little wilson

I've been debating all day who to vote for. Up until Rae's Thug claim, I had no idea who I'd go for, since there were reasons for and against voting for either of them. But Rae's claim strikes me as far too similar to Dalinar's Pewter-drawing claim. Late in the cycle, after a bunch of votes have piled on? I think she's lying. I don't think she's a Thug, but she's hoping that since we went and lynched Dalinar after he claimed that he drew Pewter, and everyone was like "Well that lynch was worthless," she was hoping the same thing would happen here. And it is. I've seen at least 3 people be like "This Rae lynch is pointless since she's not going to die." So, yeah, I don't think she's telling the truth. That said, I'm not sure she's evil either. Most of the things she's done aren't alignment indicative to me. I could see a villager or eliminator doing most of those things, given the right circumstances. The one thing I cannot reconcile for a village Rae is her main reason for the Lopen lynch: so many people are suspicious of him, so that collective suspicion must mean something, and therefore Lopen is probably bad. The village has been collectively wrong many times in the past. Using a "collective suspicion" to get people to vote for someone seems more like an attempt to connect yourself with other villagers, so they'll be more likely to follow along with you. After all, we're more inclined to trust people who feel/think the same way we do about other players. Who have the same suspicions we do. And with the target of the lynch attempt being a villager with a protection role... Obviously the eliminators want to remove those, since it leaves anyone open to attack. Especially if they have a Coinshot. As for Nyali. I see what she's saying about eliminators being unlikely to defend eliminators. I tend to agree with that, though that's certainly not always the case. I think Nyali's reasons for voting on Rae when Rae basically did exactly what Nyali was saying eliminators don't do is odd, but for me, that's actually more of an indicator for a villager, since eliminators generally don't have that bad of logic: their teammates are able to filter out desperation like that. And her actions don't really match up with the past times Nyali has been evil anyway--2 of those being the last 2 games she's played. Now, I'm not foolish enough to fall into gambler's fallacy, and say she's less likely to be evil right now, but I do think her style right now is different than her evil style in QF20 and LG28 and that's enough for me to hesitate and watch for now.

Excellent. I can bring the pizza.

Funny you should mention having a suspicion of me, Hero, because out of all of the people who've been gunning for Dalinar, you're the one I suspect the most. You seemed to be hitting the "Dalinar is eeeeevillll, let's kill him!" angle a little too hard. Yes, I thought Dalinar was village. When has being convinced that a Spiked wasn't evil automatically makes the person defending them evil too? Pretty sure that's a person-by-person basis, and I've never been much of one to stick my neck out too far to save a teammate. Especially when there was no hope of saving Dalinar. If I'd honestly wanted to save him, I would've been putting forward other names, which I wasn't. Oh, also, you missed a couple people. Namely, Stink. He was incredibly vocal about his frustration with the Dalinar lynch. And then there's like half of the people who voted on Lopen rather than voting on Dalinar.... Can't help but wonder if you skipped over them because you've got teammates in that group and don't want to shine a light on them.

No, but Meta has been wanting to do a game with a Spiked Seeker for a while.

So we'll plan on Friday, the 27th at 7:00 pm? Do we want to still meet in the Wilk or go back to the JFSB? I really kind of liked that area we met in a few times on the 2nd or 3rd floor, rather than the atrium, though the atrium is easier to find.

That's actually a really good idea. If I am smoked, we don't want a Seeker to waste a scan on me, and if I'm not, it would be nice know that, though it doesn't necessarily mean they don't have a smoker. Just that they didn't smoke me last night. And since I was planning on voting anyway, eventually, yeah. And while I'm tempted to vote on you, Lopen, honestly I'm going to wait on that until Dalinar's gone, because if I don't, I know the discussion will continue to build around him, and I'm just done with that. So instead, I'll vote on someone who has no chance of being lynched, nor am I particularly suspicious of them. Orlok.

