking suspects. A Skindancer Physicker, on the other hand, could make use of the roleblock on players they know are higher in elevation in fields that could easily be problematic (Naming, Archives, etc) and they would also likely be interested in the counselling ability to subtract Insanity Points from a teammate who's gone into the arcane arts so that teammate won't go insane. A village Sympathist could make a mommet of someone they suspected had been sabotaged, and try to kill the person. Or, if the village Sympathist suspects the Skindancers are going to attack them, they bind themselves to two of their suspects so if they get sabotaged, those two suspects get sabotaged as well. A Skindancer Sympathist could do the same things, only they'd actually be more knowledgeable about their targets: oh, we didn't target this person, so we know a villager did. Let's make this mommet to kill them. None of us were in contact with the person killed, so we know the mommet won't actually be of one of us. Villager dead! Yay! Same for the binding: bind yourself to two villagers so if an assassin goes after you, those two villagers die as well. (Malignant Sympathy Protection has basically the same use for both alignments) I could continue for the other arcane fields, but I think you get the picture. Going into a specific field isn't enough to cast suspicion on a person. This is part of why Archives isn't as useful as you'd think (not to say it's not useful. It is. Fae Lore, Omen Recognition and Banned Books are all great in their own way, and even School Records is useful, but it's less about finding a person suspicious because of what they're studying and more about verifying someone's story to make sure they're not lying). Basically, you should shouldn't be be like "Oh, you've been studying Naming; you must be a Skindancer!" because there are plenty of reasons a villager would want to study Naming, and the three Namers in LG18 were all village and two of them used Naming to kill Skindancers. That doesn't mean that all Namers would be village though. The cool thing about this game is that the most of the fields can combo with any other in some kind of way, and because there are so many and they cover basically any focus you'd be interested in having, you can choose what you want to do. You want to survive for longer or protect people? Go into Physicking! You want to protect, but you kind of also might want to kill? Alchemy would be perfect for you. You really like PMs and communications? Linguistics is just what you're looking for. Oh, you want money to do whatever you want? Study Arithmetic. You want ULTIMATE POWER? Naming. You get to do what you want to do and have the skills you want (well, ish. You can't choose exactly which powers you want but the fields are still pretty tailored to cover a certain skillset).

You literally got destroyed. Lost your head and everything. And this is true. Though Rhetoric was a fine field to tackle. As was Alchemy, if DC had actually been able to use it. It was more Linguistics and Archives (particularly Archives) that were far less useful than those other two. I'm not actually surprised you didn't try for Naming, but I was surprised no one went for Physicking.

That's what I mean though. Sure, the Inquisitor will be dead, but because he will die just as the new convert gets made, we won't have any interaction to look at to figure out who the convert is. We'll be back at square one in terms of finding who is evil. Everyone against one evil, just like at the start of the game.

Huh. Guess I should've trusted my gut. So there won't be a kill tonight because there's no one to make it. This is good. Unfortunately, it's not terribly helpful, because the Inquisitor will just convert tonight and sacrifice himself, and then we'll be back at square one, only this time, we've got a significantly less active village. Lovely. >>

I'm still not convinced that Hero is Spiked and with the lack of discussion this cycle, I'm going to place my vote on Yitzi. Hopefully, the result will end as a tie (unlikely. I think someone needs to retract from Hero or someone needs to vote on Yitzi (not both) to achieve that) and neither will be lynched, so we can actually discuss the two of them. Plus, if Hero isn't Spiked, a tie would mean that if they want to convert tonight, they'd have to do so with the Tin spike, which could possibly get us our PMs back. Otherwise, they'd have to wait an additional cycle. And can everyone please participate? Let's not let the activity die off just because we've successfully killed a few of them.

Yeah, there are certain fields that are slightly less geared towards eliminators. In the first run of this game, the Skindancers went for most of those fields and avoided the ones like Physicking that were built for eliminator teams. But yeah. The combos are endless. Also, if you end up getting expelled, the game doesn't end for you, because there's still plenty of havoc an expelled player can wreak in Imre. Or someone who just isn't interested in attending the University.

