Arraenae

This sounds similar to the Dragonriders of Pern series, which had an advanced civilization settling a planet and then nearly getting wiped out by alien life forms, resulting in them bioengineering dragons to fight that before they lost a lot of the information about their origins. Are you planning on having this previous history be relevant to the story of Samhain?

Looking back on things, I feel that the SE discord created a far more permissive environment than anyone really anticipated. It was an extremely common thing for server members to publicly "ship" SE players together. Multiple people under 18 expressed discomfort with it at the time, but that didn't stop other people from shipping them or discussing ships around them. Several ships were knowingly across minor-adult lines. This involved basically everyone active on the server between 2016 and 2017, including me. (I'm sorry to say that I was one of those people shipping other people.) After that it declined in frequency, but still got mentioned as a storied bit of community history and ingroup status. Overall, I think it created the impression that it was acceptable to talk intrusively about the romantic status of server members regardless of age, that people saying no weren't to be taken seriously, and that this type of behavior was not only allowed but encouraged. Considering all of that, it's not a surprise that private conduct between server members followed suit.

I'm happy that moderation wants to address this problem. I view what happened as a structural issue rather than outright malice on anybody's part, and luckily there are solutions for that. Harassment isn't a unique problem in online communities, and there are lots of strategies to catch and deal with it that can be ported over as appropriate. Some suggestions: One person should not be able to stop a report going anywhere, no matter how well-intentioned or personally virtuous they are. If the spreadsheet can be believed, SE has had 400+ people passing in and out for a decade, so it's inevitable that one person with sole discretion over judging everything would make a mistake. What doesn't have to be inevitable is that one single person's mistake will make the whole system fail. Restructure the chain of command however necessary so that one person isn't the bottleneck for all reports going in and out. Publicly announce what changes are being made. Post the rules of what moderators will act on in the rules thread, the SE discord rules, and wherever else people are likely to look for this type of information. Post what is the normal process for dealing with this in the same place. Overall, I got the impression that nobody involved knew the rules that were actually supposed to be in place. Burnt and BR wanted to act further, but they felt they didn't have standing to act and were effectively powerless. If they had known that they could act on DMs or incidents in the past, the situation would have turned out very differently. Same if I had realized that going to 17th Shard moderation directly was a possible option. Look for other possible cases. When speaking to other SEers in the past, I got the impression that multiple people felt that SE had a culture of silence that didn't take harassment seriously (sexual or otherwise), and this contributed to them drifting away. Some of them were quite angry over it. I can't prove that my case was the only one sat on for multiple years, but I think it will be worth asking around to see if there is anything else worth investigating. I hope that this will bring a significant improvement to the community. I made an official departure in 2023, but I came back because I heard that members are considering what needs to change in order to keep it alive. I figured that putting this out there in public would either demonstrate to incoming members that this is not a safe community, or catalyze some change to make it safe. Luckily, it seems like this is the latter case. SE was a good experience for me between 2015 and 2020. I hope that future members will be able to enjoy their time here too.

Thank you for the response! It's useful to know how this should be handled. I'm sorry to say that this does not line up with my experience. Across multiple points of time in 2021, 2022, and 2023, I contacted one subforum mod and three separate Discord mods about a case of sexual harassment that happened in Discord DMs. You should know, Wilson, because you heard about this in February 2021. The other three Discord mods who I spoke to about it later, Young Bard, Burnt, and BrightnessRadiant, all acted like it was the first time they had ever heard about it. None of them seemed aware as an option that my report could be forwarded to 17th Shard staff to be judged properly. The way they spoke about it, their options were to keep a closer eye on the perpetrator named, speak to them privately about it, or to privately ask you why you decided not to act further. If reports like this are supposed to go to 17th Shard staff, and subforum and discord mods are expected to bring this information to them, why did that not happen? I hope I am the only person that fell through the cracks like this. I suspect I am not. I say this now because I have been watching and waiting to see if SE would get any better at this, and it seems like staying silent will only encourage the de facto reality that local level moderation does not feel that they can act on anything they hear or escalate it to a level of moderation that will actually do anything meaningful about it.

