|TJ|

I don't think this works that way. xD You get a Shadowblaze, oops you're an elim

lmaooooo xD you know... you could land this role...xD would that be worse than being an elim for you?

Hehe, you know, more so, now that there's a conversion role in the game

Also, HEY this means @Kasimir DOESN'T get to be paranoid. Nope, that'd be breaking the rule

Hey hey, what's this sudden demand for heart-stealing? xD

I already feel sorry for Sart. And I don't know how I can play different, as I'm coming on the back of playing different Maybe I'll just role-play as the thief xD Prepare for the incoming 'stealing you heart' jokes

>:( KAS, you already want to break our record??? -_-' Smh, I'm disappointed in you xD And in other news, I'm scared of open PMs

Okay, I've been putting this off long enough. Coming to distribution, I think it was fairly balanced. The 4 member elim team was due to QFs inherently being elim-friendly. To match the 4 member team, I decided the three most important village roles would not have Warders and would only be one in number - Green (although I sorta felt bad when Liranil told she wished she had a Warder to help with her kills ), Blue and Yellow. The 4 members were strong, especially with a Blue to potentially find Green and Yellow (not that it was required this game ). Elims also had access to a Brown via their Warder, meaning village had a compromised Brown. Players mentioned 2 Grey on village was too strong, but I certainly didn't think so. Especially considering the other weak parts of the village (Green, Blue, Yellow), I felt it was warranted. Also, villagers are not usually right, meaning there could have been possibilities where village Grey protected an elim from elimination. Elim Grey is too powerful in games where ties cause mass elimination, in my opinion. Also, don't guess the distribution In role madness games, we can have any sorts of distribution, because we can have a counter to balance it. The game felt village leaning because elims were eliminated quite early into the game, but it wasn't due to the mechanics. Rather, they linked themselves to each other rather tighly. Perhaps it wouldn't have felt village leaning if this hadn't occurred. Another thing is that there were no successful Warder on Aes Sedai protections in the game. This might be mainly due to all the role-claims in the thread, with elims deciding to go for non-Warded Aes Sedai or just straight up Warders xD Changes would include allowing Yellow to self-target (sorry Reading ), perhaps taking away one life at the very first successful protect, and Aes Sedai losing their role only if their Warder was killed while protecting them, not by elimination.

How did that work out in the beginning of the game? You would have tried, failed miserably and get pulled in again.

Okay I do have somethings to respond to, basically agreeing with Quinn's post here. Maybe there were aggressive players before and hence Wilson is used to strong language when something frowned upon is observed. Maybe there was a time when such players needed harsh words to show what they're doing is wrong. Almost half of the players in the list joined after Wilson played her previous game. I might be making some assumptions here. If so, I apologize. But these are good players who just got caught up in the moment of the game, and such harsh words were not necessary, especially on their first infraction, and they could have been made understood in a milder tone. Saying stuff like "I'm not giving this player a role again" is a bit too much, in my opinion. I would never have thought Ventyl as Dingo, because all my previous experiences playing with him were good. I'm assuming this means Invention? I didn't have contact with any elims other than you and Swan I had submitted the action to kill you the turn I had both Odium and Autonomy. Realising it would have taken out Axl and Gorilla.. interesting. Not sure, but I think Gorilla had completed his wincon by then. I keep thinking how the game would have developed had I not claimed to Mouse and he managed to talk about doing... odonomous things No, not probably. Definitely I don't get this partiality against Autonomy's roleblock! I was happy I could roleblock Flamingo's UP and they say I can't -.-

