Young Bard

Ugh, I'm kinda peeved by this - this game is about trying to find Elims through analysis. With Connie's no-lying policy, if she said "I'm a Villager" and with us all knowing her policy, it would immediately eliminate her as a suspect, which invalidates the whole point of the game. So I hope Connie does no such thing. Unfortunately, my Dannex lynch hasn't taken off, so I guess I'll switch my vote to Random Bystander, who was next highest on my suspicions list. I feel like I'm really going to regret that, but it's 3:30am and my brain is mush, so... I should sleep and consider my life choices in the morning (or possibly afternoon )

OK, Illwei's flip should give us at least a little bit of information. Quinn and Liranil are both softcleared in my book, since Illwei pushed for both of their lynches pretty hard C3 and C2, respectively. That leaves in our suspect pool: Ash/Flying - I don't remember a ton of Ash's stuff from memory, and they've just been replaced by a pinchhitter, so... yeah, hopefully Flying will be more active so I can get a read on them. Neutral Gears - Hasn't voted at all, but has posted some post analysis each cycle - Ugh. I want to say that's an Elim strat, to avoid attention and scrutiny, but honestly, it's such an obviously deliberately done thing that I'm more inclined to believe it's some experiment being done by Gears this game, and so completely NAI. I'd put him as maybe Slight Elim, if only due to the lack of available alternatives. Connie - So chaotic that pretty much anything they do will be NAI, which may be the entire point. Still, I can't help but feel an Elim wouldn't attract that much attention to themselves, so... Slight Village Dannex - There was something about their vote on Connie last cycle that felt slightly... opportunistic to me. I don't really think that someone who was genuinely looking for Eliminators would seriously think Connie's claim was genuinely suspicious (Dannex pointed out there's no reason for a Villager to claim Elim, but I'd point out there's equally no reason for an Elim to claim Elim either, so that's not a convincing argument). It's entirely possible that Dannex isn't suspicious of Connie, but simply wanted to vote Connie out because of their chaotic playstyle, given this comment, but... frankly, I just came out of the AG where players trying to dictate how others should play SE was a huge frigging issue that became a mess, and the whole thing just makes me really tired, so... I'm going to do my best to give Dannex the benefit of the doubt and hope he's not doing that. Moderate Elim Kings_way - Kings_way is strange, because he's gotten suspicion for this post. And... I kind of agree that it's suspicious, but think it's suspicious for completely different reasons? The argument seems to be "If Kings were really inactive, then how did he know that Orlok was also inactive? Maybe they're just lurking and pretending..." Which... I don't find remotely convincing - First, Orlok had just been replaced by a pinchhitter, so I don't think it takes that much to really figure out why, and even someone with Kings activity level could plausibly know that Orlok had been inactive. Second, if the theory is that Kings is lurking, then surely they'd have stopped lurking to try and save Illwei. That didn't happen, which, if Kings were an Elim, I can only assume means he is genuinely inactive, not pulling off some pseudo-inactive strategy. At the same time, there is absolutely something really weird about that post. I mean... people were joking about Connie being the only Elim, but Kings seems to just miss the joke entirely and try to do some sincere analysis - essentially "Actually, I think it likely if Connie were an Elim, they wouldn't be the only one!" Which... I don't mean to be rude, but seems like something bluntly obvious for a bunch of different reasons. So I don't really know what to make of that post. I know Kings arrived sometime during my hiatus, and it may even be his first game, so that might go a part of the way to explaining it? If I wanted to see a Village!Kings making that post, I'd say you have a player who joins up, feels swamped, wants to contribute but doesn't feel they know how, so makes that post to just dip their toes in and try and act like everyone else seems to be acting. If I were viewing that post from an Elim!Kings perspective, it would be almost the same, except now with even more pressure of sounding normal and blending in while not knowing exactly how. Which means it's entirely plausible to be read both ways. Overall, I'd say I have maybe a very Slight Elim read on them, but I frankly talked myself in and out of seeing that one line both ways that I've gone cross-eyed and have actively ruined my ability to say anything with any confidence whatsoever, beyond hoping they'll post more in future so I can maybe have a bit more to work with next time I analyse them. Shard of Reading - similarly inactive, but I think I've gone overboard enough on the Freudian readings of individual lines for one day so I'll just say Slight Elim, and that might be why there was no counter bandwagon to try and save Illwei. Random Bystander - Illwei voted on Random Bystander towards the end of last cycle, which is... an IKYK. It could be a distancing tactic from a fellow Elim, but it could also be meant to be disguised as a distancing tactic? I do find it interesting that Random Bystander explicitly says they trust Illwei just a couple hours before rollover, but doesn't try to save Illwei, which... doesn't make sense from either an Elim or a Village perspective. Unless... at that point, Illwei had three votes on them, from Matrim, Quinn, and Liranil. All other candidates (I think) had one vote on them. So, if Illwei and Random Bystander were the only Elims online, they didn't have the ability to swing the vote on their own, except onto Connie or Kings, and even then with only a 50% chance of success. So if Bystander were an Elim, and hoping to save Illwei, they could be trying to drum up support for Illwei (specifically, at least one village vote onto a semi-plausible lynch candidate), but leave enough room for distancing if it didn't work? It seems kind of thin, but it's also the only story I can tell which feels like it kinda makes sense. So... Moderate Elim (I might have said Slight Elim, but I've marked three people as that already, and this feels just slightly more substansive than those other reads.) Looking back at the list, I guess that makes my top suspicion Dannex. Oh, and apparently my playstyle is sheepish? I... honestly don't intend it to be, and I certainly hope it isn't my 'normal' playstyle. I guess it's partly Matrim and I looked out for similar things and reached similar conclusions about most people, and partly just that reading through the threads I found Matrim's analysis to be reasonably persuasive, so shifted my suspicions to react to that. If I had more time, as well, I like to think I'd do more in-depth analysis that would give me more independent reads, and to highlight more differences between my reads and other peoples.

