Elbereth

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I don't think I've ever been lynched as a GM before. Though I've certainly killed my fellow GMs at least once.

LG42 - Day 4: More Treachery (What a Surprise!) Lord Grumbles had made a lot of enemies over the years. All his grumbling and moaning about things that really couldn’t be helped got on the nerves of everyone. So he was walking through the town square when he was stopped by an innocent-looking person. “Excuse me, sir, I have a message for you.” “Yes, what is it?” Grumbles snapped. “You’re kind of annoying,” the young man said, and dropped flat. Grumbles was dropped flat to the ground by a volley of coins. As he was dying, he heard running footsteps and this: “Hey! He was supposed to be our target!” “Then you got here too slow,” the young man’s voice said. “But, what do we do now?” “Want to go get a drink?” “...Sounds good to me.” Jonas Ffnord sipped at his wine as he turned another page in The Merchant’s Guide to Luthadel. It wasn’t the most useful or entertaining of reads, but it would do to distract until word got back. The other Nobles were focusing on just killing their enemies, but Jonas wanted information first. Who was plotting against who. Who was an ally, who was a traitor, and who could be safely ignored. There was a knock at the study door, and Jonas looked up briefly. “Who is it?” “Alvrynel, my Lord.” The Terris steward’s voice came from beyond. “The other lords are heading to the safe room, a band of soldiers are fighting with our hazekillers right now. They saw fit to warn you.” Well, that boded ill. Jonas snapped his book shut, and picked up his wine glass. Standing, he called out, “Very well Alvrynel. I shall be there in a moment.” There hadn’t been enough time yet to reinforce the wooden door to the study, but other than that, the room was impregnable. It might actually be worth it to stay here, instead of retreating to the Safe room. Assassins and soldiers would go there, knowing the other nobles were hiding in the most defensible room. But no, it wasn’t worth the risk. Jonas drew a key out of his pocket, and unlocked the door. It was immediately kicked inward, slamming Jonas backwards into a table. He gasped as a trio of black clad men with dueling canes strode into the room, followed by the apologetic Alvrynel. “I regret to inform you, Jonas, but the House has decided that you are a traitor to be executed. Know that your death will cement the alliance with our allies though.” Jonas threw his now empty wine goblet at the closest assassin, who casually batted it away, and scrambled to the side of the room. Abruptly, he stopped, as his metal belt buckle rammed into his stomach, being pulled back towards the doorway. Desperately, he clawed at it, trying to remove it, but then there was a sharp pain in the back of his head, and everything went black. Livinglegend was killed by the Heatherlockes! Devotary of Spontaneity was killed by the Ffnords, and also the Tormanders! The Day will end in Player List:

And that's time. Cycle will be posted momentarily.

I will point out, because it wasn’t specified, that the writeups have been done by me/Mint/Stink except for this one, which Orlok did and deserves the credit for. This was a fantastic game to GM, and absolutely fascinating to watch the interplay of anonymous accounts with the standard ruleset. Also, it taught me a lot about spreadsheets, so that’s a plus. More thoughts may or may not come after the voting finishes, but for now I’ll just comment that this was a great game and I hugely enjoyed it.

LG42 - Night 2: Misreading Magus Astrum thought he was about to die. “The obligators have found skaa blood in your lineage,” pronounced Locke Tormander. “Are you sure?” Magus asked, trying to keep a calm demeanor. “Are you absolutely certain it doesn’t say Boseph Jush Tormander? Our names look so similar, you know. Only a few letters off and all.” Several eyebrows were raised, but no one said anything. Magus grabbed the paper from him. Locke looked indignant, but was too proper to say anything rude. “Aha!” Magus proclaimed triumphantly. “Tiny letters, so it’s difficult to make out, but this definitely says Boseph Jush.” He grinned and tossed the paper at the fireplace. Auden Heatherlocke caught it. Magus winced. “It says Magus,” Auden confirmed. They all pretended not to see an Inquisitor take him away. (They had to pretend very hard, because he was being quite loud. But they somehow managed.) Magestar was lynched! The Night will end in Vote Count Mage (7): Bugsy, Drought, Eternum, Fifth Scholar, Orlok, Shanerockes, Steeldancer Drought (4): Devotary, Jondesu, Mafia, Mage No Lynch (1): Walin A Joe in the Bush (1): Straw Player List: (Eternum) Auden Ostlin Heatherlocke (Walin) Dbec Heatherlocke (Steeldancer) Leets Heatherlocke (Araris Valerian) Hadrian Heatherlocke (Straw) Straw Heatherlocke (Sart) Taswell Ffnord (Jondesu) Remart Ffnord (Living Legend) Jonas Ffnord (Shanerockes) Lebereth Ffnord (Fifth Scholar) Count Olaf Ffnord (Stick) Stick Heron (Crimsn Wolf) Altea Meza Heron (Mafia) Ivan Heron (Devotary of Spontaneity) Lord Grumbles Heron (Orlok Tsubodai) Locke Tormander (Droughtbringer) Boseph Jush Tormander (Bugsy) Bugsy Tormander Also. Do not PM during turnover. Please.

