Werewolf XLV - ROME! (Game over, post 3425)

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

cronin...i did thank you for running the game. It's not like I was trying to pile on you.

Understood, the lack of participation was unbelievably frustrating for me though.

[DaddyTorgo]

oh I know. I can imagine.

[Lorena]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

Tarquins have won.

The Original 5:

Antmeister
Barkeep49
Grammaticus
Narcizo
Path12


And the convert:

Autumn

wtf?

Wow, his first time playing and he was a wolf. *sigh*

[Lorena]

dola,

After I died Ant and I talked about how well developed this game was... thanks for running it cronin. I'd imagine it was very difficult at times.

[Mustang]

Well, at least I killed Ant.

I told Cronin 2 days ago that I thought Narc, Autumn and Iron were the Tarqs but, with such little analysis going on the last few days, I knew there was no chance that I could get one of those guys whacked. This is the first game I've played where you really didn't know who was who and it was impossible to get a read on anyone and I was more going on gut then anything else.

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Autumn

Although amusingly the only two traitors killed were through fairly random sword kills. Antmeister we had some evidence against, and I was almost certain was bad, but it still was lucky. And barkeep as far as I know was pure luck. I think there were four sword kills by good guys, and 50% right is not too bad.

As a note, when I had the sword guy on the night it was mixed up with Pass, Autumn was my first pick that morning to Cronin. I changed it later to Ant.

[SnDvls]

Originally Posted by KWhit

All I have to say is:

HOW MANY TIMES DID I HAVE TO HAVE SOMEONE CLEAR ME BEFORE YOU PEOPLE WOULD BELIEVE IT!?!?!?!??!?!

had you pegged as good on day 1

[SnDvls]

it's hard to comment on a game when you die early..but with no info to start sucks...as many others have said you don't know any of the mechanics, rules ect. and it just makes it that much harder to get into. I really didn't follow after my death partly because I never could find an updated "who's still alive" list which I think should be done.

Great idea St. C wish I could have been in it longer.

[Mr. Wednesday]

One thing that's been done a lot in recent games that I missed in this one was the roster list on the first page showing all the original players and how the dead ones died.

[Narcizo]

I'm going to limit myself to the game mechanics here;

For the first four days or so I didn't think we had a chance, I was just playing to extend the game. The villagers had, potentially, two open scans a day that could be immediately announced. I don't understand why the villagers didn't just organise a scan by scan process every day. It's a whole lot more powerful than a normal seer role where the seer had to remain concealed. Meanwhile we had a total of 5 kills. Then we have to rely on the swordsman. We were all poor so what chance did we have? I thought the game would be over in 6-7 days, but tried to tie up the seers and target rich people just to try and put up a fight.

IF Chief had come up with his plan before we were told we could pool our bids the game would have been over in a day or two. As it was we were lucky that the two coincided so we could use Chief's plan to incriminate people. Even more lucky the people incriminated were the ones forming a COT. (I actually thought KWhit, Anxiety and SnDvls were a third faction (I later suspected Ardent) the way they all seemed so sure of each other on day one).

People seemed to just skirt over what the philosopher could do (Hoops gave it away to me) and didn't seem to consider the chance that someone was converted. I've been terrified of the philosopher ever since as he was the main person who could damage me once I was the tribune.

As st.cronin pointed out the wolves made a load of errors that dragged the game out longer than it needed to have (My time zone certainly didn't help). One day nobody bid on the assassain resulting in Mustang getting him and taking out Ant. So instead of 16:5 we were 17:4 or something. Then I had a kill but went to bed telling people to make my kill for me (buried in a super-long post) and nobody noticing it. So that was another kill down the drain. I don't know if we could have used the philosopher more than once but if we could then we should have been targetting him instead. The lack of participation from certain parts helped us at the start but the lack of arrests was actually counter-productive as we needed executions every day to have a chance.