Yeah, this week feels a little too soon. But yeah, any day next week would work for me. I don't think I have anything going on on any night. Since it looks like you're the one with the most potential issues, Sunbird, which night would work best for you?

Really, Lopen? If you're going to misconstrue my points, at least try harder. I was being lumped among all the players who were posting less than once a cycle and not really sharing any opinions/thoughts. I didn't lump everyone else together, saying that everyone was focusing on Dalinar. Because not everyone is. Yeah, I noticed the player analyses you, Mage and Doc posted. I also noticed that there wasn't really a whole lot to any of them, as you admit. And player analyses have never been much to really interact with, beyond saying "Eh, yeah, I agree with you about this person, but I disagree about this person." They're better to look back on when a player dies, because you know what they thought about every player. So it's great that you guys posted them, but it doesn't add much of substance to the actual discussion. It's just something useful to recall. Or for other to note. Since Night 2, nearly all of the substantial thread discussion has been regarding Dalinar. There has been very little else discussed. Now, because of this, I agree that him dying and discovering his alignment will give us a bit of information. But it won't make up for the loss of discussion, because we've now lost not one, not two but three days of discussion because of this. Three days. Do you really think we'll get so much info from that lynch to make up for losing three days of discussion? If he's good, we've got a few suspects for Spiked, but those suspects could just as easily be tunneling villagers - in fact, I would be more inclined to think that they are. If he's Spiked, we have a couple of guesses for role distribution, and a few more suspects for Spiked - but we'll also have some soft-clears of people who maybe shouldn't soft-cleared because while it looks like to us that the Spiked have tried really hard to keep Dalinar alive, that doesn't mean they were trying hard in the thread. If Dalinar's Spiked, I'd bet there was at least one Spiked who voted on him in every lynch. If. I'm not convinced he's a villager. But I think it much more likely that he's being set up. I'm not convinced the Rioter who "saved" him was Spiked. They could've easily just been someone who was more suspicious of Ecth than they were of Dalinar, had an ability they've never had before, and decided to do something with it. Villagers have done more in terms of vote manip in the past. And is it really much different than a Coinshot being a vigilante? Not really. You're assuming that they were trying to save Dalinar. But I don't think that's a safe assumption. I think Day 1 had two villagers up for the lynch, and when the Rioter stepped in, the Spiked capitalized on it when they knew there was a good chance he'd be attacked and lurched him, hoping to focus discussion on Dalinar for as long as they possibly could. And it's worked. Congrats, Spiked. If I'm wrong, I'll be surprised. Exactly. Everything is contingent on Dalinar being Spiked, which isn't something I'm willing to assume, and it's really frustrating that everything substantial has been about him. That he's been the center of everything, just as you say. Because it didn't have to be this way. There were, and still are, other things we can discuss. The lynch on him D1 was typical of a D1 lynch. The D2 lynch, as far as I could tell, was mostly just because he survived the D1 lynch and and Coinshot's attack on him had just failed. That's....it. That's basically the entire substance of that lynch. Certainly not a reason to focus every bit of discussion on him for another turn (since the Night had been focused on him too). Yet, that's basically what happened. But anyway. I talk about not letting the focus be about Dalinar, and say that there are other things we can discuss. So what are those other things? Well, for one, role distribution. Now, it's been said many, many times that one should not try to guess Meta's role distribution. However, that's at the very beginning of the game with no evidence. It's a poor idea to try to guess him. But at this point, we've now seen a few things. Dalinar claims that he drew Copper, then Pewter, and now Zinc. This means that he cannot be the Mistborn who drew Tin Cycle 1. That means there are at least two Mistborn. We've seen soothing, rioting, lurching, coinshots, and thug-survival. Here's a question for you: what if the vast majority of those actions are merely from Mistborn drawing those metals? What if the two Coinshot attacks weren't the actions of a single Coinshot but two different Mistborn who happened to draw Steel? What if the Spiked don't have a Lurcher but have a Mistborn who drew Iron? Now, we've also seen two Mistings: Ecth was a Sooth and Straw was a Rioter. El mentioned this during the last day cycle or the night, but what if most of the roles are Mistborn? How does that change our strategy? Does it? Should we discuss this? I'm not saying start planning in the thread for it, but if most of the roles are Mistborn, what do the Spiked have? An entire team of Mistborn? Honestly, I could see Meta being a troll like that. I'd say that another thing we can do is focus on other suspicions, but I'm of the school of thought that says that the best discussions that happen in regards to solidifying suspicions and seeing exactly where people stand on specific people is when there's a threat of a lynch. And there's not right now, other than Dalinar. I don't foresee that changing, and I'm not going to try to direct it elsewhere, because I understand why: I was also more than a little irked when Dalinar survived the night because it meant that everything was going to get centered around him again, and will continue being centered around him until he dies. I want it over, but I don't think the information we gather from his alignment will be useful, and it's frustrating that we're not going to get anywhere during the day until he's dead. So go ahead and lynch him. But let's at least discuss other things.

