Archer

Have we had any vote manip yet? I'm thinking it'll only happen if a Mistborn rolls it. Pretty sure Shadow's female. Illwei strongly village read them, going so far as to make them one of two PM buddies they had in the early game. So full credit to them, although I'm not sure what their justification for the read was. I'll explain my Shadow vote once you explain your vote :P. By the way, your late round annotations are overwhelmingly positive. You approve of pretty much everyone at some point, so I was struggling to spot who you actually suspected before the reads list. I also disagree with: Who says someone's full username after almost a full week of playing? I don't think someone in the elim doc. Doubt this is coached, it's too random of a thing to be coached. It's an interesting theory, but I think you're reading too much into player personality. I didn't have time to post at EoD, not that I would have changed my vote, but I would like to generally sus the collection of people who showed up for the last hour after being unnoticeable for the rest of the round eg. Xino, who is a consistent voter. Shout out to the 5pm lurkers: Shining, Mat, Silvereye, Dannnex, TUN. Normally I'd give TUN credit for not voting, but it was probably v-v again and they were probably ready on standby if things changed. Silvereye draws my attention because they didn't post. The usual theory about that is they're watching to make sure a teammate doesn't suddenly come up for the exe, but are otherwise non-committal since they don't have to be. Can we get past the e!Bookwyrm theorizing after another round of them surviving not because anyone cast votes to build alternative wagons, but instead, people just changed their minds and unvoted them? I don't see their team support anywhere.

What made you change your mind from your initial interpretation of the exchange?: Wizard defending Bookwyrm mid-D1, then voting him now, then unvoting him, also makes me think Wizard and Bookwyrm are not both elims. Wiz posts this three hours before rollover: Xino's post immediately afterwards helpfully notes that the leading wagons were 2-Book, 2-Ash, followed by a bunch of one person wagons. Wiz, who exits the thread until the Night after that, evidently felt comfortable with that state of affairs, implying v!Bookwyrm. By the way, it's 2-2 because Shining unvotes Ash, so Shining-Book not e-e. If you reread that stretch, it's worth also noting that Illwei is commenting without becoming involved in the voting, which is a similar approach to their last elim game.

(Shinging) Shadow Shadow started the D2 Turtle wagon. Normally I'd give village credit for starting a wagon, but Turtle feels like the kind of vote the elims wouldn't think would take off, so it looked like a vote park. I could be convinced to do Silvereye instead on the basis of Wiz's vote placement indicates an Elim preference for the Stick wagon, making it more likely elim votes can be found there, but my default is to sus the more active and experienced player. Archivist and JNV are the other two edit: voters on my radar, but again, unfamiliar playstyle to me and JNV is being sussed by Shadow. Who is also sussing Mat, which I don't get.

In the approval PM, I thought the Simple Rules title was a reference to them being your draft version. I get it now. :D. In as Gale, an advertising executive for Stay Puffed Marshmallows looking to recruit a Shade for a commercial she's working on.

I was thinking that, theoretically, e!they'd know Wiz submitted no action and then they'd have the opportunity to cover their Stick shot by claiming a redirect but it'd be better for them to just remain anonymous if they worried about the optics. I'm inclined to read the speed of the claim and the look of that pre write as being signs of honesty. At the very least, they're a bad discussion point past this initial phase because they're not going to be read in a meaningful way, it's more about the odds of the coincidence occurring. Not a fan of their elim reads though. Book clearly got hung out to dry and had no team support. Mat moved their vote around unnecessarily for an elim, among other things. And by the way, wanting to avoid making enemies is an elim tell, not a villager one. Anyway, if JNV is offline I'll direct some attention towards Shining. JNV Shining

Oh yeah. My mistake. Cin's claim is entirely unverifiable then, isn't it? * JNV for the reasons listed in my longer post

Why would Wiz ever elect to target themselves with Cin's mystery power?

