Young Bard

Hmmm... We either want many more than 10 people to vote on the lynch candidate, or many fewer than 10 people - otherwise the lynch results are useless. And we don't need those with daggers to claim - that's likely to lead to bribing, and we know already there should be about four, based on the notes in the rules. 3 currently in circulation, plus one held by the Constable, if I'm not mistaken.

I... uhhh... I don't think I'd do a great job at being Governor, if I'm being honest. That said, my friend Mr Mannequin here seems to disagree. "Hey everybody! I'm here to tell y'all you oughta be votin' for this here Senator Ventrilis for guvnor - there ain't a finer Senator around, I'm tellin' ya. With him in place, you're sure to have them there Corrupt Senators quaking in their boots, you will. The fine Senator over there (Drake) asked him if he'd be willin' to be doin' what needs to be done, and I can tell you with confidence that he can - let's string up them blasted corrupt Senators, and the sooner the better! Now, this here Corrupt Constable what poisoned the old guvnor is worrying - it ain't gonna be easy, with the fear whatever news we hear is just the words of one of them lies pouring into our ears, but I ain't see no way round that without stringing up the lot of 'em, and we need one alive, at least, because otherwise we'd need to do some proper work ourselves - I mean, we'd lose a valuable asset to the community. Speaking of valuable assets, I hear that Ventrilis here is running for guvnor, and he'd do a mighty fine job at it, let me tell you. He's the finest there is, I say, bold as brass - not a Soother, but has the skills of one if you leave him in a room with someone for long enough. The only decent candidate, I say."

Yeah, we definitely shouldn't hard-clear, or even soft-clear, anyone in the chain. I'd advise against publishing who was in the Chain, though, since the entire point of the chain was to prevent PM spying from occurring and identifying the Seeker. (Rand) That being said, I'm inclined to think that the Inquisitor might be a newer player, who converted Rand in an attempt to get an experienced player for advice, and not realizing how likely it was that someone like Rand would be scanned. I'm leaning towards Shane or Snipexe as potential Eliminators, though I intend to go through many of the more inactive players and see if there's any strangeness in their behaviour, particularly in the first cycle.

Huh. OK, there goes that theory. So long as someone seeks Rand on a cycle where a conversion happens, we know their claim must be genuine. That might be a moot point, though, since there's a decent chance they'll be killed and spiked sometime in the next few cycles.

Hmmmm... I'll admit, Rand's claim of Mistborn strikes me as a desperate bid to stay alive another cycle to convert another player to me - if I'd been awake before rollover, I'd have probably voted to lynch Rand. Still, since he's alive now, people seem to think there's a way of confirming he's definitely the Mistborn and not the Inquisitor - hopefully that's true, but I'm not sure how to prove that, reviewing the rules. That being said, if Rand were trying to stay alive long enough to get all of their spikes out, Striker being an Unsnapped is probably a pretty big blow to them, which is a relief. For future cycles, Straw, does the Inquisitor need to do the Converting, or can any Convert do it so long as the Inquisitor is alive? Also, Rand doesn't seem like the kind of person to rickroll people - but I could buy that was a deliberate deception so people would be less likely to believe it was him.

To clarify, is that just "Senator" or "Senator Senator"?