You'll notice if you go back to the games from before I'd get intensely involved, that I typically avoid posting during the night. The reason for that is that there isn't generally anything for me to say that can't wait for the day, and I'm (admittedly unnecessarily) paranoid that if show myself as a particular threat at that time, I'm more likely to be killed. So I stay quiet during the nights. That apology was made because I'd never meant to only post once during the entire day cycle, but I was rather busy and had barely even found time to keep up with the thread. I made that post while eating lunch at a restaurant and drained half my phone's battery doing it. (I'm pretty sure that's the past I'm thinking about anyway...). I'm actually doing the same thing this time, but with dinner, and my phone just alerted me to 15% battery. Oh, the sacrifices I make. I may not be having debates with other players (unless you count this), but don't expect me to be thrilled about being lumped in with players who are not only barely posting at all, but not really getting their thoughts out there. There's a difference between my posts and the posts of Orlok, Wonko, Bugsy, Sart, etc, even if there's not much of a difference between the frequency (but there is, let's be honest). You want me to interact? Give me a reason to. This focus on Dalinar you've all fallen into is useless. I'm not going to debate with a bunch of people who want to go lynch someone who's probably a villager after you've wasted a lynch and a Coinshot on him already. You're all tunneling, and it's pointless. It had a reason D1 but it's D3 now, and what have we actually learned? Nothing. Will we really learn much else when Dalinar is lynched and shown to be village? I'm actually curious about that. What will we learn? The answer is not much. Yes, if he's spiked, we'll learn a fair bit (though even then, not as much as you might think, outside of a few guesses on role distribution of the spiked, since people can say anything in the thread), but I really don't think he is. And therefore, this focus on Dalinar hurts the village a heck of a lot more than it helps it. Let a Coinshot take him out. Let's use the lynch discussion for something that's not Dalinar for once.

