That makes sense. I just looked at Lalaith among us other dead ones and inferred she had been killed. Too hastily, I see.

And yes, with four evil characters around there would have needed to be a resurrection of one innocent to keep the game going toDay as the Night began with only 8 players left. ;)

We actually got that wrong (at least I did, and nobody corrected me) in the Dead Thread last Night as we thought the Evil side needs to succeed in both of their Nightly actions for the game to end (which seemed a plausible scenario to be sure). But true, just killing one villager would not have been enough, but a conversion was.

Thanks for pointing that out.

yes, that's right. I was the sole surviving ordo - at least Eomer got to join the winners right there at the end.

Apologies to Good Wizard Nerwen and the team for getting everything wrong and not backing you in the final lynch...I got so confused and I really was so tired. You played brilliantly.
Being an ordo was really baffling in this game but I hugely enjoyed it nonetheless..thank you so much Kuru for being a magnificent Mod.

Be very grateful everyone...Kuru's random generator originally picked me as GW but I had the sense to turn it down (I'm still at work so didn't think I would have the time to commit fully and certainly not to stay up and monitor the deadlines every Day) Now that really would have been an unholy mess....

Did we agree on that?

It was a great game, well done to all the players and special congratulations to the victors; and special thanks to Kuru!

Honestly, that was the most invested I've been in a game in quite a while; and it's quite a bad feeling looking back and seeing all the places you went wrong. :rolleyes: :D

Oh, and by the way, if Pervinca is looking in, hopefully we can get a much simpler game up for next time. I don't think even veteran players would be able to handle another game this complex for a while!

I don't think we did. Mind you I am not convinced that Nogrod always agrees with himself after the Communicating with the dead day of hell when my Monty Python clip proved all too prophetic and I ended up being quite glad I was killed as I wanted to murder everyone anyway. I think when we were 20 hours in to the day and they realised they didn't understand the situation that was the killer.

Anyway I enjoyed it much more than I expected and the dead thread was a blast. I must admit it hadn't occurred that the Wizards were cancelling each other out on selection. For some reason it didn't occur that it might happen and ended up thinking that the ranger was just ultra competent.

So Shasta, did you end up protecting yourself on Night 4 and Eonwe on Night 5? I could not figure out if it we were blocked because our picks were protected or already gifted.

Btw, I was totally ready to throw our EW under the bus and vote Legate on the last two Days, but the village gave me way too much opportunity to vote otherwise. So thanks for that. :D

Funny, there was one Night we considered you could be the GW. But I think we concluded you were just a clueless ordo because GW would be at least somewhat clued into our identities. You could say we did have a good motivation for keeping you alive. :p

You know, if I were innocent, I would've thought Legate wanting to use the same list again would look suspicious...

Based on the narration, we guessed that was what must've occurred.

Believe me, you weren't the only one. It surely was for me as well.

It's all good. It just baffles me that when I'm at my least guarded, ie, when I'm a cannon-fodder ordo, that people seem to pick up 'defensive' or wolfly vibes from me. ;)

Agreed. It was quite the re-entry into WW after a four year hiatus. :eek:

Also, thanks to Kuru for a good game and interesting concept. I've never done a Dead Thread game before, so it was quite different. While as a wolf I was quite content to stay among the living, I can see the appeal of joining the Dead Thread if you're innocent. So I can't fault Boro for that.

And Kuru, I'm sorry you never got to see your Wizards' Duel (though not too sorry!).

So many things...
 

As Lommy said in the Dead Thread, there were so many things going on under the surface of the game that I can't get it all in one post and will probably forget things.

Congratulations to the Bad Side for playing an outstanding game and putting on a clinic for how to behave as a baddie in a game thread. That was a magnificent performance. The Goodies didn't really key into who you were until the end and the Ordos were pretty much completely in the dark.

Kudos also to Gifteds, particularly Nerwen and Shasta who were the Gifteds of longest standing, for putting up a terrific battle during the NIGHT phases and prolonging the game beyond what I thought it could go. This game would have been over a lot sooner if Nerwen and Shasta had not put up such a great performance. Even when they were still in the dark about Legate, Shasta in particular (who was very sick in the early part of the game) figured out the type of player that Legate was targeting. I think Legate only successfully performed both of his available NIGHT actions once in the game because of this. I think that was the NIGHT Sally was turned.