I can confirm that in my spreadsheet, No Lynch is in fact marked as dead. *sigh* Give me a few minutes for the writeup. >> Cycle is closed.

Potentially, yes. This cycle will still end in about 24 hours, clearly, but if there is a majority opinion that the other way would work better, we would switch. (That isn’t an invitation to fill the thread with discussion of that. If you’d like to switch, you may say so in your GM PM, not here. Thank you.)

Read the rules, please.

Do so at your peril. I suppose I am lacking in male characters...

The next game to be posted will either be MR26, when the current Quick Fix finishes, or AG4, when the current LG is done. I expect it’ll be MR26, so come back in... perhaps a week? A week and a half? Signups should be up around then.

So... roleplaying is something that some players do and others don’t, and generally isn’t related to gameplay. Sometimes, yes, when a player chooses only to RP (though that’s less common nowadays), but in general there’s RP in the write ups and players do some, but it’s separate from game discussion.

@manookla the ookla, I suggest posting in The Art Of Game Creation, if you’d like advice on your game. That’s the more appropriate place for it. @Ookla the Hematist, I’m not sure I understand your question. This is forum mafia insofar as its mafia played on a forum. It’s more complicated than most forum mafia, as I understand it, but it heavily depends on your baseline. If you’d like an idea, I suggest looking at rulesets for a few games and/or reading through a couple of games to get a sense for difficulty.

@randuir, while the Shardic games do tend to be complicated, they are not LG18/26/33-level complicated. They’re a level below that, perhaps - go look at the ruleset for LG21/29 if you want the best idea, as this game would be most similar to those two. @Steeldancer, PM me the doc and I’ll drop it in the Committee’s group PM, at which point any member who knows they likely won’t play can enter it and the rest won’t.

Alv, that was fantastic. And probably the most I’ve ever seen you talk at once. I agree close to entirely with Sart, except for the first two bits: I personally don’t get the impression that RP stopped because the meta got too complicated. As far as I know, the last big spurt of it was LG14 before I came - and then LG15b was set on a spaceship, and while people could’ve played with a different setting, they instead weren’t sure what the rules were anymore and didn’t RP much. LG17 was similar, as I recall. Part of it, I think, is that the RPers left over time (Kas, Wyrm, Quiver, for instance) and not enough new ones came in to fill it up, or RPers lost time and couldn’t anymore (me >>) (though this is still backing up your point of “tried too hard” - people had the impression that it had to be something amazing, and that’s very wrong), or analysis became the focus and RP got discouraged. I don’t particularly see gut reads/feelings being a source of conflict. It makes logical discussion more difficult, yes, but it shouldn’t inherently be more problematic. I see it as a lack of friendship caused by other factors, not this one in particular. It’s a new idea, though, and one I’ll consider further. I am entirely in agreement about what Alv said about the meta, and “parts that fell on the floor together and look like something” is the best description of it I’ve ever heard. A few more suggestions if anyone’s interested: recurring characters, preferably ones that don’t tie to other universes/don’t exist outside the Cosmere - it’d be doable, but take longer to incorporate someone like Yoda than a character you build yourself, because people will think of that as a visitor rather than someone inherently in the Cosmere. Join a Shard game - those tend to have lots of opportunities for gaining magic Whatevers. Talk to me, Alv, Joe, Wilson, Orlok, or Rae (who are I think the main people but even then there are probably several others that would work equally well). Have someone react with someone else’s ongoing character (Locke, for instance, recurs in each game, and could easily (if arrogantly) interact over multiple games with another recurring character). Make your character fun, or interesting, and invest yourself in them so that you care about them. RP partners are wonderful for this. The meta is whatever people make it. I could not agree more with the rest of Alv’s post, and I’ll leave it there because I have nothing more to add to his points, except that I’ve considered in the past stopping Discord usage while in a spec/dead/evil doc, which is a possibility but not necessarily the right choice. TL;DR Alv is amazing; I don’t know why RP stopped; I’m not sure about gut reads causing conflict; and the meta is what you make it.