al opened his eyes to what was a beaaauutiful sunrise - "mighty fine mornin' this. an mighty silent 'pared ta the onesh before. my frends lay dead it sheems, and they indeed were frends. shure i like to work alone, but theresh nothin wrong with buildin'... you know.. human shtuff with fellas around you. when yar moshtly immortal, theres leel things, they become important. were all in this together ya know? gods and mortals, and were gonna be in this together for a looooong time, so we gotta undershtand each other. an even if he hafta kill em, we do it with a smile knowin we be meetin them in the next life, in which they maybe smilin upon our dead body. important thing is, we will meet again. my frends lay dead an i do not weep, cosh i know ill meet them again in another life. my aspects lay dead, but yet, i do not weep as i know can recreate them, an recreate them in the name an memories of my friends." al considered what he just said. "huh, rezarach reaalllly crept up in those wordsh huh. poor llenhdal, she was suffered so much in her little time, i wished she had been shpared. time to go, got ashpects to reinvesht" with a sigh, he got up. "well i really dont need my ashpects, jusht doin this to remember them. all i need ish right here." he glanced to his side at the half-full bottle. he went to pick it up, but thought better "guess ill do it right this time around? for once, not do something when im half outta my mind? i owe to them... i guesh" he sighed dropping the bottle and started walking in the direction of the sunrise. he'd walked for a while when he stopped and realised "HEY- NO NO, you shall not influensh me rezarach! i need to reinvesht you as sooon as possible! ha! can you imagine me? wise al? nonono thas not happenin. what the heck of a stupid idea is "don't drink"??? im goin back an gettin that bottle an pushin ya to that deepest recess of ma mind. when yar safely reinveshted, ill take a loooong chug without ya yellin 'bad al bad al bad al' in ma mind" I'm not gonna speak of a single negative thing here. Y'all have already done plenty of those, and I'm sure everyone's read them and try to be better from now on. I'm gonna speak about my experience with the game (and no, that does not include the "incident" because I said I'm not speaking a single negative thing). I had a blast. Probably the most fun I've had in a game since I joined here. I usually take games seriously, and lean on the analysisizing when I play. I just wanted to have fun this time. So, I chose what would I believed would be the most fun of all the characters to play. But what really helped me was landing Autonomy. Now I could play a fun character, AND not actually care about solving the game. And I saw Quinn had problems with anonymity, but I think I loved the anonymity part of it, as I don't think I would have ever played like this on my main account. Even writing the above bit of RP felt weird . I did try to mask my identity as much as possible (you can only do so much because timezones -.-), so if anyone other than Illwei and Kas figured it out (without their help, as I know they published it in the Roshar doc -.-), y'all are perceptive. So yeah, I had fun. Despite what happened, I sorta tried to laugh it off in the thread and tried not to make a big deal out of it. From the mercy's secret ability thing (hehe, proud of that one, it was funny to see the roshar doc go paranoid over it ), to trying to get off Odium kills for the elims, I loved being chaotic. And I was completely oblivious to stuff happening outside in the dead doc, and so when I learnt it from Kas in D6, I felt sad that others weren't actually having fun or enjoying this and wanted this game done with :/. Also happy about the pass It means that y'all enjoyed Al as much as I enjoyed playing him, so I'm glad @STINK, you're an awesome dude, and I enjoyed our totally chill PMs in LG72. @A Joe in the Bush, I loved your character! Konion was hilarious and should be appreciated more, they've been underrated. xD And yeah, me and @Kasimir broke the one-on-one PM record, which currently stands at 1,277 messages.*fistbumps Kas* And please don't take this as boasting or showing off that I've had fun, I felt lots of negative stuff has been said about the game, and I just wanted to share my positive experience. I..may...have developed a taste... for chaos... so maybe.. expect this... in the future? Right, I've got to actually go read the last 4 pages or so, and see if I have something to respond.

Sign me up!

I see both of you were expecting your passes

Yeah, I had a lot of fun in this game. Thanks GMs, for running it, and uh dealing with everything that came along with it. I'll say more after the reveals.

