Young Bard

Gah. There's so much I want to say, but I have uni tomorrow, and can't spend all night staying up - it is literally 3am right now for me here - responding to everything I want to respond to. So, I'm going to respond just to Fifth Scholar's accusation, because it's directly aimed at me, quickly on the whole Devotary/El thing, and then hopefully some sort of vote, even though there's so much more I'd like to say, but don't have the time for. Oh, and Straw. I thoroughly disagree with... basically all of your analysis, really, but that's still a strong improvement over having no analysis at all. (This is something I've responded to before, and don't have time to go over again.) Fifth - I said that because that was my thought process at the time. I was trying to point out that we couldn't even assume that there was a flat rate of 3 Shards a night being released (which, in my opinion, would be bad enough) - because tonight there will be fewer Shards to steal charges from and therefore there any given Shard has an even greater chance of being released. I'm not against villagers taking Investiture - in fact, I proposed a system in order to try and maximise the potential for people to steal Shards without releasing them (which was rejected by the village). Admittedly, that system was proposed the first Night 0, but my opinions did not change between LG43 and LG43a. I'm... not sure what you mean by 'letting my second paragraph slide' - it implies that there's something inherently suspicious about it that you're not going to comment on - either it's not suspicious or it is - if it's not, then there's no need to insinuate, and if there is, then please elaborate and I'll try and respond to that. The people 'returning their Shards after they've had their fun with it' is not my concern. My concern is whether them 'having their fun with it' counts as before or after their win con changes. I'm attempting to discourage that from happening. I think... someone - I forget who - in the thread today, put it much more clearly and bluntly than I was - Hoid and Khriss (and their new lackeys) are my concern right now, but if I see evidence that they're going after a win con that isn't a village win con, that players removal will become a priority for me. From Fifth's analysis of my second post, I only feel like I need/have time to respond to Number 4 - yes, voting on inactives is reasonably common for me, especially on Day 1, where I don't have much better to do. And for the rumour that I have a Shard - I'm not going to confirm or deny this (and I don't think anyone else should either), simply because if there's a rogue Odium out there (which is quite possible), we shouldn't narrow down the possibilities of where the Shards are. (Well, I will say I don't hold Odium, since that's the reason I'm not revealing. Any other Shard, I have no comment.) Right. Devotary... Now that that very first comment (the one that first stood out to me) is explained by them being Khriss, I feel that's my main piece of evidence gone. I'm putting them as neutral for now, with a note to watch them in future. El, strangely, I trust. Lying about Devotary would be much too sloppy for Elim!El, IMO, which leads me to assume it was a legitimate mistake made by someone who called out what they thought was a lie. I'm strongly against their lynch. (Particularly given their luck in past Shard Games. ) Hmmm... I'm not nearly as confident as I'd like on who to vote for - I'd like to read over the thread again when it's not now 3:30 in the morning. I'm making a mental note to look over a couple of Mage's posts - they felt weird but I can't place why (sorry Mage, I hate when someone says that about my posts - ping me to elaborate on this when I have fresh eyes if I've forgotten.) I think I'm going to vote for Droughtbringer. This is about an 80% poke-vote, 20% suspicious vote, if that makes any sense - they post one game relevant line, and it's about a fringe issue that's not really got anything to do with any of the major discussions (It really only says "We shouldn't treat Odium as a problem now, we should later if they seem to be working against the village" - a very safe statement.) It feels to me like they're trying to hedge their statements, and avoid coming down on one side or the other and drawing attention to themselves. Then again, it's possible that they just intend to post more when they're more rested (I should try that sometime), so I'll be interested to see what their general opinions are. Right, that's me for the night. I'll be on again tomorrow a few hours before rollover, so I should be able to discuss more then.

I suspect someone else will have posted by the time I finish this, so it won't be a double post. 1. Hmmm... That's fair, I suppose, but that still doesn't answer the fact that I don't think destroying a planet would be a good idea, even if a Shard isn't released in the process. 2. Huh. OK, then. Does anyone want to counter-claim this? ...Against my better judgement, Devotary, unless I hear a counter-claim. I do consider that my main piece of evidence, but if you were Khriss last time, then that explains that comment. 3. That, at least, we're agreed on. :/ EDIT: I've just scanned through, and the following players are people who either didn't post, or only post a line or two at most. (If I missed something more substantial you posted, I apologise.) I'm RNG'ing from this list to poke vote - I understand if you're busy, but please let us know that at the very least if so. @Arinian, @Eternum, @Straw, @Jondesu, @Megasif, @shanerockes. Straw. Do you have any thoughts on the game so far?

