Long Game 53: The Fate of the Forum

[DeTess she/her]

23 minutes ago, NotASteelClone said:

If vashrikan were in the game, they would have role blocked me and then killed me. Simple as that. Would be the logical thing to do. 

But then who blocked metabard? None has claim that act, and there's no village with a role-block role. The inactive spammer might be Vashikiran, for example. The reason I bring this up is that if you're certain Vashikiran isn't in the game, then by extension I assume you believe metabard is lying about being roleblocked. Is that correct?

Anyway, I'ms till working my way slowly through the player list. The next one is Cadcom. Earliest they could have been converted was N2, given their instrumental role in lynching Devotary. His behaviour during the Alvron lynch suggests to me that he probably wasn't an elim then either, as he wouldn't have gone for the suicidal win-con with a spammer-team that badly depleted. That is assuming that he had the role he claimed, because I remember a role in a previous MR or QF that'kill everyone voting on them when lynched. i'd imagine that the elim team would come up with a more convincing case against him had that been the case though. because of this, i suspect that Cadcom is still village as well.

[Elandera she/her]

3 hours ago, Aranduensis said:

But then who blocked metabard? None has claim that act, and there's no village with a role-block role. The inactive spammer might be Vashikiran, for example.

It's also possible it was not a role block, but a redirect on to an invalid target.

Sorry for being essentially inactive for the last 24 hours. It's been a busier weekend than expected. I'll try to get more thoughts together before the end of the day.

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

(Or it could be that Bard is lying, but...I doubt Bard would use his kill against Kidpen, an easy mislynch, if he was a Spammer.)

I’m curious why we’re ignoring Araris, potentially at our own peril. The schedule of the Spammers not killing aligns roughly with his activity, and his roleclaim can be easily proven if he’s not a Spambot by simply lynching him. 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

To be honest, I'm pretty sure that Steel is lying about being immune to the elim kill. He just said that so that the spammers wouldn't target him. If he was telling the truth, then it would be practically an automatic win for us.

@Seventh Saint I've been around every cycle enough to send in a kill order, even though I've been low active.

[DeTess she/her]

@xinoehp512, you haven't posted yet this cycle.

I'll be voting on Walin. Between him and Araris, I've got a mild village read on Araris, and no read on Walin, though his self-preservation vote on me doesn't sit well with me. Resolving these two slots will also go some way to clearing Metabard (if they're both village) or catching the last OG elim.

I'll be signing off for the cycle now, so I'll hopefully talk to the rest of you (and be slightly more active) during the next night cycle.

[Elandera she/her]

I think I'm slightly more suspicious of Walin at the moment. He'd be a pretty good convert option, since few would suspect him for joining late. Walin

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

Hmm. I get the points against Walin, but something about the lynch feels...too easy, in my brain. I dunno, could be my paranoia but I get the feeling we’re seriously missing something. 

I’ve got spring break this week, and I really hope that means I can bare down and give the thread a good, thorough reread from top to bottom instead of sort of blindly stabbing, which is what I feel I’m doing now. 

[Steeldancer he/him]

3 hours ago, Araris Valerian said:

To be honest, I'm pretty sure that Steel is lying about being immune to the elim kill. He just said that so that the spammers wouldn't target him. If he was telling the truth, then it would be practically an automatic win for us.

@Seventh Saint I've been around every cycle enough to send in a kill order, even though I've been low active.

I'm not lying. I checked with Joe before I picked up the role. The elim kill is an action, and so long as I submit my action, it blocks all other actions against me. Therefore, I am immune to the elim kill. But by all means, I'd love the spammers to call my bluff. If they haven't already. I'm not informed if any actions are submitted against me, so I don't actually know if they've tried to kill me yet. 

Edited April 7, 2019 by NotASteelClone

[Elandera she/her]

12 minutes ago, NotASteelClone said:

I'm not lying. I checked with Joe before I picked up the role. The elim kill is an action, and so long as I submit my action, it blocks all other actions against me. Therefore, I am immune to the elim kill. But by all means, I'd love the spammers to call my bluff. If they haven't already. I'm not informed if any actions are submitted against me, so I don't actually know if they've tried to kill me yet. 

