Elbereth
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Mid-Range Game 13: Treachery on the Terris Peaks
Elbereth replied to Elbereth's topic in Sanderson Elimination
So, thoughts on MR13, finally. Companions. This... well. Confirmed good roles are troublesome. This game was partly created from an effort to balance publicly known, confirmed good roles. This... kind of worked? I'd actually originally meant to put in protection, as Joe mentioned, but if I did that I think I wouldn't allow the Companions any PMs at all. That'd be the biggest change I'd make in a rerun of this game. The reason the Companions got so out of hand, and the reason why the eliminators chose to kill them immediately even though they didn't count towards the win con, was the PM coordination they could do. Now, Rae was killed immediately, so we didn't get to see much of her take on Companionship. However, Mark was around for a while, and... well, as you'll see if you read the spec doc, he got a bit dictator-like near the end. And Mayor games are no fun. On the other hand, it's not entirely his fault. That was what he felt he was supposed to do, and no one called him on it. Guys. The point of the game is to have fun. That's literally the only reason we do these things. If you're not having fun, the game's not worth playing. So if you were uncomfortable about doing what Mark told you to do? That's fine! Don't do it! Just because he's confirmed good doesn't mean he will always do exactly the right thing and make the right calls. As a corollary to that. A few of you suggested you'd be perfectly willing to follow whatever the Companions voted. Now. Why is that? Why are their opinions any more important than your own? Yes, the Companions are confirmed good. So are you. Your judgement is just as important, if not more important, than the Companions'. Confirmed good does not mean confirmed right. And final point on that topic: So, Mark trusted Burnt and Luckat. Therefore, even though he gave absolutely no reasoning for that nor indication that he had solid reasoning, you trusted them. And then, even though Burnt gave absolutely no reasoning for trusting Joe (nor indication that she had trusted Joe except in the fact that he had her information), you trusted him. In most cases, you trusted him quite a lot. Which... You trusted someone that the person who the confirmed good had trusted, had trusted. Which is a bit of a stretch, no? Confirmed good does not mean confirmed right. Okay, on to other things. If I were to rerun this, I'd take out Feruchemy. Maybe completely, maybe just one role per person. I'm not sure. But the reasoning for this is that it's just too complicated, and the main idea behind this game is the Companions. Not the environmental phenomena, not the Feruchemy. And those things really distracted from the main point, I think. In addition to that, the Feruchemy made this ridiculously difficult to balance. Speaking of balance. This was difficult for obvious reasons, partly because I wasn't sure how the Feruchemy would be handled, partly because I didn't know how people would react to the Companions. And I didn't do a great job, obviously, or we wouldn't have had a perfect sweep from the eliminators. I think I gave the eliminator team a bit too much in the way of strategy-thinking, and unlimited access to pewter. Together, those two things were just too much, particularly since almost no one used bronze to counter that pewter. If I reran this, I'm not sure whether I would have more Companions or not. I considered having four for a while, and in this setup that would have been a problem, probably. Without them being able to PM at all, it might not. I'm not sure. But overall, the balance was just too complicated to be able to do effectively, I think. Particularly for my first game. Won't be doing that again. All that said, excellent job to all the players! You all did very well, particularly the eliminator team. Clean sweeps are rare enough, and you managed to do it in a game with publicly confirmed safe roles! Nicely done. Shoutout also goes to Twei, for being an awesome co-GM and rolling up all the results for me so I didn't have to deal with that, and doing writeups when I couldn't. The writeups were particularly enjoyable for me (mostly... that chicken one was a bit disturbing), although I do regret that I decided to actually write them before posting instead of just posting the results so you could start discussing right at turnover. As a storyteller, I wanted to keep the surprise there, but it does disadvantage you. That's something I learned from the game. I'm sad that there wasn't ever a Landslide. Sometime I'll have to make another game that includes that mechanic, because it would be really fun to see play out. Ah well. In conclusion, I loved GMing this game (particularly the writeups), I hope you all enjoyed playing, and I'll see you in the next one! And of course... Tindomë stumbled out of the bushes where she'd hidden as the traitors had emerged from the mountain. They were gone now, long gone, but their faces were still there in her mind. Jonly, Dyfwyl, Kholwa. And then last, Talion, proudest and most terrible of them all. Each godlike, radiating power. She shivered at the thought of Talion's face, seeming utterly alien, but moved slowly to the cave entrance. She was alone, with barely enough food for a couple of days. She couldn't go back, now, anyway, even if she could make it that far