It was interesting that in this game the Bad Side excelled in the DAY phase of the game and the Good Side excelled in the NIGHT. I think this speaks to the quality of the players in that each side was able to overcome their natural disadvantages through sheer finesse...and a large dollop of elbow grease.

A) As Lalaith said, she was the first selection to be the Good Wizard. She begged off and because I am a merciful Mod, I allowed her.

This led to a sequence of events as follows:

~~~~~~~

Kuru: Crap! Lalaith can't be GW. Back to Random.org.

*click*

Random.org: 1

Kuru: Hmm...number 1 is...Nerwen.

No offence at all intended to Nerwen but this put me on the horns of a dilemma for two reasons. From a meta standpoint, Nerwen had been the Seer in the last game I modded and I didn't want to be seen as establishing a pattern of the same player being in a similar role multiple games. The second, and more pressing, reason was at that point it was 1:00 AM on the east coast of Australia (I know this because I looked it up on timeanddate). I don't know what timezone Nerwen lives in but that told me that no matter what it was stupid o'clock there and the odds of her getting my PM any time soon were negligible. This was a problem because I wanted to get the game started that evening (my time). I was looking ahead (to this moment in time now, effectively) and seeing availability problems for many people who were playing (and myself, truth be told) and I felt it urgent to get going as soon as possible or I was afraid the game would implode.

So I clicked Random.org again.

*click*

Random.org:11

Kuru: Hmm...11 is...Legate. Gah, didn't take Legate off the list. (Legate had already accepted the post of Evil Wizard by this point.)

*click*

Random.org: 1

Kuru: I hate you.

*click*

Random.org: 14

Kuru: Ahh...finally somebody different! Let's see, 14 is...Pervinca Took. Hmmmm...probably not a good idea.

*click*

Random.org: 1

Kuru: Curse you.

~~~~~~~~

So, I sent the PM to Nerwen, gave up all hope of starting that evening and posted my postponement notice on the thread.

It worked out pretty well in the end, not that I had any doubt on that front.

I will admit to rolling my eyes a smidgen when she immediately picked Shasta as Ranger. Mostly because they were both in the exact same roles as the last game I modded. I also thought it would be such an obvious move that Legate would pick up on it immediately. He didn't seem to, though.

B) Now that the game is over, there are a couple of things that I would do differently.

The first major thing I would change is I would give the Evil Wizard two NIGHT 1 picks instead of one. I would do this partially to still give Evil Team a running start at the beginning of the game ahead of the two scrys they would be facing (more on this below). The main reason though would be because of the loyalty issue. It is hard on players, especially toward the end of the game, to have invested so much on one side and then suddenly have that taken away. It would still need to be a part of the game, but I think maybe having three strikes at it is too many.

The second and most important thing is I would ditch the Hunter role and replace it with the Seer. The Hunter role was completely lackluster and had little inherent utility. Nerwen didn't even convert Steve until midway through the game, and I think she mostly did it to create an ally who would at least be protected from being converted into a wolf. Steve did do a good job of providing Nerwen a lot of good analysis, but on that front he suffered from the same problem as the rest of them, he just wasn't convinced that Legate was the Evil Wizard. Up until the end, he thought Brinn was.

I confess to considering changing him to a logical Hunter, but I thought doing so without warning would have been unfair to Legate and at that point Steve was only targeting Ordos and thus would have just died quietly without indicating anything to anybody.

In a broader sense I think the Seer role would have been better because it would have put pressure on the Evil Team, which was a bit lacking in the game. I know Legate and Company will probably feel different about this but they were never significantly pressured during the game and while I think this is in large part attributable to how very well they played, I think the game was a bit balanced in their direction. I think the Seer role (which I discarded thinking it was the best decision at the time) would be a much better fit for this format. It would bring much greater and genuine utility to the Good side and pose a more significant threat to the Bad Side.

Basically, due to the nature of the game, the Bad Side starts the game with the initiative and I feel that the way I structured the game was flawed in that I did not give the Good Side enough tools to give them a chance to claim the initiative. To me game balance is the ability of both sides to have the tools at their disposal to have the initiative and I don't feel I did a good enough job on this front with these rules.

This leads me to my last point:


I'm actually far more disappointed that the Visitors were not used, or were used so late that it didn't happen...and wasn't at all used for the purpose originally intended.

