little wilson

I'd RP, but I can't think of anything good for Witless currently. Plus, he had cameo in Khamsi's RP (sanctioned by me, and those words were truly from the mouth of the Witless ), and that's good enough for him. Khamsi already pointed out the oddness that all three of the people who voted Bela yesterday died last night. Douza pointed out that this explains why the Forsaken didn't make a kill Night 1. I never really thought the Forsaken was inactive. It didn't make sense. But choosing not to kill because they already had a big enough target on their back? Absolutely. Also, Wes and I were in close communication with Khas for this entire game thus far. While I knew there was a chance he was Fain, I never really got any vibes that he was working counter to our purposes and there's a simple solution to that--he wasn't. Not yet. He was playing the villager. I don't think he died because someone knew he was Fain. I think he died because he voted for the wrong person. I think he, Joel, and Jae died because they voted for the Forsaken. My vote goes to Bela. And because I rather enjoy waffles, my mayor vote goes to Khamsi. Plus, I trust her. Shiv is a highly intelligent player and he'll use the votes well.

Did you click the link? There was a gif I linked. There be pandas eating faces in it.....well. Not really. But once you get the idea of evil Mashadar pandas in your head, it doesn't come out. I can believe it would be dreamwalky, but I'm fairly certain it's not a ter'angreal. And the fact that it's dreamwalky makes it worse. So, so much worse. Because if it's dreamwalky and infected with the evil of Mashadar, does that mean it can corrupt you in your dreams? Nowhere is safe from it. Fact.

Blast. I was hoping you'd run with the idea that the fire had destroyed the panda.....Especially since now I'm insanely paranoid that it contains the evil of Mashadar.....But I should've known you'd run and take it. I can genuinely say that I don't want that thing anywhere near me. Seriously. Mashadar pandas is a terrifying idea: case in point. The gif stops because they ate his face. And that's what Jain's toy panda is going to do now. It was bad enough before. But with mashadar inside it? Light help us all. The Creator shelter us because we are dead.

Okay. I don't normally post in the thread during the night, since comments in the thread can change strategy for Team Evil, but this is somewhat important. I know there's only a few hours left in the night, and if a lot of you don't see this until the night is over, that's okay. As you know, Wes asked for people with roles to contact him. There are some of you who are understandably hesitant to do so, since putting all of that information in one place makes Wes a prime target for conversion (assuming Fain ignores Wes' comments about how corrupting him is ill-advised). I have a counter-proposal for you. Since we need to start coordinating our efforts in order to weed out the Darkfriends, the Forsaken, and Fain, we do need your roles. However, how about you choose who you trust with that information? Our group consists of me, Kaim, Waes, Erik, Leas Fel, and Khamsi. Whoever you go to with your role will keep your identity completely secret from everyone else. Then we will coordinate according to the roles who have contacted us and your contact with the group will let you know the plan. This way, no one person has all of the information, you don't have to trust someone you don't want to, and yet we'll still be able to coordinate. Not only that, but if Fain wants to try to convert someone with the info, he's got a bunch of options--too many for how many conversions he likely has (since I'm betting he's probably only got 4 or 5). Also, if it turns out one of us isn't who we say we are, that person still won't have a lot of information (namely, identities) that would prove detrimental in the hands of an enemy. If you haven't already contacted one of the above, please do so. I don't care who, but it's important that we get a plan. We can't afford to keep killing our roles by accident, and if we know (or rather, one of us knows) who you are, we can keep that from happening.