I've been quiet? By what metric? My past activity? The players who are devoting hours and hours to the game every single turn? I've made at least one post every cycle, and my posts have made my thoughts and opinions clear. I will not go back to my former level of activeness because quite frankly, I have no desire to devote 3+ hours per day to the games. I'm keeping up with the game, and I'm posting at least once per cycle. If you want more activity from me, I'm sorry, but you're not going to get it. Now. Onto the night's events. Jondesu's attacker came at him with a blade, and Straw's death had the breaking of glass and multiple things (ie, coins) smacking into him. To me, that's a pretty clear indication that Jondesu was attacked by the Spiked and Straw was attacked by a Coinshot. I don't know why the Spiked would attack Jondesu, and I don't know why a Coinshot would attack Straw, but that's definitely what happened (Meta may not be one for other writeup hints, but he at least makes the attack type known in his writeups) I'm getting really tired of the Dalinar thing. At this point I kind of just want him dead so we have this over with and move on. This has gone on way too long and taken up far too much of our time. It's ridiculous. That said, I have no desire to vote for him, because for one, I still don't think he's Spiked, and therefore we'd just be doing the Spiked's work for them. And two, I like what El said during the night about wanting to promote activity, and not lynching people who've been less active in the past who are more active now. So lynch him, if you want, and we'll learn undoubtedly learn something from his death, given how much discussion has taken place around him. But I'm not voting for him. And if someone I believe is actually Spiked comes up for the lynch, I'll probably vote for that person. I'm still suspicious of Hero, but his comments since the rollover make me slightly less suspicious of him. Though I don't agree with his comment about Dalinar proclaiming his action in the thread, because stating his metal and asking the thread what he should do with it completely defeats the purpose of it. Let's say he drew Bronze or something. If the Spiked have a Smoker or a Copper-drawing-Mistborn, who do you think they're going to Smoke? If he draws Lurcher, they just won't attack who he's Lurching. If he draws Steel, they'll lurch who he's attacking. There's literally no use in him stating an active-use power to the thread before he's used it. That said, since knowing if he has a vote manip doesn't really matter at this point, I definitely think he should tell us now. The night is over, and the Spiked can't do anything about that action. So what did you draw, Dalinar? Anyway. That's all I've got for now. I'll make another post later, maybe tomorrow but certainly before rollover, adding a vote somewhere but for now I should get back to work.

@KnightRadiant @Slowswift @Sunbird What day works for all of you?

I asked Eric/Chaos about that a while ago, and he said it's not possible with the update, unfortunately.

Pewter is passive and can't be turned off.

Back when I was analyzing things closely, I used a spreadsheet. My first game spreadsheet was for LG6. Some of my other spreadsheets are for AG1, LG12, and LG14. I no longer do spreadsheets though, because I'm trying not to get so intensely involved in the games and spend so much time on each one. But the LG14 one in particular worked for me, since I dropped the post count for each player and started paying attention to how frequently people were online, which was something I used more than post count.

Sorry about my lack of posting: I've been somewhat distracted the last couple days. Since it looks like the Dalinar lynch is set in stone and my thoughts on that are unchanged (particularly given his Mistborn reveal--if he's lying, whatever, but if he's actually Spiked, why would the Spiked lurch him if they knew that he wouldn't die anyway? Assuming that it was the Spiked who lurched him, obviously, but I feel like that's a pretty safe assumption), my vote is going to go on my top suspicion right now. So Hero.

I would suggest we refrain from giving any action suggestions to rolled in the thread. If they do have a Lurcher (I'm leaning strongly towards yes, right now), and they've used that Lurcher to save me and Dalinar (assuming Dalinar is Village), they are clearly not opposed to using their roles offensively, to let villagers gather suspicion. So what happens if they have a smoker? In AG 1, the Spiked has two smokers and they used them offensively, smoking villagers. They smoked me every cycle until they killed me, making sure that no one would be able to confirm my alignment. This isn't a tactic used frequently, but it does happen, and therefore, we cannot risk giving them public information for how we're using any of our roles. That just makes it all the easier for them to thwart in any way. As for Dalinar, I'm not convinced of his guilt. I'm also not convinced of his innocence either, but I'm leaning towards a villager being set up. As has already been said, the longer discussion stays focused on one topic, the more time the Spiked have to kill more villagers. I'm with Stink: let's not let this day get fixated on one person. Right now, I'm inclined to agree with Wyrm and Mage about Hero. The way he started the night vote for the Coinshot could easily have been that of a spiked wanting to direct a potential villager Coinshot onto a target so they could protect that same target. And therefore focus discussion. His quick vote and insistence that Dalinar is almost certainly evil also makes me wary. Lopen is another one I'm mildly suspicious of, though that's because I was in a PM with Wyrm last cycle, and Wyrm was asking me questions about WGG's and stuff, claiming it was for Lopen. If Lopen wanted to know that, why didn't he just ask me directly? Why not start a PM with me to talk with me and decide for himself if I'm evil? Why use a proxy? It doesn't even make sense, unless he didn't need to vet me out because he already knows. And now his convoluted theory with Kipper and Gamma also strikes me as an attempt to get a villager lynched or vig killed. I have a few people I'm leaning good on: Jondesu, El, Orlok, and Joe, though I'll admit that the latter three were contingent on my attack coming from a team that wanted me dead, and if they used their own Lurcher to save me, that analysis is moot. I was hoping PMs would be around for longer so I could get a better read, but oh well. It is what it is.