Storms. Three Shards? And we couldn't have picked a nicer 3 to release, either... :/ What's more, if everyone steals a charge again tonight, we're divided among even fewer Shards, so it seems likely that at least three, if not more, will be released again tonight. Devotary of Spontaneity. I explained this at the end of last cycle, but to repeat quickly: I found a few of their lines - especially their first line after the reset - to be highly suspicious. In addition, they had a few peculiar plans which I believe would be more in line with an Eliminator mindset than a villager one (see my post last cycle for more detail on that.) To the three brand new Shards: I'm pretty sure you know when you're going to change your alignment (Seonid, is this true?) - I'd strongly recommend you have returned your Shard before that happens. (I'd say do it immediately, but I know even I wouldn't follow that advice if I was holding a Shard, so... ) Oh, and Odium, I hope you're not Steeldancer. Please, please, don't be Steeldancer.

It looks like Wilson's spreadsheet hasn't been updated from that game. My apologies. 1. Huh. I'll admit, it felt a lot more from my end, but that could have been me seeing your name more/paying more attention to your posts, and somewhere along the line that translated as my brain thinking you've posted more. I'll have another look over the original Night 0 thread after this. 2. Gah. I did mean Ruin, yes. I believe my point stands, though. If Ruin is released and does end up in villager hands, it doesn't mean it will stay that way. The player could convert (and I would hazard they have a win con more aligned with the Eliminators than the Villagers), or the Shard could be passed into Eliminator hands through death or passing. And, that says nothing about the fact that destroying a planet will help the Eliminators have an easier access to as much villager communication as possible. ... I plead the Fifth. (I feel like I've said too much already to give away what I meant, so I'm not going to comment further on who or what I made that comment about. Actually, I will confirm that I am not Survival's Vessel, but that's all.)

Well. That was an interesting read. I can see one person who I am 80% sure is lying through their teeth, but they're probably still village, and I'm kind of curious to see if their gamble pays off. I think that person knows who they are, and I'd be interested in them PM'ing me sometime. Secondly, I am continuing to support the Sudden Death Win Con. However - I understand Orlok's worries about not getting to try out the mechanics, but, to a certain extent, I don't trust my own plan - the very fact that it has such a small chance of succeeding is why I'm fine with trying to play to it. It relies on us 1) Catching both Hoid and Khriss in the first 3 or so cycles, and 2) Everyone not stealing too much from one particular Shard (a plan which has already basically broken down.) Thirdly, Devotary of Spontaneity is highly suspicious to me, and I'm probably going to be placing a vote on them first thing in the new cycle unless I see something that thoroughly changes my mind. His PM Chain has already been thoroughly rejected by basically everyone, so I'm not going to go into that, but his first line this cycle seemed highly suspicious to me. This feels like he's trying too hard to prove he hasn't got anything to hide. I was trying to decide whether he was Hoid, Khriss or Survival last round, and then lost it, but a few factors have convinced me that it's the other way around. 1) His activity level is much higher this turn. Admittedly, this could easily be due to RL stuff, but I think people tend to pay a lot more attention to a game in which they're an Eliminator (though, admittedly, that doesn't always reflect itself in the amount of posts made.) 2) He's proposed/supported 2 different plans now which I think would be... problematic, for the village, and easy for Hoid or Khriss to manipulate. A PM chain in a conversion game would be ridiculously easy to seed false information and have it be passed along, as well as ensuring that generally, most of what goes on in PM's would have a fairly good chance of reaching their teams ears, if they choose their players based on where they are in the player list. Secondly, Odium destroying Taldain would a) reduce the number of World PM's that the faction would have to monitor, and b ) implies Odium should be released, which I maintain is going to be much better for Hoid and Khriss at this stage of the game than for the village. (Remember, this is Odium, not just any Shard, but the most destructive Shard that the game has. Releasing Odium would be a very, very bad idea. In fact, my main concern is that I don't think an Eliminator would draw this much attention to themselves - I know I tend to try to do the opposite as an Eliminator and blend into the shadows, which is making me paranoid. I want to get this out by rollover, but I'm looking up Wilson's Spreadsheet immediately after this to see if this would be Devotary's first time as an Eliminator. EDIT: For the record, it is according to Wilson's Spreadsheet, which could possibly explain it. (Particularly without more experienced Eliminators to help out.)

