DeTess

If they play perfectly, you're right. However, veryone slips up at one point or another, especially once an elim team has been formed. Also don't underestimate the power of some people's guts. Lopen managed to get a correct gut read on almost the entire elim team in around cycle 3 in LG30.

I'm no expert in nuclear physics, but isn't the mass of the products of a splitting reaction less than the mass of the initial atom?

Agreed, but if we clearly pre-select someone through a vote, it makes sense for an elim with that ability to smoke them, no matter the alignment of the person being smoked, to deny us information. If someone is found to be smoked when no public selection if the seeker target is done, then it could be considered suspicious, of course.

I wasn't completely clear here. Smokers don't just protect themselves but also a +1. If the inquisitor only gets 1 action then we should indeed be fine for cycle 1. No lynch occurs when no votes are cast. Additionally, depending on the rules, it can occur when no one reaches a 2 or 3 vote treshhold, or when a draw occurs. @OrlokTsubodai, is there a vote treshhold and what happens on a draw ( this isn't mentioned in tge lg2 rules either, and I can't search for clarifications elsewhere while on mobile). Edit: dual posting (posting twice shortly after eachother with no one else posting in between) is somewhat frowned upon. It's better to just edit it into your previous post.

Maybe I've made some wrong assumptions here, so let's try and clear them up. @OrlokTsubodai, does the inquisitor get only one action? Apologies if this has been listed somewhere in the rules for this game already.

The smoker power nearly always protects someone from being scanned by seekers. If we put it to a vote, if the inquisitor or one of their later recruits is a smoker, than they can simply counter that. It's a good idea, but it likely won't work because of that role.

Alright, I'm hereby mentioning everyone who hasn't posted yet and who hasn't been mentioned yet. apologies if I mention you if you don't actually belong to one of these groups. @Araris Valerian, @Dalinar Kholin, @Darkness Ascendant, @DroughtBringer, @Kipper, @Manukos Okay, that makes more sense. I'll be keeping an eye on you, but you no longer really stand out from the pack in terms of suspicion.

Based on points 2 and 3, it would appear to make sense for the thugs to claim. However, the problem is with point 1. The whole trick of the thug is that they have two lives, so they can 'soak up' an attack that would otherwise kill someone. If the elim knows who all the thugs are, he could make a point of avoiding them and focusing on all the other players first without running the risk of a kill not going through because he/she hit a thug. Worse still, he/she could decide to convert all the thugs, which would make lynching elims an incredible hassle, requiring two cycles, or a lynch and a coinshot attack to take one elim down. So I don't think having all the thugs claim is going to work in the advantage of the village. The advantage from point 2 and 3 can be gained by having the scanners check anyone who survives a lynch. edit: somewhat ninja'd by amanuensis

If I had thought Wilson's post was the be-all and end-all of alignment indicative posts, I would have voted on her because I wouldn't have cared that it could snowball into a bandwagon. I see the point you're trying to make, but the one problem with the cycle 1 lynch is that, while it is an important info generator for later cycles, the information you are working with is rather limited, and there (in most cases) won't be definite proof of someone being an elim. In that case, you have to go with the little things that sound off. As I said before, I'd like to hear from Wilson how badly we've misinterpreted and overanalyzed the post before I decide whether to vote on her.

So, I've horribly mangled my logic here. I could edit it out and update it, but at this point someone's bound to have spotted the original and would notice the switch, so It's probably better to own up and correct myself publicly, than try and sneak this under the radar. So, what I meant to say is that, yes, an unfortunate lynch could empower the elims. However, if the village wants to have any chance at winning this game, we need information, and discussion and lynches generate that information. I'm not at all convinced the risk of an unfortunate lynch now would be worth the loss of information that not-lynching would entail.

You could have Bronze as a kind of 'Detect magic', while Copper shields people in a small radius from being detected using spells that detect magic. I'm not sure how balanced that would be in the pathfinder rules (I'm a d&d 3.5 player myself).

