Elbereth

Really. Meallin says differently. (EDIT: Also, along the same lines, I'm very amused that Meta's Jeskeri now, given QF11. Maybe he was infiltrating their ranks in order to get his heart back.)

Thanks for posting again so I didn't have to doublepost! Sandhya and Thanata: The Rest of the Story, Part 2 Sandhya awoke, later. Her eyes opened first, staring up at the sky, occasionally blinking away ashes. She lay there for a time. Then, other sensations. Hearing, though there wasn’t much to hear in the deserted alleyway in which she still lay. Smell, on the other hand, was plentiful and not very appealing. And then touch, and with it, pain. When she finally managed to lift her neck slightly off of the cold stones, she saw the gleaming end of a spike sticking straight out of her chest. Her head collapsed back down to the ground. No wonder it hurts, she thought wryly. But, amazingly, it hadn’t looked like she was bleeding, and the pain didn’t seem to be getting any worse. She lay for a moment more, then with a grunt of effort sat up and looked around. It was probably afternoon by now, but no one was around any more than they’d been this morning. The market was a distant hum, but nothing else stirred. She examined her wound more closely. The very end of the spike stuck out an inch or so above her chest, but where it pierced her skin the dried blood brushed off easily to reveal a seamless join with the spike, as if it had been there for years. She tried tugging it to see if it would come out, but the pain intensified and she stopped immediately. With nothing else to do, she got to her feet, slowly. As far as she could tell, the spike hadn’t gone all the way through, so she looked perfectly fine from the back except for a bit of ash. So she simply bundled up her cloak in her arms, high enough to cover up the spike in her chest, and began heading back to Keep Fanui.

Shh, don't spoil the surprise. (Nah, it's fine. You're very on point this game, though. Just saying.)

Patience. All shall be revealed in time. And correction: you weren't the only one who didn't fall for it. Bugsy didn't either, not for a while. Definitely congrats to him on that as well. He got exactly what was happening.

Or maybe I’ll be a murdering treacherous liar! So many different combinations to play with. Or maybe I won't lie next time. Or I won't murder anyone. (And I won't be a traitor, either. Traitor implies that you start out one side and then betray it. Which isn't the case in non-conversion games. ) That was the idea. Sandhya and Thanata: The Rest of the Story, Pt. 1 The Alleyway Sandhya turned to walk out of the alley. She had an Inquisitor to kill. Then, before she reached the main street again, she paused. Had she heard something? The sound repeated, and she whirled to see a figure vanishing around a corner at the other end of the alley. Had it been watching her? She didn’t remember anyone standing down there, but she hadn’t exactly been paying attention to anyone but Thanata. The Inquisitor. Without another thought, she ran after the figure. It didn’t matter that she had no way of taking on such a powerful being, that she was almost certainly about to die. All that mattered was that it had killed Thanata, and she would make it pay. She reached the end of the alley to see it halfway down the block… running toward a dead end. She cried out in triumph and ran faster, pulling her long skirts out of the way. The Inquisitor glanced back, steel spikes glinting where its eyes should have been, and seemed surprised to see her. He glanced forwards again just in time to see the wall, but instead of crashing into it he simply walked up for a few steps, then flipped and landed facing her. She drew to a stop, staring, and they both froze. It smiled. “You’ve seen me, little girl. I was content just ruining your world, but now you’ve actually seen me. And no one gets away with that.” He pulled something from beneath his robe. A spike, still dripping with blood. Thanata’s blood, she noted dispassionately, although a distant corner of her mind shuddered in horror. “You saw me, little girl. And for that you must be punished.” She stared at him defiantly for a moment, but couldn’t help but scream when the gleaming spike came down, directly into her chest. Darkness.

I won't argue (although my personal opinion is that the GB doc was the best that I've read), but I will point out that it's also very much not a usual evil doc, given that it all took place over 48 hours. Most docs have some kind of quirk, though. With just the games since I've been playing... Okay, spoilering this because it's long and probably too detailed (I had a while in the car and not much else to do):

Faces turned towards Sandhya after the trial was done. After Tram was dead. After he was found without a spike to be seen. “No,” she said. “That can’t be. It’s not right.” She looked upwards. Thanata! Tell me where to find the Spike! There must be a Spike somewhere... But Thanata had no answer. She grabbed for the wooden tablet. “But… didn’t this say that he was Spiked? For certain? It must have.” She scanned it desperately, but now she found only implications and hints. Nowhere did it say outright that Tram had been converted. She looked around at the faces in sudden fear. Today their bloodlust had been sated, and she was safe. But what the night would bring was anyone’s guess. “I’m sorry,” she said to the surrounding faces, as sincerely as she knew how. “But I couldn’t let my house succeed in its quest for peace. That would have resulted in the death of us all.” Before turning to walk away, she said proudly, “But I am not a servant of Ruin, and I shall never be.” More to come. Why thank you. I'm very sorry for being a murdering lying traitor. I promise to never ever do it again. Better?