This is the second game I've done where I've had a role not get to its full potential. At least my other game I had a dragon. This time there were no Visitors.

I think the way to tweak this is through the Seer. That way the Good Wizard could use Seer scrys to feel more confident in creating Visitors and have more information available to do so. I had the impression in the game, although Nerwen never said anything specific about it, that she didn't feel like she could take the time to make a Visitor because the Evil Team had her under so much pressure that she had to focus solely on trying to counteract them and not take time to gather information from the Dead Thread.

And lastly, for this post, the Dead Thread.

I feel like we have reached a point in the development of the Dead Thread concept that it is time to consider tweaking the concept a bit. To me it was very apparent in this game that it didn't have quite the punch that I think it needs to have.

The idea I have rattling around in my head at the moment is to create a new rule where if certain criteria in the Dead Thread are met then the Dead Thread empowerment would double the vote total of the voting target of the empowered person.

To explain what I mean, let's cite the example of the last DAY when there was a vote (although I'm sure some of you already understand exactly where I'm going with this).

The Dead Thread voted to empower Shasta that DAY who voted against Legate. That brought Legate's vote total from 3 to 4, which created a tie, resulting in no lynch.

Under my proposed idea, some criteria in the Dead Thread is met (say everyone has to vote unanimously or something like that) then the empowerment for Shasta would have resulted in Legate's vote total going from 3 to 6, ensuring his exposure as a wizard of some kind.

I think this kind of empowerment would have to be limited to only a set number of times per game so that it would have to be used by the Dead deliberately of intent and not gratuitously.

This would also give Evil Players more of a role in the Dead Thread than just hanging out because it would be vital to them to do their best to disrupt the maximum empowerment of the Dead Thread.

And the last, last thing for this post (I promise), is it time for us to consider creating a ++ No Lynch option for people to vote since that seems to be developing into a strategy in its own right in the evolution of the game?

Some time this weekend I will post a rundown of the NIGHTly actions.

Called it

I was a very selfish Ranger this game, but it appears to have been the right choice a couple times? I really thought the narration was pointing to me blocking the EW targeting me somehow, so I felt it best to keep that up.

Much love, my heart. We tried.

That is exactly it, Kuru. Recall, though that you'd decided a Seer was redundant because the GW's scry ability duplicated it, which I myself agreed with at the time. It took actual gameplay to show the issues- which is very often the way. I really didn't think it would be fair to you to complain about it.

We certainly did, my treasure.:(

Nerwen

I was quite excited when you picked up on my little joke.

More questions
 

So, what *were* the rules about what could be communicated between GW and minions?
Could Nerwen, for example, communicate to Eonwe: "known innocents are Nerwen and Shasta?"
Or say to Shasta, i think you should protect x tonight? Or say to both - I have found that Sally is a wolf? (if that were indeed the case)?

Nerwen, did you scry as well as create roles? Who were your known innocents? Did you ever find Legate? Did you find any wolves?

Also I was thinking about Visitors - one of the drawbacks I was thinking of, and I think I
mentioned this during the course of the game, is that because they will no longer, if innocent, be counted amongst the living, the GW would in effect be killing off one of her own team. That would inform my reluctance to use that role, if I'd been GW.

Oh and another thing...how would things have played out if either Eomer or I had listened to Nerwen and voted for Legate?

He would obviously not have been lynched...would it have helped the GW team on the last Night? Could Nerwen have challenged him to a duel during the Night, would that have stopped the creation of a new wolf?

Yes, basically that. Alignment information of players could be discussed, there wouldn't be much point in the Good Wizard being able to communicate at all if she couldn't discuss whether somebody was innocent.

Specific role information was always edited...although I'm pretty sure I probably inadvertently referred to Nerwen as "she" in several PMs to Shasta and Steve. I was sending so many PMs to all different people, I was terrified I was going to ruin the game for everyone by accidentally sending the wrong one to the wrong person. I'm pretty sure my agitation disrupted my editing ability. I was also traveling the last DAY which made everything worse for me and the Good Team.

Yes, that is true and it is potentially a powerful drawback, but the Visitor is potentially a powerful, game-winning role. At least I hope it is...technically it still has not been tried out. But I think it needs a substantial weakness to balance it out.