OK. I'm stuck. I'll admit, there's a part of me that hoped someone else would have done my thinking for me, but I guess I should probably do some of my own analysis. So, it's a 4-way race between Matrim, Illwei, Liranil, and Quinn. Matrim - Matrim is actually one of my stronger trust reads this game - we seem to have similar reads on people, and he seems to be trying to figure the game out. Moderate Trust Illwei - For how much Illwei has posted, I don't really feel I have a good read on them - a lot of it is NAI. However, the fact I don't have some kind of read with the amount they've posted makes me slightly suspicious. Actually, the post where they run through the different players and think about who the Elims might possibly target feels villagery to me, so that kind of balances it out. Neutral Liranil - If Archer had flipped evil, then Liranil would be one of my top suspicions, but otherwise, I haven't really gotten any bad gut reads off any of Liranil's posts. Their post running through all the players seems slightly manufactured, since I don't really think there's enough there D2 to make a post like that - that said, especially given the sharp decline in votes/direction of this game, I can easily see it coming from a villager trying to find something to say or to pump up the conversation, so... yeah. Neutral Quinn - Quinn was one of my early Elim reads, but I the more I looked at her posts the more I ended up talking myself out of it and deciding Quinn was probably just a Villager with a slightly chaotic playstyle. And a few of her posts since have just felt... kind of similar to how I feel right now, tbh, slightly confused and lost. Neutral as well, I guess. I'm so glad I did that analysis, leaving me exactly where I started. /s Out of the three of them, I guess the strongest case could be made for Quinn, given I *did* find a couple of her early posts suspicious, so maybe my early gut was right and her later posts was a course correction or something. I dunno, I don't feel comfortable with that vote, and might change it if a new candidate comes along, but I haven't got anything better right now.

It was a pokevote before you showed up - here:

Ummm... fair enough, I suppose. If I was trying to distance myself from an Elim, I think I'd have tried to do so in a less embarrassing way that wouldn't have been immediately pointed out, but I know I've certainly voted on people for less during D1. Quinn is probably my biggest suspicion right now - they seemed to vote on me and then Liranil with very little explanation. Though, I don't think I've played with Quinn before, so don't really know their playstyle (the AG doesn't count, because I don't associate playstyles to people when they're using anonymous accounts) - the more I think about it, I can also see Quinn's posts being from a slightly more chaos-gremlin style villager. TUO... I didn't think their initial contradictions about saying there were 4 Doctors and then contradicting that with the Among Us example was alignment indicative - maybe it was even slightly village leaning, since I think an Elim might want to seem more internally consistent. But he reacted weirdly when Matrim called him out on it. I definitely feel something off about his vote on Matrim, who I'd say I think is... slightly in my village camp, IMO, because he seems to be genuinely trying to solve the game. I'm gonna vote on TUO (Random Bystander). I might change my vote to Liranil if the TUO vote doesn't take off, because it could still be informative, but I haven't seen anything in Liranil's behaviour specifically that makes me suspicious, and the main reason for me to suspect Liranil is because of TUO's vote and a potential E/E pairing, in which case, why not just vote on TUO directly?

*blinks* Oops. Sorry Archer, I somehow missed that post. Uhhh... Random Bystander, that sounds like a suspicious name if ever I've heard one.

I feel slightly guilty for people calling it my ruleset - it was Tess who came up with the ruleset, I just helped co-GM it when they ran it. On the upside, I guess that means you can unvote me now, though. Archer hasn't showed up yet, so have a pokevote. Honestly, the only roles I can't see the Elims having is Trapper or maybe Aviar Holder if they're a larger team, everything else seems like a plausible Elim role. As for what ship parts they're likely to target, I'd say the Laboratory or the Brig, since it's their greatest risk in the early game (if the Trapper is still alive and hasn't used their ability in the late game, that's more likely to be a late-game target), the Hospital is a mid/late game target to prevent mass-roleclears, the Main Office might be good if they just wanted to take out as many roles as possible. Crew's Mess depends on how the Elims feel about PM's, but I think is probably a lower priority target, and the Aviar Holding Area... it depends how many Aviar Holders there are in the game - if their kill gets blocked every second cycle, then they'll probably sabotage it, but if there's only one or two Aviar Holders, I think it would probably be lower priority again.