Right. I’ve a lot of thoughts (as usual), and will probably give a few notes on what Wilson/Orlok think as well when their opinion differs from mine, since I don’t know if/when they’ll post here. (This is primarily structured as a response to Bard, so comments addressed to Seonid/Steeldancer will be addressed in relevant sections.) Right. Regarding this first, since I do a majority of the metanarrative stuff at moment - One. I think the meta is too often seen as a coherent whole. It’s not. There’s Kiireon/Edaan, yes, a story which has reached its conclusion. That’s been the main focus in the Acropolis. But there’s also Joe’s motley of characters and objects. There’s Alv’s set, the Collective + others + lots of objects. There’s Locke and Atiela. There’s (S)laughter. It’s not all a single piece, and it isn’t so hard to add to as people seem to think. I don’t even know all of the metanarrative (I’m particularly fuzzy on Joe’s characters, for instance). (Note: the snakes are not part of the metanarrative, at least not the same one. They don’t really apply here.) The point isn’t to understand it all. The point is just to tell stories together. Two. Given that it’s not a coherent whole, the system that seems to be happening currently is individual bits of meta being reset - Joe’s resetting his for his next LG, for instance. Alv is too invested, and I’m too invested currently. Three. Since I’ve been so active in the meta, I’m one of the most invested in it, and would be very sad were the meta to be reset in any way. I acknowledge, however, that it may be best for the forum as a whole, and will endeavour to finish up the part I’m most invested in so that I’m willing to move on. Orlok’s view, by the way, is that the metanarrative should be completely reset, as that would make it more fun for new players and potentially old players (one thing you didn’t mention, Bard, is that it’s also hard for new players to enter the meta, much more so than learning it), and that it wouldn’t alienate old players enough for them to leave, so on balance would be a good thing. Seonid does have a good point. I honestly don’t really see why the meta is included in this list of issues - it may be one, but I view it as fairly small. Very little happens in the metanarrative, even less where anyone can see it who doesn’t know context (i.e. in PMs between players who do know about it, talking about old stories or whatever). The wedding, yes. It’s been six months between that and the last major event - Edaan’s freedom from Odium. There have been minor things - Orlok started all his sentences with s’s in the modchat to see how long it’d take Alv to notice, and (S)laughter then got traded at least once as a result - but that’s... about it. We could create a new meta without disturbing the old one and honestly I don’t think it’d make any difference to either. EDIT: To make this more clear, I could literally invite everyone in the meta to Atiela’s wedding (and easily; the main members (insofar as that term makes sense) wouldn’t even number twenty, plus a few items scattered about) and detonate some sort of ultrapowerful bomb that can kill Shards and Cognitive Spirits and such and the meta would be gone in an instant. Not that I’m saying that’s a good idea, but that is its scale. A small room of characters and objects that mostly haven’t been active in months/years. Note regarding the “lot less camraderie” - this is definitely the case, but old players also tend to feel less camraderie because their generations leave over time (usually due to real life things), and so they’re less invested in the game because they’re not playing with their friends anymore. This is sad, but bar making games less time-intensive (which I’m not sure how to do well), there’s not much to be done except give them community places that aren’t games. Which brings us to Discord. I would use wording stronger than “perhaps”, here. Discord has very definitely been the result of less camraderie and friendships in or caused by games. (Not only Discord, also: Messenger’s contributed significantly, particularly to the distancing of old players who talk to each other there now rather than through games.) Is it wholly bad? No. I particularly enjoy the