I would have written something about the guillotine blade passing through Legate's neck without doing any damage. I wouldn't have said which wizard he was, but Nerwen obviously would have known at that point.

Duels can only take place during the DAY.

The sad fact for the Good side in this is that by the last DAY, they had already squeaked out an extension of the game the previous NIGHT when they were on the cusp of defeat. By focusing on Legate during the DAY, no matter how it turned out, they were ensuring that the best they could do was again face the brink of defeat and squeak out again. An unlikely prospect...although in a way they still got close.

Nerwen was, as one would expect, very clever in trying to use the Visitor role to rid herself of a wolf that NIGHT. Unfortunately, that could not be done to Legate. That is part of why Legate's play in this game was so brilliant. He did exactly what he needed to do to seal the win for his team. He got attention focused on himself, who was invulnerable, and kept the Good Team from winning.

If Steve had ended up being lynched, he was hunting Legate. Legate would have been exposed in the narration because he wouldn't die to the Hunter attack, but the Good Team would have been in even worse shape as far as numbers were concerned.

Right...so if she'd known that Legate was the wizard (through the failed lynch) she could have tried to use the visitor role on someone else instead, possibly Brinn who she clearly suspected. Which could have given us an extra day...ah well.

So neither wizard knew of each other's identity?

Yep, as long as our kill was still blocked, this scenario would've provided another Day. Plus by making me (or Sally) the visitor that leaves, my role would pretty much be exposed since if I were innocent, the game would be over. Legate's role would be known to the three gifteds, and considering they also knew each other innocent, it probably wouldn't have been too difficult to find the remaining wolves. So while the game does look maybe slanted a little into our favor, the good side could've also easily won had a few things gone down differently.

By the last Night, we guessed the GW was most likely Nerwen, but we never knew for sure. And it appears the other side didn't find out about Legate until the last Night.

Technically I should have notified Nerwen that Legate was the Evil Wizard but when I knew all the outcomes of the NIGHT, I knew the game was over so there was no point.

Nerwen never thought Legate was the Evil Wizard (obviously).

Legate never mentioned Nerwen in his correspondence with me at all.

So at no point in the game was a Duel possible.

I remember thinking it through on the Night and it would've been pretty close. We'd narrowed down to Legate, Brinn, and Sally as the most likely wolves/EW, so, either Brinn or Sally would've gotten Visitored, and assuming the wolves made the same pick, Shasta would've luckily saved himself again.

However, then with the Wizards' Duel and us hopefully convincing the remaining ordo to vote non-visitored one of Brinn/Sally, we'd be down to a hunter, a ranger, an ordo, and a wolf; which would probably be even more stressful than the actual last Night of this game, since no-one would be able to communicate. And if we did make it through the Night then the Visitor would be able to return and talk and vote...

Part of me is glad it didn't get to that, but it definitely would've continued being exciting/stressful.

I was quite excited when I noticed it!:smokin:

I do like the idea of the ordos having a bit more to do... although I can also see it backfiring. Of course in this game we couldn't actually have killed Legate but maybe the dead could get some sort of one hit assassin power if certain criteria were met. You know like in Don Giovanni when the Commendatore drags his murderer down to Hell. Anyway having been thoroughly jaded with werewolf this certainly stimulated my few remaining grey cells.

Sorry everyone for withdrawing. I was so confused that I could not participate properly and I felt really bad about it as it was not fair on the other players. Anyway, I'm glad you had a good game, and I am always in the Password thread (Quiz Room subforum) if anyone wants to join in!

Speaking for everyone, don't worry about it.

WW is a really fun game, but this one was intricate enough (as evidenced by our obvious confusion at times) even for veterans, that it's no wonder you might have felt overwhelmed. I hope you'll perhaps read up on some old games, and maybe join in a more basic game in the future! :)

Thanks Inziladun and all. :)

Actually YES. I think that is a good description. Honestly, we couldn't get through that blockade...

Actually, in one of my first sort of "drafts" of how I could proceed after I learned my role, I considered both Nerwen and Shasta as options for my Night 1 picks. Eventually, I partly stayed away from them on purpose, exactly because a) I didn't want to open that case - targeting one would mean deciding what about the other, b) I was afraid (and from the looks of it, such fear was reasonable) that if I picked one, then if the other was a Wizard or somesuch, they would scry the other one.