I think the game was actually well balanced but can understand that the lack of information would drive anyone mad. It certainly would have done with me. But I think both sides were disorganised but, probably for the first time, that disorganisation cost the villagers more than the wolves. The fact that I was normally the first to post on any given day probably helped us a lot because it allowed me to set the tone for the day. There was also a huge amount of room for false reveals at the end, I think st.cronin intended that. There are players who would have had a field day. However no-one made use of that which is a pity really.

Chief I thought you were onto me several times. I remember one panicky post I made (when you said you'd taken Ardent but it turned out it was me) that I thought gave us totally away. Also I revealed "our" (gramm's) theory about the post count as soon as Ardent accused me of being a wolf. I'm sure someone was going to pick up on that. My team mates must be utterly sick of my "OH BUGGER; we're doomed!" posts because I think I made about two a day.

I've said to st.cronin that I think the game was very well put together and, considering the size, complexity and frustrating disappearance of several people very well run.

[Narcizo]

On a personal level I absolutely hated being a wolf. I got into werewolf because I enjoy the problem-solving aspect. What I should have reckoned with was that there's always going to be a chance that I would be a wolf and will have to target people and lie in order to win. There are a couple of posts in this game that I'm really not very happy about (one where I'm basically goading Ardent into killing CW springs to mind) and I don't like the side it reveals about me.

I've also been a nervous wreck for the last week and have been losing sleep thinking through configurations and threats which just isn't healthy. So basically I think I need to take a break from werewolf until I can decide whether I can play a wolf and not have me turn into/reveal a person I really don't like. I never thought it would

I want to apologise to Ardent again. Not for the in-game stuff (which I think he has to realise is justified if he's going to play WW), but the personal attack at the end. There was no justification for it. It's a sign of the stress I was feeling but there's still no excuse.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

If Ardent had bid for the sword he would have won it. The way the "pooling" worked was - take the highest rated Tarq and subtract 3, 1.5, and .5 for each successive contributor. The number would never go lower than 1.5. Anxiety was 2. There was another day when KWhit thought he was 1, but was actually 2 (DC I think was 1).

Oh I didn't realise that. I thought we all actually had a secret wealth rating. That actually means that the game was better for the villagers as if they had #1 they could always get the assassain.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Note, this is my post detailing my analysis of who could have hired the Day One sword killer. This is probably the only post int he whole thread that ahd the Tarqs shitting their pants. Three of the five originals are here, and if Autumn was converted, he's here, too.

Of course, I was only thinking there was one. I believe Antmeister was eventually killed because of this post, so I guess I can take a little credit for that.

I am grasping for any victory straws I can pull out.

Actually there was reason to suspect Passa/MV and LSG/Chubby/MR Wednesday as well based on this - as Ironhead pointed out at a different stage. I did comment on it at the time but hoped, rightfully, that other events at the time would steal the thunder from it. That's one of the advantages of playing a wolf in such a big game - it's very easy to redirect focus early on.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

They could pool in some form every day? Wow, st. cronin, that is just way too powerful. Not only could they put ina strong bid for a critical service every day, but it simply blows up any attempt to use the public rule set on wealth and service bidding to logically analyse the results.

I did mention the possibility that the wolves could outbid the villagers. That was when I was considering setting you up for coming up with the plan. My argument was going to be that the wolves could negate a bid if they knew exactly who was going to make it or some such.

Your plan was a very good one. Even with our ability to overbid it would have won the game for the villagers if everyone had persevered with it. Which was why I was trying to lay groundwork to bring it into question, once I'd got a couple of executions out of it.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

It may havee been obvious to you, but 28 players missed it. I have a feeling that while the conclusion could have been made, it was a little less obvious than you think. Also, we knew from your early explanations that wealth didn't work in any traditional "I have X pieces of gold" system. Without a base unit of currency, I don't think it would occur to anyone that pooling could be used.

I'm one of the 28 and I noticed it about .5 second after it was revealed that lawyers could scan. At that moment I just thought "But ... what the hell are we supposed to do now?"

Obviously, try to tie up the lawyers with arrests, executions and assassainations and cause there to be questions about the other lawyer. As I said, I figured it would allow us to last maybe a couple more days before getting caught.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

If Narcizo had been hired to investigate path12, they BOTH would have turned up bad. But for several days in a row nobody hired Narcizo.

