Your Likeness Shall be Hung from the Wall (The Dead Thread)

[Clearasday]

This is the Dead Thread. Drink your sorrows away.

[Clearasday]

Zark shared his thoughts with me on Day 1:

Subject: Day 0 - The Senate Gathers

The coop is in a state of emergency, the foxes have surely returned. The senate-house stands open, ready for the the senators. The debates begin in earnest tomorrow. Gather your best arguments and load your scribe up with everything you will need or might need. The city needs you.

PM button is greyed out - I presume my puppet must post more before he can PM, so I thought I'd share my thoughts for the dead with you via this "Zarkowski" fellow.

I doubt I'd be good at using a mask account unless I have another creative outlet. As such, we have a couple of choices. One is that your PM box may blow up with "thoughts for the dead". The other I completely out myself in the day thread.

RP is still formulating, but I'm looking at a mashup of Charlotte's Web, The Crow, Highlander, and (if I have room) either Babylon 5 or the first Terminator movie. I might fold a little M*A*S*H in as well, just for variety.

TL;DR - What are your thoughts on set me up with a private musings forum that the dead can read?

More in a bit,

7z7

And later:

Actually, if "Constantine" is willing to go all in (more in a bit), I suppose it's possible to fly under the radar after all.

Thanks for the game,

- Steve / 7z7

[Clearasday]

Welcome Meta4, unfortunately Random.org favoured number 2 (out of 1-5) which happened to be you. Make yourself at home, its much calmer in here and I could do with some company.

[Clearasday]

Note to Hellheart: I love your RP even if I'm the only one that can hear it. Let's see what happens now that Wasabi has joined you.

Note to Ravebomb: Your Masked posts actually convinced me that you were really Zark until I went back over the player lists and got mighty confused.

[Clearasday]

Welcome Zark and MEM. Your demise was unfortunate. The Masons decided they wanted you in their faction MEM, but your cult status was incompatible with their desires. I shall update the dead info in the morning, I've got some sleeping to do.

[Mister E. Meat]

Stupid non-free masons!

I have to look and see who is writing the french. It's driving me batty!

[7-zark-7]

Hey MEM,

Thanks for the invite. I never saw your forum until after my lynch (the announcement sent to both mask & regular acct, I didn't realize I had to log in as Zark to see yours).

CAD, could you point me to the list of masks when you get a moment?

More in a bit (it feels good to type that again)

7z7

[7-zark-7]

Subject: Night 3 - The Chicken Coven grows

Unrelated, but can I just say...

More in a bit,

I respect dedication of someone continuing to RP Zark after he's already been lynched. Whoever that is.

I have to say, I'm flattered. I'm wondering who it is as well.

Also, I'm debating if I should keep writing here in the dead thread. It's a bit quiet, & I'm not getting my RP on anywhere else.

Subject: Day 1 - The Foxhunt begins

For a time, I thought I could cross the road and escape the game.

But a being who called himself only "The Colonel" vowed to hunt down my friends, one by one, until I sickened of it and came out of sanctuary to fight him. He took Wilbur, serving him up as rashers for the farmhands. He squashed Templeton under his heel. But Fran, my poor sweet Fran... he let her linger. Using her again and again with taunts of "chicks in hot oil". He left her battered and fried for me to find as a final insult.

Stepping away from the holy ground of Fern's final resting place, I girded my feathers for battle. It was time: I was coming home to roost.

Man and chicken had once lived together in harmony (the chickens were in charge, of course). A great threat from outside forced us to fight together for survival, & out of that came respect and mutual admiration. However it also brought about a few relationships which drew the ire of the more traditional types.



Problems started when the first crossbreeds were born. The term is specific, and part of the problem: crossbreeds never hatched for some reason, and things might have gone differently if the species divide had gone both ways. In reality, I think mankind was intimidated by our Cocks impregnating their women. This would inevitably lead to war, enslavement, and, frankly, a lot of omelets.

A gentle clucking stirred me from my reverie - Sometimes, I envied those chicks. They knew nothing of life before. A life less complicated, they'd lay their eggs, & they'd never think about how they disappeared every day, nor the smells emanating from the kitchen. Chicks won't hatch unless you have a hen go broody or use an incubator. In theory, it's just a collection of cells. I tried not to think about that.

No. I thought about the Colonel, and about how he started down a different road. But that, of course, was before.

Before the great war was upon us all.

More in a bit,

7z7

[Okaros]

Well *that* was quick.

[Clearasday]

Apologies, random.org just doesn't seem to like you. It was at least very close.

