Fifth Scholar

Between a surprising load of homework and having to devote the majority of my time to visiting my relatives this weekend, I too apologise for my inactivity. First of all, to respond to a question I received in PM, the stated mission of the Anti-Shardic War Agency is to diminish the chances of inter-Shardic conflict by aiding efforts to squash groups of disrupters that form across the Cosmere. It also seeks to keep the Shard of Dominion out of untrustworthy hands until such a time as it should be required to curb a power too great to be contained by other means. Second, I still have no time to do any analysis at all. Give me an hour or two to knock out some of my homework, and I’ll try to do a brief scan of who I thought was suspicious. I do wish PMs were back up, though.

Ha. You think the ASWA seeks power? Or that men simply walk into its hierarchy? Or that I’m an usurper in the first place? What have I to usurp? I have no quarrel with your so-called divinities if they simply stand aside in the peacekeeping I seek. None. Place yourself alongside the other deities and wither, or coexist and attempt not to be destroyed. I seek the second; should not all?

*sigh* This game is super active, which is excellent, but there’s also a lot of content to go through. I’ll see if I can get a short post together, especially with analysis of Guest. EDIT: So Guest’s posts themselves really didn’t turn up much at all. As many had correctly identified, he was mostly trolling, and tried to get Rae lynched on a bandwagon, which was essentially the entirety of what he posted. He did seem to soft-defend Roadwalker, though as Road was inactive, and as he had equal incentive to pocket Road as to defend a teammate, I’m not reading too far into that. Of more interest is Guest’s lynch. I’d say I’m most suspicious of Devotary, Alv and Steel for their roles in last cycle’s lynch, in roughly that order, and will elaborate further when I have more time.

Steeldancer’s justification for voting on Rae seems fairly flimsy, and the fact that he attempted to defend what appeared to me to be a joke vote makes me slightly suspicious. Though I don’t have much time, I’d remark that I’m unsure where the support for Fura has come from, that lynching Rae or Road likely won’t yield terribly much, and that I intend to do a look at Ada and Arand when I get the time, as if the two are going to be taking such a central role in driving discussion, they should be a part of it as well. To all those who replied to PMs, I’ll get to those later (hopefully).

Vodiyehi’s effectiveness will likely vary, and will ultimately depend on what our own abilities end up being. Babaji is a powerful role, though it’s important to note that unless I’m misreading Joe’s computer jargon, the spambots don’t actually have a kill ignore me, I missed the text that said spambots get to delete an account every weekend, but it’s also worth mentioning that this conversion isn’t guaranteed to go off depending on the activity of Babaji, and whatever roles the Elims may have, so I wouldn’t make overly hasty assumptions about team size for the bots (though I’d guess 4). SookeSiled seems like a double edged sword, especially with Babaji in play. That would force the bots to use either their kill or convert every time they want to pull this off. For that reason I doubt that both this role and Babaji are in the game. Beirst is eh. There’s not much to do about it other than note if actions keep failing against them. Temptation seems...interesting. I hope we don’t run afoul of it too much, as it’s about the only wildcard the spambots have, and looks to be an effective one. The roleblock is a roleblock. Just would like to direct people to other role analysis. As there should now be plenty of it, here it is in one place. I’ll confess I haven’t bothered to really give Aman’s a good readthrough but I’d like to get this post out. Wait, if you’re Orlok’s high priest, what does that make me as a saint? Am I above you, having washed my robes in the blue, white and red of the Union Jack? Oi, stop justifying my text

I wanted to misinterpret this to play along with your comment, but it was long enough ago that my post probably doesn’t make much sense anymore.

Welp, looks like Ada, HH, and Meta are all spambots, so let’s ban them... wait...can’t vote for all three so... Guess I’ll just...retract all those votes, actually read the thread and the rules, and try to cobble something together.

I like this twist, but I’d be careful with restricting a player’s ability to post. The roleblock seems fine, but silencing people may cause disengagement or disillusionment with the game—as this ability stands, it effectively kills a player for one cycle, which can be incredibly frustrating especially in combination with denial of the ability to submit an action. Could you disambiguate this slightly? As this ability stands, I’m not entirely sure what this does. Would it simply provide imperfect lists of who takes action each Night, or is it more specific? Would they target a specific player or attack, or would they simply say “any attacks are Pushed one player up/down” as an order? The same applies to the Lurchers. Would these abilities affect both Thug and Eliminator kills? This seems...a little overpowered? A village tin claimant could be both completely untouchable while at the same time knowing exactly what other people are doing to them. There’s heavy potential for a mayorship to be set up here, and even giving the role to an Elim doesn’t fix much; they’d still be immortal except to the lynch and generally have too much of a protective shield. Perhaps give the ability a limit on frequency of use, or add a drawback such as vote negation? Factions are presumably typical village/Eliminator, yes? Are PMs allowed? If two Rioters use their abilities simultaneously, would three people be lynched/killed at Night? I do think that this ruleset should prove very interesting, though, and I like the novel mechanics you’ve come up with. Your conception of Pewter is an excellent thematic twist as well. It’s good to see diverging interpretations of Meta’s original roles.