specialisation of channels so that like-minded people can discuss without said discussion being buried in a mass of general discussion. Here are the specific problems I see, though, with having Discord and Messenger rather than spec docs: 1. There’s less socialisation in docs, particularly evil docs. Such docs used to be an excellent way to get to know people and make friends, because as an elim that was your only point of contact in SE except thread and PMs. But Discord, instead, is open all the time. In addition, and importantly, evil docs contain a random assortment of players. Not just people who tend to frequent Discord, or similar. So you’d be much more likely to make friends with someone you didn’t already know. 2. There’s less possibility of conversing across timezones, or replying to old conversations that have long since passed. In docs you could hold many-day-long conversations by going back to that thread of conversation later. Discord doesn’t provide this. (Also, multiple threads of discussion.) 3. Because Discord is distanced from the games, it also becomes distanced from SE. There’s a reason a lot of people on Discord don’t play much or at all, whereas in spec/dead docs it tended to be active people - because it was focused on the current game, and at least in part discussing that. So the community of Discord becomes its own separate entity, and doesn’t function as well as a community for SE. (I agree that these issues are either their own thing or only exacerbate the other problems in SE itself, but they’re still worth laying out.) So... In part I disagree that broken games have been on the rise. I think we have more games now, and therefore by default more broken games, but I don’t think the proportion has changed. I do think there’s been a change in perception and reaction - players actually notice when a game is broken, now, far more than they did in the past - I remember basically only Wilson talkng about them for a long time. And, also, people enjoyed said games despite the brokenness and essentially didn’t care. That has changed, and I don’t know why. (GMs creating new games is almost certainly not a resonse to players focusing more on winning. It’s because mechanics are fun and interesting to play with, and you always want to do something new - like in science. No one gets a Nobel prize for doing things a second time. ) Also, something Steeldancer made me think of - we probably have fewer broken games than we used to. Broken games are heavily correlated to new GMs - a lot of broken games are run by new GMs, and new GMs mostly run broken games, as I recall. And particularly very broken ones. Having more experienced GMs helps with this, as does the committee, as does having experienced co-GMs. Inversely, GMs having coGMed first also helps an awful lot. So those are things that we could encourage, perhaps? This is something that I’m aware of - I belive Wilson or Orlok mentioned it to me initially. To this I have two responses: one, we’ve seen that this tends to come in waves - a lot of nonstandard and then a bunch of standard. Right now we’re moving into the latter, to an extent. LG39 is standard. The AG will be, and LG41 isn’t hugely different. The next QF is yours, and I presume given what you’re saying that it’ll be relatively regular as well. Which is a fair balance. My second response is that the mods/the committee is aware of this, and doing what’s possible to help with it. Very much agreed regarding RP incentives helping, so I won’t even quote that. Steeldancer’s point about it is also excellent. Games being fun helps. An awful lot. The more interesting/exciting/fun a game is, the better it’ll be for the community. This is something that can be done as GMs in a number of different ways, I think - things like Stink’s writeups help, for instance, or what Wilson did with MR19 with comics. Things like fun flavour help. Cosmetic roles and RP incentives, as well - anything to get players interested and invested, in a way that’s fun rather than incentivising winning. I wonder if there’d be a way to cautiously disincentivise winning in a game, without making that unplayable...? Right. Regardless. Those are my initial thoughts. Thank you for bringing this up, Bard.

