Agh, I was a seer, but unfortunately moving and football keep me way to busy to stay on top of this incredibly complex game. Looking back on it I wish I had had more time, would have made for one heck of a game. Damn, loved the narrations though, were the highlight of the game no doubt.
Institutional Pederasty on
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Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
edited August 2008
Oatway's resurrection wasn't what won the game for the villagers. He just made it so that we won tonight.
If he hadn't been resurrected, there would have been 4 villagers, 1 CIT, 2 converted-GODs. Converted GODs couldn't use the main GOD abilities, so the only kills would have been from the vote, the CIT, and KingMole's vig kill. Infidel had given out passwords to the remaining villagers, which I had, so ostensibly I could have had them vote off whoever we needed dead. Either TT would have killed KingMole, or KingMole would have killed TT, or both, and the village could have voted off cheez. Basically, the village was always going to outnumber the remaining faction members, so the village would have come out on top in the end.
Oatway just made everything a lot easier, what with having a conversion AND a kill power. However, his key role in the victory was converting me before he died, so I still think he wins MVP for this game.
It's always interesting when people try new mechanics to keep things from being overused or us falling into a pattern whether it be instant networks etc.
We were notified about anything goes up front, so most of us probably joined the game out of curiosity to see what's going to happen.
A few comments.
Pros:
-I like how you've gotten the sense of confusion or paranoia with the game where people feel they need to do something to figure out how they can help their team win the game.
-The setting, role PMs and narrations are great.
-I didn't get converted!
Cons:
-Information. I was in one of the masoned factions and it appears I didn't really know anything about anyone or anything in the game on day 1. I was told after death I should have sat around to learn more as the game went on. So the game supported inactivity, non discussion and basically hiding. In fact, it rewarded it. After I screwed my team because I apprently had no clue what the game was even about, my team had no choice but to go into hiding, which didn't help them.
-It appears that my team was infiltratred by other factions (or rather we had people who were a part of multiple factions) and not knowing this was a factional game at all, people played as a village versus bad guy game. This meant that there was no information that was safe at all. The only people who did not know about anything going on were my rivals. In fact, the public thread indicates very few people, if anyone, even knew what the heck was going on because everyone was pretending to be a villager. Win conditions appeared to change as the game went on so it appears that the best way to play this game was to sit and try to not die, which usually means to skirt the inacitivity line.
-The game heavily relied on people lying low, no information, little information to those in a faction that were hooked up and mostly, it involved people existing and not dying. I'm not entirely sure what you were going for here, but I'm not really seeing how this was fun. People like options, the option of spending some time/effort to figure out what to do or what direction to go with a team is appreciated, but it appears that until the later game, this wasn't actually a choice, as seen especially by the decimation my team went because we actually decided to try doing something other than existing in the game with a vote and a few posts.
-I think your game mechanics are convincing people that lying low, not contributing anything other than a vote and being on the verge of inactivity is the way to play games in order to survive. I personally do not fnid that enjoyable or fun at all, but that's just me. Especially finding out that I needed to wait a while to figure out what's going on before I could really act on anything at all.
-Moderators. This is a personal preference, but I don't like it when the moderator(s) of the game intervene with conversation at all. For example, when robothero mentions that the village has the best chance of victory, he's confirming things very few people knew, if anyone. That all factions must die for a village victory and the village must die along with the rival for a faction to win. If people were playing in the background stating they could win with the village, this undercut their efforts completely. I feel you have to let the lpayers play the game. Stunts where people could convince others they were not a threat are great cover and gameplay, but they can easily be taken apart by a comment from a moderator. I personally feel that moderators should not, in any way, influence the game at all. Talking about the theme is cool, anything to do with the game can potentially cut someone's legs out from under them.
tl;dr - I think the best way anyone could have played this was by laying low and being inactive. I know you stated you hated the inactivity the game underwent at one point robot, but you rewarded people who laid low and survived so they could figure out what was going on.