The way I see it, there could be a Rioter out there who can claim to have moved Cin's action onto Wiz. There's no incentive for an elim to make Wiz the target of anyone. If the Rioter claims, they should therefore be conf village - or Cin's teammate covering for them. Both are good datapoints to have. If no Rioter comes forward, we can only assume that Cin is evil. (If Rioter Wiz was the one who did it, they deserve the mix for being counter intuitive.) I'll go on record as having not been the Rioter.

Edit: My apologies for the state of this post. It originally included links to all of the posts, but the site won't let me put more than three in. I still have the links if you're looking for a post's origins, I'll just have to provide them by request. Anyway, after some patching and reposting, I am done editing this. None of my alignment leanings were proven wrong, so I'm going to post this thread trawl unedited. Enjoy. 1/ Looks like y'all made a rash decision killing Ashbringer. 2/ ISOing yourself is taking your wellbeing far too seriously. Wanting a clearer idea of how the exe will shake out/wanting people to reconsider their votes that through dumb luck are on elims right now and listen to your seductive logic is scummy. 3/ This seems evil because they want to avoid attracting Ashbringer’s retaliation vote while continuing to camp on them. Their explanation undercuts any pressure Ashbringer might feel from the vote, so what’s motivating the vote really? Potential counterpoint: Question: do you have to vote? It seems that it is an optional thing, but I would have thought everyone should do it 4/ Similarly to JNV, Shining is focussing on who’s in real danger. Putting Kas so low indicates they’re okay with them dying, which might be why when, in theoretical elim doc discussions, exing him was seen as too difficult, e!they was cool with NKing them. Their post is also couched in ‘slight’ qualifiers, which makes backtracking for e!strategic reasons easier. 5/ Book: who should I vote for? Elim teammates: do a retaliation vote, no one will find it suspicious Book: HELLO THIS IS A RETALIATION VOTE 6/ Weird retraction given that D1 evidence standards are low, but I like that they changed their mind. 7/ D1 Xino and Book got very little support – having to self pres then rely on some unvotes isn’t consistent with the usually elim team strategy of place votes that push a safe exe for them. Shining-Xino not e-e since Shining tried to vote for them. Shining is the only person who showed any urgency, which could be e!indicative. Them and Mat are the only people hanging around near rollover that fit the elim profile in a v-v-v situation. By the way, Devo unvoting to try and get to an RNG decided exe is consistent with their playstyle. NIGHT ONE 8/ Villager. Also e!Xino doesn’t kill pocketed!Kas. 9/ Sus. Overreacts to death, laying blame (those pesky non voters!), wanted to be around near rollover like a good elim. 10/ Wiz: I also agree on the effort clearing Kas, because I once did it with e!Kas and it wasn't good. Would I lynch him? Probably not as v!Kas is a usefull village asset. But the possibility No, I most likely wouldn't, unless substanial evidence comes up. Contemplating Kas’ death for the reasons stated above is scummy. (Ha, Araris posted D3 literally as I wrote this. Called it.)11/ Village points for making a bold read of Kas shortly before he’s NKed. I agree with the take on JNV. 12/ Elims need to press sometime, and this turned into a mix. Worth criticizing. 13/ Came across a Wiz reads list but I’m going to leave their posts for an ISO later. 14/ Really? Because that says scripted distancing to me 15/ I don’t believe an indecisive villager narrows in on the small sample of Turtle posts as their top sus. Sus. Note that Cinnamon also calls Turtle out. Shadow-Archivist-Cinnamon works as an elim team for me because they’re all null/sus to me. 16/ Defender of Wiz 17/ Given the flip, that’s a villager thing to say. No need for an elim to make waves. 18/ Evaluating your own story makes me think it’s a lie. You don’t have to persuade when you’re telling the truth. Also I just quoted a line where you village read Wiz… TL;DR Village: Mat, TUN, Danex, Xino, Book Eh: Conq, Illwei, Silvereye, Elim: Shining, Cinnamon, JNV, Shadow, Archivist Original state of the post when the Shard ate half of it (don't read this, I just have to include it to comply with SE rules):