Bard, that was excessively trollish. Sign me up as Seventh Saint, a convenient alternate alias that was given to me by Aman a while ago. He also needs to be a villager, as I’m not sure what a spambot!mod would signify. Edit: After changing my profile, I’d like to clarify that I am/was Fifth Scholar, so there’s less confusion.

Hahahaha... Any of Joe’s games are a good launching point (I recommend QF14 if you want truly interesting mechanics with supposedly OOG characters). GM intervention is interesting, but also fraught with risk in many ways. The main role of the GM is to be an impartial facilitator of an enjoying game, and having them possess direct influence would undermine that slightly. That said, having the GM function like an NPC and have a jester role or similar has been successfully implemented before. Consider LG15a and LG41, in which the GM had to be lynched for the Elims to win, or games (there’s quite a few of these) where the GM used a character of their own to advance writeups. It really kind of depends on what you have in mind, I suppose.

Congrats to the Elims. Even though I died N1, it was fun getting continually confused in the spec doc. I have legitimately no idea which posts of mine prompted @Snipexe to say I was “nailing a lot of guesses,” but a quick purview of the spec doc should disabuse you of that notion. Also, thanks to Devotary and Maill for sticking it through and remaining active villagers to the end in a game which was somewhat plagued by inactivity. Even if I wasn’t performing my own analysis towards the end, it was fun watching you two nearly get the village back together.

Continuing our record of archiving older games, it’s time to close this one up. It was a lot of fun developing and running this game, despite a few flaws, and thanks belong to Joe and El for helping refine it, and to Devotary for being a wonderful co-GM. Most importantly, thank you to all the players who participated. Congratulations to the village (and the Synod, even though the Pacifico font burns my eyes) for their win, and to the Eliminators for putting up a valiant fight, despite fortune being against them. As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Orlok, Alvron or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about! If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, A Joe in the Bush, or Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private. Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

Though it’s been eight whole months, this game is being closed up at last. Though Seonid may be gone, he is still to be commended for running a smooth game, the first AN since the AG, with a simple blackout ruleset which kept all sides in the dark until the very end. As a co-GM, it was fascinating to watch the village (and the EBI in particular) slowly work their way through their initial confusion to catch Bort at the last possible second, and to see Bort himself nearly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat; needless to say, both sides deserve a round of applause. Also worthy of mention are the spectators, who created the lengthiest spec doc we’ve seen in SE in quite a while, and to all the players who had to play bird accounts, as they were slowly, systematically slaughtered by both teams. As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Orlok, Alvron or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about! If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, A Joe in the Bush, or Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private. Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

Yes.

Just a brief reminder to all players that using any outside sources to encrypt, code, or codebreak is forbidden by the Fair Play Policy in the SE Rules. Any team is still allowed to devise their own codes, develop their own programs to encode and decode messages, or speed up an encoding or decoding process, but only if you yourself made that program. Using online sources directly, however, is against SE policy.

Thank you! Quite unfortunately, the British GMT system the Shard uses to track birthdays means mine isn’t until 3 hours from now, but the sentiment is appreciated.

With discussion having long past ended on this game, it’s time to close it up. Jondesu is to be credited for his creative yet simple game, his wonderful writeups, and the fun twists built into the mechanics; no Gondorians, and a Mordor player without doc access, certainly came as a surprise. Credit is due to the team of four novice Eliminators who were nevertheless successful in duping the village into a series of mislynches, or rather tied lynches. And, of course, thank you to all the players, without whom these games would never be possible. As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Orlok, Alvron or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about! If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, A Joe in the Bush, or Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private. Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

It’s a little past time some of these games got closed up, but we are getting to them, steadily enough. Thanks are in order to Straw for running this one. It’s always a pleasure to see an old and familiar ruleset being given another chance to see the light of day, and witnessing AG rules applied to a small QF was certainly intriguing. Congratulations to the village for their timely victory, and to the Eliminators for a well-fought fight. Perhaps the AG curse itself lives on, but a victory in a similar game for the villagers may bode well for the future. Time alone will tell. As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Orlok, Alvron or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone in our Art of Game Creation thread. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about! If you would rather keep some detail secret, or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, A Joe in the Bush, or Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private. Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