Okay, so it sounds like people are good for starting this back up again. When do we want to meet?

That's an awfully defeatist way of looking at things. You're also not the only person dealing with a high death rate. Here's some interesting statistics: the sum of all the characters/avatars who have been in every game played in SE is 1653. The death count is 1102, or 66.7%. This means that the average survival rate is 33.3%. Individuals with a lower survival rate than that die more frequently than the average SE player. Here are the survival rates of a selection of players with lower survival rates than the average: A couple things I'd like to comment on this. Everyone, minus Ecth, that is higher than Seonid has played more than 20 games. Seonid, Hael, and Kas are all at 17-18 games. The rest, including Ecth, are between 10 and 15. There are some really low survival rates there. Mage is less than 10%. He's only survived one game, out of 15. That's kind of insane. Hael died the first 12 games he played. However, if we count just from the time people stopped making a hobby of Hael Hunting, his rate is 60%. 3 out of 5. Not too bad. And I imagine, it'll hold to about that. If he were to continue playing rather than going on a hiatus, I imagine his death rate would balance out at about 30%. Once you hit about 25 games, the survival rate you have is probably going to stay about the same, unless you make a concerted effort to change it, and even then, it's questionable. Death is just something that happens. It usually balances out the more you play. The average survival rate for those with 20 games or more is about 30%. So less than the average SE player, but not by much. Certainly better than 20-25%. But that's because you've played more games and people have a better placement of you in terms of kill-necessity, and you've gotten better at being less suspicious-looking, no matter your alignment, so you'll probably by lynched less as well. Especially early on. For example: You've been lynched 7 times in your 12 games. 2 of those lynches were when you were village (so you accrued suspicion and couldn't deflect it....or your brother arranged your lynch because he was evil ), and 3 were when you were evil. You've been lynched every time you're evil. But I'll bet you've learned something every time you've been evil as well. You're probably learning how to avoid suspicion. That's what happens when you're evil. You learn. You get better. Eventually, you'll make it through a game without getting lynched as an eliminator. You might get vig-killed, but hey: at least it wasn't a lynch. And you'll improve from that. You've been killed by the eliminators once, and that was in MR18, towards the later part of that game. You've been attacked by the eliminators a couple of times early on as well, but you didn't die to them. And yes, attack cycle is rather different than death cycle. The first block of information is the cycle you take your first hit. The second block of information is what cycle you die. You've been attacked 4 times in the first 2 cycles, but you've only been killed 3 times in that same chunk of time. You tend to be attacked first between cycle 3 and 4, but you don't tend to die until cycles 5 or 6. That's...not bad. Sure, your death rate in the first two cycle is on the high side, but there are others with a high number of deaths in those same cycles. Orlok has been killed 7 times in the first two cycles. He can definitely relate, because he was really upset about it after the 4th or 5th time it happened. Really, it's just about playing more. Those early deaths will average out. Your survival rate will rise. You've only played 12 games, which I get that that sounds like a lot, but comparatively, it's fairly low. There have been players who played 10+ games before they finally became an eliminator for the first time. Like I already said, Hael died the first 12 games he played. 12 games isn't enough to get into the true direction your stats are headed. That takes around 25 games. And I can practically guarantee you that your stats won't look like this 13 games from now.