in her weakened condition. They'd kill her if they found out she was still alive. So she entered the mouth of the mountain, hoping for something, anything, to get her away from here. She eventually came to the cavern and the pool. It wasn't very full, she saw. But perhaps... perhaps it had enough power. She didn't want much. Just enough to get away. She knelt carefully at the edge of the pool, reaching her hands into the stuff. Then she concentrated, ignoring the thought of Talion and his companions, ignoring everything but one thought. Away. With a yelp, she overbalanced and fell into the pool. She sank into it slowly, away, away, away, and then... something happened. She felt it. And then she was lying on cold, hard ground, somewhere else. When she finally managed to look up, she froze in wonder. She was on another world. To be continued... -
Well. This isn't great. We have to worry about conversions again. Which is irritating. On the other hand, no more last minute vote changes! That's nice, at least. Ryuk/Rem/Holders will have to actually provide evidence and such in order to control the lynch. Hopefully, we can actually catch them. The old-fashioned way, with discussion. EDIT: I'm going to be gone for a good deal of tomorrow, by the way. Maybe a bit of time in the morning, but it's very likely that I won't be around until around four hours before turnover. I have a math competition. Woo...
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...Well, I would like to not die twice within two hours, yeah. But also, I really don't want a last minute vote frenzy. Those are not useful in showing the opinions of anyone but you, or generating discussion. Plus they're not fun for Alv. And, to a lesser extent (since we do only have 20 minutes left in the day now), it's unfair to the people who aren't on at turnover. So let's not, okay?
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Yeah. But why? He never really explained that. And at the moment, it's the best I've got. If you have a better suggestion, go ahead and put it forward.
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Guys. If we want to avoid a stupid last-minute-vote frenzy again, then we have to actually establish a solid lynch. Before the game gets down to ten minutes left, preferably. So... Mark. Sorry. But I don’t have anything better, and you never actually explained why you were voting for me or why you thought it was either me or Burnt in the first place. Anyone mind joining me, so Joe doesn't control again?
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I will start anywhere but Scadrial. Reasoning will become clear shortly. I hope.
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Yeah, I was confused because I had no idea what Maill was talking about, and the only things I could think about didn't make much sense. I still don't know, actually. He never told me. I'll have to wait until after the game to ask, I guess. My reasoning behind the speed thing was that it sounded like something he'd come up with before the game started. If it were a plan he developed with Rem, I'd think it'd take a bit longer to figure out all the details than that. But that's a good point that I did basically say "Here's all the reasons it'd benefit a Holder! I think he's a civilian!". And... well, yes, the plan does benefit a risky Holder (although as we know now, he was a civilian at that point anyway). But it benefits the village a lot more, in my opinion. And part of my trust for him was just gut, too. Sorry if that was unclear. This is indeed true. It does balance out a bit more because there's more of a chance of a conversion failing than a kill (or there was. I'm not sure about anymore, with the number of police that have died...). But yes, conversions are bad. That's why I've been advocating for Joe not dying this whole time. Yes. Yes, it definitely does. Nice job! Ripple, I apologize. I didn't even check because I was so sure you hadn't posted. Oops... EDIT: Stupid formatting...
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Yeah, sure. I keep notes of important posts too (when I have time to take notes, which I do not for both this game and LG20 with school, so I am not taking notes for this game, unforutnately). I just... eh. Whatever. I just don't think they're that useful to the thread becuase it's better to go back through the posts yourself so you can see them without bias.
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I think it's because Mark said it was a tossup between the two of us. He never actually explained why he thought that, though, so right now I'm just waiting for either (non-evil) person voting on me to explain their vote. For now, I'll poke Ripple, who hasn't posted recently, I don't think. I may change that to someone I actually think is suspicious later. Also, I'm now less certain that we shouldn't lynch Joe. He said that he hadn't contacted Ryuk yet, right? I don't know if that's trustworthy, but if it is it'd be better to lynch them and keep them out of contact. I'm not sure about this, though, so I won't vote there yet. Alias, my point was that the summaries by themselves aren't any good to anyone. I mixed mine with analysis, for Joe. If you're not going to do that, you might as well just say why you think I'm suspicious, referencing specific posts when you need to, rather than restating every single post. Glad to hear you were joking, though. I was slightly concerned.
