Araris Valerian

Well, I did mention having a vote manip card earlier, so I'm pretty sure we will have double deaths from the vote today.

There wasn’t really an answer to give, since it was an arbitrary choice at the time.

@The Unknown Order, @Fabien, do you two plan on voting during LyLo?

@Kasimir, I appreciate that you retracted from me for at least part of a post. Current VC: Araris (3): Kas, Drake, Ash Archer: (1): Araris Drake: (1): Archer Okay, let's see if I can fix this. Drake seems to think I'm on a team with either Kas or Ash, which makes me wonder why he is very happy to be voting for me alongside both of them. Ash is voting for me based on a single post I made in which I arbitrarily voted for him over Archer. I don't really want to join Archer on Drake, but at this point I will. We still have an hour left in the cycle to consider things, but I know my alignment, and I'm better off trying to vote off a slightly lower suspicion than letting myself die. Updated VC: Araris (3): Kas, Drake, Ash Drake: (2): Archer, Drake

Yeah but vote manip isn't very helpful when you aren't online at the end of the turn.

The issue with TUO is that he just hasn't done that much. The D1 thing is just about all there is to go on him, considering we are in D3. If it weren't almost certainly LyLo, I'd vote him out right after Fabien (maybe even before) out of principle. But I feel more confident in one of Archer/Ash/Drake. I'm also not sure why elim!TUO would reveal having a vote manip card. Nope, I didn't draw anything after the first cycle.

The secondary issue is that village!Fabien and a 3-person elim team kinda just stinks. Even perfectly guessing the elim team here the game will come down to luck of the card draw, or Fabien returning.

The Fabien being an elim thing only applies to a 2-person elim team. In which case, since Fabien hasn't been voting, we are at 4-2, which is essentially LyLo, although the outcome would probably come down to what cards people draw. I'm basically saying that we can't count on village!Fabien's vote today.

Okay, lets see what I can do here. For starters, we are at LyLo only under certain circumstances. Namely, that Fabien is not an elim, or that there are 3 elims, or that there are 2 elims and they pulled a Shardblade. And any of this is negated by a village Shardblade (assuming they can guess correctly). So it seems like the best course of action for this cycle is to ignore Fabien and assume 3 elims. Ignoring Fabien is a little painful, but if he is elim, based on his lack of activity, the elims won't have a voting majority next cycle. Next up is Kas. There was discussion earlier in the game about the viability of an elim GC with a 3-person team. Certainly, if Kas is elim and Fabien is village, the game is already over, assuming Fabien remains inactive. So I don't think there's a whole lot of value in pursuing Kas this cycle either. Also Kas has been generally helpful and trying to solve the game, so he gets a village read independent of role stuff. TUO was linked to Kas during C1, but the link is rather weaker than I originally thought, as Kas pointed out last turn. All the final votes on him D1 were village. Really not a whole lot to go on here, especially because TUO is kinda just playing like he usually does, trying to copy my signature strategy. He doesn't really have a strong link with other players, and that's making this hard. Archer has been pretty active this game. We had early pressure D1 on him from Mat and Drake, and Mat has since flipped village. I voted alongside Archer on Ashbringer, and Archer ultimately moved to Elandera near the end. So potential teammates are Ash, like I mentioned earlier, or Drake, for the D1 vote and retract. Last cycle, Archer voted on me before moving to Striker, who died. Drake and Archer did vote together that cycle. And given what's played out so far this cycle, and could see a Drake/Archer/Ash elim team. If for some reason both Fabien and TUO are elims, I need to pick one out of Ash/Archer/Drake. But metagaming a bit, I don't think both Fabien and TUO would be elims together. Too much chance of having a really low activity elim team. So that means at least 2 out of Ash/Archer/Drake. Ash hasn't really given much, so that means I can ignore him and just look at Drake. Who I don't want to read any posts from, as entertaining as they have been to read up to this point. Drake wasn't really under a lot of pressure C1, just a brief stint with Kas and TUO voting on him. And he ended on Kas. Honestly, I've been reading the Drake/Kas interactions this game as pretty v/v. Although that impression comes from a game where I was interacting with Drake as an elim, so IDK. I guess I think villagers have more incentive to butt heads with each other than elims with villagers. To cap it off, I'm not really sure there is anything I can say in my own personal defense, but I've been aligned evil the last 5 games I've played, so if someone wants to compare my playing and look at my elim profile, there's plenty of material available to you . At this point I should run a game where all the elims are the various elim RP characters I've had during this streak. Maybe all the villagers will be Kasimir clones, given his rather long (time-wise, at least) village streak. I guess from most to least suspect would be something like Fabien, Archer, Ash, Drake, TUO, Kas. And the team is likely 3 out of the top 4. Should be pretty hard to get this wrong, so I'll vote Archer.

