Sart

Okay, wait. Backing up a sec. TKN scanned village? Then why was there no insanity that month? I guess we're back to square one on that thread then. I don't like this. Theoretically, there should be some push back from expelled players since Szeth would be their only hope of winning the game. Of course, it could also be Drake that's inactive, but again, that seems too easy. I might be getting too paranoid now, but whatever. It's going to mess with the thread too much if I change course now. Szeth Szeth.

Well, I guess this has been decided then. Ashbringer TJ TJ. Let's see what happens next.

Vote Count:
Szeth (6): Archer, Archer, Kasimir, Kasimir, Kasimir, Kasimir
STINK (2): TJ, TJ

While it's certainly possible that the elims are low activity, I always get paranoid about that possibility. I'm going to spread the love to Ashbringer. @Ashbringer You haven't voted yet, and I'm curious as to your thoughts. Do you think the elims are low activity, or are we dealing with deep wolfing?

Ashbringer Ashbringer. TKN TKN. Given that TKN is a Noble who has only been elevated once, I am concerned that the elims have spent a large time in Imre buying supplies.

While I do want to touch on why no one went insane, I first want to figure out why Mat voted on himself. Unless I'm missing something, there's only two ways to accomplish that. Either some one is level 3 in Rhetoric, or someone used a Name on Mat. Considering that Kasimir was surprised by this development, there's only one other person who was Level 3 at the time of the manipulation. I'll press the issue here. Ashbringer Ashbringer have you been delving deep into Rhetoric?

Dang it. Copied and pasted your question, and lost my analysis. To answer why I suspected TJ first. I thought his votes didn't have a lot of thought put behind them, and thought he was sheeping someone. However, after analyzing the votes, I can clearly see that he was the first vote on both targets, so that analysis doesn't hold water.

The problem is, I still have a poor gut read on him, and I think I can back it up with evidence. 4 separate people all voted on Archer on Month 2. TJ, Wonko, Drake, and you Kas. In the world of E!Archer that would look pretty good for TJ and Kas. However, the Elims choice of kill confuses me. Archer votes for Drake twice in the same cycle that the Elims decide to kill him. Why bother with that? Wouldn't it be better to vote on someone who might get expelled, in order to further damage the village? That's why I'm leaning slightly village on Archer. In a V!Archer scenario. I suspect that the leading train would have an Elim on it. 2 of the people on that train have gone crazy, leaving only you and TJ. I know that voting you won't do much, so I'll try hurting TJ.

Alright vote analysis, go! I'm going to assume off the bat that those who were driven insane were targets of Skindancers, and thus real Students.

T1M1:

T1M2:

T1M3:

Crap. Haven't done a vote count, but I'm running out of time, and I'm presuming that I'm leading in the votes. I still have a bad vibe on TJ, so TJ TJ. I'm going to keep writing a post, but I'm not sure it's going to be done before rollover.

Sarenrae cleared her throat, not particularly wanting to apologize, but knowing it was necessary.

"I'm sorry for letting a velociraptor loose in the Medica. It was an interesting research subject, and I thought it might prove vital in my knowledge of the body. I'm sorry it started rampaging, and caused severe property damage. I take full responsibility for my actions, and apologize to Aralor for my lack of foresight.

She felt relieved. Surely that would calm the student body. However, someone shouted, "But what about Francis's food? How dare you steal his culinary masterpieces!"

Sarenrae was baffled. "Seriously? That's what you're mad about? Well, sorry, I guess. I mean you just left it out there, so I figured I could eat some of it."

"No I didn't!" cried Francis from somewhere in the crowd.

"Yes you did!" Sarenrae was outraged by this accusation. "It was in a big pot at the dorms. I saw it was some kind of stew, and drank some of it. Sue me. It was hot, and I was thirsty. And let me be clear that level of salt could kill someone. I don't know what you guys are talking about."

"THAT WAS EMBALMING FLUID YOU IDIOT!" shouted someone.

"..." Sarenrae paused. "I suppose that explains the after affects on my gut system. Sorry for confusing preservation liquid with food."

Apparently the university had been doing a number on her. Perhaps she needed to take a break.

Sarenrae examined her fellow students in order to see what they had to offer.

• Francis (Matrim's Dice) was a terrible cook. Salt was meant to be used as a preservative, or a component in alchemy. It was not meant to drown out all other flavors, and lead to a desperate desire for water. She glared at him. "Are you trying to poison us?" she accused. Matrim's Dice.
• Cavothee (The Known Novel) had decided to invent unique headware. The idea seemed promising, although the fashion was a bit lacking. A holly hat was a glowing bright sign to the skindancers, saying "Remove me first!" If the technology was converted into an amulet, or some other method of concealment, that could potentially save a life.
• Issal (Ashbringer) had found a field that accommodated them well. A Re'lar could be a useful ally. Sarenrae had to admit she was slightly jealous. Now if only Issal would get his head out of the clouds. Then they could actually tackle the problem at hand.
• Aralor (Araris Valerian) had found some sort of hunting bird. Sarenrae would love to study such an exotic creature. She hadn't studied falconry at all, but knew such creatures could be used for reconnaissance. It was an intriguing proposition.
• Jincs (Archer) was struggling to apologize. She hadn't paid much attention to the arguments surrounding him, but they felt slightly overblown. Still, his conniving attitude rubbed her the wrong way. However, it wasn't the stench of a skindancer. It was more the stench of an arrogant prick.
• Kevan (Kasimir) had re-enrolled after getting expelled from the university. Why in the world did the professor's agree to that? If she heard correctly, he nearly burned down the school. She debated whether a skindancer would do an act of sabotage so publicly. Probably not, but during his abscence and hiatus, he could have been replaced.