Elenion, what I'm saying isn't that the Nobleman shouldn't be able to go through the Outlaw. I'm okay with that. I'm saying that the Guard shouldn't be able to be blocked by the Outlaw power except when there's a kill. Second point is fair, though. And yeah... LG17 doc was more off-topic than usual. Rae tends to do that to docs. I can't really think of a particularly good doc to recommend at the moment, though. There isn't a really generic this-is-what-evil-docs-are-like-in-general one that I can think of. They all have individual quirks. (And I'd be happy to outline a few in more detail so you could pick what sounded interesting to you, but I have to go to bed now. Maybe in the morning if you'd like.) I don't know... QF15, maybe? Not sure that's a good example, though, no matter how fun it was. MR10? Dunno. I'll have to think about that.

When scanned, the scanner does not learn what Highprince they're imitating. However, when they die, they will appear as "Parshendi Highprince of Food", for example. The "Disguiser" is just for scans. Cool. It's unblockable because some guy with an iron sword can't stop a Shardbearer. I do like the cycle cooldown ability, I think I'll implement that next version. Sure, okay. Although maybe also include Half-Shards, just for flavor? Wow, you must have a good memory! You cannot self target. I also forgot to add the text that the item is used up once you fend an attacker off. Heh. Not as good as you think, or not for those reasons at least. I actually only read through LG4 a few weeks ago. I wasn't playing at the time. Ah. Now that's excellent. One-use makes it much better. It's the former, "Wilson used Iron Sword protecting Elbereth" or "The Young Bard stayed home and equipped his Half-Shard Shield". Uh, isn't that the latter? And that makes it more powerful. And I know that powerful evil roles are a good thing given how village-balanced the game is, but at the same time having one role on the evil team (or on the village, for that matter) that's superpowered is a lot riskier because there's nothing saying that person won't die early (or go inactive...) and then the team will be really disadvantaged. Okay, 2 sounds good. Definitely not 1 though. Great. That's fine. He can always make something up about a teammate if he sees someone using an item one turn. But this shouldn't be as much of a problem seeing as mayoring would result from a quick death at the hand of the Assassin. Speaking of the Assassin, he's one way to make the game less village-balanced, so if he dies right at the beginning it would be more difficult for the eliminators to win. He's really hard to kill, though. Ah, I suppose that since it does reveal specific items/roles it's not as bad. Could go around that by asking them to call their shots ahead of time, but it's potentially, barely doable. And you could get around the Assassin to an extent through proxies. Since there are PMs (although very limited, which is definitely a very good thing), if a Scribe finds the Highprince of Information, they could set up a code so that the Highprince wouldn't have to reveal to the thread in order to reveal results (and they'd probably reveal only alignment so the Assassin doesn't know whether they're highprinces or not, although you haven't confirmed that the Assassin's goal is to kill the Highprinces (and you shouldn't)). And regarding the Assassin. Yes, he makes the game less village-balanced, which is a good thing. I'm still somewhat concerned about either a) dying early (and in this case given that it's a LG and how much of a difference it could make, early could be as late as C4 or so and still be problematic), or going inactive, which is also an issue (which you can counterbalance maybe by deliberately picking the person who is the Assassin, or picking it from a pool of people who are less likely to go inactive, but the problem with that is that those people are also generally more likely to die early). Kind of like Nimbleform above, it's usually not a good idea to put all of your balance relying on one or two people. Ah. Okay, interesting. I can see that flavorwise. My instinct against that came from... dunno. The Explorer in MR10, maybe? If a player is untargetable, that should apply to all situations. There shouldn't be a specific situation in which that doesn't apply just because of a particular role interaction. (Also, this way if the Guard and the Outlaw get into contact, they can pretty easily figure out about the Mordorian, which I don't really like.) Hm, first, correction: the Steward is the biggest role-wise target for Mordor. That doesn't mean that's the person they'll most want to take out. If Con (just using him as an example because he was L in QF15 - he's probably gotten better with scanning roles since then) is the steward but Wilson is playing, and the eliminators know both of those things? At least part of the time they'll take out Wilson first. Because she's more dangerous to them. Second, some of the same stuff I was saying above: You're still relying on the Steward being active. Which is not necessarily a good assumption to make. So be careful about that. Third... yeah, okay. I mean, I have some quibbles with the term 'involved', because you're implying that some roles are expected to be more active than others (and thus the reverse is also true). And thus they're more important. But in general you answered my question, so excellent. Well. I tried a couple quotes, manually. We'll see if they work... EDIT: Yay!

... Hmph. I don't even have a defence against that... Still not voting for myself, though. Keeping the Senate stagnant is also a good thing. Also I don't want to die twice within 48 hours or so.

Oh. I guess Sart was a village Coinshot. Whoops. My mistake.

