Werewolf CXX - Shipwrecked

[enkhuush]

No, that's not what I mean't. A cultist is trying to infilitrate the JL as a protector, say. He only wants the name of the Seer. He asks you who to protect. You don't say "Rendap", you say a name that has been scanned and is unlikely to be a cultist. Then, if that person is hunted, this infilitrater is almost certainly a baddy. If there is a no hunt, you don't trust him.

Understood your logic, but in this situation this won't work. So I've confirmed cultist and JL mouthpiece will make announcement we've got baddie and that would be cultist. Baddies will contest that you should bring wolf, not cultist.

Edited: The issue is unless we hit wolf, the protector won't trust JL.

[reis91]

No, that's not what I mean't. A cultist is trying to infilitrate the JL as a protector, say. He only wants the name of the Seer. He asks you who to protect. You don't say "Rendap", you say a name that has been scanned and is unlikely to be a cultist. Then, if that person is hunted, this infilitrater is almost certainly a baddy. If there is a no hunt, you don't trust him.

Almost certainly*. Also, you lose one scanned guy.

[enkhuush]

Now I firmly believe that the village could have won only by miracle, because:

- Overpowered sorcerer. Touch of bad too overpowered compared touch of good.
- No priest means we can't do nothing against hunter cultist.
- Then distiller and lover cultist.
- So on.

I think the JL is victimized by apparent attempt to nerf JL.

[Taiisatai64]

Almost certainly*. Also, you lose one scanned guy.

You can't trust anyone. Yes, you lose one scanned guy, so what? He might have just as easily been a baddy. I learn't that to my detriment in Rendap's airport game.

[Vainglory]

Werewolf CXXI: Deus Omnia Vincit

IT IS THE 41st millenium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defense forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

TO BE A MAN in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of the thirsting gods.

Signup is now open.

[randakar]

Distiller - A late minute addition inspired by the role-blocker from Ciry's game. I think this has the potential to be a keeper. It is more valuable
for a baddie than for a goodie in the early game. In the endgame it is probably more of value for a goodie. I know lots of people think lover is too powerful
and this could be seen as a watered down version of lover.

The distiller has my seal of approval.

Touch of Good/Evil - I think these are best put on apprentices rather than on starting scanners. For this game I restricted them so people couldn't touch themselves (ewww!) but didn't think about this:

White Daimon has a rule that baddies should never be able to switch sides. A rule I fully support, I might add.
Putting ToE on baddies definitely violates that.

Spiritual Witness - Never liked this myself and only included it so people would have more things to chose from. Noone picked it so I guess noone else likes it either.

You might want to reduce the cost a bit though. I took plotter because it was 1 point I still had left that I couldn't use elsewhere. SA was cheaper, yet SA is probably more powerful (and therefore, very popular.)
It definitely was something that worried me as a potential problematic trait in the game though.
How I was to know reis was the only person who even had that ..?

Parity Check

Actually I think I gave the wrong answer to that one. I think I normally check after each step, after lynch+brutal, after sorcerer scan, after hunter hunt, after wolf attack+hunter retaliation. What do you guys think?

Definitely check that every step of the way. It's how slinky used it in Fierce Creatures, and that game had a very clear case where the two methods would have derived different results for silly reasons. Eg. the wolves eating the newly claimed sorcerer's apprentice at a point where that apprentice caused parity to occur ..

Stealing Apprentices - I'm not sure what I think here. Should it be allowed, not allowed or restricted like I had in this game?

Baddie apprentices being stolen violates the "no baddies turning back" rule. For goodie apprentices it's less big of a deal since paranoia in the JL = good.
However, the restriction is kinda counterproductive. The problem is apprentices turning in the first place. Restricting it like that just means that they don't get to choose after getting turned once anymore, it doesn't stop baddie apprentices from going "gee, I know all the wolves, and there is this Ironman JL going .. might as well throw in my hat with them". And with goodies, you at least still have a chance that the priest turns the seer's apprentice or vice versa, in which case you get complete trust in the JL going whereas the baddie variant will always have to worry about the apprentices turning (at least, until you're certain all goodie scanners are dead )

Leader - "Can only redirect to people with at least 1/3 of the votes of the lynchee." This was never put to the test but I think it's about right and can be used if Leader is used.

