Sart

Vote Count: Mint (1): Rae Straw (0): Paranoid King{1}, Sony Jondesu (1): Paranoid King{2} Elbereth (1): Droughtbringer Orlok (1): Sart{1}, Steeldancer Arinian (0): Sart{2} Steeldancer (1): Araris{1}, Straw Sart (1): Araris{2} Joe (1): Frozen Mint Hmm... this is getting us nowhere. Everyone keeps getting one vote on them, which means the lynch is either going to get tied, costing us momentum, or it will be changed by vote manipulation, which gives us even less information. Since Arinian has finally posted, I'll take my vote off of him. To ensure a lynch, I'm putting my vote on Joe. He's been joking around more than participating in the discussion. I know it's a weak argument, but we don't have a lot to go on. @A Joe in the Bush care to defend yourself? If you have a better lynch candidate, I'm all ears.

Vote Count: Mint (1): Rae Straw (0): Paranoid King{1}, Sony Jondesu (1): Paranoid King{2} Elbereth (1): Droughtbringer Orlok (0): Sart{1} Arinian (1): Sart{2} Steeldancer (1): Araris People who have been on the Shard during this turn, but haven't posted: @Arinian @Seonid @StrikerEZ @Lemonelon @little wilson @Elbereth (Has said she is busy with classes) @Doc12 (He's been helping a friend through a rough time) @DarianHammersmith @Aonar Faileas Come on guys, let's get some discussion going. Discussion question: Would you like me to continue to notifying players that they haven't posted in cycles? I can see it getting annoying, but I want everyone to participate.

Thank you for responding Orlok. It was mostly the meta-thing that was bothering me, which you had a perfectly good excuse for. I hope your friend is doing okay. To continue the contribution crusade, I'll post a poke vote on Arinian. @Arinian hello! You seemed fairly critical of Aman's no-vote plan on Day 1. However, you haven't put up any suspects yet. Do you have any ideas for who the Elims might be?

I know discussion tends to die out over the weekend, but this is ridiculous. We need to lynch someone if we want to actually win this game. Plus, our odds have significantly increased. In the interest of discussion, I will put a vote on Orlok. He was extremely active Day 1, which was great. He hasn't posted since, which isn't great. It's interesting to note that a lot of his posting was fueled by getting voted on, which is a telltale sign of an eliminator. This last reason is meta-gaming, but it's something I need to point out. Out of all the players in this game, Wyrm specifically chose Orlok to close the cycle. Now, this could be because Orlok is moderator, but that doesn't sit right. If Wyrm needed a moderator to close the thread, he should have asked the impartial moderator to post that. Why then did he choose a random villager to close the thread? I'm guessing Wyrm messaged him on the Eliminator doc, and Orlok closed the thread for him. Again, this is meta-gaming, which isn't a strategy I'm fond of, and this is just my personal opinion. @Orlok Tsubodai Why did Wyrm ask you specifically to close the Day 1 thread?

Coffee. You know, your daily Morning Joe? https://i.imgur.com/sPwgpLj.mp4

"God has truly blessed us this day. A chance to root out an unholy skaa in the name of High Prelan! Oh blessed be the Lord Ruler!" cried Sart, his religious fervor echoing the room. Already they began to turn on one another, happy to serve their God. I'm not sure how active I will be in this game. Midterms are next-week for me, so don't expect a whole lot of activity. As to the lynch today, we're at a disadvantage. No lynch results in no information, which can be a problem as the game goes on. However, killing someone with only a 4% chance of getting it right is less than appealing. To mitigate this, I propose we embark on a Contribution Crusade, at least for the first cycle. My logic goes like this. If the Eliminator is usually active, they will continue to be active to keep up appearances. Active players tend to garner more suspicion, so we will lynch more active players than inactive players as the game goes on. In other words, we are likely to catch the Seer in later cycles if they are active. In addition, active players are more likely to be converted, as the Seer wants teammates that can support them as the game goes on. Thus, we'll gravitate towards lynching active players. If the Eliminator is inactive, or has a more passive play-style, they will try to blend into the shadows. Discussion would hopefully pass by them, while they continue to convert more and more players to their side. However, as the game goes on, more active players may be converted, so lynching players who have started acting suspicious is a valid part of the strategy. We become dis-incentivized to vote for players that are off the radar, as we are less likely to find an eliminator. My point is, we are going to start lynching more active players as the game goes on. To increase our chance at finding the Seer over the long haul, we should vote for players that haven't been active. The worse case scenario is we lynch someone who wouldn't be active in the first place, and thus wouldn't help our chances anyway. Other than the two new players, the only person who hasn't posted yet is Doc12. If I was GMing, I wouldn't have the new players be the conversion role, as it is a lot of responsibility, and there's no guarantee they will be active. However, Doc12 has been active on the Shard, so it would make sense to let him keep the Seer role. In addition, he already has a vote on him, which makes this crusade much more effective. Poke votes are nice, but we need to back up our threats.

