Werewolf XLVI - Sun And Shadow (Game Thread) - Game Over! Cultists win!

[DaddyTorgo]

got my scan results back.


Mr. W is the artificer.

VOTE NIGHTFALL

[Peregrine]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

Swaggs, as the Wizard why would you want to turn over the Sun members to us?



To me that sounds like there would be a strong possibility of a personal win condition with the Sun members. Is this not the case?

This was certainly my intent. Basically the Wizard is like the opposite of the Artificer.

[path12]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

glad to see whoever was the crafter took my advice early on then and made another fabulous ring of power...errr...shadows

You did hint at it, but I was going that way anyways. Followed by a Triune.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

BTW, not sure it's such a good idea to look like you're protecting MrW right now. I'm not reading anything into it, but just so you know.

lol, how convienient of you to point that out

[DaddyTorgo]

hey maybe if everyone votes nightfall and we have enuf votes, peregrine will end it for us right here and now?

[DaddyTorgo]

and i wasn't griping about you sleeping peregrine. just wondering when you'd wake up.

[KWhit]

Vote Nightfall.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Lathum

lol, how convienient of you to point that out

Huh? Did I miss something? Why is it convenient that I am the one to point out it odd to come out protecting MrW? Do You know somehting about me that even I don't?

Since DT came back with his scan...

VOTE MR W
VOTE PUNISHMENT

[hoopsguy]

VOTE MR. WEDNESDAY
VOTE PUNISHMENT
VOTE NIGHTFALL

[Lathum]

VOTE NIGHTFALL

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Chief Rum

Huh? Did I miss something? Why is it convenient that I am the one to point out it odd to come out protecting MrW? Do You know somehting about me that even I don't

I just thought it was funny

[Lathum]

dola- why so defensive?

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by Lathum

dola- why so defensive?

Sorry, I didn't read the joke implied. I thought you were trying to say I wasn't working with the cultists or suggesting I was Shadow with your comment.

[SnDvls]

VOTE MR. W
VOTE PUNISHMENT

[SnDvls]

dola

vote nightfall

[Joe]

VOTE MR W PUNISHMENT AND NIGHTFALL

[Peregrine]

Nightfall coming shortly.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Nightfall coming shortly.

Wait I havent voted yet!!!

[Alan T]

Let me think about it for a bit. I'll vote by 5pm EDT

[Alan T]

Ok, just kidding

Vote Mr.W
Vote punishment
Vote nightfall

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Let me think about it for a bit. I'll vote by 5pm EDT

are you kidding?

[Lathum]

lol

[Peregrine]

With Mr. Wednesday revealed as the artificer, everyone turns on him. As the votes rain down, it's decided that an early ritual will be performed. Hopefully the final one. The spell begins, and Mr. Wednesday thrashes, twists and turns, before finally expelling a huge amount of Shadow, which departs him with a final scream, and melts into oblivion.

The Cultists win! Also the Sun wins!


Just some general comments - I apologize for any mistakes I made, and there were a few. I like to design complex games but I'm not always so good at keeping everything organized once the game starts. With all the roles this one was especially tricky.

Obviously this was a quicker ending than I would have liked. The Shadow got very unlucky, I felt, in being revealed so early. It's not their fault, things just played out badly for them. I didn't realize that two shadows were so exposed, I thought they'd move up to three or four and be much harder to get rid of, and I think that would have happened except for bad luck.

I'd like people's ideas on how the game could be improved if I were to run it again. I already have some ideas. I was definitely too liberal with the magic items to start the game, there's no way a Ring of Shadows should have started in play, it's just too powerful.

As for the roles, it's brutal to balance. In this game, sure it seems that there are too many cultist roles that help to ferret out the shadow, but what if they had converted some of the key roles? It would have played out very differently. Maybe I should consider going away from the percentage model and give the Shadow players actual Shadow roles, it might give them some more specific play options, I don't know.

I also need to streamline the whole sleeping room thing. Things like potions of alertness are definitely overpowered in this setup. Maybe next time sleeping arrangements would be submitted ahead of time, that way people could sort of plot and plan. Should the Shadow be able to convert people through magic, from another room? That was my plan originally but then I decided it would be more interesting if seeing people move around would be a good part of the game, and I think it was. The Shadow this time just kept running into potions of alertness or people spotting them.

The way the Sun was set up was deliberately mysterious. They had some real roles and then cover roles which were included in the original list. They are powerful but they don't want to be revealed, and that was successful, though I'd say they came close to being revealed at the end. I really made a mistake in not being clear to Swaggs that he is on the Sun side, and wins with them. Mea Culpa.