Yes, I am definitely a Voidbinger. That's why my face goes red and black when I'm really angry, you see? And don't expect further participation from me for some time. Grades are due in ~4 hours.

Same reason I said earlier; I read his interaction with Ash as potentially e/e. I'm also feeling weird leaving my vote on Fabien for so long. But I think, since you retracted from Archer, I'm gonna stick to my guns for now.

I'd consider joining a train on Archer this cycle. But I'd like to hear from a bunch of people before I move off of Fabien. Mostly TUO, Steel, and Ash, although it would be nice to get some more out of Striker as well. This should be 8/3 or 9/2, down to 6/3 or 7/2. So we are slightly less well off in the 2-elim scenario.

I'm pretty sure you mean it's classic Araris behavior. Although the two are basically indistinguishable at this point. Village!me has been stuffed in a closet for so long that possibly elim!me has taken over. Edit: 8 players voted out of 11, but TUO voted earlier and retracted. So the assumption that at least one elim voted is meaningless. Just saying. "Differnce 'tween you an me is I still want ter whack the fella. I'm just not poking 'im in the ribs currently, ya see?"

I think we would want to vote out TUO before Kas, based on how things played out last cycle, because there is a decent link between the two, but we only need one turn to get a flip from TUO. I'm going to switch my vote from Ash to Fabien. This game is potentially short enough that we can't really afford to give new players a pass past the first turn. I'm still willing to vote on Ash, but I'd like a little more pressure than what we have for the amount of time that has passed this cycle. I'm still currently soft v/v on Kas/Drake (actually the read on Drake is a bit stronger now), so I'm not going to vote on either of those this turn as things stand.

I might have moved my vote at the end of things if I was arorund, but I just woke up. My summer class I taught just ended, so I took advantage of the opportunity to sleep in a bit . @Illwei, you have Matrim's Dice in two places in VC 1.5. Is that your tell? At first glance, it's interesting that votes dropped off of myself and Ash, but not Kas. Especially since I got the impression most people think elim!Kas would be a bit unbalanced, or at least volatile. The question is: would elims vote on Kas given that sentiment. And I guess that depends. I'd probably give Drake a bit of a pass here and have small suspicion on Fabien, based on my assumptions of how experienced/inexperienced players would differ. This is under the soft assumption that Kas is village. I don't think elims would bus elim!Kas, since the extra life would be pretty important to hold onto for later. While giving Steel a pass last turn was fine, this game has the potential to be rather short, so I would be fine voting for him today. I think there's some potential for Ash/Archer to be e/e. It's really only based on Archer withdrawing from Ash when he did (and also not going back when Kas voted there). I think I sort of need to read TUO as village because of my soft-village on Kas. But if TUO did flip elim, I'd consider elim!Kas a strong possibility. I'm still missing Striker in there. Which means I guess I'd be fine voting him as well. So Fabien, Steel, Striker, Ash, and Archer are my elim candidates. Definitely a larger list than there are elims, but that's what I'm thinking now.

Guess it's time to call in my prayer to the Gods of Luck and chance from @Alvron. Edit: Whoops, no prayer required. Guess I'll just be out. I can go help what's his face with the latrines I suppose. Edit 2: Although, this tie is only really worth it if we currently have 2 elims involved, or there are only 2 elims in the game. Although I suppose there might be something interesting to learn about a 3-person team if we (not me, sadly) learn one of their teammates.