How would the doc be spoiled if the dead players aren't allowed to communicate with the living ones? I mean, 1) once an eliminator gets in there, they know the identities of all of their teammates (and still have access to the doc though they can't talk in it), so that's being spoiled. And 2) dead and living players do talk in OOG PMs, and there's no rule that says a living player can't rant to a dead or spectating player about a game, as long as the dead player doesn't comment. I've done that. I'm doing it with Wilson right now, for both of the current games. Oh, and 3) eventually GMs are usually tempted to spoil the doc for one reason or another. But even without that, once enough players have died they can usually start piecing together the puzzle. No minimum; only majority. You could do it with one if you really wanted. Ah, perfect. Given that this is a QF, that's probably best. This ability is meant to solve the problem in the case that all Mordor players want to perform a role action and not do the killing. It isn't required to that the LoM authorize every kill as long as there's no conflict. I'll clarify that in the next draft. I mean... okay. I still see it as an essentially redundant role (if that were the case in the normal course of things, the team would just pick the person for whom the role action is least necessary, or if every singly one was necessary there just wouldn't be a kill), but meh. I do highly suggest going to read an evil doc if you haven't, but it wouldn't do any harm to wait until MR15 finishes and read those. Okay, I'll authorize OOG PMs. The other thing I wanted to say about this... There are players here who have been in essentially constant OOG conversation for two years. While they could stop for a game, there's really no reason for them to, and it's not like they'll be talking about the game anyway. OOG PMs are by definition out of game. So you don't have control over them, to authorize them or not. If there's a problem, the impartial mod and the GM will handle it. Far as I'm aware there hasn't yet been a problem caused by OOG PMs, though. (Closest analogy is SE players who know each other in real life.) We trust everyone to exercise common sense, and it works out. Since there's limited space on the Mordor team, there's actually a pretty good chance they don't get one. Sure. Probably best not to say anything more about the evil team distribution, though. More fun to keep it a surprise. The blocked/failed kill thing: It's fine, but I could say it in fewer words. "If the Guard successfully protects from a kill, the guard will be notified but not the target, and it will not appear in the writeup." "If the Mordorians attack an Outlaw using their ability, the kill will not appear in the writeup and the Mordorians will be notified that their target was not at home." That's really all you need. And I'd recommend putting them in the Outlaw and Guard roles (the second could also potentially go with the Mordor bit) rather than their own separate spoiler. It's a good sign that I've already gotten to just correcting semantics with you. It's a good game, and I shall be excited to play it. Regarding blocked and failed kills? I'd actually recommend that the Outlaw ability comes before Guarding, so that the Guard doesn't get notified that there was a kill, just that his/her target wasn't home. That makes more sense to me. With unsubmitted kills, I wouldn't give them the leeway of the writeup, personally. It's a lot easier to just cut everyone off at a specific time. And that way you don't have to change the writeup halfway through writing it. You don't want to have to do that. Trust me. It's not fun. Oh, also, would this game be role madness? (i.e. everyone has a role other than vanilla villager) Ah, excellent! That sounds fine to me. And it gets rid of some of my previous points, but I'm not going to go through and take them out. Just ignore them. (And you don't have to @ me. It's redundant.) Great. On to the next. For mine, before you ask, yes, the player who is defended by the Guardian is notified that they were attacked, but their name DOES NOT show up in the write-up. Excellent. Does the fact that there was an attack at all show up? Any number of Highprinces (excluding the Highprinces of War and Information) may be Parshendi. However, if a Parshendi Highprince is scanned, their role will appear to be “Disguiser” instead of “Highprince of X”. Nice. So it's not revealed what highprince they're imitating? Would it be revealed in the writeup? Shardblade Night action. Odd-numbered cycles only. Choose a player to unblockably kill. The body cannot be autopsied. (In turn order, this will be immediately after the eliminator kill.) Question. Why is this unblockable? (Not saying it shouldn't be. Just asking.) Also, while you can make it only odd-numbered cycles, another way would be that it takes a cycle cooldown, so you can only make it every other cycle. You don't have to, but that's an option. Iron Sword Night action. Choose a player to protect. If that player is attacked, you will protect them and kill the attacker but die yourself. The Assassin won’t be deterred and will just kill you. That's a good item, but remember to have very few of these in the game. (LG4 had one and it caused problems. To be fair, there was good reason for that, and LG4 had more than that as a problem, but still.) Can you self-target? Modern Medicine Passive ability. If you are killed at night while you possess Modern Medicine, you will take much longer to die and may continue to post and vote until the Day Turn is over. This ability does stack with multiple Modern Medicines; each grants you 1 more turn to live. I like this. Government Certificate One-use item. Night action. The following day, you gain the power to vote twice. You may vote twice for the same person or once each for two different people. Is this voting publicly in thread, or is one of the votes private? (If both votes are public, I know from experience that this is going to be very rarely used except maybe by eliminators pulling a hammer. Particularly since you have to know the night before that you'll want to vote twice.) Simple Medicine Passive ability. If you are killed while you possess Simple Medicine, you will take longer to die, so your Death Rattle may be longer (up to 150 characters including spaces instead of 50 characters including spaces). This ability does stack with multiple Simple Medicines; each grants you 100 extra characters including spaces. Ooh. I quite like that. It's not very useful in the sense that while more than 50 characters may allow you to make youre point more eloquently, anything you really want to say can probably be done in fifty characters. But I like it. Nimbleform Rooftop to Rooftop: Night action. Choose a player. You will spy on that player from the rooftops, learning what action they performed and all targets of that action. You will not learn the results of that action. ...I can't tell if that's OP or not. On the one hand, you're essentially learning your target's role/item (how specific is what you learn? Is it "Wilson killed Elbereth" or "Wilson used a Shardblade on Elbereth"?) and who they targeted with it. On the other hand, the eliminators might need that... hm. Not sure. - The Day Turn is when the lynch and some actions (denoted by the text “Day action”) take place. A player requires three votes to be lynched. Interesting. That might be a little high (most games only require two), but given the voting patterns recently it might not be a problem. So that's probably fine. Just prepare for a couple days of no lynch, potentially. Also, when it gets into late game, if it's a really close game, there might not be enough for three votes on a single person, either because people can't agree or because there aren't enough people. (LG16 got down to three people, after all. And that was decided by one person's vote.) - No game-related PMs between two living players or a living player and a dead player are permitted. Game-related PMs between multiple dead players are permitted. See what I said above to Elenion. Essentially, this bit isn't necessary. Players will exercise their good judgement, and everything will be fine. I wanted to leave the door open for myself if I wanted to make a kill item, but it looks like at this point it'll just be used for the eliminator kill. Yep, pretty much. 12% is good, then. Highprince of War definitely needs to be Alethi, since he's the one reliable way to kill the Assassin other than a lynch. As for Highprince of Information, I just added a Parshendi role that learns actions, if you scroll up to the previous post. Which isn't the same thing as learning roles, since items exist. So the Parshendi still can't replicate it. Also, remember that the Assassin will kill any defense roles blocking their target as well as the target, so mayoring would be a really bad idea for the Alethi, unless they want the InfoPrince to turn up dead the next day along with 2 Guardians and 4 other villagers defending him with their swords. Now. This I had forgotten about. This helps a lot, although there's always the worry fo the Assassin dying early. But still. That does make things a good deal better. I'm thinking an item award at the beginning of each day cycle, awarded at the GM's discretion. (The same player won't get it more than once unless everyone else who has been roleplaying has already received an item award.) Hm. I don't like that as much, because it turns it into a competition between RPers, rather than a reward that anyone can get, as many a cycle as RP. If it were random among people who had RPed, maybe? But just having the GM pick feels too much like favoritism. Also, this doesn't encourage people to continue RPing, just to RP until they get the prize and then stop.

