Straw

Statistically, you're probably right about a villager being lynched, but it's not a good mindset to have. We should always be trying our hardest, even if it's early on and there isn't much to vote off of. A D1 vote gives us a strong basis for future discussion. Yes, I just checked the rules and they say the elims do have a doc. I doubt they'd all vote on one villager together. You have to remember that the constables want to blend in, so they're not going to do obviously suspicious stuff like that. elim teams will also spread out, so that if one vote train looks suspicious, they're not all implicated. On D1 lynches, I strongly believe that there should be a D1 lynch. I missed the bit about no unvoting, that's interesting. I can't seem to find it in the rules though?

Typically, it's between 20% and 25% of the total players. 20% would be 6 players, 25% would be 7.5. I doubt Joe would trend towards 20%, so I'd say probably 7 or 8 elims?

I will note that Flogs is an alignment scanner, not a role scanner. Renowned are the role scanners. However, he just scans constable/non-constable, so he can't even 100% trust any of the people he scans. But yes, I would recommend that Flogs be very careful. I will also note that Flogs is immune to the lynch, and I would certainly call that a "survival ability". I don't see why we would necessarily trust someone protected by a bodyguard in the first place, since we have the Constables, Bleeder, and any bartenders that might be around as possible killers. After all, kills aren't differentiated according to Joe. However, I suppose they'll have a higher likelihood of being village, since Bleeder wants the Constables alive. Agreed on this. Focusing on Bleeder that much would probably be a waste of effort.

I believe AG4 was due to pinch hitters. The player list has 30 players listed, and the spreadsheet has seven of the players marked as inactive. Similarly, LG12 had five pinch hitters marked, bringing it down to 31 players. MR10 does not appear to have any pinch hitters, which likely makes it the highest player count game.

ITT: El bullying me. IMO, it'd be a bit better if the NPC Masters DP distribution was weighted proportionately. I'm not sure why they'd treat some student with one complaint the same way they'd treat someone with 20 complaints. I think that a consistent power curve is preferable to random power spikes. Yeah, that makes sense. For Hand Delivery, it might be interesting if it didn't prevent from spying, but instead allowed you to open PMs with people that allowed them to respond, regardless of whether they're at the University or expelled. Ex: instead of making a PM called "LG65: T4M1: Burnt and Straw" you'd make one called "LG65: T4M1: Burnt and Straw (Hand Delivered)" or something. It might make more sense to have the GM make them in that case, and/or limit the number of them you could make.

I ended up counting it and here were the stats: Bard x1: Cealdish Commoner Burnt x2: Cealdish Commoner Coda x2: Vintish Nobleman Devotary x1: Vintish Nobleman Elandera x2: Aturan Nobleman Hael x1: Edema Ruh Lopen x2: Vintish Nobleman Rover x2: Aturan Nobleman Hael lied cuz he's an evil Skindancer.

Yeah, this is one of the things i mentioned in my post as well. As it stands, they have to kill everyone, so they have to double tap all the insane people if they don't have naming. They also have to deal with breakouts along the way.

