Straw

48 minutes ago, Furamirionind said:

I believe we have an issue as a community where we don't care about what people say.

The reason I keep leaving SE, is I get tired of having people constantly criticizing my playstyle and saying the way I enjoy SE is invalid. My first game back, and it's happening again. (Surprisingly and disappointingly not to me). There are certain players in this community who I really hate their playstyle (you know who you are : P)... But I don't take issue with them playing that way. I only hate when I am forced to play that way. While we may get frustrated at each other for viewing the game in fundamentally different ways, most of the time people agree that as long as you aren't making the game less fun for everyone else, you can play how you want.

My issue, is while most people feel that way, some players seem to think it is their job to tell people the right way to play. My issue is that no one contradicts these people when they try to tell others what to do. Perhaps people want to stay away from drama or whatever. I understand that... However, how would you feel if someone IRL put you down for being yourself and no one stood up for you? There are thousands of specific examples I could use, but I'll let you all fill in whatever your first thought is.

I don't think this should be acceptable behavior.

I'd now like to quote something from the SE Rules:

This fundamentally is pointing out people have different playstyles. We have always had to deal with various conflicting playstyles, and we always will.

There is, of course, a point where someone's "playstyle" detracts from the overall fun. This is why mayor-ing is discouraged. However, I think something people are struggling to understand is that there is a difference between, "frustrating for you", and "detracting from the fun of the game". If I decided to vote randomly every single game, that would detract from the game. That's not the game, nor how it is made to play. However if I appear to be voting randomly but claim I am voting logically, I may be frustrating to play with, but people can ignore my lack of logic and move on.

In conclusion, it's easy to be a bystander and let someone else get bullied. I want part of the SE "meta" to be we don't allow people to bully others.

First of all, if people are directly bullying you as a player, that sounds like an issue for the IMs.

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking for here. Unless I'm misreading your post, it seems like you don't want any criticism of playstyles, as long as they're not game breaking, even if they're frustrating to play with, which is unreasonable IMO. The game itself and playstyles are closely intertwined, which complicates things, since disagreements are a major part of the game. For example, in your example of "voting randomly but claim[ing] I am voting logically," that could very well be an elim indicator. Just as you are free to use whatever playstyle you want within reason, people are also free to criticize your playstyle within reason. It's all part of the game.

I'm also unsure what the distinction between "frustrating for you" and "detracting from the fun of the game" is. If your playstyle is frustrating to everyone else, then I think that certainly detracts from the fun of the game. Likewise, if your playstyle detracts from the fun of the game, then it's probably frustrating to play with.

5 minutes ago, Ookla's Dice said:

@Straw, I've reconsidered my schedule and the LG, and I think I'll drop out of this one. I think you had more than 15 hopefuls anyway, so one of them can play in my place. I'll take a spec doc, though. Thanks!

Alright, @Lord_Silberfarben you're in as a player.

1 hour ago, Lord_Silberfarben said:

i want to join, since there seem to be 14 players?

Joe signed up right before you, moving it to 15 players. Would you like to pinch hit instead?

16 minutes ago, TJ Shade said:

Oh dear. AG sign ups are going to be like this right? Except we don't get to see them. 

Sign me up too. And I have no idea what powers you guys are speaking about as I haven't read the books.

The AG has a much higher player cap, so it doesn't fill anywhere near as quickly.

Just typical superhero (or in this case, supervillain) powers. Your weakness is something that makes your powers disappear.

9 minutes ago, The Windrunner Supreme said:

Same. Im going to worry about the long game more

To clarify, you do want to sign up?

Looking at the player list, it's filled up far more quickly than I expected (12/15 in four hours), so I'm making the following change to the start date:

Instead of starting on December 11th, the game will now start on December 6th, or December 7th if some extra time is needed.

This change should give us enough time to get to 15 players + some pinch hitters, while not leaving us sitting around waiting for too long.

Pinging the current player list below:

@Ookla's Dice @Ookla the Shadowed @Ookla the Grammatical @Somebody from Sel @Ookla the Araris Valerian @Quinn0928 @Ooklil' the Wei @Liranil @Ookla the Paradoxical @Vapor @Gears @Elandera

43 minutes ago, Ookla the Paradoxical said:

Thanks for the ping, Mat. I would like to sign up please! OOC you can call me Archer. I'll brainstorm a character and get back to you shortly with it. 