...*sigh* I really should have seen that coming. Well played, whoever did this. Anyway - analysis time - hopefully something here sparks a conversation (preferably on someone who is not me). Hael - I was trying to remember Hael's playstyle from when he was here ages ago, and it seemed kind of different, but the more I think about it, the more likely it is that my memory is bad, this is a somewhat unusual game so everyone is playing differently, and Hael's just changed as a person over the last two years and come back to a slightly less familiar community, so it makes sense they'd play a little differently. That being said, the other thing that drew my eye towards Hael is that I got the sense that some of the things that they were saying were the kind of things an Elim would say to try and appear village. "Don't roleclaim immediately" - in response to someone having already roleclaimed when it was already too late, so makes little sense for a villager to say at that point in time, but an Eliminator could be trying to say something that sounds villager-y, in which case, it makes sense to say something like that. Similarly with "RIP Aman. Really wish you hadn't died..." I was considering voting on someone else this cycle, mainly because Hael is a returning player and I feel like that's a poor welcome back present, but I don't think there's a candidate yet who I feel a sufficient reason to vote on. Running through the rest of the list quickly: Rand - I always struggle to read Rand, and this cycle is no exception. However, Rand's said he's busy with his Masters thesis, and I'm inclined to think that if he were the Inquisitor, he'd likely have passed the role over to a pinch-hitter since being an Eliminator tends to take up even more of your time. Burnt - Is also a returning player, same as Hael. I can't rule them out, but there's also nothing that distinctively makes me trust them yet either. Also, they're fun to talk to in PM's, which is a disincentive as well. Striker - Has also said they're busy due to IRL/mental health stuff. Plus, their actions seemed pretty villagery to me. In the last MR, they seemed to be slightly more cautious and reserved with their words (which makes sense as Eliminator behaviour), which I don't see here, and I'm inclined to believe they're village. Moderate trust read. Fifth - someone (I forget who, and I'm too lazy to go through and figure it out) pointed out that the Inquisitor would be unlikely to have made the plays he did at the end of D1, which I'm inclined to agree with, but out of the surviving players in the game, Fifth is a player who might take that gamble for exactly that reason. So, slight trust read - would be more, except for paranoia. So, I'm slightly stuck. I might look over shanerockes a little later, but I just don't think there's enough there to really show whether shane's an Eliminator one way or the other.

Care to elaborate? I... hmmm... *blinks*... I could have sworn that's not what that post said - that was just a blatant misreading. I like to think that if I were the Inquisitor, I'd do a slightly better job of framing someone than straight up fabricating what someone said in the thread, where it could be easily refuted. I'm curious to hear why you and Hael bandwagonned onto that vote without challenging me last cycle, though. I should probably get my eyes checked, though, that's really weird. I was pretty tired when I read through the first day the first time, so maybe I should do a reread when I'm actually awake so I don't do a goof like that again. Sorry, Lum.

Ultimately, that's probably up to your daughter - if they're a little young for it, then worst comes to worst, they start it, get bored/confused by it, put the book down, and come back to it in a couple years. I don't see the harm if she wants to read it.

OK. So, there are a few people I think we can rule out from the previous day (I was considering waiting until tomorrow so I wouldn't put a "GOOD CONVERT" sign on these people with flashing neon lights, but I suspect most people would come up with a fairly similar list anyway, and me putting this message here means that it becomes much more of an IKYK gamble for the Inquisitor to convert them. ) Unlikely Inquisitors: Devotary - Their tone and behaviour seems fairly villager-y to me as a gut read, where normally they seem pretty neutral to me - I think it was Fifth that mentioned the exact same feeling independently, which makes me more confident that Devotary's probably a villager. BR - I have a pretty good gut read on BR right now. Araris - Araris has been very open with their thoughts - from experience, I'm fairly certain Inquisitor Araris would be much more likely to lurk in the shadows. Stink - Controversial pick here, and the only one that I think I really have to justify in this list. I (like most people, it seems) am in a PM with them, and I really just can't picture them as the Inquisitor - I'm getting much more of a care-free vibe from them than I'd expect if they were the Inquisitor. It's the one that's most likely to change as I see more of their opinions and we have more information, but I think for now I'm comfortable placing them in this category. There are some people who I don't think there are enough posts to analyse yet, and so I'm not going to bother analysing yet because I'll only make myself paranoid: Ark (Ray of Sunshine), Doc (I'm in a PM with Doc right now, but it's mainly just catching up/NAI content), Snipexe, shanerockes, Rathmaskal, and Sart. So that leaves potential Inquisitors that I want to do analysis on as: Hael, Burnt, Striker, Lumgol, Randuir, and Fifth. Of those, I think the most likely Inquisitors would be Lumgol, Hael, and then Burnt or Rand, in that order, but that's going off the top of my head before I've done any proper analysis, and may change once I do. Striker and Fifth I don't think are the Inquisitors, but I don't have quite enough trust in them to rule them out of my analysis just yet, and want to do a bit more analysis first.