Holy smokes... a bunch of new posts just appeared. I missed Orlok's post when I posted the last time, so I'll respond to that now. Then I'll try and get to the others after that. Hmmm... 15% (or 18%) seems like a very low Eliminator ratio to me - I'd always had it in my head as being around 25%. That said, I probably should have done the mental arithmetic for that first - 4 people seemed lower to me than it seems to be (perhaps it's because my head is dividing them into 2 groups of 2, which is a lot more difficult for both of those Eliminator teams to be able to function.) So far as I recall though, there has been a discussion on the Day 1 lynch just about every conversion game I've ever played, so if I was expecting some sort of opposition to the idea of a Day 1 lynch, I don't think that thought is entirely unjustified. I know I posted this after you'd already posted, but I think that the villages best chance in the early game is going to be following the Sudden Death win con. In addition, I don't think the Eliminator teams holding a Shard is going to be as useful as you're implying, as they have a (presumably) fairly limited usage before they form their own win con - which would be even more problematic for an Eliminator team then it would for the village since this brand new faction will know exactly who the members of the Eliminator faction were. The entire point of my plan was to make sure that no Shard, whether it be Cultivation, or especially Odium, was released in the first place. Since at least a couple people have already expressed interest in a charge from Cultivation (versus precisely zero interest in any other Shard, I might add), I think that at the very least, being open about what charges we're taking is going to mean people at least have a fair chance at releasing Shards we don't want released. If worst comes to worst, passing Shards between players who we believe are Village is also a valid plan (and a way of getting around the conversion rule, provided people actually pass them.)

That's... fair, I suppose. Our main advantage against Hoid is the one action limit - if he roleblocks us, then he's not converting or using any other of his many possible actions. You have a point, but I'm worried. For one thing, the second reason will only work a few times, and then Ambition will form their own win con, which could cause more problems then it fixes. While Ambition might be the best Shard to release if we have to release one, I think keeping them all contained, and hunting for Hoid and Khrissalla, might be our best shot in the early game, because it will be a lot easier to achieve our Sudden Death win con before we start releasing Shards then after. If we reach Night 3 or so, and we haven't caught either Hoid or Khrissalla, I'd probably be happy to go with this suggestion.

Heh. I get no responses for 2 hours, and then 3 in 5 minutes. OK, then. Sure. I wouldn't mind hearing a bit more about why, but I understand if you're busy. (Post seems slightly village to me, though in a conversion game that means a lot less than it normally does.) True. Although, if I'm being perfectly honest, I'd probably still advocate for it even if it began on a Day Turn. I... don't think we have, actually. In some ways, I hope Hoid/Khriss does try to release a Shard tonight - then, if we catch them tomorrow, we'll have eliminated an entire faction. I definitely wouldn't have been willing to take that risk as one of them. ...Huh. I'd kind of assumed that, perhaps because of my experience with LG29... Actually, I'm sure Seonid strongly implied it when he said the day would start on a night turn (Me from 10 minutes later: he did, here), but it would be good to be explicitly confirmed. Seonid, can you confirm that Hoid and Khriss are starting alone in their respective factions this turn? This is true, however, I'd say that information generally helps the Village more than it helps the Eliminators. A one-time charge isn't especially going to be an important factor in conversions, and as I said, I doubt they'd choose to steal a Charge instead of convert someone tonight. (The same can't be said tomorrow, of course - I'm hoping someone else will have come up with a smarter solution by then. ) But for tonight, I think it will be fairly beneficial for us to declare what we're doing.