My brother went to grad school at NAU, and one summer, that's where my family went on vacation. Didn't really do much in Flag since we stayed in Sedona, but I completely agree with you. That area is gorgeous, and if you like the outdoors, there's a lot to do. But...yeah. The terrain doesn't change much. Still, though. Rather pretty, if you're used to more green (or sagebrush, as the case may be for me, coming from Idaho )

Okay, so. I've been pretty busy today, but I've tried to keep up with the thread as much as I could. I'm not thrilled about the bandwagon and so many people admitting to piling on simply because of the bandwagon. I hope they realize that is absolutely a DF's dream. As has already been said, the fact that there isn't really any contest to Dirt's lynching likely means that he is not a DF. Sure, he might be Fain, but right now, if Fain knows what he's doing, he'll actually be helping the villagers for the first couple cycles, waiting to convert until things die down a little bit and he has a better gauge of who would be best to convert. So lynching Dirt simply because he's inactive and could be Fain is not in our best interests right now. We need to find some DFs, and I think we have a couple in the vote for Dirt. Hence, I'm voting Jain. Up to this point, he hasn't really been particularly helpful. In fact, his few PMs to me have been downright confusing, with very little explanation despite a request for more clarification. While this doesn't make him a DF, clarity isn't something the DFs want the villagers to have. In fact, the more confusion they can inspire, the better. And he's certainly not helping currently by jumping on bandwagons just for the sake of jumping on them. This vote probably won't even matter since there are 6 votes for Dirt and with my two, the vote for Jain will be 5. So odds are that Dirt will still be lynched. But I can't sit back and let that happen without at least trying to do something to prevent it. I really don't think he's a DF, and I'm a little worried that he could actually be an important villager. We've already lost our Whitecloak. I'd prefer not adding our Wisdom, Viewer, or, heaven forbid, our Wolfbrother to that. I'm not really a fan of doing the DF's jobs for them, personally. I'd much rather make things far more difficult for them.

I'd thought we were going to wait til tomorrow, so the double vote actually has a chance to be of use, and continue that. Two-day term for the mayor, so to speak. If we don't want to do that, that's perfectly fine with me. I know who I'd be most comfortable with as my replacement. But if we want to pass it around every day without the double vote even having a point, we might as well not even have a mayor. I'll step down and we can choose to elect no one. My point about passing it around before was so we could make use of the double vote but not put a target on anyone's back for very long. Daily elections only puts an unnecessary target on someone's back. The villagers gain nothing from it. Not necessarily. It depends on who the DFs are. Most of the time there is at least one eliminator who is very vocal. Sometimes there are more. The rest participate a bit--either from 1 post a day to 3, but never usually more than that. And occasionally, there are eliminators who participate heavily in the doc but don't participate at all in the thread, or if they do it is very irregularly. It's typically a good idea to run on the assumption that there's a mix. That means that one of the highly vocal people is a DF. According to my notes, the most active people yesterday and last night (either at least 5 on one half-cycle or at least 6 posts between the night and the day) were me, Kaim, Dellan, Joel, Newan, Waes, and Jae. The least active (at most 2 posts total) were Nath, Lam, Jim Bob (who hasn't posted at all), Leas Fel, Bela, Douza, Senna, and Rishi. That's just going solely off of post count, rather than post content. I plan on taking a bit of time this weekend to do more analysis about that along with all my PMs. I'm not sure if those numbers there give any help whatsoever, since there's probably at least one DF in either group, plus at least one more in the semi-active group (so basically, it's still keep your eye on everyone, regardless of their thread activity). You'll also want to watch for people who are particularly active in PMs but only at most semi-active in the thread. That's not a fool-proof way to catch eliminators, but sometimes they like to limit what they say publicly because they're worried the more analytical people will see something wrong with it. Again, not foolproof, because some people just don't like to plan publicly and have the eliminators see. But it's at least something.

I highly doubt it's the Wounded Gazelle gambit. There are only two possible roles Waes could have now to survive an attempt on his life, without the Wisdom getting involved. And either of those two roles aren't ones the Darkfriends would want to whip out and use this early. The last time the Wounded Gazelle gambit was tried was when the player could take a total of 3 attempts on their life before dying, and that was her first hit. If he's Aiel-blooded, the Darkfriends just wasted their extra hit. He's now normal. If he's a Channeler, they just wasted their Hands of Air Weave for essentially nothing....I mean, okay, it's an attempt to get Waes more trusted, but that's far too high a risk for far too little a reward. He's now wide open (at least assuming he's not the Channeler). I'm more curious about the Dreamwalkers. Looks like we've got a Villager and a Darkfriend, and either could be either one. Personally, I'm inclined to think that the Darkfriend is trolling us, by saying they're a villager and female. Or maybe they're trolling us by putting trolled in italicized letters....who knows. As for Aspren's idea. I do not think it wise at all to start PMing one player to coordinate the Fanging. That means that all Fain has to do is convert Aspren and he has all the identities of all the vanilla villagers. It doesn't even take a large PM group. We need to discuss this openly. It keeps the vanilla villagers anonymous, and they can still decide to not follow the group's decision if they don't want to (which is something they'd still be able to do in a PM group).