Also this is my first time doing SE. Does anyone have an old game PM they'd be willing to add me to? I keep seeing references to roleplaying but I'm getting the sense it happens mostly behind the scenes. I'd like to take a look at an example to see how it's done.

RP normally just happens in the thread, but it's usually scattered around.

Some RP-heavy games to look at, if you want RP examples:

• LG30 (Stormlight)
• LG18/LG33/LG65 (King Killer Chronicles)
• LG1 (Mistborn) (also a good game to read through in general, since it gives you a solid idea of what a typical game is like)

As a note, all of those examples are Long Games, which tend to have more RP. Quick Fixes like this game tend to be a bit lighter on RP, because the cycles are far shorter.

Basics

Factions

Ookla Season

Welcome to Quick Fix Game 49! I am the GM for this game. @Ookla the Hypodecadal is the IM.

Signups will end on December 6th at 5:00 PM EST. This will probably be the normal rollover time. If I do not have the requisite 15 players by that date, the signups will continue until there are 15 players.

Since it's Ookla season, please make sure to check the Ookla rules above. I'll also have everyone's non-Ookla name in the player list.

This ruleset was originally created by GeneralHankerchief. This game is a flavored rerun of these games from Mafia Universe.

RP Background: You're one of the Lesser Epics in Newcago (or you're pretending to be one). Some of the Reckoners have infiltrated your group, using technology to emulate powers. If you want, you can tell me your powers, weakness, or come up with how the Reckoners would kill you. Just PM it to me or @mention me.

Spectator List

Pinch Hitter List

Player List

Quick Links

20 hours ago, Quinn0928 said:

Well, I mean how many games do people typically play before they actually run one (sorry, unclear phrasing there)

People tend to play a good number simply due to the fact that it takes a while to get to the top of the list for a game. For example, the average amount of time I've spent on the list between games is around 187 days (this can vary quite a bit though). Also, people don't sign up for games right away, so that adds even more time.

I ended up getting curious and using the data from the stats spreadsheet and doing a bit of filtering, I got an average of 13 games (probably a bit of an underestimate, since it doesn't distinguish co-GMing). See here for more.

2 hours ago, Devotary of Spontaneity said:

You need an excess of four clout to kill someone and an excess of seven clout to investigate, meaning you need at least five clout to kill and at least eight clout to investigate.

Okay, in that case Drake's completely correct.

5 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I believe this is fairly realistic. Eliminating a potential threat is generally a lot simpler than determining whether or not you can trust someone.

In a game like this, I'd say trust is more valuable than the removal of a potential enemy. Or at least it is if your cardinal is high.

It might be more valuable in some cases, but I don't think it's that much more valuable.

7 minutes ago, DrakeMarshall said:

I do think it is a reasonably substantial advantage, considering that overt actions end up having nearly twice the clout of covert actions. You can get more bang for your buck if you're willing to plan ahead and let people see you coming, but there is some element of diminishing returns. I can think of several cases where an overt approach would be pretty useful, but they aren't most cases.

It might be a good idea to increase the flexibility of overt actions, though. I feel there should still be some penalty for canceling an overt action, but maybe it could just be a -1 penalty to the clout of whatever action you decide to take in its place, instead of not being able to take an action. This introduces more IKYK because you can never know for sure if they are actually taking that action or just pretending, which I think is a feature.

Of course, I would be pretty surprised if my best guesses for what all the base "clout" numbers should be all turned out to be correct, and that's something worth watching for if this ever got run, so you may be right about needing to increase the clout of overt actions.

I think you're missing what I'm saying about thresholds. You seem to be evaluating Overt based on how much clout it gives, rather than evaluating how useful that extra clout is. Consider the following:

-A minimum of four clout is required to kill someone.
-A minimum of seven clout is required to investigate someone.

Having five clout rather than four or three does not seem to be particularly useful for either of these action. For example, if you are attacking someone on your own, you have little reason to be Overt rather than Standard, as +1 clout would not be enough to overcome any defenses they might have. Similarly, if two people are working together to investigate someone, their cheapest option is Covert + Standard. Going above that only offers an advantage if they are both Overt and there is only a single Covert player defending their target.

Essentially, Overt isn't all that good regardless of disadvantage, considering that the thresholds are composed of fours and threes, meaning that a five isn't very useful. Overt only seems to be useful in situations with large teams directly opposing each other, and it isn't very useful even then.

2 hours ago, DrakeMarshall said:

G'day friends.