Excellent. Well, let's start with a poke vote on... oh, it's a night cycle, isn't it? That's that idea gone, then. Advice - As I understand it, everybody is currently on the 17th Shard team except for Hoid and Khriss. (Survival, as I understand it, is currently a Sharder, and will only have a new win con if they use their power too much? Even so, I'm not really that worried about a Survival win con - I imagine that would be fairly benign and neutral.) Hoid and Khriss, unless one of them is *extraordinarily* unlucky, and targets the other, will both convert someone tonight, leaving 4 people who are a problem to the Shard. To preempt the discussion that I know is going to happen around a Day one lynch with only 4 Eliminators - I intend to vote tomorrow. Even though the odds are low of catching somebody, the act of expressing suspicion and voting is the best way to catch an Eliminator, and so we have much more to gain by treating the Day 1 lynch as a lynch rather than holding back, because otherwise, we'll never get the information we need to actually catch an Eliminator. In terms of Young Pyromancer's suggestion of allowing the Shard's to be released... I'll freely admit that I'm two-minded on the matter - on the one hand, I think letting the Shards be released will cause a lot more problems down the road. On the other hand, I look at the actions that having charges gives you and I think "I want some of that", and I'm sure most other players do to. (I'm sure that was entirely Seonid's point - I'm pretty sure this whole thing was based off of the Tragedy of the Commons.) On the upside, tonight is the *one* night we can act and be assured of no interference from Hoid or Khriss - they only have one action this turn, and they'd be foolish not to try and convert tonight. As such, just for tonight, I'm going to advocate that we try and distribute charges in such a way that we can be sure the Shards won't be released. (Though we won't know until Seonid wakes up whether there's enough to go around.) This does require a little bit of openness from everyone about what Shard they'd like to borrow from, but I think that could help the Shard overall as well. In that spirit of openness, I'd like to humbly request taking a Charge from Cultivation, but if there are too many other players who want PM's I'll bow out (and then hope one of them PM's me ). Gah. I *know* there's something I meant to talk about this night turn, but I can't remember. Never mind. I'll think about it and come back ranting and raving to the thread about it more than I already am.

He'll be missed. He was probably one of the smartest minds of the 20th Century.

Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III must not have noticed that Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III addressed Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III as 'I' (my apologies, humblest Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III) in Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III's introductory post, in which Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III let it be known that Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III is to be known as Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III. Clearly, this is a travesty that Philepe De Pedro Von Leiderhuch Johnson III can not overlook.

Let me be the first to welcome you to SE. Starting on a Shard game is certainly going to make for an interesting experience... Unless I've misread the rules, this is a faction game, and therefore there is no 'village'? It's quite possible I've got this wrong, though - Seonid's changed the rules around, so I haven't quite processed all the rules yet.

*sigh* I have too much nostalgia for these games not to play. Sign me up as Jeral, the nice young optimist who is sure that everyone is bound to get along with each other.

Is there any way to download audio from Arcanum (or can someone PM me the original source for me to download) - I might try running some of the poor quality audio such as the San Diego Signing through Audacity and see if I can reduce the background noise from it to make it more intelligible. (I make no promises, mind - I have literally a couple hours experience with trying to do this from over 2 years ago.)

Young Bard: Voting for Araris Valerian

Young Bard: Voting for Lemonelon

Removing vote for Lemonelon Voting for StrikerEZ

Voting for Lemonelon

6 Months Ago Jerol was 14 today. To the children of most houses, this wouldn't mean much - perhaps, there would be some sort of celebration or ball, to commemorate the event, and maybe whispered discussions and back-room deals would ensue to find an advantageous partner for the increasingly eligible young noble. But, in Jerol's House, things were different. When a member of Jerol's House reached their 14th birthday, then it was time for the Threshing to occur. Sometime today, Jerol would be pulled aside, taken into a room - soundproofed with thick, layered, walls, to minimise the distress of any other nobles nearby, and be beaten within an inch of his life. He shuddered at the thought of it. He'd been in that room once before, nearly a year and a half ago, had seen the bare walls, the rusty chain designed to keep people upright as they were beaten, had seen the results of the Threshing first-hand on the last person to enter that room. He never wanted to see that room again. Even the skaa he passed in the hallway seemed to feel sorry for him. They bowed their heads a little more than usual, moved a little faster past him. The skaa were superstitious folk - maybe they thought by not associating with Jerol, they wouldn't be forced to suffer any of the same misfortune as Jerol himself. And so, he was left to wander, and pace, and slowly think in circles as the dreaded hour approached. Relon might have been able to comfort him, except... no, of course he wasn't there. He never would be. Then he turned the corner, and a hand was clasped around his mouth. Then, slowly, he was dragged back towards the room, his futile struggles only causing mild frustration to his captors. It didn't halt their progress as they dragged him back down the corridor. It didn't halt their progress as they passed skaa and noble alike, all of whom turned away as if avoiding looking at the kidnapping it would somehow be less awful. It didn't halt their progress as they arrived in the room, and Jerol was tied to the roof of the room, as the door was slowly shut behind him. Well, that turned out much, much rougher (and quite a bit darker) than I'd planned, because I completely forgot for a few days and nearly missed out on signups... If it isn't obvious, I'm signing up to this game as Jerol. This looks too fun to pass up. And yes, I did steal the name 'Threshing' from Brent Weeks. So what? Questions: How many houses will there be in this game? I'm not sure if I've seen that answered yet.

