Mark IV

Oh, I kinda .. forgot about that vote. DeTess. My bad. Speaking of gut reads, I cannot shake the feeling that at least one of Mat or Araris ought to be elim. If I list of the players, we have left: TKN Mat Araris Aeoryi JNV Mark Frustration Stink And no confirmed elims so far. So, the elims (if they even exist, because idk how this thing works anymore) have to be from this group of people.... --------------- I was going to go on to give an explanation of why I think at least one of Araris or Mat ought to be elims (cause active and old players etc) but I'm starting to think it's possible none of us are elims. If I take some interpretive liberty, we have, from the LG OP: Notice the Affected win condition is that they win if they can't possibly be defeated. Not, "if they outnumber the village". @Szeth_Pancakes can the Affected win without reaching parity? My theory is that we're possibly making elims as the game progresses. My first guess would be that dying in a certain manner (exe vs night kill) could possibly flip your alignment. Notice that even if someone's dead, they're still technically in the game. I'd be interested in trying to complain out one person killed by the day vote and one person killed at night (there is only one, I believe?). We have eight people. Worst case, we'd at least ideally be able to complain out 1 person for sure. --------------- That aside, though, if I stick to the narrative that complaints have no special role apart from a group kill OOG objects that people have don't have a role to play There's very little to discover about hidden mechanics in this blackout game and try to figure out who the elims are in the poeple remaining alive, I can't shake the feeling that at least one of Mat or Araris has to be elim. The other teams just don't make sense to me (I can discard possible teams with me in them cause I know I'm not elim, just saying). I'm gonna do a post-by-post analysis of one of them (cause I don't have the energy for both). Let's see what that yields. ------------------- All that aside, would anyone like to try complaining at Exp? Edit: Can't say I didn't have it coming, but yeah, if this is exelo (it is exelo this time, right?) then I'm gonna have to fight it. Give me a bit.

We won't know until we try, no? Besides if I assume simply that complaints don't kill, then devo isn't dead either, which gives us just a little more flexibility. I find it unlikely that complaints would kill villagers but not kill elims, when they're such an infrequent mechanism (albeit only 3 are enough for removing someone). That being said, we were warned that we shouldn't use complaints for game related purposes. And, to be honest, I don't feel like the GM has really lied in the game. Half truths are one thing, but don't think there's been overt lies.

I intend to make a more meaningful post later in the day, but maybe we could try complaining at TKN instead of voting them out this time? That also frees up the vote to be used elsewhere, albeit we have less information than I'd like. And the complaints only refresh 3 turns from now, so we'd be without complaints for a bit. But, it might be worth a try. In fact, we could lynch multiple people in one day, like in Devo's first post (or was it DeTess?). If we're at ExeLo, it doesn't necessarily hurt us to kill more people for the chance that we might net more elims. But coordination might be a problem, especially with (what is likely) 3 rogue elim complaints in the mix as well.

Idk about you, but DeTess' entry clearly reads differently than the others, no? I played a game where someone's (Aman's, obviously) alignment changed when we got him back from the dead. I wouldn't be surprised if DeTess had something similar happen to her. Especially after she was removed from the game. Rude Edit: You guys do have a point in that voting for DeTess right now won't be helpful though. DeTess.

Maybe DeTess is also viable? I wonder what she's up to rn.

Fair enough. Though, a quick scan through the end of D2 didn't show me you or Archer saying you were going to be AFK toward the end of the cycle. Did you and Archer say that some time earlier in the thread? N4 clearance is actually too late, I think. We currently have 9 people. So, 3 until parity, if we assume 3 elims. One dies right now, one tonight and one D4, so by N4, there's a very real chance the game will have ended. Makes me wonder - maybe the elim kill requires investiture too? Maybe that's why no elim kill last night? I mean, that's some mishandling on part of the elims if that's the case, but interesting to think about. Regardless, doesn't really change my vote here.

You could just PM me. That is, if you think there's anything to be discussed in PMs right now. My seconds on the list are either people whom I get more information for from your lynch or people I have no read on due to not much being said in thread

