Werewolf XLI - Apocalypse Awakens - Game over!

[hoopsguy]

The first few days were the most intense, as it was applying a set of rules that was new. There were also more overall players at that point, which meant more PMs and more combinations of actions to interpret.

There was only one point in the game where I had an "oh crap" moment - that was on Night 3 when Surfer was supposed to kill Warpath, who was guarding Captain America, who was slated for conversion. So both bad guys were set to converge on Warpath - who got to act first? The rules dictated that a random number would be used to determine this ... which was kind of a bummer because Tyrith and I tried to minimize/eliminate the use of random numbers as much as possible for this game.

Ex: Night 1 bodyguard block. Bodyguard does not get to identify/kill the attacker, but will be able to ID attacker on all subsequent blocks. Attacker does not learn identity of bodyguard at any point.

[path12]

Originally Posted by Narcizo

I thought this was in-character comic-book "Bwahahaha! Nobody can stop me now" style gloating. The only problem being that in the comic books the bad guys say that 5 minutes before it's too late, rather than 2 hours after.

I actually thought it was really funny when Mr W. negated my healing power after my explanation of how hard I was going to be to kill. It was so comic book "bad guy tells good guy how he can't be stopped in his plan to destroy the world yet good guy somehow escapes to foil the plan." After he did that I was like "um....oops!".

[hoopsguy]

I absolutely was rooting for the good guys to play well down the stretch when evil had established a clear advantage. And Mr. W's disable power would have been exceptionally useful if the remaining heroes had just a litle more energy to work with in the end ...

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

The first few days were the most intense, as it was applying a set of rules that was new. There were also more overall players at that point, which meant more PMs and more combinations of actions to interpret.

There was only one point in the game where I had an "oh crap" moment - that was on Night 3 when Surfer was supposed to kill Warpath, who was guarding Captain America, who was slated for conversion. So both bad guys were set to converge on Warpath - who got to act first? The rules dictated that a random number would be used to determine this ... which was kind of a bummer because Tyrith and I tried to minimize/eliminate the use of random numbers as much as possible for this game.

Ex: Night 1 bodyguard block. Bodyguard does not get to identify/kill the attacker, but will be able to ID attacker on all subsequent blocks. Attacker does not learn identity of bodyguard at any point.

Heh, I actually wondered about how that would work out but forgot to ask. I actually tried to figure out what my bodyguard strategy for this game would be. For those who didn't know, I was able to guard anyone for consecutive nights except I could never guard myself. So I had to keep my role quiet and not out myself as I had no protection.

The problem with guarding someone consecutive nights was my energy resources were pretty drained every day. It took 3 energy for one guard action (or the amount I got back each day). I had a passive defense that I never used draining 1 energy each day, so I was already in the hole for every day. THen if I chose to attack someone with a vote for a lynch time action, that was another 1 point. So basically I had 5 energy points a day I needed to spend, but only got 3 back each day.

I had thought my chance of IDing the attacker was either a flat random chance, or if the same attacker got blocked multiple times I would ID them was my hunch. I didn't know I would ID all attackers after the first one. So I designed my strat to try to maximize back to back blocks.

I wanted to block Sinister both night 1 and night 2 to try to trap someone. I figured ProfessorX was too obvious a target, and Sinister seemed like the most likely choice by a "Crafty" wolf, so I went with it. I then thought they would go back to him again with the chance I couldnt block the same person two nights in a row. That day I made my attack on Anxiety thinking I had 3 energy left for the night block. I forgot about my stupid passive defense eating up energy though so my night PM told me my intentions were good, but I didn't have the energy to complete it. (And sinister died).

I got a little frustrated with myself on day 3 because I screwed up there, but in hindsight, missing that action was good as it now meant I had enough points for my night 3 block. I went back and forth over who to block or what to do. My choices were:

1) Protect no one, save the energy for night 4 + 5 to try to trap someone again and this time dont screw it up by forgetting about passive defense

2) Guard DaddyTorgo - Most people seemed to not believe him though at the time, so I decided quickly to not guard him and take a chance on the Bad guys leaving him alone for a while.

3) Guard Cpt. America - At this point DaddyTorgo had revealed he was one of the 12, and he seemed the most trusted in the game. I imagined if DT was bad, he would still not lie about Cpt.America being good here, so felt he most likely had to be good.


I ended up deciding to choose #1, and save up for #4 & 5 nights to try to trap someone. I went to bed though thinking about that, and tossed it about in my head most of the night. (I hate when I cant sleep because of something to do with a game!) So I ended up waking up early before my alarm clock went off even and changed my mind. I PMd to guard Cpt.America and felt knowing what I knew about night 1, and who I assumed were wolves (My wolf list at the time in my mind was: Grammaticus, Path, LSG, Blade and WVufan) that he had to be their choice.