[Clearasday]

It's the same argument I had with Ryvvn yesterday. We know who's on their team. Our options are "poach from them" or "initiate new cultists".

The first keeps the two teams approximately even, but keeps the pool small.

The second increases the total number of cultists in play, but whichever team does it runs the risk of the other team poaching from them (and thus knowing exactly who's on the other team to continue poaching).

Standard prisoner's dilemma. The team who poaches is best off, but the ideal outcome for both of us is if both teams grab new members. Do we get a new player and hope for the best, or do we steal from them since it's the best outcome for our team?

Dferrantino has hit the nail on the head. This was exactly the dilemma I hoped to create.

[Clearasday]

I must say I did not intend for two factions to die so early. The marines were supposed to be nightkilling every night. This would have sped the game up quite a bit.

The flavourtext in the forums was leading up to the following clash between three of the cults. If a faction fulfils their aim they would have gained an additional power.

Slaves on day 3 told they must kill Chickens of Repute
Chickens of Repute on day 3 told they must kill Marines
Marines on day 3 told they must kill Slaves

But with the Marines and Chickens of Repute dying before this could get underway, I can't really give the Slaves an additional power yet. Maybe I'll give them a different enemy.

[Clearasday]

On the subject of the Ducks:

The Ducks were supposed to be a faction added to the game when three cults targeted the same person. He would then, through extreme confusion at his own identity, believe he was a duck, and instead become the cult leader of a new faction. If this did not happen by Day 4 he would be chosen at random from amongst the vanilla humans. Which is what has happened. I would have liked it the other way around but these things happen.

The Cunning chicken was to join the game as soon as the Duck did. He can seer every night, finding out what animal his target is. He probably assumes he's looking for Foxes, but hopefully he'll find a Duck or two. He was randomly assigned to a Human.

[necklessone]

Thanks for the game, CAD. Sorry I couldn't manage the whole mask thing without making a fowl of myself.

Edit: Regarding what I had mentioned to lock out the non-masked accounts, that's something I could set up for you if one of the admin's grants me access temporarily.

[Ozymandias]

Yeah-- thanks for the game CAD!

Sorry you for scapefoxed, necklessone. I agree the whole argument about your Day 1 vote was ridiculous.

But we really did think you had a Night kill because of Hadrian's vision.

[Hellheart]

Wonder who killed me, since we nabbed a normal cultist. I'll have to look.

Does Aldax know he's on a team? If he only signs on as his masked account he may not know.

Thanks for the RP compliment, CAD. I actually liked my priest RP a ton even though I had to do a lot of fudging to mask my normal posting behavior. I had that RP in mind ever since Admetus suggested his main + puppet account game because I figured I could pull off something like that. And then you made me the leader of a cult where I could literally practice what I preached, and I was grinning ear to ear.

I'm kind of sad that nobody ended up outing me as a cult leader/member. I would've called my cult the Inquisition and said we just wanted to root out and destroy heresy

----

Also, lol @ the "there are no foxes" thing. I could've never responded to that given my account's previous posting behavior...plus I was working tonight...but it was bugging the SHIT out of me that people seemed to think there were actual wolves. And one of them might have even been serious!

[Ozymandias]

Hellheart, you got mighty ducked by Admetus.

[necklessone]

Yeah-- thanks for the game CAD!

Sorry you for scapefoxed, necklessone. I agree the whole argument about your Day 1 vote was ridiculous.

But we really did think you had a Night kill because of Hadrian's vision.

It at least made it easy for me to assign a name to the Romulus account. No one but the new player would be shocked that someone made a Day 1 tie.

And yeah, those who saw that vision really had no choice but to off me. It made me sound ferocious!

[Clearasday]

Welcome to our three new dead players. I'm a bit astounded at all three of you going out tonight, you were all power players and I expected you all to butt heads pretty soon if you all had survived.

Necklessone, no problem at all. It didn't hurt the game in any way as long as it was done by accident. I must actually confess that ICB helpfully made a usergroup to give main accounts read only access to the day thread, when I asked him after your urging yesterday, but I decided I was too much of a Bastard to use it. It would make it too easy for you all, and that's not what we want is it?

Hellheart, I have PMed Aldax again on both his accounts so hopefully he knows now if he did not already. I am also saddened that the Inquisition did not happen.

Ozy, Admetus was actually trying to convert you and kill someone else, but he seems to have gotten that guess at a masked account wrong. Clearly you hid yourself too well.