Yeah, I was just about to make a post with some thoughts on abusing Plum Bobs, so I might as well just put them here: Code words: This would probably get a GM veto, but I'm curious if you'd be allowed to match multipart answers to code words. For example, making a huge list of every possible Skindancer team along with a codeword for each, and asking them to say the codeword that best matches their knowledge of the elim team. Ideally, that would force them to out the entire elim team. Specifying: I'm curious about the exact questions Devotary asked, and I was thinking about what specifications you'd want to put on certain questions to maximize the answer value. For example, I think the best way to figure out if someone was a Skindancer and if they are, extract some useful info would be the following question: "Out of the living, unexpelled, non-insane players, excluding yourself, how many players do you 100% know are Skindancers?" Ideally, this would result in them either announcing the number of Skindancers and confirming that they're a Skindancer, or clearing themselves. Another thing that I think would be interesting would be using the following question when asking a player who the other Skindancers are: "Out of the living, unexpelled, non-insane Skindancers, excluding yourself, which Skindancer represents the greatest threat to the Students?" Out of interest, how many Cealdish Commoners and Edema Ruh gambled? Do you think that giving them better odds ended up being a good buff for them? Also, I'm curious as to how Cealdish Commoners ended up doing in general. I was either at the University or insane for the whole time, so I didn't really get to use any of their special stuff. Hearing more about any of social classes would be interesting, since I know you changed them a bit. I kept on thinking during the game that the Windy Tower seemed kind of OP, hence why I stayed there whenever possible. I agree on switching them, but I almost think that the "mid-tier" lodging shouldn't really give a benefit, or if it does give a benefit, it should be minimal. I'm not sure if you mean that it would subtract two votes, or if it would subtract a DP after masters assigning DP and stuff? IMO, the big benefit to the Golden Pony was that it stopped you from getting DP due to single votes, so the second option would be more of a nerf than a buff. I'm curious about how you feel about how much the Masters ended up influencing the vote. A lot of times, it felt like it was very random, but that might be just player bias. Regarding tuition, I know you've mentioned that the 200 words thing ended up making posts unnatural. While I'm not sure how to fix this, I definitely agree that it was a thing that happened. BTW, you should totally make it a multiplier of a reading ease test result and a word count. Time to make people pull out the thesaurus! I'm also curious about how you felt about RP being worth 10x as much as game discussion. As a Cealdish Commoner, there were a lot of terms where I had to focus my time on RP rather than discussing the game, since I needed to reduce my tuition. I'd been thinking about this a bit during the game, and definitely agree with you that they're nigh-impossible. I love the idea about destroying the Arcane Fields, but it does feel like it's kind of railroading the Skindancers into those fields. I also feel like it could mess with students who just want to go into those fields because they sound fun, since you're essentially designating some fields as suspicious. With the first win con, i was thinking about what'd happen if the Skindancers managed to kick everyone out of the University. I feel like if the Skindancers were stuck with few offensive field abilities, they'd have a long road to success, and could even lose, which doesn't feel fair. They'd have to go and get rid of all the expelled students, which could be really difficult if those students had defensive items. They'd then have to go and target every single insane person, since they need them dead, not just insane. I'm curious about how balanced changing the win condition to dead/insane would be. It feels like it's a nicer parallel to the students, and stops the Skindancers from having to retarget everyone. If the Skindancers have managed to drive everyone else insane, I feel like they deserve the win at that point. Then again, this is counterbalanced by the Students not having many ways of getting rid of Skindancer masters. Part of me is oddly happy that I caused some sort of issue for you two. I'm kind of curious: how powerful is Naming on average? There are big flashy power displays, like Araris nuking everyone, but is it a linear scale? Naming seems like it's the most flexible field, so I'd be kind of surprised if it also gave that much power to people. This sounds very interesting. I hope you look forward to me making MSPaint drawings for free items. If you're talking about me, Burnt, and Hael, then yes, that was fun. However, it was a bit awkward sometimes, due to time zone differences. I know. I was commending your good game design. My thoughts on Linguistics: I went 100% into Linguistics, because why not? I ended up finding Linguistics to be a fairly odd field, in terms of ability power. You get abilities randomly, so which abilities you get first matters a lot. So, here's my rating of Linguistics abilities: Mysterious Bulletins: This ability felt fine to me. I never ended up using it, since I had nothing useful to say and I wanted to minimize Skindancer information, but it has nice synergy. Linguists could use the ability to send their findings about lies or PM spy results. It's also very nice flavor. Hand Delivery: In my opinion, this is by far the weakest Linguistics ability. The only abilities that allow PM spying are Bribe the Messenger, which is another Linguistics Ability, and Wind. I doubt that people would use Wind to PM spy rather than using it to roleblock or attack someone, so that's also pretty unlikely. All in all, it just ends up being a pretty useless passive, since it probably only protects you from one ability, and that ability is from your own field. Bribe the Messenger: While I never ended up having the opportunity to use this, it feels good to me. I doubt anyone would get that much info from PMs, but it's still a useful tool. I'd say it's far better than Mysterious Bulletins, but not as good as Linguistic Analysis. Linguistic Analysis: This ability was nuts, and I could have done some seriously broken stuff if I had been allowed to get more than two uses out of it. By scanning players with reads, you can essentially get their alignment, and that's not even taking into account players doing "I am not a Skindancer" and stuff like that. Every time I was elevated in Linguistics, I was just praying for this ability. I'd be curious to hear any GM thoughts on how powerful they thought this was. I think it'd be interesting to either have a set ability progression for Linguistics, to encourage people to stick with it and also make the power spikes less random or to change Linguistic Analysis and Hand Delivery to be more in line with the power level of the other abilities. I'd also be curious to hear what other Linguists thought about this field. Also, note to the GMs: I'm not saying this much stuff because I disliked the game or anything, it's more that I'm bored and have been thinking about this stuff for quite a while. Also, once again: thanks for running the game!