Everyone claimed early on (as in, N0). I claimed Coinshot, he claimed Smoker. Far as I know (since he obviously didn't start out as the inquisitor), that's the truth.

This is all of my comments from everything before my last post. There are redundancies, sorry. Comments on everything after will come later. Right. More things about Elenion's game: Jailors. You currently have them as Gondor-only. On the one hand, it'd be interesting to have them as a role that the prisoners know is good but also want to kill. On the other... well. What I see happening is that the prisoners reveal the identity of the Jailor (which five or so people can confirm), and boom, confirmed good role. The prisoners might want him dead, sure, but voting isn't as important as a confirmed good role. (Does this game have PMs? I don't remember if you've clarified that already...) The most important thing a player can do isn't vote, it's add their voice to the thread. Which they can do regardless of whether the Jailor's alive or not. So, basically, confirmed good role. I don't suggest that. Secondly, kind of related - concern about the prisoners. If they don't know the identity of the Jailor (or even if they do), I think they might not have much interest in playing the game. They can't do anything, not even vote (and if they're a village prisoner, they probably won't want to vote, because that'd just obfuscate the result - they'd probably just reveal that they're a prisoner and then use a different color to show who they would vote for if they could), and that's not as fun. And discouragement from playing in the games is never a good idea. Outlaws - I don't think that the Mordorians are going to be as concerned as you think they are about the release of the outlaws. It makes the game less chaotic due to knowing how the vote will turn out, which is kind of a bad thing to them, but that kind of detect isn't a huge problem for eliminators. Particularly when it's only once per game. You would have to be a very lucky guesser to use your power when you get attacked, and even then you aren't informed if you were attacked, correct? So if multiple Outlaws used their power (or the Mordorians don't attack for some other reason), it might be hard to tell who's the Mordorian. So I see that coming into play maybe once in the game. Maybe. If the prisoners' votes only count against the Jailor (and they're not confirmed good), it's pretty easy to see what will happen. D1, every prisoner votes on the Jailor, Jailor dies, everyone is free. Yay... Ecthelion's LG: Incorrect. Autopsy can be used on anyone who died last turn, except someone killed by the Assassin. No, but what I mean is... there isn't anyone else but that, essentially. There aren't any other kill roles. Except the Highprince of War, I guess? But essentially other than that one instance, there's virtually no reason that Autopsy will ever be used on anything but the eliminator kill. Maybe I'll do it so you don't have to send one in every night, but if you don't, it'll be the last one you submitted. That way you're not submitting the same one over and over and over again if that happens to be the case. I like that. That works very well. Foreign Affairs was confirmed good because it would be practically worthless for a Parshendi. It's most elemental use is escaping the Parshendi, but if you are a Parshendi, it's not doing you much good. Well, sure, but I can think of a few reasons a Parshendi could want that. If there's an item kill role, they could be escaping that. Or Highprince of Information, or Pickpocket, or whatever else. There are plenty of reasons the Parshendi could find it useful. Okay. I still think that the Highprince of Information (and Highprince of War) should be Alethi-only roles, but for the sake of gameplay over theme I might have to permit Parshendi spies into the other roles. Highprince of War can be confirmed good if you like, I suppose, but I still kinda disagree with Highprince of Information. There's absolutely no way for the Parshendi to pull a fake-Seeker gambit (because Information reveals roles as well as alignments), so the Highprince will be confirmed pretty fast. Less of an issue if you don't limit the possible number of Parshendi highprinces, though, so it's never quite certain whether all of the rest are cleared or not. Overall, it sounds like the game is too village-balanced. Time to come up with some more powerful evil roles! Mwahahahaha... That would certainly help. Would it be all right if I added an item bonus for good roleplaying? Roleplaying incentives are always great. Now. You do have to be careful, because "good roleplaying" is a vague term. How much roleplaying do you have to do to get the bonus? Is it a bonus only granted at the start of the game, or every cycle you RP? Etc. But I love the idea. Right, I believe I'm caught up for now. Can't wait to see the next iterations.