[Hellheart]

For what to do with my powers, hmm. I can use the night kill as a kind of seer. Obviously I should be pretty sure my targets are not even remotely likely to be the same.

I would have probably tried to convert Hellheart, but that Day 4 spiel was a neon signpost. I will evaluate for a day or two, but he makes a good night-kill target.

Wrong about my account Admetus, wrong wrong wrong. If Ozymandias had gone down via lynch we would've actually killed each other, though

It was really between Ozy and Admetus because I was all but certain that you two would be in a Cult after 4 conversions. And I didn't want our faction to grow over 3 people so I wanted to get off a few kills before we'd recruit again.

Although I am kind of glad that I hid that well, I wonder if he would've targeted someone else had he known.

[Ozymandias]

Who did Admetus think Hellheart was?

[Clearasday]

And foxes may be around who can kill every 2 days.

If anyone has any ideas how I can continue to encourage the belief that Foxes are running rampant, please do pitch in.


And here are the PMs for Spheno and Snake tonight. I've included the past ones for Spheno as well.

You think you know Chickens well. Hadrian is definitely a Chicken.

Added bonus if he questions his seering sanity after this.

Valerian's feathers seem fine to look at, if a bit broken in places. However, they don't smell too good.

You try to see Scipio's feathers, but it just isn't possible through all of that blood on them.

You stare long and hard into the nest at Constantine. Yet again feathers stare back at you, but this time you have a feeling they're holding a microphone.

You peer into the darkness at Tiberius but you see only feathers.

[Clearasday]

Who did Admetus think Hellheart was?

really sounds like Hellheart - after day 4 novel, definitely hellheart, but i can't touch him if he's going to get hot

[necklessone]

And foxes may be around who can kill every 2 days.

If anyone has any ideas how I can continue to encourage the belief that Foxes are running rampant, please do pitch in.

If I didn't feel my only hope was to try and contribute logic to the main thread, I wasn't going to say anything about the foxes. I've been loving the opening posts and the fox-related paranoia (even if some of it was feigned).

Of course, then I just went and mis-posted my long rant even after chaning forum themes. I was too exhausted to rewrite it (shitty weekend leading to putting a dog to sleep) and didn't care to try and hide myself after the other misposts.

[Ozymandias]

This is a pretty impressive setup, CAD!

Though I do have one criticism-- I don't think players who are targeted by their main account should die as a result of such targeting.

I mean, Hellheart did a great job hiding himself with his RP, but now he's dead and out of the game, basically through no fault of his own.

[Ozymandias]

Why didn't a Mason die when they tried to convert MEM?

[Clearasday]

This is a pretty impressive setup, CAD!

Though I do have one criticism-- I don't think players who are targeted by their main account should die as a result of such targeting.

I mean, Hellheart did a great job hiding himself with his RP, but now he's dead and out of the game, basically through no fault of his own.

True enough. It was an attempt to weaken the nightkill that the Ducks had. This way Admetus is hesitant with it, and if he's not careful, he might nightkill the same person he converts that night. I don't think its any different to a normal TWG where the wolves maul pretty indiscriminately, I'd just say that Admetus has to figure out what masked account links to what player that much faster or risk not being able to control his nightkill. I wanted to encourage people guessing at Masked Accounts.

[Clearasday]

Why didn't a Mason die when they tried to convert MEM?

Masons only die when they convert the Cult Leaders that actually are Cult Leaders. Some of the cults have a starting cultist that is called a leader but is convertable away and has no more powers than a cultist. Other cults have an actual leader, like Visigoth or Necklessone that functions differently to their cultists and is important for the cult. The Masons would lose a mason if they converted one of these Leaders. I wanted the Masons to be afraid though, so I just told them to beware converting Cult Leaders.

Converting the leaders of the Slaves, the Marines or the Chickens of Repute would not have killed a Mason.

Its 2:37am, bedtime now.

[Ozymandias]

It will be interesting to see how forthcoming RaveBomb is with the Slaves.

Because as presumed Seer, Constantine is likely to be targeted again by a Cult, so Rave would I think be better off by pretending to be Vanilla.

[Hellheart]

Thanks Ozy. I'm kind of disappointed that there wasn't much more speculation; I wonder if anyone would've figured it out in any reasonable timeframe. I think if I tried that role in a real game it would likely get me killed because it's a serious role, so I was glad I got to trot it out at all.

Converting Aldax was a reach because I knew he wouldn't contribute, but I'm glad I did now because no other cult going to touch him with a 400-foot pole. We needed at least 2 members, and Wasabi can run the show himself if he needs to. It's one of those situations where we just need the body to serve as fodder if we hit a Cult Leader.