Hmmm... My home internet has been fritzing up lately, and I don't know when exactly it will be fixed... If I were to sign up, I might not be able to get on as much in the first 1/2 cycles... Eh, I'm too curious about this game not to play. Sign me up as Second of Daybreak. (EDIT: Oops, just realised Dawn was taken already.)

Wow, that was an incredible writeup. Congratulations to Fifth, Kas, Matrim, Devotary, and everyone else who contribured to it - it was such a rollercoaster ride. And more broadly, I've missed the Shard Games - I really hope it isn't another two years until the next one. I wasn't quite as pkugged into this one as I'd have ideally liked, but I was around enough to be really impressed by how everyone played. And finally, huge thanks to El and Wilson for running this behemoth of a game, and somehow managing to stay mostly sane through it all. Kas was the only person I got pretty much instantly - everyone else I got stuck on. I'm really curious to find out who Lion was - I felt I should be able to place them, but just... couldn't, somehow.

I'm definitely not ready to run the QF unless I ran a completely different ruleset, even if the anonymous accounts weren't being used already. As Elandera mentioned, @CadCom and Elbereth are both unlikely, so unless @The_God_King claims the spot in the next couple days, I think you have it, TJ.

I'm ambivalent about all of the suggestions, though a large part of that is probably familiarity bias. With a lot of our roles, we've developed a name for them based on the first game to feature them, which often means the Mistborn roles from LG1 - even if it's not a Scadrial game (e.g. vote manipulation being referred to as Soothing, even if it's not a Mistborn game.) I could see something similar happening here - you can use either a game-specific term (which might be imprisonment, execution, hanging, etc., depending on the game) or a generic term coming from a game with a word we all liked.

Thanks El for running a great game. I enjoyed working my brain up in knots about I know that the Cultists know that we know who the Korathi are, etc. Twice the IKYK's, twice the fun! And I had a PM with Striker, but it was very short (I never made one with Mist) - I started a PM the cycle we lynched Hael - interestingly, Striker was actually the candidate I was second-most suspicious of at that moment, but something about the Drake lynch, and then Hael trying to lean on a Striker lynch, gave me a bad gut read, and made me decide to switch. Once we had a confirmed Cultist, it was much easier to draw connections to the others - with 4 players, you didn't really have the leeway to distance - Hael was tied to Elk, and Elk was tied to Illwei, and Silber was just the odd one out in the JP doc. In a slightly different world where the flip had gone the other way and Hael wasn't lynched, then the Cultists would have managed to win (and they nearly did anyway). And this game is just weird. Whenever I think about a specific faction, I go "Oh, yeah, this game is so biased against that faction, they have all these disadvantages"... Except I think that about every faction and they can't all be true. I think the Practitioners probably had the easiest job out of the three, but not by a whole lot - I actually mentioned to El before the game the possibility that a Cultist would just share the names of some Practitioners with a Korathi, making it impossible for the JP's to win. If I were a more chaotic/brave player, I might have claimed Cultist to a player and started giving fake reads or something to reduce the effectiveness of that technique.