Okay, I've taken a look at the linked 17S Code of Conduct. Let me know if this understanding of the situation is correct: Sanderson Elimination players are not allowed to harass other community members, whether it is in the forum, game docs, SE discord server, discord PMs, or elsewhere Harassment includes, to quote from the 17S Code of Conduct: Harassment should be reported to 17th Shard staff at the google form link in the 17S Code of Conduct post: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScyEhjycK1zSa7i70JVyNfjW6zMKQ4ZRgD25094ozy4EhXKJQ/viewform Subforum moderators do not handle harassment of any sort and should not be expected to decide disciplinary action over it Harassment can be reported at any point in time, no matter how long ago it happened Can Wilson or another subforum moderator confirm that this is the policy that Sanderson Elimination follows? I have some additional points I'd like clarity on. It was said in the post said that "reports of this nature should go to a 17th Shard moderator or admin...not the subforum moderation team." What is the process if someone is not aware of this and winds up reporting harassment, sexual or otherwise, to the subforum mods? What is the process if someone reports harassment, sexual or otherwise, to the SE discord moderators? Since Wilson has expressed she is busy and may not be able to respond soon, I am requesting a response from SE discord moderators as listed by server roles: @BrightnessRadiant @Bugsy @Burnt Spaghetti @Elbereth @Orlok Tsubodai @StrikerEZ @Young Bard (Wilson is also listed as a SE discord mod, but I am not pinging because she has expressed busyness.)

Hi y'all. Been a long time. Came back here because I was contacted for interview purposes about how I felt about my time here. I have some questions about how things are running now. @little wilson, @Elbereth, @Devotary of Spontaneity, @Elandera, @StrikerEZ, @CadCom and @Araris Valerian, as the current moderators as far as I am able to tell, I feel you are the best equipped to answer this. What is the SE policy regarding game-related harassment between community members happening off-site of the forum and (official?) SE Discord? What is the SE policy regarding sexual harassment between community members happening off-site of the forum and SE Discord? At what point does something become a bannable offense? What are the roles and responsibilities of a moderator in the SE Discord? How is it decided who gets to be a moderator in the SE Discord? I'm asking here because this seems like something that is helpful for everyone to know, including new players.

Send me a link to the spectating doc!

Hi y'all. Haven't played SE proper in a long time. No comment on whether I'll start again with this game. I think "removed" is nicely euphemistic and goes with SE's reputation of being Gentlemen Killers. It's simultaneously compatible with the flavor of games where being lynched does not lead to death, like the My Little Pony imprisonment, and with games where it does represent death, where it calls to mind a mafia boss saying that the latest troublemakers have been... dealt with. I think "executed" also works. Less polite, still calls into mind a little of the feeling of group action or approval. Execution is usually done by a state or by other people in charge. I think "murdered" is a little too blunt and as Gears said, possible to confuse with other kill actions.