I guess I ended up only being partially right there, as I was their kill choice for the night. I evidentally didnt do a good job of hiding the fact that I knew stuff and still was a target in their mind. Luckily I did block the conversion attempt. I'd rather be lucky than good any day I guess

[st.cronin]

Apologies to the good guys, I was just never able to really get up to speed. I don't know that anybody would have, though. This was a hard game.

[Qwikshot]

This reminds me of my most famous rule when playing these games...

when in doubt, Kill Blade.

I did enjoy and would play again, this time from the start, though I did enjoy Gambit, it was just too hard playing follow up. I really felt for cronin with daredevil.

[spleen1015]

Hoops and Tyrith, great game!

To those responsible for my death...I HATE YOU!

[hoopsguy]

Originally Posted by Qwikshot

This reminds me of my most famous rule when playing these games...

when in doubt, Kill Blade.

I did enjoy and would play again, this time from the start, though I did enjoy Gambit, it was just too hard playing follow up. I really felt for cronin with daredevil.

There was an element of the good guy analysis that I thought was missing here, although it is always easier to talk about this kind of stuff when you are moderating the game.

The "trust list" is the most important tool that good guys possess. However, a second component that I rely on when doing my analysis is the relationships between players. So, who is linked with who and why?

People will clearly look to align themselves with someone trusted - both good and bad guys as a method of self-preservation. That much is obvious, but the thing I try and do is look for who seems to be leaning on one person and shying away from another person.

Example - Blade vouched for NTN at the start of Day 4. No one was able to confirm/deny Blade's story. But both of these people moved up trust lists as a result.

Day 5 - both Blade and NTN are still around.
Day 6 - both Blade and NTN are still around.
Day 7 - both Blade and NTN are still around.

If they are trusted by everyone, wouldn't evil be incented to take these guys out of the game? In this one, perhaps you could argue that neither was a member of the 12. But with a full complement of 20 players, the chances of that are 8/20 * 7/19 = 56/380 = 15%. Which is a much lower percentage than the 40% play that Barkeep made against Thomkal in the one time I saw someone use probability as an action driver.

I hear people talk about Occam's Razor in these games and think it is a useful concept to keep in mind when doing the analysis. But I tend to trust my gut + math to help me with my reads. And trying to understand how people interact (or, in some cases never do) supports my gut and gives me an opportunity to do math.

Does this always work? Nope. Could I come up with examples in this game where relationship mapping probably would have given bad info? Yep. But I think it is an important concept to have in your arsenal when trying to figure people out in these games.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

I would encourage another GM to take a shot at this - I don't know the universe well enough to integrate anything resembling a comic book feel in my writeups and PMs.

One other area of interest for me - I sent out night PMs to everyone, not just the people with night actions. This was done to try and reflect the thought process of your character and potentially give some insight into the role-playing aspects of the characters. Was this helpful, or was it confusing? If it was of limited value in terms of overall game enjoyment I can definitely cut back on this next time around and save myself about 30-45 minutes in the mornings

I like getting night PMs even when I don't have a night action. Among other things, I then am likely to find out before I get to the write-up whether I've been offed or not.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

I absolutely was rooting for the good guys to play well down the stretch when evil had established a clear advantage. And Mr. W's disable power would have been exceptionally useful if the remaining heroes had just a litle more energy to work with in the end ...

In retrospect, we screwed up by going after Blade at a point where I had already disabled Silver Surfer's healing (partly my fault for not encouraging everyone to go after Silver Surfer, who would have been vulnerable to all of the attacks), and then I chose the wrong power to disable on Blade where I should have disabled Protected by Khonshu instead of his second life power (which I presume wouldn't have worked as such because it would have manifested a day or so later).

Of course, the only reason I even had enough energy to cast a second disable power was because I somehow absorbed one from Gambit's attack on me. I had left myself enough to cast one disable power when I attacked Venom (6 energy after the regeneration that night), and with only +3 energy per night, I wouldn't have pulled back enough to cast it again.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

There was an element of the good guy analysis that I thought was missing here, although it is always easier to talk about this kind of stuff when you are moderating the game.

The "trust list" is the most important tool that good guys possess. However, a second component that I rely on when doing my analysis is the relationships between players. So, who is linked with who and why?

People will clearly look to align themselves with someone trusted - both good and bad guys as a method of self-preservation. That much is obvious, but the thing I try and do is look for who seems to be leaning on one person and shying away from another person.

Example - Blade vouched for NTN at the start of Day 4. No one was able to confirm/deny Blade's story. But both of these people moved up trust lists as a result.

Day 5 - both Blade and NTN are still around.
Day 6 - both Blade and NTN are still around.
Day 7 - both Blade and NTN are still around.