Really? That sort of sucks. I can't think I see the logic in that - If anything I should reveal Path as good. I certainly wouldn't have pushed for people to scan path if I knew that fact.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

As I mentioned, the COT was wiped out. Crazy to think that in a game with little information, the villagers would allow the wolves to point them in the direction of the only COT we were going to have and take down every single member.

Like I said, that was a happy coincidence, not some sort of machiavellian masterplan. It just so happened that the COT that was forming consisted of the rich people. Well, actually it isn't a coincidence, as they were more likely to get the services of the lawyers.

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by Tyrith

Honestly, I didn't like this game. As a poor vanilla I was pretty much trying to feed on the crumbs that the other players gave me...NOT HAVING ANY INFORMATION THE ENTIRE GAME IS SERIOUSLY ASS. We blew up an entire CoT because the rival CoT was telling us too and we had no external way of doing so. Not having any idea what's going on IS NOT FUN. Cronin, I think the game was quite innovative, and I really appreciate all the effort you put into it, but it was frustrating as hell.

But it wasn't all of us telling you that, it was just me. Honestly I just can't understand why you were willing to listen to me so much and yet no-one scanned me. And then when the philosopher goes missing for a day why did no-one ask questions about who might have been converted. If I'd have known that nothing was going to be asked about it we'd have converted Ardent. But at the time we presumed that it would be too obvious that either he or I had been converted.

I think I was the only one who ever mentioned the fact that someone might have been converted. (FWIW it came down to Autumn or Ironhead - we weren't sure if the bodyguard would block it so we didn't want to risk trying to convert Chief).

[Narcizo]

Obviously I liked the time schedule although it did leave room for errors by the wolves. Basically the time zone issue did interfere with our ability to get organised (we also suffered from the same ailment as the villagers - an inability to coordinate, which is unforgiveable for the wolves).

Given a full idea of the rule-set I actually think the game may have been slightly tipped in the favour of the villagers but thean again I would say that. Certainly the rules played strongly into my hands as a wolf. All I had to do was do what I would have done as a villager and create instant suspicion. I think I played almost all of the game as I would have done as a villager (probably wouldn't have arrested Neon, or stood for Consul for that matter) and that includes voice suspicions about Ardent. (Probably not as strongly though). That's because of the advice Path gave me on day one that I should play my normal game.

In some cases I took it too far as my evidence pointed to path's guilt so I mentioned it. I should probably have made more of an effort to sit on that. Then again I thought I was going to be revealed at any time so I thought that it create trust for him.

[Narcizo]

Anyway I want to thank st.cronin for the huge amount of work he's put into the game and how well thought through I think it was. I'd also like to apologise to him for dragging non-game stuff into it. I also want to apologise to my team for bombarding them with super-long PMs and for the nervous breakdowns.

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Well, that was the maddening part. WW is a game based on analysis and the utilization of facts. We essentially had no facts in this game. There was nothing we could say for sure about anyone. And that meant anyone could argue themselves out of bad situations or sow suspicion. And anyone could lead people to believe things that were toally false--because we couldn't confirm anything whatsoever.

I admire that you attempted a game like this to make it work, but if I ever see another game with "nothing concrete" involved in it, I am going to step out of it. It was maddening. I'm okay with some mystery--but when everything is complete guesswork, it takes all the fun out. The bad guys knew who were bad and good and had several tools to help them. The good guys had numbers and shots in the dark, with information systems in the lawsuits where we knew nothing about how they were judged, or that we weren't even knowledgeable of all the rules regarding the wealth/bidding system.

We were like fish in a barrel, and not one Tarq was standing outside the barrel, but six.

Amen, CR. This is exactly my belief. I stated several times that I felt the game was heavily rigged in favor of the Tarqs, and that's exactly what happened. It wasn't a level playing field. The fact that we find out that the wealth table that everyone spent so much time with was useless and the Tarqs could go around it at will is the last straw.

