Oh man, I know it was killing you and Saber, but again, I kept hope alive:
]Elven Lord of the Fountain of Life
You have been tasked with keeping the Elven Fountain of Life safe. The title is mostly an honorary one, but you take it seriously. Never in all your years has the fountain come under threat. Who would threaten it? Anyone attempting to destroy it would be hurting themselves as all life comes from the fountain. Still times are uncertain what with the tremendous blow something struck the tree of life. You must protect the fountain at all costs. Furthermore, you should be careful about letting anyone know where the fountain is located. Better safe than sorry after all.
Royal Bequeathment - Your Beautiful and Noble Queen has asked that the Long Sword of Swiftness be given to a champion of the Elves to ensure all is well in the World Tree. Please send a PM to @38thdoe with your vote target before vote close.
Win condition: Eliminate all threats to the village.
My role was "the only NPC who survives until Faxanadu starts, and then helps the hero," so mission accomplished I guess?
Auralynx on
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Conversions are rough. Also I think your and SOEs powers could've been explained/understood better: they weren't to heal the parasites, they were to prevent someone from being converted. If ya'll had been using those daily, this would be a much different outcome.
I did use daily but without any indication (like infection) it was shooting blind.
So how did Lost get healed if the Meditate wasn't to heal that? I'm super confused still
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Conversions are rough. Also I think your and SOEs powers could've been explained/understood better: they weren't to heal the parasites, they were to prevent someone from being converted. If ya'll had been using those daily, this would be a much different outcome.
I did use daily but without any indication (like infection) it was shooting blind.
So how did Lost get healed if the Meditate wasn't to heal that? I'm super confused still
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
I could only target one person a night. It was chamberlain or the person who EVERYONE knew had a bunch of information. Jpants was a much more prominent target, chamberlain was more in the background.
I helped there. That was one thing JPants did tell me to vote, you to get shield. Once I was converted figured even if you didn’t get sword (which I hinted to Jpants you should get for every day Vig) it would be good to control guard
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Conversions are rough. Also I think your and SOEs powers could've been explained/understood better: they weren't to heal the parasites, they were to prevent someone from being converted. If ya'll had been using those daily, this would be a much different outcome.
I did use daily but without any indication (like infection) it was shooting blind.
So how did Lost get healed if the Meditate wasn't to heal that? I'm super confused still
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
I did, I targeted Virgil the first few nights since I knew he was getting the sword. I targeted Auralynx a couple times when he said sometehing about it mbeing important he not get corrupted. I targeted SOE a couple times.
Plus, the way our power was worded it sounded like a guard, not a cure. Made more sense to protect the most imporatnt person each night instead of spreading it around.
If we Meditated at a converted person would that have unconverted them? I doubt it. So we had to get lucky and target the convversion target the same night they were targeted? That can't be what was expected.
Conversions really are rough. Fairly sure even after conversion I didn’t lie to anyone in a PM. The fact that everyone generally stopped talking to me the day before helped.
I just think they need to be tempered. That's why i want to know how these worked.
Not getting a seer until there had been 2-4 conversions already also seems a bit out of whack. And no backup seer ever? dinger.
As salty as I seem, I really did have a great time going farging crazy out of my mind this game. I'll take a crazy, possibly imbalanced game over a dead simple vanilla game, any day. I will definitely think twice about being a nethead next time.
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Conversions are rough. Also I think your and SOEs powers could've been explained/understood better: they weren't to heal the parasites, they were to prevent someone from being converted. If ya'll had been using those daily, this would be a much different outcome.
I did use daily but without any indication (like infection) it was shooting blind.
So how did Lost get healed if the Meditate wasn't to heal that? I'm super confused still
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
I did, I targeted Virgil the first few nights since I knew he was getting the sword. I targeted Auralynx a couple times when he said sometehing about it mbeing important he not get corrupted. I targeted SOE a couple times.
Plus, the way our power was worded it sounded like a guard, not a cure. Made more sense to protect the most imporatnt person each night instead of spreading it around.