Is your action usable in the daytime?

[Steeldancer he/him]

5 minutes ago, Elandera said:

Is your action usable in the daytime?

Yeah, but there's not much point in using it during the day. For me, anyway. I can only use it once a cycle.

[Young Bard he/him]

7 hours ago, Elandera said:

It's also possible it was not a role block, but a redirect on to an invalid target.

I was specifically told I was roleblocked on Night 2. (Compared to Night 3 - initially, the GM's forgot to tell me what happened, hence the initial confusion, and I was later told I was redirected to Itiah, who was an invalid target.)

[A Joe in the Bush]

Two more hours to vote.

Please note that while Rollover will happen on Schedule, about 2 hours from this post, the writeup may be significantly delayed, by up to two hours. We're on closing shift today. Due to that, some of you may receive preliminary PM's, as long as they do not affect the outcome of this cycle.

[Araris Valerian he/him]

I'll put my vote on Walin. I haven't really seen much positive contribution from him (which may be a bit hypocritical coming from me this game), and moving forward I'd rather not have to worry about him.

[Walin he/him]

Looks like I only have a few hours left before I die. One reason why I didn't post that much was because I couldn't think of anything to reference, so I'll drop the shtick in my last few posts. I don't expect Aranduesis to go online before the cycle is over, so there's no way that I'll live through this voting cycle.

The turn I came into the game, PM's were disabled. However, when I joined I got a secret role: Internet Explorer. Everything that affects me (targeted actions, game mechanics changes, votes etc.) affects me 24 hours later. Due to this, I was still able to PM, and I established contact with one of the elims right before they died. Though I haven't analyzed anything this entire game, just hopping in sporadically, I'll look back at that and everything they posted to see if they had a code anything like Furamirionmind and decode it for any elims they were contacting during the game (just in case the doc closed at the same times PM's did).

For some reason I got a full paragraph in my PM with them, which should give me enough to go off of for decoding. Also, I forgot which elim it was, but I'll check after this post. I just want to get this post out here as soon as possible before I get lynched and die at the end of the Weekend.

[Elandera she/her]

This weekend was a lot busier than I had expected. I don't have time to go in depth by looking at past turns, so take the below analysis with a grain (or bucket) of salt. I'm doing mostly based on memory and impression rather than evidence.

Purple - Possible convert
Green - Probable village
Red - Possible OG elim

1. Xino - Claimed to have a redirect action that we've seen a couple of times. I believe he claimed this fairly early, and I recognize this might actually be a pretty good action for spammers to want to pick up, especially after Temptation died so quickly.
2. Fura - Still unsure exactly what her role is, but she seems to have kept up honest effort for village.
3. Bard - His stories of roleblocks and redirects seems genuine. I don't really have any reason to suspect him at this point.
4. Rand - If the conversion was later, I can see the spammers wanting to pick up the vote manipulation ability, since it's pretty powerful. He's also just sneaky enough to not really show he was converted.
5. Steel - I'm neutral on Steel, though leaning toward village still. My tin-foil-hat-wearing self thinks his claim to have Vodiyehi's powers is just a big IKYK situation. I would like if someone could target him tonight to see if the action failed or not. Please don't announce it, though, just in case Vashikaran is a thing.
6. Fifth - I'm also neutral here. Though I'm not as paranoid about him as before, it's not completely resolved. I just don't have any reason to pursue action against him yet. I can't remember when he claimed, but if it was before Alv died, the role alone would be a possible conversion target.
7. CadCom - No idea. He's had lower activity than in past games (which is understandable, life happens). I think he has a Roleplayer role, which also would be a good conversion ability. He claimed after Fifth, from what I can remember, so falls under the same possible conversion. (Has he proven his role yet? If not, possibly lying about role?)
8. Araris - I don't really have a read on Araris either. Knowing his ability, though, I could understand him being a possible convert. That diminishes somewhat because I know he didn't claim until late and so spammers would have taken a gamble on what role they'd get.
9. Aman - He has an action scan, but I don't think we've gotten any results from that for a while. It makes me a bit suspect that he's not actually using the scan ability.
10. Walin - Fairly close to Araris and CadCom, where activity has limited my read somewhat. I do believe they'd be a good conversion target for early game, since no one would really suspect them.