This game is long past due to be closed up. An enormous thank you is due to Steeldancer for creating and running such a simple yet highly entertaining game, and striving to foster engagement through the usage of “fashions” from cycle to cycle. Additionally, his creative and hilarious writeups kept the game flavourful within the Princess Bride setting he chose. For the players, the Eliminator team is to be credited for their win, persevering through their struggles with inactivity and early misfortunes which crippled their team from the onset. Special mention goes to Mr Doctor for misleading the entire village in his first game, in dramatic fashion. As always, if anyone would like to try their hand at running a game, please get ahold of Wilson, Orlok, Alvron or myself. Not only will we get you added to the list, but we'd also be more than willing to help out in any way we can. You can also ask questions and get some hints and feedback from everyone over here in our Art of Game Creation thread as well. With all the games that we've run so far, we have plenty of experienced GMs that can help you refine any game you're thinking about! If you would rather keep some detail secret or are self-conscious about posting in thread (there's really no need to be; while we do slaughter each other, we are very polite about it), then I'm sure one of our fantastic committee members (Elbereth, Amanuensis, Aonar Faileas, A Joe in the Bush, and Stink) would be more than willing to help you out in private. Thanks again to everyone that played, and we look forward to killing seeing you in future games!

Hmm. I’d hoped to do analysis of a player that hadn’t gotten much attention, but this post is noteworthy enough that I want to share my thoughts on it before I go dark for about 24 hours. The first paragraph simply seems odd, as if Fura is attempting to project her “alignment” and draw people to a premature conclusion. It’s easy enough to claim villager, and in this case the passive and insinuating way in which she seems do to it, hedging against a future lynch on her, seems highly disingenuous. It could be posted by a villager, of course, but an Elim!Fura would probably benefit more from the ideas behind the post. If Furamirionind is an Eliminator, I expect the list she gives here to be a mixture of truths and lies. Hopefully by C3, if everyone honestly claims their C2 medallions, we’ll have a comprehensive picture of which metalminds are out there, and can potentially cross-reference Fura’s list at a later point. I will say that the tone throws me off, though, and something about the post just seems, as I’ve said before, highly disingenuous. (Apologies to Fura—it is harder to counter reasoning based on gut or feelings, and hopefully my suspicions will articulate themselves by tomorrow so you have something better to respond to.) Finally, an Iron claim makes me instantly suspicious, as I currently hold just the one Iron medallion, and that means that either the Eliminators want to give out Iron to ensure their target tonight kills somebody with a medallion, or Fura is lying, my Iron was randomly assigned and she’s evil. The odds of both of us only having a single Iron are incredibly low, and I’d very much like others’ input, as I know what I received, but obviously can’t prove it. From my point of view the Jedi Fura is almost certainly evil, but those without my personal bias may be best in resolving this situation to the thread. Finally, to be clear, I’m claiming because it’s urgent and I didn’t want the chance of me being killed tonight to hinder the evidence available to any investigation of Fura.

Hmm. I had thought that the bendalloy would still cause the lynched player’s alignment to be shown. It’s a little annoying, for the time being, that we still have to take CadCom’s words with a grain of salt. Luckily, he’s already given the two things I most want out of him if he is a villager—a reads list, and an analysis of last cycle’s lynch. @Cadmium Compounder, if you have further thoughts, please share them. I’ll be fairly busy tonight, and as I’ll be travelling tomorrow I likely won’t be the most active, but I do hope to get in some analysis when I can. More specifically, I’d like to look at some of the people who haven’t necessarily been analysed yet. I do have one question for @Kidpen, though; is there an inactivity filter of any sort? I’d rather not waste lynches on lurkers or inactives.