Point. Apologies, I didn’t look carefully enough at exact wording. I wouldn’t know - I wasn’t really paying attention to the game except through him at that point. Clarify this? Like, yes, I agree that it’s true (and even more between PMs and Facetime, which can get interesting >>), but don’t see the relevance or the point you’re making. Because it was pretty clear from Rae’s reveal in that chat that Orlok wasn’t evil. No. You don’t usually play like this. (Which is unfortunate, as this is excellent.) In this game, you are dangerous (in your hypothetical situation) because you are active, suspected Orlok, and are confident. That’s the thing that particularly stands out - you’re confident in this game. As far as I can remember, you’re not usually anywhere near this certain. That’s why I’m suspicious. Also, as far as I can tell we have a tie between DA and Seonid. Which isn’t useful. >> Either one is innocent and the soother makes sure that person dies (in which case, yes, we know the other’s evil, but it’s probably too late then); both are guilty and the elims leave it as a tie so no one dies, or both are innocent and one dies at random. Though... @Wyrmhero will you be counting Orlok’s vote? @Seonid, given you know you’re not evil or pretend you do, care to join on DA?

Sigh. I’m sorry for not paying as much attention to the game as I should. >> I’d promise to be more active, but I’d rather not make a promise when I don’t know if I can keep it. :/ I’ll do what I can, though. Just from reading this thread (as I haven’t gone back to previous ones yet), DA. Yes, clearly your theory is proven wrong by Orlok dropping out. It was also highly unlikely before then, and seems very likely to me to be part of an attempt to frame Orlok (as seems to have been happening for a while). Orlok didn’t respond to it, so I might as well: So has Orlok. At the very least since Cycle 2 - I can’t remember if he mentioned it to me before then. Wyrm specifically made it clear in thread that he reversed his ruling in the middle of the game, from being able to talk in any medium (a ruling he made mostly because Orlok ased if he and I could speak about it while in person/over Facetime) to only in PM (a ruling because of all this). As far as I can tell, you’ve been active/paying attention all game, and should have known that - so there is no logical reason to say that game talk shouldn’t be in a group chat when at that time it was perfectly allowable. Why, in fact, would Wyrm have made that call if this incident had not happened as stated? And finally, the basis of Seonid’s and your claim is that Orlok bussed Rae in order to gain trust to lynch Lemon. What? He bussed Rae to lynch Lemon. Why does that make any sort of sense? Lemon at ome point was going to be lynched even without this. Rae wasn’t accruing suspicion (as far as I know) from anyone but himself and Wilson. Why would he need to bus Rae, and why would he use the capital from said bus to lynch Lemon? Lemon isn’t the most active or dangerous player to him - why not lynch someone likely to be protected, or actually dangerous - me, or Wilson, or Aonar? Why not lynch you, DA, since you’re suspicious of him? Your proposed actions didn’t make sense even without Orlok dropping out, and given that it’s now pretty clear he’s good (which I’m also fairly certain of, given close interaction with him), that seems very much like trying to frame him because he’s dangerous. (Corollary that makes sense, but doesn’t provide much evidence - Rae not wanting to kill Orlok, but to test herslef/be nice to him through not killing him until late game?) Anyway. @Darkness_

I’m happy enough to do so. Lemonelon. The point, particularly if you’d responded earlier in the cycle, would be that you could potentially avert your lynch if you had a good enough explanation for your actions. The fact that you’re instead avoiding the question seems to me like evidence in favour of you not, in fact, having said explanation.

This post is what pinged me about Lemon, personally - claiming not to be voting for self-preservation but because you’re following Orlok based on the assumption that he’s village. Where about a post before that you were questioning whether he was in fact village, and in either case following along with him isn’t what I’d define as ‘a good villager’. This either reads as suspicious or confusing to me, and I can’t tell which. Rae, care to explain before you die if you have time? Speaking of which, I’m fine with a Rae lynch. Also, I’m back! Still catching up, but back. Sorry for my absence. >>

Summary of Kiireon/Edaan for reference: Reception will be posted in a while, in this post. In essence, though, every character who’s applicable will be there. I have a list of relatively major ones that will definitely be there, but if you have a less prominent character, I’m very happy to include them. Characters can interact, plot, and have as much fun as they’d like at the reception. If you have requests for what you’d like a character of yours to do, from tiny requests to full polished scenes, I’m very happy to include them. Not applicable characters: Jonly, the Collective, Bartbug, anyone who’s irritated the happy couple over their years. Also, dead characters who are dead enough not to come back (few though those may be). Happy belated birthday, Alv. Sorry this has taken so long.