OK, it seems pretty certain that Aman is village, and I'm fine with a Misting being killed today. But I feel that's different to not even trying to search for the Inquisitor today, which Aman seems to be trying to push for. Just searching for a Misting and nothing else stifles conversation, and a strategy we can use to find the Converts later is watching to see if their opinions change visibly in thread between this cycle and future cycles. That's part of why I voted on Lum - I doubted they were going to get lynched today but I figured if I floated them as a lynch candidate then at least it would give us a data point to analyse on later.

Beattie arrived in a town square - unusually empty for this time of day, and saw an old friend - someone who they'd had lots of fun with in days gone past, and a grin split across their face. "Hey there, old man. Why so grouchy?" she muttered under her breath. She started to move across to reintroduce herself, then thought of something better. She'd put a smile on his face, somehow. She just needed to find some materials first... Hmmm... Lumgol. I tend to find that Eliminators undersell their own sides abilities (probably from an internalised sense of their own side being the underdog) - 2 spikes means just one convert and then one additional convert from suicide, which seems highly unlikely. Plus, something feels slightly off about it as a gut read.

Senator Ventrilis is one of the quieter members of the Senate. His puppet assistant, however, will never shut up.

That's... a bold claim to make early in the game - I think I'm inclined to believe you, though, since as the Inquisitor it would draw way too much attention onto you and as someone trying to get converted it's still much less subtle than your usual style. But then, me clearing you too easily could just mean the Inquisitor will see you as an easy convert, so I'd like to hear as many of your thoughts about the game and its players this cycle to see if any of them change in the next few cycles to come, and how. EDIT: And I'm fine lynching an inactive this cycle - my main concern is that it can stifle discussion, but I'll do my best to call out anyone who seems to just be bandwagonning onto an inactive, and I encourage others to do the same.

Welcome to the Shard! While you're waiting for Book 4, a section of the forum I particularly enjoy is the Sanderson Elimination subforum, which is a cool mix of RP and the forum game Mafia, if you're into that.

I've planned for that. A slightly creepy little girl that is just slightly off the entire way through? Yeah, that's never been done in a horror movie before...

Are the Unsnapped informed of the fact that they are Unsnapped? Beattie Buvidas hated Inquisitors. They went and screwed everything up, making her parents worry so that they'd stay indoors and wouldn't let her go outside to play with all the other kids. Well, Beattie would show them. If her parents had wanted Beattie to stay indoors, they should have invested in some better window latches. Beattie dragged a chair across the room and up to the window, stood on top of it and reached the top of the latch to flip it unlocked, then heaved the window up and out, and stepped through to the ledge on the other side before her parents could see what she was up to. She shimmied across the outside ledge to a water pipe, then grabbed hold and slowly started lowering herself down, until she was low enough that she could freefall the rest of the way, landing in a pile of raked up leaves. From somewhere behind her, Beattie heard the gardener yell out with a mixture of concern and anger, so she quickly jumped up and ran off into the streets, where she was soon lost to sight.

I'm looking forward to the new tactics that might emerge from this. I, in Australia, will see the new cycle post first, and can therefore contact an Elim buddy, for which rollover has not happened yet, and get them to change their action for the best possible outcome.