If by "every time they voted" you mean "that one time they supported a lynch on Mist last cycle", then yeah, fair enough. I really don't like the last minute vote shenanigans going on this game - normally, I'd put it down to Elims trying to save their comrades, but it just seems to be everyone this game. But the fact that it's everyone means that it gives the Jeskeri more of a smokescreen. Votecount as of 30 minutes before rollover last cycle: Vote Count Mist (3) - Matrim, Young Bard, Illwei Matrim (2) - Sart, Elkanah Elkanah (1) - Kasimir Illwei (1) - Mist Striker votes on Mist, cementing their lead as the lynch candidate to a point where I'd have considered the lynch effectively over in a normal game. But this isn't a normal game, and things are just getting started just getting started. Vote Count Mist (3) - Matrim, Young Bard, Illwei, Striker Matrim (2) - Sart, Elkanah Elkanah (1) - Kasimir Illwei (1) - Mist Devotary votes on Matrim at 5 minutes before rollover, and then swaps from Matrim to Elkanah at 4:59, pinging Matrim to try and follow suit - if Matrim had, it would have resulted in a draw between Mist and Elk. However, it's in the final minute of the game, so Devotary might have pinged Matrim knowing there wouldn't be time to react and change their vote. Vote Count Mist (4) - Matrim, Young Bard, Illwei, Striker Matrim (2) - Sart, Elkanah Elkanah (2) - Kasimir, Devotary Illwei (1) - Mist In the final minute, Illwei swaps their vote from Mist to Matrim, resulting in a tie, and Matrim getting lynched. (Though Illwei likely didn't see Devotary swap from Matrim to Elkanah, so would have expected Matrim to be in the lead, guaranteeing Mists survival.) Final Vote Count Mist (3) - Matrim, Young Bard, Striker Matrim (3) - Sart, Elkanah, Illwei Elkanah (2) - Kasimir, Devotary Illwei (1) - Mist Illwei found the possibility of the vote on Mist accruing over the course of the cycle suspicious. If that's the case, wonder how I felt at reading two different attempts to save Mist in favour of a different candidate in the final minute. OK, there are a few possibilities here, depending on whether Mist's alignment. 1) Mist is Korathi If Mist is Korathi, then most of this is just chaotic players, and there's less that can necessarily be read into it. It could be that Illwei and Devotary are Elims trying to cast suspicion on Mist and target the focus of the thread onto Mist and away from Practioners, though I don't find that a likely option, reading through. 2) Mist is a Practitioner/Cultist in the Practitioner Doc If Mist is in the Practitioner Doc, I would say it's extremely likely that one of Illwei or Devotary being part of the same faction as Mist (though almost certainly not both). If I had to guess, I'd say Illwei is the most likely candidate, though I always struggle to read Devotary, so I certainly can't clear them. (Illwei might object that they were the first person to vote for Mist, but that in itself means that it could be a distancing tactic, rather than a genuine attempt to get Mist lynched, and why they later backtracked at the last minute.) 3) Mist is the Korathi Cultist One of Illwei or Devotary would likely be a Jeskeri Cultist, in that case. If that's the case, I'd expect one or both of these players to die to the Jeskeri Inquisition in the next couple days, and for them to flip Cultist. So, most likely according to Options 2 and 3, and with a possibility in Option 1, one of Devotary or Illwei is a Jeskeri (there's no easy way to tell what kind of Jeskeri they are, which is frustrating, but if we hunt for the people who we're fairly certain aren't Korathi there's a decent chance we'll find some Practitioners, and it's not really a problem unless we kill the Korathi Cultist, who the Practitioners have no way of killing). I'm tossing up between the two of them, and Mist - on the one hand, Illwei has been more suspicious throughout the game, but they also seem to have a more chaotic playstyle generally, which usually draws some suspicion. Devotary, on the other hand, isn't someone who I'd expect to pull these kinds of last-minute vote shenanigans as a Villager, so that makes them slightly more suspicious to me.

OK, I'm here, and thoroughly confused. Sorry for not posting last cycle - again, a combination of IRL stuff and then general tiredness prevented me from posting. I can see a lynch on Mist - changing their beliefs like that from one cycle to the next without any clear reason could be a sign of a Jeskeri just pretending to have actual reads instead of anything real and then not keeping their story straight. The fact that Matrim is also voting on Mist is making me a little nervous and paranoid, but even if Mist does flip village, it could still provide useful information on the alignments of Illwei and Matrim, so there's that, I suppose. If anyone else besides Sart wants to vote on Matrim before I go to bed soonish, though, I'd swap my vote to them.)

(Apologies for not getting on and voting yesterday - I meant to, but RL got in the way, and I was too exhausted to really focus. But I now have my laptop again, which makes things much easier.) I'm getting a weird vibe off of Matrim. There's so much of what he writes which feels... performative. I'll show you what I mean. First non-RP line, and it's reacting to the Jeskeri Inquisition lynch - a Practitioner dying was probably the most likely outcome. There's something about it which feels forced, like they feel they have to blend in and show that they, too, are happy about a Practitioner dying. And that trend continues here as well (emphasis mine). Which feels incredibly forced trying to ingratiate himself as a Villager. He's also been fairly aggressively going after Illwei and Sart, which... Huh. Normally, I guess I'd associate that with more village behaviour, since I think Elim's generally want to fly under the radar, but again, my gut is saying that his tone is just off, somehow. Blegh. I could definitely be tunnelling at this point, but I don't have any better suspicions. Tomorrow, when I'm more awake, I'll try and have another look at Matrim's (and everyone elses) posts and see if I'm still suspicious of him.

OK, I'm going to be on mobile for all of C1, so I'm not going be typing out long paragraphs of analysis until tomorrow. I keep on flipping on who I think the rules are biased against. During signups, I thought the Practitioners had the hardest job, being wedged from both sides and having to kill some of their own in order to win, but I'm starting to wonder if the Korathi are going to have the most difficulty, since in trying to lynch Practitioners they could easily kill a Cultist, furthering the Practitioners wincon, and the Cultists will prevent the Korathi from ever getting too close to wiping out the Practitioners. Suggesting something provocative D1 is not something I usually associate with Sart, but I don't find it unusual or AI either. I do intend to vote a bit later, once I look a bit closer to see if I can find anyone I'm more suspicious of.