If we Meditated at a converted person would that have unconverted them? I doubt it. So we had to get lucky and target the convversion target the same night they were targeted? That can't be what was expected.
I'm pretty sure once you used it on someone it would prevent them from being converted for the rest of the game.
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Conversions are rough. Also I think your and SOEs powers could've been explained/understood better: they weren't to heal the parasites, they were to prevent someone from being converted. If ya'll had been using those daily, this would be a much different outcome.
I did use daily but without any indication (like infection) it was shooting blind.
So how did Lost get healed if the Meditate wasn't to heal that? I'm super confused still
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
I did, I targeted Virgil the first few nights since I knew he was getting the sword. I targeted Auralynx a couple times when he said sometehing about it mbeing important he not get corrupted. I targeted SOE a couple times.
Plus, the way our power was worded it sounded like a guard, not a cure. Made more sense to protect the most imporatnt person each night instead of spreading it around.
If we Meditated at a converted person would that have unconverted them? I doubt it. So we had to get lucky and target the convversion target the same night they were targeted? That can't be what was expected.
I'm pretty sure once you used it on someone it would prevent them from being converted for the rest of the game.
Then something really weird happened, because I targeted you in day 1.
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ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Conversions are rough. Also I think your and SOEs powers could've been explained/understood better: they weren't to heal the parasites, they were to prevent someone from being converted. If ya'll had been using those daily, this would be a much different outcome.
I did use daily but without any indication (like infection) it was shooting blind.
So how did Lost get healed if the Meditate wasn't to heal that? I'm super confused still
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
I did, I targeted Virgil the first few nights since I knew he was getting the sword. I targeted Auralynx a couple times when he said sometehing about it mbeing important he not get corrupted. I targeted SOE a couple times.
Plus, the way our power was worded it sounded like a guard, not a cure. Made more sense to protect the most imporatnt person each night instead of spreading it around.
If we Meditated at a converted person would that have unconverted them? I doubt it. So we had to get lucky and target the convversion target the same night they were targeted? That can't be what was expected.
I'm pretty sure once you used it on someone it would prevent them from being converted for the rest of the game.
Then something really weird happened, because I targeted you in day 1.
oh, then yeah, I was assuming it inoculated but was apparently wrong!
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Conversions are rough. Also I think your and SOEs powers could've been explained/understood better: they weren't to heal the parasites, they were to prevent someone from being converted. If ya'll had been using those daily, this would be a much different outcome.
I did use daily but without any indication (like infection) it was shooting blind.
So how did Lost get healed if the Meditate wasn't to heal that? I'm super confused still
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
I did, I targeted Virgil the first few nights since I knew he was getting the sword. I targeted Auralynx a couple times when he said sometehing about it mbeing important he not get corrupted. I targeted SOE a couple times.
Plus, the way our power was worded it sounded like a guard, not a cure. Made more sense to protect the most imporatnt person each night instead of spreading it around.
If we Meditated at a converted person would that have unconverted them? I doubt it. So we had to get lucky and target the convversion target the same night they were targeted? That can't be what was expected.
I'm pretty sure once you used it on someone it would prevent them from being converted for the rest of the game.
Then something really weird happened, because I targeted you in day 1.
oh, then yeah, I was assuming it inoculated but was apparently wrong!
Yeah, if it was inoculation, and it said so in the description of the ability, this would have been a lot more fair. As it was. <shrug>
38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Host Notes
I am going to apologize up front if anyone didn't have a good time or got frustrated with this game. I think I was a bit too vague with the powers. I didn't want to spell everything out but combined with a red herring I think everyone got the wrong impression of what was going on in the game.
This is what was going on: discrider started as the Traveler. The creature in the meteorite was converting creatures to its side. The creature’s conversion triggered even if it died so as to not end the game on Day 1. The conversion was shown in the narration as figures moving into the sludge at night. The creature could then convert them into monsters, allowing them to kill. This was also shown in narration. The monsters could have a maximum of two kills per day. Thus even if they got the village weapons away from them they'd not be able to get an absurd amount of kills. The creature was limited to having 3 teammates but would receive a bonus capacity for taking over a fountain.