Didn't stop us from going "wait, we have 6 votes, might as well leaderlynch hc" today

Cloak of Invisibility - Nobody used it, not even as a standing order to save themselves. Nobody picked it (despite all the pre-game talk about it being "overpowered" ). Doesn't seem to be that game-altering so might be used again.

It's situational, if someone plays his cards exactly right it could be very powerfull, but I think that if you can manage to know when you'll get hunted / scanned / whatever up front and activate the cloak and *then* get advantage out of that .. more power to you

RPing traits - I tried to only hand them out in such a way that people who didn't like them could back out and I think this is the way to go if any of these are kept.

Nice. Definitely a keeper.

I had thought that the number of cultists and wolves would be switched, so I thought we had another day.

If you'd stopped to think about why HC was suddenly going after TNT like that on the last day, you might have realized that parity wasn't *that* far off.
Though to be honest at that point you guys didn't actually have a way to stop us any more. Lord_D's leader order made the village vote pretty much irrelevant.

*Cough*

Clearly I am a master at this game.

It made me laugh pretty hard though, because I had done absolutely nothing to warrant suspicion yet, and at one stage it seemed pretty obvious you were just ..going after me for the lulz.
You did worry me for a little bit, so I scanned you, but after that I just went .. nah. Everyone ignored you anyway

All me guys, all me.

In hindsight, what you did was pretty good for us. Without protection and enkhuus dead getting to Rendap wasn't hard at all.
Though to be honest, if he hadn't gotten killed, I'd have scanned and turned him ..

That aside, you people continue to nearly always think I am a wolf, bad memories?

Villagers in general made themselves look pretty suspicious. The wolves, however ..

I kenw Lord-D was a wolf, and I had was suspicous about Falc as well

Yes. Nobody listened to that though. Not even me
(I didn't know about lord_d until the very last day ..)

As for Falc - he was good, until I turned him - the day rendap died

I was quite happy with my ability to lay so low this game. I don't think I even got quoted once in analysis, though Randakar being the sorcerer kind of helped with that. And I don't think I ever got more than two votes.

You're welcome

I'm glad its over, though... my poor inbox was overflowing, and that didn't help my ability to GM the Lite or Diplomacy at all.

Well, apologies for the spam.. but I hope you had fun regardless

Now, who the hell had me hunted?

I'm guessing that was Euro ..

Only village and the seer listened me. I could have played like AOK, all my suspicion was right. But if I hit sorcerer or cultist with this kind of village, then of course I would have been lynched.

The thing about suspicions is that knowing when to listen to them is the hard part. Everyone can suspect anyone else, and be right about it, figuring out which suspicions to act on is the key.
I still haven't really quite mastered it, and I'm not sure I ever will.

Also I think with this setup, there is no way to win.

You could have gotten turned by me, and joined the dark side.
Or the village could have gotten to me first, and you would have been an almost unkillable JL spokesperson of doom, leading the village to victory.

There's many ways this could have ended. I'm only happy that it turned out well for me

I was annoyed with Walrus brutalizing me. He said afterwards that he was vindicated, when in fact I voted that day for the_hdk knowing nothing of the candidates. All I knew was that EUROO7 was my wolf master, Taiisatai64 was a cultist in Rousseau pack, and Randakar was the sorcerer. None of that was useful for my voting that day, and so I voted the_hdk because it put my vote where it could be analyzed, rather than throwing it away. As it stood my vote did end up being innocuous, but Walrus was convinced I was suspicious for no good reason, and he brutalized me. I always hate when I die for the wrong reasons, particularly when people then insist they were right. If I'd been lynched for inactivity I'd have had only myself to blame, since I wasn't paying any attention, but instead I got brutalized for totally the wrong reason.