After examining the complaints from the previous cycle, she also decided to lodge a complaint against TJ. The two votes he did seemed opportunistic, and something about them made her hair stand on end.

In a blatant attempt to lower tuition, here's some RP mixed with analysis.

Sarenrae was focused on her work. As a student of this illustrious university, it was imperative that she continued to hone her craft, elevating it to a new standard of excellence. However, it appeared that everyone else had taken the same approach. No one was actually talking with another. It was as if they were all in their own little worlds. They couldn't even agree on what year it was, much less what to do about the skindancers. For that reason, she submitted a complaint against Kevan (Kasimir). It felt as though that man was in his own little world of fun and camaraderie, ignoring the plight of the other students. It certainly wasn't because she was jealous of his tight knit circle of friends. She sighed. It wasn't like she was much better at this. She hadn't given much thought to the problem, and didn't truly suspect anyone of being a creature from myth. Perhaps it was time to start investigating.

TL;DR: Kasimir's RP is great, but it's a little disconnected from all other RP. In general, we should try to come up with a cohesive setting, in order to better facilitate thread activity. Haven't put much thought into alignment yet, but that will come soon.

Oh no now I have to actually read rules.

As someone with not much skin in the game, perhaps the problem with this ruleset is including a village faction in the first place. The fun of this game, at least to me, was trying to become one of the Shards and gain cosmic power. If the standard win condition was gain a Shard, and fulfill it's win condition, I think that might have led to a more interesting game.

Got it. DeTess. Getting a bad vibe from them.

I don't know why the factions wouldn't convert. Getting an extra player enables talking inside of docs, more action economy, and a better game experience. What else would they even do? Admittedly Bavadin can't convert, but they'll make friends regardless.

I think I'm just going to go with what feels flavorful for me today.

Oh right. Shard game. Yep, I'm in.

Obviously this clears Kasimir and Devotary, barring extreme shenanigans. I'd lightly clear Illwei, Matrim's Dice, and DeTess. I want to take a closer look at Archer, as they were the third candidate up for Day 1, but managed to wiggle out of it.

3 minutes ago, Matrim's Dice said:

That would be disagreement :P.

Is your list of people just village reads?

I suppose after participating in so many failed role exes it’d be fitting for me to finally be on the other side of one

But seriously, the chance of it backfiring is, what, five percent? That’s not ‘a lot’ by any means.

You're misreading the rules. The chance increases by 5% every time a kill successfully goes through. The odds of an elim dying after an elim performs 4 kills is close to 40%. If you get up to 5 kills, it's closer to 60%. This ignores Villagers dying from their own crossbow shots, but it's still a significant penalty for the elim team to avoid. Hence, an extra life, or some way to ignore the shades.

If I've understood the mechanical discussion correctly, it appears the most likely scenario is that the White Fox blocked the elim kill. As other have suggested, they should probably claim halfway through the cycle. That gets us a free kill on an elim, and a confirmed villager. In addition, we can protect the White Fox with the Shade Master, making the elims very unlikely to kill them. This isn't quite a follow the cop scenario, but it gets close.

@Elandera Can a player start out with the Items the Thief can find? Like for instance, can they start out with Silver Dust?

In order to move discussion along, while still being adjacent to mechanical discussion, I'm going to put a vote on Matrim's Dice. @Matrim's Dice Considering that the chance of a kill backfiring on the elims is so high, I suspect that they have some form of extra life. Mat surviving the kill instantly makes me suspicious of him.

WiM definition please. Discussion of Aman seems to be centered on that term, but I don't know its meaning.

In terms of the whole Voice in the Crowd debate, I think it benefits the Elims more than the Village. Vote analysis is the quickest way for villagers to get a feel for where arguments have been going and how to analyze the game. With that analysis seriously in question, due to literally everyone having untraceable vote manipulation, it's much more difficult to get a feel for the thread by reading the thread. Yes, it can be used in gambits, but those are generally the province of PM Spiders, which I am generally not one of. All in all, it's an interesting gimmick, but not one I think benefits the Village all that much.

However, I want to transition from the mechanical discussion to more actionable discussion. It's all well and good to analyze mechanics. Trust me, I can do that for ages. However, we must analyze the analysts themselves, in order to see who is coming at the discussion from a biased point of view. In that regard, what immediately stuck out to me was this post.

10 hours ago, DeTess said:

Regarding VitC, just reading it I feel like it might be slightly more useful to groups that can pull off coordinated action which is easier for the elims, but depending on the amount of writers in this game there could be sufficient ways for villagers to talk away from the thread to put it into action as a coordinated strike as well. Plus as was mentioned earlier it could affect the elims more than the village when they can't be entirely sure about the actual vote-count.