Right, Elenion's game. First off, I like that it's a QF now. I think that fits much better. The Mordor team get a kill every cycle, submitted as an action by one of their players, and win if they outnumber the remaining Gondor players. The Mordor faction also gets their own doc to scheme in. Gondor players, of course, are not permitted in the doc, but dead players will be provided with the link upon request through PM. While you can certainly do this if you'd like, GMs have generally found that it's easiest (and most fun) to make a separate doc for all of the dead to talk in (sometimes combined with the doc for the spectators to talk). And that way as long as an eliminator hasn't died (or even if one has, sometimes), the doc isn't spoiled, which makes things much more fun for the GM. Each cycle, the players as a group chose one player to lynch. The lynch is decided by voting in the active thread. A tied lynch will result in the kill being made at random among the players tied for the lead. This choice will me made with a die roll, RNG, or other impartial method. While you're clarifying the lynch, might as well do them all: How many votes does it take to lynch a player? A player who does not post for 72 straight hours (3 cycles) will be killed. Should a player wish to lurk without posting, a PM sent to the GM to that regard will count as a post for this requirement, but one must still be sent at least every 72 hours. Ah, nice, an inactivity filter. Good idea. Haven't had one of those in a couple games. Side note about the generic stuff like this - if you haven't already, I'd highly suggest going back and looking at some past games for an idea of what's assumed and what isn't. (For instance, everyone knows that turnover is the break between cycles. You don't need to explain that. And if someone's new and doesn't know, they can just ask.) Wyrm's games are excellent examples for that kind of thing, as I recall. Authority of Mordor (passive): The Lieutenant chooses who in the Mordor doc must submit the Mordor kill as their action. The chosen player cannot submit another action and counts as visiting the target player's house. Same question as last time: what if the lieutenant is inactive or dies? Observe (active): The Lieutenant of Mordor may learn the role and alignment of a player. This counts as visiting the player's house. The role and alignment will be revealed at the same time as the Steward's action, and will also be in a PM. Ah, very nice. Yay for evil Seekers. (I'm a little concerned about the Steward being confirmed good, but not nearly as much. Particularly with this thrown in as well. And the fact that it's a QF. Should be fine.) Guard's Training (active): Each night cycle, the Citadel Guard may choose a player to protect (using a PM to the GM). That player is protected from the Mordor kill, but not from any lynching and not from the Noblemen's kill (see Nobleman, below). The guard is notified if he defended from an attack, but does not learn the identity of any of the attackers. The guard's action counts as visiting that player's house. Is the attacked player notified if they were attacked? (For that matter, does their name show up in the writeup?) Publish (triggered): After the Scribe dies, he/she may make one post in the thread. It may not contain more than 100 characters and may not contain a vote. Nice. Might want to add that they don't gain access to the dead doc until they post that. (And I might suggest having them send the message to you and you posting it instead? That way you can make sure they're fine to post.) Jailor: Gondor only Jail (passive): The Jailor has no ability in and of himself except to keep the prisoners locked up (see Prisoner). Why is this role Gondor only? Mordor Jailor could be interesting. EDIT: Actually... I don't know. More thoughts about this to come later. I'm Free! (triggered): When the Jailor is killed, prisoners lose their special condition and instead gain the ability of an Outlaw. Nice. I like that. I'm afraid players (especially new ones since this is a QF) might be tempted to drop hints over the PM. Should I remove that note? Especially since it's a QF? Actually... only 26 of the 175 people who've ever played SE have joined in QFs. They're much more likely to join for LGs than anything else, I think, because people will advertise for them outside SE more often if there aren't enough numbers. Plus LGs are generally just larger. And new players are fairly rare. There've been plenty of games where no one new joined at all. So you don't have to worry much about that. Besides, you're a new player and you know better, obviously. People have common sense. We can probably trust them not to use OOG PMs to talk about the game. (Particularly any that are eliminators. They'll realize very quickly that talking about the game is a bad idea. ) The Mordor guard (If they even get one; there might not even be one since space on Mordor would be limited) would be useful for WGGs. About the noblemen's kill, see below. Sure. But at the same time, they're essentially a vanilla role unless the team does decide to pull a WGG. That said, I don't think you should change it. More uncertainty is a good thing. Basically what the noblemen have is a nuke. The Mordor characters of course would want to use such a weapon against a protected character, but they won't start with a majority in the doc. Basically their role is to be a battleground: players on the doc don't want to reveal their names because they will then be targets of a Mordor faction who wants the ultimate weapon once their leader identifies the Steward. Inversely, the Noblemen (well, most) will want to use their ability on someone allied with Mordor, and early enough that Mordor can't control it. Nice. I think I like it. (I say 'I think' because something in there about your assumptions of what would happen is bothering me. No idea what, though, so I'll have to think about it.) I've a few more comments about the Outlaws but must leave now. I'll try to find a moment to post that and my comments about Ecthelion's LG this afternoon.