If it consoles you, a lot of villagers got lynched for the wrong reasons as well

No priest made difference. Also distiller cultist made outing in this game.

Edited: how can we know that guardian is not cultist?

No priest was a bit of a challenge, I give you that. But I blame inexperience with this kind of setup. If this kind of way of setting up a game was more normal people would realize there is no guarantee of either scanner role to be there. Or any of the protectors, for that matter.
And .. you can't.

No, that's not what I mean't. A cultist is trying to infilitrate the JL as a protector, say. He only wants the name of the Seer. He asks you who to protect. You don't say "Rendap", you say a name that has been scanned and is unlikely to be a cultist. Then, if that person is hunted, this infilitrater is almost certainly a baddy. If there is a no hunt, you don't trust him.

You will go far, young padawan

Understood your logic, but in this situation this won't work. So I've confirmed cultist and JL mouthpiece will make announcement we've got baddie and that would be cultist. Baddies will contest that you should bring wolf, not cultist.

Edited: The issue is unless we hit wolf, the protector won't trust JL.

You don't out him. You just say that so-and-so is suspicious, and preferably you give them your reasons, too.
Or even better, you have someone else say it, together with a bunch of other people..

Now I firmly believe that the village could have won only by miracle, because:
- Overpowered sorcerer. Touch of bad too overpowered compared touch of good.

That sorcerer didn't actually have touch of evil. And the apprentices couldn't use that trait until they turned into sorcerers themselves. Which never happened.

- No priest means we can't do nothing against hunter cultist.

You can try to catch them the old-fashioned way, you know. That's what happened to vain.

- Then distiller and lover cultist.
- So on.

I think the JL is victimized by apparent attempt to nerf JL.

The village had distillers and lovers, too. If you hadn't come out and said "I'm the Seer" the wolves would have had no idea who to sit on.
So no, that wasn't overpowered at all. In fact, it didn't even *do* anything this game. Except getting Kiwi killed

@Johho - is more of that AAR coming?

[Trinitrotoluen]

I wasn't involved much in that decision.
Tnt asked me if I had problems with a hunt on you or
someone else, and the one thing you two had in common was
being on my scan list, but not the seers.
I guess they didn't want to risk hitting cultists by accident

That was a concern since Vainglory did not know who the other cultist in his pack was. We did not know that snoopdogg was part of the Swedenborgs but I felt fairly sure that he had something to hide.

[enkhuush]

The thing about suspicions is that knowing when to listen to them is the hard part. Everyone can suspect anyone else, and be right about it, figuring out which suspicions to act on is the key.
I still haven't really quite mastered it, and I'm not sure I ever will.

I agree with you.

You could have gotten turned by me, and joined the dark side.
Or the village could have gotten to me first, and you would have been an almost unkillable JL spokesperson of doom, leading the village to victory.

There's many ways this could have ended. I'm only happy that it turned out well for me

I'm talking about JL not about myself. It could have ended many ways, but the baddies has at least 75% chance to win because of initial setup.

Also it was most likely turn out well for you because of again initial setup.

No priest was a bit of a challenge, I give you that. But I blame inexperience with this kind of setup. If this kind of way of setting up a game was more normal people would realize there is no guarantee of either scanner role to be there. Or any of the protectors, for that matter.
And .. you can't.

When there is no priest, JL has lost half of its power.

You don't out him. You just say that so-and-so is suspicious, and preferably you give them your reasons, too.
Or even better, you have someone else say it, together with a bunch of other people..

Yeah, I could say it, but there is no guarantee of success.

That sorcerer didn't actually have touch of evil. And the apprentices couldn't use that trait until they turned into sorcerers themselves. Which never happened.

In this regard, sorcerer has advantage. You can sacrifice yourself and then your apprentice will use touch of bad to JL spokesman. Then viola! JL spokesman turned. While seer sacrificing himself for blessing is absurd.

