Haelbarde

IF Almod is Exotic, then maybe Nerdy?

It's a tie atm, right? Do we know what happens on a tie?

Glad I could be of some service Mattrim

It's potentially a good opportunity for last minute elim doc kill order conversations, certainly.

I'd be willing to shift, but only if there was other movement away from Kas.

Isn't Fifth voting on Matt still? I'll note that I described them as vibes rather than solely reads because there's little to go on right now. Fifth got a Goodish because their posts feel par for course to me. Only reason why you're not on goodish is because I want to avoid reading you strong village out of habit, and I felt a little weird about the focus on Merlin at the time. I've not had the chance to actually process this yet, so I hadn't adjusted anything on the reads/vibes.

I wouldn't say I'm fine with it so much as not having the energy to interact with it, given I feel there's little chance of response to it at this stage of the cycle. EDIT: The vote in question:

@Kasimir These are the votes on you. Dannex was as throw away poke vote copying your throwaway poke vote on Devo in the opening minutes of cycle, Nerdy seemed to vote for you for having people engage you in discussion. Your vote is based on a disagreement with Fifth over Mat, and Xino is an unexplained vote with no context. These players don't seem to be paranoid, just throwing votes down on active players, without giving any attention to why they're voting. I think I'd opt to vote Nerdy based on that post if not for being their second game and this being cycle 1.

Detailed Tally Devo (0): Kas{1} Aman (0): Hael{1} Kas (4): Danex [Gastro]{1}, Nerdy [Nerdy]{1}, Kas{3}, Xino [Forgotten]{1} Hael (0): TUN [Unknown]{1} Danex [Gastro] (4): Kas{2}, Stick{1}, Aman{1}, JNV{1}, Bookwrym [Perpetual]{1}, Silvereye [Wind]{1}, Hael{2} Mat [Tall] (1): TUN [Unknown]{2}, Fifth{1}, Aman{2} Wizard [Myopic] (1): Aman{3} Stick (1): Matt [Tall]{1} Fifth (1): Devotary{1} Vote Tally Kas (4): Danex [Gastro]{1}, Nerdy [Nerdy]{1}, Kas{3}, Xino [Forgotten]{1} Danex [Gastro] (4): JNV{1}, Bookwrym [Perpetual]{1}, Silvereye [Wind]{1}, Hael{2} Matt [Tall] (1): Fifth{1} Wizard [Myopic] (1): Aman{3} Stick (1): Matt [Tall]{1} Fifth (1): Devotary{1}

Turns out you've played 8 more games than I have. I was about to post a vote tally based on an earlier Stick one, but then it doesn't line up with Devotary's at all, so gonna go back and do my own properly to confirm. My reads/vibes of players so far are as follows: Player Vibes Village - Strong: Hael - Moderate: - Slight: Stick, JNV Neutral - Goodish: Fifth, Aman - Meh: Silvereye (Wind), Mat (Tall), Bookwyrm (Perpetual), Xino (Forgotten) - Badish: Devo, Nerdy, Kas, Wiz (Myopic), TUN (Unknown), Dannex (Gastro) Elim - Slight: - Moderate: - Strong: Absent - Infinite, Exotic Although I'm disinclined to vote Devo or Kas this turn. And I N1'd TUN last game, so feel like they deserve a pass. Think I'm going to put my vote on Dannex.

I'm hurt Had been going to weigh in and say if TUN was a newish player I'd be tending to view them village, but sounds like they're not then. I'll try review their past games and reevaluate once I'm at a PC. I don't think you were intending to refer to me here - think it was Devo responding to Stick? I was going to say "look at my recent games, this is my new normal", but I think I only did so last game, and I was evil... >> I swear I'm not though. More seriously, I've been finding myself lacking motivation to actually keep up with SE games, and regardless of alignment struggling to make more than a couple short posts, particularly if no one's asking me any questions. The time accountability is/was an attempt to try and ensure I post a bit more. I'll unpoke Aman for the moment. Not sure how I feel about the amount of discussion of Merlin's when I don't really feel it's all that relevant to the discussion. At least to me, the standout issue with Merlin is their susceptibility to analysis based on their curse of knowledge. The Winzik doesn't have that curse of knowledge. The issue they have is a hole in their security, where they, and all the other members of the inner circle have to be careful to not be ID'd by their use of the doc. About the extent of the value of the discussion to me is that using it talking about Martin's claim based on past examples of Merlin game is a useful connection to read NAI on Mat's claim.