Mm... I mean, Mek counted the retraction after turnover last time. I'd say that probably, everything counts until he posts that the cycle is over. Maybe. And this is probably actually my last post of the day. Bye!

Yep, here. And I don't want it so much that I will vote for myself. Sorry. (Particularly because I've seen too many lynches for information that ended up useless because no one else actually went and figured out that information. And because I personally don't think that information is worth more than me continuing to help the village while I'm alive.) I can vote for my scan in the senate, if you'd like that, and then it'd just take one person to shift it over to me. No interest in suicide today, though.

Hm. While I am indeed active this game (though it still feels less active than I'm used to), I'm not... focused on it? That's not quite the right way to describe it. I'm not keeping track of what's going on as much as I'd like to be. So I haven't really developed any new suspicions. Thus the tunnel on Aman. As for a scan or even a lynch on me, I'm beginning to think that might be the best option. I don't want to die, but my death/scan would give everyone a lot of information. (As long as you use it...) And given that we're currently lynching Maill because... not much reason at all? I mean, I'm fine with it (and there are a couple of things that have struck me as maybe eliminator comments - the "Why are we lynching inactives again?" thing about Con, and... something else.), but why the storms is he any more suspicious than I am? That doesn't make sense to me. Also, I'll be gone for basically the rest of the day up until turnover (and potentially beyond that as well). Sorry.

Uh... yeah, I would. I mean, there have been a lot of outed eliminators in recent games, but that's at least partly because it's fun. Maybe if I'd been a revealed eliminator before, I wouldn't do it, just to do things differently, but my first time? I will definitely be revealing when I get the chance. Other note - Today I have a lot going on (working with horses and then practice with a chamber music ensemble and then either contradancing or observing for my internship all night... It's going to be a long day.), so I can't promise to be on again before turnover. Apologies.