So I had this idea for a game setup.

It's pretty different from a typical mafia / werewolf setup, but I feel like maybe it could work. It's a single page of rules, though I won't pretend they are particularly simple in practice.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g6hFwS5AShes7Nd_pCPe4G4RlOc9rSi8_uqYMzW-53o/edit?usp=sharing

I don't really know if I would be in a good place to run this by the time I hypothetically got to the end of the SE games queue, so I will also say that if anybody else is interested in using this setup, they may.

Looking at the rules, I'm confused as to why Investigate costs much more than Assail. It seems like eliminating someone would be much better than learning their Cardinal.

Also, what exactly is revealed when your action is announced?

It might be good to give the Overt method more clout, given how +1 clout is a minor advantage, since it's not at a threshold (4 clout is needed to kill, so going over wouldn't be that good). It also comes with a pretty severe disadvantage, since people know your offensive actions and can cancel them. It also requires you to put things in one cycle behind, which means you lose a ton of flexibility. I can't really see people using it.

I agree that lower Cardinal players should be given some benefit, and giving them more clout seems like a solid solution.

7 hours ago, Somebody from Sel said:

Voidbringer: standard Elim

Listener: they win if at least one member lives to see the Voidbringers lose, they do not count towards parity bit if the number of Village is equal to the number of Elim and there is at least one Listener then the game won't end.

Knights Radiant: standard village

For the Listeners, is the first bolded bit essentially the same as saying that the Voidbringers must kill all Listeners to win?

Can both the Listeners and the Knights Radiant win?

7 hours ago, Somebody from Sel said:

All factions will have these roles bit only ever one at a time.

What exactly do you mean?

9 hours ago, Somebody from Sel said:

Cohesion: stop yourself from being Elim killed, only works once.

Does this mean that you can only protect yourself once, or does it mean that you'll automatically survive one elim kill?

9 hours ago, Somebody from Sel said:

Division: kills a player, blockable by shardplate and shardblade.

Shardblade: protect another player from the Elim kill, one time target.

Shardplate: protect yourself from the Elim kill, two time target.

Wouldn't it be easier to say that Blade and Plate block kills in general, given how they seem to block both elim and Division kills?

9 hours ago, Somebody from Sel said:

Shardblade: protect another player from the Elim kill, one time target.

Shardplate: protect yourself from the Elim kill, two time target.

By "one time target" do you mean that you can only try to save someone once, or that you can only successfully save someone once?

9 hours ago, Somebody from Sel said:

Nimbleform: nullify and actions targeting you, the targeter will not know.

Nullifying any actions against you is a bit strong IMO, given how it'd make you immune to any kills.

On 11/17/2020 at 7:36 PM, Lotus said:

I have a game idea... Yes another one

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bEqkC4UaTv-DnLgmt543qnXDJNNB_m0GjsS8mo6DY94/edit?usp=sharing

For the Honest, what kind of tells were you thinking?

Cards: How much is random and how much is predetermined? Is the "deck" an actual deck that has cards removed from it, or just a set of odds? Is the 0-2 thing random? Do Voidbringers have the same deck as everyone else?

I just found this in an old draft PM. It's a kind of neat alternative role PM for the HI:

2 hours ago, Lotus said:

I have a game idea... Yes another one

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bEqkC4UaTv-DnLgmt543qnXDJNNB_m0GjsS8mo6DY94/edit?usp=sharing

BTW, Art of Game Creation is the thread for game creation/review, so you'd get more responses there.

19 minutes ago, Lotus said:

Does anyone have a master list of roles/powers that are commonly used?

The most commonly used and referenced powers are the LG1 roles, which frequently appear in games either directly or in modified forms. Some other good sources are:

• The SE Stats Sheet has some roles listed in the Key tab.
• The MafiaScum and Mafia Universe wikis have good role lists.

Special thanks to the following:

• @Matrim's Dice for being an excellent Co-GM.
• All the active players, for keeping the game going.
• The dead players, for making sure that the dead doc wasn't dead.
• The Traitors, for successfully winning the game.
• Illwei, for making everyone violate PM safety. Seriously, if Illwei had been an elim, all of the Hemalurgists would have been super dead.
• All the new players, who had a good performance.
• Lotus and Burnt Spaghetti, for being willing to sub in for inactive players. Burnt in particular had it pretty rough. She had to sub in late in the game, with very little warning.
• little wilson, for checking over the distribution and being the IM.
• Ashbringer and Lotus for writing their own deaths.
• Mist, for letting me make a lot of puns.
• Wyrmhero, for originally making this game.
• little wilson, for heavily influencing this game's current ruleset. I was talking to her about this game on Discord at one point, and a lot of stuff from our discussion (particularly regarding the HI) ended up making its way into the game.