Who, me? Well, sure. But you've got to be careful, as just because something is already known to the eliminators, doesn't mean that they can't learn things from who/how/where that information is disclosed to the larger village. Always a good idea to think through any information you disclose, as to what information might be gleaned by others. I'm quite wary of the attempts to Spartacus for example, as those rarely work as intended and tend to be quite the treasure trove of information. Always. Don't have time/energy to RP right now, but figure it may be easier to RP a game knowing the turns. So I played the next match in the spoiler. Anyway, been a long day, and need to get some sleep, so I should be around in about 8 hours, so will actually think about the initial susses people have been throwing around then.

Aman Edit: @Ookla the Omniscient, I think you missed that my RP character is Hal Vanicus Also, had time during intermission to post, but I'll be next available in another 2 hours.

Yeah, going to be out from now for the next...8 hours or something. I'm wondering if it's easier to preroll the game and then have some fun RPing the actual interactions instead?

Hal shrugged. "This will leave them owing me, which made it an opportunity not worth missing." He pulled once again from the deck. "Damn it." He had pulled a nine, bringing his total to 24, which he couldn't fix with any one card from his hand. Turning to Doncie, he sighed. "I've gone bust. So the game is yours if you can land a 20."

One of the important considerations of including Break Tanks as an additional format alongside the QF, MR, and LG formats, as far as I'm aware, was to specifically avoid any impact on the activity level of players in those standard format games. For that reason they are kept intentionally short, to prevent the limited numbers of players available from being taken away from signing up to the standard cycle of games, or to help remove any additional reason for what players we have going inactive in those games. The point of the break tanks, to my understanding, isn't that they're short. Nor is it about the ability to stop midway. The core idea is the testing ideas that are nearly impossible to predict how players will react to them, without letting players give it a shot first and seeing what breaks. To address your game idea proposal specifically, I've two thoughts: I've had bad experiences with GMs that have varied the end of cycle time. While due to Life happening to the GMs, which I understand, one game this was a large part of a serious of circumstances that changed a game that my team could not lose into a major loss, while a few other instances did interfere somewhat with the ability to hammer as elims, or properly respond to important questions in thread. A regular cycle close time, while it can be a really painful time depending on the time and timezones, it can be relied upon and planned around. While I guess the point of you testing this would be to gauge player responses to changing cycle ends, I can already tell you that I'm a player that wouldn't be keen on the idea. I'm not keen on the possibility of cycles being less than 24 hours. The SE community covers, or at least use to, timezones from all across the world. The nature of this is that it limits the ability for everyone to be able to communicate with each other in real time. By making cycles a minimum of 24 hours long, you give all players, no matter their time zone, an equal amount of time to contribute to a cycle, without international players having to adjust their sleep cycle to even have a chance at posting in a given cycle. That fact is not something I'd want to lightly change, as to do so reduces the accessibility of the games to those international players. Now, Break Tanks obviously break this rule. And for this reason, I've not been able to engage with any of the break tanks, as there's only a 3 hour window I can reliably be active in, i.e. once ever second cycle of a BT. However, it's ultimately not a big deal because of the nature of the break tanks not being proper games. You might then say that seeing as BT already break the normal timing rules, it's the perfect spot to test games that mess with the timing of cycles. But the whole point of the BT is that you're testing something which is to be eventually played as a QF, MR, or LG, and I'd argue that something with the potential for less than 24 hour cycles shouldn't ever be run in the first place. So I guess then I've two questions: Is there a version of your concept that maintains 24 hour cycles as the minimum? How exactly are you intending to have the cycles reduced. Is the subsequent cycle posted immediately after the close of the previous, with the new cycle time determining the close of the new cycle? Does each cycle have a fixed start time, and the reduction in cycle length then changes the actual end of cycle time each cycle? Or in reverse, does each cycle have a fixed end time, and so the reductions in cycle length cause the cycle to start later and later? Finally, to address your last comment about unplayable/unfun MR/LG, Break Tanks aren't the only tool to address that, nor are they even intended to be the primary tool to address that. That's the purpose of the review committee, where at least two experienced players should have weighed in on the game before it's run. It's also part of the role of the Impartial Moderator, who might be able to comment on the specifics of your role distribution at the start of the game should that be likely to significantly impact the balance and fun of the game.

In the games, the buttons were "Stand" or "End Turn". Which makes sense for a video game button, but is not as useful for natural language sentences.