Whee, longish post! I'm kind of amused that I'm currently going over four other people's games to help them out. Two here, one in PMs, and one I've recently become the co-GM for (yay!). So that's fun. Note: I will be using bold instead of quotes, because... well... you'll remember how well quotes turned out for me last time. I have no desire to repeat that experience whatsoever. First off, thank you so much for taking the time to review this. It’s a lot to read! It’s good to know that the GMing list isn’t actually that long. Speaking of which, what format would you recommend this as: LG or MR? You're very welcome. And it's fun. At the moment... I'd say it's straddling between LG and MR. Could be either. Maybe MR, but I'm mostly saying that because it's still more village-balanced (and I suspect it will still be slightly in its final form) and village-balanced MRs are much better than having village-balanced LGs. Items might bring this into more LG territory, though. · I can’t say much about the Assassin, it being the wild card role. There are some secret shenanigans going on behind the scenes. Secret roles are fun. You'll want to go over that with whoever your mod turns out to be when you run the game, to make sure it's balanced, but I won't say any more about it, then. · I made the images because my role list was looking like a hard-to-read wall of text, but I can transcribe them if that will be an issue. It shouldn't be, not if I can see them on my tablet. Haven't checked in the mobile version, but I'm guessing your fine. (And it probably wouldn't be a hard-to-read wall of text, or at least... not that bad. Go look at LG18's rules, and then decide whether this would be a textwall. ) · This is an action you take (since it’s limit 2 times, it can’t be a passive ability). It’s similar to the Merchant in MR15, but the targeting player will receive the message “You could not kill the target because they were not home” or something like that. Sure. Essentially my question was more like "will the person targeting them know that the person they targeted is indubitably the Highprince?", to which the answer I have realized is yes, since there are no more roleblock/etc roles. So that's a consideration to be taken into account - basically another role that can be confirmed. · Highprince of Information—thanks for the input, I’ve never designed an investigation role before. I’ll think about alternatives. Also, if a role has 2 actions, you can only perform 1 per cycle. Sorry, I didn’t clarify. I don’t see any reason why not to have actions in the day, but if that’s standard procedure I’ll take that into consideration. Well, the basic reasoning for that is pretty much that it's easier. In particular, the one-action-per-cycle thing is easier to handle if most or all of the roles take place at the same time. And this way the scanner can be roleblocked and manipulated or whatever. · Is Private Investigation fine, or does that need work as well? It's essentially a traditional scanning role. I'm of the opinion that it's fine in general. In this game? Not sure. Scanning roles are very advantageous to the village. Pretty sure that at this point the village does not need that extra advantage. It's okay, though. · I got Highprince of Law kind of from Town of Salem’s Jailor. Yeah. Probably where Gamma got it from as well (in LG22/LG6). I like it. · I was considering lowering the % chance for Autopsy to 15%, maybe 10%. What percentage do you think is balanced? 15 or 10 would be nice. 10, probably... If it's a LG definitely ten. Hm. As you have it at the moment (you may put in an item kill role, I don't know - speaking of items, if you want ideas for potential flavortext names for them check out LG20), the only thing that the Autopsy can affect is the eliminator kill, correct? · I was wondering if Stormform was balanced. Thanks! In this game? Stormform is definitely balanced. · Is Sentinel too powerful? Hm. Possibly a bit. It's two different powers, essentially. One is whether your target took a night action and one is who targeted your target. Both of them together are a little OP. By themselves they wouldn't be as bad. · The PM is not perpetual, it only lasts for the turn. Though if you want you can strike up another PM with the same person next Day turn. And to make sure, the PM can only be between two people, correct? And one of them must be the Scribe? And does it last for the turn (i.e. only the day) or the cycle (i.e. the day and the next night)? · Each player starts with a random item, with maybe 3 or 4 players getting Rare items and only 1 (or possibly rarely 2) getting an Epic. Keep in mind that Epic items are taken by the person who makes the kill. Items cannot be passed with an action. Each player does only get one action per cycle, though, and many items will require an action to use. Right. That'll be fine, then, pending the items. · I intended for death rattles to be very short so you could only pass the most important information on after you die. Do you think it’s tedious to have to submit every night? Hm. I mean... the way that it was done in LG20 is that if you submitted your death cry within the next turn after you were killed (and before you were given the link to the dead doc, of course), the GM posted it then, separate from the writeup. And that way they didn't have to send one in every night. I kinda like how you have it, though, so they have to send one in every time. Requires people to be paying attention and such. Your choice. · What do you mean by “village-balanced”? Ah. Good question. Basically, in the ideal game, if you played it over and over again, villagers win 50% of the time and eliminators win the other 50%. That's perfectly balanced. The idea is to get it so that both sides have a good chance of winning. Village-balanced means that the chance for the villagers to win is higher than the chance for the eliminators to win. In the previous iteration of your game, I'd say it's about 90-10 in the village's favor. Maybe 95-5. Now with your changes it's better, though still somewhat village-balanced. I'd say 70-30? Not sure yet. Haven't thought through all of the changes. What are your thoughts on the Pickpocket? Hm. I mean... hard to say. It'll depend on the items and how they work. It does rather remind me of the Thief in LG5/LG20, which ended up being almost a neutral role instead of village-aligned (and in the rerun it was made into a neutral role), but that was slightly different for... reasons. >> Um, by itself it seems like it could be OP pretty fast, although the one-action limit and items having actions should be helpful. Not sure. It'll be easier to tell when you figure out the items. How many Parshendi would you recommend having? Ooh, tricky question. Generally, the ratio of eliminators to villagers is either the square root of the number of players, or about 15-25% of the number of players (which can end up being about the same anyway, depending on player numbers). Given that this game is fairly village-balanced, I'd recommend on the high end of a reasonable number. But it'll also depend on the number of players you get. So. That's not something you'll have to deal with for a while, anyway. Not until you're actually distributing the game. Right. This looks a lot better. Everything's great, except. I'm still worried about village-aligned Highprinces. Because if that one Parshendi highprince dies early, you have nine (or even 4 or 5) suddenly confirmed good roles, many of whom can prove themselves. This is... not a good thing. At all. Even with limited PMs. That's the thing that breaks this game, in my opinion. And really, what happens? The Highprince of Information (who is still confirmed good) reveals him/herself and gets protection, proves their role by scanning one or two people, and then goes through the highprinces one by one until they get to the Parshendi. Who is then killed in short order and the rest are automatically cleared. You can see how that could be problematic. And why is Foreign Affairs a confirmed good role as well? Not sure I see the logic there. Oh, can someone have more than one role? Other than that, it looks like a great game, though. Elenion, will do yours in the morning (maybe - I'm rather busy tomorrow, but I promise to get it done at some point). For the moment, I should really go to bed...

