Aeoryi

"Impurity will catch up to you, false one." The light fades away, conjoining with it's dark counterpart again.

The light prevails, and blasts him away with a strong force. The darkness of Quintessence attempted to commune with Pic. "What do you require?" it asked.

The Darkness avoided Pic, because it wanted to leave him unharmed. The child, however, would have to pay. The shield was simple enough to disarm, requiring only some pressure to pop it like a bubble. Reaching forward, the Dark Quintessence snatched Lundyn's soul and started withering it, deteriorating it, generating a feeling of hopelessness and despair. Elsewhere, the Light Quintessence struck Jar Man with a sword of light. @TheRavenHasLanded

Darkness envelopes Lundyn, making everything pitch black.

Go get tram pass through top left passage, and then leave Deepnest through the tram available from the right of the main bench next to the hot spring. All rooms that way will be illuminated.

The Light desperately tried to escape. @TheRavenHasLanded/

The tentacle was cut off suddenly by the darkness.

The light separates in a vicious struggle, and a green force glows between the two halves that are being pulled apart

Quintessence turned around immediately and chased back down the hallway. It sensed a... Coalescence in this child. Maybe it could be spared. The darkness disappears upon contact and reappears when the attack is over, while the light moves in front to defend its counterpart, solidifying and knocking away the attack.

"The chaos within yourself consumes you." It threw Eyes across the room, into a wall. "You are a falseling. You should not deserve to live."

Quintessence reaches forward and grabs Jar Man by his soul, lifting him off the ground. "Fake god." Quintessence noticed the music, but did nothing to Pic or those he was protecting, for protection and sacrifice are the most powerful acts of light and dark.

"I am primordial light and primordial darkness. You cannot defeat me."

The light sizzles back a bit, and then a massive head of a dragon appears in the clouds of light and dark. "What do you want from here?"

In a flash of light and darkness, Quintessence appeared around Aventine and Jar man and all of their friends, and poised to consume them

Elsewhere in the clinic, a drop of water landed in a small puddle on the floor in a pitch dark room. And then another. And another. Every 5 seconds, there was a drop. Every 5 seconds, water struck water, and the puddle grew larger. It was like a clock. 5 seconds passed, and another drop. A small leak without a doubt, one that would not cause long lasting damage to the clinic. The water pool was thin, and the silence was interrupted when someone else came in. Water stopped falling, the clock interrupted. Balance was forgotten. A footstep sounded in the darkness, alongside distant echoes. A distant light entity came into the room, illuminating everything. But it could not illuminate all. A shadow, darker than all the rest, loped out of sight. The moment the light creature went to go investigate the source of the water, the Shadow struck. Light and dark fought for an eternity in an instant, swirling around each other, trying to consume the other force. They grasped and tried to absorb the other, asserting a solid victory. But neither could defeat each other, for they were like preservation and ruin. Two sides to the same coin. The two forces both tried one last time, at the same instant, and both crushed each other, combining into one single force. A shadowy figure with a light form. They realized that they were the same and alike, and soon became acquainted to themselves. They were truly two sides to the same Coin. Light and dark. Ruin and preservation. It called itself Quintessence, the 5th element of a world designed for 4. The Quintessence started to hunt within the Clinic, forming into a humanoid form composed of swirling shadows and shining light. Both sides of the coin wanted the same thing: Revenge.

Oh look an ad! Wonder what happens when I click on it- (Joins game)

undergone metamorphosis... Cool to see that this is still going, hype!

I bestow upon you a single breath, able to make you last an extra week (Looks like I'm a bit late, though)

Ah, okay I thought you meant mechanical settings lol I think good settings can be anywhere, really. Things like a Reckoners' cell tearing themselves apart trying to find a spy, or as mentioned, a scandrial setting works well. I do think that settings that don't Invision like, the village as an entire village work better. For instance, instead of having tyrian falls village faction be thematically an actual place, maybe just making it a group of explorers or settlers would make it seem appropriate to the setting. And as a huge Nalithis fan, I think places like the court of Gods won't work well as the village faction when compared to something like a group of priests dedicated to a specific returned (the GM! :P). There are definitely some ways to make the game not feel devoid of players by simply adjusting the setting. I think the path to take depends on the GM, and ultimately while I do have opinions on which method is better, I think both work just as well for games.

There are easily more ways to adapt to the smaller player counts we see more often. I think the most important thing to keep in mind is to have a plan in place for lower player counts. Just like how a 34 player game would not be acceptable, a game that requires 14+ players is also not acceptable. The easiest solution would be to have a role setup pre-planned for your game. For instance, if I was GMing a Tyrian falls game, I might have a setup planned like: Having a plan will make your game able to run, even with low player counts, generally no matter the ruleset. (Although the 7 player setup looks sketchy). You don't have to share the distro with the players, since that's not really a thing here, but it will be beneficial to have something planned for most occasions. Here's another thing: Don't expect games to last long. Nerfing the amount of kill potential or making kills less likely to hit is not the best thing. I think the better course of action is to simply embrace it, or build a ruleset around it. If Exlo/LYLO is at cycle 3 on average, so be it. Obviously, don't make the game be over by cycle 2, since that's lame and unsatisfying, but don't try and make your game last longer by tampering with the eliminator kill or execution. Here's why tampering with the two kills that should always happen is bad: Say I have a 7 player setup where players have a 50% chance of dodging a kill. What does this accomplish? Well, it makes my game longer, yes, but it also means that people will not be enjoying it when the execution fails for the third time in a row. It means the eliminators will be cussing at me from their doc because they can't kill Kas by cycle 3. It means that people will blame the outcome of the game on RNG, and that's not how the game should be decided. Now, you might say, “Well, I would never design a ruleset like that, that sounds terrible!” Well, let me modernize it a bit for you, again using tyrain falls: What's the problem here? Well, if you look closely, the eliminator kill has a default of a 50% chance to fail, and the execution doesn't even kill the eliminators half of the time. In other words, this setup is fundamentally the same as the 50% survival chance setup. So there will be the exact same problems with both. I know the lurcher doesn't really count as protection, but you get the idea. Don't try and make a smaller game larger by extending the duration through protection. Most successful small games work because they aren't a large game optimized for a low player count. They succeed because they use the player count to their advantage. Now, let's move on to araris’ questions. There are some setups that work better with less players. I can't name any right now, but I so think that smaller games can have setups that a larger game couldn't have. As I have said previously, I don't think prolonging the game is a great strategy to combat low player counts. I think some good things to convert old rulesetups are: Limiting the role usage (I.e charges, both non-replenishable (like lg98b) and replenishable (like lg99)) for chronically powerful roles. This can help it be less RNG. For instance, if you want to add a coinshot, but don't want the game to be decided by c2, maybe give the coinshot one shot (flavored as a vial or something) and you'll still be able to have 3 kills on one cycle and 2 after that. But let's say you want something more. Don't feel afraid to add other limitations. Let's return to the coinshot in your setup. So maybe you don't want the coinshot to become a vanilla after cycle 1. Maybe you want to make them only able to shoot on odd cycles, which gives them some relevance to them having that role. Maybe you want the elims to have some resistance against your coinshot, so you give them a thug ability that only works on even cycles, solving the 50-50 issue somewhat. Or maybe you want the coinshot to choose when they shoot, but not be able to shoot every cycle. Give them the limitations of having to shoot every other cycle there after. Or maybe you have a target scanner but you don't want them to become a seeker after the only other village role dies. Give them a modifier that makes it so they can't scan after the other role dies, or when there's only one elim remaining. You can use these limitations just as much as you can use roles, so feel free to use them to balance old setups. Just give people a heads up that certain modifiers might be applied to roles. Lowering role density. Having a few key roles instead of many general ones will make it so that you don't need more players. Take a smoker, for instance. Let's say you want to design a ruleset around village smokers. Instead of making the elim team have vote manipulation, and the town have a seeker, and the elims have a mistborn, maybe just make it so it's just an elim soother versus 2 town smokers. That'll make the game more controlled, and ultimately come out the way you want it. Now while not having cool roles as often as before may seem wrong, just remember that in the books, magic tends to be scarce (mistborn are very rare in the final empire, why are there 3 mistborn in some random town in tyrian ). Keeping a game simple will make it more viable for lower player counts. I don't really understand what this question asks. Anyways, for those who may be struggling to understand how I am implementing this, I made a ruleset designed for low player counts (7-10) as an example: Anyways, while Drake and I probably have overlapping points, this is what my suggestions are.

no The person below me eats popcorn