(The main deck we're drawing from would be endless if digital, or there's normally four cards per number, so you could draw another 2 or 10 from the deck) Hal watched Doncie pull a second card, getting a 10 to bring the total to 12, before calling "Stand". Hal frowned. "You sure you want to stand? Standing locks you in at 12, while Fuel on the Fire has already called stand at 19. If you stop now, you've lost for sure. Another round gives you a pretty decent chance at not going 20, and if you land the 20, then you just might win!" Hal turned over his fourth card, revealing an eight. "Hmm. That takes me to 15. Think I've still got decent odds on landing a twenty with one more pull, so I'm going to end my turn and continue to the next round." Round One Round Two Round 3 Round 4

Will do. Sleep well! I'd been figuring it'd be fine to deal yourself into the existing game if you wanted, but if you had, we wouldn't have gotten to experience that piece of RP As cards continued to be dealt out, Hal responded to Doncie. "So hopefully you've got yourself a side deck. If not, just pull 4 random cards from this one." (just use the same list as Wizard or I, as posted earlier). He watched "Adding Fuel to the Fire" pull a 4 from the deck, and then play a card from their hand to bring their total to 19. Hal directed Doncie's attention to Fuel to the Fire's cards. "See the goal is to get as close as possible to 20, without going over. Their second card was a four which brought their total to 13, after which they played one of the cards they drew from their side deck to bring the total to 19, which is a pretty good score. It's unlikely the next card from the deck for them would be a one, so they've chosen to stand, designating this their final score. They're hoping that none of the rest of us can land a 19 or 20, so that they win on their 19." He pointed then to Illvin's cards. "You see his cards? His second draw took him to 13, but he's chosen to bide his time and hope for a 7 or lower in the next round, which is fairly likely. Hal reached for the deck, dealing himself a third card. Out came a two. "See myself, I've been pretty lucky so far with a few low cards, bringing my current total to seven. I could maybe play a card to get closer to 20 sooner, but I'd rather wait and see what comes out of the deck next." Indicating his turn was over, he turned back to Illven as he awaited the others to continue playing. "Business rather than pleasure this time. An old friend called in a favour he did me once, so here I am for the next week or so." Round One Round Two Round 3 Round 4

You're welcome One by one, others sat at the table, pulling out their side decks and dealing them in. As he watched and waited, he could tell it would be an interesting game. Two of the other players had dealt out high starting cards, while another had gotten almost as lucky as his first pull with a 2 on their first card. "So, who are you anyway?" Illvin asked. Hal considered the dock worker for a few moments. Though a highish starting card, this fellow had instigated the match. He would have to keep an eye on him he figured, to ensure no funny business with the cards. "The name's Hal. Just landed a short while ago, and found myself with some time to kill before check-in." Once all the other players interested had dealt themselves in, he leant forward to take a second card. "It's been a moment since I've set foot on Starsight. What's new?" He flipped the card. It was a 4. Seems his was to be a slow match for the moment. "That brings my total to five. Too early to play any cards I think so I'll end my turn." OOC, I'm going to continue the game without waiting for other posts given I've time now, and won't necessarily have time later when the other potential participants are active. However, the game should run okay with multiple players taking turns at different times, particularly with the early game. Where it does sort of matter is when you've gotten to a total of something like 17, and you're faced with the choice of Ending you Turn and getting another card next turn, gambling on it being a 1-3 (unless you've got negative cards still to play), or Standing, and hoping that no other players land in the 17-20 zone. That's where knowing whether your opponents have already taken a Stand, or have gone bust, etc, help determine whether to take the risk or not. So anyone else who wants to join in, feel free to jump in at any time, and get caught up to the current round, and hopefully we can make the timey-wimeyness of the RP work Round One Round Two

[Enter Hal Vanicus] "Seems we have ourselves here a full Pazaak tournament just waiting to happen. Don't mind some DPS rules myself. Figure we can either do individual matches, or we do one longer games as all 4 of us play each other at the same time. Don't mind what we do, but mind if I start us off?" Hal got out of his long coat two decks of cards. Shuffling the smaller side deck first, he dealt himself out 4 cards. Then after shuffling the larger main deck, he dealt the first card face up to himself. It was a 1. "I end my turn". Hal's Playing Field Suggested Way to Play My Randomised Draws from the Side Deck (This is meant to be hidden during the game, but so I don't forget, and/or there's transparency over what legal plays I might make, here it is)

Ah whatever, I'm on break. Deal me in. I'll try discover who I am as we go.

Observation: One does not need to be a meatbag to operate as part of the circle of life.

Statement: The hunt is more fun when the prey can fire back.

Gentle Correction: Never apologise for killing Gizka.