At this point, someone is either lying about their role, or there is no OG elim left. That doesn't seem to line up with Bard, since he says he's been blocked, and no one has claimed to have any roleblocking.

If CadCom hasn't proven his role (I honestly can't remember), then I'd suspect him most of being Vashikaran.

[xxGaea]

Turn has ended. Stand by, we are currently driving.

[xxGaea]

Winning SE'ers:

Droughtbringer
Young Bard
Snipe.exe
Xinoehp
Steeldancer
Fifth Scholar
Kidpen
Jondesu
Aranae
Mailliw73
I Think I Am Here

The Spammers, and anyone converted to the JOE disease have lost.

Links to all the docs will be posted within 24 hours, as well as GM's thoughts.

Walin was lynched! He was Vashicarininininininin!

**The pictured post is obviously not really something that Chaos posted. pls dun be mad, we thought it would be a cool ending write-up.

[I think I am here. he/him]

16 minutes ago, xxGaea said:

I Think I Am Here

Woohoo!

It’s only on truly special occasions where all of the words in my username start with capitals.

[DeTess she/her]

I'd celebrate, especialky given how much I was on walin's case, but I've actually lost I'd expected there to be another elim so the Joes could fully expand the next cycle.

Anyway, this was a pretty fun game, though the spammers got really unlucky in those opening cycles.

edit: and back to normal. It was fun while it lasted, but almost every time I saw one of my own posts my first thought was: 'hey, Aman posted something', and I understand things weren't much different for the real Aman either  

Edited April 7, 2019 by Randuir

[Steeldancer he/him]

My clone was unfortunately murdered by a spammer robot, so I got my laptop back at least. I’ll say something more relevant later. 

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

Feels nice to have my “real” account back. 

Thanks to Joe and Gaea—this was a very fun game, if a little hectic at times. My apologies to Elandera and Lumgol, and the others I tunnelled onto; my tendency to distrust roleclaims might have gone a bit far, but it seems as though everything worked out in the end. And congrats to the Spammers for fighting it out to the bitter end; you were dealt a poor hand at times, but you still made the most of it. Also props to @Alvron for his gambit during C3–if that had been successful, it would have turned the tables. 

[Furamirionind]

Yeah, I think the spammers played the abosute best they could given how unlucky they got. Sorry, and good job.

Thank you to Gaea and Joe for running this game.  It was incredible fun.  Also thanks to Ada, for being a huge force to be reckoned with, and keeping this a fast paced game.

Well, my robotics event has just ended, and I am carpooling back home right now. Of course now that I have time again, the game is over. Lol.

This was a very fun game, and I particularly enjoyed my role.  Having a role that interacted with depended on voting/being voted on, is something I really liked the concept of.  I originally thought, when Mailliw claimed the role "Upvote Addict" to me, that this game might be so meta, that his role actually interacted with upvotes in some way... I may try to create a ruleset for a game where the roles interact with the game similarly.

For the Joe role, I am a bit disappointed.  I count this as a win personally, but I think this officially drops my win % to 10 or 16% lol.

It was mentioned that the JOE role may have brought the villages power in line.  I personally dont think it did.  There were just too many people (2-3) who just didnt consider it a worthwhile action.  Of course, this wasnt a full run because the spammers didnt get much of a chance, but if this was to be replayed, I think there is a good chance that most of the time, the eliminators would win, but the Joe's would lose unless the converts are picked very carefully.

[Mailliw73 he/him]

Thanks for the fun game everyone! I know that Gaea wrote the write up because my username has the right numbers.  (I still love you, Joe)

This game was super fun, even if I started rooting for the spammers once I died. That luck those first two cycles was incredibly bad for them. The access to PMs made it harder and it was good that was taken away. 

As the resident gambit-taker, I also applaud Alv’s audacity in that tied lynch gambit. He could’ve converted Steel then, but decided to go big or go home.  that’s a gambit for the ages. 