GM Thoughts: Even though the case is specific here, I believe this has to be said in general, so all "you"s refer to everyone in general. We throw around the word "fun" a lot when it comes to SE. "Hey, always prioritize having fun to winning" "Sure winning is good, but having fun is more important". I want to emphasize that this refers to aggressive competitiveness, the "I don't care about anyone else as long as I win" type of mentality. To curb this type of mentality, we say "having fun is the most important." But in this case, the "fun" you guys refer to just became "I don't care about anyone else as long as I do what I want". The "fun" we refer to is a collective term, the fun and enjoyment of everyone and I mean everyone who is playing. If the way you want to achieve fun causes disappointment to even a single person who is playing, it is not in spirit with SE. You just cannot call it fun, when it deliberately hurts even a single player. Fun for an individual or two, at the expense of causing disappointment and hurt to other players is just not it. You are literally telling "I do not care about the enjoyment of others, as long as I enjoy myself". Dead people are not in fact, dead. Most of them are invested in the game. They spend a decent chunk of their day lives and commit it to SE. Just because they are dead, it does not mean they or their opinions are invalid. We are playing a team game, which should be obvious as I feel ridiculous feeling the need to say it. As such, each action you take affects your team and teammates in some way. Put yourself in your teammates shoes, and look at it from their perspective. Empathize. Is it worth doing this given it's likely to hurt someone on my team, dead or alive? GM and IM rulings: Why do you think we make a decision? Is it to control you? Is it to restrain you because we get someone sort of satisfaction from it? Heck man, the sole purpose of creating a game is for you guys to have fun. When we make a decision, it is by considering what is best for everyone and what is best for the game as a whole. Breaker asked us if he could go for a deliberate tie when he could win. Because this directly affects his teammates, we asked for their thoughts. 2/3 remaining elims told they'd want him to go for the win. We ruled that he could not do so. I'll talk more about it in the gamethrowing part. But what followed was Breaker being extremely upset at this decision, telling he didn't think it was appropriate for us to tell him "don't do that", that he was stunned at being given an order and he felt railroaded and might quit the forum. You may recall him mentioning this in the thread in C8, as well as in the sign-ups for the LG. This is not an appropriate reaction for telling "don't do this, your actions will hurt your teammates". It does not get better though, as he asks the consequences of going through with it anyway. He wanted to ignore the IM ruling and go through with this plan anyway, and he did. At this point, I just decided to let this play out because the alternative was to modkill him for going against the IM, and I did not want to take that route. So when asked for the consequences, I mentioned he would risk upsetting and hurting his teammates. To this, he replied "I accept", meaning he didn't care that he was hurting his teammates to get what he wanted Reasons for Ruling: The first and most obvious, he was hurting his teammates. But this goes a lot more than that. a. He was gamethrowing to set up a situation which would lead to Gears gamethrowing. b. I know James was seemingly fine with it perhaps because they were friends, but at the time, he was talking about killing James and letting Matrim survive to the last round. It set up a situation in which Matrim had to witness his own teammate vote on him, which would be extremely annoying for him. c. Future consequences leading to the thoughts like "Will the future GMs think twice about putting him in an elim game again?" and that would lead to the meta that Breaker would be village most of the time, and "How will future teammates of Breaker treat him if they know he exhibits such behaviour? Will there be arguments and friction in the future?" all of it could be culled with this ruling here and now. d. Going this way definitely felt like a pity-draw or gifting the villagers a draw, which would not go well with them, as is the case now. e. Gears would be put in a position of betraying his friend or betraying his entire team. Now, I cannot anticipate how Gears would react to that, but what I could do is avoid putting him in that position in the first place. If he betrays his friend, there'd be discontent there. If he betrayed his team, like he attempted, his teammates would be rightly upset. This move to create this situation did not lead to any sort of outcome in which some or the other party was not upset. All these put together just made it clear that it would lead to a very messy situation. Gamethrowing: No, I don't believe that Breaker couldn't win the game. In fact, neither did he. I have stated in the dead doc of the ways he could win the game. In fact, he did have an alternate plan to win when we ruled that he couldn't go for a tie, before he decided to ignore our ruling. His plan was to go for a WGG in C8, which he thought was his way to win. Even the path he took, by killing Matrim, he could win, and he knew it. He had stated multiple times that he "wanted to go for the fun tie rather than a boring win". He had a fairly straightforward path to a win, and he believed it. Why is Gamethrowing bad? I can't believe I have to say this, but you're literally invalidating the efforts of everyone who is playing the game. Like Illwei said, everyone who is playing is putting time and effort into the game. By attempting to gamethrow, Breaker invalidates the effort and time put in by his teammates. By attempting to gamethrow, Gears invalidates the time and effort invested by the villagers. Yes, he is forced to a position where he has to choose to throw or to go for a gifted victory. But he is failing to see something important. If he truly believed that Breaker could not win, it is because of the efforts put in in the early rounds by the village. Breaker is in this position because of villagers figuring out the other elims efficiently. By throwing it at this point, he's erasing and invalidating all their efforts. If I'm reading it correctly, Gears disagrees with the change in the ruling. He believes having fun should precede everything and that going for the fun option over going for the win should be allowed. This was fun for whom? Breaker? Sure. Gears? Maybe. But elims? It wasn't. Striker was upset with this decision as he has made it clear in the dead doc. Villagers? Some of them didn't have opinions, most were upset at being gifted a draw. But "fun" wasn't mentioned at all. As I mentioned earlier, fun for one or two individuals at the expense of disappointing the rest is not fun at all. OOG Talks: I've seen hints that Gears and Breaker were talking about the game outside the only place they could, the thread or their Warder PM. One of the instances was when Gears exclaimed that Breaker was right about Burnt being a Brown, but I couldn't find any such statement made by Breaker prior to this message. And it seems Gears already knew Breaker was going to kill himself and had asked Gears not to protect him, but I don't find any such messages between them as well. If I'm missing something, and there were no such talks, ignore this point. But if it's true, I don't even know what to say to players who are unable to conform to the rules of the game. I don't even know if I've told everything I want to say so I might revisit this stuff later. Mechanics and distribution talks will have to wait, as I believe this is important and deserves a post of its own.