Ways to find eliminators: an uncomprehensive list I sent this in a PM to a new player, and thought that it would be worth reposting in here. Here are some strategies for finding villagers and eliminators that I've used: comparison to standard player analysis, player-specific analysis, gut reads, connection analysis, and process of elimination. These aren't official names, just ones that I made up to categorize them. Comparison to standard player is when you're comparing people to how you think the standard villager or eliminator will act. For example, eliminators generally want to keep their teammates alive, so they might vote to lynch a random villager over their teammate. If Player A makes some bad arguments for keeping Player B alive, and later you find out that Player B is an eliminator, Player A could be an eliminator who wanted Player B to live. Another thing is that eliminators want to seem like they're contributing to discussion without actually contributing to discussion, so pay attention to people who are using a lot of words to say very little, especially if they never mention who they are suspicious of and who they trust. Alternatively, look at players who post just enough to remind you that they're alive, but not enough to make their opinions very noticeable. Keep in mind, however, what makes up standard eliminator behavior can change over time. One eliminator activity is called bussing, where they will purposely lynch a teammate to gain trust, because lynch teammates is not considered standard eliminator behavior. Now that bussing has been around for so long, however, it's been accepted as something that some eliminators will do, and is a somewhat expected standard eliminator behavior. Standard villager behavior generally looks like someone who is trying very hard to find eliminators and lynch them. If someone has lynched multiple eliminators, they're almost definitely village. People who talk a lot are more likely to be village, but there are a few players who are very good at talking a lot even when they're eliminators. Player-specific analysis is like comparison to standard player analysis, except that you compare people to how they've acted in previous games when they were certain alignments. For example, you might know that Player A always posts less often when they're an elim than when they're village. You might also know that Player B always gets lynched early when village, so you might decide to vote for someone else instead of Player B because they're probably village anyways. This can be confounded by players deciding to change their playstyle just because. Easier to do after playing a few games with people in this community. Gut reads/tone reads are when you look at a player and decide that you don't like how they feel, but you're not sure why. Maybe their posts feel too slimy, or you don't like how they're weaseling around other player's questions. Alternatively, you look at someone and decide you trust them, but again you're not sure why. Gut reads are based off of your subconscious picking up cues that your conscious mind is missing. Some people have very accurate guts, other people don't. However, since gut reads are so difficult to explain, it's harder to convince people to vote along with you, and they're difficult to defend against. Connection analysis is when you pay no attention to what people say and instead pay attention to what they do. Break everything down into votes, attacks without votes, defenses without votes, and defenses with votes (as in saying someone is village so you vote to lynch someone else). If you know that Player A is an eliminator, and Player B kept stating suspicion of them from very early on the game and voting on them, Player B is likely to be village. However, if Player B only ever half-heartedly stated suspicion of A, and never voted on A, they might be an eliminator trying to do some distancing. Usually eliminators don't care if villagers are up for the lynch, but they do care if their teammates are. Process of elimination is when you figure out everyone in the game who you trust. Sometimes abbreviated as PoE. Usually the number of eliminators is around 1/5 of the number of players, or the square root of the number of players. Let's say a game had 25 players, and now it's down to 10. You think there are 5 eliminators. You know you are village, and you trust 4 other people, so the ones that are left must be eliminators. Generally a good thing to start doing towards the end of the game when there are fewer players. These are the strategies that I know about. Other players use other strategies, so this isn't the one and only way to play the game. If you're lost, though, this list might give you some ideas on how to get started. I hope this helps.

I'll admit I really only kind of skimmed the writeups for this, but it's interesting seeing how the narrator's accent fell away toward the end. It was so strong at first and here it's nearly gone. I suppose that's the point, since the jig is up and his audience is dying soon.

Be a GM, then you can never be pocketed because you know everyone's alignment

...yeah, what Straw said. Forget I said anything.

Please put all votes in red. If you're not sure how to get red from the editor, another way to do it is to type in [colour=red]NAME[/colour], but with American spelling with no u.

Another day, another body. Varen’s dead, impaled by a spike through the gut. Still, at least they haven't gotten all of us yet. Maybe this change in leadership has been good for you lot, eh? Mint, looks like you're the new suspicion of today, huh. And a more credible one too! They say they found a metal spike in your bag, like the ones the murderers are using. Still, we've got to do this the civilized way. Off to the basement with you! Here's a bucket, so you and Caliex can, uh, do your necessary business a little more cleanly. Maybe I should have figured that out yesterday, but oh well. Better dirty than dead. I'm thinking that maybe we should rob House Orielle again. Seemed like an easy enough mark last time. Or maybe we should go for the Hastings? Everybody, if you want to have a say, write it down in plain purple which House you want to rob. Mint was lynched and was an Obligator! Striker was killed and was a Skaa! Vote Count: Mint (5): Vapor, Eternum, Mystic, Fifth, Striker Mystic (3): Ashbringer, Truthwatcher, Mint Player list

Alright, alright, alright. Surprisingly enough, you’re not all dead yet. Other than Box, unfortunately enough. We really need to fix this murderer problem soon, or this crew won’t exist for much longer. I see you have a new suspicion today. Trussing up Caliex with that much rope wasn’t really required, but okay, fine. At least it's better than death. Caliex, come with me. You're going to stay in the basement until we can sort everything out. Why does this crew have so many problems? I’m beginning to see why Stink drank so much. Devotary was lynched and was a skaa! TJ Shade was killed and was a skaa! Vote count: Devotary (4): Straw, Eternum, Fifth, Striker Fifth (3): Mystic, Mint, Devotary Mint (2): Ashbringer, Vapor Straw (1): TJ Shade Player List

Cycle is closed! More news to come when Orlok is online!

Gabe Orielle watched through the windows into a filthy skaa thieving den, his hands shaking. The Steel Ministry had killed his father for being unable to deal with this thieving crew. Even though they were only a cadet branch of the Orielles, news of the death had spread all the way to Luthadel, where the rest of the Orielles were based. Gabe had been given a choice: fix his father’s mistakes or have the entire cadet branch disowned for its failures. The sheer number of skaa here was disgusting. Such rooting, dirty creatures. Gabe looked among them, hoping to pick out the Steel Ministry’s infiltrators, but none of them stood out to him. Each of them looked equally stupid, equally subhuman, equally likely to stab him without a second thought. He let out a quiet sob. How was he supposed to do this by himself? Then, miracle of miracles, a fight broke out. One of the skaa pointed at another, accusing them of keeping a low profile. More jumped on the accusation. Then a skaa accused someone else, backing it up with their fists. Yes! Maybe he could do this! Gabe downed a vial of zinc shavings and burned it, pulling on the emotions of all the skaa there. Anger, righteousness, fear. The small fight turned into a full brawl. Gabe snuck past the fighting skaa -- they weren’t his real goal. Nobody heard his footsteps. He went down a hallway, into another room, this one a touch less dirty than the other one. It had actual furniture here, a desk with an ornate chair and a bed with a large skaa snoring on it. He pulled a paper from his pocket and compared the face on it to the face of the skaa. Check. This was Stink, crewleader of the thieving crew that had plagued his father for so long. He could do this. With this, Gabe would restore glory to his branch of the Orielles. He would make up for his father’s failings. Gabe tiptoed to the bed, drew a dagger, and buried it in Stink’s chest. Stink jerked awake and threw his body forward onto Gabe’s. He reached his hands around Gabe’s neck and squeezed. “You’re not killing me so easily, ya Ministry punk!” Stink roared. Spots swam in Gabe’s vision. He pummeled at Stink with his fists, but the weight was too much. Even for a wounded man, Stink was strong. Another, feminine voice sounded in the distance. “Stink? Is everything okay?” Then, someone else entered the room. With desperate panic, Gabe flared the last of his zinc and yanked on everything he could get in this new person. Ambition. Calm. Cruelty. Opportunism. Then he yanked on Stink’s sense of despair. The woman picked up the chair and brought it down upon Stink’s head. Then, she brought it down upon Gabe’s. His vision went black, and he knew no more. Hey y’all, this is Rae again. I’m sorry to tell you this, but… Stink is dead. A Steel Ministry assassin killed him. I was there to comfort him in his last moments, and he said that he wanted me to run the crew. So here I am. Here’s my first order: stop fighting each other. From what I hear, a whole lot of people bludgeoned Lumin to death, and someone took advantage of the chaos to knife Vilt. Reading over there looks like he keeled over from sheer fright. We can’t keep doing this, people! From now on, if you’re suspicious of someone, send them to me and we’ll make a jail for them. Feather, Varen, Caliex, I’m nominating you to bury the bodies. The rest of you are going to scrub this room clean from all the bloodstains, you hear me? Go on, get to it. Remember, if you’re suspicious of anyone, jail them, don’t kill them. Vote count: Mist: 5 (Ashbringer, Straw, TJ Shade, Eternum, Fifth Scholar) Frozen Mint: 4 (Vapor, Mist, MysticLotus, StrikerEZ Fifth Scholar: 3 (Frozen Mint, Devotary of Spontaneity, Lahilt) Lahilt is killed, and is a Skaa, Mist is a Skaa, and Shard of Reading dies of inactivity, and is also a Skaa Player list:

Pyro as a placeholder vote for now. I think that we should look more for Bleeder than the eliminators now. The eliminator team has been wrecked for how early it is, with two dead and one known. On the other hand, Bleeder knows who one of the two people they need to kill is. If Bleeder wins, everybody else loses. I'd like to avoid that. Off the top of my head, I think the way for us to find a serial killer is to look for people who are very concerned with their own self-preservation but not much about anyone else's. Unlike the eliminators, Bleeder does not have a team to keep alive in order to win. I expect that Bleeder will probably seem uncaring about the level of Constable or Criminal death. I'm conflicted about Elkanah. On one hand, even if Bleeder had about manipulation, they gain less from using it then from using their kill or skin. However, Elkanah specifically said that he wanted to use his vote manipulation to kill multiple people with the tie, which is significantly more efficient than using a kill action that will kill only one person. Still, nobody has counterclaimed him yet, so I think he is telling the truth at least about the vote manipulation. I'm pretty sure that Elkanah is not a Constable. I don't think the Constables would have gained very much from sitting up Elkanah as the fall guy if Elkanah was one of them.

Pyro, Straw.

Okay, just to clarify, because this might be hard to pick up on without prior experience: Straw and Pyro are trolling. They have given up on convincing people that they are village and are now trying to confuse everybody instead. Don't take anything they say at face value. It's generally considered acceptable to do this -- encouraged, even -- as long as it doesn't cross the line into griefing.

Venquillotrists are a thing

Okay, Straw's pretty much given up on convincing people he's village and is trolling now. I had such high hopes I really wanted to see a talkative, analytical Straw. @Orlok Tsubodai, whose scenario permutations are you calling useless? At the time I made it, Pyro and Striker were voting on Karnage and I thought everyone else might follow!

We have hours and hours left. Honestly, that post was more arguing that there's no need to vote on Karnage today than it is arguing that we should vote on Straw.