In one of my earliest games I was part of a critical team tied to the village’s success. Basically if my masons and I died, the game was lost. My masons were slowly dying and someone needed to reach out and get them help but we couldn’t let ourselves be discovered. The tension of trying to secure help without revealing myself was amazing. I tried to recreate this here with the fountain masters. If they were converted or killed the mafia would be powered up. To balance this, fountain corruption would spawn a vote for a non regenerating seer.
Specials were voted on and regenerating to try and help against the cult. The village also had Royalty with +1 vote strength and gurus who could guard conversions. The sword hammer shield and armor were essentially a guard and vig every day. If someone had both items they upgraded to a full vig. Unfortunately everyone except Auralynx talked about their role through soft networking people and the cult knew exactly where to convert and kill.
Please don't blame @Egos for any Balance issues. He tried to warn me. He even sent me the video of Tim the Enchanter. He has a better eye for this stuff than I do. I didn’t really have an epiphany on the game state until Day 4. Still the village had a good chance had they guarded LostNinja on the night he seered Locus. Sadly the guard was on JPants that night. It was heartbreaking seeing so many fingers pointed at the mafia the last day but ultimately not acting on it.
I haven’t done a conversion game since Transformers, which was pretty rough since it also featured obscuring of the vote kill and resurrection. That game was a cult blow out but that was in 2014 and I was read to try a conversion game again. I thought I had toned it down a bit and the game was winnabe until after tonight’s vote. Conversion are tough to balance. Softnetworking is a huge wildcard in all games. It can be especially powerful in games where more people are not vanilla. In somegames you see plucky little softnetworks of the specials and they are essentially village mafias. Masoned with powers. Way too powerful. In Transformers the village vig soft networked with the cult and agreed not to kill the cult. In this game the village leaked a lot of info to unconfirmed people.
All other things aside, the engagement in this game was wonderful! We generated 1.3k posts, more than the last two games I ran put together! The last game I ran with that many posts was For Science! In 2015 a 42 person game that went 12 game days! So thank you everyone for getting into things!
About the long weekend: Weekends continue to be awful for me and I suspect a lot of other people. While I see the side that if you don’t force people to make time they’ll never find it I put a fair amount of hours into making and running these games and I hate for them to be decided by Inactivus.
Finally I regret the red herring I put in this game. When discrider died I had a great block of text written up for the conversion in event of the creature’s death. I sent it out to a couple of dwarves who were not in peace of mind that had a nightmare about it. Whereas Locus’ message ended in a role conversion, the dreamers ended with saying they are okay. I think this really confused the vague wording of the gurus powers. I felt so bad I let death miller/thralls be confirmed as not existing in the game.
Well. I think that’s probably enough out of me for now. Maybe I’ll go play some faxanadu. I was slightly astonished when Jpants picked out that I had mentioned this game in a previous host notes. Holy crap people read these?
Let me know what you did and didn’t like and how things might be improved. Thank you all for playing!
I reall appreciate you taking the time to run this game @38thdoe I know how hard being a host can be.
I think your drastically overestimating the villages chances. The only reason that Lost even knew that Locus was a good target was the fact that there was a vague network around. There’s no way for us to know whether the mafia get racial special votes or not, so we have to ask SOMEONE for votes to get them places. Otherwise, it ends up with someone random who wouldn’t necessarily know the important people to seer, and wouldn’t have contact with the gurus to ensure that their targets stay seemed.
Even had the mafia not killed Lost, and we got a vote on Locus tonight, they would have still had Chamberlain’s kill and the ability to convert someone to replace him. We’d be back in the same boat with the dwarf items again the next night and just as close to losing. Even if he seemed another mafia and survived the kill AGAIN, we’d lose the next day.
I think the long and the short of it is that cults and straight “pick a target” conversions are not balanced. Period. Full stop. I’m curious if there’s any cult in any game who could select people to convert that has ever lost a game? The only one I can think of was the random christas do-it-yourselfer where the cult also had a posting restriction that was eventually figured out. If people have other examples, I’m very curious.
