Tol-in-Gaurhoth (Isle of Werewolves)

[Loslote]

I agree with Rikae, I think the twitter idea might need more development and maybe an extra gameplay component to make it more fun, rather than being first and foremost a restriction. The Ghost Game sounds like it's closer to being ready to go in July, and it also sounds like a super fun concept for the Downs.

[Kath]

Ooh a ghost game sounds really interesting! What's the idea?

[Blind Guardian]

Originally Posted by Kath

Ooh a ghost game sounds really interesting! What's the idea?

In the Dead thread last game we talked about how the Dead can come back to life to quote.

If you noticed Boro said:

I am of the House of Felagund. Though my pride has fallen, I will not allow myself to be taken by the likes of you for your pleasure. May my spirit find peace and rest! ++Nilp

Which is a quote from the Silmarillion I believe.

The idea was that the Dead get one quote from any JRRT book per night to say. One Dead comes back to life just to say the quote.

There was talk of limiting the quote to the first sentence of a chapter. The specifics would need to be worked out.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Blind Guardian

The idea was that the Dead get one quote from any JRRT book per night to say. One Dead comes back to life just to say the quote.

My question/concern for this is: how do you integrate it into the game? Because the Dead don't know anything, so the Living have absolutely no reason to listen to what they say. It's fun for the Dead, but if it's the only thing different about the game, it's a bit weak.

Of course, once the Seer dies the Dead might know something, but that just devolves into attempts to dictate to the Dead precisely what they should say in any given scenario. ("If the Seer has dreamed Huinesoron innocent, and BG as a wolf, quote the first line of chapter 6 of The Hobbit...")

One possibility would be only revealing the deceased's roles in the Dead Thread, but people weren't too keen on that (and it gives the wolves a huge advantage). Another would be to give the first two/three Dead players new powers - perhaps a one-shot Seer, a (one-shot?) 'Nightmare Wolf', and a one-shot vote (ie, that player gets to cast a vote from the DT one Day). That way they would have something to say, but with one-shot powers it wouldn't be clear if they'd used them right away. Also, they might get given to a Wolf, if the village gets lucky Day One or Two.

hS

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Kath

In the game we just played, for my own personal interest, I tried to keep to G55's idea of no more than the box size for posts. I can't say it was a success.

And here I was wondering whether the change in your posting style was perhaps indicative of a special role.

Originally Posted by Boromir88

I think it was Legate who said when he thinks of new roles or experiments the question is "is this phantom-proof" is a good general guide to follow.

Definitely.

Originally Posted by Rikae

Well, I offered to mod the next game, and was thinking late July/early August for the start, but I have to say, I was never really wild about the short posts idea, and even less so if it's just a way to eliminate the long analyses which, to me, are a big part of Barrowdowns WW, even if I'm usually not the worst culprit. For that matter, "double post" restrictions would really cramp my style (I can't seem to help myself!)

I get your points, and I'd definitely be against double post restrictions myself (what do you do when you're online at a time when nobody else is around?). To be sure, counting characters and policing people's posting styles isn't my idea of fun either, and I'd rather have more spontaneity than less -- but you can be spontaneous in a brief post as well as in a long one. Maybe more so sometimes. Think punk rock vs prog rock.
As for the long analyses, yes they're kind of a style element of BD WW, and though I rarely find the time to post them myself I often find them useful (as long as they're not half a page and include the analysed player's shopping and laundry lists with commentaries and footnotes). It's the combination of long posts & lots of posts which I found daunting at times in the last two games -- like, when I finally get to play at about 3 hours to DL after a long day of work, dinner and a modicum of interaction with wife & pets and find 5 pages of thread since Daybreak, and by the time I've digested these there's 2 more, etc. - the Achilles and the turtle phenomenon. Back in the early days of BD WW whole games were played out in the number of pages we nowadays often take for a single Day. But that's more common in larger villages - maybe I should just stick to smaller ones.

Originally Posted by Rune Son of Bjarne

There would definitely need to be a maximum length to the post, but one should not have to diligently count characters. I have sufficient faith in you guys to trust that you would play in the spirit of the game (and the new rules), and if a post or two is a bit over the limit, so what. Of course if there are obvious and repeatedly infractions, then the mods would need to take action.

I'Ve been thinking of castigating offenders with links to Ramones songs, as a reminder that everything worthwile can be said in 2 minutes.

Anyway, the ghost game idea sounds fun. Limiting it to first sentences might be a bit harsh, but I suppose we'd like to prevent someone just quoting e.g. Kath's signature to indicate she's the last living wolf, or some such. (People with Tolkien signatures watch out!)

[Loslote]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Anyway, the ghost game idea sounds fun. Limiting it to first sentences might be a bit harsh, but I suppose we'd like to prevent someone just quoting e.g. Kath's signature to indicate she's the last living wolf, or some such. (People with Tolkien signatures watch out!)

If we want to make it really phantom-proof, we could even make the Ghost run all their Ghost quotes through the mod to make sure they're not too revealing. But then again, the Dead don't actually know anything. By the end of the second-to-last Day last game, I (a Dead person) would have been chomping at the bit to tell the Living that the wolves were OBVIOUSLY Lommy, Mac, and Kath, and I was totally wrong about 2/3 of those. So even if the Dead are able to very clearly convey their thoughts, there's no guarantee that their thoughts are helpful.

[Kath]

So is the quoting in place of a vote or empowerment of some kind? All they do is quote a Tolkien line and then the Living spend the whole Day wondering what on earth the Dead are on about?

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

I'm quite against any strict restrictions - I'm not against some people going for a super experimental game if they want to - but in general it sounds like a very bad idea.

Like some people have already noticed: situations may change drastically (reveals, sudden bandwagons, someone finds a crucial point...) which requires possibility to react freely. Also the whole feel of the game has lot to do with spontainety, including little banter here and there.

Quoting is also quite crucial to the game-mechanics. If people are forced to quote less to save their post-lengths it will immediately favor the wolves (who are, according to Kuru's latest statistics in the Grimoire, clearly having the upper hand already of late). Add to that a post-count restriction, and the wolves can co-ordinate things nicely especially late in the Day.

Or think about the last minute frenzy when everyone is holding their precious one last post to the very end, looking to see if someone is trying to use the situation to their advantage...

Also, who wants to count the characters in one's posts? So a Word or LibreOffice is required to play so that you can check the number of characters you use?


That said, I do think the walls of text in the first game this summer were quite overwhelming and we all could think twice, when it is truly important to make such huge posts (or quote all the stuff people quote) and when not.

What Nogrod is saying here is that the game will be different than normal, and change is bad.

Anyways I haven't tried to develop the idea since the end of the game, but I think we are overthinking certain aspects here.

There would definitely need to be a maximum length to the post, but one should not have to diligently count characters. I have sufficient faith in you guys to trust that you would play in the spirit of the game (and the new rules), and if a post or two is a bit over the limit, so what. Of course if there are obvious and repeatedly infractions, then the mods would need to take action.

If we were to put a cap on the number of posts, it could be in place until x hours prior to deadline from whence the cap would be out of effect. Again we could trust each other to stick to the spirit of the game, or we could add some different restrictions such as "no consecutive posts" etc.

In the words of the great Billy Joel "It's always been a matter of trust"