So yeah, it's a tool useful for both sides.

Reading through the rules, there's a lot going on, but apart from VitC I don't think most of it is actually game-changing and in need of discussion? Or am I missing something?

Her post just parroted what was already in the thread. It's just completely blasé. And to top it off, she also says that the rest of the rules aren't worth worrying about! Rules are always worth worrying about. How will we know how the elims might try to fool us, or how we can sus them out. I'm especially interested in the possibility of insanity, and how that can bound the kill potential of the elims.

For that reason, I'll throw a vote on DeTess. I haven't played with you in forever, and this is my way of welcoming you back.

Well, if you need more players, I'm always happy to sign up.

Figgldygrak

Welp. It showed up again. For those who aren't aware, Brandon blessed us with this term in the Way of Kings.

Quote

Nonsense. Balderdash. Figgldygrak. Isn't it odd that gibberish words are often the sounds of other words, cut up and dismembered, then stitched into something like them—yet wholly unlike them at the same time?

Hoid, as Wit, was dropping some Cosmere wisdom on Dalinar, and used this funny looking nonsense word. While nonsense and balderdash are real words, that literally mean gibberish, Figgldygrak is a pure Brandon invention. Given Hoid's comment, fans began to suspect that perhaps Figgldygrak had some secret hidden meaning, and rapidly began to speculate. Curiously, Balderdash was found to be an anagram of Shardblade, which led many to suspect Figgldygrak could be one. However, those hopes were dashed by Peter Ahlstrom, who in reply to that thread, responded,

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You are very special people.

That should have been the end of this. However, Brandon decided to troll his audience. The word made a triumphant comeback in Rhythm of War. As Navani narrates,

Quote

Well, let them waste their time trying to figure out a reason to the figgldygrak she wrote.

This is specifically in regards to putting false ciphers in her own work to distract the Parshendi. Whether this is hinting at some deeper hidden meaning of the word, or if Peter was just having a laugh at our expense, again remains unclear. It was a fun callback, and I was ready to shelve it as a funny callback.

However, Tress of The Emerald Sea has come out recently. Guess what word pops up in Hoid's narration?

Quote

Beyond that, there are those among us who have the uncanny ability to read another’s emotions. Not through magic, or mystical Connection, or any such figgldygrak.

Once again, Hoid has deliberately used the word figgldygrak. Once was a turn of phrase, twice was a funny callback, but three times? Something is happening here. Where has this word come from? Could it be Yolish? Why do Cosmere characters keep using it? Is there some hidden meaning for us to discover? What if it's the sounds of some of the original shardbearers' names, chaotically shuffled? Could it be Hoid's true name, just chopped up and rearranged?

Am I grasping at straws? Probably. I don't really think it has any hidden meaning. It's just a nice Easter egg for fans, who sometimes read way too much into what Brandon writes. Still, it's a fun coincidence. I wonder if it will show up in the other secret projects.

1 hour ago, Archer said:

Sart   This is the type of post you attach a poke vote to. You didn't. That's weird. 

Fair. It's just that I feel like I've fallen into a holding pattern with this game in general. I'll make one or two tentative votes, then retract them after getting basically any push back. I usually end up on poke votes as a safe option. Then when I do swing for the fences, I usually make such a wild claim that it's immediately read as nonsensical. I'm just tired of it.

So, what the hell, I'll just go where my gut's telling me. Xino. TJ. I really didn't like his vote on Ash. If he's more suspicious of me than Ash, why vote Ash and not me? That's an easy enough train to get going, since Kasimir, who is being very active, had already voted for me. It wasn't even halfway through the cycle. I just feel like the vote was too opportunistic. Plus, it lets him pivot onto my execution for the next cycle in a village Ash world.

Having just made this post, I feel really weird about it. I already know it's going to get attacked from two different angles. One, it's way too retaliatory. I get my first vote and I'm already defending myself? That's not a good look. And two, this is a tacit defense of Ash yet again. I'm sure Kas is going to read it as he and I being on the same team. I'm not sure what alignment he is, but I've now voted on two separate counter trains. Fun times. It's difficult to draw anything from I'm busy right now. It's why we have the Contribution Crusade in the first place, so I understand why the train is happening. I'm half tempted to join it myself. Still, I feel like it's better to raise a suspicion now, rather than wait and let it fester. The gut wants what the gut wants.

As an aside, where the heck is @Devotary of Spontaneity? They were on the shard 8 hours ago, but they haven't said anything yet. I'm not sure it's alignment indicative, but I just want to hear from them.

Well, this is awkward. I could swear I played a game with Xino where he was super active, and it turned out he was evil. Then after that he was always a more low activity player, and he always seemed to flip good. I have no evidence for this though, and quite frankly, I don't feel like trawling through my excessive history with this site. Did I hop into a parallel universe? Possibly. Was I mistaken? Too early to say for certain, but the evidence isn't exactly conclusive.

Now I have to go back to the drawing board and actually do tone analysis. Ugh. I was so excited thinking that I had found a tell that I could easily bust open.