Okay. Let's look through all the possible scenarios for Karnage and Straw’s alignment. 1. Karnage is Flogs, and Straw is a Constable. Bleeder can scan Karnage to see if they are Flogs. Once they get verification of that, Bleeder will attempt to kill Karnage. To win, Bleeder only needs to kill two people, Flogs and Winsting, which means that Bleeder can afford to spam kills against Flogs until one breaks through. I don't think that Karnage will be able to successfully coordinate bodyguard protects long enough to stay alive the whole game. For one thing, Karnage assumes that there are at least two bodyguards in the game. This is a Joe game. Nothing is guaranteed. Secondly, Karnage assumes that at least two bodyguards will be willing to protect him. If, like he assumes, there is one Constable bodyguard and one Criminal bodyguard, I'm not sure that the Constable bodyguard would bother. In this scenario, Karnage just outed Straw. That probably burned through any goodwill the Constables might have towards them. The Constables have every reason to expect that Karnage will continue trying to lynch them. What's more, even assuming that there are at least two bodyguards in the game, and assuming that they are willing to protect Karnage, I don't see this arrangement working out for long. What if the bodyguards don't want to use their 1 PM solely to check in on Karnage? What if a bodyguard finds some other villager who they also think is likely to die? What if a bodyguard goes inactive and forgets to submit a protective order? For all of those reasons, I assume that Karnage is not going to live very long. Bleeder has every incentive to keep attacking them until they are dead. If we assume that Karnage is Flogs, I don't think it's worth lynching them to verify, because of this likely death. We will know their alignment once Bleeder kills them. I expect it’ll take three cycles, max. If they’re miraculously still alive by then, we can re-evaluate the situation. 2. Karnage is a Criminal, and Straw is a Constable. In this case Karnage would’ve guessed and is trying to play Flogs to absorb a Bleeder kill. Very unlikely. 3. Karnage is a Constable, and Straw is a Criminal. Bleeder can scan Karnage to see if they’re Flogs, and they will see that no, Karnage is a Constable. Once they find that out, Bleeder has no reason to try to kill Karnage. In fact, Bleeder loses if the party disperses too early, so Bleeder benefits by keeping a Constable Karnage around. Alternatively, Bleeder attacks Karnage without checking. I still don't think the double bodyguard plan will work out, so I still expect Karnage to die. (The only way for the Constable team to fake a result like this would be for them to spend multiple night kills on Karnage, while also protecting them, which means they spend a lot of resources to gain very little.) There are several ways to see this scenario is likely. If Bleeder does not attack Karnage, then we lynch Karnage. if Straw’s alignment is found to be village, either through an alignment scan or lynch, then we lynch Karnage. If Bleeder attacks Karnage and Karnage dies, then obviously we will know Karnage’s alignment. We can do all of that without having to lynch Karnage this cycle. If this scenario turns out to be true, we probably can learn things about the Constable team. There are certain players who I cannot see agreeing to this plan, which means that we can rule them out if they have similar times of online activity as Karnage. 4. Karnage is a Constable, and Straw is a Constable. Bleeder can scan Karnage to see if they’re Flogs, and they will see that no, Karnage is a Constable. Once they find that out, Bleeder has no reason to try to kill Karnage. In fact, Bleeder loses if the party disperses too early, so Bleeder benefits by keeping a Constable Karnage around. Alternatively, Bleeder attacks Karnage without checking. I still don't think the double bodyguard plan will work out, so I still expect Karnage to die. In this case, the Constable team would basically be trading Straw’s life for Karnage. I'm not sure why they would do that, because we can still use the methods outlined in scenario 3 to get an idea of Karnage's alignment, and then the Constable team would have basically traded in two lives for nothing. I really don't think this is likely. 5. Karnage is Bleeder, and Straw is a Constable. Bleeder is automatically protected against kills as if they had a bodyguard. It's possible this means that Karnage would be able to attack themselves and survive, and get a writeup saying that they were attacked and survived. I could even see Joe giving the single serial killer role an extra life just to make sure that they don't die early in a scenario like what just happened here. Again, this is a Joe game, so role distributions are likely to be trolly, but it's not impossible. This scenario is actually the hardest to disprove. If we lynch Straw, and find that he is a Constable, that would mean this is scenario 1 or 5. One way to disprove a situation like this would be if we found every single bodyguard in the game, and they said that none of them were protecting Karnage on a cycle that they were attacked. This would be really hard to do, for obvious reasons. Another way would be for Flogs to counterclaim, but in that case Karnage would kill the counterclaimer and be halfway to completing their wincon. We’d probably lynch Karnage the next turn, but that’s closer than I’d like for things to get. Out of all the scenarios that have been outlined, this is the only one that can't be immediately disproven or doesn't have negative effects for Karnage. If we assume that Karnage is a rational actor, then this becomes much more likely. 6. Karnage is Bleeder, and Straw is a Criminal. If Straw flips Criminal when Karnage claimed that he's a Constable, then the next obvious lynch target is Karnage. This scenario is really, really unlikely. 7. Karnage is Bleeder, and Straw is Flogs. Well, why try to get Straw lynched then if Straw is immune to the lynch? Near impossible.

Pyro. Chances are that Karnage is going to get a Bleeder kill aimed their way after this claim and will die soon anyways. A villager has pretty much no reason to falsely claim that they scanned someone as an eliminator, so the easiest way to verify this is to lynch Straw. The fact that you don't want to makes me think that you might be on Straw's team. Honestly, I'll probably move my vote onto Straw later today, but I'd like to milk just a little bit more discussion out of this cycle. Please? Pile-ons tell us nothing until we get lynch results back.