While we're closing loopholes... In the event that I typed: Voting for Joe or Voting for @A Joe in the Bush Would these votes be counted as invalid? And would I die as a result of deviating from the wording? Could I somehow use this to make people *think* I'd voted for someone, only for the votecount to come out differently in the writeup? OK, now I'm just trying to find ways to annoy Wyrm. It's fun, though...

Doc and Alexis' game was QF21, IIRC. I have no idea how it's similar to this, though. Mainly out of curiosity to see how this will go, I'll sign up to this. Are the mafia permitted to confer in a doc? I'm guessing by the fact that each mafia will take turns deciding who to kill that the answer is no. In the spreadsheet of the results, do you plan on including whether the player was the first/second/n'th person to make that vote, and the order in which votes were made? May I request that you do, if you weren't planning on it? Also, potentially coloring votes green or red when the alignment of the player being voted on is revealed? A quick note on the expected distribution while I still have the opportunity to talk - The first few days will be random, and we can expect a high level of inactivity from this game once the exoticness (is that a word?) of the game wears off. As such, the size of the Eliminator team will be small, giving us longer to find them, but the disadvantage is that it will be a less obvious bloc of people operating with only a smaller group. There's more I want to say, but that's all I feel I can say without going against the spirit of the game, if not the letter. Suffice to say, this should be interesting.