I had better prevent the panda apocalypse. I'll sign up as Sart, since I can't come up with a clever name right now.

Not Jor, the bouncer in the second bar, who didn't say a word, but was described as having a scar, and mentioned as scowling at one point.

Hmm... the word of Brandon makes things difficult, as the Highstorm is Honor's shard pool. We also have the Horneater oceans as a probable Shard pool, since Hoid emerged from them. I remember a theory that there was a surprising lack of gates near Horneater territory. Maybe that's because the Horneater oceans are actually Odium's shardpool? And then Urithuru would be Cultivation's shardpool? It would make what Hoid did a lot more daring, so I'm not sure it's the right idea. Nice find! I didn't even get V=Z until I read it on here, so I'm terrible at that type of cameo. Thanks for pointing that out.

In retrospect, the boring mechanic is rather onerous. I considered adding in a, "if you are boring for 2 or more cycles, lose a life" clause, but I worried that would make it too annoying.

"Now I have become death, destroyer of worlds." That's what Non Sequitor was thinking. He wondered if there were other things he could think about. The meteor in the sky was very important. Sart was very important. He nodded as the flames began to spout from the sky.

Since this game might go on forever, I propose that we come up with an end-game condition. Something like, "a giant meteor will hit on Day 7, which will kill everyone" That way everyone has a deadline for their actions, and it hopefully causes the game to end with someone winning. Remember, vote giant meteor. Giant Metoer: A better tommorow, today! Also, Sart

Time to use my patented Sanderson Elimination ketek. Crying blood, we kill. We bleed, crying.

Don't worry, there are other farm animals as well. Sart

This looks absolutely mental. Signing up as Non Sequitur. If a player receives no votes, that player is Boring. Boring players can't be targeted by other players because no one pays attention to them. Further, since no one pays attention to Boring players, no one is affected by their actions. No one pays attention to their votes, because they're so boring, unless they vote on themselves, which makes them interesting, and stops them from being Boring.

Taking a break with college starting back-up. I would like a spec doc link though.

Sorry about getting so heated. I didn't realize Cessie knew about the twist. I thought she was just a random player, but I could be wrong about that. Still, I dislike giving out roles on principle, but agree to disagree. Don't actually have a link. I think it was also assuming random voting and no scanners, which isn't accurate. Agreed. They need some protection. I was just mad that you gave a powerful role out. I don't like that on principle. Very good point. I don't think nameblind games are in-balanced. The main source of imbalance comes from people going inactive, right? No matter if the person is on the village or the eliminator team, it's going to be bad for balance. It might not be as bad for the village, but it still hurts their chances of winning.