Aftermath: TJ woke up from another weird dream. He'd been having a lot of those lately. Strangely, they were all related to Wheel of Time. Maybe I should stop reading those WoT fanfics all the time. You know when you're obsessed with something and it starts appearing in your dreams? Yeah, I think that's the case here. He tried to remember it, like he did always. What was it again? It was right before the Salidar Aes Sedai took siege of the the White Tower. But something was different, wasn't it? Different from canon? The Amyrlin had tried to root out the Black Ajah? That didn't happen until later in the books. And there were a lot of Aes Sedai whose names I didn't recognise. Yes, the Amyrlin was almost successful in rooting out the Black Ajah. And..And.. I.. remember a James? What kind of an Aes Sedai name is that? And a Basilisk? Trying to find the final Black Ajah for the Amylin. What happened next...? The dream slipped by his mind in moments. He was lucky he could even remember this much. Most of the times, he could never recall a thing. Weird, this subconscious mind. Just like that, Roko, James, and Kanaira were gone, just constructs of his subconscious mind. Gears, James Brafin and Breaker disappeared. They were figments of the narrator's imagination. [Hmm, what's that? You want the actual write-up? You want to know what happened? Okay, okay I'm only joking around. Might as well, cause you know, stats sheet and all that.] "Huh, sure would have liked to know how that ended." mumbled TJ as he stepped out of his room, only to find James and Breaker in his field of vision. "Wow, I must have taken something strong last night." TJ tried to shake himself out of it, and tried slapping himself, but there they were, as clear as a day, engaged in a stand off. "Huh, they're actually...real? Wait a minute-" he looked closely... and they didn't seem to be pointing their guns at each other? They.. held their guns to their own heads? "Oh, god I'm still in a dream isn't it? I-" All of a sudden, they started shouting at each other. "I'M GONNA KILL MYSELF" "NO, I'M GONNA KILL MYSELF" "NO, I'M GONNA-" "No, no, this can't be happening. This is not a dream, I'm going insane HEY, can you guys-!" BOOM. James Brafin was eliminated. They were Rebel Aes Sedai of the order Grey Ajah. Breaker killed themselves. They were a Black Ajah hiding within the order Blue Ajah. Vote Count: James Brafin (1) : James Brafin Rebel Aes Sedai are deemed to have won. Player List: Doc Links: Dead/Spec Doc Black Ajah Doc GM Spreadsheet Thank you all for playing, and I hope you had fun! A big thanks to @Araris Valerian for helping me throughout the game. GM Thoughts later, because oh boy, there are some stuff that need to be said.

And game.

Games gone long enough, and I'm gonna call it a tie if there is no specific winner at the end of this turn.

Cycle - 9: Warder You Doing?? Connie and Order were hallucinating that they were Romeo & Juliet. So they went to the nearest cliff and promptly jumped off to their deaths. Philico was feeling left out, so he joined them and jumped off as well. Condensation was eliminated. She was a Warder in the service of Rebel Aes Sedai. The Unknown Order was eliminated. They were a Warder in the service of Rebel Aes Sedai. Matrim's Dice was killed. He was Warder in the service of Rebel Aes Sedai. Vote Count: Condensation (3) : Gears, The Unknown Order, James Brafin The Unknown Order (3) : Matrim's Dice, Breaker Cycle 9 has begun and will end on January 23, at 23:30 IST [GMT + 05:30]. Please try to bold your votes, and give retractions in green. Player List:

Time

Hey, you have it easy. I might have to run my MR on the back of this QF Let's see: @Elbereth @Kynedath @Zillah and @Kynedath @Elbereth @BrightnessRadiant If El doesn't want to run the game on the back of the AG, the others on the list have not been on the Shard for a while, then I'm at #6 and @Straw is at #7. I'd really rather take a break for a while, and Straw told he might whip something up if none on the list are ready. Edit: @StrikerEZ you've got a couple of games in between as well, one marked as (jan-may) so I figured you might want to be @'ed as well

Condensation (3): Gears, The Unknown Order, James Brafin The Unknown Order (2): Matrim's Dice, Breaker

The Unknown Order (3): Matrim's Dice, Breaker, James Brafin Condensation (2): Gears, The Unknown Order

Cycle - 8: Bright Red Brick “Brick… Brick…Brick…Brick.” The assembled cast their votes forcefully. Oh man, Brick thought, which considering he was a Red Ajah, was a serious curse. “I get a last meal, right?” Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed the closest thing he could, a chair, and chomped down on it. Too big, too big, he thought frantically, eyes darting around the room for something smaller to consume. He spotted a man’s hat and grasped at it. “Euhck ifs thes leaber?” The hulking man spit it out, disgusted. “That’s not even tanned properly. Does anyone have something small and hard? Hey is that diamond?” He had the wedding ring in his mouth before its unfortunate owner had a chance to protest. “Now thes ibs a challenge!” He started grinding it in his teeth, relishing the metallic taste. I could finish this in thirty thousand bites or less. He took a deep breath. Shame there isn’t time. With that, Brick swallowed, forcing the ring down his throat. The convulsions started immediately, but he stayed on his feet as he choked, looking each of his accusers in the eyes. “Goobf luck,” he gagged, before falling facedown on the ground, dead. Archer has been eliminated. They were Rebel Aes Sedai of the order Red Ajah. Devotary of Spontaneity has been killed. They were Rebel Aes Sedai of the order Grey Ajah. Vote Count: Archer (4): Matrim's Dice, James Brafin, Devotary of Spontaneity, Condensation Condensation (3): Gears, Breaker, Archer Death RP by Archer! Go upvote them! Cycle 8 has begun and will end on January 22, at 23:30 IST [GMT + 05:30]. Please try to bold your votes, and give retractions in green. Player List:

Time's up!