I guess the other big takeaway is listen to egos? :P
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Yeah, this game was super confusing at first, and then super nerve wracking post conversion. I kept wanting to contribute enough to not get swept up as inactive, but not give away I was mafia now.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
I reall appreciate you taking the time to run this game @38thdoe I know how hard being a host can be.
I think your drastically overestimating the villages chances. The only reason that Lost even knew that Locus was a good target was the fact that there was a vague network around. There’s no way for us to know whether the mafia get racial special votes or not, so we have to ask SOMEONE for votes to get them places. Otherwise, it ends up with someone random who wouldn’t necessarily know the important people to seer, and wouldn’t have contact with the gurus to ensure that their targets stay seemed.
Even had the mafia not killed Lost, and we got a vote on Locus tonight, they would have still had Chamberlain’s kill and the ability to convert someone to replace him. We’d be back in the same boat with the dwarf items again the next night and just as close to losing. Even if he seemed another mafia and survived the kill AGAIN, we’d lose the next day.
I think the long and the short of it is that cults and straight “pick a target” conversions are not balanced. Period. Full stop. I’m curious if there’s any cult in any game who could select people to convert that has ever lost a game? The only one I can think of was the random christas do-it-yourselfer where the cult also had a posting restriction that was eventually figured out. If people have other examples, I’m very curious.
I guess the other big takeaway is listen to egos? :P
I picked Locus to convert because of his hammer 'I'm a dwarf' secret dance day 1, because I had both vanillager PMs.
Didn't know that it would take though.
ObiFettUse the ForceAs You WishRegistered Userregular
Lol at us voting out the only mafia day 1.
I say thats a village win right there.
I can see why you would be frustrated with the outcome of the game @38thDoe but I know I had fun. I think stepping away from Phalla for a bit has helped me to realize that the fun in these games is less about winning but more the experience of it all. It was fun when I was village and it was fun when I was mafia.
I reall appreciate you taking the time to run this game @38thdoe I know how hard being a host can be.
I think your drastically overestimating the villages chances. The only reason that Lost even knew that Locus was a good target was the fact that there was a vague network around. There’s no way for us to know whether the mafia get racial special votes or not, so we have to ask SOMEONE for votes to get them places. Otherwise, it ends up with someone random who wouldn’t necessarily know the important people to seer, and wouldn’t have contact with the gurus to ensure that their targets stay seemed.
Even had the mafia not killed Lost, and we got a vote on Locus tonight, they would have still had Chamberlain’s kill and the ability to convert someone to replace him. We’d be back in the same boat with the dwarf items again the next night and just as close to losing. Even if he seemed another mafia and survived the kill AGAIN, we’d lose the next day.
I think the long and the short of it is that cults and straight “pick a target” conversions are not balanced. Period. Full stop. I’m curious if there’s any cult in any game who could select people to convert that has ever lost a game? The only one I can think of was the random christas do-it-yourselfer where the cult also had a posting restriction that was eventually figured out. If people have other examples, I’m very curious.
I guess the other big takeaway is listen to egos? :P
We wouldn't have been able to convert anyone else. Locus used the last conversion on chamberlain.
facetiousa wit so dryit shits sandRegistered Userregular
I think there were some mechanical issues with the game, but I enjoyed myself, I thought the setting and narration was cool, I like a lot of the ideas in theory, but something was missing. A bit more guidance for the village, perhaps, although the confusion was fun in its own way. Perhaps that much confusion for the village may have worked with slightly less power for the mafia?
As an aside, after such a long hiatus from phalla, for my first game back to be me as a vanillager flailing around outside of the "solid" village network is so hilariously bloody typical that it's like I've never been gone.
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
I reall appreciate you taking the time to run this game @38thdoe I know how hard being a host can be.
I think your drastically overestimating the villages chances. The only reason that Lost even knew that Locus was a good target was the fact that there was a vague network around. There’s no way for us to know whether the mafia get racial special votes or not, so we have to ask SOMEONE for votes to get them places. Otherwise, it ends up with someone random who wouldn’t necessarily know the important people to seer, and wouldn’t have contact with the gurus to ensure that their targets stay seemed.