Su’gal… No. Magister Agemtsar woke up, a nasty headache pounding through his skull. His last memories where of fleeing Luthadel after the Lord Ruler’s death. Now he woke up on a thin mattress, other people slowly returning to consciousness around him. The Magister checked over his clothing. He was still wearing the sturdy travel clothes he’d secured before the retreat from the centre of the empire. He still had his purse, the metal vials and… Agemtsar frowned as he pulled a letter out and read through it. It was addressed to him, and, unless it had been written in a deliberately obtuse way, was a continuation of a previous series of letters. ‘Ugh, I hate taking an identity without preparation time. You never know what kind of trouble they managed to land themselves in before their time came.’ The Magister looked around the room again. The people present seemed to be from all walks of life. Some had returned to consciousness, while others were still out. One unconscious form attracted his attention, however. It was a young man, and something about his face looked familiar to the magister. ‘That.. is going to be an issue.” The magister turned around an quickly left the room. ‘getting through this test with limited knowledge of who I’m supposed to be will be hard enough. Now, apparently, I’ve got a dead man’s family to worry about as well. Let’s hope that boy hasn’t heard about his grandfather’s demise yet. Or failing that, let's hope he's gullible enough to swallow the story about how I miraculously survived.' --------------------------------------------------- I had initially been planning to try and do some heavy-duty all-encompasing analysis from the get-go this game. Then I went camping for the weekend, and when I returned, another 10 people had joined up, and apparently we are up to page 2 already. I'll still try and do some analysis, just don't expect me to cover a majority of the player-list in the early stages of the game. So, time to get started. Here's a vote-tally: Omegaster(1): Arraenae Arraenae(0): Amanuensis Sart(1): Sart Little wilson(2): Amanuensis, mark IV Drake(1): TheMightyLopen Elenion(1): Jondesu So, let's start withe the easy one, @OmeGaster. He hasn't posted yet. Since the game isn't even 24 hours old, this is not really surprising. Omegaster, If you are feeling intimidated by the game in any way, or would like to as some advice, you can PM me, or any of the others that have posted in this game already for advice. Just remember to include the GM's (those who send you the message containing your alignment). Don't tell us important info like your role, of course. though I'm pretty sure most of us are happy to help a new player, no matter our alignment, you can't expect us to not make use of suhc info if you share it. So, that having been said since the game is less than 24 hours old, I see little reason to vote on him yet. Next, @Arraenae. As I mentioned before, I find a poke-vote while the game is still very young extremely odd. It's completely possible Omegaster was still asleep at the time, and hadn't even realized the game had started yet. I seem to remember you berating Drake for a similar action in LG30, so I think it is odd you are the one to do so now. next up, Sart. He voted on himself in Roleplay. Enough said. Next, @Drake Marshall (I know I skipped Wilson, I'll get to that last). He mostly talked about how he's going to be less active now and more active later. Given that that has been mentioned as a possible inquisitor behavioral pattern, I highly doubt the actual inquisitor would state the intention to do so as clearly as Drake has. Therefore I don't particularly suspect Drake at this point. So, @Elenion. He has been asking some questions about the exact powers the inquisitor has. Though some of this is explained in the rules for LG2, the rules themselves don't actually explain what other powers apart form conversion he has(reading through the game might reveal that, but that's quite a bit of reading), so I don't find the questions particularly odd. I doubt the actual inquisitor would be asking these questions in-thread, as the potential small gain in credibility is offset by people gaining knowledge of his powers that they might not otherwise get this early. So, I don't have any particular reason to vote on Elenion either. So, last but not least, there's @little wilson. Wilson's post has been savagely torn apart... er, I mean, thoroughly analyzed by Amanuensis and Mark, and I find that I don't have too much to add to that. Though, as Wilson said, an unfortunate lynch could empower the elims, the information that discussion around the lynch and the lynch itself generates is very valuable. Without this information we can't win. If we refuse to lynch someone every turn, then this game is going to take a while, but unless the coin-shots manage to hit the inquisitor, it'll result in a loss for the village. The reason I mention the exaggerated situation of not lynching someone during each cycle is that the reasoning presented could continue to apply, because no discussion and no lynch to cap off that discussion results in a continued lack of information. However, although I'm definitely suspicious of Wilson right now, I'm somewhat hesitant to vote on her. That would make a third vote, and that could lead to that vote snowballing out of control, which doesn't help discussion when it happens in the first half of the cycle. I'd like to hear what Wilson's response to the allegations is first, and then I'll decide whether to vote on her, though as it stands, she's the best candidate for my vote. Also, @Magestar (and others who have been in a similar position), could you share some perspective on being a solo-elim, and the tactics you'd expect the current elim to employ?

You are, but nothing stops you from RPing as one.

I personally liked the write-ups as well, and it matched the theme of the game pretty well. I should have seen the 'there was only one guy' twist coming, given the game's theme, but it still caught me by surprise. Regarding the lack of day-one lynch, I suspect if you implement the idea to have everyone talking at the same time, it won't be an issue. I feel part of the reasoning behind that was that both players in each pair should get at least one cycle to say their piece, and a D1 lynch this game would have killed someone off without giving them a real chance to speak.

