Sart

My gut is clearly evil, considering I nearly botched a lynch on an Eliminator and got a village member killed. I'm just going to take the cowardly option, and try to kill another inactive. To clarify, I wasn't against lynching Ornstein, I was just more in favor of lynching someone who saw the thread, but still went inactive. I'll vote for Shanerockes, since he hasn't posted since he signed up for the game.

Might as well make a vote count. Steeldancer (1): Drake Ornstein (6): Seonid, Straw, Steeldancer, HH, Living Legend, Devotary Drake (1): Araris Straw (1): Nutella Spren Asterion (1): Sart This vote got swung from Asterion, who is lurking, to Ornstein, who isn't. Why?

@shanerockes @Aspen @nutellaspren I just want to say welcome to our 3 new players in this game. It's always fun to see new faces here, and i hope you enjoy it. That being said, I want you guys to say hello in this thread, so that we know you're still committed to playing. This time of year can be especially hectic, but hopefully it means you aren't distracted with classes or jobs. @A Joe in the Bush is there an inactivity filter for this game? There's always a risk that someone goes inactive this time of year, and I would rather not waste a vote on them.

Yeah sure I'll sign up. Signing up as Lord Tuy.

Voting for Straw

Removing vote from Straw Voting for Crimsn-Wolf

Voting for Straw.

Voting for Phattemer

Voting for Crimsn-Wolf.

Voting for Phattemer.

Stop trying to meta-game it! Voting for StrikerEZ

I'm confused why anyone wouldn't make PMs with all players. It lets them target everyone, and vote on all possible players. Maybe add a limit of one PM per cycle?

This seems silly. Signing up as S.

In the end, these issues boil down to one simple fact. We tried too hard. In other words, we got too intense. We made some crazy awesome stories together, but because they were so awesome, they got more and more complex. Pretty soon, no one could keep up with it all, but we didn't want to break canon. And so, roleplay began to die. We wanted to win the games we were playing. We devoted hours to analyzing the thread, wondering who the killers were. We came up with new, more detailed analysis. We started keeping spreadsheets, charts, and writing all sorts of essays out of love for the game. But then, real-life got in the way. Our activity started slipping, but we didn't want to give up our current activity level. Our analysis felt worse and worse, and it quickly became too much effort to do our analysis. If we did post, we would always feel guilty, promising to do more and more analysis that we could never fit into our schedules. The most-repeated lie I've seen on this forum is "I'll do more analysis later." We don't have time to do analysis. The bar was raised way too high, and now even basic analysis has become a chore. And thus, we became more and more passionate, relying more and more on feelings and gut reads. And thus the games started to get personal, and with that came the death of camaraderie. We wanted awesome games to play. We started getting more and more creative, adding in new twists as we went along. We added in more secret roles, more complex mechanics, more new exciting ideas. The balls started to get too hard to juggle. Our games were either too complex, or too boring. We started relying more and more on repeats of past games, hoping to rekindle that spark. The games started to blend together. How many games can you have on Roshar and Scadrial without them feeling the same. Even if we tried to be different, and go for a new original work, not all the players would understand the world we were playing in. And thus, games became chaotic. We wound up making it impossible to live up to our own expectations. It's no wonder a lot of people have burnt out on this game. We've been going for 4 years now. That's a huge accomplishment, but it's difficult to keep going. I don't know if we can actually fix this, but I have some ideas. Inactivity filters: We're not using these properly. Currently, we have mandatory filters on quick games, optional filters on mid-range games, and little to no filters on long games. That seems backwards to me. Long games are long, which means there is plenty of time for people to respond to the thread during a day or night. Furthermore, they drag on, which isn't helped when half the living players haven't posted in a week. This creates really boring situations. In contrast, Quick Fixes are over in a week or two. If someone goes inactive in those games, the game will be over before they know it. Because the game moves so quickly, it's easy to get lost, or miss a whole cycle. We can be more lax in quick fixes, but we need strong filters for long games, to prevent games from going a week after they should have already ended. I don't know why the inactivity filter has shifted to quick-fixes, but it is not a change I agree with. In addition, we need to be clear about what kind of activity is acceptable. Just sending in an action is not acceptable, or responding to 1 PM, doesn't qualify as active to me. Counting that rewards lurking, which kills discussion in the thread. In the future, we should ensure that players must post in the thread to avoid dying. If we want to be even more radical, we could force players to vote for a player to avoid the filter. I'm not one-hundred percent on board with that idea, but it's something to consider. Player count: We're used to having games with 20 people in them, and a lot of games have been balanced based on that assumption. However, I don't think we have enough people to do that anymore. We've become a close-knit group, which means we're getting less new people than normal. That might change with Oathbringer, but as of right now, games are struggling to meet their quota. Because of this, people who really don't have time for the game sign up because they feel guilty and want to help. That only contributes to our lurking problem. The first Quick Fix game was run with only 12 people in it. I don't think we should put limits on the amount of people who can sign up, but we shouldn't keep asking people to join our games. We need to be flexible with player count, and be more comfortable running games with less people. This kills two birds with one stone. We get smaller games, so hopefully there would be less inactivity, and it would make the games run faster, which would help with our backlog of created games. Anonymous Games: I know of the logistical problems from this type of game. We don't want people running multiple accounts, up-voting their own posts, creating bot-nets. However, there's a lot of pressure when you're a well known face around here. If you're an Aman, or a Joe, or a Wilson, you're expected to make Wilson level or Aman level essays. That's just not feasible a lot of the time, and when you do manage to make enough effot, you wind up getting killed. My advice is simple: Play each game likes it your first one. Obviously, learn from your previous mistakes. However, commit to the activity that you can do right now, as if there were no expectations on you, and you were just starting out. Make some roleplay, engage in the thread, but don't get so hyper-competitive that you lose sight of your goals. Don't feel guilty if you're not doing as much as you used to. As long as you're contributing and having fun, then I'm having fun too. Sorry for the rant, I just had to get that off my chest.