As some of you may know, there was a discussion on Discord about a week ago about what several players perceive as problems in SE right now. A number of players have pointed out several things that they've been enjoying less and less about the state of SE as it stands now, mainly to do with how it's both harder and harder for new players to be able to understand the meta of SE and fit in with it's increasingly complicated plot, and, more directly relevant to a lot of the older players, an increasing lack of enjoyment with recent SE games. This was due to a number of factors, but in fair amount due to the reduced amount of camaraderie between players, which is what drew players into SE in the first place. (There are other reasons for this as well, which I intend to discuss below.) The Metanarrative and New Players In regards to new players and the increasingly complex meta, a number of suggestions were made about how the metanarrative could be made easier for new players to understand and begin contributing to. One of the ideas that was suggested was some sort of Wiki. This was one of the ideas I used to be a proponent of, going so far as to create the "SEncyclopedia" (which promptly failed due to me being busy and unable to properly work on it), but I've found more and more flaws in that idea as time goes on. The big problem is, new players have no investment yet towards the meta, and yet, in order to fit in, they'd essentially be forced to read a fairly long backlog on Shards, Snakes, Swords (e.g. (S)laughter) and basically everything else under the sun starting with S in order to understand the metanarrative and injokes of the games. As such, I no longer feel that this is the right way to approach how to deal with the metanarrative for new players, because it sets the bar too high for new players to be able to understand and fit in as a group, something which I feel is a steep learning curve already. A similar, yet slightly different proposal which I’ll quickly address is something more akin to metanarrative inspired stories you see in the SEAcropolis thread as a way of getting new players up to speed. While I think it has the potential to be more fun to read through if we direct new players to a relevant RP on Snakes or the history of Kiireon/Edaan, I think this would merely mitigate the issue, rather than dealing with it completely. A system like this would still mean new players would have an extremely steep learning curve in order to understand the meta of the community. Many of us in the conversation agreed that a system like this wouldn’t resolve a lot of the problems we agreed were there. A more extreme change that was suggested was a reset of the meta, and a new metanarrative that would be constructed out of the ashes of the old one, with a focus on making it easy for new players to have a low threshold to understanding the metanarrative as it stands at that moment. There are a number of ways this could be achieved, (and I’d love to hear your input on this) but the way I envisage such a system operating is an overarching metanarrative, which has 'arcs' or 'beats' to it. All a new player would need to understand in order to start contributing to the metanarrative is what's happened in the current arc/beat, which on its own is shorter and more free-standing in order to be easier to understand. Then, only if they decide that they're sufficiently invested and want to know more, would they dig into some of the older metanarrative arcs in order to understand the backstory, which is relevant but by no means necessary to understanding the current position of the metanarrative. I think a system like this could be useful. My main concern is that it arguably places too much structure on a system that I think some players like to be unstructured and freestanding, which is unfortunate, but I think a necessary step if the goal is to have a less steep learning curve for new players entering SE. I think this balance between structured and free-form meta-RP is something we’re going to need to focus on balancing if we go ahead with this plan, and is something I’d also love to hear your thoughts on, or if you have any alternative suggestions to deal with the issues I’ve raised. Camaraderie and the Desire to Win in SE There was also a lot of discussion around why a lot of older players were also finding it harder to engage with the more recent SE games. After a fair amount of conversation, this came down to a lot of issues. There’s a lot less camaraderie than there used to be, when a lot of the older players enjoyed the game because of the more social aspect of the game, to be able to enjoy finding Eliminators together, trying to read each other, and generally having a good time. An increasing focus that’s developed in players over time to focus just on winning, and less on the community of the game. Higher and higher levels of inactivity in games. We were discussing what might have caused these, and generally agreed that it might have come from a couple common issues. The way in which people play SE now is fundamentally different now to how it used to be played. Two of my earliest docs are also my two favourite docs of all time - the Shard Zero Doc in LG21 and the Venture Docs in LG23. What’s common between them - and what I haven’t seen as much in any of the later games, is the community and social aspect that is a large part of what a lot of the older players enjoyed about the game so much. Part of this, perhaps, is the Discord Chat. A lot of the social conversations moved from docs and PM’s to Discord round about LG24, when the Discord was created. As a direct result of that, less attention in SE was placed on the community and regular socialising, because we now had the Discord Server for that. Now, arguably, this isn’t a bad thing. It’s possible to say that these things simply develop, and that simply because there is an old way of doing things doesn’t necessarily mean that the new way is any worse, and that SE can still provide a fun setting for many, even if it’s not what a few of the older members originally came into the community for. However, I would argue that some of the ripple effects of this change have caused more, clearly negative changes in how SE is played. A natural consequence of people socialising less in SE results in people focusing more on winning, on achieving the goal, occasionally at the cost of what is fun, for yourself and others. An environment like that, with an increasingly competitive game, is more likely to lead to a less inviting and friendly community, and more likely to lead to people taking things too seriously, leading to clashes and arguments which might once have been avoided, as well as a higher amount of stress with the game overall, meaning people are less invested to want to play. This last part, especially, might attribute both to the number of older players who are considering not playing SE anymore, and the increasing number of inactives on a game to game basis. Which leaves the problem of how to resolve (or at least mitigate) these issues. Realistically, I think the Discord is here, and here to stay. Many people, including myself, get something worthwhile out of the community we have there - however, I don’t want that to come at the expense of the community here, and I feel that we can do more to at least mitigate some of the effects mentioned above. On top of that, I don’t think that the Discord