The Wedding There are some who say that light and dark fight forever. They say that ever since the beginning of time, the Light and the Shadows have fought everywhere, everywhen, that it is the oldest story in the universe. They say the two can never rest until one is forever defeated. Today they are proven wrong. The darkness and the light do not always battle. Often, yes, but now and then - perhaps as rarely as once in an eon - they meet, not in battle, but in unity, and worlds quake at their joining. This is the story of how they loved. They came in the early hours of the morning, of course. Before sunrise, before the first breath of dawn had even touched the stars. Visitors and friends from across the Cosmere trickled into the seats, lit only by the silver glimmer of the walls of Elantris. All coming silently, shadows and whispers in the stillness of night, and all present to bear witness. As the first hint of dawn-to-come touched the sky, lilting music began from somewhere unseen, dancing over the assembled crowd, sparkling over the dais before them and the solitary figure standing there. There had not been sound before, yet the crowd fell more silent still. A few particularly close friends of Edaan or Kiireon began walking down the aisle, one by one, as the light in the east grew brighter. Not many - the two hadn’t made many friends, and even fewer still living. But a few did remain, and they all beamed with pride. Following the last groomsman, Hal Heatherlocke, was a young girl strewing flower petals. Since she was a Cognitive Spirit, they vanished after a few seconds, but she didn’t seem to mind. The procession made its way to the dais, separating to stand on either side of Edaan, who slowly became visible in the pre-dawn twilight. He was nothing like any of them remembered him. Not cloaked in shadow and gloom, now, not hateful and horrible to see nor even pale and shaken as he had been for so long after Odium left. His usual vaguely-defined traveller’s cloak had been replaced by a sharp black suit, and he stood tall and proud in the rising light. And the dark that gathered around him (an aftereffect of Odium, they thought) wasn’t frightening, this time, because it was beautiful. The most important difference, though, was that he was smiling. A smile which only Kiireon had seen before, full of pain, and loss, and memory of unimaginable torment, but joyful nonetheless. He held up a hand, darkness seeming to gather around it, and gestured towards the aisle, throwing the shadows to the winds. The sun rose. Everyone blinked against the sudden light, standing, and Kiireon was there, shining in concert with the dawn. She came up the aisle alone, dignified and beautiful beyond compare. She ascended the dais to stand beside Edaan, and held his hand, and they smiled at each other for a perfect, everlasting moment. “We gather here, today, to celebrate the reunificantion of Edaan and Kiireon finally and forever,” said the priest of Omi who was officiating, smiling at both of them fondly. “From love in candlelit rooms to fire, near-death and thinking the other was dead, Odium, and kidnapping, and near loss of everything, their story has been long and difficult, but here they stand. United, once again, in pure untarnished love, at long last. Who will come forward to speak for them?” “I will,” said a clear voice. “I am Atiela, future daughter of Kiireon and Edaan, and I declare that they deserve each other and all that their future holds. I represent their love, and it will last as long as their lives.” She stepped back into her place, bowing her head. “They are represented, as is tradition,” said the priest. “Bring forth the rings.” Locke, because he had known both of the pair and saved their lives so long ago, had been chosen to bear the rings. He stepped forward from the other side of the dais, bearing a ring in each palm. One was black and ungleaming, the other bright white and glowing in the new sun. They’d each been infused with a tiny piece of a soul. As everyone watched, Kiireon carefully slid the gleaming white ring onto Edaan’s silver finger. “With this ring, I give you the key to my soul, for you have my love and my life,” she said clearly. “May it shield you when you walk in the light.” Holding onto his hand, she added, “You have always loved me, always accepted me, despite all I’ve done. You know me better than any other, and you are stronger than anyone I know. Thank you, for letting me share the rest of my life with you.” He took her hand in turn, and fitted the midnight-black ring onto her slim finger. “With this ring, I give you the key to my soul,” he replied, “for you have my love and my trust. May it protect you as you walk in the shadows.” He paused for a second. “Kiireon, Queen, Brightness Ascendant, you have always had my love. Today and forever I am yours, in life and in death. You are the light of my life, the sunrise in the bleakness that was my life. And never again will I leave.” Kiireon held up her hand, and Edaan carefully took it, their rings chiming when they touched. The priest bound their wrists together with a grey ribbon, dark against their silver skin, speaking as he did: “Edaan and Kiireon, once-Odium and former warrior, Lord of Night and Lady of the Day, you are now bound eternally together, in light and in darkness, in life and in death.” He smiled. “You may kiss.” As the sun turned the stars to dust and the worlds were silent, Edaan and Kiireon embraced and kissed at last.