If they are trusted by everyone, wouldn't evil be incented to take these guys out of the game? In this one, perhaps you could argue that neither was a member of the 12. But with a full complement of 20 players, the chances of that are 8/20 * 7/19 = 56/380 = 15%. Which is a much lower percentage than the 40% play that Barkeep made against Thomkal in the one time I saw someone use probability as an action driver.

I hear people talk about Occam's Razor in these games and think it is a useful concept to keep in mind when doing the analysis. But I tend to trust my gut + math to help me with my reads. And trying to understand how people interact (or, in some cases never do) supports my gut and gives me an opportunity to do math.

Does this always work? Nope. Could I come up with examples in this game where relationship mapping probably would have given bad info? Yep. But I think it is an important concept to have in your arsenal when trying to figure people out in these games.

I've never really gotten into the associations like that, although maybe I should. I did keep track of who was vouching for who, somewhat, and the thing of it is, until relatively late, there were a bunch of associations being kept around.

The problem we had with ntndeacon was how marvelously evil finessed the sacrifice of Captain Marvel. I never even contemplated the mechanic in use where she was intentionally sacrificed by Apoc.

With Blade, I kept talking myself out of him because of the attacks on Doom and Marvel.

[ntndeacon]

My thoughts on picking a team was very person driven on the whole. I had not had many opportunities to be a wolf before, so I figured I would need at least one big name to help guide me. Hence the Blade pick. I did not know anything about Moon Knight so the resurrection in his character was a pleasant surprise. I also had played a few times with LSG and path and enjoyed how they played. Also I knew Silver Surfer was a powerful character. I thought that Captain Marvel would be powerful as well, and perhaps not on anyones radar as quickly as some of the characters. And WVU was someone who I did not think I had played with before, but I liked the idea of putting him on the team as well. I admit that one was more due to him playing Dr. Doom.

[path12]

Originally Posted by ntndeacon

My thoughts on picking a team was very person driven on the whole. I had not had many opportunities to be a wolf before, so I figured I would need at least one big name to help guide me. Hence the Blade pick. I did not know anything about Moon Knight so the resurrection in his character was a pleasant surprise. I also had played a few times with LSG and path and enjoyed how they played. Also I knew Silver Surfer was a powerful character. I thought that Captain Marvel would be powerful as well, and perhaps not on anyones radar as quickly as some of the characters. And WVU was someone who I did not think I had played with before, but I liked the idea of putting him on the team as well. I admit that one was more due to him playing Dr. Doom.

I think ntn gets a lot of credit for the game he played, both in assembling a team that had a nice dynamic and in the fact that he and Blade both came up with the sacrifice of LSG/conversion attempt and in fact were able to really use that to stay above suspicion the rest of the game. This was also my first time playing evil with Blade, which was a lot of fun if only to see just how many schemes the guy has up his sleeve at any given time.

Someone (I don't remember exactly who) when the first game started and people were talking about who they'd pick for horsemen actually got like 3 of the 4 of us. Being bandied around as a likely horseman pick early on meant I had to do a bunch of misdirection to try and stay active enough in the thread yet not call a lot of attention to myself. I think that's one area where the complexity of the game really helped evil......

[Bonegavel]

Since my suspicion-ometer went off so heavily for Doom, I should have followed up my gut feeling about Mandarin and his offing of Cpt Marvel. I tossed that idea around a bit but abandoned it thinking that I needed to trust somebody based on the only hard evidence we had since I didn't have any seer/investigative powers.

I even had doubts about Moon Knight but dismissed them because he had helped me, somewhat, out Doom. That was a good move.

I also wanted to go after Prof X because his posts sometimes felt false for some reason. DT played Prof very well and I really got the feeling that it was almost too good of a Prof X job that scared me into thinking he was evil. The vouching for X that Cpt America did was the only thing that kept me from ripping his bald head off since Cpt America turned out to be a good guy. I was just worried that people's vouching was more a gut feeling than something a power gave them.

[Blade6119]

Originally Posted by Mr. Wednesday

In retrospect, we screwed up by going after Blade at a point where I had already disabled Silver Surfer's healing

That was a huge reason i revealed when i did, and as cockily as i did. I wanted to draw the remaining votes off of path to keep him alive, and split the good vote in half(exactly what happened). If you had all hit path, he would have likely died. Then the next day, instead of taking me to double and failing, you would have only had to take me down 10(you did 16), as it was path who did all that damage to GI.

So that was big break for us to, when you all split up between path and i, while we all piled on our target.

[Blade6119]

Originally Posted by path12

This was also my first time playing evil with Blade, which was a lot of fun if only to see just how many schemes the guy has up his sleeve at any given time.