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Wait. So, you're not voting on Hael because he's an R&R player and Ryuk's been killing those. (Although, of the R&R players who have died, Lopen's the only one Ryuk's killed, I think. Joe killed Maill and Meta both, and (probably) Luna killed Aman. So I'm not sure if that point stands.) But you're voting on me or Burnt... because we're somewhat R&R? As in, between the new players and the experienced ones? That logic doesn't make much sense to me. I'd actually tend to say that Rem would be fairly new, at least, and I think it's equally likely that Ryuk is an R&R or a newer player. Also, thanks so much for voting on me twice within 24 hours. I appreciate it. Alias, that's not analysis. That's summaries. And really, if you're not going to comment on the post, people might as well go back and read the posts themselves. Because summaries are going to be slightly biased, whatever you do, so it's better to read the original content. I summarized each post for Joe, yes, but that was in order to comment upon it without having to do a huge wall of quotes. And I only did that because he was known to be an eliminator. For a suspect, I'd just have done anything I found particularly relevant. (Obviously, this is my personal opinion, so if you disagree, feel free to ignore it. But I do feel that summaries without analysis are fairly useless.) The one comment you do make is that I called Alv "my lord". Which is definitely not alignment-indicative. I would have said exactly the same thing if I were evil. I follow the Lord of Shadows, you see. It's best not to anger him.
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It's night time? There aren't 5/6 eliminators anymore, though. Because two have died. So at most we have four eliminators left, out of 12. Which is still an uncomfortably close margin, but it's not like a we're-going-to-lose-tonight-if-we-don't-catch-one kind of thing. Unless both Shardblade wielders kill innocents and someone uses a Grandbow. And none of the four people have protection. And there are four eliminators left, and Kas isn't one of them. That's the only way the game could end tonight. That said, it is getting close. If we don't catch an eliminator soon, the game could end tomorrow or the following morning (game-time). Which is fun.
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...I'm glad you enjoyed it, Joe. Well, I was going to ask "what the heck, Hael?", but I think I get what you were doing. Not sure if that kind of last minute vote actually helps us figure out who's an eliminator, though. We need to have more votes thrown around than... what, two? Both by Hael? Before the end of day madness, anyway. Poor Alv, though.
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Um... It would be really nice not to have the lynch decided by a Holder for the third time in a row. So... Weaving Webs. Even lynching an inactive would be better than letting Joe decide. Not that I can do much unless someone gets on in the last 6 minutes... Trelagist, I see you viewing the thread. Care to join me?
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Oops. Burnt. Sorry.
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Well. Eventful turnover, to say the least. Thoughts: Luna was a SK. Obviously, she killed Aman (which makes sense, as I could definitely see a murderer choosing not to kill D1). I'm glad we managed to lynch her early, then, although Alv is sad about it. Joe's reaction to it seems somewhat forced, though. Maybe he knew she was the SK? Not sure. Joe isn't Ryuk's Holder. Storming secret roles... His actions do make somewhat more sense that way, I suppose. That way, Con didn't necessarily have to tell Joe that he was scanning someone else (HS, apparently?), for instance, in order for him to stay alive. Because Joe wasn't evil until D2, as I understand it. So we can't look at his C1 interactions for Ryuk, then. Or Rem, I guess. Hellscythe died. And he was a Holder. This is particularly interesting. At a guess, assuming Joe is telling the truth (and not just pulling this out of nowhere to convince people he's not Ryuk or something, which seems very unlikely), either Joe killed him (not knowing he was a Holder) or Ryuk killed his own holder in order to... Convert someone else, I guess? Maybe Joe? First option is more likely, in my opinion. So, this means that there will be one kill tonight (from Joe), since Ryuk's going to be converting. Which is fun. We'll have to reevaluate everyone tomorrow. And if we kill Joe today, we'll have to reevaluate again the next day. Which is why I'm still inclined to say we shouldn't lynch/kill Joe. Hellscythe has been a Holder since the beginning of the game, though, right? So we can look at his interactions all three cycles. Maybe I'll do that later, maybe not. Depends on how much school stuff I have to do. Cloud, you never answered my question about why you voted for Luna?