Trying new mechanics is something I really enjoy seeing people work with. Please remember that you want to make sure your players enjoy it too. Many people were neutral at best with a normal villager role due to not knowing much about what's going on other than speculation from narrations and the OP. In a game where nothing is known and almost everyone after day 1 finds out they're all in the dark, it gets very difficult to actually do anything in the game to be active. I tried to get people to talk about some ideas/theories/abilities/facts on day 1 with my sacrifice in hoping we could find some allies out there and give information to those who were potential allies, but I guess it didn't pan out as I'd hoped.
As always, thanks for running the game Robothero and co. Thanks also for letting me participate.
I offer an apology to my team for a risk which turned around full circle and annhilated our chances of even surviving halfway into the game.
Thanks for the report Ardor. As much fun as it is to see a successful game, It's good to know that there are things to be improved on for the next time I try and run something similar. I'll be the first to admit (I already did even!) that the end-game-goals for all of the groups was a little too vague, but I think that is just a result of me putting these mechanics through my head for the past 4 or so months (since before Belarus, which was the mechanics test for this game). Everything sounded right to me, but to an outsider it probably didnt.
I liked the game and everything once I started getting into it, but as others have said, the beginning goals were a little too vague. And yeah, SHA was fucked from the start, but it didn't help that our conversion targets kept getting killed. Guess we should have tried to convert Thetheroo after all.
adejaan on
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TehSlothHit Or MissI Guess They Never Miss, HuhRegistered Userregular
edited August 2008
Although I was admittedly completely lost and at times dismayed, this was a pretty awesome game. Thanks to everyone, especially people running the game and working with post restrictions, it all made it super-awesome. Narration was fantastic and if it weren't for all the batshit crazy things people did (like MGW), this definitely wouldn't have conveyed as much of a frantic mood.
Thanks for the report Ardor. As much fun as it is to see a successful game, It's good to know that there are things to be improved on for the next time I try and run something similar. I'll be the first to admit (I already did even!) that the end-game-goals for all of the groups was a little too vague, but I think that is just a result of me putting these mechanics through my head for the past 4 or so months (since before Belarus, which was the mechanics test for this game). Everything sounded right to me, but to an outsider it probably didnt.
Man, I had an awesome role in that game too.
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Toxic ToysAre you really taking my advice?Really?Registered Userregular
OOOOOOOoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
This game was Epic!
I enjoyed reading it even after i "died"
OOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
My day 1 bluff succeeded, no one attempted to convert me so I was "unconvertable" as "claimed".
The last two days went exactly as VH and I planned. Oatway coming back was a bonus, but we still won as intended. The only thing that screwed up was Lawinator revealing our double-agent for no good reason, but it didn't lose us the game fortunately.
My day 1 bluff succeeded, no one attempted to convert me so I was "unconvertable" as "claimed".
The last two days went exactly as VH and I planned. Oatway coming back was a bonus, but we still won as intended. The only thing that screwed up was Lawinator revealing our double-agent for no good reason, but it didn't lose us the game fortunately.
Good work village! Awesome narrations. :^:
Toxic was SUPPOSED to kill Kingmole, it really wouldn't have changed anything anyway.
As soon as I was converted, I was told to kill Infidel. Got you in the crossfire.
I'm still just happy that I survived to the end of a phalla game, and that I ended up on the side that won though sheer luck.
EDIT: Plut's village special network. Needs to be unlocked though.
Haha, Plutonium basically nuked the entire boards. I think it started with me, once I came out about the double conversion.
Did you not see my post on that, cheez?
I wasn't allowed to visit the network boards anymore after my conversion. That whole "you have forgotten your prior affiliations" bit.
Anyway, confusing game, but at least I got to have fun with my post restriction on the last day. I think the best one was where "Oh man" got turned into "Person from Ohio state."
I have to ask, since my team team was basically dead after day 2, what were the goals of the factions? I was told I wasn't supposed to do anything during day 1 but wait for more information as the game progressed, so I am out of the loop.
Day 1 we only had to kill the church, but it said that may change.
It appeared in the thread that everyone thought this was a village versus bad guy game, when it turns out it was supposed to be a factional game. I think if people realized this was a factional game, nobody would've kept decimating my team.