Pshhh, i dont know what your talking about. Im not devious

By the way, sorry again LSG....

[LoneStarGirl]

Originally Posted by Blade6119

Pshhh, i dont know what your talking about. Im not devious

By the way, sorry again LSG....

Yes, you should all know, Blade and I are no longer friends. He will always be my day one vote, even if he is on my team. Mark my words.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by LoneStarGirl

Yes, you should all know, Blade and I are no longer friends. He will always be my day one vote, even if he is on my team. Mark my words.

Not a bad strategy at all.

[path12]

Originally Posted by LoneStarGirl

Yes, you should all know, Blade and I are no longer friends. He will always be my day one vote, even if he is on my team. Mark my words.

I knew there were gonna be ramifications to that!

[Tyrith]

My day 1 vote is going to be ntn until he FREAKING DIES one of these games

[Schmidty]

HULK WORST PLAYER IN GAME. HULK FEEL LIKE CRAP!!!!

HULK SPLAT CRAP!!!

OWWW!!!!!!!!!

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by Bonegavel

Since my suspicion-ometer went off so heavily for Doom, I should have followed up my gut feeling about Mandarin and his offing of Cpt Marvel. I tossed that idea around a bit but abandoned it thinking that I needed to trust somebody based on the only hard evidence we had since I didn't have any seer/investigative powers.

I even had doubts about Moon Knight but dismissed them because he had helped me, somewhat, out Doom. That was a good move.

I also wanted to go after Prof X because his posts sometimes felt false for some reason. DT played Prof very well and I really got the feeling that it was almost too good of a Prof X job that scared me into thinking he was evil. The vouching for X that Cpt America did was the only thing that kept me from ripping his bald head off since Cpt America turned out to be a good guy. I was just worried that people's vouching was more a gut feeling than something a power gave them.

I wasn't able to 'vouch' for Professor X until he joined my team, and even that had issues because of his night action.

But yeah, early on my circle of trust was limited to gut feelings because, well, I was pretty worthless as any kind of a diviner if folks weren't on my team.

If Moon had joined the Atlantic Alliance, I would've scanned him...but they still might have gone after me as the night kill anyway. Ah well.

[ntndeacon]

Heck Sack. We tried to get you to join us. then we coulda waited on killing you til later.

[WVUFAN]

This is one heck of an enjoyable game, and I appreciate everyone's indulgence in the whol "Fool! Worm!" stuff.

LSG's sacrifice, I honestly believe, turned the tide. It gave Blade and NTN a pretty hard alibi, and when Blade and I concocted the argument, and I turned out to be evil, I think that solidified their innocence in alot of the good guy's eyes.

Schmidty, heck of a game -- your Hulk was fantastic. BoneGavel had me pegged from the get-go. Everyone played their parts well.

I appreciate my fellow Horseman allowing me to be a part of it, and I very much appeciate hoopsguy's invitation to the game. I hope that I can be invited back when Part two rolls around. :-)

[Eaglesfan27]

I missed the last few hundred or so posts and am just catching up.


While I was/am very disappointed to be killed so early, I kept following because I think Hoopsguy and Tyrith created a very interesting game that they did a great job moderating.

[LoneStarGirl]

eaglesfan, play in the survivor game, you were such a blast to play with this game

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

I missed the last few hundred or so posts and am just catching up.


While I was/am very disappointed to be killed so early, I kept following because I think Hoopsguy and Tyrith created a very interesting game that they did a great job moderating.

Sorry about that Eagles. I just had a bonus to attacking you so it seemed like as far as Day 1 attacks went, it made sense, so I was afraid we wouldn't get enough attacks in to kill someone, and I'm a firm believer of the "lynch a player a day" unless there are unusual game mechanics.

[Poli]

I'm back, sorry I missed the end.

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by ardent enthusiast

I'm back, sorry I missed the end.

Ardent you played a good game, though I can't tell you how much I wanted to bet a hattrick supporter in there about your list and I don't even play hat trick .

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by LoneStarGirl

eaglesfan, play in the survivor game, you were such a blast to play with this game

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

Sorry about that Eagles. I just had a bonus to attacking you so it seemed like as far as Day 1 attacks went, it made sense, so I was afraid we wouldn't get enough attacks in to kill someone, and I'm a firm believer of the "lynch a player a day" unless there are unusual game mechanics.

No biggie Barkeep. This was a one time return LSG. I'm not going to play any more WW unless I use an alias (which is doubtful.)

[Poli]

I began to have my own doubts, as DT could attest.

[Barkeep49]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

No biggie Barkeep. This was a one time return LSG. I'm not going to play any more WW unless I use an alias (which is doubtful.)

I know hoops and I have both discussed using that mechanic in a game at some point.