Also, doing that piece of analysis at the end was an interesting exercise, especially regarding the importance of ignoring preconceptions. The fact that there where some things pointing to _stick_ being evil caught me by surprise, and If I had looked at Lopen's posts without this impression from day 1 that he was village, I'd definitely have had him as completely Neutral, and given the amount of text he produced, that should have been a clue to his true alignment. Anyway, it's a shame it proved to be for nothing, but ti was interesting to do anyway. Also, before I forget, apologies for tunneling on you, Jondesu.

Welp, I got one out of three correct in the end. Good job to the elims. Also, the next time Aman tells me he has suspicions on three people, but only explains one, I'll remember to pay a lot of attention to the other two, even if he is wrong about the first one (he called Mage and Lopen as his other suspects, apart from Elbereth, in a PM with me). I'll probably put my thoughts regarding the two-player mechanic up tomorrow.

I'll do a player-by-player pass of the day players, starting with those that voted on HH... Which is just about all of them, so there goes my sneaky plan to reduce my workload. So, without further ado, let's start with @Arinian. I've looked through cycle 1 again, and haven't found any reason to revise my comments on him from that cycle, so I'll pick up where I left off and start with cycle 2. Arinian only had two posts in the second cycle, but one of those was of considerable size. He made some good points about various things, but there is one thing I'd like to lift out (bolding mine): A lot of information could be gleaned from this one off-hand comment. This comment, to me, only makes sense if Arinian is a vanilla Ghostblood. If he is a ghostblood with a role, he wouldn't make a comment that he is aware is false. If he'd been asked about his role, he might lie about it no matter his alignment, but there was no point to bring this up there in the first place. If he had been an elim, then it would have been a dangerous comment, because if a lot of players actually had roles, his misunderstanding could be construed as indicating he's actually an elim. The other possibility I can think of is that he's an elim strategist, and due to his scan already knew two ghostbloods where roleless (one from the lynch, one from his scan). If that was the case, however, I don't think he'd be in favor of the roleclaim, as this would level the playing field from a point at which he had an advantage. edit2: actually, if he was an elim strategist, he'd be in favor of the roleclaim, as it would allow him to match pairs. I expect he'd be far more active in trying to get it implemented if that was the case though. There is one other comment in his big post I'd like to attract attention to: He, unfortunately, doesn't provide any reasoning for these good reads, which is at least as important as explaining your evil reads. In Cycle 3, he changes his mind about drought, and instead puts him up as suspicious and votes on him. One of the reasons he presents for that is the lack of posts from Drought, which is odd, because apparently there had been enough posts from him to get a good read before. Arinian hasn't posted anything else that's terribly exciting from an analysis point of view. He provides reasoning for voting on Drought and HH and it does not appear faulty or overly biased. Overall, I'm still leaning villager on him, despite his somewhat confusing turn-around on Drought. Moving on, we get to @DroughtBringer. He's been mostly lurking, but has had an uptick in activity this cycle. This reminds me somewhat of LG30, where he was less active through most of the mid-game, but became more active in the late game, so I don't think that in and of itself is alignment inidcative. I agree with Arin's assessment regarding his post summing up Len's activity. The conclusion is the important bit, and the time needed to compile the rest could have been put to use elsewhere. It does look impressive, but it's not actually useful. Overall, I can say very little on him based on his activity. Neutral I'm going to take a short break now, and then move on to Jondesu. Edit: Back from that break, so let's talk about @Jondesu. Note that for some reason, I've picked up a somewhat negative bias against Jondesu for this game. I hope I'll be proven correct, though. So, let's start with his very first post of cycle 2(edited out unnecessary tag, bolding mine): The bold part stands out to me, as it's both superfluous and meaningless. It basically says "Look, I did that suspicious thing I did because I'm village." It's a non-argument, that follows after an actual argument. He didn't need it here, but the fact that he did include it makes it look like he really designed to post to make him look village, which is something an actual villager would not be worrying about as much. Nothing from the rest of cycle 2 stands out in particular, for good or ill. Now, on to cycle 3. The first comment I'd like to discuss is this one(tag removed): I disagree that there are no reasons an elim would have done that. In fact, he provided one himself, stating that he believes this clears him from any suspicion surrounding Aman's death. If Aman had been lynched there, a lot of suspicion would have come the way of those that made the lynch possible. A villager might have kept his vote there anyway because of legitimate suspicion, while an elim would know Aman was innocent and so would take the first excuse to back out again to avoid undue suspicion. Of course, he could also have been legitimately swayed by Drake's arguments. Allright, on to another interesting post. This was said after Arinian outlined just how little Droughtbringer had posted: At the time he said this, the vote tally was as follows: HH (2): Len, Jon Len (2): Lopen, HH Drought (1): Arin This was also mentioned in the post in which Arinian