I like your strategy of questioning yourself so I feel redundant bringing up those points about you when building a case. :D. My argument would be that the delay of having to type things out naturally filters out immediate emotional expression, unless it's e!performative. Your vote placement also puts you high on my suspect priority list. If we guess 5 elims, because one early mistborn flip likely means many power roles and therefore a beefier elim team, they're probably not all going to be on two wagons, barring a e-v top two scenario. The side trains are: Book (2): Shining, Devotary Mat (1): JNV Cinnamon (1): Book Devotary (1): Alvron Having done little back reading, of those I know Devo is the type of vote Alv would make. I'm pretty sure they made the same choice in that Rithmatist game with the Thief because they like to try and get past the hard to read nature of Devo's style. I'm gonna assume Devo had good reason to vote you, which means I assume Shining did too. So I'm eying you and JNV as the players who are most likely to have voted elsewhere for the sake of splitting up the elim vote. Not retaliating against the voters on you is also a sign you didn't feel endangered, which can be elim indicative. Again, I haven't read anything so this ignores context like vote timing. And stated reasons. But you fit a lot of general elim trends.

*waves* If you had a PM with Devo, feel free to help Araris out by adding me to it. Edit: If you'd rather keep personal conversations private, feel free to start a fresh PM with me instead Hey @The Bookwyrm this post makes me think you're trying to be more evilly strategic with your vote and are over-reacting to the vote (what'd you expect - someone not to die?). Saying this stuff out loud feels like you're laying groundwork more than genuinely processing the game. Everyone else, has anyone claimed yet? Any common assumptions that're being made? How were y'all reading Devo?

GM Thoughts: -Shining, Wiz, and Mark sent one or two PMs per round, but no one else did. I banked on lower levels of PM safety making the need for an elim scanner low, but I think everyone got scared off by the PM rule. Which was interesting because people with even/odd roles could have gone crazy in their off cycles. The PM rule would have been really hard to keep track of if PMs were busier though, so I’d caution future GMs against it. Instead, I’d suggest a hard cap (eg 10) and have players self-police. (Shoutout to Mark for counting his own PMs!) -I’m glad Araris convinced me to name the range of dates available instead of keeping it secret. The range was big enough that it still would have been special if someone had hit it, which was the goal of the exercise. I probably wouldn’t run the mechanic again because even if someone had gotten their date right, it was a small reward for a large-ish amount of work. Alternatively, I would have played hotter-colder or higher-lower or had a cooperative element. The optimal elim strategy would have been for the person submitting an action every round (Devo) to submit the kill every round too, which would free up both of Illwei’s actions for coin guessing every time, maximizing their odds of getting it. -Shoutout to Xino who watched over Conq every single round. There was a time when Devo had submitted a roleblock on Conq that he would have seen, but it was changed to Sil I think. -There was also an almost-interaction of Devo roleblocking Sil and killing Mat(?) and Sil protecting the kill target- but they’d have been roleblocked from doing so, oo la la! But order changes scuttled that too. -By the way, the elim roleblocker was a trap role because there was a good chance they’d get caught by all the scanners. The village protection and elim self-protection being both Odd was also on purpose, to give Illwei the chance to frame Sil if they suspiciously survived a round. All the vote manip being village was also a trap for meta-gamers. -Surprisingly, based on how the game came down to an elim blunder and getting to a cycle away from 1v1, I think it was pretty balanced. I agree that that C3 late rollover really helped the village by giving them the chance to back off a mix, so that needs to be considered. It was partially balanced by the commonness of people failing to get their actions in on time. I expected people to paranoidly submit their actions as early in the cycle as they could, but what happened instead was a bunch of non-submissions. Same with voting. People were more lax than I expected about the deadline, so its use as a motivational mechanic has its limits. -I liked that variable rollover times gave me schedule flexibility as a GM. I recommend them for future use. -Organizing your player list by the OOA is a good idea. -Thanks to everyone who complimented the writeups. An unexpected plot emerged and I just rolled with it. There’s an Easter egg in the Gaston one where the police chief says he can’t read and that points to the wording of the protection role Sil had about them having influential connections in the police department that keep them safe. -Again, thank you all for playing. Cheers!