I actually like the tie idea, at least for now. Striker, Ashbringer.

"Phaw, you'd accuse me of cheating? We both know that I'd just ignore you." Aralis squinted at his cards again. Bother his old eyes, was that a pen or a spear? Maybe the hand wasn't quite as ordinary as he originally had thought. "Besides, if I was cheating, my hand sure as storms would be better than this mess. "While that is a reasonable assumption, the dealer told me they get new cards soulcast each round. Nonsense if you ask me, but if it's true, we could have a deck full of Shardblades." [OOC: Lotus said during the committee review that cards are randomly generated, as opposed to having fixed amounts of each. It's a 1/9 chance for the regular cards and 1/18 for the special ones.]

Aralis frowned at the captain, this Karnan fellow. Man seemed entirely too young for such a post. Then he frowned at his cards. No surprises there, although that was bit of a surprise in itself. It would be nice to have some surprising cards, rather than a surprising life. Lastly, Aralis frowned at the other players. Cards were bothersome foolishness, and that was that. But it was a bit easier to glare at the other players from at the table, instead of from outside it. So Aralis played. Of course there would be cheaters. Aralis had tried his hand at that once. Never been any good, couldn't keep his face straight. But you couldn't trust folks these days further than you could whack them with a stick. As his gaze swept over the players, he thought Striker flinched a bit. Might be a sign of cheating, that. Or just recalling their last confrontation. "And there's no such thing as Voidbringers! Voidbotherers, more like, if they are silly enough to play cards with the likes of us." The rules specifically say that Guard cards block night kills: Was the original intent that they also save from the vote?

I agree with this. I've been on the elim team a lot recently, and often the village has had a hard time figuring things out, so I advocate for total avoidance of bussing in the hopes of denying the village any footholds. This mechanic is intended to force the issue in the other direction, one way or another. On an unrelated note, I'm on the search for 2 new mechanics. One is a way for villagers and/or eliminators to be able to kill inactive players without hindering themselves. Sort of like a player enforced activity filter that would replace what we currently use. Something simple would be a kill role that can only target a player that hasn't voted. But more nuance would likely be better here. Maybe once per game a player could ask to be granted immunity against this kill during the current or next cycle. The second is a way to reward villagers (mechanically or otherwise) for finding elims through analysis. The game already does this by default, but I think we as a community can step up our game here, and a good mechanic might help with that. A rough idea would be that during each night turn, players have to submit a guess at the elim team (whose size would be revealed at the game start). Then over the course of the game, the players who have the most accurate guesses get something at the end. So something similar to what I proposed for the locations in my LG ruleset.

Exactly. I'll Holdem still while you do the stabbing .

I'll sign up as Aralis. He's not entirely sure how he got roped into a card game on Roshar, but he is sure that he's going to be grouchy about it.

Hmm. Maybe another way to do this is to make it a village role. Same effect, but a villager gets to choose when it goes off. It would be useless to do it right away, and that would give the elims the chance to kill off the player before it happens.

That”s a good thought. One way to deal with that would be for this to be a random event. Say it has a 10% chance during C1, 20% during C2, etc until either the event happens or an elim dies by other means. The elims could still play around it, but it would be quite a bit more risky to sacrifice a player for potentially no gain. I’m not exactly sure what the best way to randomize this would be.

Something that has been brought up in a few different places is the amount that the village depends on alignment scans rather than doing analysis to solve the game. So I thought of an idea for a pseudo alignment scan to kick things off in a game where the GM is worried the village might struggle. Basically, around Cycle 3-4 roughly, if no elims have yet been caught, the elim team has to choose one of their members to be revealed as an elim and removed from the game. However, unlike a regular death, that player does not get access to the dead doc, and is still able to participate in the elim doc. I think this might work well as a core mechanic in a QF or MR with 15+ players.