Overall I thought you guys did a great job with the analysis. Putting together all the roles, figuring out who did what, I expected that and it worked out well. If the Shadow had gained more traction it could have gotten pretty ugly. One thing I was surprised about, but maybe shouldn't have been, was how the cleansed players basically went invisible. I thought they'd be leading the charge to identify bad guys, since they weren't under suspicion.

Like I said at the beginning, this was an experiment. I would have liked it to go a bit longer but there wasn't much I could do about it. I think if I run something like this again it will hopefully be more balanced, but there's always the element of luck in any game.

Good game everyone.

[Alan T]

I thought it was a fun game Peregrine, and very enjoyable to play. I have always felt in larger games where everyone has roles, it usually favors the good guys, and I think this game followed that, but I could very easily see how one break a different way and the bad guys could run away with it. This game really felt won or loss in the first 2-3 days probably.

Out of curiosity, who were the sun agents?

[Peregrine]

The Sun agents were DaddyTorgo and Barkeep49. Basically DaddyTorgo's real role was fairly identical to his cover role of the Diabolist, but Barkeep had the cover role of the Enchanter but was really the Sun Priest, who could convert someone to the Sun cause (he did, Chief Rum,) and also blast people win Sun energy three times a game, it would cleanse shadow but have no effect on anyone else.

I think if I ran this again I'd get rid of the Sun conversion ability, it doesn't really serve much purpose, it's sort of a relic from an earlier design where it was going to be an all-conversion game with Sun and Shadow trying to convert the most.

[Swaggs]

Good game, Peregrine. I enjoyed it.

[Alan T]

Yeah, I think one thing that would have been cool is if there was some reason for the cultist to not want the sun agents around, to give us the delimna of choosing between offing a sun agent or a shadow agent, that could have definitly changed things at the end there.

[Peregrine]

Well the Sun agents specifically lost if they were exposed with some proof, not just speculation. This would be because they'd be killed if everyone knew they were spies. So that element was in there, but more from their side.

[Joe]

what were the individual victory conditions

[hoopsguy]

I think the one change of not having the Ring of Shadows available until later would potentially have a big impact on the game.

The biggest factor in the game was that there were no conversions for a couple of days, which allowed us to sustain and build a circle of trust. A nightly conversion would have shattered this.

From the bad guy side, how did you make use of the chat channel? What kind of collaboration did you guys do?

I was also bummed that the cleansed (not KWhit) didn't seem interested in playing aggressively. I liked both that dynamic and the outside chat channel a great deal and may steal them for future games.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Obviously this was a quicker ending than I would have liked. The Shadow got very unlucky, I felt, in being revealed so early. It's not their fault, things just played out badly for them. I didn't realize that two shadows were so exposed, I thought they'd move up to three or four and be much harder to get rid of, and I think that would have happened except for bad luck.

The critical factor was me hitting the Wizard, which was something like a 1/16 shot at the time, in combination with Lathum hexing Tyrith (although, as it turned out, that didn't matter).

I'd like people's ideas on how the game could be improved if I were to run it again. I already have some ideas. I was definitely too liberal with the magic items to start the game, there's no way a Ring of Shadows should have started in play, it's just too powerful.

Aside from the Ring of Shadows, I can't see too many issues. If we had gone back up to three for the next day, we would almost certainly have moved into at least one person who was under less suspicion, and it would have gone even farther on the next day after that. Add to it the increasing chance that the Augerer would succumb to the Shadow (which was why I never wanted to go after him, even with the risk that he would reveal one of us)...

[Peregrine]

As for the Shadow communication, the only way I could figure out to do what I wanted to do (anonymous communication) was to create a Yahoo Groups chat group, then I created some anonymous shadow accounts and assigned them as players became converted. The archives were mod-only so any new shadow players wouldn't see all that had gone before.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by hoopsguy

From the bad guy side, how did you make use of the chat channel? What kind of collaboration did you guys do?

Tyrith suggested we go after KWhit in the first night, and I was fine with that. I revealed that I was the artificer, Tyrith revealed to me. KWhit never got connected with us, which was fine because he was gone after a day anyway. Tyrith was out of contact that night, so I acted alone in targetting Swaggs. Then Tyrith was on the block on day 3, so I didn't bother saying anything because I didn't want to give any hint to my own identity.

[Mr. Wednesday]

One idea for more balance, Lathum was able to use his hex for three nights straight, which became really crucial when we didn't have new blood and our numbers were getting narrowed down. I think even limiting it to every other night might have helped, since then we would have had two shots at conversion on night 2 (although of course Tyrith went out of contact when Lathum hexed him on night two, so there ultimately wouldn't have been any change).

[Peregrine]

It's funny, at first I considered it a stroke of luck for the Shadow to have the artificer converted at the start, but then later I realized it was actually bad, since if he wasn't converted, he would basically be the Cultist, trying to help the bad guys from outside.