Oh, Seattle. I used to live there (over 20 years ago...I was born there, but I still have quite fond memories of it). Love that area.

I've essentially already said everything I can in regard to the boons and curses. The only one that I see as imbalanced in favor of the Sharders was Slaughter, and that's for most of the reasons Claincy states. I think kill items should have a high cost, but the cost wasn't balanced between the factions, since it cost a Sharder holding the weapon less than it would've cost a non-Sharder holding the weapon. The rest of them we will have to agree to disagree on, as I think they were balanced very well, and if the game were played again, things would work out very differently, even with those same boons and those same curses. Not quite. It's more if you ask for a specific person to die, you'll get that, but you also just killed a member of your team. Very rarely would the Nightwatcher kill the person asking for the boon. It's about punishing them in other ways. The reason Ash died wasn't because of the Nightwatcher. It was because his time was up--he was a Voidbringer who'd been hit the day before.

Witless watched the town from a perch in the tree at the edge of the woods. He studied each of the villagers, wondering what secrets they were hiding from everyone else. Clearly some of them were hiding pretty big secrets. Darkfriends in Drell’s Crossing. Light. What is this world coming to? The only good news he’d had that day was from his snares. It was a good thing he’d checked them, since two of them had a caught squirrels. Only one each, but that was more than he’d had since he’d raided a small part of Bunnt’s farm in the dead of night. Witless still wasn’t sure if the farmer had noticed the missing part of his crop, but Witless had been careful to avoid the man, just in case. Still, now he was full on meat, which was a lot more filling than a few measly little carrots. Why he’d thought raiding a farm for food weeks before harvest time was a good idea, Witless didn’t know. He’d eaten a few hours before, though, and since then, he’d been up in the tree, watching the town, focused on the villagers milling around in the road and coming in and out of the Spruce Thicket. He’d seen a few of them doing things that could be considered suspicious, but he wasn’t sure if he was just jumping at shadows, acting the Whitecloak, and seeing Darkfriends where there were none. A figure stumbled out of the inn, and Witless’ eyes narrowed. He perked up on his branch, and wondered if he might’ve finally seen something worthwhile. So, I had a suspicion earlier this morning about a player, but since I was at work, I didn’t want to devote the time then to search it out more. But now I’m off work and I can take all the time I need. Through some searches I found something suspicious. Grey. In Game 5, he was absolutely against lynching someone day one. The lynch that occurred that day killed one of the only Team Good roles--one of the artifabrians. That’s pretty unfortunate, and what I would learn from that is more caution. Yes, we can learn a lot from lynching people. But that information is gathered from the discussion that takes place, not the actual lynch itself, unless there are vote manipulation roles (which there are none of in this game). Is Grey being cautious, though? No. He’s advocating lynching. Here’s the post I find most incriminating: (emphasis mine) Take note of the bold. That emphasis is what I want to address, since it is utterly false. Like I said, it’s not the lynch that gets us information. It’s the discussion. Even using Game 5, these statements don’t make sense. Only one GB voted for Tors, and no real information was gathered from that lynch, except that the GB had a reverser. In fact, very few GB’s were lynched that game. To my knowledge, only one was, and that was a lucky hit. The Nobles didn’t win that game because of lynchings. So the last statement is also false. As for what’s in the middle. Those are valid points. But they’re exactly the type of things Team Evil would put in there to back up their arguments. I know. I’ve done it. Many times. So while those stats are pretty good, it doesn’t really mean much to me. And this brings me to my last point. Just before the game officially started, Joe said in a post that he was going to advocate a day one lynch. The timestamp was 6:20 MDT. I’m not sure when exactly the roles were sent, but I received mine at 6:30, and I’m pretty sure I was one of the first (which would make sense if they were sent in the order we all signed up). At 6:56, Grey responded to Joe’s post, saying that he also was all for the day one lynch. This could be an innocent post from a player who just wants to mix things up and try something different from the previous game. Or it could be someone who just got his role telling him he was the Darkfriend or the Forsaken, and noticed a perfect way to cover himself and make it look like his push for a first day lynch isn’t anything to worry about. Coupled with everything else, I’m inclined to say it’s the latter. So. Grimlar al'Pil. Would you like to defend yourself?