MR60 Aftermath: Frame * “This is getting ridiculous.” “You should get off Twitter then. Mind if I join you?” “You already have. Listen, there’s a full blown turf war on the streets right now between fast food workers. And the cops have been poisoning people in a convoluted round-about way of making money when they could just as easily divert some funds from their enormous annual budget!” “That would be illegal.” “So is poisoning people! And the payoff is what? A couple thousand per officer? It’s just not that feasible a scheme.” “And yet, that’s what’s happening.” “Is it though? This isn’t a plausible situation. Possible, sure, but not plausible. I don’t believe this is happening right now. I really… I’m in the Snapshot!” “People in the Snapshot don’t know they’re in the Snapshot.” “Evidently that’s a myth because this simulation isn’t even close to being accurate.” “I disagree. There’s an internal logic to this all that is being followed. It’s a realistic world, Ms. Stand. Anyone who belonged here would believe it. They’d have no frame of reference that would lead them to question anything.” “Nuh uh, I’ve figured this out. It’s not right, this isn’t real. I’m not real.” “You’re partially correct. It’s not right – to you. But it’s realistic, and that’s what counts. There’s an Epic named Firefight in this universe now and she’s quite graciously allowed herself to be plugged into the machine. She’s very good at making alternate realities. Only those with meta-knowledge would spot the discrepancy.” “I don’t understand. There’s a different Epic running the Snapshot?” “We have benchmark tests to show there was no change in the simulation quality. This evidence will still be admissible. I would advise you to settle, but that’s the real real you’s prerogative.” “So you admit I’m not real?” “Close, Ms. Stand. You admitted you don’t belong here. If you were able to figure that out in a reasonable simulation, a judge should agree that you’d notice that outside of one too. The implication is actually that you’re very real. Too real to be in a fictitious world. My Client will be extremely pleased.” “I still don’t understand.” “Don’t worry about it too much. It’ll only confuse you for another three, two…” SIMULATION ENDED *** Even Informed Polaroid Gang Member Stick was arrested! Mark was attacked, but he survived! That means the members of The Press have won the game! The votes were: Stick (3): Mark, Xino, Shining Xino (1): Stick Players remaining: Links: -Elim doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZLQwazXn8UKc2VwhRNaY4zWY4g0KfXfch1GYeACFRAk/edit?usp=sharing -Dead doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QHwsN9-p0gDyIXPxe3ZoddJcstMtlAmvstKyTshh3HY/edit?usp=sharing -GM spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WG9SJcXF5IzaSGYNXQpYqZBoCQs9PoppJkXig-eVSvw/edit?usp=sharing Discussion Questions: I'll post some GM thoughts later, but I'm excited to hear what you thought about the new mechanics used in the game. Were the roles fun? Was the balance okay? Would you play with variable rollover times again? My thanks to Araris for being the IM for this game. Many thanks to all the players and spectators as well, you made running the game an enjoyable experience.

This cycle is over, and so is the game. Please stand by for the aftermath.