As far as victory conditions, the Sun needed to defeat the Shadow and have at least one of them remain unrevealed (to report back to the King.) They succeeded.

One of the players, I forget who, had a mundane role that was a Score to Settle, basically there was a certain player that he wanted to see cleansed and would have gained an additional victory condition if that happened.

Swaggs was given a condition of getting a moderate victory if he joined the Sun. Basically I kind of botched his victory conditions from the start, they should have been he wins if the Sun wins.

[Peregrine]

I agree about the hex. There were a lot of roles that could be used X number of times. I guess since I didn't fully realize how critical the first couple of nights would be, I didn't realize people would burn them all right away. The hex might need to be toned down a bit, an every other night condition is a good idea.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Well the Sun agents specifically lost if they were exposed with some proof, not just speculation. This would be because they'd be killed if everyone knew they were spies. So that element was in there, but more from their side.

But there was no incentive to reveal them, victory-wise, for the cultists, was there?

(Since I was the artificer, I only knew the shadow victory condition...)

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Mr. Wednesday

One idea for more balance, Lathum was able to use his hex for three nights straight, which became really crucial when we didn't have new blood and our numbers were getting narrowed down. I think even limiting it to every other night might have helped, since then we would have had two shots at conversion on night 2 (although of course Tyrith went out of contact when Lathum hexed him on night two, so there ultimately wouldn't have been any change).

I am assuming my ability to block would have caused problems too though. (I assumed I was able to block conversion attempts at least..)


Also, as normal.. nothing personal to Chief/Path/Barkeep/Tyrith from day 1 I don't really honestly care too much about differences of opinions on how things should get done or anything. The only thing I was thinking with how fast all three had jumped on me with votes was there had to be a wolf in there somewhere. I just guessed wrong to which it was. I played up the arguement with Path a bit with the plan of either targeting Tyrith or Barkeep that night. I was going to go after Tyrith, but ended up going after Barkeep instead because of the comment about there being a role missing in the game and someone (hoops I think) mentioning that he couldn't find any way a role would know that. I went over all of the roles and items and matched it to what Barkeep had said up to that point and agreed with him.. so targeted Barkeep.

[Lathum]

I enjoyed the game Peregrine allthought it was surprisingly short.

I would have love to seen the look on Tyriths face when I hexed him.

[Mr. Wednesday]

I was surprised that nobody challenged me on my cover story for departing the Chamber of Rest on night 2. I already somewhat botched it by waiting so long to put it out there, but even then I wasn't sure it was going to fly.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Mr. Wednesday

I was surprised that nobody challenged me on my cover story for departing the Chamber of Rest on night 2. I already somewhat botched it by waiting so long to put it out there, but even then I wasn't sure it was going to fly.

I must have missed it to be honest, I didn't even remember you responding about that night when I asked about it.. and I even commented how fishy I felt that you completely ignored that detail when you voted. I probably just missed your reply to that if you made it later on in the day, by then I think I had made up my mind that you were who I was going to go after last night anyways. Only reason I didn't was Lathum later came in and said he was going to target you instead.

[Mr. Wednesday]

I ultimately claimed that I left to search the Alchemy closet.

[DaddyTorgo]

Yeah...all you cultists are welcome. We're going to bring in the Sun Guard and convert you to the One True Religion now though.

Barkeep converted Chief Rum I think it was...the second day. He'd be able to tell you better.

The one thing I lied about (other than my actions ALWAYS being a day action) was that on D1 I scanned Alan and not Chief.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

It's funny, at first I considered it a stroke of luck for the Shadow to have the artificer converted at the start, but then later I realized it was actually bad, since if he wasn't converted, he would basically be the Cultist, trying to help the bad guys from outside.

The biggest negative was that I didn't have any sort of a cover story, because I couldn't reveal my pre-conversion role, and as other roles started piling up there was little room for me to mix in.

[Alan T]

Were the sun agents able to communicate with each other?

[DaddyTorgo]

and with my 3 daytime scans i was able to scan people and really help build the CoT for us

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Were the sun agents able to communicate with each other?

yes...3PM's each per day. I don't think Barkeep and I ever made use of more than 2 though, and with the short length of the game Chief never really needed to get into the loop all that much.

[path12]

Originally Posted by Alan T

Also, as normal.. nothing personal to Chief/Path/Barkeep/Tyrith from day 1

No issues here. I was playing it up a little bit also, I was just trying to make sure that I'd get scanned and then left alone so I could get the ring crafted.

I thought it was a good game Peregrine and enjoyed it even though it ended up playing out pretty quickly. We got the breaks in this one, no doubt.

[DaddyTorgo]

thanks for the game peregrine!

[KWhit]

Fun game Peregrine. And since I was cleansed, I got to be on the winning side.

In fact, everybody is a winner!