Now, on to the GM thoughts.

Distribution

I think this distribution was balanced. The first interesting bit about the distribution was the number of elims. I wasn't quite sure how to treat the HI, but fortunately the numbers ended up working out such that it was 22% without counting the HI as an elim and 26% with the HI. Treating the HI as half an elim gives 24%, which I felt was about right. Regarding roles, the distribution was sided towards the village. The elims only had the HI and an Elantrian, but the village had two Feruchemists, two Mistborn, and three Surgebinders, which I thought was pretty stacked in their favor.

Looking at Hemalurgists, the elims had one Hemalurgist and the village had five (with two of them being Feruchemists). This was fairly in favor of the village, as it wasn't likely that all of the Hemalurgists would die until significantly far into the game, and in most cases where there's a lot of village death, the elims are probably going to be trending towards a win by numbers. Additionally, the village always had a chance of finding the HI (either by voting them out, or by hitting them with a kill, which would then put them under heavy suspicion). I think that it's also important to note here that the Feruchemists were specifically both Hemalurgists. Doing this accomplished several things:

• They could influence votes away from their fellow Hemalurgists.
• They had a higher chance of dying from the elim kill thanks to the elim Hemalurgist, which helped balance the fact that Feruchemists are fairly strong.
• If the HI was unleashed, there would be no vote manipulation present in the game.

Changes from LG15

• Voidbringer and Mistborn limits: I think this was better in the end. Mistborn with unlimited kills are problematic because they're so strong, which makes the game a lot more swingy (I also like the fact that having only one kill makes you think a lot more about who to use it on). Voidbringers are problematic since they'd be entirely immune to the elim kill, which can be rather annoying, since if they managed to be trusted they'd be essentially immune.
• Kandra changed to rolescan: I'm glad I removed the ability for Kandra to scan alignments, since that's always very swingy and potentially not fun. I thought about allowing them to scan alignment instead one per game, and I think that's a perfectly acceptable fix as well. One issue that I ran into with Kandra was that the HI is an elim only role, which means that if the Kandra hits the HI with their rolescan then it's game over for the HI.
• Hemalurgist changes: I'm happy with how the anonymous doc and Hemalurgist interactions ended up going. The doc was certainly fun to read through, even if it kind of died later on. I'm also glad that I let Hemalurgists have another role. It gives a lot more flexibility when making distributions, and allows for some interesting combinations. I think that being a Hemalurgist could significantly change how a role would be played in a lot of circumstances.
• Forger removal: The Forger is just one of those roles where it's kind of complex and weird and I honestly just didn't want to deal with it.  So yeah, glad I removed that, but it'd be fine if all of the interactions were figured out.
• HI changes: Overall, I think my changes were fine. Definitely better than LG15, but probably not ideal. I'm specifically glad that I made it so the HI was always an elim, since that was the main issue.
• Vote mechanics: Totally up to the GM, this was just my default.
• Inactivity filter: Filters are good, but I'm glad no one ended up dying (thanks Lotus and Burnt). I think that the filter was at least useful for making sure that people posted once in a while instead of just going completely inactive, which I kind of got burned by in LG67. I was annoyed that some people would do the bare minimum needed to dodge the filter, but fortunately most people were decently active. I do kind of wish that I'd done a vote-required filter, since that might have made things a bit more interesting, while also making Feruchemists weaker.