I think the long and the short of it is that cults and straight “pick a target” conversions are not balanced. Period. Full stop. I’m curious if there’s any cult in any game who could select people to convert that has ever lost a game? The only one I can think of was the random christas do-it-yourselfer where the cult also had a posting restriction that was eventually figured out. If people have other examples, I’m very curious.
Even had the mafia not killed Lost, and we got a vote on Locus tonight, they would have still had Chamberlain’s kill and the ability to convert someone to replace him. We’d be back in the same boat with the dwarf items again the next night and just as close to losing. Even if he seemed another mafia and survived the kill AGAIN, we’d lose the next day.
Sorry If you had killed Locus they would have lost the ability to convert, the hammer, and the armor which would be up for village vote.
I guess the other big takeaway is listen to egos? :P
I guess. I often don't want to put in all the work of running a game to run something vanilla. Eh. I don't want to just run people through a frustrating harrowing experience either. Maybe I'll take a break for a bit.
Which isn't to say Egos only wants to do vanilla things. I just have crazy thoughts I guess. I'm curious about cults as well.
I guess. I often don't want to put in all the work of running a game to run something vanilla. Eh. I don't want to just run people through a frustrating harrowing experience either. Maybe I'll take a break for a bit.
Which isn't to say Egos only wants to do vanilla things. I just have crazy thoughts I guess. I'm curious about cults as well.
I like crazy games. Crazy games gets people going and talking and thinking about their own crazy games.
I guess. I often don't want to put in all the work of running a game to run something vanilla. Eh. I don't want to just run people through a frustrating harrowing experience either. Maybe I'll take a break for a bit.
Which isn't to say Egos only wants to do vanilla things. I just have crazy thoughts I guess. I'm curious about cults as well.
I like crazy games. Crazy games gets people going and talking and thinking about their own crazy games.
Keep doing you.
Someday I hope @Infidel@MrBlarney and I can show you the bottled insanity we have been working on.
I reall appreciate you taking the time to run this game @38thdoe I know how hard being a host can be.
I think your drastically overestimating the villages chances. The only reason that Lost even knew that Locus was a good target was the fact that there was a vague network around. There’s no way for us to know whether the mafia get racial special votes or not, so we have to ask SOMEONE for votes to get them places. Otherwise, it ends up with someone random who wouldn’t necessarily know the important people to seer, and wouldn’t have contact with the gurus to ensure that their targets stay seemed.
I think the long and the short of it is that cults and straight “pick a target” conversions are not balanced. Period. Full stop. I’m curious if there’s any cult in any game who could select people to convert that has ever lost a game? The only one I can think of was the random christas do-it-yourselfer where the cult also had a posting restriction that was eventually figured out. If people have other examples, I’m very curious.
Even had the mafia not killed Lost, and we got a vote on Locus tonight, they would have still had Chamberlain’s kill and the ability to convert someone to replace him. We’d be back in the same boat with the dwarf items again the next night and just as close to losing. Even if he seemed another mafia and survived the kill AGAIN, we’d lose the next day.
Sorry If you had killed Locus they would have lost the ability to convert, the hammer, and the armor which would be up for village vote.
I guess the other big takeaway is listen to egos? :P
I guess. I often don't want to put in all the work of running a game to run something vanilla. Eh. I don't want to just run people through a frustrating harrowing experience either. Maybe I'll take a break for a bit.
Which isn't to say Egos only wants to do vanilla things. I just have crazy thoughts I guess. I'm curious about cults as well.
I hear you. I’m not a big van of vanilla game myself. And I’ve really enjoyed your games in the past. EVO Phalla still haunts me every time I end up in charge of things. I’ve also certainly run my fair share of games that have left people frustrated.
All that isn’t to say that you can’t find a way to make cults interesting or fair. This is a learning experience for all of us, and it’s not like I’m walking around with all of the answers either. I look forward to whatever you out together next, whenever you’re ready to do it.
maybe revealing special abilities in a game with conversions isn't the best idea?