I think if I were asked again what I thought before you put up the ruleset for the game, there is one major thing I'd recommend that Rand hasn't included in their GM thoughts - the Engineer role is just too powerful, for two reasons. First, it meant that anyone who wasn't an Engineer functionally wasn't meaningfully contributing to the game more than a vanilla player was, because any impact their role might have had was drowned out by what was going on with the engineers at the time. Second, it unbalanced the game slightly. There are two ways for a game to be unbalanced. The first is whether it is biased towards one team over another. For this game, I'd say it was slightly biased towards the Elims, for the reasons Rand mentioned, but I don't think it was unbalanced in this way any more than a lot of games are. By contrast, I think the second type of balance is much more to do with how much both sides have the ability to recoup from their losses and make a comeback. In a well-balanced game (as an example, I'll take the Tyrian Falls games, which are in many ways still the standard that a lot of games here are based on), when an Villager dies, that's bad for the village, but that damage is likely mitigated by the new information that's learned from the death, and enables the village to make better guesses about who the Elim is in the future. And when an Elim dies, that's really bad for the Elim team, but with luck and skill they can turn it to their advantage if they've been able to distance themselves in the thread in the right way up to that point (that being said, in a standard mafia game, the longer a game drags out, the more likely it is to favour the village - normally, that's just something that has to be taken into account when creating the rules.) Another role that I love as a GM is the SK role - in a Village/Elim/SK situation, it's kind of auto-balancing for everyone except the SK themselves - the SK ideally wants to make sure that the Villagers and Elims are both neck on neck and so are at each others throats and aren't spending too much time actively looking for the SK. [tangent] The SK role itself is usually quite badly unbalanced, but you can get away with that simply by virtue of how fun being an SK is, so the SK is also the perfect example of when it's completely OK to ignore balance in favour of other factors like fun. [/tangent] By contrast, taking a look at Cycle 3 this game - as of 5 minutes before the end of the cycle, the lynch was a three way tie between Alv (Elim Engineer), Stick (Village Engineer), and Devotary (Elim Vanilla). Stick ended up being lynched, which was more or less the end of the game for the villagers, though they didn't 100% realise it yet (though quite a few people guessed). By contrast, if Alv had been lynched, it would have meant the villagers won the game. Only one part would have been sabotaged, and the bridge would have been restored. Assuming Stick wasn't lynched or murdered soon after, it would then have taken another 9 cycles for the Elims to have won via airship parts, by which time the village could easily have found the remaining Elims and lynched them. Functionally, it just means that neither the Elim team nor the Village team had the ability to bounce back from defeat - once they'd lost their sides Engineer, there was almost nothing they could do to stop themselves from losing the game.