Yes. I absolutely support that. Also, having two Wolves in the beginning, I daresay, makes it also easier for the village to catch them, simply because of the percentage. (You'd basically have three baddies just like in a normal village.)

More importantly, yes, I have been thinking about the loyalty issue a lot and I actually was taking it into account during my picks. We literally discarded some picks for turning just on the basis of that we knew those players wouldn't like it. By the way that is also why the failed picks were so frustrating, I knew the further in the game it was, the worse it would be for the players we turned. That's why e.g. personally, after Day 4 or somesuch I felt really comfortably about turning just a handful of people - Eomer was among them, incidentally; although our final pick on the last Night was obviously purely utilitarian. Already my attempt to turn Shasta on the Night before was based on the idea that he probably would be able to adapt to his new role fairly well if it came to that. Sadly, he had been already spoken for.

In a way yes. Although personally, I think when the GW can function as the Seer, it is okay, but having a Seer separately could ensure continuing presence of a "knowing Gifted" even after GW's possible departure, especially in a game where nobody knows anything. I think personally THAT is the main issue and that leads me to my last point, where I actually contrary to Kuru believe that the key to the game isn't so much in changing anything about the Seer, but...

I think the Visitors were a great idea but they should be made more significant. Especially because the knowledge is really so scarce in this game. Maybe they should be independant of the GW. Maybe they should be a hidden role that exists since the beginning. Or one of them: i.e. make the GW create one Visitor, but another Visitor would exist regardless of that. Something. I don't have a clear idea about this, but I am pretty sure this would help the game, the balance, and the flow of information a lot if done right.

Because in my opinion the problem isn't fixed by the Seer, it would just mean that the Gifteds etc. know more, but we need to make sure that the whole village knows more. And the Visitor (who doesn't need to think about self-preservation and can just shout the truth - or the perceived truth - after returning from the dead) could do just that.

That's a cool concept, and flavouful; I really like that kind of image. Something like that could work as well.

We are sorry you couldn't see this through, but as others have said, it wasn't the easiest game to start with. Maybe you can try again when some "normal" game with basic rules starts. We'd be happy to see you :)

NIGHTly Activities
 

NIGHT 1

Evil Wizard -> Converted Brinn into wolf - Success

Good Wizard -> Converted Shasta into Ranger - Success

NIGHT 2

Evil Wizard and Wolves -> Converted Lottie into wolf - conflicted with Good Wizard, failure; killed Morsul - success

Good Wizard -> scryed Lottie - conflicted with Evil Wizard, failure

Ranger -> Protected self

NIGHT 3

Evil Wizard and Wolves -> Converted Sally into wolf - success; killed Lommy - success

Good Wizard -> Scryed Boro - success

Ranger -> Protected Lottie

NIGHT 4

Evil Wizard and Wolves -> Converted Shasta into wolf - failure, Shasta self-protected; killed Mithalwen - success

Good Wizard -> Converted Steve into Hunter - success

Ranger -> Protected self - success, caused Evil Wizard's conversion attempt to go *doink*

NIGHT 5

Evil Wizard and Wolves -> Converted Steve into wolf - failure, Steve was the Hunter and unable to be converted; killed Nogrod - success

Good Wizard -> Scryed Nogrod - success

Ranger -> Protected self

Hunter -> Hunted Nogrod

NIGHT 6

Evil Wizard and Wolves -> Converted Eomer into wolf - success; killed Shasta - failure, Shasta self-protected

Good Wizard -> Created Legate as Visitor who Leaves - failure, Legate was the Evil Wizard

Ranger -> Protected self - success, foiled attempt on his own life

Hunter -> Hunted Sally

I think making the Visitor who Dies a pre-existing, independent rôle might be an idea.

You and Shasta would have "unofficially" known each other's identities, and you would have known exactly who to hunt- I think you could have brought it off, as long as you got the last ordo's trust. Ah well.

That is probably a good idea.

Although the difficulty might be in how does the hidden Visitor go to the Dead Thread. If we just wait for them to be lynched, it may not happen again.

Perhaps the Visitor would go to the Dead Thread when it hits a certain population.

That sounds reasonable. If so however, it should not be known when exactly, or what exactly is the trigger (or combination of triggers), so that it doesn't pull too much focus (and doesn't prompt phantoms to start pulling schemes how to kill the Visitor. Although then again that might be interesting).