Eh... I think you're putting words in my mouth. Just that it's usually the case, whether it be on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, or whatever other power imbalance you can think of, that the people who have power are almost by definition unwilling to use that power to change the system, because it's clearly worked well for them. And because of that, it takes an active collective push in order to change the status quo, and in being silent, you're helping to maintain that status quo, whether or not that is your intention. "Silence is violence" is probably not a slogan I'd personally use, but not even because I disagree with the spirit of it, just that sometimes in trying to come up with a snappy slogan you make your point harder to understand rather than easier, and I feel this case is one of those ("Silence perpetuates a system of unjust hierarchies" is probably more accurate, but much harder to chant at a rally.) And I just looked up Marcellus Wiley - I only found a 2 minute clip of him speaking, so maybe he produced a more substansive criticism elsewhere that I couldn't find in a quick Google search - he found a list from somewhere which he said was BLM's mission statement, and criticised points from it like the dismantling of the nuclear family (which he viewed, and the data backs him up, as a destructive goal that's likely to increase crime and poverty, not decrease it), and ending white supremacy (which he views as trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist in the 21st Century, pointing to his career as a successful TV show host). The thing is, I don't even disagree with any given sentence Marcellus said? The problem is, BLM is a grassroots movement, and I am confident that there are probably hundreds of different mission statements out there, a large number of which are easy to poke holes in, and I feel Marcellus is constructing a strawman that doesn't actually address, or even mention, the core of the BLM protests, which is trying to end (or failing that, at least reduce) racism in the criminal justice system.

I just read the rules for this, and I'm now really curious to see how this goes down. Signing up as Reolene. ...I typed up a whole bunch of thoughts and potential strategies for each alignment, but on second thought, I am far more interested in seeing what each alignment chooses to do for themselves rather than letting them copy off of my notes.

Sure. So, I made 2 rolls. First, I rolled to see which ability the Archivist would get, out of this list: Role of [player] Action [player] took Who [player] targeted PM's [player] is in Who targeted [player] Then, I'd roll for all the still-living players (players dying that turn were not in the list, due to the OoA), minus the Archivist themselves. So if I got "Action [player] took" and "Pyromancer", Shade would discover what action Pyromancer took that cycle. As for what happened with duplicates... I don't remember it coming up, tbh - for something like roles, I'd probably have rerolled it, but wouldn't have for any of the others, since they're dependent on the cycle. For the probability of TJ discovering Mist's action that cycle, it was still pretty unlikely - it would have to have been "Who Mist targeted" or "Who targeted Mage", with "Action Mist took" being a slightly less incriminating variant. There were about... 6-ish people still alive at that point, IIRC, excluding TJ themselves, so it was about 1/15 or 1/10. However, TJ actually used his ability twice that cycle, due to a Nicroburst from Ash, meaning the probabilities jumped up to between 1/8 and 1/5, which got into "Unlucky but plausible" territory. Obviously, some of this was more useful than others, though I wouldn't call any of it 'useless'. The PM's one probably wouldn't ever have been massively useful, but by luck of the RNG, I don't think TJ ever actually got that one. And yeah, we probably should have been specific and published how I was doing the Archivist rules, since it would have allowed people to plan and understand the mechanics better.

Alright, time for my GM thoughts. Overall, I think this game went really well. It was broken in a couple places, but any game this complicated always is. It seems like people had fun - the sheer number of times some bolt of fortune/misfortune hit someone was almost hilarious from a GM perspective (Matrim's already pointed out the biggest one - he nearly caught the Kandra N3, but got coinshotted that cycle, which was hilarious, and actually caused some relief for Striker and I who were kind of rooting for Ash, given how much of an underdog position they were in when they were converted.) PM's such as the Shouty-Shouty Club were hilarious to watch, and I think they were one of the really accidental things that made the game great fun to watch as well. From a mechanics point of view, there's a few things I could probably comment on - in no particular order: Kandra - Ash did really well here, given what a poor starting position they had. Striker and Araris already talked a little bit about changes for the next round. Striker's said if/when he runs this game again he'd like to make killing the Kandra part of the Village wincon. I... am not sure this necessarily needs to be the case. Making the Kandra's death part of the Village wincon means there's more of a target painted on their back, so you'd need to make the Kandra stronger as a result, but that paints even more of a target on their back and so on... I feel a better alternative would be like the Carved Red from MR17 - the Village doesn't have to kill them to win, but if neither the Village nor the Elims achieve their win cons first, and the game gets to 3/4 players or less plus the Kandra, the Kandra kills the remaining players and wins. So they start out not a threat, and then steadily becomes more and more of one as the game heads into the late-game. Plus, that keeps the auto-balancing feature of SK's I really like, in that they essentially end up supporting whoever the underdog happens to be at that point in the game and bringing an unbalanced game back into balance. Araris also suggested that the old Kandra get to talk and provide advice/support to the new Kandra after their death, which is a cool and unique idea I completely support. Boxings/Items - probably the majority of my job for this game was checking to see how many boxings people had earned, so that they could buy things at the Black Market. For how much the Black Market was used (4 Bulletproof Vests, 2 Steel Traps, 1 Charged Spike, 1 Uncharged Spike and 1 Lerasium Bead), I'm not really sure it was worth it. In a future edition, I'd say you have 2 options - either get rid of boxings and items entirely, or do the exact opposite and make them a more central part of the mechanics of the game. You have the Steel Trap as a one-time roleblock item - you could easily add to that and have one-time vote manipulation items, and other cheaper goods people can buy as well, for example. Protection - the amount of protection in the late-game was slightly out of control - there were more players who were protected from attacks than not. That's bad both for balance (it's hard for the Elims and the Kandra, since they lose their kill for the cycle and it could soft clear a player going forwards.) If that could be toned down a bit, probably by making the Bulletproof Vests a bit more expensive, that would be great. Regular roles - It's strange, but we had so many strange and unusual roles that it seems like we missed out on a few of the basic ones. We had 3 different Feruchemy roles that essentially started with "If roleblocked, then [x]", but the only actual roleblock role was the Leecher (which is why we had so many of them this game). The only vote manipulation I can remember was vote cancellation from storing as well (admittedly, I think that one was more due to inactivity/early lynches rather than the distribution or ruleset). You could easily have more roleblocks, redirects, rolescans and vote manipulation in this game for a future run, I think. Irregular roles - I think the roles worked really well - I can't really think off the top of my head of a role that I look back on and go "Oh, yeah, that role was broken." Maybe a couple like Spinners could be spiced up slightly, but they frankly worked better than they had any right to without more testing. Thug Elim - There was a phase during the early AG's when people said "There's no way the GM's would put in a Tineye Elim, it's not a useful role for them, since the Elims generally want PM's to close." So, the GM's, curse their trollish hearts, started putting in Tineye Elims into their games left, right, and centre. Thugs, IMO, are the new Tineyes - "The GM's would never put in a Thug Elim, it makes the game unbalanced." A note to all players: Don't ever, ever try to guess what the GM's will do with the role/player distribution for the sake of balance - they can and will use that against you just for the lols. Twinborn names - Pyro gave their Twinborn name a nickname - I think it was Lookout? The moment I saw that, I remember thinking "Oh, yeah... I wish we'd done that." The extra flavour/immersion would have been worth it for the effort it takes to come up with the names, IMO. Especially since other Sanderfans already came up with a list of every possible combination of Twinborn somewhere, apparently. So... yeah. Sorry for the rambly mess, but those are my various thoughts on different parts of the game.