displayed Drougth's posts, so it was very unlikely Jondesu missed it. As can be seen, if jon had moved his vote here, drought would have been moved to the tie position with Len, which would have placed him more in the spotlight than HH, so saying that it wouldn't change much at that time is a bit of a stretch. I haven't been able to find much else of interest about Jondesu in cycle 3. If it wasn't clear yet, Is supect he's an elim. As I said before, I feel like I'm a bit biased against him here. That doesn't mean you should ignore my arguments, but you should take a look at his posts for yourself first, instead of blindly following my lead on this. So, next up is @Elenion. I can't get too much from his posts in cycle 2. I've expressed my opinion on role-claiming last night-cycle (though I'd like to add that I think we've passed the break-even point and that it would no longer benefit us more than the elims). His comment about his partner having a plan sounded ominous, but I think his explanation in cycle 3 was adequate, though slightly underwhelming. There are two comments from cycle 3 from Elenion that I'd like to discuss here: So, in this comment, he sound reasonably confident. I don't think an elim would say this, knowing that HH is actually village, as he's basically staking his reputation on it. So, there's a bit of IKYK going on with this one, but it seems reasonable ( I actually used a similar argument to try and convince my partner to vote HH). If Elenion is actually an elim, this means that the comments above are part of a stratagem involving at least an IKYK of level 2. Just thinking about that makes my head hurt, so I'll leave it to others to decide wether he would go this deep down the rabbit-hole. I've got a Neutral read on him for now, with his support for lynches of villagers on the one hand, and the fact that he sounds sincere about it on the other hand. I'm taking another break, and will get back to the rest later today. Edit 3: The break is over. Next up is @_Stick_. After being silent for the first half of the cycle, a poke-vote form Jondesu brought stick back to the thread with an interesting post. She analyzed Rae's posts, which I suspect has helped solidify the Sart lynch, due to the suggestion that the elims might have targeted Rae to silence people who where against partner-claiming. The post overall was interesting, but not particularly alignment indicative, one way or another. Her second post that cycle is far more interesting. She claimed the sudden bandwagon on Sart had made her suspicious, and decided to vote on Mage. There are two odd things about this: First, there where only two votes between her first and second post. One from jondesu, who quoted Stick's analysis of Rae's post as the deciding factor for his vote switch, and one from Elenion, who stated the information gained from A Sart lynch would help with his partner's plan. I don't consider either of these two particularly bandwagony. The second odd thing is that she didn't vote on any of the bandwagoneers that had apparently made her suspicious, but rather on mage, who had stated that he was still unsure about that particulkar lynch.These two odd things take together, and it sounds to me like Elim!Stick was trying to distance herself from what she knew was the lynch of an innocent villager. In the third cycle she posted once, placing the third vote on the HH lynch. There are apparently some statistics going around that elims are usually the third to fifth vote on a lynch. I don't have enough experience to judge this myself, so I'll disregard this coincidence myself. I've mentioned it here for those among you who do use that statistic. So, in conclusion, I've gotten an elim-vibe from Stick's most recent posts. So, now we get to @TheMightyLopen. Lopen's first post of cycle 2 had an interesting contradiction: I'm curious how Lopen was planning on probably removing the vote if he slept till rollover . On a more serious note, though, Lopen has put up some meaty posts in cycle 2, which gave me a village-gut feeling on him, though I can't point to anything in particular in his posts to rpove this point. So, on to cycle 3. I find it interesting that lopen somehow felt personally responsible for the Sart lynch, but that's not a particularly alignment-indicative post. I'm running into that constantly, actually. Lopen might be an elim providing excellent reasoning, or a villager providing excellent reasoning, and as long as that stands up to scrutiny, I'm having a hard time telling which of the two he is. So, based on somewhat verifiable proof, he's Neutral, but my gut says village. That only leaves @Magestar. Magestar hasn't posted too much these last two cycles, though I do find it somewhat interesting/suspicious that he hasn't voted on anyone yet. In fact, in a lot of posts he's pondering why voting on certain people is probably a bad idea. This might be an attempt by an elim to fly udner the radar without appearing to fly under the radar. however, a quick check back to LG30 shows that he voted on lynches in less than half o the cycles, so this could also be part of his normal playstyle. So, I've got a Neutral read on Mage. So, yeah, I'm starting to get an appreciation for just how much time Aman puts into this game when he's an active player. And I only had to go through 7 people. There is one important thing I'd like to say in conclusion, and that is to stress the importance of doing your own analysis, or at least to check what others have said. If the elim kill goes through tonight and the next night, and there are two elims (I think it's unlikely, but not impossible that there is only one) then the next lynch has to hit an elim, or it's over for the village. So let's try to gather enough information and thoughts on the matter that we can get the elims the next cycle or two. Or failing that, get enough information we can legitimately claim 'I knew it' In the aftermath.