1 hour ago, Furamirionind said:

 

This was a very fun game, and I particularly enjoyed my role.  Having a role that interacted with depended on voting/being voted on, is something I really liked the concept of.  I originally thought, when Mailliw claimed the role "Upvote Addict" to me, that this game might be so meta, that his role actually interacted with upvotes in some way... I may try to create a ruleset for a game where the roles interact with the game similarly.

I like the concept, but I’d be careful with a mechanic specifically involving upvotes as that interferes with the purpose of them. 

[Lumgol she/her]

Welp.

You should have seen me panicking in the dead doc about how the game was about to end but not everyone was JOE.

However, I think this was really fun and my role, however annoying, was extremely fun to carry out. I was also disappointed at the lack of enthusiasm for converting people shown by some of the other JOEs. I think that with more coordination and teamwork from everyone, we could have won. (Although I AM counting this as a semi-victory since I was village and all that.)

Anyways, great job on catching the spammers super fast!

[A Joe in the Bush]

First off, Links:

The Badly kept action spreadsheet, The Spammer Doc, and the Dead Doc.

The Player List has been updated with all the Villagers roles.

Secondly, My thoughts on the PM's.

This game, like many of my games, was a hot mess. xxGaea originally approached me about running a game together 6 months back, and I had been wanting to run a Semi-Blackout game for a while, so pitched her the idea of a Meta Forum game. We knew going in that only the Spammer Roles would be revealed, and we wanted to do never before seen abilities (SookSiled and Temptation). We realized that this would mean that village roles would all be safe roles, and planned accordingly to not have any PM's in the game. A month ago, when I got the green light to run the game, we made a second pass through the rules to figure out if it was ready. We saw that PM's were closed, and couldn't remember why they were closed, and decided that from a flavor perspective, they should be open. That was when we added the Herowannabe role to the game. Originally it was a Droughtbringer Role, where they could talk to the dead doc, flavorwise they had everyone's contact info.

Early on in the game, the PM's started to bite us hard. Players were easily proving their alignment to eachother. Roadwalker was already dead, and it looked like the others would soon follow. We realized we would have to close down the PM's, and prepared to change Elandera's and Jondesu's roles. By coincidence, Jon was killed, so we used that as an excuse, and I changed Elandera's role to Roleplayer. I did have to tell Mailliw and Rae that Elandera's role had been changed to prevent them from lynching her, since she had roleclaimed to them.

Thirdly, My thoughts on the JOE's.

The JOE's were intended to be both a hilarious flavor role, and a counterbalance to the Village. They were meant to slow down whichever side was winning and waste actions, and force people to guess how many Spammers there were. If they ignored, as many JOE's did, they would end up losing. For this reason, though many of you deserve to win, I cannot consider anyone with the Joe role to have won. (Lumgol especially is the only one that I would be willing to consider an actual victor)

Should I have done this role differently? Yes. How should I have done this role differently? I don't know. The Dead Doc said that it would have gone better if it had been know of from the start. I disagree. I see two routes for that option. If everyone knows there are JOE's, the easiest way to win is to kill the first JOE before they can covert, and I didn't want the JOE's to basically be a third faction. The other route would be everyone cooperating, with someone volunteering to be converted, and just mapping out a convert tree from day 1, taking away some of the paranoia and the fun, and instead making it just a waste of actions.

Fourthly, My thoughts on Walin.

I decided to have Walin enter the game as Vashikaran. Was that a good, unbiased move on my part? I don't think so. I think it was necessary to give both the Spammers and the JOE's a fighting chance. But I don't know if I would have done it had none of the spammers been dead yet. What do you guys think? (Also, apparently The Storm guessed I had put him in as an elim)

Finally, My thoughts on the Game as a whole.

Like I said, this game was a hot mess, and was fun to watch. Some people were really excited about their roles, others were not. Lots of people laughed and had fun. Some people went inactive. It was a pretty average game for me. I don't think the game as it is can be rerun. Certain features certainly can. For instance, when the Spammers first got to their doc, none of them had roles. I assigned roles to the team, but they got to divvy them up as they saw fit. That is a feature that I definitely like, and will probably be keeping in some of my future games. 

Either way, thank you for playing in our game, and please go upvote xxGaea, Alvron, Little Wilson, and Steeldancer. All 4 of them deserve more upvotes than they got.