It was some time before Darson returned from wherever he had taken Pyria, though the young loyalist was no longer with him. The remaining few allomancers and feruchemists were still in the main room, as Darson’s hazekillers were not letting them leave. Tensions were high, as they knew that one of them must be a loyalist. All eyes turned towards Darson as he entered the room, a hazekiller shutting the door behind him. There were six of them now. Lance Neverwatch, Lahilt, TJ Shade, Lumen, Faleast, and Reginald. One of them was a loyalist. And one of them was a Kandra. Darson had been sure to keep his hazekillers in pairs of two so the Kandra could not infiltrate their ranks. “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Darson said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Fortunately, the young Pyria was able to be...persuaded into telling me that only one of you is a traitor. Unfortunately, she did not know the identity of her compatriot.” Darson watched as the six men and women before him avoided his eyes as he looked across them. All except for Lumen, the young woman who no one had been able to quite figure out during their extended stay here. Several moments seemed to pass, each one stretching on for what felt like minutes, the sweat beginning to bead on the foreheads of the people gathered in the room as they waited for Darson to speak again. Finally, Darson grew tired of their silence. “Fine,” he said, pointing to one of his hazekillers who moved towards Lahilt and grabbed him. “If you will not reveal yourself, I will simply kill each of you one by one.” The hazekiller brought a knife up to Lahilt’s throat, ready to cut his neck- “It’s me,” Lumen says, stepping away from the others. “I’m the loyalist.” The others all turned to stare at her. Darson smiled. “Thank you. Kill her.” The hazekillers all pulled their guns out to shoot her, but in the blink of an eye she was behind the hazekiller who had been holding Lahilt and shot the man in the back of the chest with his own gun. The metalborn scattered as several bullets from the hazekillers made their way through where Lumen had been just a moment ago. “Don’t let her escape!” Darson yelled. From his pocket, he pulled out a vial of steel flakes from his coat. Quickly, he popped the cork from the vial, swallowing it down, eyes peering around for Lumen, who’d flashed again and had a dagger up against the throat of another hazekiller. Darson fumbled at a coin, shot it off trying to aim at Lumen’s head, but too slow - a line of red appeared at the hazekillers throat as he collapsed and Lumen was nowhere to be seen. “She went this way!” called one of the others. Faleast rushed towards one of the corridors, and Darson followed, grabbing a few more boxings from his pocket. He looked down the corridor, and saw Lumen bolting down it, trying to find some exit. Darson smiled - even with her new abilities, there was no way he missed. Carefully, he judged the angle, feeling the coin in his hand, when he felt something go through his chest - he looked down, and saw long, silvery claws poking through his chest. He looked over at Faleast… only it wasn’t Faleast, not anymore. Slowly, Faleast’s face began to morph between faces Darson knew - Araris, Xino, Kynedath - though each one was slightly wrong, as if their features were being mixed and melded together. All of them were smiling at him. “It will be… good, to add another face to my collection,” the Kandra whispered, sliding between its many faces. Darson felt the silvery mass slowly spreading across him, over his chest, up onto his face. He tried to scream, but it entered his mouth, blocking off all sound. It swarmed over his nose, his eyes, until his entire face was covered. He couldn’t breathe, he could only feel the kandra’s slimy mass slowly… absorbing him. Darson’s lungs were fighting for air - desperately, he shot the remaining coins in his hand out through the Kandra, but if the Kandra even noticed the attack, it didn’t give a sign. His body convulsed, but gradually, his thrashing died down, as Darson faded into unconsciousness. There was a still silence for a few moments after Faleast and Darson followed Lumen down the corridor. There had been a few moments of chaos as the hazekillers’ bullets had grazed against some of the metalborn, but Reginald was fine. At least, he felt fine. He quickly checked his body for wounds, as maybe he had been hit and the adrenaline of the moment had made him not notice it. Thankfully there was no blood anywhere, so he was probably fine. Finally, after what felt like an eternity as the hazekillers tended to those who had remained in the main room, Darson returned alone from the corridor, his gun in his hand. “Lumen was waiting for us,” he said calmly. “She got Faleast, though I managed to shoot her before she could get away. Is everyone alright?” Since when has Darson ever cared about our wellbeing? Reginald thought to himself, watching the man carefully. He walked as if he were afraid, when normally even the way he walked would command the attention of the room. His eyes darted across the room, as if he were looking for ways out of the building. “We’re alright,” TJ said, slowly standing up. Lahilt and Lance had been injured, and TJ and the hazekillers were helping them. “You really got her? So this is all over?” Darson nodded, stopping a little bit away from TJ and talking to him, though Reginald was much closer to him. He studied the man, something in him telling him something was wrong. “Sorry to interrupt,” Reginald said, “but I’m curious why you appear unharmed, if you say Lumen attacked you and Faleast?” The room froze for a moment as everyone held their breath. Darson looked at Reginald for a moment before lunging at him, his hands turning to claws. Reginald leapt back, tapping pewter to gain some strength as the Kandra recovered and lunged at him again. The two struggled for just a moment, before a bullet tore through the Kandra. It quickly glanced around and saw the others rushing towards the two of them, then made a dash towards an exit, forgoing Darson’s bones as it squeezed its body through the cracks of a window. “Quickly!” Reginald said, heading back towards the corridor where the Kandra had come from. “Lumen is probably still alive! The Kandra must’ve taken its chance to try and escape during all this chaos.” The others followed him as he raced down the corridor, his eyes straining to find Lumen in the darkness. She must’ve shot out all the lights in the corridor as she’d gone through. The corridor led to a dead end. “There’s no windows,” Reginald said, “she has to be in one of these rooms. Carefully start opening each door.” They spent several minutes going through and opening every door in the corridor to no luck. Finally, they narrowed it down to one more room. They gathered around the door as Reginald carefully set his hand on the doorknob. He opened the door, bursting into the room. Lumen fired off a quick shot at him, but thankfully it hit the metal armor he had under his clothing. He stumbled backwards, hitting a hazekiller behind him as they entered the room. A coin flew from TJ’s hand towards Lumen, then suddenly veered over to the left once it got close to her. Reginald blinked and Lumen’s knife was in his side. He tapped pewter once again, grabbing onto Lumen before she could get away. She made to pull away, but Reginald would not let her go. The others froze in place as the two grappled, before Lumen kicked his knee and he fell to the ground, pulling her down with him. They rolled even farther away from the others, and for a moment they moved towards them before they once again froze in place. Reginald was pinned by Lumen, though she was struggling to maintain her control over him as she attempted to pull a knife out of her belt. Reginald managed to get a hand around her wrist and snapped it, the knife falling to the ground. He flipped her over, grabbing the knife as he did so, and quickly stabbed it into her chest. Lumen gasped up blood as she looked up at Reginald, the life fading from her eyes. “Long live,” she coughed up some more blood as her dying voice rasped out the words, “the old Elendel.” Reginald pushed the knife further into her chest and the last of her life faded from her eyes. The others began to move again, rushing towards him as he sat up. It was over. Finally, after a week of nothing but death and accusations and treachery, it was all over. The Game is Over! Congratulations to the PRE Operatives for winning the game! I'd also personally like to congratulate 2 players - @The Young Pyromancer, for convincing literally everyone in the game that you were a villager and compromising all their trust groups - that's really tricky to pull off, and if a few things had gone differently in the last 2 cycles, it could have won you the game. And secondly to @Ashbringer, who had an uphill battle after becoming Kandra much less than halfway through the game, and still managed to do really well, being one of the last 5 players to stay alive. Striker and I will probably post our respective GM Thoughts over the next few days. Docs and Links: Elim Doc Kandra Doc Spec/Dead Doc GM Spreadsheet (2 quick notes: 1 - Don't open this on your mobile, you might crash your phone. 2 - There are quite a few errors in here Striker and I couldn't be bothered fixing. To see peoples boxings each cycle, go to the boxings tab, not the main sheet, which is wrong.) Player List:

I've gone back and forth on the whole 'celebrity endorsement' debate in my head (from the perspective of a supporter of the BLM movement). On the one hand, if the celebrity supports the things I support, that's nice to know. On the other hand, there's definitely groups (e.g. the NFL, as Sanderson pointed out, or that infamous Pepsi advertisement - I still don't understand how that ad got greenlit), that are more willing to use a statement on politics as a marketing tool/a way to avoid backlash instead of out of any real good faith in wanting to help this issues. But on the other hand, even if it's disingenuous, what matters is it still helps to make the BLM movement harder to ignore and go away like it has every other time before now, and might actually lead to some kind of change, such as the overturning of qualified immunity, demilitarisation of police departments, and better funding of social work so that a cop isn't the only resource for things that don't need a cop, like dealing with people with mental health problems. In that sense, it's the end that counts, regardless of intent. (And I know about 50 of you are going to want to start quoting 'Journey Before Destination' at me... as a utilitarian, I have a lot of mixed thoughts on that, but this is not the place - if people are interested, let me know and I'll start another thread somewhere to discuss it.) But on the other hand, I'm not sure how many people are actually convinced by celebrity endorsements these days. I heard a talk once where a person working in advertising was describing how a certain ad technique has a lifecycle of about 5-10 years - it gets created, has enormous success, which leads to a whole bunch of people imitating it, meaning people get wise to it, and begin to start mentally tuning the ad out until it's something fresh. And if you're trying to convince the masses to support a political position, that in some ways involves a degree of advertising, only it's for an ideology instead of a commercial product. And the 'celebrity endorsement'... it used to be really effective, but in this increasingly polarised world I don't think it is anymore. On political issues, nearly everyone is basically set into one of three camps - pro, against, and the 'Why do we have to talk about politics' crowd. And none of them are going to change their opinion based on the opinions of a celebrity who is not an expert in their given field. There are exceptions, but they're rare. The exception to this rule is if there's an issue no-one's talking about, then a celebrity can use their platform to bring it to the public arena and get people to talk about it, but that's certainly not an issue with the BLM movement. The problem right now is not getting people to talk about it, the problem is getting public support, and, ultimately, policy change. But on the other hand, the whole "neutrality always favors the oppressor, not the oppressed" argument is something I generally agree with. Even if a celebrity's opinion doesn't count for as much as it used to, does that mean they should sit back and do... nothing? That doesn't feel like it sits right with me either. But if I don't think they do any good regardless putting out a statement, and I don't think they should do nothing, I'm not sure what's left. But on the other hand, I have about 7 hands now, so I need a new analogy. TL;DR: Can definitely see both sides of the issue about whether Brandon needed to speak out, or should have spoken out, etc. I'm glad the statement is in support, that that it seems to be a good faith attempt to figure things out instead of a PR statement that's not genuine. However, I'm sceptical if that's actually going to change peoples minds - the pro-BLM crowd doesn't need convincing, the anti-BLM crowd isn't going to listen to some celebrity who clearly doesn't understand why they oppose BLM, and the non-partisans are going to roll their eyes and say they only want to know when Rhythm of War comes out.