Will comment again, on both, when I have time. (And you don't have to @ me. I'll see it regardless. )

First off, I don't agree with this mindset at all. You should be posting games as soon as you come in, if you want to. (And more people do than you'd think.) If you want help, you can always ask for a co-GM or have your impartial mod help when you actually run it. Second, the list isn't as long as you think it is - the number of passes make it likely to be more like eleven or twelve games before we reach the end of the current list. Still a while, though. Second, some questions. And comments. And stuff. Parshendi - do they have a group kill and a doc to plot in? That's fairly standard but it should proabbly be clarified anyway. Assassin's cool. I like that. Sounds like it's going to be a variation on a SK or possibly Odium from LG21 (with the equivalent of Shards being Highprinces), but there's some nice uncertainty there. I really like the format for the highprince roles and such, but I'm also a little worried that the images aren't going to show up for some people. Highprince of Commerce is quite a cool role. By "background" ability you probably mean passive, I'm guessing. Highprince of Finance - I assume that "3 times" is three times per game? Other than that, I quite like it. Highprince of Foreign Affairs - so just to make sure, this is an action you take, it's not automatic? And if that's the case, how does that show up to anyone targeting them? Are they just told the action failed, or that they were blocked, or something else? Uh... Highprince of Information. This one I have problems with. So. First off, can you do both actions? Second, why is it a day action? I don't have any particular problem with that, but in general (MR15 is an exception here) everything except the lynch and vote manipulation happens at night. This deserves its own point, although I'm still talking about Highprince of Information... Public Investigation. This essentially allows you to get a GM-confirmed good player every single turn. This is a bad idea. So, you might have noticed how I was concerned about the Korathi Acolyte being able to essentially clear him/herself to one person every night turn. And that's a minor thing, but if Aman had it instead of Straw it could very well be a problem. Invite someone into the doc, have that person confirm him (or two people or whatever), then ask publicly for protection and be essentially untouchable for the rest of the game. It's worse with PMs. That's the thing that broke LG4, for instance. One GM-confirmed innocent can coordinate the entire village and gather all of the information (generally referred to as being a dictator or Mayoring), which makes things ridiculously difficult for the eliminators. So you can see why I'm mildly concerned about a GM-confirmed good player every turn, hmm? Highprince of Judiciary Admission is actually quite cool. Oh, something just occurred to me. Can Parshendi be highprinces? Because if not there could be problems with the same confirmation stuff I talked about above. Highprince of Food calls that there'll be a feast night ahead of time? Confirmed. Highprince of Domestic Affairs calls who the extra vote'll be on before the end of the night turn? Confirmed. Highprince of Judiciary Admission has the same problem as the Korathi Acolyte. Etc. So if Parshendi can't be highprinces, I'd highly recommend changing that, even though I know it doesn't fit as well flavorwise. Highprince of Law is nice. I always liked that mechanic with the Whitecloaks. Autopsy for Highprince of Research seems a little strong. That's a good chance of revealing at least one eliminator over the game, basically guaranteed.' Just to make sure, Highprince of War only kills the Assassin, right? I like that. Stormform's great. Sentinel is interesting. I don't remember seeing that variation before, although Assassin from MR10 might be close. Ooh. I like Informant. Quite a lot, actually. For the Spanreed - Is the PM perpetual or only one turn? And if perpetual, can you create more PMs while the first is still going? I'm supposed to be doing something else, so I won't look closely at the order of actions, but I think it's fine. Items: Will each player start with at least one item? Can items be passed? Does that take an action? (For that matter, is everyone limited to only one action?) Mm. Death rattles. Death rattles are my favorite thing. 50 characters is so short... Probably a good length, honestly. I just don't like being brief, and I had trouble with 200 characters in LG20. Most people would only be putting information, though, not fluff about twilight and death and Wilson being the paragon of light and good (oops...) and such. Okay, don't have much time, but in general I really like the roles and such of the game. It's currently very village-balanced, though. But I would love to play this. So many fun roles. Great game!

I don't know whether Straw would listen, but we could try. Although I'm not sure why you're having the Senators specifically choose who goes into the doc. Why are our opinions any more important than yours? As for a trustworthy target... I mean. I don't really care for inviting people who are already Senators because they already have a doc to talk in. I'd rather give it to someone else. Problem is that there isn't anyone who isn't a Senator who's even semi-cleared at the moment, that I can think of. At this point, though (assuming Eol confirms), I highly doubt that Straw's an eliminator. That would require outing two teammates of his, so that if he ever died they'd go down with him, plus the possibility of the real Korathi Acolyte or one of the people they've invited outing him. Could pass that off as there being two acolytes, but really? They're a confirmed good role who can prove that to others. I really don't think there are two. So in my mind, Straw and Cloud are the most cleared members of the game. (To everyone else, obviously Straw would be the more cleared.)

Ooh. No outed eliminator this game. That's different. Suppose it's worth it to lynch a village Coinshot who you can't convert or control anymore, though. Regarding voting on Dow - Same thing I was just saying about Meta over in MR15. Sure, the lynch this game is volatile (although it's not that much worses than usual), but enough to lynch a basically inactive player with one vote on him? Uh. No. I don't buy that. The entire thing about this game is that the lynch is completely focused around active players who could be dangerous just because they're in another faction. Dow does not qualify. And shame on you, trying to take responsibility for my kills. My kill role. Um. I jumped on the point that he was killed by a Coinshot because I'm the Coinshot that killed him? Don't really see how that's a valid point.

That's... actually a really plausible explanation right there. That wouldn't surprise me at all. Elenion, can you clarify what you mean in that last post? I don't know what you're trying to say.