If you believe that he’s an Eliminator trying to pocket you, and that his trust in you is too unfounded, wouldn’t you want him lynched in case he was evil? I find your parenthetical interesting and slightly at odds with the rest of your post—I certainly understand wanting to spare someone the displeasure of an early death, but if you’re tipping the vote towards him, and actively causing him to be lynched, it rings slightly false that you don’t mean for him to die. Re: your first paragraph, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. The more you lie, the better you get at it! And if you had theoretically lied at this point, it would have been nearly impossible to counterclaim you, so I hope you don’t mind if I take your first statement about you being a poor liar with a grain of salt. That’s a fair assessment of Fura, I feel. I’m getting increasingly tempted to switch my vote to CadCom at this point, but I’m holding back if only because he was just killed C1 in the last MR. It’s poor logic, but I’d feel bad lynching him so early again. That said, your vote probably has better backing than mine, and...hmm. I’ll keep my vote on Fura for the time being, mostly to gauge if the train of voters at the middle of the cycle were opportunists looking for an easy lynch, or intuitive villagers that have been prematurely condemned. It’ll also resolve the pervasive uncertainty surrounding Fura’s alignment. “I’m Aliat, though it gets shortened to Al a lot. RaLeen, that’s an interesting name. You came here as an emissary? What group do you represent? I thought Lerdar had briefed me on most of the major diplomats already, though apparently he missed a few. “As for me knowing what I’m doing? That’s a nice thought, but as a contractor for the constabulary I’m under direct supervision of both Elendel’s bureaucracy, and the eyes of the most elite police force in the world. It’s a spotlight I’ve borne, for now, but it takes a lot out of me. A lot of following specific orders, and satisfying specific people, is what I do. Anything I know is embedded within the commands of those above me.”

@FatherTiempo Try [color*=red]Your Vote Here[/color*], just removing the asterisks.

Alright, time for multiquoting again because I’m only going to really be able to post a good, thorough post once a cycle. The above post is making me reconsider my vote on Furamirionind, though it’s also illustrative of why I remain in two minds about her. The first paragraph screams village to me; acknowledging a potential error and offering a perhaps better solution is not something I associate with Eliminator tactics. That said, the second part of her post confuses me, and I’d like her to explain it more thoroughly; if your main concern was lack of information upon a person being lynched, a simple question to Kidpen could have clarified the matter, and unless my memory fails me (which it might) I don’t think you brought that point up before. This post gives me an overall village lean, which I’ll explain a little more further down. I’m not going to bother commenting much on CadCom’s role analysis, as I simply wouldn’t have the time, though I’d like it if somebody else could at least skim it and give their thoughts. I’m glad that he seems to be putting real effort into analysis, though. Not tunnelling on Fura is certainly a point in CadCom’s favour, in my eyes, though it should be noted that the post does look a little like hedging. Given my own conflicting thoughts on Fura, however, I’m less minded to condemn him for it. After CadCom’s urging for somebody to claim another aluminum, and then the way he seems to place more emphasis on the fact that that person may be more cleared, the interactions between CadCom and Lumgol, the seventh aluminum claimant, could be worth examining. At the very least, I’m not going to clear anybody who claimed aluminum from the order in which they claimed, as any such underlying logic is inherently IKYK. From my admittedly poor math, a player has about a 60% chance of getting a random medallion to begin the game, which, while I don’t know the specific formula to find the odds of getting two, I’d imagine that it’d be somewhere between 20 and 36 percent. Therefore, suspecting Drought for having two metalminds seems a little like grasping at straws, and worsens my view on CadCom slightly. Yeah, so this is the reason I haven’t retracted from Fura yet. After acknowledging that a C2 claim may have been better, she immediately pivots to defending her earlier stance, and then jumps on to CadCom for mild hypocrisy. While I’m not getting great vibes off CadCom myself, this post is inconsistent with Fura’s earlier statements, and also brings up a completely unrelated point. Why does CadCom’s Elim status in the past two out of three games make him suspicious in this one? The call to use gold is an excellent one, and one that I fully echo. Again, not fully hopping onto Fura’s wagon out of convenience makes me more minded to view Elandera positively, and she brings up an excellent point about what Fura may have been thinking in making her original post. However, this late in the cycle, poke votes on inactives are a wonderful way to appear to contribute to lynch discussion without actually taking a firm stance on AI issues. As such, @Elandera, what are your thoughts on the current lynch? Eternum repeats a previously stated point, though if he’s simply in agreement with it, it’s not necessarily plagiaristic. I find your vote on Fura interesting, because she was actually the first person to bring that idea up, and even voiced her support of it (though she did seem to backtrack, which just makes me more confused). Right now, the Fura lynch has received little pushback and got easy support from bandwagoning votes, and that makes me suspicious that we’re running into a mislynch here. Whatever the case, I’d appreciate it if bendalloy was used on whoever is lynched this cycle so they can pitch in their final thoughts. Again this post puts me in two minds about Fura. The first paragraph makes a valid point, though I’m not entirely certain the math is correct. However, as the push to claim may have resulted in villagers needing to lie to preserve secrecy, lynching away the pool of seven “suspects” isn’t a good idea, in my opinion. Eliminating groups like that based on the logic that there has to be an elim somewhere in there is, from experience, an excellent way to start a string of mislynches, and anyone placing undue attention on the seven is slightly suspicious to me. That said, I completely agree with the second and third paragraphs of Fura’s post. The Elims aren’t necessarily lying, and Eternum’s case against Fura did seem to cherry-pick a little. The fourth paragraph simply confuses me, as I’m not sure what it’s trying to say. The result of all of this conflicting opinion about Fura within me is that I still want her lynched (no offence Fura), as I’d like resolution to both my personal uncertainty and to discussion in this thread, which has mostly centered around her. It’s another reason I’d like the bendalloy users to go ahead and do their thing this round, as I’d very much like Fura’s final thoughts after we’ve seen her alignment. See, it wasn’t what I actually meant, which is one of the factors pointing me towards a more village lean of Fura; she could have refuted the idea that you brought up, which was my original intent, but she instead created a sensible idea out of my post, more sensible than my original plan. This makes her look more village in my eyes, as she’d have greater incentive to simply counter my original, and poorer, idea. And yes, waiting on a tin scan before using any lynches on the “Group of Seven” is likely wise. The tone of the first paragraph throws me off, and reads as insincere more generally. It seems overly emotional, and attempts to center our focus where it arguably shouldn’t belong yet. I, as stated before, disagree that Lumgol is cleared. The fact that you essentially announced that you would clear the seventh claimant before she announced her aluminum cheapens her position on the claim train even further. I’m not sure why Elandera's lack of analysis is particularly meaningful, as basically none of the others in that group were really doing much analysis either. Further, while I would perhaps like to see more from her, I would definitely not say that Elandera is the most suspicious of the seven. I don’t disagree on a significant enough level with your other analyses to warrant comment, and this post is getting too long anyway. Finally, encouraging more people to claim aluminum, and almost offering a clear for doing so, seems counterintuitive to me, though I’d be curious to see what others think on this matter. Aah, you guys are posting faster than I can quote. Which is wonderful for activity, though I’m not accustomed to being on the lower end of things. Keep it up, please As for concluding thoughts: I’m suspicious of CadCom, have very mixed feelings on Fura that I’d like resolved, and I don’t advocate lynching the people in the “group of seven” for solely that purpose.