..... on a completely unrelated note, was Brody actually king of the dwarves?
No one knew conversions were a thing. We could guess and speculate, but there was never any confirmation.
On the other hand, dying to the vote was DEFINITELY a thing. As a village special, I’ll take the unknown of a possible game mechanic over the vote any day.
I like crazy games. I get the frustration of the village here, even after hearing the Guru's power, I'm not sure I fully understand how they could have prevented any conversions.
I do have to say that I still would prefer an unbalanced crazy game as opposed to perfectly balanced vanilla game. Vanilla games seem like they all follow the same pattern, and it's just a matter of which couple key points of the game are reached by either side first, and then you can see who is going to win. We didn't even know what kind of game we were really playing most of this one, so that was fun.
I think everyone might have soft networked too much here. I honestly still don't get how Locus got his hands on both the hammer and armor on the dwarf side, that was crazy to find out when getting converted.
I like crazy games. I get the frustration of the village here, even after hearing the Guru's power, I'm not sure I fully understand how they could have prevented any conversions.
I do have to say that I still would prefer an unbalanced crazy game as opposed to perfectly balanced vanilla game. Vanilla games seem like they all follow the same pattern, and it's just a matter of which couple key points of the game are reached by either side first, and then you can see who is going to win. We didn't even know what kind of game we were really playing most of this one, so that was fun.
I think everyone might have soft networked too much here. I honestly still don't get how Locus got his hands on both the hammer and armor on the dwarf side, that was crazy to find out when getting converted.
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have revealed, but after slipping on the fountain deal, I kind of felt I had to back it. Also, my+2 never actually came into play, so I never felt that I would provide specific benefit to the mafia.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Posts
Oh man, I know it was killing you and Saber, but again, I kept hope alive:
]Elven Lord of the Fountain of Life
You have been tasked with keeping the Elven Fountain of Life safe. The title is mostly an honorary one, but you take it seriously. Never in all your years has the fountain come under threat. Who would threaten it? Anyone attempting to destroy it would be hurting themselves as all life comes from the fountain. Still times are uncertain what with the tremendous blow something struck the tree of life. You must protect the fountain at all costs. Furthermore, you should be careful about letting anyone know where the fountain is located. Better safe than sorry after all.
Royal Bequeathment - Your Beautiful and Noble Queen has asked that the Long Sword of Swiftness be given to a champion of the Elves to ensure all is well in the World Tree. Please send a PM to @38thdoe with your vote target before vote close.
Win condition: Eliminate all threats to the village.
My role was "the only NPC who survives until Faxanadu starts, and then helps the hero," so mission accomplished I guess?
Why weren't you using it on the people you guys were handing out powers to, like chamberlain?
Bad/good timing there.
I could only target one person a night. It was chamberlain or the person who EVERYONE knew had a bunch of information. Jpants was a much more prominent target, chamberlain was more in the background.
I did, I targeted Virgil the first few nights since I knew he was getting the sword. I targeted Auralynx a couple times when he said sometehing about it mbeing important he not get corrupted. I targeted SOE a couple times.
Plus, the way our power was worded it sounded like a guard, not a cure. Made more sense to protect the most imporatnt person each night instead of spreading it around.
If we Meditated at a converted person would that have unconverted them? I doubt it. So we had to get lucky and target the convversion target the same night they were targeted? That can't be what was expected.
Not getting a seer until there had been 2-4 conversions already also seems a bit out of whack. And no backup seer ever? dinger.
As salty as I seem, I really did have a great time going farging crazy out of my mind this game. I'll take a crazy, possibly imbalanced game over a dead simple vanilla game, any day. I will definitely think twice about being a nethead next time.
I’m eager to see the full design!
I actually started typing out a PM to you saying I thought it was a trap vote - but deleted what I wrote as people I was surprised by piled on.
I thought bedlam was normal bedlam this game ... so decided not to bother with changing my vote.
Island Name: Felinefine
I'm pretty sure once you used it on someone it would prevent them from being converted for the rest of the game.