Cycle Five: Print “Do you mind if I hide a body in here?” Jimmie Hesler nearly fell off their jail cell cot in shock. “Earring? How’d you get in here? And NO!” “Thank you very much. You seriously haven’t tried escaping through the window yet? That lock didn’t even have security pins.” “I’m innocent.” “And yet they continue to detain you. Gave you that line about needing to check simulation variations, I’ll bet. Funny how often that happens.” “Why do you have a body?” “Couldn’t leave it at the restaurant.” Earring calmly unzipped the body bag and let the corpse of Tommy fall to the ground. Followed by a rather annoyed black cat. “Bullet! You kept care of him for me?” Tunnel vision kicked in as the writer embraced his best friend. “-know that dental care is provided by private practices subsidized by the government, which is unique in the universal healthcare model. This allows them to operate as for profit… are you paying attention?” Jimmie shrugged, then paused. “Something’s wrong with Bullet.” “Look, I don’t have much time. Since you’ve been here, how many officers have left for private sector jobs?” “Uh, one who went to work in fast food. And one who wanted to clean teeth or something. Hey why’re Bullet’s teeth messed up?” Earring swore. “Does its breath smell like chicken?” “His gums are bleeding! Guards! I need help!” “No! Please wait. They’re playing both sides and I’m so close to having proof.” The cat started coughing, spitting up red-tinged phlegm. Jimmie cradled it, breaking into sobs. “You did this! Guards, guards, she’s one of them! Arrest this Polaroid Gang member!” Lights flickered on down the hallway while the light in Bullet’s eyes began to fade. Jimmie’s best friend, his glorious, wonderful companion, started spasming. Fade to black. *** Unrestricted Distracting Polaroid Gang Member Devotary of Spontaneity was caught! Odd Slanderous member of The Press Conquestor was their final victim. The votes were: Devotary (3): Shining, Mark Stick (3): Conq, Xino, Devotary Xino (1): Stick Players remaining: This Cycle will end on Wednesday, October 19th between 4pm and 8pm EST.

This cycle is over. Please stop PMing and posting while I work to get the next one up.

Cycle Four: Crop *** Even Slanderous member of The Press Matrim's Dice was fired (out of jealously, they'd tell you). Illwei was followed in the Snapshot under suspicion of murder, which revealed that they were an Odd Favored Polaroid Gang Member! The votes were: Illwei (4): Conq, Mat, Shining, Devotary Mat (0): Stick, Conq (1): Mark Players remaining: This Cycle will run forever end on Monday, October 17th between 4pm and 8pm EST.

Finally. The cycle is over. Please stop posting and PMing while I get the next one up!

that's my line

This cycle will end sometime within the next hour and 15 minutes

A minimum of 1.5 hours left! Please let me know if I've messed up this vote count. Pay no attention to the fact that Wiz questioned me last round and immediately got disappeared >:).

Cycle Three: Shoot "A letter came for you, Chief. I think it might be a confession from one of the Gang members." "Splendid! But you know my entire family is illiterate, please read it out for me." "When I was a lad I ate one dozen eggs, And worked on my writing, dear Sarge. And now that I'm grown I eat eighteen eggs, And build houses the size of a barge! No one writes like Anon, And crime fights like Anon. Need to light a match, nobody lights like Anon! I'm especially good at unexculpating... Here's more points on Anon!" "Skip to the end." "Blah, blah, blah, oh. This is not a confession, but an anonymous tip. I was working on a story near the City's Dental Appliance Armory when I overheard two people shouting at each other. I think it was Jimmie Hessler and Peter Parker, who I've since learned was murdered last night. You should check that out." "Ah ha! A wonderful lead! Bring them in, Sargent. Then help me get that song out of my head!" *** Odd Influential member of The Press Dannnnnex was killed by the Polaroid Gang. The Wandering Wizard was followed in the Snapshot under suspicion of murder, but they were an honest Odd Influential member of The Press. The votes were: Wiz (2): Mat, Shining Mark (1): Conq Shining (1): Devo Devo (1): Xino Additional notes: -Please welcome _Stick_ to the game! They're replacing Tani -Please remember to green out unvotes Players remaining: This Cycle will run until between 4pm and 8pm EST on October 15th.

Uh oh! This round is over. Did you make the right decisions?

coward Disregard that previous message then! (Thanks for the correction)

EDIT: This is untrue In addition to this, Wiz is voting for Mat. A minimum of 3.5 hours to go, everyone!