Edited: Also it shows baddies are overpowered, they didn't need to use their trait to survive.

You can try to catch them the old-fashioned way, you know. That's what happened to vain.

If only baddie makes mistake and it will work very well in lite unlike big game.

The village had distillers and lovers, too. If you hadn't come out and said "I'm the Seer" the wolves would have had no idea who to sit on.
So no, that wasn't overpowered at all. In fact, it didn't even *do* anything this game. Except getting Kiwi killed

I'm not hunted by wolves and almost lynched by village. I have said "I'm the seer" because I have believed we have priest in this game. It was calculated move.

[johho888]

Johho, can you post the roleplaying traits in full? I'm curious to find out what some of them mean.

Will do. But have to wait until I get home.

[Capt. Kiwi]

Except getting Kiwi killed

Shot again

For those iterested: the_hdk was my wolf master. All I knew was which nights my pack hunted. Any further attempts at co-ordination were hampered by clashing time zones.

[johho888]

White Daimon has a rule that baddies should never be able to switch sides. A rule I fully support, I might add.
Putting ToE on baddies definitely violates that.

Sounds right. Only need a way to make the steal apprentices work with that. Limit stealing to between seer/priest maybe or from goodie to baddie?

Didn't stop us from going "wait, we have 6 votes, might as well leaderlynch hc" today

Well, the limitation was there to stop things like a hc leader in that situation going, everyone is voting me but I'll convince them to lynch TNT anyway.

It's situational, if someone plays his cards exactly right it could be very powerfull, but I think that if you can manage to know when you'll get hunted / scanned / whatever up front and activate the cloak and *then* get advantage out of that .. more power to you

I think so too. (I was very disappointed when I had a similar trait "can see dead people" in Kaetje's Lost game and timed it perfectly and then got almost nothing for that.)

If you'd stopped to think about why HC was suddenly going after TNT like that on the last day, you might have realized that parity wasn't *that* far off.
Though to be honest at that point you guys didn't actually have a way to stop us any more. Lord_D's leader order made the village vote pretty much irrelevant.

The village vote was irrelevant, yes. Given how you phrased your orders there were actually a way for the village to use its remaining traits to get the game to last at least one more day.

No priest was a bit of a challenge, I give you that. But I blame inexperience with this kind of setup. If this kind of way of setting up a game was more normal people would realize there is no guarantee of either scanner role to be there. Or any of the protectors, for that matter.

Which was the point of the setup. And if you know my history as a GM you'd know I try to surprise the players with the setup while keeping it within the boundaries of the normal rule set. I've had games with no GA, with no seer, with one, two or three packs etc.

@Johho - is more of that AAR coming?

Yes.

[johho888]

Indeed, I started realizing this... touch of evil is way superior to touch of good once the sorc articulates with the packs...

Touch of Evil is more powerful than Touch of Good. Sure and that is intentional just as a Seer is more powerful than a sorcerer.

Even the same trait is more or less useful for the different sides. Brutal is more powerful for a baddie than for a goodie for example.

[pevergreen]

You have him protect someone else and if that person is not hunted, then you trust him.

But pevergreen's move was actually rather clever, and damn unpredictable.

Its a byproduct of playing for a team victory for so long rather than an individual. I saw an opportunity to save my team some hassle, even though it may have taken me out. The trade was worth it though.

[Lord_D]

Now I firmly believe that the village could have won only by miracle, because:

- Overpowered sorcerer. Touch of bad too overpowered compared touch of good.
- No priest means we can't do nothing against hunter cultist.
- Then distiller and lover cultist.
- So on.

I think the JL is victimized by apparent attempt to nerf JL.

Having no priest isn't necessarily all that bad. I remember a johho-game without a priest in which I was a cultist. It actually made for a very entertaining and deep game, nearly won that one with my master AVN but the village still got us through clever play.