If the Pulsing/attempted kill took place on N4, then the kill would be delayed to N5.

Drat, I thought I'd fixed that before anyone saw. Ventyl.

Lafay grabbed the whisky bottle, took a long swig. He’d taken one accusation after another, and he’d managed to wade his way through each one. Until now. People eyed him suspiciously – even more than they did each other – and Lafay knew it would only be a matter of time before they came for him. Except, unlike Shard, you’re actually one of the ones the mob is looking for. The idle thought passed through Lafay’s brain, and he sighed. It had been mostly accidental – he hadn’t wanted to get involved with any more storming wars, but he’d been drunk, and everything the Loyalists said seemed so reasonable in the moment. Before he knew it, he was caught up in another scheme again. He heard voices coming up the stairway. “He’s this way! He’s not going to get away this time!” “There’s still hope. You need to swear the fourth ideal, Lafay.” Ola said urgently. He heard bangs as someone heaved something heavy into the door – there was a sharp crack, but the door held, for now. Lafay mumbled, trying to clear his head. “I don’t know the words.” “Think! You still have time.” There was another boom at the door, and Lafay saw a thin cobweb-like line appear across the door – one more hit and it would probably burst in two. Lafay thought desperately, but… he didn’t know the words. He had strayed from the path, and he didn’t know the words. “Ola, I’m sorry. Maybe you’ll find someone else to show you the Cosmere.” Before Ola could reply, the door burst open, and the mob swarmed in, and he felt hands grabbing him, hitting him, strangling him. It was almost a relief when he slipped into unconsciousness. Several minutes later, the mob left, leaving Lafay lying in a pool of blood and whisky. Ventyl has been lynched! They were a Loyalist Leecher Misting! Vote Count: Ventyl (3): Ashbringer, Elandera, Lahilt, The Young Pyromancer Mist (2): Magestar, TJ Shade Magestar (1): Karnage TJ Shade (1): Mist PMs are still open! Make sure I am in them, along with Young Bard and Fifth Scholar. There will not be a lynch this turn. Items are available in the black market. This turn will end on Monday, June 15th, at 9 pm CDT, and the next turn will be posted at 10 pm CDT. Player List: Black Market