mostly Still, I feel like Araris bringing attention to TKN in his first vote this cycle is not insignificant. My first gut reaction is to trust that there isn't really a link between Araris and TKN. However, I seem to recall someone mentioning that Araris can and will bus a teammate if it comes down to it, unapologetically so. If that is the case, I could imagine Araris noticing the votes on TKN last cycle and trying to use that. On that note though, I am mildly surprised by Araris' sudden burst in activity. I intedned to say it gave me a v!Araris read, somewhat, but now I can't seem to remember exactly why. Could be he's just an elim who happened to become more active this turn. I'll have to think on it a little. Woah, just chill out. If you're that indecisive, you do have the option of not voting instead of smearing red all over. Also, green text. Helps with the vote counts. Just my opinion, but no, it is not a good idea to vote for yourself even if you're a vote manip whose vote is discounted when they use their action. As Mat said, maybe you'll be roleblocked. And in general, it's just misleading. But, you can do as you wish. This is Whimsy's shardworld, after all. :shrug: No, she was emphasising the importance of passing amongst villagers, I think (haven't reread D1 in a while, but that was the impression I got). For any village power, whether the target is buffed or debuffed by the effect, there is always a risk of mistargeting and hitting players of the wrong faction (village for debuff and elims for buffs etc). But if you follow Exp's direciton of reasoning, then villagers would almost never end up using their powers. My general thoughts: Araris: You mentioned it might still make sense for e!Devo to kill Exp if Devo themself was not a mage - but having someone pass you Investiture frees up your action to pass Investiture, which means you don't have to alternate between harvesting and passing every other cycle. The only scenario where it does make sense is if the elims don't have any mages in the first place. In which case, I don't think an e!Devo would have encouraged passing investiture because then there's little (still non zero, but not as large) potential for it to actively hurt the village by passing investiture. (The only negative case would be if the elims ended up making everyone pass them investiture and hoarded it to themselves). On the whole, I'm not entirely in favour of the DeTess votes. I've previously explained why I think she's not elim. Aeoryi still reads pretty much as village to me. I'm in agreement with Mat here that DeTess and Aeoryi are very far down on my list of people to vote for. Mat himself, though, I'm not sure. I don't think I've played a game with you when you were elim, right Mat? But his helpful village vibe is exactly the vibe I've come to expect from good elims I have played with (when I used to play regularly). It really puts me on guard about his posts. But I mostly find myself agreeing with them. However, I do agree with Stink's post last night cycle here a little - Mat does point out that he didn't want Archer dead, but he doesn't seem to have done much for it, apart from making a couple of posts rereading makes me realise the Szeth votes were a last minute thing, so understandably might have been missed by someone not online at rollover. Is that what happened, Mat? (Also, sorry for exe-ing Archer. Bad decision on my part. Sorry, Archer) .Honestly, the TKN vote seems reasonable to me. TKN flipping either village or elim would be some information (because of how today has turned out), I feel, while also not killing someone I have active reads on. (I had reads on Araris, I just can't remember why). So, TKN. Probably my last post for the cycle. I apologise for the lack of activity - I was not at home for the weekend, last minute plans. But the turn sure did turn out to be interesting :3 Edit: Mat, I did PM you after the Archer vote about it. It was well past my bed time, so I can see now that it didn't make much sense to do so, but you did have the chance to get me to change my vote. And you still haven't replied to the PM. My guess would have to be that you weren't on for ~6 hours before rollover. But, what's your story there? Does no one do white text anymore :/

I believe szeth already got 3 complaints. Mat and I submitted complaints, so that's 2/3 that I do know. And the write-up clearly mentions the Floral being disdainful of the complaints that us, the reader, used to try and kill him. Why do you keep saying this? There was but 1 vote on you in the write-up. I'll respond to Mat's question a little later

Huh, yeah, I see the two Archer votes. I wonder if that is necessarily a mistake. We'll see, I guess. Edit: Oh, nvm And, ugh, I feel terrible about that. I'm sorry, Archer. Feels like I played for the elims regardless of whether I was on their team Is the GM immune to complaints? I mean, the RP says "one week ago", so clearly the floral is still alive in current time, yes?

Very well, I'll put in my complaint now. If I read the rules correctly, our complaints should be rearmed by D3 anyway, so I'd be willing to risk it, especially given Szeth's last post. I hope it's not the wrong thing to do, but I have a hunch it's probably not. Honestly, this feels more like the same thing as what DeTess did - DeTess isn't calling anyone to stop or continue passing investiture. They're commenting more on Exp's motives. They even vote on Exp in the same post. It's a fine distinction, but essentially, both your post and DeTess's post call out the person saying the thing, and don't necessarily call for enforcing/acting against the thing itself. I thought this made you more suspicious in my eyes, but looking back, you've always been of the opinion that villagers need to be more careful of passing investiture, at the very least. And if I believe DeTess is village now, then clearly villagers are liable to commit the "fallacy" as well, so it's NAI at best. I'm not entirely happy with my Araris vote given their lack of effort to get it off them when there's two other votes on them and given the fact that I don't see any other votes picking up steam. But I'm not sure where I should put my vote otherwise. It's been 2 whole cycles, so if the elims have vote manip, they're likely to use it to cause chaos anyway, so it'd be better to have a strong lead in the votes than a flimsy tie. --------------------------- 5 min later: Okay, you know what Araris , Archer . There's little more than a gut feeling here, but I just wanna try it out.