@OrlokTsubodai I'll get my thoughts up soonish. It's about midnight here, so I'll probably post it after I've had a night's sleep (which should help with my coherency).

Hmm, I might as well weigh in on the partner-claim and role-claim suggestions. Regarding partner-claiming, I think it will benefit the elims more than the villagers. The benefit of being able to target or not target specific people should not be underestimated, as it can be used to sway the opinions of people. I suspect Rae's death has helped with getting Sart/Elbereth lynched (Stick presented that reasoning quite well), so I think it would be best if the amount of strategic targeting the elims can do is kept to a minimum. Regarding role-claiming, I can see some of the advantages of that, but if the elims have a strategist, it could come with the same issues as partner-claiming. Furthermore, if the elims can figure out who people's partners are (or at least make intelligent guesses), this would help them with targeting important people. On the other hand, it could help with at least soft-clearing certain people based on actions they have taken, and increase the information available to the entire village (on that matter, Strategists, Stalkers and spies, I'd suggest taking action to prevent information from being lost if you get killed by the elims or lynched). So, overall, I think partner-claiming is a bad idea, and role-claiming a neutral idea, with some definite up-sides and some definite down-sides. I do think the downsides of role-claiming weight heavier the further the game progresses, as it increases the chances of the elims having gathered enough information to be able to target someone with a specific role with a reasonable degree of success, while it decreases the amount of coordination that can occur before the game ends.

Allright, so I'm signing up as magister Agemtsar. The reports of his death by coinshot in Luthadel have been greatly exagerated, and where most definitely wishful thinking on the part of his enemies. Edit: Are there any particular character traits of magister Agemtsar that a Kandra would be aware of, @Magestar?

I'd like to join this game as well. @Magestar, can I use the magister Agemtsar name here, as my Kandra was probably using his bones after LG 31. If you plan on him reincarnating for this (or a future) game, I'll use another set of bones, of course.

Okay, I won't put up as large a post as I did last night (at least not right away), but there's a couple of small things I'd like to comment on right now. First, @OrlokTsubodai's questions: Regarding HH's statistics: In cycle 1, when we've got almost no information, quoting statistics does not strike me as suspicious, because unless someone makes a big mistake, hitting an elim with the lynch is really just luck. It is not terribly useful either, because it doesn't give any new info. Statistics don't really belong in later cycles, unless it's the kind related to bandwagoning or player behavior. regarding my doubt of Rae: She posted that info with less than 6 hours on the clock. If the elims had somehow gotten information that Aman wouldn't be able to post at all today, than that could have been an attempt to perpetuate that fiction. This was of course unlikely (and I was proven wrong shortly after that), but it was just likely enough that I wanted to see Aman confirm it himself. Edit: pressed 'post' before being done. some more is to come. Edit2: Nope, just found a completely innocent explanation for the suspicious thing I'd found. This is it, for now. Edit3: wait, there was one other thing. @Jondesu, Drake is dead. There's little point to tagging him and asking him to participate in the discussion.

The problem here is that they actually can't. Once a shard has spend a significant amount of time in a star-system, it starts to become stuck. If it actually invests it's power into the system it becomes almost impossible to leave. This leaves a Shard immobile, and with a significant amount of its power bottled up in creating things like the local magic system they are vulnerable to attack by another shard. It is inf act quite likely Devotion and Dominion fought together against their Odium, but they wouldn't be able to fight at their full strength. It doesn't help that Autonomy likely aided Odium in his fight on Sel.

Regarding the questions: 1. Yes, the number of parts will be revealed at the beginning of cycle 1. 2. I'm currently leaning towards not differentiating between the elim and trapper attacks. That will help a bit with note 3, in that the doctor can't be certain about the alignment of anyone in the hospital, unless he's got a good PM going with the trapper(s). Regarding the notes: 1. I agree. 2. I'll take that into account. What exactly is the main issue with it? I assume it increases the workload of the GM, but are there other implications I've missed? 3. I've noticed that, and did take it into account with how I expect to divide some of the roles. Regarding that, if there's anyone around with some experience in running games, but who doesn't plan to take part in the game I described (or who'd like to co-GM it), I'd like to have someone to discuss some questions and ideas regarding balancing, as well as some other small ideas I have. If anyone is interested in, just send me a PM.

The fourth post in this thread has them all.