Dirt and Ralv. They're the only ones left.

That's a valid point. I mostly just don't want any chance of it falling into the Darkfriend's hands and then being passed around there for a while. Because I'm almost positive a Darkfriend will be elected eventually. There's not much we can do about that. But if we can get something in place to prevent it staying with the Darkfriends before even electing the first mayor, then that'll be good. Granted, if that did happen (the role got passed around to Darkfriends), when one of those who were Mayor died, it would throw suspicion on everyone who had it after them. Which could end up killing most of them. So, from that side of things, it's not entirely strategic to do. Unless they were to pass it to someone innocent who they can manipulate..... Honestly, I don't even know at this point. I feel like I'm talking in circles, although that could just be the headache (my head literally feels like it's going to explode so if some of this post is nonsensical, I blame that...). Yeah, so...I'm good with anything. Mayor abstaining, mayor voting, either one. Probably best if we pick one and run with it though. And now I'm going to go wish I could amputate my head....or something.

Joe, I'm not about to get into some debate about why I should be mayor more than Wes or why I shouldn't at all. In the end, it's what you guys want, and I'll do the best I can with it if I'm elected. But I'm not about to hold it for more than just tomorrow. I really think it's best to keep it rotating. And probably even better if the current mayor abstains from the election of the next mayor (because if it does fall into the hands of the DF or Fain, we don't want it to stay there, and they would know who their teammates are).

The curses were actually pretty symmetrical. It was simply the way they interacting with other things or the people who requested them that made it seem like they were disproportionate. I'm guessing you're referring mostly to Slaughter, but any kill item would've had that curse, regardless of who asked for it. You get the item,so now you can kill people, but someone on your team dies every time you use it. Admittedly, it's best held in the hands of the Seventeenth Shard, but every time Gamma used it, he was wrecking his chances of winning with the Merchants, if anything had happened to the Sharders. I think you're also referring to you and Rengar's boon/curse pair as well. These are best looked at separately. Rengar asked for someone to change loyalties. In return, he changed loyalties. You asked to kill someone. In return, someone on your team died (it just happened to also be the person who you'd asked to kill). In terms of the other curses: Tulir asked to grave rob to find the roles of the dead. In return, he had to state the name of the person robbed and their role somewhere in his post the next day (although it didn't have to be as obvious as he chose to make it). Jaelre asked for the dead to hear him whistle, and for him to hear them whistle right back. Essentially, communication with the dead (since he used morse code in his whistles). In return, his curse was that his communication with the living was hindered. He now had to speak in limerick, everywhere. Aonar asked for PM's. He got them. But he couldn't use ERNSTL in them. (He could've gotten around this one with 1337, but he chose not to make it easy for you guys).' And I think that's all of them. But anyway, the curses were proportionate to the boon. They were symmetrical. The way they worked with other things that were happening in the game? Not so much. I'm not saying the curses didn't affect the way this game played out. They did. They hit the darkeyes hard. But that wasn't entirely the curses' fault. Here's a little scenario of what very well could've played out if Aonar hadn't died: First, Aonar had two lives. He would've kept those with his loyalty transfer. He also could PM. Additionally, he knew about Slaughter. He could've alerted the Merchants left, letting them know to protect themselves. Twei still had her protective potion (although using it would've made it so Gamma was also protected). He could've done a group PM (yes, he had the ability to; he simply chose not to) and opened up a secure line of communication between the Darkeyes, Merchants, and Nobles, two of which still had their Ghostbloods at that point, and one of which had their worldsinger still. It wouldn't have been hard at that point to convince Sarams to start working with the Darkeyes instead. And if they could've worked out Rengar? He was a big portion of the voting power, and he only had one life. Kill him (or even silence him) and the Shard would lose their lynch power in a huge way. Granted, with Aonar switched sides, Gamma would've gone after him with Slaughter, but if he can't feed the sword, he can't kill. And even if he could feed the sword, the Darkeyes Ardent was still alive and could've protected Aonar. Aonar's death was the turning point in the game. From then on out, it became very difficult for anyone else to win, but again that wasn't entirely because of the Nightwatcher curses. Hence, I'm thinking Ash should take the Doh! award (and don't be offended by that Ash. We've all made mistakes. It's what we learn from them that matters ).