Hi! I’m back! Apologies for taking so long. >> I had two midterms, an essay, family, and a transatlantic plane flight, and then yesterday I didn’t have internet (blame Orlok >>). But I exist again, and ought to be more active for the next week at least. A few comments from previous cycles: Seonid: True, and that does make sense. I’m not sure I agree that it’s less useful than establishing a baseline at all, but I certainly understand your point. Drought: Sure. Which is fairly valid for this game, though less so in general (“progressing our own win con” shouldn’t be restricted only to lynching or killing eliminators, because without discussion and even mislynches there is no possibility of lynching eliminators at all). Drought: Sorry. Back now, if that helps. Jondesu: Just so you know, Steeldancer’s first game was MR22. Mint’s was LG25 (simultaneous with MR16). You started playing closer in time to Flash than Mint did. Just saying. Rae: No. >> There’s not a disconnect. Sart was saying basically that we should lynch inactives because if the Seer is an inactive player, we’re highly unlikely to lynch them later in the game because we’ll be focused on more active players. (Partly because active players are easier to examine, partly because converts are likely to be active.) He was saying that therefore D1 we should lynch an inactive in order to have a better chance of catching the Seer overall. Does that make sense? Right. Beyond that, I agree that Sart’s been suspicious (particularly the post that’s been pointed out a couple times, and a bit this cycle as well), and I’d far prefer his lynch to someone we know (or at least it’s highly likely) is not the Seer. Sart.

Cycle is closed!

That was essentially my reaction as well. >> ...I don't really understand how this relates to QF25. Or rather, if you want to wait for something to go off of, what would you have advocated in QF25, then, or a similar game where the fact that there were only two eliminators was publicly known? Would you advocate never lynching, because there aren't any connections to go off of, or only one? Why is that a good strategy? This is almost always the main argument for no lynch, I'll note. It's not fair to the person who dies. Which is true, yes. But you don't see the eliminators abstaining from their N1 kill just because it's "not fair". What's the difference? That's an honest question - where does the different lie between a C1 kill and a C1 lynch to make one seem more "fair" than the other? I'd point out again what Orlok/I both pointed out near the bottom of page 1 - the info we gain is a baseline of how players are acting in this game, so that we can look for changes if they're converted. Does it? >> It does not seem so to me. Yes. Well... yes. Even if he hadn't proposed this plan he'd likely have had to die eventually - maybe D5 or so? But given that it's uncertain how much information he is receiving, we can't assume that the Seer hasn't converted him. Wrong on pretty much all counts, actually. 1. LG2, the Inquisitor role was given to a new player a. because that player was fRR, who came up with the idea for the game and is the only reason SE was started up again, and b. because 14 out of the 29 players were new because it was the second game ever. 2. Sart's not saying it should be a particularly experienced player, just that it shouldn't be someone brand new because you can't have any idea how active those players will be. He was eliminating people from the shortlist of players-who-hadn't-posted. Of those four(?), two are inactive, and of the remainder you already have a vote and are likely to lead to a lynch. Which, by Sart's argument, is good, because we're unlikely to lynch inactives later in the game. I'll note, by the way, that Sart's argument for a CC is possibly the best reasoning I've ever heard for one, though I'd respond with two points - 1. a Coinshot is entirely capable of carrying out the CC later in the game, and 2. so long as we have open PMs, we can carry out the other version of the CC that started in the last AG, with PMing inactives instead of lynching them. I'm very slightly more suspicious of you now, Doc, though I think it more likely that you only skimmed Sart's post and that your response is inaccurate because of that. With all due respect, no, it wouldn't. Aman (if he isn't the Seer) is a major benefit to the village until he gets converted, and lynching him today if he's village would help the Seer immensely. (This is counterbalanced slightly by the fact that his conversion could help the Seer significantly.) Your presence as a villager, given past games, is far less likely to drive discussion in the way that Aman does, though seeing that change would be lovely; and thus your lynch is far less hurtful to the village. Speaking of your whole "I'm willing to trade info" thing - yours, and Shqueeves', and Joe's. The only reason there was any logic behind making Aman an information hub is because he explicitly plans to lynch himself D3 (which isn't quite logical because he can still be converted before then, but makes more sense than the rest of the proposals nevertheless). The three of you made no such similar claims, so that if people actually do trade info with you, the Seer has absolutely no reason not to convert you. So, why exactly is publicly announcing as you have a good idea, other than painting an enormous target on your back for both the Seer and later lynches? >> From memory, there are two votes on Doc and two on Aman, and an hour left in the cycle? I'm... I think I'm fine with either of those, actually. Not pleased about them, but I'm not sure who I'd actually be happy to lynch, and I don't feel strongly enough to vote this close to the cycle end. So I think I'll leave things as is and go back to studying for midterms. I expect this posting level will keep up until about next Monday - generally one multiquote a day keeping up on what I've missed, and not really following the cycle except when I come on to post.