Changing the number of elims is risky. Too many, and they overwhelm the village in the voting. Too little, and the village might overwhelm them. The reason why we have a normal number of eliminators is for balance purposes. Meta did a mathematical proof that stated games are balanced when the number of eliminators equals the square root of the number of players. That's why we have that tradition. That being said, you can tip the scales provided you balance it well enough. You could run a game with 8 elims, but all the villagers are Seekers, or something silly like that. You could have a conversion role, and have that reek havoc with the town. Or you could run a game with a Serial Killer, as shown in this game. That's not a bad thing, and it can be a good change from the norm. The problem with this game is that the Serial Killer was more powerful than a regular eliminator team. First, having a smaller number of eliminators is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Less eliminators means less chances to make mistakes in thread, and less chances to be caught defending one another. My favorite part of the game is seeing that an eliminator died, and then deducing who else must be evil because of it. To balance out this inherent strength, a smaller team has less power to vote. That can be especially dangerous if one of them dies early on. Thus, serial killers usually have some sort of extra power to balance it out. There are 3 common ones. Having some sort of protection Having some sort of vote manipulation Having some sort of extra kill power. Having one or two of those can make for a balanced game. The problem was, the Skybreakers had all three! I'm not mad; I'm just disappointed. I enjoyed this game while I was playing it. I loved seeing the debate, the back and forth of conversation, all the crazy conjectures people were making. I hated the ending of this game. I've been writing this post for a while now, and I finally figured out why I don't like this game. Voting didn't matter. No, scratch that. Voting was harmful to everyone. Let me explain from each player's perspective. The villagers: On another villager: This is normal, and drives discussion. However, it still hurts the village in the long run. Games should try to encourage this type of behavior. On Stink: They lose their lives. It benefits the person being lynched more than the person killing him. If it's a neutral role we can avoid, that's fine. However, we had to lynch Stink. There was no other way to kill him. We had to act against our own self-interest to win the game. Yuck. On Orlok: Hooray! We lynched the elim we're supposed to lynch. What's that? He had an extra life? Oh well, I guess he might be an Elsecaller. Guess we learned nothing from that lynch. What's that? We lynched him again, and he still didn't die? Huh, guess he might be some type of Survival role. Better lynch him again to make sure. Yay! We finally killed him! And it only took 2 cycles without any relevant discussion. Hooray! The eliminators: On another villager: This will just make me look suspicious. I guess I will if I start looking suspicious, but there's no rush. I can just hide among the crowd anyways. Games should try to encourage this type of behavior, to make mafia stand out. On Stink: Haha. Suck it losers, get wrecked son! I guess we still lose a teammate... and Orlok loses his extra life... why do we have to do this again? On Orlok: I really don't want to vote on myself. Eh, worse case scenario I just lose an extra life. Do you see the problem here? This isn't healthy. We want players to vote and engage with this discussion. I want to see the benefits of me voting, and see "So and So has died, they were Evil" I especially want to see that text when the only thing I can literally do in this game is vote on people! Seriously, when 90% of your players can do nothing besides vote or influence the vote, I want my vote to actually be meaningful! I could forgive all that for just being bad game balance. It's fine, it's just an experiment that didn't go well. We need those every once in a while. They're healthy for the community. But you crossed a line. You made this game broken on purpose. You gave your boyfriend the most powerful role in the game. I think your romance is one of the coolest things that has come out of this forum, but you have to understand how this looks. You gave the troll the trolliest role in the game. You didn't do this randomly! I play with the expectation that everyone has a fair shot of being evil, and a fair shot of being good. That didn't happen this game. If you needed to tell Orlok the role distribution twist, Orlok shouldn't have played. In the past 2 games I've played (this and the last MR), GMs have given out roles to players. On the Question and Answer page, both Aman and Elb have admitted to tweaking distributions after seeing the player list. This can't continue! Just look at the discussion above me. Head-hunting has been occurring because "there must be one experienced eliminator on a team". That type of logic is cancerous, and just leads to experienced players having less fun, while other players never get a chance to be bad guys. This can't hold. Do you want to know something? I've run two games recently, and I think they've been good games. I created a role list before the game began, detailing roles and alignments. Then I assigned players randomly, and hit start. I didn't look if the team would be good, if the team had experienced players, or if the team was composed entirely of new players. It shouldn't matter. Yes it sucks if Ruin suddenly goes inactive, and he's the only evil kill role. However, that's an outcome we may face. I propose the following rule: All games should be made name-blind. That is to say, role lists should not be based off of particular people, and roles should be assigned randomly to all players. It's the only way to keep the process fair and balanced. It's how we've done things in the past, but we've just strayed away from it. We need to be better than this.

Hey, I killed an Eliminator! At least I did something. It wasn't of my own volition, but I killed an eliminator. @Elbereth What powers did Orlok have? I'm just wondering how this turned into an Eliminator victory, since we had 3 villagers alive and 1 elim left. Sure, it would be unlikely, but it technically could have been possible. To win, did the village need to kill both Orlok and Stink, or did we only have to kill Orlok? Did Stink dying make the Skybreakers win automatically?

The lynch on STINK is crazy. If you recall correctly, Lopen was attacked cycle 3 by the Skybreakers. Thus, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that Lopen would be trusted. The only way that makes any sense is if the eliminators were trying a wound gazelle gambit. Therefore, Stink trusting Lopen is logical. Further, that makes voting on Lopen a really sketchy proposition to me. If we're sure about this, then the team would have had to pull that gambit. Unfortunately, I think my read on Lopen is the better of the two options presented to me. Orlok is my biggest suspicion, especially after people leapt to his defense. I would rather lynch him if there were more people on, but alas.