In general, AGs tend to have a high player count.

You don't see something like this?

Thanks to El and Wilson for both GMing and dealing with my 72 message GM PM. It's interesting that no one ever broke out. I'll be curious to see GM thoughts on the game. Activity Tracking A few graphs:

IMO, making it not role madness makes the most sense to me.

Does the Dakhor Monk Spy count as a role in addition to being an alignment?

Alright, time for some GM thoughts. Distribution: I kind of regret having so few items in this setup. It'd be interesting to see how a setup with more items would have worked. A lot of mechanics like item passing or the Shade roleblock would have had an actual impact on the game if there were more items in the game. I think five elims was probably balanced for this many players, but it's kind of hard to tell given how far off track the village got. Changes from QF16: -Silver Powder: While this change didn't end up having any effect on the game, I probably overcompensated on the Silver Powder buff. I almost feel like with the Shade nerf, Silver Powder shouldn't be in the game. I feel like the Shades would benefit from always knowing that they did indeed roleblock the person they chose to target. I'm not sure if it would be worth replacing though, or what I would replace it with. -Intoxicant: This is the item from QF16 that I replaced with the Medical Kit. It was a single use vote switch. I feel like it was a good idea to not keep this item, as I wanted to keep the lynch in the hands of the voters. -Shades: I feel like I went the right direction with the anonymous Shade doc. I don't believe it really had much of an effect on the game, and it hopefully made the Shade doc a bit more interesting. On the other hand, the Shades probably need some kind of buff, either in the rules or the distribution. The Shades could possibly be buffed in the rules by giving them more info on what happened (who they blocked, if the person they blocked did anything, what the person they blocked did, who voted for which players, etc) or by making them only block kills. The Shades could be buffed in the distribution by increasing the number of items in the game, thus making it so there's a higher chance of them hitting someone. -Item behavior on death and item passing: In QF16, items were randomly distributed on death and people who received items would be told who they got the item from. I dislike randomly distributing on death, and I think that should be kept out in future iterations. I had been hoping that people who were lynched and had an item would pass it to someone else, but that didn't end up happening. I think a future GM could probably make it so item passing isn't anonymous, as long as they kept the Mutineer kill as a free action. Does anyone else have any opinions on this?

Yeah, GMs should be included in game-related PMs to other players.

Fifth posted this in Discord: As Elkanah said, turns are a minimum of 24 hours long in all games, so everyone gets a chance to post. You'll usually get a PM that looks something like this: It'll typically include the player in question, the GM, and the impartial moderator. The first message in the GM PM will be the GM telling you your role and alignment (Village Smoker, in this example). If you're an eliminator, it'll also include a link to a Google doc where you can talk to the other eliminators. The GM PM is also where you submit actions and ask the GM clarifying questions. For example:

I will sign up as Straw. @Matrim's_Dice here are the signups for the next game.

Hmm, I'm surprised @Experience hasn't posted this month. I wonder if they realize that Masters get a three talent inflation for not posting in the thread.

GreenRover: Fortunately (or not), this read is a lot shorter than most of my previous ones. They basically just did RP and were inactive up until T3M2. Their only read at that point was that they kind of trusted Karnage for explaining why the elims might have gone after DeTess. Later that month, they seemingly randomly threw two votes on Kynedath, for reasons I am unsure of. During T4, they just made random comments with no reads. Finally, we get to their post this month, where they vote on both Karnage and me. They voted on Karnage because it seemed like a “safe bet”, which reads… oddly to me. They did also say that they disagreed with some of Karnage’s reads, but agreed with others. That doesn’t seem to be a terribly good point either. They also used their second vote on me, even though I’m a Master, which was strange. Overall, they kind of read like an elim who’s flying under the radar to me. I’ll throw one complaint on them: GreenRover. Sorry for the kind of last minute vote, but I just finished reading up on them, and noticed some things I found slightly odd. I'd be interested to see their reads. EDIT: @GreenRover

Time to hit the GMs with this: #1: #2 is true. #2: #1 is false.