Um. Hm. I know you did alignment of one of the voters. I thought it was first voter. I know it was in a game where Nyali had mentioned that 90% of the time, the first (or second, whichever it was) voter is an eliminator, and since you were bored in the doc, and we were both curious, you checked with all the games and found it was the opposite here. But I can't remember what game doc it was in. Pretty sure it was after LG 20 though. Possibly LG 25. Maybe. I don't know. Sorry. >>

Technically, it is what she said, but I don't think it's what she meant. The way it's worded, with the punctuation and everything, the sentence is saying to protect inactives because they're more useful than actives. But that's not what she meant, obviously.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about the paranoia, but seriously? You do realize that I'm aware of the extreme paranoia that's constantly around me, right? The fear? I just got killed by an eliminator team with two people on it who don't like to kill me. If two people who know me are going to be that wary of me/kill me for purely strategic reasons, why should those who don't be any different? No matter my actual alignment, people will be hesitant to trust me. That's just a fact, and it's one I've come to terms with. I'll readily admit that I like WGG's. Pulled one in LG2 and suggested the LG15b one. But guess what? I don't like to pull them on me. I prefer to get teammates in positions of trust. Always have, and that's not something that's changed, or is likely to. I die. That's what I do. I don't have a 15 game death streak for no reason. I'm not irritated about not having survived a game in two years for no reason. I die no matter my alignment. So why would I attempt to gain trust for myself like this, knowing that I am highly likely to die even with that "boost"? And yes, you can spin your I Know You Know theories all you want, saying that I'd do it just because I could say this, but no. I don't operate like that. I operate on strategy. What in the world is strategic about getting everyone to focus on me and be paranoid? If I'm going to do a WGG, wouldn't it be better to do one on a teammate that won't attract this kind of attention? Honestly, I'm now suspicious of Stick for being so convinced I'm an eliminator. Paranoia I can understand. But it's like Kipper just said. The attack isn't particularly alignment indicative either way, unless you're willing to trust what I say about disliking myself being the target of WGG's, which I'm betting most of you aren't. I know my alignment and I find it interesting that someone is pushing so hard for the idea of the attack being a WGG at the cost of any other possibility. I rather think it's because Stick is Spiked and is hoping to either get me lynched or vig-killed since they failed to kill me. What better way than to get the village to complete the job for them?

For once, Whistler wasn't whistling. He moved around the ashes, silent tears coursing down his cheeks, trying to find anything salvageable. but there was nothing left. Nothing. His home, his shop, his everything was gone. And this...mess... He couldn't fix it. He looked at his hands, blackened with the ash and cringed. He'd been proud of what he'd built with his own two hands. Proud. And now he'd have to hope Lord Conrad or that Terris Herwynbe's mysterious Lord would allow a charity case to live in their fine manor houses. Whistler shoke his head. Not for long, he swore. Not for long. He'd bet everything he had (or once had) there he would find those who did this to him. And they would pay. Oh, yes, they would pay. Well then. That was enlightening for me. I didn't post at all, only had a single PM, and yet I still got attacked. Thanks for that. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know people so desperately want to kill me. Right now, the only game relevant thought I have is that I completely agree with Hero about the contribution crusade, especially considering the state of inactives in recent games. So be active, people! Other than that, I have no suspicions, since like I said, I was only in one PM and the thread was mostly RP. I'm hoping the thread discussion today will be more enlightening. I'm tired though, since I've been sleep deprived the last 3-4 nights (I'd bluetext that but I'm on mobile and feeling lazy), so I'm going to go to bed and I'll be back in the morning. Good night. And good morning? For the game? Whatever. I'm off.