Making decisions as a Mason is HARD. If a real-name-conversion faction grabs one of us, we're done. The whole damn cult.

[Ozymandias]

So if Hadrian is smart, he'll pretend to go along with Constantine's ultimatum, and then give him someone else's Main Account name.

[Hellheart]

Man, where's Zark? I hope he'd compliment me on responding to his post by RP'ing with both accounts!

[Clearasday]

So if Hadrian is smart, he'll pretend to go along with Constantine's ultimatum, and then give him someone else's Main Account name.

That would make for great watching.

As an aside, I'm trying to leverage the difference between the rules as laid out in the role PM and the Day 4 first post. I suspect -- correct me if you feel like it -- that if I die before my cult members, the death upon conversion away from the cult stops happening. That means it isn't perfect operational security, because if we share all our information in the Duck forum, and I die, the cult will likely be seriously wounded by the first conversion.

Since I will never be anything but a Duck, I have to decide whether the Duck team is more likely to win with more sharing or more secrecy. I've pretty much made my choice to go with more sharing, and hope to live a long time. That could easily be a bad choice, because I've got a weak track record with surviving to the end.

[Clearasday]

I'm not answering Admetus' question about Cults on purpose. Not because I missed it the first or second time.

[Clearasday]

Blindsniper's vigilante kill could make the game close to ending in a few days. He'll want to know his teams masked accounts so that he can shoot without hitting them, but will dferrantino reveal his lover as well?

[rekard]

So silly. People on day 3 thought I was on a team for some reason. Though if I had not had a team on day 4 I would not have lived then.

[7-zark-7]

Was offline for the weekend (family in town) - catching up in thread but... that's a lot of dead chickens.

HH - loved the RP. Early on, I suspected you might be the Pope (like, six games back) but you're changing the subject.

CAD, this is a very interesting variant. One thing which might be worth considering if you run it again is to not reveal the player names upon death of a mask account. This would require swearing the dead to secrecy in the f5 thread and other public areas, which might be easier done if there was an afterlife involvement (shoggoth anyone?).

It would make such conversions much more difficult for factions which convert by playername, so an appropriate re-balance would be needed. Anyone trying to convert Meta4 would not succeed, but (if his RP is not obvious) it might add to the paranoia - why didn't it succeed?

Similarly, what happened to MEM would come out of freaking no-where - the Masons would try to convert MEM in their forum, & in the day thread, his puppet Trajan would fall over, clucking softly. All that would be left is the anthropomancy of digging through he entrails trying to divine his one true name. Picture something similar happening to one of the great strategists, (Ozy or Rekard come to mind) & the hunt which might follow.

A great game. I am saddened I didn't get to lead my crow on a bloody vengeance spree through the hen house, but I suppose I can save that for next time. Victims, aren't we all?

More in a bit,

7z7

[Hellheart]

I keep going back to the vote-tracking results from Domitian, and looking at that very specific format, that doesn't include "Day" in the headings, and uses the <name><voteorder> format in the votes. That's automated, so Domitian is someone that plays with the Excel sheets.

This isn't strictly true - although it normally would be, I got bored enough to add code to my color tally function that adds the correct day-spoiler and quote tags for braindead copy-paste . It's gotten pretty insane code-wise, to be quite honest, but I spent a lot of time recently optimizing it and it's blazing fast at this point.

I don't like DOM naming both Aldax and Wasabi. I don't mind them killing Aldax first though, but that puts my cult in severe danger.

One I finish my conversion color tally code, I'll add comments to all the VBA code and probably toss it to Necklessone to see what I did horribly wrong and what I can improve on.

[Clearasday]

I was given a role as a seer. It was a seer to differentiate the animal of the person I seered. Everyone I have seered is a chicken. Quelle surprise? If there are no foxes then my role is totally useless. I can imagine Clearasday receiving my desperate pms for information laughing his fucking head off at the fact the response is essentially a message saying, "yes that person is still playing you idiot".

He's a cruel man.

Oh dear. Someone is about to get Ducked.

[Clearasday]

CAD, this is a very interesting variant. One thing which might be worth considering if you run it again is to not reveal the player names upon death of a mask account. This would require swearing the dead to secrecy in the f5 thread and other public areas, which might be easier done if there was an afterlife involvement (shoggoth anyone?).

It would make such conversions much more difficult for factions which convert by playername, so an appropriate re-balance would be needed. Anyone trying to convert Meta4 would not succeed, but (if his RP is not obvious) it might add to the paranoia - why didn't it succeed?