First of all, I got a lie from Hael, and I think his lie was probably in his reads list. I think it would, but it'd depend on how the read is formatted. If an elim said that a village person was probably an elim, I believe that'd be a lie. I also think stuff like Fura saying that someone was 99% village would be a lie if the person saying it was an eliminator, as eliminators are 100% certain of all alignments. Overall, probably depends a lot on read formatting, but I think there's a high likelihood that I'd get a lie from an elim's read list. Also, Wilson got back to me and said that a villager putting themselves at 100% suspicion would be borderline, but wouldn't return a lie.

He's told me that it didn't come from an elim doc, which I believe is why you were voting for him. I'm using Linguistic Analysis to check that. I phrased it badly. Why are we both village or both elims? I haven't scanned him yet, and there's a chance that he's lying and the Skindancers will just sabotage me to keep me silent.

Four died, and while one was a mutineer, the rest were loyal. The mutineers had finally won, and the Shades left at last. DrakeMarshall was lynched. They were a Loyal Crewmember! Megasif was killed. They were a Loyal Crewmember! Amanuensis died to inactivity. He was a Loyal Crewmember! The_Archivist died to inactivity. They were a Mutineer! Vote Count: DrakeMarshall (4): Sart, Silberfarben, The_God_King, Zillah Elbereth (2): DrakeMarshall, Megasif GM Notes: -The Mutineers have won! -GM thoughts to come sometime soon. Docs: -Master Spreadsheet -Spectators -Mutineers -Shades: Cycle Two Cycle Three Cycle Four Cycle Five Cycle Six Cycle Seven Cycle Eight Player List: (As of the end of the game) xinoehp512 - Hades Loyal Crewmember Karnage - Shroud Loyal Crewmember StrikerEZ - Reverie Loyal Crewmember Elkanah - Cain Loyal Crewmember with a Medical Kit The_God_King - Mavet Loyal Crewmember Elandera - Thankful Loyal Crewmember with a Knife Lord_Silberfarben - Silber Loyal Crewmember with Silver Powder BrightnessRadiant - Calypso Loyal Crewmember Kynedath - Maledict Loyal Crewmember Kidpen - Aradia Loyal Crewmember A Joe in the Bush - Joseph Loyal Crewmember Elbereth - Crepuscula Mutineer with Silver Powder The_Archivist - Archer Mutineer Mist - Rona Loyal Crewmember Sart - Sam Trudite Mutineer Zillah - TBD Mutineer CadCom - Patience Loyal Crewmember DrakeMarshall - Verity Loyal Crewmember Amanuensis - Nok the Bard Loyal Crewmember Arraenae - Resourceful Smythe Mutineer Megasif - Mega Loyal Crewmember Furamirionind - TBD Loyal Crewmember with Silver Powder

The cycle is over! So is the game!

@GreenRover You do realize that I am a master, and cannot get any DP? Karnage talked to me in PMs, and I can use Linguistic Analysis to determine if they were lying about Fura fishing for info. Oh yeah, with Linguistic Analysis in general, I'm not trying to be a mayor or do the whole "I am not a Skindancer" thing. However, it'd be very helpful if people could try to give reads lists that I can scan. That way I can confirm that they're either a villager or a Skindancer that just confirmed a lot of people. Hopefully, I won't be Sabotaged this turn. On a related note, it's interesting that no one has broken out yet. The odds of someone breaking out are fairly good. Experience: I don't trust Experience at the moment, mainly since I'd very much like an answer for the last-minute vote on me. They've mentioned feeling good about CadCom, voted on Zillah for lots of RP/NAI stuff, and made a lot of posts about the game itself rather than players. Before that, they have some RP and then a post where they voted for Walin and mentioned that he felt like an elim. Before that, there's just RP and spreading out votes. Elim/neutral read? I feel like their last-minute vote on me was almost too elimy. I'd like them to post something this turn ( @Experience ).