All I knew was around day 4 or 5, it seemed the win conditions were finally stated in the narration?
To TheLawinator, during our convo I reacted as I did because my take on it was that no matter whether you were right or wrong CIT as a group was fucked, our best chance was betting you were wrong so thats what I did.
(I also made a "thoughts" post about this on CIT proboards).
So he knew Nerrisa was a spy aligned with his faction and just decided to say it in the thread?
And all Nerrisa could do was think what the fuck are you doing
This. So much this.
By the time he was done, I was pretty much forced to reveal to ISAT, because I just couldn't keep up with refuting him to both the main thread and them. At least without outright lying to everyone, which I didn't want to do, because I kinda like keeping my reputation for honesty.
Well, at least now I have a day 1 grudge vote in future games. :P
oh, and I don't know wtf he was talking about with being locked out of the SHA boards... I had done a bit of re-organization that day, but his account was changed in exactly the same way as the others, and they were posting fine. I PM'ed him as soon as I saw that, asking him about it, and making a couple of suggestions, and got no response and he never posted there again, so I don't know wtf was going on there.
Posts
Otherwise you would have died a night earlier, BL.
That would've been nice. When the phalla felt artificially extended, it was just a bummer.
Proboards unlocked: http://hellocthulhuparadise.proboards38.com/index.cgi
I did not expect Wildcat to have been randomly guarded.
I always do.
Depends.
If I wasn't feed info, then yes. Infidel was my next target. I still wanted to get rid of the village vigs just to keep me safe.
If he hadn't been resurrected, there would have been 4 villagers, 1 CIT, 2 converted-GODs. Converted GODs couldn't use the main GOD abilities, so the only kills would have been from the vote, the CIT, and KingMole's vig kill. Infidel had given out passwords to the remaining villagers, which I had, so ostensibly I could have had them vote off whoever we needed dead. Either TT would have killed KingMole, or KingMole would have killed TT, or both, and the village could have voted off cheez. Basically, the village was always going to outnumber the remaining faction members, so the village would have come out on top in the end.
Oatway just made everything a lot easier, what with having a conversion AND a kill power. However, his key role in the victory was converting me before he died, so I still think he wins MVP for this game.
Didn't work did it. Ass.
If you would of told me what vig was going to kill you, I would have went after them.
BTW - What were the order of actions? I really want to know.
guardian
kills
vote
seer
conversion
So all kills happened at the same time. That explains a lot.
We were notified about anything goes up front, so most of us probably joined the game out of curiosity to see what's going to happen.
A few comments.
Pros:
-I like how you've gotten the sense of confusion or paranoia with the game where people feel they need to do something to figure out how they can help their team win the game.
-The setting, role PMs and narrations are great.
-I didn't get converted!
Cons:
-It appears that my team was infiltratred by other factions (or rather we had people who were a part of multiple factions) and not knowing this was a factional game at all, people played as a village versus bad guy game. This meant that there was no information that was safe at all. The only people who did not know about anything going on were my rivals. In fact, the public thread indicates very few people, if anyone, even knew what the heck was going on because everyone was pretending to be a villager. Win conditions appeared to change as the game went on so it appears that the best way to play this game was to sit and try to not die, which usually means to skirt the inacitivity line.
-The game heavily relied on people lying low, no information, little information to those in a faction that were hooked up and mostly, it involved people existing and not dying. I'm not entirely sure what you were going for here, but I'm not really seeing how this was fun. People like options, the option of spending some time/effort to figure out what to do or what direction to go with a team is appreciated, but it appears that until the later game, this wasn't actually a choice, as seen especially by the decimation my team went because we actually decided to try doing something other than existing in the game with a vote and a few posts.
-I think your game mechanics are convincing people that lying low, not contributing anything other than a vote and being on the verge of inactivity is the way to play games in order to survive. I personally do not fnid that enjoyable or fun at all, but that's just me. Especially finding out that I needed to wait a while to figure out what's going on before I could really act on anything at all.