But I don't think they were trying to convert a Lurcher. I realized that giving up Uber Iron probably had nothing to do with the conversion that had just happened. Think about it: if you're the Inquisitor and you only have two powers left, Uber Iron or Uber Pewter, and you have to sacrifice one of them to create this Steel spiked convert, which one are you going to give up? You're not going to want to give up either of them, but if you've lost just about every convert you've brought onto your team, you have to survive for long enough to make your last conversion. Therefore, you have to keep Uber Pewter. So Uber Iron has to go. And who was the unprotected Thug? Kipper? He wasn't unprotected. The other Lurcher was protecting him, like I told you.

Especially given that Fae Lore actually told you if your action successfully cancelled someone's actions. >> Yeah, that was like the first change I suggested... Also, while Archives is one of the more obviously powerful fields, it's not as powerful as you might think. It's predominantly an information-gathering field, but with the Fae Lore fix, it's not an alignment-Seeking field. You're not going to find out if someone is a skindancer, and unless you plan on using Banned Books to learn abilities in other fields when you only have a single action period to use with those other abilities (so you're severely limited in that regard), most of the other information gathered is going to be pretty minimalist in terms of use. Compare that with a field like Arithmetic, where, after a couple cycles, you have a lot of money, and then you can go flood the Black Market with contracts, offering ridiculous amounts of money for different services rendered. Or buying up a bunch of things at the Apothecary and at the Black Market (bodyguard/assassin/mommets). Most of the less obviously powerful fields are similarly powerful if you use them well. The least powerful is probably Linguisitics, but it's compensated by the fact that it has the non-specific action periods, so if you combine it with another field (say, elevate to El'the in Linguistics and then Master in Archives), it becomes much more powerful. So yeah, it's not surprising that people initially jumped on the Archives train, because it seems like the most powerful non-Arcane field, but....it's not really. You just have to think how to use the others.

Well this is interesting. I'm back to the conundrum I had after the Snapped talked to me and I was trying to figure out if it was Hero or Yitzi who'd been converted. On the one hand, I've got Hero, who could easily have been converted and I can't trust his arguments even though I want to because they sound completely genuine and he makes a fair bit of sense. On the other hand, there's Yitzi, who is saying things that don't quite add up which could be because he's still learning the game because he's new or it could be because he's evil. So here's a crucial fact: Yitzi knew exactly who would be protected last night. I'd told him, because I was certain that Hero was evil. While I can see Lopen being attacked either way, it makes even more sense for Lopen to have been attacked with Yitzi being evil as opposed to Hero: kill Lopen and I will gun for Hero, causing a mislynch, and they can use the Iron spike to convert tonight rather than the useless Tin. If I'm killed, though, you don't know if Hero will end up lynched because I'm by far the one most suspicious of him. Therefore, keep me alive and kill Lopen. I find it interesting that Yitzi is also like "You probably shouldn't have said that I'm the other Lurcher," since if Hero is evil, the Spiked already know so it doesn't hurt for that information to be revealed in the thread. The only reason you wouldn't want that information revealed is if the Spiked don't know it or if you yourself are Spiked and you don't want the village knowing what your role was and giving you more people to be accountable to. Also, one of the main reasons I was suspicious of Hero was due to things Yitzi was telling me about his PM with Hero, making it seem like Hero was just saying certain things or that he'd said them after I'd talked to Hero. And when it comes to the timing of the PMs, Hero's comments strike me as completely genuine there. He's been busy enough that I can believe that. He hadn't responded to my PM from around that time either. I don't know why an attack wasn't made the night before last, but at the end of the day, I don't think we can assume it was from inactivity, since Rae could've made that kill as well. They had 48 hours. It could've been a busy teammate. It could've been that someone forgot to place the order. It could've been planned to make it seem like that. So I think I'm going to put that aside. I'm going to retract from Hero because I want more discussion about this as opposed to the bandwagon that's formed. I don't know which one of them it is now, but I'm leaning toward Yitzi, given his knowledge last night. Not enough to cast a vote on him, but let's discuss this.

I don't think any of his troll posts were from when he was converted, or at least his first ones definitely weren't. That was actually at least partly to do with me, if not mostly. Aonar is a troll, and he was one of the reasons it was easy for me to maintain a bit of snark earlier in the game: I knew that even if none of the other players were amused, he would be (and the snark was fun for me too). Then he died. Hero's initial trolling was to compensate for the loss of Aonar. It was for me.