What the heck? Arinian was a Dustbringer? That doesn't make any sense. He was claiming Stoneward, and he had the vote manipulation to prove it. If he's not the one trying to lynch me, who is? I suspect GM trickery or Skybreaker shenanigans. It makes no sense. Arinian and Yitzi are dead, so they can't be the culprit. Jon lost a life to the lynch, so he can't be a Stoneward either. Someone in the shadows is trying to kill me, without revealing their identity. That reeks of eliminator scheming.

I should probably explain myself. I was trying to come up with suspects that hadn't been brought up in the thread yet. I've never been the best at gut reads, so I was trying to base my voting on evidence, rather than simply relying on gut. I took a closer look at Ecth, after I realized he was keeping up with the game without placing votes. I looked back at cycle one, and tried to reason myself into believing that she was evil. If she was evil, it would make our lives a lot easier, as Orlok and Eternum would become major suspects, while clearing Stink and Roadwalker. I included the line about Ecth not being evil in case I was wrong. I wanted a point to base off of if Ecth died this cycle. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning has led to me being on the chopping block. I don't want to be lynched, so I'll throw a vote on Yitzi. I got gun shy after thinking they might be the Truthless, but I think I was over analyzing. I don't have any clever logic to vote for them, and I'm not sure how much information we would get if we do lynch him. However, I'm going to rely on my gut, as well as the knowledge that I am villager. I hope that makes sense.

We might be at the point of no return. Let's suppose there are 4 Eliminators. That leaves us with only 11 villagers left. Even if some of us have powers, it's going to be extremely difficult to control the lynch. If we fail today, and the eliminators kill again. We're looking at an even worse outcome. This is going to get bloody quickly. In addition, we still have the threat of the Truthless hanging over us. It's going to be hard, so we need to think back. Let's look back at the voting of cycle one. Cycle 1: Ecthelion (5): Stink, Flash, Megasif, Roadwalker, Stick Flash (4): Orlok, PK, Eternum, Bard Stink (2): Jondesu, Elithanathile Stick (2): Arinian, Drake Rae (1): Winter Jondesu (1): Elenion I'm going to put a vote on Ecthelion. At this point in the game, that would give us a large amount of information. Suppose Ecth turns out to be a Skybreaker. That would explain why she hasn't been putting votes down, yet is still keeping up with the game. It would also make Eternum and Orlok look incredibly suspicious, as they raised a counter-bandwagon for her. Now suppose Echtelion is a villager. If we lynch her, we waste a cycle, which isn't good. However, it makes Roadwalker and Stink prime suspects for Eliminators. It gives us more information, rather than relying on gut feelings. It's not the best logic in the world, but it's do or die time. We can't afford to waste this, and a lynch on Ecth would be huge if correct.

Someone's trying to have me killed. It appears that Arinian is a Stoneward. Since he was in danger of being lynched, he moved one of the votes on him to me. However, due to Lopen's last minute vote change, Jondesu was tied with me, and I got lucky. Does that make Arinian a Skybreaker? I don't think so. That would be a very powerful role for the Eliminators, as it nets them 2 extra votes (1 off the player in second place, 1 on the player the elims want to lynch) It depends on the number of powers in the village. If there's a large abundance of power, then the Elims might also have powers. However, we have 5 New Recruits already dead, and there is a weaker vote manipulation in the form of Dustbringing. It seems more likely that Arinian is a villager for the time being. Unfortunately, that means I have to deal with a Village Vote-Manipulator who is tunneling on me. Great... I don't have any powers, so me dying wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but I'm at least trying to be active. I'd prefer not to die if possible. And now I'm worried that Yitzi is the Truthless because of the switch to Eternum. I'm worried he's trying to drum up anger against himself in order to go up in a blaze of glory. Then again, he did apparently do a role swap, so that might be out of the picture. Erg... now I'm questioning my own reads. I'll vote tomorrow.

Vote Count: Yitzi (1): Sart Sart (1): Arinian, Elenion[1] Arinian (2): Eternum, Lopen Jondesu (1): Elenion[2] Elenion (1): Jondesu I'm tempted to put my vote on Arinian instead, but I've got a stronger read on Yitzi, so I'm going to keep my vote there.