-Moderators. This is a personal preference, but I don't like it when the moderator(s) of the game intervene with conversation at all. For example, when robothero mentions that the village has the best chance of victory, he's confirming things very few people knew, if anyone. That all factions must die for a village victory and the village must die along with the rival for a faction to win. If people were playing in the background stating they could win with the village, this undercut their efforts completely. I feel you have to let the lpayers play the game. Stunts where people could convince others they were not a threat are great cover and gameplay, but they can easily be taken apart by a comment from a moderator. I personally feel that moderators should not, in any way, influence the game at all. Talking about the theme is cool, anything to do with the game can potentially cut someone's legs out from under them.
tl;dr - I think the best way anyone could have played this was by laying low and being inactive. I know you stated you hated the inactivity the game underwent at one point robot, but you rewarded people who laid low and survived so they could figure out what was going on.
Trying new mechanics is something I really enjoy seeing people work with. Please remember that you want to make sure your players enjoy it too. Many people were neutral at best with a normal villager role due to not knowing much about what's going on other than speculation from narrations and the OP. In a game where nothing is known and almost everyone after day 1 finds out they're all in the dark, it gets very difficult to actually do anything in the game to be active. I tried to get people to talk about some ideas/theories/abilities/facts on day 1 with my sacrifice in hoping we could find some allies out there and give information to those who were potential allies, but I guess it didn't pan out as I'd hoped.
As always, thanks for running the game Robothero and co. Thanks also for letting me participate.
I offer an apology to my team for a risk which turned around full circle and annhilated our chances of even surviving halfway into the game.
It was probably that Kingmole guy.
twitch.tv/tehsloth
Man, I had an awesome role in that game too.
As soon as I was converted, I was told to kill Infidel. Got you in the crossfire.
I'm still just happy that I survived to the end of a phalla game, and that I ended up on the side that won though sheer luck.
EDIT: Plut's village special network. Needs to be unlocked though.
You got to screw me over and get away with it. Grudge.
that was my favorite part!
Haha, Plutonium basically nuked the entire boards. I think it started with me, once I came out about the double conversion.
Did you not see my post on that, cheez?
I warned ya
This game was Epic!
I enjoyed reading it even after i "died"
OOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
My day 1 bluff succeeded, no one attempted to convert me so I was "unconvertable" as "claimed".
The last two days went exactly as VH and I planned. Oatway coming back was a bonus, but we still won as intended. The only thing that screwed up was Lawinator revealing our double-agent for no good reason, but it didn't lose us the game fortunately.
Good work village! Awesome narrations. :^:
Toxic was SUPPOSED to kill Kingmole, it really wouldn't have changed anything anyway.
I wasn't allowed to visit the network boards anymore after my conversion. That whole "you have forgotten your prior affiliations" bit.
Anyway, confusing game, but at least I got to have fun with my post restriction on the last day. I think the best one was where "Oh man" got turned into "Person from Ohio state."
PS fuck da police
Also, good game guys! Had lots of fun!
Azulan Saul Tigh
Day 1 we only had to kill the church, but it said that may change.
It appeared in the thread that everyone thought this was a village versus bad guy game, when it turns out it was supposed to be a factional game. I think if people realized this was a factional game, nobody would've kept decimating my team.
All I knew was around day 4 or 5, it seemed the win conditions were finally stated in the narration?
(I also made a "thoughts" post about this on CIT proboards).
http://innsmouthsha.proboards57.com/
This. So much this.
By the time he was done, I was pretty much forced to reveal to ISAT, because I just couldn't keep up with refuting him to both the main thread and them. At least without outright lying to everyone, which I didn't want to do, because I kinda like keeping my reputation for honesty.
Well, at least now I have a day 1 grudge vote in future games. :P
oh, and I don't know wtf he was talking about with being locked out of the SHA boards... I had done a bit of re-organization that day, but his account was changed in exactly the same way as the others, and they were posting fine. I PM'ed him as soon as I saw that, asking him about it, and making a couple of suggestions, and got no response and he never posted there again, so I don't know wtf was going on there.