First of all, good luck with your mission. I completely agree on the need to begin lynch discussion, and I hope we start getting more votes soon. While I respect your right to remain silent on this, I find it slightly odd that you have no thoughts on a full page and a half of thread that’s been put out over the last 24 hours. More importantly, however, both Steel and Ark claimed an aluminummind. This means that unless one of them is lying (which should be enough to warrant suspicion regardless), the Elims gave one of them the metalmind. @Steeldancer @Ark1002 Either of you care to explain yourselves on this matter? Particularly Steel, who claimed two metalminds. This post seems to have sparked most of the discussion this cycle, and while others have responded to it, I’ll do so briefly myself. First, I’m not sure what you believe roleclaiming will give us. The Eliminators have no incentive to be honest about which metalminds they have—I doubt they created any Bronze so that the village could find out, regardless, and claiming will only serve to expose potentially powerful metalminds, or else force their holders to lie, further muddying the waters surrounding the entire ordeal. Second, why this cycle? It would be much more effective next cycle after metalminds have rotated out of mostly Eliminator hands, as we’d get a much more honest portrait of which metalminds are out there. As for now this seems like a tactic designed to get the village to expose where powerful metalminds were initially distributed, Furamirionind. (I acknowledge this is a weak case, and I’d love to hear your response, but we need to get lynch discussion going.) Roadwalker is correct that we need a lynch, though I wouldn’t fear a hammer this early when enough villagers are active to punish any Eliminator team foolhardy enough to try such a tactic. Drought here echoes my main concern with metalmind claiming, earning him a Very Slight Village Read. Hmm. I can see a less nefarious intent here, though I’d point out that the Elims would get a lot more information out of those claiming Roleless than the village, as the village would have to muddle through the list, while the Elims would instantly know where the more powerful medallions are. While information quality does improve slightly throughout the game, I am still hesitant to give up my ability to a team that could potentially eliminate me for it. Role-claiming seems to simply force villagers into lies in this situation, and get them roleblocked or killed. @Elandera, my apologies that I haven’t replied to your RP, but I’m simply low on time and energy right now. Hopefully Aliat will reply later.