“It’s Second of the Sky. It has to be. What are the alternatives?” Saluden spoke to the assembled crowd. Foreman Cole looked on - the whole thing seemed a bit theatrical for their tastes, but Saluden raised good points. “Every other crew member has been seen elsewhere on the ship at the time of the sabotage, or else has stuck to their cabin and not left. The only person who has made their way around the ship is Second of the Sky. This is why they need to be imprisoned immediately.” The crowd cheered, and the Foreman gestured at the guards to escort Second off to the brig. “Excuse me,” Second intoned, speaking up for the first time since Saluden’s speech had begun. “But I don’t believe I’ve had an opportunity to defend myself?” The foreman sighed, but reluctantly waved back the guards to let the man speak, with an impatient look at their watch. Second smiled at the crowd. “Thank you. Mr Saluden here has raised a number of serious charges against me - if his word is to be believed, then I have been sneaking out nightly to sabotage various parts of the airship we’re currently on. It is a shame he does not have sufficient evidence to back up his claims.” “Sufficient evidence? Who else could have done it?” Second’s smile widened, as though he’d been waiting for the comment. “I’m glad you asked. Saluden used a process of elimination to conclude it was me, but in doing so he was forced to make a stretch. First, those with alibis. These people, indeed, could not be the Engineer. However, that is not to say they could not be one of the Engineer’s companions.” The crowd looked between each other, now slightly more uncertain. Saluden opened his mouth to reply, but Second cut him off before he could start, eyes flicking between the foreman and the guards. “On the other hand, that still leaves a number of candidates who could be the Engineer themselves. And here, Saluden makes a critical error. He assumes that those who so far appear to have stayed in their cabins are not, in fact, the Engineer. “I ask you this. Can we be sure that these inactives are not, in fact, getting up in the night to do their mischief? Can we be sure that, while they have failed to show up for work, they may still get out of bed in order to follow their twisted calling by night? Saluden is misguided in his opinions - he believes that someone who is active enough to do their dark deeds must be active enough to be seen around the airship, but we know better. There is no dark and depraved strategy these people would not bend to.” At this point, the crowd was nodding along, looking between themselves. Wasn’t it suspicious, they were asking themselves, that these people were hiding away, avoiding anything that could incriminate them? One of the members of the crowd stood up - Second recognised him as Quill, one of his former opponents. “What about this Ventyl person? Very suspicious behaviour - we should lock them up to be sure.” There was a chorus of agreement, and the Foreman reluctantly waved at the guards to go and get this Ventyl and escort them away. Maybe, finally, this could be over. *** Mika Fergus climbed up to the top of the sky crane - carefully setting himself down where he wouldn’t be likely to fall off. From this height, it was possible to see most of the ship, and, when the clouds parted in the right way, part of the archipelago below them. Today wasn’t one of those days - a dark grey cloud was billowing across on the ship’s port side, preventing Mika from seeing a large portion of the ship below her. Then she smelt the smoke. That was no cloud - that was the port engine below her going up in flames. Mika got up, half running, half climbing back down along the crane - as he was reaching the bottom he saw Second looking around near the bottom of the sky crane, opened up the control box to the sky crane, grabbed a handful of wires, and pulled them out of the box. The crane bucked beneath Mika, and Mika furiously hung onto the nearest pylon, before continuing their furious race down. He just got to the bottom just as Second pulled out another handful of wires - Mika turned around in shock to see the crane ever so slowly began to collapse down on top of the ship. He turned back to chase after Second, but they’d already disappeared. *** “This is not a drill. All personnel should make their way immediately to the starboard hangar for evacuation.” The lights in the corridor flashed red as Mika rushed towards the hangar. In front of them, the Foreman was checking off everyone on a list as they arrived, furiously counting heads and trying to see how many were left on board. There was still one engine holding the ship up, but the entire ship was sagging on one side, and drifting towards the ground at an alarming rate. “Foreman, it’s Second - I saw them sabotage the Sky Crane. I-” The Foreman just nodded, mouth grimly set as he looked around. “We know. We saw him take off with his compatriots after Striker sabotaged the engine.” The Foreman sighed. “Auseor, I’d suspected for quite a while, but Twi… they seem to have fallen in with a bad crowd. Still, there’s not much we can do about it now. Get on to the shuttle, you’re one of the last left.” Mika made their way onto the completely packed shuttle, barely managing to fit between a window and an oversized gentleman who, judging by the smell, hadn’t had a shower in a week. As the doors closed and the shuttle took off, Mika watched as the ship they’d abandoned slowly drifted down and landed with a crash on the shore of one of Patji’s Fingers. *** 1 Month Later “So the mission was a failure, then?” Foreman Cole looked down, avoiding the eyes of the person standing in front of them. “Well, not exactly, sir.” “Your ship was destroyed before you even reached the island, and you failed to explore or collect a single Aviar, and lost those precious few we provided. How, exactly, do you intend to tell me your mission wasn’t exactly a failure?” Cole’s boss gave him the shivers. They’d spent too much time playing at being a God, he thought. What was it the locals called them? The Ones Above? Really? That was bound to give anyone an ego trip. “Well, there was… another task. The Doctrines prevent us from trading with primitive cultures without a certain level of technology. That may no longer be an issue.” There was silence for a minute. “You mean… the crashed ship…” “It’s on Patji’s shore, just waiting for some inventor to come along, take it apart piece by piece, and recreate it. It wasn’t the original plan, but this situation is salvageable. No pun intended.” There was silence as Cole’s boss considered this. “Very well. You can see yourself out.” Cole turned around, and fled the room. Vote Count: Ventyl(5): Drake Marshall, Striker, Devotary, Aman, Burnt Alvron(1): Araris Congratulations to the Saboteurs (Alvron, Devotary, Lum and Striker) for winning the game! Docs: GM Spreadsheet The Underpass (Elim Doc) Jail (Lynched Doc) Hospital (Attacked Doc) The Boardroom (Spec Doc)

And that's the end of the cycle! Rollover will be up eventually.

Both.

If there is an Elim that has gone completely inactive with a role, we would allow another Elim to submit those role actions on their behalf.

Lynch Non-sabotage/attack actions Engineer Elim Kill

The lynch comes before the repair action in the OoA, which answers part of your question at least.