Witless slept peacefully, curled up under the hay in the hayloft of the inn’s stable. It was warm, and he wanted to stay there forever. If only Gade would stop kicking him out of the loft whenever they found him up there…. The sun was high in the sky, Witless knew, but he didn’t care. Or at least, he wouldn’t if there wasn’t a ray of it coming through the thatched roof and shining on his face. He rolled over, keeping his eyes firmly shut, and settled back further into the hay. A clanging sounded in the stables below, and Witless jerked awake. “Who’s up there?” a voice called to him. Witless groaned. The stableboy. “Witless? Is that you? I thought Master Gade made it perfectly clear you weren’t allowed to sleep up there anymore!” Witless glared down at the boy, but when the boy started toward the ladder, Witless moved. “Alright, alright. I’m going,” he grumbled. When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he sauntered past the boy, muttering. “Pesky little upstart. Let’s see you go for weeks sleeping in the woods and see if you wouldn’t want a warm loft.” He wrapped his thin cloak around him as he stepped out into the stableyard, and hurried away from the inn. Best not to let Gade see him. The innkeeper would likely set his dogs on him to chase him off the yard again. Witless had kicked one of them the last time Gade had done that. Or at least, he’d tried to kick the mut. His foot got tangled up in the ratty ends of his cloak and he’d ended up on his back in the mud, with the mongrels ripping even more holes in his cloak before Gade had called them back. He hurried past the inn, wondering what he’d eat today. Maybe one of the traps caught something...No, best not to hope for that. The snares he’d set in the woods had proven vastly unsuccessful thus far. He’d caught one scrawny rabbit two weeks ago, and when he’d cooked it over his fire, it had barely enough meat on its bones to fill even a quarter of his stomach. Still, I should probably check them all the same. He marched off down the road, before movement in his periphery drew his attention. A crowd was gathered down the road, around the town hall. He generally avoided the crowds of townfolk, not particularly caring to hear them all mutter about his intelligence. They don’t know what they’re talking about. His hesitation only lasted a moment before his curiosity got the better of him. I wonder if the Mayor’s going to make some proclamation. As he neared the Green, he stopped dead in his tracks. Red covered the exterior of the town hall, and he could see more red stained the dirt in front of the building. Splotches of it, all over the road, and even some reaching out onto the Green. Witless didn’t need to get closer to know what the red was. He could smell the iron even from this distance. Blood. Who in the world could do this? He was too busy staring at the bloody walls across the Green to see Leas Fel mount the Mayor’s platform. It wasn’t until the old veteran started speaking that Witless noticed him. For a moment, Witless was confused about why Fel was up there and not the Mayor, and then it clicked. The blood. The town hall. The Mayor’s dead. And Fel was talking about Darkfriends in their midst. Witless shivered and glanced around the green at all the people gathered there. Sure, many of them had been rude to him at some point in the past, but darkfriends? And what’s this about companions to travel around the village? That kind of a proclamation was all fine for most of the village rabble, but Witless knew what the people thought of him, however wrong they were in their assumptions. None of them would debase themselves enough to keep him company. And even if one did, if Fel was right about traitors and darkfriends, what if that person wasn’t one of them? No, Witless knew that the only person he could trust was himself. He turned around and hurried away from the Green and the red-splattered town hall. It was time to check his traps. And maybe, when he was done, he’d keep an eye on the village. He knew these people, bad and good. Maybe he’d be able to find who killed the Mayor. Darkfriends indeed. Witless shivered again. Reading through the rules, it looks like we can elect a Mayor every day. And I think rotating that role might be the best option for us. It'll keep the double vote moving around, and it will also limit the target that the Mayor has with the Darkfriends and Fain. I don't really care who takes the mantle first, and since my name's been thrown up there, I'll let everyone else decide.