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by Mustang

As a note, when I had the sword guy on the night it was mixed up with Pass, Autumn was my first pick that morning to Cronin. I changed it later to Ant.

Well, I was stilll a good guy then, so that wouldn't have helped :-)

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Autumn

Well, I was stilll a good guy then, so that wouldn't have helped :-)

Could they have converted anyone or did you have some preset condition that you had more potential to be converted??

[Autumn]

As far as I know they could convert anyone.

[Grammaticus]

Originally Posted by Mustang

Could they have converted anyone or did you have some preset condition that you had more potential to be converted??

We could target anyone. Not sure what would have happened if that person had the BG or what impact the sex slaves could have had againts a target. I'm guessing both would have caused a block.

st.cronin, after the conversion, could the philosopher be used again?

[Neon_Chaos]

I never liked complicated Werewolf games.



Thanks for running it, though, st. cronin.

And I never did bid on anyone for anything. The complete lack of information the villagers had was just too much for me to even work up a sweat and "try".

[path12]

First, yay Tarqs!

I posted a couple days ago that there was a ton of information out there, but it was very disjointed and was really going to take effort to pull together. If the senators had been able to do some of that earlier I think the game would have been much closer than it turned out to be.

Our biggest advantage was that we could take any particular piece of that information and basically misdirect fairly easily -- especially since two of us were really putting out detailed analysis and gaining early trust as a result.

I didn't play a great game by any stretch, I wasn't lying about the difficulty I had getting my head wrapped around this, and would have liked to have more of a presence in thread.....was able to be a little more active behind the scenes though.

Thanks Cronin for running a complex and well-thought out game. While I think the balance in the end probably slightly favored the Tarqs, it was by no means as unbalanced as some seem to think. Finally, a shout out to Narcizo and Autumn for a well played game (even though I thought Narcizo was turned at the end). And Narc's breakdowns were really funny to read.

[Barkeep49]

I just want to add that my missed arrest had nothing to do with me being evil and was indeed do to losing the internet at work.

And KWhit, if it makes you feel better, I believed you were innocent

[Barkeep49]

DOLA -- There were some interesting mechanics here, but I completely understand the frustration of feeling like there was too much unknown. I think I fell into that trap with Spawn 2. Like I said, I liked some of the mechanics we had here and might incorporate some of them into future games of mine.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

DOLA -- There were some interesting mechanics here, but I completely understand the frustration of feeling like there was too much unknown. I think I fell into that trap with Spawn 2. Like I said, I liked some of the mechanics we had here and might incorporate some of them into future games of mine.

I don't know if you noticed, but some of the mechanics were adapted, with some modifications, from your Survivor game.

Originally Posted by Grammaticus

We could target anyone. Not sure what would have happened if that person had the BG or what impact the sex slaves could have had againts a target. I'm guessing both would have caused a block.

st.cronin, after the conversion, could the philosopher be used again?

The philosopher could be used repeatedly. I forget if I've mentioned this in thread, but the philosopher was also a powerful tool for the village - if they sent the philosopher to a Tarq, that player would commit suicide. Which would demonstrate that if a villager sent the philosopher to a player who showed up at the Senate the next day, that player was most likely good.

I think this game was fairly balanced. Every mechanic could cut two ways, and there were safeguards against any single mechanic being exploited.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I don't know if you noticed, but some of the mechanics were adapted, with some modifications, from your Survivor game.



The philosopher could be used repeatedly. I forget if I've mentioned this in thread, but the philosopher was also a powerful tool for the village - if they sent the philosopher to a Tarq, that player would commit suicide. Which would demonstrate that if a villager sent the philosopher to a player who showed up at the Senate the next day, that player was most likely good.

I think this game was fairly balanced. Every mechanic could cut two ways, and there were safeguards against any single mechanic being exploited.

The more I hear about the rules, the more inclined I am to agree with ya st.c.

-Abe

[Tyrith]

The lack of participation and the lack of information are very highly correlated in my mind -- I know for sure that's why I wasn't talking, because the only facts we had were flaky at best. Not having allegiance revealed on death made this game insanely frustrating because it was impossible to ever get a track record on people. And, to be honest, I don't like having to play 20 questions to figure out the rules of the game.