Something I thought of recently is that new players don't necessarily know what rules are enforced more than others. For example, a lot of mafia forums have etiquette policies, and a number of these etiquette policies say things about insulting other players and being a poor sport, but those aren't rules that are enforced unless someone specifically mentions it. Last year's mafia championship game that Hael participated in had a number of players openly insulting other players, but they were never called out. Not until Hael finally commented on it to the GM, and then the GM gave a notice. But it didn't stop the insults, and nothing else was said. While there may be rules in place, that doesn't mean those rules will be enforced. 17th Shard has a relatively small moderating team, considering our member base. And yet we have relatively few problems arise. Do you want to know why? Because the members themselves regulate the site. If someone gets negative, it's usually a member who says something about it and tries to help the other person understand why the 17th Shard isn't the place for such negativity. First contact is rarely with staff. Because the members have taken it upon themselves to adopt the rules and help others understand them. To help others adopt them too. This is why the Shard has been and will likely continue to be the safe haven that it is. It's not the staff enforcing rules, except in extreme situations where they must. It's the members upholding the rules and helping new people understand them as well. We can do the same thing here. But it's going to take a concerted effort from the players, the moderators and the GMs to do. It's not just for the GMs to put filters in place and regulate inactives like that. It's not just for the moderators to blacklist chronic inactives. It's not just for the players to deal with it. It's for everyone to. That might mean an eliminator team killing an inactive or two. That might mean an extremely harsh inactivity filter. That might mean blacklisting people who don't contribute to the game in any way post signing up. That might mean trying not to lurk, even though it's strategically sound for you to blend in with inactives. That might mean restricting people from playing multiple games (or at least multiple LGs) at one time, as Hael suggested. Whatever it means, it needs to be done in tandem, with the support of the majority. Saying that you don't have to do something because someone else will handle it won't fix the issue. If you're not willing to take the responsibility of fixing the problem on yourself, the problem will probably never be fixed and the only person you'll have to blame for it is yourself for being unwilling to help. This is not something one or two or five people can tackle. This is something that needs the support of the community as a whole, or it will never be fixed. And this doesn't even have to be just about inactivity. If someone posts a super-complex game in the Game Creation thread and you're worried about the complexity of it, say something about that. Voice those concerns. Maybe help them break the game down into something more manageable that they still like but is balanced. We can all help each other. By helping each other, we'll be helping the games, in all aspects.