I'm not sure why the darkeyes went for you, but Gamma went for you because you were a Merchant, and he needed power for Silent Laughter (aka (S)Laughter).

The Nightwatcher was a crucial aspect of this game. While the curses were bad, as long as you didn't ask for anything too game-changing, they were totally workable, and the boons helped enormously. I'd say that was probably the biggest thing the factions should've been doing. The Sharders started out with no powers, but more information than anyone else (I would say a lot of information, but they were still in the dark about a lot of stuff), but they gained more power because they went to the Nightwatcher. Outside of the big first day rush, no one outside of the Sharders went to the Nightwatcher until after the Everstorm. That killed the factions. It's understandable that you want to use your power, but if you sacrifice one day and head to the Nightwatcher and pray successfully, when you return, you'd be able to not only use your power, but also your boon from the Nightwatcher (whatever it was). Once Rubix links the docs and the spreadsheet (not sure if he'll do it today or tomorrow), you'll be able to see the prayers that were granted. Take special note of Aonar's prayer (which I'm pretty sure the fact that his was so insanely good was the reason no one else got one granted that day. No one else compared, despite some of the other prayers that day being on par with other prayers that were granted later in the game). Aonar's prayer was the ideal prayer. Rengar's was pretty good too, and I thought Gamma's was pretty hilarious. Maill had some good prayers too, but he was dead at the time. If he'd been alive and offering the same prayers, he likely would've gotten one answered. But since he was dead, he didn't. That's not saying a prayer from the dead couldn't have been accepted, but it really would've depended on the humor (read: troll) factor of the boon. You were hit twice. Gamma fed you to the sword at the same time that that the Darkeyes GB hit you. (See, Khas? You're not the only one to get hit multiple times!)

Hm.....Having taken a closer look at it, it could go either way, with a little tweaking. However, I think it'll be more fun to run it as a longer game. Assuming you have the time to do so, that's what I'd suggest.

He's actually not the first. The vast majority of people who've posted games recently have been Mid-Range games--that's likely going to be the name of them, although we're still talking about the exact definition of each game. We'll get it up for you guys as soon as we work everything out. But if you think your game is Mid-Range, Khas, that's what I'll put it down for. I haven't looked really closely at it yet, but off-the-cuff, I would've said a longer run. However, if you think it's got some stuff in there to speed up the game play, I'll take your word for it on that and place it there on my spreadsheet.

Gamma should definitely get the Chronic Back (Stabbing) Pain award. Also, in terms of Can't Touch This....Claincy definitely wins. 4 days, accumulating 23 votes (I think). He would also get Most Lynchable, seconded by Alvron, at 18 votes.

I was hoping one of you would have the brilliant idea to try that yourselves. I really wanted to tell you that, because I thought it would be hilarious. At one point, it looked like Aonar was about to suggest responding in kind, but then he didn't. And then you guys wrote up that tweet, which was pretty stinkin' hilarious, so there wasn't really any point then.

Oh, he didn't have to whistle in morse code. He chose to. He wanted to "whistle to the dead and have the dead whistle right back".....but you guys didn't respond.

Seconded. And I'd like to nominate Khas and Wyrm for the "Talking Heads" award (most talkative....as anyone who shared a doc with them can attest).

It was about time for someone other than Khas to lose a bet. Also.....Khas and Wyrm. Yes. You won. By a little over 2k words. I'd say this was unfortunate, except that this was partially brought on by my trolling, so.....I don't feel so bad.