Were you mafia, though?
Then something really weird happened, because I targeted you in day 1.
oh, then yeah, I was assuming it inoculated but was apparently wrong!
Yeah, if it was inoculation, and it said so in the description of the ability, this would have been a lot more fair. As it was. <shrug>
Not sure?
I was the same colour, but on my side I was the sole cult leader with both vanillager PMs.
Not that that would have changed any of it.
I am going to apologize up front if anyone didn't have a good time or got frustrated with this game. I think I was a bit too vague with the powers. I didn't want to spell everything out but combined with a red herring I think everyone got the wrong impression of what was going on in the game.
This is what was going on: discrider started as the Traveler. The creature in the meteorite was converting creatures to its side. The creature’s conversion triggered even if it died so as to not end the game on Day 1. The conversion was shown in the narration as figures moving into the sludge at night. The creature could then convert them into monsters, allowing them to kill. This was also shown in narration. The monsters could have a maximum of two kills per day. Thus even if they got the village weapons away from them they'd not be able to get an absurd amount of kills. The creature was limited to having 3 teammates but would receive a bonus capacity for taking over a fountain.
In one of my earliest games I was part of a critical team tied to the village’s success. Basically if my masons and I died, the game was lost. My masons were slowly dying and someone needed to reach out and get them help but we couldn’t let ourselves be discovered. The tension of trying to secure help without revealing myself was amazing. I tried to recreate this here with the fountain masters. If they were converted or killed the mafia would be powered up. To balance this, fountain corruption would spawn a vote for a non regenerating seer.
Specials were voted on and regenerating to try and help against the cult. The village also had Royalty with +1 vote strength and gurus who could guard conversions. The sword hammer shield and armor were essentially a guard and vig every day. If someone had both items they upgraded to a full vig. Unfortunately everyone except Auralynx talked about their role through soft networking people and the cult knew exactly where to convert and kill.
Please don't blame @Egos for any Balance issues. He tried to warn me. He even sent me the video of Tim the Enchanter. He has a better eye for this stuff than I do. I didn’t really have an epiphany on the game state until Day 4. Still the village had a good chance had they guarded LostNinja on the night he seered Locus. Sadly the guard was on JPants that night. It was heartbreaking seeing so many fingers pointed at the mafia the last day but ultimately not acting on it.
I haven’t done a conversion game since Transformers, which was pretty rough since it also featured obscuring of the vote kill and resurrection. That game was a cult blow out but that was in 2014 and I was read to try a conversion game again. I thought I had toned it down a bit and the game was winnabe until after tonight’s vote. Conversion are tough to balance. Softnetworking is a huge wildcard in all games. It can be especially powerful in games where more people are not vanilla. In somegames you see plucky little softnetworks of the specials and they are essentially village mafias. Masoned with powers. Way too powerful. In Transformers the village vig soft networked with the cult and agreed not to kill the cult. In this game the village leaked a lot of info to unconfirmed people.
All other things aside, the engagement in this game was wonderful! We generated 1.3k posts, more than the last two games I ran put together! The last game I ran with that many posts was For Science! In 2015 a 42 person game that went 12 game days! So thank you everyone for getting into things!
About the long weekend: Weekends continue to be awful for me and I suspect a lot of other people. While I see the side that if you don’t force people to make time they’ll never find it I put a fair amount of hours into making and running these games and I hate for them to be decided by Inactivus.
Finally I regret the red herring I put in this game. When discrider died I had a great block of text written up for the conversion in event of the creature’s death. I sent it out to a couple of dwarves who were not in peace of mind that had a nightmare about it. Whereas Locus’ message ended in a role conversion, the dreamers ended with saying they are okay. I think this really confused the vague wording of the gurus powers. I felt so bad I let death miller/thralls be confirmed as not existing in the game.
Well. I think that’s probably enough out of me for now. Maybe I’ll go play some faxanadu. I was slightly astonished when Jpants picked out that I had mentioned this game in a previous host notes. Holy crap people read these?
Let me know what you did and didn’t like and how things might be improved. Thank you all for playing!