My main problem with the balance int his game is that there were SIX bad guys, and the conversion came really late, which hurts much, much worse than having a conversion come early on, because we've already started to trust people.

Honestly, for a game we got blown out in I feel like I played pretty good. In the last few days...we had already lost unless the one scenario we had groupthought ourselves into was true. I damn nearly sent in an arrest order for Gramm for the last day, but I figured it didn't matter at all. The general level of frustration meant that at that point I had just kind of stopped caring.

General commentary for future WW reference -- games lasting more than 8 days or so just tends to be too long. It's really hard to maintain interest in a game for two weeks+, especially when your level of frustration towards the game is quite high.

I would like to again thank cronin for all the effort he put into this game, even if it did frustrate me at times. It's really obvious you tried quite hard at this, and I liked a lot of the ideas in it. Looking forward to your next one

[saldana]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Even though I am guessing only St.cronin ever saw it, I thought my analysis of Saldana's being good was very well thought out and complete.

Such ashame that entire message was a complete and total waste of time!

(I had sent a message to saldana via horsemen but evidentally didn't have a valid horseman).

At my time of death I felt ok about Saldana, Kwhit, Dodgerchick and uhh one other person I don't remember who. I died too early to really have a read on who was bad.

i answered your horse...dont know why you never got the response, but i sent it to cronin...

[saldana]

Originally Posted by st.cronin

I was very surprised that

- none of the Tarqs asked me if they could pool their resources before I told them they could, and

- that nobody publicly speculated that it was a possibility.

To me, it seemed a very obvious scenario.

Keep in mind, that ALL of the resources were potentially valuable, and for them to pool their resources would mean giving up shots at something else. EVERY DAY there were lawyers that weren't hired, and on several days NO lawyers were hired. That was catastrophic for the village.

cronin, i realize this was a monster of a game to set up and run, but IMO, it was overly complicated...there were so many mechanics in play at one time that you couldnt even keep up with them all. there was no information available to the village without running one of the complex mechanics, and it is a little difficult to pick up every nuance of the game, however significant, when you have to pick up EVERY nuance of the game...especially when there are 500 or 600 posts every day to try and sift through. the voting mechanic made it incredibly easy for the wolves to sit back and watch us kill each other off, and the sheer number of players made this the easies UTR game ever....i had to keep checking the first posts just to remember who the hell was playing.

[Peregrine]

There were a lot of good ideas in the game, st. cronin, but what I think you're overlooking is that no matter how many mechanics there are to help the villagers, if you can't trust any of them, it really reduces their value. It doesn't matter how many seers you have if any of them could be evil and lying about the results, and even if you get a role reveal you never know if it was true.

Essentially most WW games are a balance between the wolves, who have secrecy, organization, and kills, and the villagers, who have numbers, roles, and lynches. In this game though, roles were usable by both sides, and in fact much more benefited the wolves because they could know exactly if a good or bad person was using them. If you take something from one side of the equation you need to add something to balance it.

A lot of your posts seem to be blaming the players for not "getting" your ideas, but I think if anything, anything had been presented ahead of time, it would have helped a lot. Even a sentence like "There are a lot of secrets in this game, and not all is what it appears. You'll have to work out the mysteries as you go" would have given us SOME idea that this is not normal. As it was I think most of us went in figuring this was a fairly normal game, with more information to be revealed. Then we found out it wasn't going to be revealed.

[Coffee Warlord]

Originally Posted by saldana

i answered your horse...dont know why you never got the response, but i sent it to cronin...

There was a % chance that the messenger got lost, from what cronin told me after I bit it.

[st.cronin]

Originally Posted by Coffee Warlord

There was a % chance that the messenger got lost, from what cronin told me after I bit it.

No, there was one real messenger and one fake messenger. I believe that Saldana's message was sent the same day Alan was killed, and that's why he didn't get it. That happened a few times, where a message was sent to somebody who was killed.