luckat

Vasher is the assassin. Stormwardens is the final blue agent. (You only had 8 blue agents to find since your team was second.) Congrats to the blue team for winning without making a single mistake! Good game everyone.

Ien (Raoden's Seon) is a red agent. However, The Thrill is an innocent bystander. @Herowannabe It's the blue team's turn.

@Rebecca @Scion of the Mists @Darkness_ Splinter: 2 Link to spreadsheet

Oops. Here's the correct countdown: Anyway, Wyrn and The Jeskeri Mysteries are both red agents. You have one more guess if you want to use it, or you can pass if you're done.

@Rebecca @Scion of the Mists @Darkness_ Hrovell: 2 Link to spreadsheet

@Rebecca @Scion of the Mists @Darkness_ Renarin: 4

@Rebecca @Scion of the Mists @Darkness_ Atium: 2

I’m in for the next round. I’d be willing to be a Spymaster.

Yeah, I'll guess it now. Lifeless Agreed. I'm done guessing for this turn.

Sounds good to me. I'll guess. Re-Shephir Spren Honor

Re-Shephir seems like the obvious choice. Spren could be the other one, since the Unmade can be considered spren. I still think Honor for the Stormlight clue, since we still have one more to guess for that. It does make sense since people generally think of Stormlight as coming from Honor, even if that might not be completely accurate. It makes more sense than the other options to me, at least.

Highstorm seems really likely to me since it's the source of Stormlight, so it should probably be our first guess. For the other, I'm less certain. I'd probably go with Honor, actually, since he's kind of related to the highstorms. I wouldn't really think it's Lift since it might be more accurate to say she metabolizes food into Investiture, although I'm not sure how important the distinction between Stormlight and Investiture really is here.

@Kered @Hemalurgic Headshot @Herowannabe Forgery and The Path seem most likely to me, but I'd like to hear your opinions before guessing. It's not the red team's turn yet. You'll get your clue after the blue team finishes guessing for this clue.

I’m in for round 2. Didn’t even really get to play round 1

I want to join in. I played Codenames a few times over the holidays, and it was fun, so I'd like to try out a Cosmere version.

It took me a while to get through this part.... I'm disappointed that Elhokar died right when I was starting to like him and look forward to where his story was going, and right when he was about to swear oaths. I'm not happy with Moash right now. Also, between that, the deaths of the Wall Guard members and parshmen Kaladin knew, and the earlier death of Eshonai and reminders of who had died previously in Dalinar's army, it almost feels like Brandon is trying to make up for the non-deaths last book. Anyway, this part seemed really slow. Maybe it's because I had to put a hold on reading because I had other stuff going on, but this part was hard for me to get into and I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what happened at the beginning of the chapter. The parts with Dalinar felt disconnected from the parts in Kholinar, and present-day Dalinar seemed to be gone from the narrative for a while in favor of flashbacks. Everything in Kholinar seemed to drag. I feel like it could have been shorter, honestly. I wasn't all that interested in Shallan's parts, except for when Wit showed up. Kaladin's parts were interesting. But it also seems odd that we didn't see much of what Adolin and Elhokar were doing. Still, Evi's death was horrifying, everything starting with chapter 82 was great (although I don't like Elhokar's death), and I'm really interested in reading about everyone in Shadesmar (although there's a few Interludes to get through first). I'm surprised there's still two more parts after the battle at Kholinar, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the climax to the whole book will be. Oh yeah, also, Vivenna! No more Vivenna is everyone and their mother theories! It should be interesting seeing more of her in Shadesmar.

I finally finished part two. Here's some reactions before I move on to the next part. So... Eshonai is dead. Hrm. I actually liked her, and I'm not sure about reading Venli instead. I don't like how her death was off screen like that. I do want to know what that comet spren is. Huh, an explanation of the Oathpact and what the Fused are. That's nice to know. Poor Taln. Ooh, Odium! Passion. That's interesting. I wonder if that relates to the Thaylen Passions. I also wonder if that description of the Shard is any more accurate, or if he's being purposefully misleading here. It sounds like he's claiming to be the patron of emotions, or at least intense ones, and that reminds me of how normal spren are in two categories--emotion spren and nature spren--and how we thought the emotion spren were from Honor and the nature spren were from Cultivation. And those are some of my disorganized thoughts. Moving on... Lift is invading Dalinar's visions. It looks like that part of the interludes is reaching the main narrative now. Also, LETTER FROM HARMONY! That just makes me happy, even though it wasn't very long. Also letters from other Shards? I wonder what meanings all the people here on the Shard have already pulled from them. I LOVE Jasnah. There were some great moments in the Bridge Four chapters, but some of them seemed a bit long. I REALLY like Rlain and want to see more of him. Also, was that an honorspren following Teft already? I'm not sure how I feel about Moash. I think I would have been more interested in seeing more of the Diagramists than the parshmen, but it's probably better that his story is connecting with where Kaladin's left off in Alethkar. I'm just not sure where he's going in the story, and I'm not really connecting to his character. Sometimes Dalinar's flashbacks make me need to look at the Coppermind to see if the characters he is around were mentioned in the previous books... and hope their pages don't have spoilers for later in the book. What's up with Renarin and his spren? I wish we had a viewpoint from him. Umm, Shallan. She... reminds me of myself a bit too much sometimes, unfortunately.

I finished part one a few days ago (and haven’t started part two yet—with Thanksgiving and family stuff I just didn’t have time) and wanted to post few of my thoughts. Kaladin’s reunion with his parents was wonderful. I’m really glad he got the chance to go home, but I’m also glad he didn’t get stuck there all book. I hope that means he can continue to check in with his family in the future while still taking part in the main plot of the books. (He still needs to introduce Syl to his parents) Also, his parents had another kid! I wonder what’s going to happen with him. I thought Kaladin’s parts with the awakened Parshmen were interesting. I’m also glad they didn’t take up too much time though—he’s back in Urithiru now, ready to rejoin the other main characters. It was absolutely hilarious to me when Adolin was told to investigate Sadeas’s murder, but then that investigation turned into something else. There have been some consequences for Sadeas’s death, but for the most part it seems to have been set aside for other things (especially since we already knew who killed Sadeas and that the other attack couldn’t have been from the same source), which feels odd given how much it was a cliffhanger in WoR. Hopefully we’ll get back to that soon. I’m worried about Shallan. Pattern is great! “No mating.” We saw one of the Unmade! I don’t know why, but honestly Dalinar’s flashbacks didn’t grab my attention a whole lot in this part. Dalinar can bring others into his visions! That might make the talking to world leader parts more interesting. The best part: Jasnah’s back! I was worried she’d be gone for pretty much the whole book again, but only one part in and she’s back. I’m really looking forward to what she has to say, what she gets up to now, and how her interactions with Shallan go since Shallan has changed so much since they were last together. And now onto the interludes and part 2.

Is this the quote you're looking for? (I found it mentioned in this post, which is probably where you first saw it.)

Here's the differences I noticed (other than the birthdays moving and who's been online in the last 12 hours being added): Chat was moved from the top bar to the menu on the far right. Now that menu is split into "Other Areas" and "Site Info" (I don't think it was before, but I'm not sure when I last looked at it.) Except not on the mobile version--those things are all under "More" there, and there's no link to the Chat. Now there's a link to a Leaderboard in that menu (although it's separate from the "More" menu on the mobile version). The Stream button now opens a menu instead of just going to my default stream. The Popular Contributors sidebar now links to the Leaderboard (and the link's the same color as its background, so you can only read it if you mouse over or highlight it). *Looks at posts in the Server Maintenance thread* Oh, I think the button to share on Pinterest might be new, but I'm pretty sure the others were already there. And it looks like the new banners on people's profiles are related to the new Leaderboard. I'm guessing the two new features you're talking about are the Leaderboard and better Stream management.

It looks like that quote is from this interview, about 4/5 of the way down. Actually, that interview is on Theoryland here, except a segment of it (including this question) wasn't added. Maybe that's something @WeiryWriter should know about.