chat is the sole source of these issues (as much as some of what I’ve said above might have unintentionally implied that), so much as it has aggravated and revealed some of the issues that I think we would have eventually had to deal with anyway. Many of the suggestions in the Discord Chat were centered around the ideas of introducing (or rather, reintroducing - some of these ideas existed a while ago, but weren’t carried on) ways to promote a more open, friendly, environment. One idea I think works as a good start is the ‘paper plate awards’, like you’d see in Cross Country Tournaments, or Model UN Debates. These awards essentially are a way to promote open, friendly gameplay, features less dedicated to competitiveness such as roleplay, and whatever else is fun, memorable or fitting for that game. For example, you could have awards for the best RP, and you can also have awards for things such as nearly being lynched the most times. I went digging, because I know I’d seen them on the old site before the great overhaul, and I found some examples that on Alv’s profile, if you’re curious to see the kind of thing that I mean by this. As I said before, I think this is a good idea, at least as a starting point. I’m worried that on it’s own, it might not do much, as it deals with some of the symptoms, instead of addressing the root of the problem itself, but I believe this definitely works as a starting point in changing the focus of the community away from a purely competitive game to a more social one. Another idea that was suggested had to do with the revival of Cosmetic Roles. I’m… less certain this will be effective, though I’m interested to see the argument in favour of it. Cosmetic Roles, to me, seemed like a way of prompting people into RP’ing more, if they hadn’t really thought of it as an option. Personally, I feel that if people are going to RP anyway, then Cosmetic Roles will be unnecessary, on account of the player having their own RP ideas, and those who weren’t planning to RP probably wouldn’t anyway. I’m not so sure it’s likely to very many players attitude very much, unfortunately. Perhaps I’m missing the point of this, and if so, I’d love to hear the perspective of other people when it comes to cosmetic roles. The Role of the GM The final point I’d like to ask people about is what role the GM has to play in dealing with the issues I’ve mentioned above. So far, I’ve placed a fair amount of focus on what the community as a whole is doing that is potentially causing problems, and what the community could do to fix it. However, that’s only one side of the coin, and I think there are a few things that GM’s have done that have potentially aggravated the problem, and a few tricks the GM’s could use to potentially mitigate or resolve them. The elephant in the room with this topic is broken games. Sadly, I think that these have been on the rise. Partially, I think this is due to GM’s want to experiment with more outside-the-box games in an attempt to make something new, different, and exciting. (One could make an argument that this is the response to players being more and more focused on the mechanics of games in an attempt to win instead of more socially based games as it used to be. Or, perhaps that’s a stretch too far. I don’t know.) Sadly, in their attempt to achieve the first two of those, they sometimes fail at the third. However, I’m not going to talk about this a great deal right now, because only recently, the GM’s created the Balancing Committee, and I’m optimistic that this will be an effective strategy in reducing the number of broken games. As such, there’s not a lot I’m going to say about this, though if this continues to be an issue I may create a follow up post about this later. That said, if anyone else had something they feel should be added to the conversation about broken games, I’d encourage you to do so, because it certainly forms a piece of the overall problem. What I am going to refer to is the tangentially related issue of non-standard games that I touched on in the paragraph above. To this day, I love non-standard games, as they’re different, and fresh. However, I love them because they are the exception to the rule, so I wonder if it’s a good thing that they become the rule itself, as, more and more, it seems to be becoming. Is there a responsibility of GM’s to try and make sure that non-standard games are the exception to the rule, not the rule itself? Is that the responsibility of someone else, like the new balancing team, or the mods? Should we let things be, or is that going to aggravate the problem of broken games and place an overly strong focus on mechanics - at the cost of making people view SE as a social game instead of something that’s interesting solely because of its mechanics. I’m divided on this issue - on the one hand, I like the relative degree of freedom that GM’s have in creating games, but I can also see the issues that might arise from it, so I’m hoping to hear everyone else’s thoughts on this before I make my mind up one way or the other. Finally, I do think that GM’s definitely can and do have some responsibility in this area. The first games that come to mind when I mention this are MR17 and LG30, both of which were run by Aman, and both of which had incentives placed on posting RP. These games were highly successful, and I think struck a perfect balance between incentivising RP and not making it absolutely necessary for those who really weren’t interested in RP to participate. I think something like this is another solution to reducing the focus of winning at all costs in SE, though I’m interested to hear your thoughts. If you have any other ideas about what role the GM has to play in influencing the focus of games, or any of the other issues I’ve discussed, I’d love to hear them. I’m currently planning for my upcoming QF, and I do intend to take on what was discussed here and in the Discord Chat when planning for my game, and experiment with what works in creating a fun game, and I would be interested in hearing your suggestions as well on what else a GM could do to tackle these issues. Conclusion I’ve written up a fair amount by this point, but I’m only one person, and I’m sure there’s a lot I haven’t considered, or might have wrongly dismissed out of hand. If you have anything else you feel needs to be discussed surrounding the SE environment, or have alternative suggestions, I’d encourage you to post your thoughts and opinions - even just your two cents on the ideas presented here if you don’t feel you have anything to add - as it would be help us understand what the major issues SE players are finding with SE, and how they can potentially be resolved. If you have any concerns with the direction SE is heading, now is the time to voice those concerns, so we can hopefully make the SE experience better for all involved going into the future.

I'll be doing it again this year. My final exams end in the early part of November, so I'm hopeful that I'll have the rest of the month free to work on NaNo and perhaps win it this year.

Spoilers from the sample release chapters (link will download a Microsoft Word file) of the Liar of Partinel (an unpublished novel by Brandon).

If you have less than... say, 18 players, by the time this is due to start, you can sign me up for it. It sounds really fun, but I'm hesitant about clashes with RL, as I'm the middle of my final exams right now.