...what? If you're a villager, that doesn't help out in the slightest. If you're an eliminator, you just sacrificed yourself to draw more chaos in the thread. Plus it's nighttime, so that vote doesn't even work.

What? Ah, the bold strategy of calling yourself an Eliminator when you are actually a villager. Yeah, I'm not sure how that was supposed to work. I mean I've heard of crazier things working, but that wasn't the best strategy. Ah well, I look forward to playing more with Walin in another game. He was active at the very least.

Gahaha! Well, I didn't actually participate in this, but I still feel a sense of accomplishment. Just need to carry this momentum forward. And if it turns out Jondesu was a N1 scan, so Joe's attacks looked really suspicious, then history would be repeating itself again.

In my opinion, it's better to trust your scans rather than doubt them. It's statistically rare to be corrupted in the early cycles, so try to build up a trusted group.

Well, I died in the other game and now it's midterm break so I'm signing up as... Oh. This is a MR8 re-run. That game was my greatest failure. Let me just... Mortago remembered the fire. He had been an Ardent back then, praying to an Almighty that he didn't truly believe in. But that didn't stop the visions. He could see the innocent and the wicked, and could see them for what they were, but he doubted them. Mortago thought the visions were flukes, that his paranoid mind was giving him the answers he desperately sought. Why had he doubted the Almighty? He wasted his time by dithering, contemplating and re-contemplating scenarios over and over. He could have said something! But no, he dithered, and then one day... the fire happened. He didn't know who had started it. He knew the wicked were behind it, but he didn't know why they had decided on killing him that night. Oh, how he wished he had told someone about the visions! No, he did tell one person, a guardsman, strong and courageous. He was supposed to guard him that night, but the conspirators had realized his plans. They killed him the night they set the fire, turning all of Mortago's plans into ash in one fell swoop. He had tried running, but the flames were everywhere. A piece of timber crashed onto his back knocking him to the floor. He had to crawl his way out. The next thing he remembered, he was being nursed back to health by a field medic, unaware of the growing conspiracy. He had spent several days on death's doorstep, and had to watch as the traitors culled the camp. It was a bloodbath, and if he had just been there... Things would have been different. In the aftermath, the wicked took control of the camp. He couldn't reveal himself, or he would face certain execution, so he ran. He forged a new life for himself. It wasn't pretty. He had lost everything in the fire. He had nothing but his name, his nature as a light-eyes, and the clothes on his back. To dull the pain, he started drinking. At first, it was only one or two glasses, but soon he was drinking whole jugs of Horneater white. Of course, alcohol had its price, and his debtors began calling. They press-ganged him, and he wound up in one of the Bridge Crews. It was what he deserved after all. He had failed the camp, and this was his punishment. It was a tortuous existence. His burns ached every time he carried the bridge, and every night he dreamed about the people he failed to save. In the end, he longed for the sweet release of death, and the promise of the Almighty. He finally believed. The Almighty had given Mortago a great gift, and yet he had squandered it. He had known his visions were true, yet he rejected them. No longer. He prayed everyday, blessing the Almighty with all his being. He just wanted one more try. One more try to root out the evil among them, one more try to purify the camp of those wicked men, one more try to fix everything. He would serve faithfully, he would serve honestly, he would serve with all his being until he had nothing left to give. He would give his life for the Almighty. And all he needed was a chance.