[walrus]

I was annoyed with Walrus brutalizing me. He said afterwards that he was vindicated, when in fact I voted that day for the_hdk knowing nothing of the candidates. All I knew was that EUROO7 was my wolf master, Taiisatai64 was a cultist in Rousseau pack, and Randakar was the sorcerer. None of that was useful for my voting that day, and so I voted the_hdk because it put my vote where it could be analyzed, rather than throwing it away. As it stood my vote did end up being innocuous, but Walrus was convinced I was suspicious for no good reason, and he brutalized me. I always hate when I die for the wrong reasons, particularly when people then insist they were right. If I'd been lynched for inactivity I'd have had only myself to blame, since I wasn't paying any attention, but instead I got brutalized for totally the wrong reason.

It doesn't matter that my theories were incorrect, my conclusion was still right

[Rendap]

Having to choose roles or not having a priest in the setup means that the JL will be seriously handicapped. It makes infiltration a lot likelier. This was one example where the seer (me) messed up by contacting the wrong person. Another example is Baggy infiltrating the JL in The Airport where Taii was lost after Reis was dead.

In both cases, it means that the seer have to be a lot sharper than usual and that the village had to go through more interesting notions. I would have liked to see what would have happened if we had caugt a wolf in scanning and that way could have gotten Enkh more credentials and protections. But we'll never know.

I think that games with different setup is good just to throw a wrench into the villages thoughts. If people know that the setup is always seer+priest+GA+doc, they tend to wait for the JL to form. Messing with this, raises the paranoia which I think is good and makes for funnier games.

Since I knew Enkh could be stolen from me, I never revealed the scan target before it happened to him, so even if he was Sorc's apprentice now, I would still decide myself who to scan. I listened to advice of course, but decided myself.

[Kriszo]

I apologize for inactivity.

Thanks for the game johho!

[johho888]

I apologize for inactivity.

Thanks for the game johho!

Sorry about the autokill but I was trying to GM while travelling (I do not recommend this to any future GMs BTW ) and hadn't time to handle all the sub requests so I decided to kill off one from each team as a quick fix. I could probably have just let it be and both you and Najs would have been alive at end of game even if neither of you hadn't voted any more.

[jacob-Lundgren]

Even if the game was a bit tilted in the baddies favor, not a shock as few games are not tilted at least a little, players still make it happen either way (with random also). By the time I was hunted I started to suspect some vocals were a bit...off but lack of time and focus made that too slow. I am guessing none of the other protectors coordinated with anyone by games look, did we have a witness that did anything? I don't remember either way. Random luck also always matters, a game can have 2-3 cursed and all get hit or as sometimes happens 6 cursed and never hit oddly. All in all it was at least fun for most aye? And if so it was a success, winning IS fun but some forget it can be more fun to make a big impact and lose as opposed sit on your butt and get a cheap win. Play long enough and the cheap wins come.

[Falc]

My point of view on parity:

I fully believe the parity rule is there to keep games from dragging out and to prevent people from having to die when their side has clearly won. Thus, I see this more as a specific case of a more general rule: "When the wolves' victory is assured, they win the game." Parity is a guaranteed win for the wolves if they play correctly, not even Blessed/GA can stop that. The only thing it changes is how many wolves remain alive at the end, and it is precisely to avoid people losing when they should have won that the rule is implemented.

But this means that the game should only end when there's truly no way left for the village to win. Imagine, if you will, 4 wolves left, 2 regular villagers and 2 goodie Hunters. Is this village doomed? Close, but not quite. Should the wolves try to force their victory by putting 4 votes on a villager, they expose themselves. The 4 remaining villagers vote a wolf, giving a tie. 3 vs. 3. If both Hunters remain alive, they kill 2 wolves and the wolf hunts one villager. 2 villagers, one wolf left. Village wins probably. Of course, if the wolves had voted and thus lynched one of the hunters, they'd have guaranteed their victory.

Thus, my conclusion is that parity itself should not be treated as the rule, but rather the inevitability of victory for the wolves. In other words, if the wolves can still lose the game by hunting down apprentices instead of villagers, well then so be it, the game should continue.