What gives you that gut read, if you could elaborate? Is that something you thought of too, or are you agreeing with me about the Exp train? Hmm, makes me think it might be a good idea to complain at the GM? Or maybe even vote? The feeling's mutual, mate. Idk why, I'm just trying to find anything, but everything feels NAI, so far. Unless a GM lynch is specifically in some sort of win condition for someone. But yeah, I think I agree I think it's more likely Archer's just curious (as a villager or as elim, could be either) Anyone wanna complain at the GM? @Aeoryi?

We were told not to use complaints for in game reasons. And we're being told voting the GM out would be abusing the game (i.e. the game mechanics). I feel like there might be a way to conclude that complaining the GM out would technically not be an abuse of the "game" because it's for "non-game" reasons because complaints are "technically not part of the game" (Quotation marks are not to indicate verbatim responses, but rather for semantically doubled phrases) I'm not saying we should remove the GM, just that if we're heeding the warning, then maybe it could be more specific than it appears.

I have reason, from my own GM PM, to believe flipping as simply "Not Affected" is probably just roleless. But I'm not entirely sure, especially given the number of people that have turned up as Not Affected in the writeups. I haven't had too much time since the night cycle to go over todays posts, but there's a couple of things I am did notice: Someone else already mentioned this (Mat or Archer, I think), but Devo's death and DeTess claiming Devo was passing them investiture N1 to me soft-clears DeTess (assuming the elim teams works like any other normal elim team, mechanics wise - maybe they can only kill people who pass investiture, and there are very few mages, idk it could be anything). In any case, this kinda makes me question the other people who voted for experience. I could easily see an elim with few directions to vote hopping onto DeTess's reasoning for Exp, given that, I believe DeTess was the first one to vote for Exp out of the 3 votes finally in the tally (will have to verify this fact, not 100% sure). Also kinda explains DeTess's reaction to Exp's statement about investitute passing, now that I think of it. Mat and Archer seem to be rather in sync at times - both of them switched from their Exp/Frustration vote to a Szeth vote within a few posts of each other. Then Mat (building off of Araris' post) comments on the fact that Archer's commited vote on Szeth makes him lean village on Arch. Makes me lean towards not both e!Mat & e!Archer. Now that I think of it, the village lynch fully killing the player (if that is what is happening) kinda makes sense if the flavour text for complaints is that they "remove [you] from the game". I'd be in favour of testing out complaints this day cycle. If someone wants to volunteer, maybe we could try complaints on someone who is not the GM (we already know the GM is kinda unreliable, and there's only one of them anyway). I was gonna leave this post voteless, but on second thought, I think I'd like to put some pressure on Araris. @Araris Valerian unless you're quiet for OOG reasons, I'd like to know what your opinion is on the NK, your vote reasoning and anything else you've spotted under the radar. It is, however, past 2 am, and I have to get to work tomorrow, so this is all I'll say for now. I will be skimming the thread during daytime, so hopefully I should have something more substantial to post by tomorrow. Also, if anyone wants some investiture, feel free to drop me a PM. But do so at your own discretion, because I will be assuming you're not roleless, in that case.

Don't have much time right now, but I am interested in the reasoning behind your vote last cycle, @Araris Valerian. I'll be making a larger post in around 12 hours from now, so feel free to ask me anything until then.

Because I said something in our PM and I believe Archer wanted to confirm if I was ... behaving consistently with my statements. That's just my guess. Maybe it had something to do with Araris' vote on me last cycle instead.

Nop

Sure thing, boss

Sorry for the double post, but it's been some time since the last one, so I figured this would be better. Randuir DeTess (oops) I don't like this comment. It seems intended to discourage vanillagers from using the action they have, which in turn nerfs any village mages. Meanwhile, any elim mages will have built in support from any vanillas in their team. For now, experience. This feels kinda like a forced vote on Exp. While I did say I agreed with your sentiments about their post, to me it feels like you're just looking for someone to vote for here, kinda like an elim would. I guess you could argue it is D1, and people are going to be giving more attention to hunches and subtler cues. But then I'd argue the same thing (does that make me a hypocrite? ). I had a longer post planned out. I'd quoted all the relevant posts and then I switched to the most recent quarter of the thread and all the quotes were lost. It is well past my bed time, so I'm afraid this is all I'll say for now. Aeoryi, still waiting for the spiders, btw

Not usually, no. I'm just bringing it up because this is a blackout, so maybe that might be a thing here. But I wouldn't bet on it this early in the game when we know so little about the mechanics.