Similarly, what happened to MEM would come out of freaking no-where - the Masons would try to convert MEM in their forum, & in the day thread, his puppet Trajan would fall over, clucking softly. All that would be left is the anthropomancy of digging through he entrails trying to divine his one true name. Picture something similar happening to one of the great strategists, (Ozy or Rekard come to mind) & the hunt which might follow.

This is a great idea. Very bastard GM. I guess I'll have to run this game all over again now.

[Clearasday]

Yeah Romulus definitely doomed himself. This is why we don't reveal as a seer in the main thread after only receiving one vision folks.

Subject: Day 5 - Murder Most Fowl

I was given a role as a seer. It was a seer to differentiate the animal of the person I seered. Everyone I have seered is a chicken. Quelle surprise? If there are no foxes then my role is totally useless. I can imagine Clearasday receiving my desperate pms for information laughing his fucking head off at the fact the response is essentially a message saying, "yes that person is still playing you idiot".

Well. As a Duck, I feel like this may call for some attention. Wild speculation - instead of full seers, there are several faction-specific seers, or seers that are capable of detecting a few but not all cults.

Although at the same time this is exactly the sort of position I wanted to put the seers in. Questioning sanity is always a great thing.

[Ozymandias]

This is a pretty impressive setup, CAD!

Though I do have one criticism-- I don't think players who are targeted by their main account should die as a result of such targeting.

I mean, Hellheart did a great job hiding himself with his RP, but now he's dead and out of the game, basically through no fault of his own.

True enough. It was an attempt to weaken the nightkill that the Ducks had. This way Admetus is hesitant with it, and if he's not careful, he might nightkill the same person he converts that night.

Sure, but you could have switched it-- Admetus kills masks, and converts mains.

I don't think its any different to a normal TWG where the wolves maul pretty indiscriminately, I'd just say that Admetus has to figure out what masked account links to what player that much faster or risk not being able to control his nightkill. I wanted to encourage people guessing at Masked Accounts.

I think the difference is that in a normal TWG game Humans have a chance to convince the Wolves that they're not worth mauling.

And higher profile players are also more likely to be GA protected-- which, IIUC, isn't the case here, because the GA would only have been able to protect masks, not mains.

[Ozymandias]

I also think certain cults being able to kill if their conversion attempts fail is WAY overpowered.

You should force those cults to pick one or the other each night-- they either try to convert a non-cultist, or they try to kill a cultist.

Either action fails if they target incorrectly.

[Ozymandias]

CAD, this is a very interesting variant. One thing which might be worth considering if you run it again is to not reveal the player names upon death of a mask account. This would require swearing the dead to secrecy in the f5 thread and other public areas, which might be easier done if there was an afterlife involvement (shoggoth anyone?).

It would make such conversions much more difficult for factions which convert by playername, so an appropriate re-balance would be needed. Anyone trying to convert Meta4 would not succeed, but (if his RP is not obvious) it might add to the paranoia - why didn't it succeed?

Similarly, what happened to MEM would come out of freaking no-where - the Masons would try to convert MEM in their forum, & in the day thread, his puppet Trajan would fall over, clucking softly. All that would be left is the anthropomancy of digging through he entrails trying to divine his one true name. Picture something similar happening to one of the great strategists, (Ozy or Rekard come to mind) & the hunt which might follow.

This is a great idea. Very bastard GM. I guess I'll have to run this game all over again now.

Agreed, that would be great!

Particularly since it would encourage everyone to RP like someone else, in the hopes that you get them killed.

[Ozymandias]

Another idea for next time: a vigilante cult that can only kill if they correctly match a player to a cult.

[Ozymandias]

btw, if two cults tries to convert the same target, I think you should give priority to the smaller one.

Because if the Slaves get a little lucky, this game could be over in two days. So I think you should extend it out.

[Okaros]

Hrm. I might get WOGed if I don't continue posting in French.

Guess I need to find a new villain to zap me with the Frenchifier.

CAD, you magnificient bastard...

[Ozymandias]

I figured out what this game is missing: PMs!!!

You should let main accounts PM all they want!

Then I'd have no problem letting cults target main accounts for kills, because at least there'd be some way to make alliances to protect yourself.

[necklessone]

For what it's worth, I wouldn't have played if this were a PM game.

[Clearasday]

I was receiving 2 to 4 pages of new PMs a day when I hosted the last full PM game. Never again. You PM too much.