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I feel like it's a stretch too. But I don't have anything better. And in my view Macen and Kynedath are equally suspicious, so I'd rather put more pressure on Kynedath rather than just one vote on each.
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My comments about you, earlier this turn:
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It... hmm. It's possible, if they didn't have any items to start with and Maill was being a particularly egregious troll. The potential to get items from the killed does decrease the possibility a bit, but if you think about it that's only one item a night. 6 items is potentially only one per person (more likely some would have two, since it'd probably be a smaller team in this case), and accumulating over time instead of starting like that? I think it's certainly possible. Also, I'll join you, Nyali, since Kynedath and Burnt seem equally suspicious to me, and there's the thing I mentioned about assuming DC had Shardplate. Kynedath.
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Ah, okay. I will disagree, then. I can see that perspective, but in my opinion it's not helpful to actually winning. (Particularly - although I don't currently remember the exact timing - since if Kynedath was evil, I could definitely see Maill replacing him with Burnt.) And since it seems fairly likely that one of your trust group is evil (particularly since Lopen decided to out himself when he really didn't need to, from a thread perspective), Burnt. Macen, Sheep. (Because I forgot to retract the first time.)Also, yes, there have been games when free PMs do not create trust groups. LG16 never did, I don't think, although there were only PMs during the night (but then, this game's PMs are limited too). That definitely didn't really affect the game's outcome. AG2 did, and it wasn't made up of eliminators, but the eliminators won anyway. Pretty sure there was not much like a trust group in QF14, even though there were free PMs and alignment scanners. Pretty sure Kyn was around during the night? I can't remember for certain, though.
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And this is when I really wish I had thought to ask for a PM with Nyali last night... Right. So. I'm going to assume that you know what you're talking about, and those people who you said didn't perform the kill definitely didn't. Because I do trust you, although that seems like a lot of people to know the actions of (T1A actions, no less). Out of those three left, I'd say I trust Macen the least. Because I do trust Wilson, I think. (um... Other than the fact that I'm suddenly having flashbacks to trusting Meta in MR12, which is just a tad worrying.) Whereas Macen... I haven't talked with him in PMs, but I don't think he's said anything in thread that particularly shows his alignment either way. Can you explain what this means? I don't quite understad your point here.
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...Storm it. I knew that. Brain fart. Okay. Well, Nyali's still mostly clear in my mind, for the other reasons I stated. Mark is much less suspicious than I said, though. Did you hear that from me? Because if not, I can confirm that Alv didn't make the kill.EDIT: And yeah, Mark, I only got to around D4, right before the DC/Wilson duel. Planning to finish the rest before turnover today, though. I hope.
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Okay. Decided I'd try to do a bit of summary/analysis on Joe's posts, since I seem to be in an analyzing mood today. Day 1 Day 2 And that's everything up to today, which is entirely trolling. Comments on things said as I'm writing up this post: MR10. And... yeah, that is a good point. That was an unfortunate decision. I think it's different in this case, though, because we don't need to have the Holder die in order to win. Also, Aman was a Cook (kill role) in that game, which was kind of important. In this game, Joe doesn't have anything rolewise more than Ryuk. Unless secret roles, of course. Why Luna, in particular? Because of Joe's comments about her? I actually think exactly the opposite. Joe's useless as an info-gatherer or supporter to Ryuk now. All he can do is troll, basically. I would actually guess that Ryuk's one of the players voting on Joe right now. This actually makes me want to vote on you, LUNA. Since I don't think Joe should die, and if he has to, preferably to the murderers rather than the lynch.I don't trust him about the info, though. EDIT: Spoilered for length.