Future Changes

• Feruchemists: As some people pointed out, Feruchemists are strong, but I don't think they're that strong. Feruchemists are certainly more powerful than most vote manipulators, but they're fairly situational. As a Feruchemist, you can only affect close votes, and even then you still have to choose between the players who are up for the vote. It'd often be better to have a Mistborn kill, since you can use that against whoever you want, whenever you want. That said, I think that for Feruchemists you could definitely replace them with a single vote removal or something like that.
• Kandra: As I mentioned earlier, Kandra can be somewhat problematic with the HI. This is the primary reason that there were no Kandra in this game, and I think it might be best to have Kandra scan the HI as a Regular.
• Elantrians: IMO, Elantrians were potentially too strong when combined with Hemalurgists (ex: Elantrian just spam-heals a trusted Hemalurgist, thus making them essentially invincible). I think that Elantrians should at least be unable to target the same player twice in a row.
• The HI: The HI was fine in this game, but I think that it kind of had an awkward position. The HI's main goal until the Hemalurgists die is to just stay alive. The rolescan doesn't particularly help with this, and also wasn't all that helpful to the elims later on, though that was partially due to the distribution. I think that anyone considering rerunning this game should seriously think about what kind of role the HI should play in the game, and change the rules accordingly. I've put some of my ideas below.
  • No HI: First of all, I think the HI and the Hemalurgists could be cut out of the game and it'd be fine, but it'd make the game less unique.
  • The HI as an independent elim: One possible path for a fixed HI is leaning into their position as an independent elim. In this case, it might be best to just cut out the Hemalurgists and have the HI be permanently separate. The HI would probably also have their invincibility removed, and might gain a few more powers. I think it might be interesting to give them every role ability (limit of one per cycle), which would give them a fair amount of power. Another thing that I was thinking about that I personally think would be funny would be giving them a way to talk anonymously to the elims, with the caveat that a transcript of their conversation would be posted to the thread at the start of each day turn.  It'd also be interesting to maybe give them a one use elim-kill (they can submit an elim kill and it overrides whatever the rest of the elims put in), but I personally doubt that the HI would use it.
  • The HI as a win condition: In this situation, it depends on the HI's viability as a win condition. If it seems fine now, it might be best to just give it some kind of protective ability such as a vote move, instead of a roleblock. A silent block on any kills put in against it could also be interesting (kills put in against it don't show as "attacked but survived" in the writeup). Another thing that I think could be interesting would be going all-in on the HI and making the HI actually be two players, with both sharing the same life, role PM, etc. Essentially a hydra but with two accounts. In that case, it'd probably be best to just have the first HI to be killed die as normal. That way the HI just has a bit more robustness.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd be interested to hear it.

Wind has died! He was a Loyal Surgebinder.

Vote Count:

Wind (5): Araris Valerian, Burnt Spaghetti, Flyingbooks42, The Windrunner Supreme, Whysper
Condensation (1): Danex
Vapor (1): Condensation

GM Notes:

-The game is over!!! Thanks for playing!
-The elims have not technically reached parity yet, but I called the game because they would have won if they killed any villager during the night, and there was no way for the village to stop them. Additionally, even if they did forget to submit a kill, they were in contact with Mist and could have tied the vote during the next day. Thus, the village would have needed to win four consecutive coinflips in order to win, assuming they figured out exactly who all the elims were and all voted together.
-Congratulations to Araris Valerian, Ashbringer, Flyingbooks42, Lord_Silberfarben, Mist, and The Windrunner Supreme!!!
-GM thoughts up sometime.

Documents and Spreadsheets:

-GM PM Spreadsheet
-Master Spreadsheet
-Dead/Spectator Document
-Traitor Document
-Hemalurgist Document (fun game: try to figure out who's who )

Player List:

The turn is over!

Yeah, I believe you have the wrong thread.

TJ Shade has died! He was a Loyal Feruchemist and Hemalurgist.

GM Notes:

-The day will end on November 14th, at 5:00 PM EST.
-The following player is receiving a warning for inactivity: @Wind. If he does not post this cycle, he will be replaced.
-If you need a vote count, just @mention me and I'll give you one ASAP!
-Remember that PMs are closed during the day.

Player List:

The turn is over!

7 hours ago, Danex said:

I think the rules said that the “improvements” were just that the HI can then access the Elim doc, and it can then die to a lynch. Maybe I misunderstood. 
 @Straw?

7 hours ago, Whysper said:

Hmmm yeah, I'm a bit confused by it. Here's more to the description.

I suppose you could be right that the "improvements" are just flavor text for the switch to losing kill immunity but now gaining access to the Elim doc.

The rules say that the improvements are being able to die and being able to access the elim doc.

Mist was voted out, but survived!

Vote Count:

Vapor (1): Araris Valerian, Whysper
Condensation (1): Vapor
Mist (2): TJ Shade
The Windrunner Supreme (1): The Windrunner Supreme

GM Notes:

-The night will end on November 12th, at 5:00 PM EST.
-Don't forget to get your actions in!
-PMs are open! Remember to include me and Matrim.

Player List:

The turn is over!