Well, I'm finally getting around to responding to this. I'm still not sure if I should though. I'm putting it here because I don't want to get in the way of people posting game ideas and this whole topic is only somewhat related to game creation, and focusing on the game creation aspect limits discussion on other important aspects of it. I think this thread is the closest thing SE has to a place for general discussion. While it's framed as a place to ask questions and get answers, there's bits in there (that I underlined) that imply more complicated discussions fit here, even if they don't start as simple questions or have easy answers. That's nice of you to say, although whether I'm missed isn't as important as if I personally am enjoying myself. In order for that to happen, I think there would have to be considerable discussion, cooperation, and willingness to change things from everyone involved, not just one or two people. Honestly, I haven't seen much desire to really address issues. That's great for any games you run, but unless those ideas filter to other games it doesn't help people who want to play but don't want to have to only play the few games that are under certain GMs or certain rulesets. Most of my thoughts about inactivity problems have made their way into various docs, and I really don't feel up to restating all my thoughts on it. I feel like I've probably wasted my time and energy putting my thoughts down in docs since most people don't read them and even if they did any discussion on the topic would be scattered everywhere. I honestly am tired of talking circles around how to deal with inactives and seeing nothing improve. It wouldn't be quite as bad if there were only a couple of complex games or event games per year, even if all of them ended up being broken, because at least then it wouldn't be all the time, although it still wouldn't be fun for someone who didn't play many games and ended up playing one of the broken ones, and it might compound the problem where more players than usual sign up for a particularly interesting looking game and inactivity and game breaks become more likely as a result. Getting the general mindset back to the core of Mafia could help. There's a lot of games that really stretch the Elimination/Mafia part of Sanderson Elimination, where other goals than elimination take the spotlight or it becomes a faction game rather than village versus mafia. Sometimes it seems like, for example, the lynch is just there because it is supposed to be there, not because it fits the game. While it would be interesting to explore other games, a subforum that is put together to play Mafia seems like the wrong place for that, unless the community as a whole wants to have plenty of games that aren't really Elimination just as several aren't Sanderson. That is one thing that might help, although I doubt the mods would be happy to have to take the extra time for that. Games probably should be vetted to some extent or other before a group of 20+ people spends weeks playing them, but from what I've seen of how it is chosen which game is next, that would be really hard to implement. That's a decent idea, although there's problems with it. I'm not sure how many GMs or players would even be interested in a test run that isn't even a game, although it's seemed like some actual games have been prototypes rather than finished products anyway. A test run like that might catch some problems, but changing the parameters like cycle length and the number of cycles it runs could make some problems not appear or even introduce different problems, and it might be further complicated by differences between who (and how many people) is interested in trying a test run and who wants to play the final game. Still, it could be a good thing to try as long as the limitations are kept in mind. It's hard to tell how effective it would be without actually trying it. It's probably helpful to have those definitions out there. I don't think it's helped anything that most discussion has been kept to private conversations and docs. That just I also think the difference between proactive and reactive players is important: some people are good at getting the conversation going, but if a lot of people's activity depends on how other people are acting (like mine does), inactivity problems compound themselves until players who might be willing and able to be active lose interest or can't make up for other people's inactivity. Habitual inactives are the most obvious problems, but all of the levels of inactivity contribute to a larger problem than just individuals. I think that inactivity that is a problem from a player standpoint but not from a GM standpoint is still a problem and should be addressed, but probably not by GMs. Game design can't be the only way to combat inactivity. And yes, there are a lot of complications when it comes to activity. There probably needs to be more discussion about what is acceptable to the community as a whole for there to be any kind of improvement. Unfortunately, I haven't seen much desire for productive discussion about the topic, and most of what I have seen has either not been public or has been within games, where there are time constraints and other problems keeping discussion from being truly fruitful. Yeah, having other people to try to stretch a game to its limits together would get better results than the GM just testing it on their own or even having other people read through the rules to find anything the GM missed. Well, I'm still not entirely sure it was a good idea for me to respond here, but I hated leaving it hanging. I hope that you all can find some solutions to the problems that exist--or that those problems just aren't as detrimental to you as they were to me.

Here's the WoB Spoolofwhool was referring to: source Theoryland has the Interview Database that contains interviews from both Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. Sometimes you have to wade through Wheel of Time stuff, but it's usually the best place to look for what Brandon has said about the Cosmere. That is an interesting idea. Given the timing of the Idrian royalty's exile and Shashara's death, it's possible they were related in the way you suggest, but I'm not sure if they considered Shashara one of them after she Returned (modern Idris at least wouldn't be pleased with her consuming and studying Breath) or how much they knew about who killed her. I don't think we have enough details about that time period to say much about how the Scholars, and Shashara in particular, interacted with the Idrian royalty. Vasher says he doesn't remember his life before Returning, but he does remember being one of the Five Scholars, so it must have been after they became Returned, when they had the opportunity to amass a large amount of Breath. Maybe some of them were involved in scholarly persuits before Returning, but it doesn't seem likely they all knew each other back then. Otherwise Vasher would know more about his previous life.

Not yet. I'm planning to today when I have the time. I figured it might have something to do with Edgedancer.

I went to the signing last night, although I was too tired to post when I got back In the signing line, I asked him what would have been included in a hypothetical Nalthian essay had there been one. He said it would have talked about how close the scholars there were to being Cosmere aware, and how they knew more than anyone who wasn't a worldhopper. He also said he would have given clues to where the pool was. That's not verbatim at all, unfortunately, and I was a bit too frazzled to ask any more questions (yesterday was a long day). Also, he wrote "Are you listening?" In my book, although I have no idea what was meant by that. Re the Kaladin flashback he read, he said we might have noticed there were holes in what we learned in the flashbacks in the previous books, and he was going to use these stealth flashbacks to fill them in. In the one he read, we learn more about Tarah. He said these flashbacks will be shorter than the main flashbacks. They're probably, like Argent said, in-chapter sequences when the character has a reason to think about them rather than part of a series of flashback chapters dedicated to exploring the past like the main flashbacks.