What'd Aman do this time? CC = crowd control = killing inactive players? Honestly, Aeoryi's self vote and activity initially made me think they could have been trying to die quickly. But their posts since, in self defence, make me think it was more for activity and to see reactions. Mild village read here, for me. I agree with your opinion on the advice, and I feel pointing out that villagers might make mistakes and pass investiture is mostly just stating the obvious. However, it does tell me something vague about Exp here. Not sure what I can conclude from this yet. More concretely though, it feels too outrightly elim-y for an elim to actually try suggesting the village not do anything, you know? Gives me more of a village read on Exp as well. Maybe just not a "vanillager" (funny term XD). The last time the GM was lynched, I remember hearing bad things happened. But maybe this time won't be that bad. Maybe we'll just make fools out of ourselves. Regardless though, seems more counter productive for the village, given our win-con is literally "when all of the Affected are defeated". Unless the GM's affected But yeah, Szeth's name's not gonna go in red for me But is anyone jumping to defend anyone? I'll have the go over the votes once, if I have the time. Else could someone make a vote tally counting vote changes as well? I won't confirm the exact words of my GM PM, but Szeth did use emoticons in our GM PM and gave me a straight-forward answer to a mildly tautological question I asked. I think that might just be the GM being the GM. Can't be sure though, that's just my two cents. Testing your theory on "unwilling" (I assume by that you mean inactive ?) villagers might not net us information if the villager stays inactive for another cycle, no? I'm not saying we should exe/complain out an active villager, just that either way, we'd be taking a risk. Unless you mean something else by "willing" villager (given that active villagers might also be unwilling). Continuing: Why are they gambit twins? Is that from this game? Or some previous game? Elims can act game solvey, especially if they don't know some of the game mechanics either. And especially so if they do know some mechanics that the village doesn't. Unless this is also a reference to something not from this game. What's a mix candidate? Because inactivity or because of something else? Cause I'm right here typing out this post :3 I need to make another pass over the thread to see what stands out (and to decide on my vote), but for now these are my thoughts.

Inb4 that turns out to literally be a game ending mechanism or the only way for your team to win in the last cycle

Yuo guys seem to be getting such spicy GM PMs. Idk man, seems like mine's the only one that makes it seem like this game's not got anything hiding behind the curtains (though I don't doubt it most certainly does). Maybe I just don't have a life outside the game. :') Yeah, no, I think you'd know if you were village. Just sayin' Doesn't make too much sense to me to have complaints renew every 2 cycles if they're supposed to be a moderation tool. I mean, maybe I missed something, but have there been any recent incidents that were not able to be solved by the GM or IM? Makes me suspect Szeth's just being mysterious/tongue-in-cheek with the clarifications, where real-life (and other synonyms) really is an in-LG term for some specific mechanism. Plus all the emojis are kinda ... amusing And how is it supposed to be played? EYES

Oh look, it's that time of the year again! I'd like to sign up as Mark! Don't have the most free schedule, but I've been itching to play a game, and a blackout LG is rather enticing, I won't lie. I'll be keeping an eye on you this time, Devo Nice to see some old faces and some (kinda) new ones! Look forward to the stabby nights and likely confusing days

I know it's been a long time since the game ended, but I'd still like to finally post my thoughts on the game. Firstly, Archer, excellently run game, Loved playing it, especially after such a long break. I won't be playing any games for another few months, so I'm glad I can take a break with a good taste in my mouth. The twitter segments of the writeups were all very amusing, and honestly, my second-favourite part about the rollover (right after finding out if we'd lynched an elim, of course ). I'm somewhat surprised people read me as village, given how I voted and that my reasoning was usually somewhat insubstantial. But, maybe that's because I didn't used to say much of anything before, so I'm not used to saying stuff... Conq, I'm curious what Devo said to you in her PM that made you come close to being suspicious of me - in the sense that I'd already expected you'd be suspicious me. (I mean, to be honest, I think I'd have voted for me :P) Illwei's death was really a stroke of luck, especially given the first 2 cycles. The vote swings during the rollover danger zone on C3 was honestly amazing and hilarious at the same time. Though, it'd have been nice if rollover wasn't around 2+ am for me XD. If Illwei hadn't been lynched that cycle, I think most of the village might have turned on itself, given my suspicions of Mat & Shining, Conq's suspicions of me (?) and Mat and Mat's read on Shining. Conq's suspicions were really on point throughout the game. My whole reason for believing Shining was village turned out to be unfounded. XD After I hinted in thread that I thought Shining had an extra-life role, he role claimed in PM and I thought there'd be no way an elims would have an extra life. Idk why I thought this, given there's been so many games with elims with extra lives, but it just came off as very villagery. Glad I believed you, Shining, but idk if it was wise. There's probably some other things I wanted to say, but I don't remember anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Well played to the Elims. If things had played out a little differently, I think you'd have had the upper hand by the end of it. I honestly hadn't suspected Illwei or Devo (until I spoke to Conq). Well done to the Village. Thanks again, Archer, for hosting the game. I'll see you guys again in a few months, hopefully.