GM Thoughts This game was interesting to balance. I knew I didn't want a role madness game like last time, since last game was a little hard to balance right, due to there being so many roles and so many Diagrammists (it was an 8-person team last time, with 2 inactives on it. I knowingly placed inactives or those who I thought would go inactive on the team to counterbalance the number of Diagrammists). I liked the number of Regulars and I really liked the distribution, but I realized that having vigilantes in a game where people have to use their role action in the first two cycles could cause some issues. Fortunately, it wasn't a big deal. I'm really happy with the communications in this iteration. Last time, the eliminators had a doc, and the village only had the chain of command PMs, which could only be used once per game rather than once per cycle. The village ended up PMing Diagrammists and they never got organized. The communications this game went a lot better. The Diagrammists not having a doc I think was a good change, since it made it a little harder for them to get organized quickly. I'd intended for it to be risky for them as well, with the Edgedancer able to potentially spy on Diagrammist PMs. I hadn't counted on an Edgedancer Private spying on his Captain, and that Captain revealing his entire team in a PM, but...oh well. It happens. I think it's a good lesson everyone should learn about PM safety. While, yes, Joe was talking to his teammate, you never know if anyone is listening in, or in other cases, if the person you're talking to is trustworthy, so sharing very sensitive information via PMs is generally not a good idea. So if nothing else, I'm happy that there was a good lesson to be learned through this game. I also liked the inactivity filter, and think it worked well. Only 3 people out of 20 didn't PM, post and/or submit a role action. One of those three only didn't submit a role action, and he was a Cook and didn't want to kill. The other two only did one of the three each. And then in Cycle 2, all three of them were some of the first to complete all three of their activity actions. All-in-all, everyone stayed pretty active. Of course, it was only three cycles, but still. There was a good bit of activity in PMs and the thread, and just about everyone who could submit an action did. Which was the point of the filter, and it worked. If there's one thing I would change, it would be discussion about the Bondsmith win con. I think I would make it so the Bondsmith win con cannot be strategized for openly. I might even go so far as to say that the Bondsmith win con cannot be mentioned or even alluded to in the thread. When I'd envisioned the Bondsmith win con initially, it was using PMs and forming alliances and potentially betraying people. It was meant to be an ironic form of unity. Unity brought about through betrayals and backstabbing. That's....not what happened here. I understand the openness, given the situation, but I definitely would want to prevent such openness from happening again. Also, in my mind, the Ghostbloods and the Sons of Honour are definitely the village factions. They can win together, and they very easily could've in this game. Once Arinian died, the SH and the GBs both had 1 living Radiant. Had the Diagrammists been killed, and those last two Radiants survived (not sure if Mage would've been able to, since he'd outed himself to Joe), everyone but the Diagrammists would've won, just like any other elimination game. So while it's a faction game, it is possible for all the non-Diagrammists to win. So this isn't that much different that a standard elimination game. It just also has a couple village factions that can work together, if they choose to. Thus far, neither has really chosen to work together much, in either iteration. Overall, I'm okay with how the game went. Sure, it was short. But it was interesting seeing Joe in action, trying to salvage his mistake, lying through his teeth to the thread and Mage and basically anyone who was not a Diagrammist. It was interesting seeing some of the Ghostbloods being like "The Sons of Honour are a bigger threat than the Diagrammists. Kill them." And it was really funny to see Son of Honour Commander Seonid in contact with Restares/Bard, saying in the thread that he was a mere Private and that his entire upline had just been slaughtered. And then the Ghostblood Cook killing him for good measure, right after the SH Cook had taken out the other SH Commander.... >> The second cycle was hilarious. The third cycle....well. At least everyone posted in the thread. And good thing too, because if they hadn't the Bondsmith win con wouldn't have been achieved right then, because someone would've almost certainly died to inactivity. I want to thank Stink for helping me GM this and handling most of the writeups. And about that comic writeup: that thing took me two hours to do, and I used a program on my work computer to put it all together. If I can download a decent (free) program onto my laptop that can do something similar fairly intuitively, and I know the results and have time to draw it out without it taking up time for the next cycle, you might see writeup comics in the future. Maybe. I did have a lot of fun drawing it, so it could happen again. (Oh, and Kynedath: that SH with the "real" eye in the first panel wasn't meant to be you, though you're very welcome to claim him if you like. I just noticed his head was weirdly-shaped and decided to make him a crazy cross-eyed person jumping in the air ) Thanks again, everyone, for playing. And remember: PM SAFETY.

Whistler whistled as he scrubbed the ash off the floor. He pushed the bucket along with him, moving across the floor, dipping the brush in the bucket and scrubbing. Scoot, slosh, scrub; scoot, slosh, scrub. There was a rhythm and it worked. After a while, the floor was sparkling clean and he sighed in relief. Such dirtiness always grated at his nerves, especially when it was within his own home and shop. No, his things had to be neat and clean. Always. Everything in its rightful place. Nothing out of order. Of course, with the ashmounts acting up since the fiasco with the Lord Ruler down in Luthadel, his life was a little more....difficult. Bloody hard to keep the floors clean when someone tracked ash in every time they walked through the door into his shop. The door to the outside creaked as it opened and closed with a bang. He glanced up from his position in the corner and groaned softly. Sure enough, a trail of ash marred his floor. "Whistler? Are you here?" Whistler stood to help his customer, bustling around his little shop to get the ingredients the man requested. "You heard the news yet?" His customer asked as he placed a handful of boxings on the counter. "What news?" "The koloss. There's supposed to be an army of koloss heading for us." Whistler laughed. "I'll believe that when I see it. What would koloss want with our little town? I'd bet 5 of these here boxings that it's all just a tall tale. You'll see." "I'd take you up on the bet, but I don't reckon I want to bet against us. We'd never survive a koloss attack." The man walked out with his goods, and the soft breeze blew more ash in while the door was open. Whistler sighed and walked to the back of his shop, whistling as he went. Time to get that bucket again. His floor needed cleaning. - Whistler is in. He's the shopkeeper, who is very neat and a compulsive gambler. One could also say he's a hobbyist, if you count his obsession for whistling as a hobby.