I was going to suggest that Mraize might actually be from First of the Sun, since his whole hunter aesthetic would fit will with it, but apparently he's from Thaylenah, as per Peter's words.

Suspicious of Jondesu, Aonar and Orlok

Well, I'm probably dead. Did Wilson not notice I said I was suspicious of Rae?

That would be good to get clarification on. @Wyrmhero does the Seeker scan alignment? It would be nice, but conversion makes even those results less powerful. Still, that would let us get a guaranteed eliminator. Might as well do a vote count while I'm here. For some reason my mouse isn't working, so I'm not going to bother with the strike-through formatting. Paranoid King (2): Arinian, Araris Lemonelion (1): Paranoid King Orlok (1): Sart Sart (2): Wilson, Orlok Well, I'm glad that people are voting, even if it's for me. As to the one post everyone is suspicious of me for, I get that. I was leaning village on Joe in the last hour of the day, and was feeling guilty about killing him. He seemed like the best candidate out of the people available for lynching, so I kept my vote on him. I wrote that post immediately after the night went up in order to make others not try to lynch me, and to justify my decision to myself

You're right. I wanted someone, anyone, to die. Obviously I wanted an Eliminator to die, but I was okay with having a villager die. Death is the only mechanic we have as a village to gain concrete information. It spurs discussion, and it lets us look back at older people's votes with confidence. Of course confirmed good does not equal confirmed right, but it at least puts us closer to the truth. It's why I put a second vote on Doc cycle 1. I didn't realize the other vote had been retracted, otherwise I would have switched to Aman to ensure that a lynch would go through. It's boring when no one dies, so I want to spice it up a little. So, there I was the only active player as rollover was happening. I wanted to ensure a lynch, so I looked over the candidates. It would be hypocritical for me to vote on Mint, since she was getting voted on for breaking a tie, which is what I was doing. I didn't think that was Elim behavior, so I moved on. Jondesu was getting voted on based on flawed reasoning by Paranoid King. Jondesu thought the vote was tied when advocating no deaths cycle 1, while PK thought he was petitioning for no kill while the lynch leaned towards Aman. I don't like following bad arguments, so I skipped over him. Elbereth had given a reason for her inactivity, which was something I wanted to support. I'm for the Contribution Crusade, but when someone announces they will be busy ahead of time, I'm okay with it. Therefore, I didn't vote on Elbereth. I had already voted on Orlok once that cycle, and I was worried that my meta-reasons were clouding my judgement on him. I still have a bad gut read on him, but I wanted to give him a fair shot to make his case. In retrospect, I wish I had voted for him instead. It was down between Steeldancer and Joe. Steeldancer was getting voted on for doing some RP. I like RP and want to see that encouraged, plus I had a good gut feeling about him. As we now know, he was Villager, so I take small comfort that my gut was right on that count. I actually liked Frozen Mint's argument about Joe. He pointed out a contradiction, which could happen if Joe was the seer. He hadn't posted any thoughts on Day 2, other than asking why Sony was voting for him. That defense strategy seemed like what an Eliminator would do, so I decided to kill him. He turned out to be village, but at least I killed a role that was more powerful in the hands of the eliminators than the village. Also, I don't like your panda. It's creepy, and I'm pretty sure it wants to kill me. As to today's discussion, I'm going to put a vote on Orlok. His activity level has dropped off completely after day 2, which makes me think he's been converted. He was fairly prominent, so he would be a likely target for conversion. For what it's worth, I have a bad gut read on Rae as well, but I don't have any evidence to back it up.

Well, that was disappointing. At least we took out a role that we don't want the Seer to convert. Vote manipulation is more powerful in the hands of the Eliminators, as they know who is on their team, and who isn't. Still, it always sucks to lose a villager, but we didn't have much choice in the matter. We need as much information as possible, which means lynching people to determine their alignment.