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Then that's why. He'll die tonight, unless he's talked to someone after me. Here we are: Okay. So I actually haven't finished rereading the thread ( ), but I got pretty far and I figured I should share my thoughts. Particularly as nothing else seems to be going on today... (In thread, at least.) Alv- I've got nothing. I haven't talked with him much in PMs, but from the thread I can't read anything out of his posts. Nyali - Mostly trust. The fact that she had a Shardblade and didn't use it at all is pretty near a hard-clear, plus the fact that she helped kill Lopen, and just hte tone of her posts. I probably trust her most of anyone. Kynedath - As mentioned, hasn't talked in forever. Fairly neutral here as well. Although this post stood out to me on a reread, because the first half basically assumed he could protect himself from the eliminator kill. Which only Shardplate can do. Since DC was innocent, I thought we couldn't draw anything from that, but Lopen was a spy, and it does make sense for DC to have been one of the first scans. Maybe not worth a lynch, but interesting. Wilson - Paranoid trust. Mostly due to PMs, partly tone, partly how open she's being. Partly, as Alv mentioned a while ago, for her fighting back. Plus she obviously had Shardplate from the beginning of the game, which is a point in her favor, and she helped kill Lopen. Sheep - Some suspicion. Partly for the reason I voted for him, a while ago, which was felt like he was trying really awkwardly to put suspicion on the (now mysteriously vanished?) Grandbow user. Also, putting pressure and suspicion on DC for what his A1 slot was for, ignoring the fact that role actions could take up that slot. And the trying to convince everyone that there weren't any thieves was kind of odd. Could all be an honest mistake, but it does seem suspicious to me. Zas - Some trust. He hasn't said much in this game, but what he has said seems very un-eliminator-like, personally. Obviously, this is mostly tone/gut. (For example, his question about the GB secondary win con C1. That was what originally sparked my trust in him.) Twei - Mostly trust. Partly because of the Soulcaster thing, although I haven't been involved in PMs so I don't know exactly what's going on there. Originally, I was suspicious of her for the post about what Artifabrians should do (here), because it occurred to me that it would be better for the eliminators if all the temporary painrials were used C2 and couldn't be used C3 or 4, so that the GBs would have free reign then (particularly with the later context of them having their own Artifabrian, so they could control the Painrials of everyone else in order to choose when their Grandbow would have the best effect), but then she undercut that plan later (here), which makes that point invalid, and I just never retracted that suspicion in my notes. Other reason I have for trusting her is that she confirmed with me about DC's Spanreed, which seems unlikely for an eliminator to need to do. Macen - Neutral. There's been nothing that's stood out either way, for him. At least, thus far in my read (I'm midway through D4). I think he's said more since? Not sure, anyway. No read. Mark - Light suspicion. He's mostly stayed under the radar this game. Only 8 posts (I think; might have missed some during the nationality debate) up through D4. This is mostly gut, but if I were to pick any of the people Seonid listed to be traitors, it'd probably be him. He did suggest the killvote, true, but that doesn't necessarily hurt the eliminators. Particularly when they managed to kill Trelagist with it. (Or let Trelagist die, if there weren't any eliminators in that vote.) Kas - Hasn't posted much, but I'd say light trust. Mostly for his comments on gut votes, and the fact that I'd guess he'd be a little more active as an eliminator. And he was the one to originally suggest the orange vote for kills. Not sure on this, though. Burnt - Difficult to tell, particularly as she's essentially only been around for half the game. Neutral, from my perspective, although with associated trust because of being part of the group that found Lopen out. Stink - very, very slight trust. Mostly for his analyses, which didn't feel like an eliminator thing for him to do. Also, he tried to steer the topic back to the game when the nationality debate was going on, which is a small plus. But as always, difficult to read. And very irritating in our PM. Hmm. If I were to pick someone to lynch today... I'll say Sheep, for now. Particularly as he hasn't even posted in 4 (real life) days. How's this for substance, Twei?
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I figured it out, maybe. I went and made a PM with everyone N3, including Kynedath just because. He responded once. So this is the fifth turn that he's been inactive. Maill, if that were the last thing he said, would he have died today? Or would he die tonight? Also, writing up my thoughts on every player right now. Sorry it took so long.
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The schedule for games is here. MR14 will come after QF15 finishes. You can sign up to run a MR in this thread (you can see the signup schedule for each game format in the second post), if you want to. Hope that helps! Can't help with the technical problems, though. Sorry.