Yeah I thought the game had changed so the village didn't win Day 1.
I guess I won?
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
I think your drastically overestimating the villages chances. The only reason that Lost even knew that Locus was a good target was the fact that there was a vague network around. There’s no way for us to know whether the mafia get racial special votes or not, so we have to ask SOMEONE for votes to get them places. Otherwise, it ends up with someone random who wouldn’t necessarily know the important people to seer, and wouldn’t have contact with the gurus to ensure that their targets stay seemed.
Even had the mafia not killed Lost, and we got a vote on Locus tonight, they would have still had Chamberlain’s kill and the ability to convert someone to replace him. We’d be back in the same boat with the dwarf items again the next night and just as close to losing. Even if he seemed another mafia and survived the kill AGAIN, we’d lose the next day.
I think the long and the short of it is that cults and straight “pick a target” conversions are not balanced. Period. Full stop. I’m curious if there’s any cult in any game who could select people to convert that has ever lost a game? The only one I can think of was the random christas do-it-yourselfer where the cult also had a posting restriction that was eventually figured out. If people have other examples, I’m very curious.
I guess the other big takeaway is listen to egos? :P
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I picked Locus to convert because of his hammer 'I'm a dwarf' secret dance day 1, because I had both vanillager PMs.
Didn't know that it would take though.
I say thats a village win right there.
I can see why you would be frustrated with the outcome of the game @38thDoe but I know I had fun. I think stepping away from Phalla for a bit has helped me to realize that the fun in these games is less about winning but more the experience of it all. It was fun when I was village and it was fun when I was mafia.
We wouldn't have been able to convert anyone else. Locus used the last conversion on chamberlain.
Frankly it was a bad game for me to be mafia
As an aside, after such a long hiatus from phalla, for my first game back to be me as a vanillager flailing around outside of the "solid" village network is so hilariously bloody typical that it's like I've never been gone.
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
Yes. I screwed up. I'm sorry.
Sorry If you had killed Locus they would have lost the ability to convert, the hammer, and the armor which would be up for village vote.
I guess. I often don't want to put in all the work of running a game to run something vanilla. Eh. I don't want to just run people through a frustrating harrowing experience either. Maybe I'll take a break for a bit.
Which isn't to say Egos only wants to do vanilla things. I just have crazy thoughts I guess. I'm curious about cults as well.
I like crazy games. Crazy games gets people going and talking and thinking about their own crazy games.
Keep doing you.
maybe revealing special abilities in a game with conversions isn't the best idea?
..... on a completely unrelated note, was Brody actually king of the dwarves?
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
Someday I hope @Infidel @MrBlarney and I can show you the bottled insanity we have been working on.
I hear you. I’m not a big van of vanilla game myself. And I’ve really enjoyed your games in the past. EVO Phalla still haunts me every time I end up in charge of things. I’ve also certainly run my fair share of games that have left people frustrated.
All that isn’t to say that you can’t find a way to make cults interesting or fair. This is a learning experience for all of us, and it’s not like I’m walking around with all of the answers either. I look forward to whatever you out together next, whenever you’re ready to do it.
No one knew conversions were a thing. We could guess and speculate, but there was never any confirmation.
On the other hand, dying to the vote was DEFINITELY a thing. As a village special, I’ll take the unknown of a possible game mechanic over the vote any day.
I do have to say that I still would prefer an unbalanced crazy game as opposed to perfectly balanced vanilla game. Vanilla games seem like they all follow the same pattern, and it's just a matter of which couple key points of the game are reached by either side first, and then you can see who is going to win. We didn't even know what kind of game we were really playing most of this one, so that was fun.
I think everyone might have soft networked too much here. I honestly still don't get how Locus got his hands on both the hammer and armor on the dwarf side, that was crazy to find out when getting converted.
I'd like to note you had two other lists in that same post that implicated almost everyone still alive...
Anyways, I ended up being a bit busy and not able to continue as much. Sorry. But I had fun! Thanks for running!
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Locus calling all dwarves, winning the hammer vote, getting converted.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain