Friday, 22 August 2008

Thoughts in-- What the fuck just happened?

quote [ I have such wonderful things to show you. ]

I did have plans, I swear.

I'll be using the lovely tree structure of the comments to make this make any sense at all. Bear with me while I copypaste.


Google groups:
Conclave- http://groups.google.com/group/our-wives-for-hire
XRS- http://groups.google.com/group/dispensers-of-indiscriminate-justice
Dark Templar- http://groups.google.com/group/adun-toridas
Zerg- http://groups.google.com/group/gwaaaaa-kreeeeessssshyaaa
[mafia game] [by theolypse@10:47pmGMT] [+5 WTF]

Comments

theolypse said @ 10:51pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Table of contents:
1. Planning
2. Role Assignment and PMs
3. Omniscient Retelling
<4>4. Errata
theolypse said @ 10:53pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Planning:
a. Thematic
b. Mechanical
c. Miscellany
theolypse said @ 11:06pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Thematic:

"I'm planning on a huge game, with all sorts of special powers. A lot of them are risky to use, because a poorly-chosen target can get you killed or reveal you to your enemies. The powers of invisibility and detecting same will factor heavily into things, as they do into Starcraft. There will be, as there were in SMK, distinctive kill methods."

There were requests for bloody chaos. And also for giving the bad guys a good chance. I also wanted to keep the distinctive racial flavors from Starcraft. To those ends:

Zerg can replenish their numbers, which neither of the other races can do in the time-frame we're dealing with. They're also comprised mostly of heroes, all of whom are masked from at least one of the two investigation types. Only the new recruits are entirely vulnerable to investigation. Unfortunately, none of the Zerg are detectors; in the games, that role was more than filled by the omnipresent Overminds, who were not featured here. The Zerg were very seriously threatened by night actions from Dark Templar, or Ghosts.

Protoss were almost all given some night action, at least as proxy for a team, and it very often made use of the invisibility mechanic. It's a race of psychics and
"spellcasters" who are, compared to Terrans all special. The Protoss tend to be more limited in whom they can use their abilities on, however, so bound up in ritual are they.

Terrans made up the bulk of the players, though by a smaller margin than I had planned originally. They were given slightly more versatility in the use of their night actions, especially if you count the Terran-type Zerg characters, and they had the two characters whose night actions could leave lasting, public identifiers on a character, which I was hoping could be put to devious use. They had a handful of players with no particular specialty, but were the best recruitment targets for the cult everyone knew about, and the only recruitment targets for the cult that never happened.
theolypse said @ 11:11pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Of all the things Stratafyre did well in Sensible Evil, I liked the uncertainty most. Now, I wish there had been a bit more direction, but the subject matter suggested erring on the side of paranoia, so I easily forgave it.

I attempted to make everyone's objectives more clear to them, but I liked the idea of no one, good, evil, or otherwise, being entirely sure what they might be up against. Furthermore, the single-player campaign of the games, which I drew on for some characters and most of the style, was heavy on betrayal and deception. My intent was that, if I pulled things off properly, everyone would trust their allies more than anyone else, but never completely.

On that note, Jewbacchus won the Hostile Paranoia award on Day one, for quoting his Role PM to his allies while changing it to make him seem less vulnerable to any 'ambitions' they might have had.
Jewbacchus said @ 1:41am GMT on 23rd Aug
hahah. I was put off by your insinuations that my teammates could get recruited.
theolypse said @ 2:21am GMT on 23rd Aug
And yours were the only non-recruitable teammates.
theolypse said @ 11:27pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Thematic.Zerg

Betrayal and lies. Evil, evil evil. Make people betray their friends. Also, betray each other. !!!

Kerrigan must be in the game; there's too much story potential to leave a rich character like that out.

Duran is, canonically, playing Kerrigan for a fool, so I have to give him something she doesn't know. Hybrid!

Arcturus who? Arcturus Iscariot, that's who. A zerg who wants to start his own faction.

Watching their google group should be like watching another parallel game entirely.
theolypse said @ 11:28pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Thematic.Protoss

The Protoss are united by strong purpose and religious devotion! Except for the ones who aren't, who have been the subject of pogroms in the past and are extremely recently reunited with the rest. There'll be some lingering mistrust there, best expressed with in-fighting. Say, two factions, one trying to kill the other. And there should be a significant number who don't have a dog in the fight, who just want to go home. I'm not abandoning neutral factions entirely, here.
theolypse said @ 11:32pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Thematic.Terran
Options. Give Terrans the highest frequency of choices in the game. There are too many infighting groups I could invent, so fuck that. They absolutely have to have some expression of the inter-species mistrust, though. Sources of choices: Night action alternatives, voluntary cult recruitment, and maybe some bonus conditional events.
theolypse said @ 11:36pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Mechanical:
a. Overview

b. Zerg
c. Xenomorph Relocation Society
d. Dark Templar
e. Conclave Fanaticists
f. Neutral Terrans
g. Neutral Protoss
theolypse said @ 11:38pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Mechanical.Overview
The prototypical Mafia game has two groups, each with one advantage over the other. The Mafia has an information advantage, and the Town has a numbers advantage. As the game progresses, those advantages vanish, and the skill of the players determines which vanishes faster, therefore which team loses. I started with that basic equality, and seriously attempted to perfectly balance all the huge changes I made to the original formula. I made each change as a trade-off, and ended up with something clunky and unpredictable, so I kludged a lot and streamlined things and made a series of successively smaller tweaks before I was satisfied that everyone had a fair chance of winning, and that the game would likely not be decided in the first few days.
theolypse said @ 11:48pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Mechanical.Zerg
• The Zerg had recruiting, so the Zerg began with only 3/50* players.
• The Zerg had a lot of intra-group tension built in, so they were all shielded from one or both of the two investigator types, to let that tension play out without necessarily damning them all.

• Daily unchecked recruiting by a nightkilling group would have been absurd, so:
° Most Zerg recruits would be bombs.
° Recruitment would happen only every other night.
° There would be a team-size cap. Not a hard one, because that would be arbitrary, but a threshold past which the group became imperiled.

• EVERYBODY wants to kill the Zerg. They had the highest number of enemies, something I did plot for all teams prior to running the game. I felt that recruiting, killing, anti-investigation, bombs to retaliate against lynchings, and the chance to kill in a variety of ways to shift blame at will adequately made up for starting at 3/50 and capping safely at five players.
• There were a lot of competing groups, so I made an investigator-heavy game.
• The Dark Templar, for thematic reasons, started out scattered,
theolypse said @ 11:48pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Gahaha. Ignore those last two lines.
theolypse said @ 11:58pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Mechanical.XRS
I felt that this should be a defensively-oriented group, in contrast with the aggressive search-and-destroy I had planned for the Fanaticists. To that end:

• The group could only perform four night kills through the course of the game. In exchange, they were given a set of roles that should ensure them a heavy late-game presence, so they could steer the vote toward their ends.
° 1) Protector
! Furthermore, a protector who provides day-time evidence.
° 2) Unkillable
! I mean at night. And that was a bit excessive, so I made this role's self-protection rely on sight, and the invisibility detection rely on an item.
° 3) Two-shot killer, followed by suicide. Activates when the player chooses.
° 4) Upgraded version of #3, with Trample. In the M:tG sense.
° 5) Investigator. Actually, an upgraded investigator, who could choose between protecting and performing a partial roleblock.
theolypse said @ 12:10am GMT on 23rd Aug
Mechanical.DT

• They have to start out scattered. That's the nature of them. This will make tracking voting patterns from one to the rest almost impossible, granting them a measure of safety to make up for their effective late start as a group.

• But they might not all survive until link-up. So they need to be the most potentially powerful group, on the expectation that they'll never reach that power.
° Two killers. Who do not coordinate with each other, and can both act in the same night.
° An investigator who can, alternatively, act as a protector
° A thief. Because I feel like it.
° You know what this game needs? A bus driver role. Let the fuckers have a spacebender.
theolypse said @ 12:18am GMT on 23rd Aug
Mechanical.Conclave
This group should be very straight-forward. Kill the Zerg, kill the Dark Templar, and get the hell out of Dodge.

• Target selection: Not only is killing non-DT Protoss not a mission objective, it flies in the face of the group's theme. It should cost them the player that made the kill, to keep them from just gunning down everything that moves until they've won. They'll need an Investigator, absolutely, and the group should be able to perform both actions each night.

• On the other hand, depending on a positive ID from the group's Investigator means they could go several days without discovering any Dark Templar at all. They'll be fucked if they lose their killer before then. Answer: two killers.
° And a backup killer/investigator, whichever they run out of first. This way, the only way to completely neuter the group is to kill it off entirely.
theolypse said @ 12:24am GMT on 23rd Aug
Mechanical.NeutralT
Not much to say here that doesn't belong in the Role PMs, really. This group essentially would win by eliminating the three "evil" groups: Zerg, XRS, and Conclave.

I had left open the option of allowing multiple win states for most groups, the results of which would inform the background of a theoretical sequel game, but the game never reached the point where I would need to decide whether to include that. If I had, they would have won by killing the Zerg, and then resolving the other two conflicts by killing off one group from each pair:
XRS/All Protoss
Conclave/Dark Templar
theolypse said @ 12:32am GMT on 23rd Aug
Mechanical.NeutralP

The other half of the "town" players. These ones had more people trying to kill them, but more tricks up their sleeve for preventing it, on average.
theolypse said @ 10:56pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Roll Assignment and PMs:
a. Overview

b. Zerg
c. Xenomorph Relocation Society
d. Dark Templar
e. Conclave Fanaticists
f. Neutral Terrans
g. Neutral Protoss
theolypse said @ 12:39am GMT on 23rd Aug
RAPM.Overview

Random.org did the damage, here, except in two cases when I re-rolled someone's results.
1. Breven was originally assigned Arcturus Mengsk, a perversely complicated role that I didn't feel comfortably foisting on someone I had never seen in a Mafia game before. I asked for another player, and swapped his role with the role of the player it gave me, -_-.
2. Jarringpeach, whom I -know- has never played Mafia in her life, was given some important role, either a protector or an investigator. I felt I had handicapped the town enough already, so I swapped her with someone random, too.

I had originally meant to have about a dozen vanilla Terrans, and half a dozen vanilla Protoss, but most of those roles vanished when I had to scramble to rebalance for about 3/4 the players I intended. Ultimately, that would have helped the Zerg, as their recruitment would then have had a better chance of robbing the town of a useful role. In response, I took away the Hybrid role's awareness of the other Zerg's identities, and I made a few of the "vs. Fatal" night actions into "vs. Hostile", a category that included Zerg recruitment.
theolypse said @ 12:42am GMT on 23rd Aug
RA+PM is also going to include each role's unique mechanics. For unique mission statements, though, please check the google groups.
theolypse said @ 12:44am GMT on 23rd Aug
I mean group mission statements. Ugh. So much typing.
theolypse said @ 12:41am GMT on 23rd Aug
RAPM.Zerg:

a. Sarah Kerrigan
b. Samir Duran
c. Arcturus Mengsk
d. The Hybrid
e. New recruits
theolypse said @ 12:49am GMT on 23rd Aug
Sarah Kerrigan-

They should have known you wouldn't die so easily. Jimmy should have remembered your penchant for cheating death. The Protoss should have deciphered the psychic burst that transferred your consciousness to the new body you had prepared. They should all have realized it had been too easy to bring down the Queen of Blades.

But they didn't. They rejoiced, blindly. You had planned for the worst, when your forces began to lose ground, but they gave you less trouble than you were expecting. You outwitted them all, again, and went into hiding, to await your perfect opportunity. You took advantage of the turmoil between the species to begin your diplomatic career, and your position as aide to the ambassador of a nouveau riche mining world at the fringe of the Terran sector was just important enough to land you a seat on a shuttle bound for Hermes. It would have been check and mate for you, all the leaders of all the worlds that mattered, hidden and sequestered for you to secure your influence over, but for one problem you didn't discover until shortly before landing.

There were Zerg on Hermes. Ones you hadn't brought with you. And siezing control of so many would involve enough psionic activity to blow your cover and give every ghost and Protoss in the compound a bead on you. Your group would have to lie low while whatever was about to go wrong did.

OOC:
You can perform kills and recruitments.
When you perform a kill, you have the option of slashing your target apart and burning them to death with a psionic overload, so let me know which you want to do.
You are the ultimate authority regarding all Zerg decisions.

You have enough psychic power to disguise yourself from Protoss investigations. Unless you overrun your recruitment limit, you will show up to them as a normal human. This comes at a cost, though; Terran medics will discover the strands of alien physiology woven through your tissues that amplify your power to that degree.

nibbon landed this role, which had the final say in all Zerg night actions. Special recruitment rules are detailed in the Zerg google group. This was the only Zerg role with two kill types, and they both would have implicated the Protoss. It was also an invisible role.
theolypse said @ 12:53am GMT on 23rd Aug
Samir Duran-

It is enough to wait.

Kerrigan was very useful during the Brood War, and managed to survive her inevitable loss, besting your expectations, so for now, you will keep up the appearance of serving her. It doesn't hurt her case that she managed to position you, herself, and Mengskb in diplomatic positions that ultimately brought you to this beautifully vulnerable gathering. It is somewhat regretable that you had to abandon the comfortable form of Samir Duran in order to escape recognition after the war, but the perfection of your human seeming is worth the disorientation.

If she remains as competent, she may have years of use left in her. If not, well... You may not currently have the psionic resonators she does, having opted for mimicking Terran biology over raw psychic power, but it would be simple enough to grow those after this voyage is over. The swarm knows everything she does, after all. In fact, the swarm will know one thing she does not, once you ultimately release the information to it. Kerrigan, you are certain, doesn't know that your creation survived the purges. And she definitely doesn't know that you've managed to bring it to Hermes.

OOC:
You can perform kills and recruitments.
When you perform a kill, you do it by gunning down your target.
If Kerrigan dies, you become the final authority on all Zerg decisions.

Protoss who investigate you will discover your deviant psionic emanations. Fortunately, most Ghosts release the same sort of emanations, albeit weaker, so you shouldn't be instantly suspicious. Also fortunate is your near-total mimicry of human tissues. Terran medical teams could discover you, but it would take a month of analysis, and that's more time than the medics on Hermes will have.

This one went to dead_bob. It was also invisible, and killed with a gun, implicating Terrans. Duran had the ability to identify the Hybrid, and, if sent to kill it, would recruit it instead. If this brought them above the safe recruitment level, they'd get a one-day grace period to bring their numbers down.
theolypse said @ 12:57am GMT on 23rd Aug
Arcturus Mengsk-

This is the chance you've been waiting for ever since that little tramp, Sarah, captured you and filled you up with zerg worms. She left you only loosely bound to the swarm, in order to leave you enough free will to torment you with. But here, on this isolated ball of rock in the outskirts of God-Knows-Where, you'll make that mistake her undoing. Sarah will be focused on drilling into the minds of the planetary leaders, naturally, and that should allow you plenty of freedom to maneuver among the lesser dignitaries and their escorts. Surely at least one bodyguard will have the sort of mercenary past that leaves a person familiar with night-time assassinations. With Kerrigan gone, eliminating her flunky, Duran, should be trivially easy. Then you'll finally be able to reclaim your humanity, or at least carry on hiding what that bitch did to you long enough to reclaim your old throne. The world never stopped needing Emperor Mengsk, and you intend to prove that.

...as long as she doesn't seem to have too much support, that is. You haven't accomplished what you have by being careless.

OOC:
You can perform kills and recruitments
When you perform a kill, you do it by gunning down your target.
Your loose attachment to the swarm has an advantage. Protoss investigators generally won't notice you as anything but a normal human. FURTHERMORE, human medical investigation would take a solid month to identify any irregularities in your tissues-- a month they won't have.

You have the option of rebelling against your captors and trying to sieze power for yourself. If you choose to do this, many things happen-
1) You no longer win with the Zerg. If Kerrigan makes it out of here alive, she'll be sure to forcibly debrief you and discover your betrayal. In fact, you cannot win if Kerrigan OR Duran survive, because either one is perfectly capable of controlling you.
2) You get one recruitment attempt per night. Any humans are possible targets, though not all are safe ones.
3) No one has to join you. They'll know that "Arcturus Mengsk" approached them and wants them to join his cause. This is a security risk, yes, but it comes with an advantage: Your followers retain their abilities, whereas the Zerg-recruited become generic Infested.
4) Your cult wins by surviving until the end of the game.

Perversely, -_- ended up with this role. I know it made him squirm with glee. Ordinarily, he was a visible gun-killer who was totally immune to investigations. If he had chosen to strike off on his own, however, he would have been a pure Terran cult leader, for all intents and purposes, and actually on the "town" side of the general team divide.
theolypse said @ 1:01am GMT on 23rd Aug
The Hybrid-

I'd give you a lot of flavor and backstory, but the fact is that your role doesn't have that. You awakened shortly before the ships touched down, and responded to the psychic instructions from someone calling himself your Father to blend in. You've managed that, with the assistance of the information your Father has been feeding you about the others around you, but you're still effectively alone, not even sure who has been instructing you.

At least you seem to be in harmony with the rest of the tall greenish fellows who look like you. You're fairly certain that any mental examinations from one of them wouldn't raise any suspicions. That should help.

OOC:
You win by surviving.
There are a few events that could result in you being recruited to join the other Zerg.
If any of those events happen, you'll win with the Zerg team, and I'll tell you your role among them.

I felt bad for Eon Bleu, who landed this role, because it was a crappy one until recruited. Its special knowledge was a casualty of the size adjustment. It was still the only nominally Protoss role that would have fooled Protoss investigators.

The real secret power of the Hybrid, though, was its free recruitment. Attempting to recruit it would have been a success without costing the Zerg team a recruitment chance, so they would have gotten a surge in population over three game days. After recruitment, this would have been a visible electropsi killer, like one of Kerrigan's options.
theolypse said @ 1:07am GMT on 23rd Aug
New recruits-

New recruits just got an ordinary night-result PM, and a freehand narrative of their new status as part of it. Ask spite48 or penisinface to show you, if you're interested, or request the Night 1/3 Resolution PM files from me. I'm not making this into a 50MB comment tree.

Terrans became bombs, as the game revealed, and their night-time kills would have been just as explosive, and suicidal. And they would have been visible while performing them.

Dark Templar recruits could not perform kills for the Zerg, but they would have remained invisible and functioned as jailers, protecting and roleblocking someone each night. This would be, mind you, in ADDITION to the Zerg team's nightly kill and potential recruiting.
theolypse said @ 1:10am GMT on 23rd Aug
RAPM.XRS

a. Priest
b. PTSD Ghost
c. Marine
d. Retired Firebat
e. Senior Medic
theolypse said @ 1:15am GMT on 23rd Aug
XRS Priest

Every cult needs a charismatic leader. Boy, is the XRS leader charismatic; you really admire him. Here, though, you lead. Mostly, that's because you have the highest tolerance for potentially lethal stimulant doses. But you say grace like nobody else.

You're immune to ANY nighttime assasination attempts you can see coming, since you never really sleep, anymore. Furthermore, you have a set of goggles you've retrofitted to reveal the electropsionic distortions that surround anything invisible. That means you can detect them, son. Well, so long as no one steals your glasses.

cb361 was the immortal Priest! I was surprised when he didn't role-reveal as an investigator on the first or second day, honestly. He only died as a result of the unlikely timing of theft and kill-by-Dark Templar.
Additionally, his self-protection was meant to be anti-Fatal, but I made it a more powerful anti-Hostile during my emergency rebalancing. The role became, with that change, immune to Zerg Infestation and night-time Theft. Which makes the loss of his goggles even more amazing.
theolypse said @ 1:24am GMT on 23rd Aug
PTSD-suffering Ghost-

You've already seen more than most people ever will. You've damn sure seen more than you ever wanted to. Being out on the front lines is a bit much for your frayed nerves, what with all the fucking inhuman horrors always eating your buddies. On the other hand, you're still a ghost, with a ghost's reputation, and like hell will any of those horrors get to your buddies on your watch. Even the horrors that wear humans skins.

Each night you can pick a target to protect. You'll prevent all visible attacks on the player you've chosen that night. Ever since the siege on Brintham IV, your aim hasn't been what it was, but you'll at least be certain to wing anyone you run off.

This role went to spite48, and he got to use it exactly once. It was anti-Hostile protection, performed invisibly, but by a non-detector. Ideally, the injury, visible to all players the next morning, could have been used to cast whatever suspicion the theoretically-outed Priest felt like casting, for the purposes of steering the next day's vote.
theolypse said @ 1:26am GMT on 23rd Aug
Marine-

Bodyguard? Yeah, well, whatever works as a cover job. It got you here, didn't it? The aliens have finally tipped their hand and tried to wipe out the human delegates. Too bad for them they hadn't counted on you being present. You've personally racked up a kill count in the high double digits, just in the last twelve hours, and you're ready to keep going for as long as it takes. The medteam says your injuries need rest, but what do they know? And hell, even if they're right, you still have some fight left in you, and you'll be sure to bring it to the bastards that deserve it.

You burned through most of your stimpacks during the initial attack, and you're sure feeling the strain of it, but you have one more left and just enough determination to use it when you see a good opportunity. Doing so will grant you a kill on that night and the next, but your overtaxed system won't be able to keep going much past that. On the third night, your poor heart will stop entirely, and your grand mission will be left in other hands.

Whenever penisinface decided to activate his role, he would be allowed one visible, non-detector night kill by gun that night, another kill the next night, and would die in the middle of the second night after.
theolypse said @ 1:33am GMT on 23rd Aug
Retired Firebat-

Ready to roast some bugs? Yeah, you know you are. You always have been. You just need a bit of the juice, and you'll be too wired to not roast something. Twenty years ago, you'd have been ready to take out every damned alien on this installation, but you know your heart can't handle the strain for long, now. On the other hand, your noble cause is worth any sacrifice. It's just a matter of not wasting what may be your last chance.

You managed to smuggle a stimpack onto Hermes. Well, smuggle may be too strong a word. You were hired on as a bodyguard, and who doesn't want the unit commander of their bodyguards ready to wage war on a moment's notice? Not the diplomat who hired you, that's for certain. Using it will grant you two night kills in a row, but the strain, after your long journey, will be too much for you-- on the third night, you'll collapse dead.
If someone, pity the fool, tries to block your holy mission of annihilation, fuck 'em. If your target is protected, you will generally manage to kill the protector and still injure your target. Nobody gets in the way of a Firebat.

This one was special. This was archangel_2's role, and it functioned, on the surface, much like the Marine role. Two visible, non-detector kills, dead on the night after the second kill. Differences:
1) Kills by burning, not gun.
2) Injures any target that, for reasons of Protection or Invisibility, it can't kill, providing vote-guiding fodder just like the Ghost.
3) Any on-site protector, which means {PTSD Ghost, Infested Protoss, Electropsi Technician}, would be killed in the attack.
theolypse said @ 1:42am GMT on 23rd Aug
Senior Medic-

You're actually one of the few people who knew about Hermes ahead of time, and you know that it's actually a moon, not a planet. You still don't know where it is, though. You were among the medical staff brought here months ago to tend to the inevitable injuries the construction crew would suffer while preparing the installation, and you've spent your time well. Now that order has broken down, you're -certain- no one will finish that inventory, so the supplies you snuck out for building optic flares will never be missed.

Each night, you have the option of investigating a target or disabling for the night any vision-dependent ability that target may have. Your investigations will reveal only one thing, whether your target is infested with Zerg or not, but it's the most important thing, since Protoss aren't exactly hard to identify. Well, that you know of. The testing takes time, though, so you won't receive the results of any investigations you perform until near the end, not at the beginning, of the following day cycle.

13ullet was the XRS' team investigator. Terran investigators got a gussied-up boolean response from me-- Zerg/Not Zerg-- and it took, like the autopsy results, an extra half-round. Medics, all of them, were visible. They were also non-detectors, but their investigations resolved at lowest priority, every night, so they would actually happen after invisible characters became visible again, making that mechanic largely irrelevant to them.
This role additionally could function as a roleblocker, if the player chose. The only roles not entirely dependent on sight for their abilities were Protoss Investigators, the Mindbender, the Spacebender, the Psionic Adept, the Psychic Receiver, and the Paranoid Marine.
theolypse said @ 1:45am GMT on 23rd Aug
RAPM.DT

a. Hand of Uraj (killer)
b. Eye of the Matriarch (investigator)
c. Thief
d. Spacebender
theolypse said @ 1:50am GMT on 23rd Aug
Prior to the Dark Templar assempling as a group, four of the five (yes, five) were limited to searching the rooms of other Protoss hoping to find one of their comrades. Only the Eye of the Matriarch got the full details of its role before the group had assembled at least partially.

As soon as any DT found another, I created a google group to allow those who had found each other to communicate. If there became two pairs, they would have remained separate until a theft or investigation cross-pollinated them.
theolypse said @ 1:54am GMT on 23rd Aug
Hand of Uraj-

Before grouping: Each night, you can select one other Protoss to spy on and hopefully to discover the origin of. Once you've discovered another Dark Templar, you will be able to communicate privately with one another. I'll need your e-mail address ASAP to handle that bit.

After grouping: As a Hand of Uraj, you have been trained to kill, and you are damned good at it. You are able to carry out the once-nightly execution your team is capable of. There are risks, but the threats around you are bigger risks yet.

There were two of these, brat#3 and Copernicus. They were invisible, nondetector killers who slashed their targets. They could, if both were in a/the group, both attack in the same night.
theolypse said @ 2:00am GMT on 23rd Aug
Eye of the Matriarch-

The Matriarch sees through you. Figuratively, of course. Once per night, you are able to investigate another player and sense their psionic nature. Normal humans will barely even register; most Protoss are obviously slaves of the Khala web; human ghosts, other Dark Templar, and Zerg (for what that's worth) are all in communion, witting or not, with the Void.
Once you've discovered another Dark Templar, you will be able to communicate privately with one another. I'll need your e-mail address ASAP to handle that bit. You will also, at that point, be able to sacrifice your nightly investigation in favor of watching over one of your allies, to alert them of impending danger. Once aware of a threat, you know, there is nothing the Dark Templar cannot evade.

OOC:
You start as an investigator. Once you've grouped up, you can choose each night between investigation and ally-only protection. When protecting, you are invisible, but cannot see others who are. When investigating, you are visible, but your mind's eye can see through such ruses. You need to send me your e-mail address so I can get you into a google group once you team up with another DT.

King Pellinore was the dual-purpose EotM. At first, his power was limited to performing a psionic investigation, as a detector. Protoss Investigators were not on-site, so their awareness resolution was minimal to irrelevant, and they remained visible in their rooms.
After discovering allies, the EotM could opt, at night, to watch over one of them, warning them psychically in time to prevent Hostile or worse actions. As an off-site protector, the EotM wouldn't have been killed by the XRS Firebat.
theolypse said @ 2:12am GMT on 23rd Aug
Dark Templar Thief-

Not everyone can grow up to be a warrior. And besides, warriors need to be equipped, right? Each night, you have the choice of either spying on another Protoss in hopes of finding one of your comrades or rummaging through someone's possessions in hopes of finding something useful. And then taking it. Actually, you can do both in one trip, if you pick a Protoss to steal from.
Whichever you do on any given night, you do it invisibly. That's a good thing.

Do I really have to explain this one? Here's a list of items he could have stolen:

Grand Seer -- Khalis crystal
Khala's Blades -- Cloak disruptor
XRS Priest -- Electropsi goggles
XRS Marine -- Stimpack, before use
XRS Firebat -- Stimpack, before use

In that these are not items he could have used, the thief roles were essentially long-term partial roleblockers.
theolypse said @ 2:12am GMT on 23rd Aug
Oh, right. This went to RedRiverRat.
theolypse said @ 2:16am GMT on 23rd Aug
Spacebender

Before grouping: Each night, you can select one other Protoss to spy on and hopefully to discover the origin of. Once you've discovered another Dark Templar, you will be able to communicate privately with one another. I'll need your e-mail address ASAP to handle that bit.
After grouping: The High Templar think they're so impressive, creating illusions? Pfah. Warping your enemy's perception at its core, that's much more effective. Each night, you have a choice in how you deploy this distortion:
a) Pick a target. Now pick your target's target. Anything your victim does tonight will be redirected as you've chosen.
b) Pick a target. Now pick a patsy. Anything that targets your target tonight will find itself targetting your chosen patsy, instead.

In neither case will you know what the result of your meddling was, or even if there was one, except as the results may be obvious come morning.

Congusto got this role. This was off-site and not vision-dependent, like a handful of other Protoss powers. I would have liked to see it in action, however confusing it may have made things. Detection and awareness resolution were completely irrelevant to this role.
theolypse said @ 2:23am GMT on 23rd Aug
RAPM.Conclave

a. Grand Seer
b. Khala's Blade
c. Young Templar
theolypse said @ 2:27am GMT on 23rd Aug
Grand Seer-

You're not the leader of your small band of loyalists. No, that title is very explicitly reserved for the high-ranking Templari you arrived serving. You are, however, acting Judicator following their demises, and frankly, the opportunity to prove yourself is not entirely unwelcome. You've hand-picked this group, all of them Templari you personally knew and approved of back on Aiur, and they'll assuredly be looking to you to guide them in the coming days.

You can investigate one player every night, and you will, assuming no interference, learn the state of their minds. You will know whether they are aligned with the Khala, as all true Protoss should be, or with the Void, like those degenerate Fallen Ones. Humans generally don't register as either, and return no information, excepting the psionics they call "Ghosts", who use the same energies the Dark Templar do. Oh, and the Zerg also yield a Void response, but those were all destroyed, and obvious mutants anyway. Right?

You have also been entrusted with a fragment of the Uraj crystal. It allows you one perfect investigation, that will tell you everything you could possibly want to know about the alignment of the target you choose. It is an item, mind you, and carries all the attendant risks of suddenly being not there.

Jewbacchus scored the upgraded Investigator role. Like the Eye of the Matriarch, the Grand Seer is an off-site, detector Investigator who gets an immediate Khala/Void/null result, as opposed to a Terran's Zerg/Non-Zerg on a delay. He also sent in the orders for the Conclave group, as the nominal leader. He also had an item-- the Khalis crystal does what the PM says, exactly.
theolypse said @ 2:33am GMT on 23rd Aug
Khala's Blade-

The Conclave tasked you with defending the negotiators it sent, and you have already failed in that mission. Honor demands that you avenge the dead before you may return to Aiur to face their judgement. To that end, you have sworn to root out and destroy the surviving Dark Templar and any of the Zerg monsters they may still be controlling. Perhaps you can redeem yourself thus; just be certain you do not compound your failure.

Your group can kill once per night, and you're one of the people who can carry it out, by slashing them apart with your psychic blades. Dark Templar are the obvious targets. Humans don't really matter to you one way or another. However, if you take down a true Protoss, faithful to the Way of Adun, your failure will be so great as to demand your immediate suicide.

Macst34 and shiftace were the night-time killers for the Conclave team. Their kills would have looked identical, in the morning, to kills by Hands of the Matriarch, or Kerrigan with her blades. They were visible, and detectors by necessity, but their detection depended on items that could be stolen, the Cloak Disruptors mentioned in the DT Thief explanation.

And yes, the Hybrid would have triggered the suicide clause, despite being actually a Zerg.
theolypse said @ 2:39am GMT on 23rd Aug
Young Templar-

You were fortunate to have been brought along on such a historic diplomatic mission. Clearly, you were being groomed for great things. It's a shame everything went to hell upon arrival, but you're sure you'll still have opportunities to make yourself valuable.

OOC:
You, like ze goggles, do NASSINK. Not at first, anyway. If your team runs out of Blades, you can suit up and take on that role, performing nightly kills for the glory of Aiur. If the Grand Seer dies, you can likewise take over that position, getting one normal investigation per night. Also, I need your e-mail address. Hup hup! It's vital.

Does what it says on the tin. Equinophobe was the Conclave team's insurance policy, capable of becoming a last-ditch copy of either role. He ended up taking over the Investigator slot. Prior to taking up arms, or eyes, he was functionally a perfectly ordinary Protoss.
theolypse said @ 2:42am GMT on 23rd Aug
RAPM.NeutralT

a. Medic
b. Ghost Bodyguard
c. Paranoid Marine
d. Psychic Receiver
e. Thief

Vanilla Terran-

Attaché, aide, advisor, bodyguard... Damnit, I wanted another 'A' word. In any case, however you came to Hermes, you find yourself in the unenviable position of fighting to survive long enough to leave it. Well, let's be honest; you probably won't make it. But you came here to help engineer peace, and you're determined, at least, to stop those on both sides of the aisle who want to use this Disaster as a pretext to war.

Off the top of your head, you know that enough of your fellow Terrans had hoped these talks would fail that some of that lot must have made it here. And there have always been schemers on the Protoss high council, even if they usually spent more time infighting than troubling themselves over your kind. You win if you can eliminate all the aggressive factions, so that whatever truth you discover has a good chance of making it off the surface of Hermes, but be advised that few people are entirely forthcoming about their motivations.

All Neutral Terrans got that. The five special ones got extra bits tacked on to the end.
theolypse said @ 2:44am GMT on 23rd Aug
Medic-

Fortunately, the medical facilities weren't completely damaged in the attack, so you should be able to slip off at night with any tissue samples you can manage to collect for analysis. You've seen the results of more Zerg infections than you care to recount, and you know what to look for, even in someone apparently normal, but the process is time-consuming. You can automate much of it, but you still won't get your results until the end of the following day.

Like the XRS Medic, but without the bonus roleblocking. Exactly that, in fact. Visible, but last-to-act for purposes of awareness resolution. Non-detector, but with no need for detection.
theolypse said @ 3:50am GMT on 23rd Aug
Whoops. Alacron.
theolypse said @ 2:49am GMT on 23rd Aug
Ghost Bodyguard-

That's all right, though-- you're rarely forthcoming about much, either. It's part of the training; you learn the importance of holding your tongue, especially when operating under cover. You hadn't come to Hermes with full kit, and fighting off the Zerg attack used up all the ammo for your canister rifle, but you do still have your sidearm and a few days' power for your cloaking device. Your will and training are quite strong enough to keep you awake at night for as long as you expect to need to be, so it looks as though you'll be spending your down time hidden and watching.

Each night, you may pick a target to watch over. You'll notice anyone entering that person's quarters, though you won't be able to see who it is if, like you'll be, they're invisible. Trouble is afoot, you know, so if you choose, you can slip in after a trespasser and subdue them, in a permanent fashion. The noise would blow your cover, though, so if you choose to watch aggressively, you'll leave after the first intruder, and won't see anyone else who may have chosen to come by. If you see your target leave the room, well, there's not much reason to keep watch after that.

Skainsmate was the neutral Watcher role, with a twist. If he chose, by telling me so in his night action PM, he could perform a post-facto kill by gun in response to the first Hostile or Lethal action performed on his Watch target. Deadly or silent, his actions would be invisible, and this role was a non-detector, so it couldn't have retaliated against an invisible intruder.
theolypse said @ 2:54am GMT on 23rd Aug
Paranoid Marine-

That's really the worst part, too. On top of everything else, you don't know whom to trust, if anyone. This nightmare is officially too much for you. The Beasts That Shouldn't Be popping up everywhere, everybody turning on one another in the confusion, and those whispers that seem to always be just around the next corner... You composed yourself fairly well during the attack, sure. That was a battle, and your reflexes have been built around battle for nearly a decade. Now, though, with everyone holed up together with any number of potential killers, you're feeling a bit frayed.

So you'll sleep with your rifle, damnit. It just makes you feel better. You feel even better when you leave the safety off. You know, just in case.

OOC: Anyone who enters your quarters at night, for whatever reason, is going to get a faceful of depleted Uranium slugs, assuming you can see them to take aim.

This role went to eskimonoise, and was the only one in the game with a response to merely Suspicious actions. Even Medics would have been gunned down before getting close enough to carry out their night action. The attack was only partially dependent on sight, too; if blinded by an Optic Flare, or reacting to an invisible intruder, the kill would have been downgraded to an injury, which would have allowed the intruder's action to complete.
theolypse said @ 3:00am GMT on 23rd Aug
Psychic Receiver-

Well, at least they're not normally forthcoming. Few people can really keep quiet around you for long, it seems. You've been on the receiving end of more whispered confessions that you can count, and you've long since stopped concerning yourself with the fact that you never actually see the person talking. But man, ever since you made landfall on Hermes, the whispers have been louder, and it's getting harder to tell where they're coming from.

OOC: It's a secret.

Ah, the real reason for Breven's troubled sleep. Every night that there was significant communication in any google group except the XRS one, I would cull the day's chatter for a select few lines to send to the Receiver. The Zerg, Conclave, and Dark Templar, see, use psychic communication.

On the first night, the messages were chosen to be ominous. The second night's messages were simply confusing. By the third night, I meant for it to be somewhat clear where the messages were coming from. From the fourth night on, I was selecting lines to be moderately useful, but not game-breaking.

In no case would the identities of the speakers ever be revealed, or even what group the message came from.

It never came up, but the free-and-eager psychic connections this role conveyed would have given a Protoss Investigator a fairly confusing, and impossible, response of "Khala".
theolypse said @ 3:20am GMT on 23rd Aug
Terran Thief-

What good is a big hoopla like this without at least one stowaway? Nobody skulks or sneaks like you, not even those high-falutin' Dark Temples, or whatever they are. And definitely, nobody has the brass balls to do what you do with that skill. Picking pockets at night just isn't the same kind of challenge.

OOC: At any time during a day phase, tell me your steal target, and you'll get the item in time to use it that very night, which is when your target will learn of its loss.

After being shuffled off whatever important role she originally landed, jarringpeach ended up with the DayThief role. At night, she was essentially a Vanilla Terran. During the day, a thief with a couple of differences from the Protoss Thief:
1) By virtue of having the biology they were meant for, she could have either full Stim-Pak, had she stolen one. It would have given her, like its original holder, two night-kills and a heart attack.
2) By virtue of operating during the day, this role bypasses any anti-Hostile protections, or retaliations. Like the XRS Priest's immunity. Which is ultimately why he died.
theolypse said @ 3:26am GMT on 23rd Aug
RAPM.NeutralP
a. Psionic Adept
b. Observer Hobbyist
c. Electropsi Technician
d. Mindbender

Neutral Protoss-

Attaché, aide, advisor, bodyguard... Damnit, I wanted another 'A' word. In any case, however you came to Hermes, you find yourself in the unenviable position of fighting to survive long enough to leave it. Well, let's be honest; you probably won't make it. But you came here to help engineer peace, and you're determined, at least, to stop those on both sides of the aisle who want to use this Disaster as a pretext to war.

Off the top of your head, you know that includes at least a handful of fanatical Templari, and there have always been humans eager to throw themselves senselessly on the Protoss' blades. You win if you can eliminate all the aggressive factions, so that the truth has a good chance of making it off the surface of Hermes, but be advised that few people are entirely forthcoming about their motivations.

All Neutral Protoss got that opener, plus a bit about their unique roles. There were no Vanilla Protoss.
theolypse said @ 3:34am GMT on 23rd Aug
Psionic Adept-

Let someone slip and reveal those motivations though, and... Bam! Triggering a psionic storm in such close quarters would probably mean your death, too, but if the option is dying or letting someone whose intentions are foul make it back to Aiur and drag her into still more pointless bloodshed, well, that's hardly a choice at all. Anyone foolish enough to attack you from the shadows will find you quite prepared to defend yourself, and you always have the option of throwing your life away for justice-- justice, in this case, meaning to exterminate a threat to the peace you came to Hermes to usher in.

OOC: You're a bomb, at night, taking out whoever attacked you in a burst of burning psionic turmoil. You also have one night kill available for you to use, at your option, though it will mean your death as well. You win if every faction that wants to use the Hermes Disaster as a powergrab loses, and they generally lose by dying off.

This was Misanthrope's role, and -_-'s demise. This would -NOT- have retaliated against a lynching-- only a Fatal night action.
theolypse said @ 3:58am GMT on 23rd Aug
Observer Hobbyist-

You have one ace up your sleeve, though; you managed to secure and protect an Observer drone through the fighting, and you're familiar with the technicalities of their operation. At night, you have the option of sending it out to keep an eye on the comings and goings of one player of your choice, or alternatively setting it to monitor you in your sleep. In either case, when you awaken, you'll be able to upload its recordings for your personal consideration. The drone will keep a copy of these records, so anyone finding it in the event of your untimely demise will, at least, learn what you've discovered.

OOC: Observers are invisible and detect invisible, so they are almost certain to learn something useful, assuming there's something to be learned. If you don't send it afield to track someone, it will hover nearby and monitor who, if anyone, enters your quarters, though it will have difficulty determining what they may have come to do. You win if every faction that wants to use the Hermes Disaster as a powergrab loses, and they generally lose by dying off.

This was Aliron's and shiney things' role, and normally a pretty straightforward Tracker function. Observer Tracking was invisible, detecting, and counted as a Suspicious action. It was also, technically, off-site, so the worst retaliation result was disabling the players' night actions, not killing them.

Special: If the target player did not use a night action, or had an off-site night action, that meant they would stay in their room all night. So the Observer would track them to nowhere. So it would see whatever happened in that room, all night. Shiney things ended up with a shitload of information thanks to two excellent tracking choices.
theolypse said @ 4:12am GMT on 23rd Aug
Also, in the event of the hobbyist's death, a randomly-chosen living player would receive a full dump of all recordings by the Observer since the beginning of the game. I believe Zelgius got copies of shiney's PMs, and Aliron side-stepped this by revealling to the whole crowd.
theolypse said @ 4:05am GMT on 23rd Aug
Electropsi Technician-

And that's exactly the sort of thing that prompted you to go into your line of work in the first place. Machines don't lie, they just do what they're engineered to do. And boy, can you ever engineer them to do. Your covert inspection of the compound has revealed that the walls were laced with interferent psi-conducers, probably to keep the Seers on Aiur from tracking you all down and stirring up trouble. Well, you know a thing or two about psi-conducers of all types, and it would be no trouble to rewire the door to someone's quarters to react to the wavelengths involved in violent thoughts and set up an eddy current that would forcibly turn aside anyone trying to pass through it bearing them. It'd only last a few hours before the jury-rigged circuits burned out, but that should be enough help keep things honorable.

OOC: You're a protector, but moreover you work in both directions. You only stop nightkills, but you can stop them coming AND going. If your target is a killer, they'll be trapped in their room, however safely, until morning.

Valen85 was the pure anti-Fatal role. His target could not perform any night actions at all if one of them was Fatal (this could have mattered to the Zerg), but neither could any Fatal night-actions affect his target. He was visible, and not a detector (though his night action ignored invisibility), and on-site, however briefly.
theolypse said @ 4:10am GMT on 23rd Aug
Mindbender-

Whatever their motivations, though, you have the power to keep them from acting on those. You took to the mind-clouding techniques the Dark Templar had developed like a klahr-beast takes to magma pools. In a dangerous place like this, you've decided it would be wiser to only rest under the protection of an aura of confusion. Unless you choose to suppress it, and send me a PM to that effect, at least half the attempts to interfere with you in the night will fail. The less certain someone is about their decision to affect you, the more likely you'll be to turn them aside.

OOC: Any night you leave the confusion field up, the last 50%(rounded up) of all actions targetting you to be sent to me in PM will fail outright. Fortunately for you, kills tend to be decided late, and after much deliberation, whereas protection is usually submitted shortly after the end of the day. If it does happen the other way around, though, you could end up muddling your protection away. Good luck.

Fedhax, as archangel_2 complained, was a hard guy to get in contact with. Whenever he was targetted for night actions, and after clearing out any that might have been blocked or diverted by other roles, the last 50%(rounded up) of the targetting-Mindbender PMs were blocked. Ask archangel or Equinophobe what that looked like.
theolypse said @ 10:58pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Omniscient Retelling:
a. Day 1
b. Day 2
c. Day 3
d. Day 4
e. Day 5
f. Day 6
theolypse said @ 2:20am GMT on 23rd Aug
This waits until tomorrow, I'm afraid. By the time I finish the role revealing, I'll have been typing and copypasting for about five hours.
theolypse said @ 7:14pm GMT on 23rd Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Day One:
Eon Bleu, who never even read his Role PM until ten minutes before the end of the day, dies, throwing many assumptions into disarray. Suddenly, the Zerg don't even know what they think they did about their numbers.

Jarringpeach considers stealing from -_-'s used panties collection, but can't actually bring herself to do it, and so goes away empty-handed.

Unfortunately, at least eight people don't begin play, the first day.

Night One:
Zerg-
Dead_bob is perceived, mostly thanks to -_-'s maneuvering, to be the least likely to survive the next few days, and so is sent to perform both the killing of Bodnoirbabe and the recruiting of spite48. Both go off without a hitch, and the Zerg acquire a huge tactical advantage with spite's information.

Dark Templar-
KingPellinore takes the precaution of scoping out -_-'s alignment. Unfortunately, -_- appears innocent to all investigations, and scrying a Terran doesn't give KingP a chance to find another Dark Templar

brat#3 decides to check whether Aliron is a Dark Templar. He isn't.

RedRiverRat searches shiftace's room, but doesn't find anything valuable, not even a friend.

CongustoCopernicus don't do anything, robbing their team of 40% of their chance to assemble and start coordinating.

Conclavers-
Jewbacchus searches archangel_2's mind, but finds nothing there. *rimshot*

The team declines to kill, the first night.

XenoRelSoc-
Spite48 decides that archangel_2 is at the most risk, and protects him. And then goes home and becomes a Zerg traitor to the cause. :D Whoops.

13ullet takes a medical sample from spectre853, who is not Zerg.

Neutral Protoss-
Aliron watches Breven sleep, and sees the outward evidence of Breven's role, the fitful sleep.

Shiney things watches Equinophobe sleep.

Valen85 sets a barrier on shiftace's door.

Netural Terrans-
Shizac takes a medical sample from spite48, who, thanks to the Medic's lowest-priority action, has already been recruited. He won't learn of his success until just before the end of Day Two.

Alacron steals one of Breven's jerk socks for "analysis" back at the lab.

Skainsmate, watching archangel_2's door, sees spite48 standing guard, but nothing else.

Breven hears things that sound like orders to kill people. Because they are. They just weren't directed at him.
theolypse said @ 7:14pm GMT on 23rd Aug

*sigh*
spite48 said @ 3:48pm GMT on 24th Aug
Spite48 decides that archangel_2 is at the most risk, and protects him. And then goes home and becomes a Zerg traitor to the cause. :D Whoops.

Yeah, As you know I did seriously consider protecting myself. Would that have been effective? I gathered from the PM that the recruitment was invisible.

The only reason I didn't protect myself was because AA_2 and Penisinface were being vocal enough that I thought I should perhaps protect one of them instead.

Once my game win conditions changed, I revealed all to the Zerg, which really compromised the XRS.
theolypse said @ 8:59pm GMT on 24th Aug
You could have protected yourself from -_- performing a recruitment. Not the invisible dead_bob.
spite48 said @ 2:13am GMT on 25th Aug
Ah, then I blew it for the XRS. I should have stuck with my original gut instinct.
theolypse said @ 2:22am GMT on 25th Aug
Nope. Dead_bob was sent for you.
theolypse said @ 7:40pm GMT on 23rd Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Day Two:
Spite48 is outed just in time to face the noose beside the all-day front-runner, aliron. Dramatically appropriate as it may have been, the choice of shizac to perform the execution of spite, and subsequently to die in the blast, was a random one.

Jarringpeach, citing "gut feeling" about the matter, decides to steal from cb361, and scores his goggles. His immunity is thus compromised.

Night Two:
Zerg-
-_- is sent to kill Misanthrope, a last-minute decision by nibbon that surprises both of his teammates and ultimately costs -_- his life.

Dark Templar-
KingPellinore pries into shiney things' thoughts, and finds no evidence that she is a Dark Templar. Because she isn't.
Fortunately, just as he wraps up that failed search, brat#3 comes in to search for an ally, and there he is! She then goes back to her room to be nearly roasted alive by archangel_2's attack, which is where RedRiverRat finds her, thereby assembling all three of the Dark Templar who have actually bothered to play.

Copernicus and Congusto are still nowhere to be found, so the team is operating well below peak power.

Conclavers-
Jewbacchus also investigates KingPellinore tonight, and is very pleased to learn that his target is a Dark Templar. This does lead him and Equinophobe on a sadly-misguided attempt to glean information from KingP's voting record that simply isn't there, yet.

Macst34 and shiftace still haven't bothered to check in with the group, so it's operating with only 1/2 the coordination and brainpower it could have been.

XenoRelSoc-
Archangel_2 attempts to incinerate brat#3, but can't see her, so he just torches her room, and wounds her in the process.

13ullet puts -_- through the second kind of investigation that he's not susceptible to. Not that it matters, really, because -_- is about to die.

Neutral Protoss-
Shiney things and valen85 don't send me any night action PMs, and so do jack squat.

Misanthrope, faced with death, takes -_- with him.

Neutral Terrans-
Alacron takes a medical sample of CapnSilver, who will prove to be not a Zerg.

Skainsmate doesn't send a PM, so no one is watched.
theolypse said @ 8:10pm GMT on 23rd Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Day Three:
Catastrophic bad luck has me, and the game, out of commission for the week. At this point, I stop really faulting anyone for not playing.

Copernicus, mostly for never saying anything, is killed, costing the Dark Templar a second night killer they probably wouldn't have ever discovered, anyway.

Jarringpeach forgets to steal anything.

Night Three:
Zerg-
With bombs now a proven problem, the Zerg decide not to put all their eggs in one basket. Nibbon performs the kill of skainsmate personally, and sends dead_bob to recruit the known-safe penisinface

Dark Templar-
KingPellinore decides to investigate fedhax early in the night, and fortunately so. If he had been a couple of hours later, he would have fallen on the wrong side of the 50% split in the confusion effect. He learns that fedhax is an ordinary Protoss.

Brat#3, only now able to kill at night, finds cb361 suspicious enough to be her first target. And because his goggles were stolen Day 2, and she is invisible, it succeeds.

RedRiverRat joins the clusterfuck in Jewbacchus' room, coming away with a little information, and the powerful artifact the Grand Seer had been holding-- the Khalis crystal. And since RRR is in a group with a Seer, it can actually be put to use, by KingP.

Conclavers-
Jewbacchus investigates CapnSilver, and learns nothing useful. Then he sees RedRiverRat in his room. Then he dies. While an Observer drone is watching. Seriously, man, what did you do to draw all this attention?

The team has, again, opted to refrain from killing, preferring to not risk bombs, and also to watch KingP for hints as to his allies.

XenoRelSoc-
Archangel_2 just can't get a break. He targets fedhax for the kill, and he sends the PM a few hours after KingPellinore decides to investigate, so his action is blocked, and his last kill chance also falls flat. The next day, of course, he's free to say whatever he likes, since he already knows it will be his last.

Penisinface has had enough of waiting, and decides that Jewbacchus is a great place to start his brief killing spree. Since everyone else acting on Jewby is invisible, though, he learns nothing extra from the pile-up. Then he goes back to his room and turns into a Zerg. Shazam!

13ullet, who has by this point stopped communicating with his teammates for reasons I never learned, takes a sample from foobar for analysis. It will ultimately reveal foobar's innocence.

Neutral Protoss-
Shiney things decides to track Jewbacchus tonight, and since he never leaves his quarters, she gets to watch the entire drama play out. Jewby in a trance, RRR stealing, and penis coming in at the end to execute.

Valen85 submits a last-possible-second protection order for juju, who is unfortunately not on the roster for this game.

Neutral Terrans-
Alacron wants to know if cb361 is a Zerg. So he takes one of the dismembered pieces of cb361 back to the lab.

Skainsmate doesn't watch anyone tonight, either. Although it's not as though he'd have gotten to use his information, since he died at nibbon's hands.

Breven's message for tonight is more useful than the first two, mentioning -someone-'s desire to kill cb361. My hope was that he'd realize, with cb361 actually dying in the night, that he was getting inside information.
theolypse said @ 8:37pm GMT on 23rd Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Day Four:
Brat#3 couldn't defend herself in the face of archangel's absolute freedom to lie as he liked, so he finally got the chance to finish what he started, when he scorched her.

Jarringpeach sent enough revisions to her steal target I lost track of which one she had settled on, at last, but it didn't matter because none of them had anything to steal. It would be her last attempt.

Night Four:
Zerg-
Dead_bob is sent to silence jarringpeach. Apparently, her piercing criticism of archangel's story had made them nervous.

Dark Templar-
KingPellinore decides to use the Khalis crystal RRR had stolen to perform a perfect investigation of nibbon, who was Sarah Motherfucking Kerrigan, of all people. It's a shame he died mid-trance and never got to tell anyone.

RedRiverRat steals some of penisinface's porn, since that's all he had of "value".

Conclavers-
Equinophobe, taking over for the fallen Jewbacchus, decides to look into archangel's public complaint by investigating fedhax. Predictably, it fails.
He also decides that KingPellinore has lived long enough, and sends macst34 to take him out, which probably saved the Zerg team's ass.

XenoRelSoc-
With the death of archangel, this team now consists of 13ullet, an investigator, and penisinface, a Zerg spy. Really, they didn't have much of a chance, after the first night.

13ullet investigates jarringpeach tonight. And by that, I mean investigates her corpse. The result would be Not Zerg.

Neutral Protoss-
Shiney things, tracking jarringpeach tonight, again gets to watch a bit of extra excitement. She chronicles both the kill, which she will speak up about the next day, and the investigation.

Valen85 wisely decides to protect archangel_2 from mischief. Unfortunately, protection vs. heart attack isn't one of the mechanics in this game.

Neutral Terrans-
Alacron sample penisinface's delights, this evening, and would learn shortly before the next day's lynch that he had discovered a Zerg.

Breven got nothing, because the google groups had actually gone so quiet that there was nothing interesting to tell him.
theolypse said @ 8:56pm GMT on 23rd Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Day Five:
Dead_bob died with only four votes against him. More than three times that number didn't vote at all. At that point, I decided that if Day 6 didn't best 50% participation, the game would end.

Night Five:
Zerg-
Penisinface was sent to recruit shiney things, whose claims during the day suggested she might have some kind of investigatory role. It would prove fatal to her.

Nibbon took care of killing daffyduck himself.

Dark Templar-
At this point, only the thief and the still-not-playing Spacebender remained alive. The Dark Templar's chances were looking slim.

RedRiverRat chose to steal from valen85, who had no useful items, neither was he a fellow Dark Templar.

Conclavers-
Equinophobe was also curious about valen85, and also learned that he was not a Dark Templar.
The team declined to kill tonight.

XenoRelSoc-
13ullet never sent an Investigation PM.

Neutral Protoss-
Shiney things tracked shiftace tonight, but did not live to see the results. With her death, her probe and its recorded information was randomly sent to Zelgius, who had only a sadly brief chance to review and act on that information.

Valen85 spent another quiet night in his room, rather than protecting.

Neutral Terrans-
Alacron investigated Zelgius, who was not a Zerg, tonight.
theolypse said @ 9:02pm GMT on 23rd Aug
Day Six:
6+2+1+1 votes, 10 non-voters. Rocks fell and everyone died.
vahid said @ 10:53pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
theolypse said @ 10:56pm GMT on 22nd Aug
<3
cb361 said @ 10:58pm GMT on 22nd Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
important advice : don't google-image search "what the fuck"
drewski3420 said @ 11:43pm GMT on 22nd Aug
aaaaaaaaaaaaah my eyes.

you bastard, you just said that so I would do it, didn't you?
cb361 said @ 11:52pm GMT on 22nd Aug
It might have crossed my mind, but while I'm usually very sympathetic to the frailties of the human spirit, if you've been on the internet this long and you still fall for that one, the gene pool doesn't need you. Because when somebody says Don't click here, you don't. None of that "If I don't click here, I'll always wonder...", because you won't - you'll forget about it in a minute. Sooner than if you do click here, anyway.
cb361 said @ 11:59pm GMT on 22nd Aug
On the other hand, some links are entirely safe for work and mixed company.
archangel_2 said @ 12:08am GMT on 23rd Aug
You were right. I should've listened - that fucking kitten SCARED me!! But the one that's entirely safe WAS safe. Now I know I can trust you. ;)

(To my mind, I usually click on them and go "meh. I've seen worse." so I'm not terribly worried about my curiousity causing problems - I've already reached maximum san loss...)
cb361 said @ 12:24am GMT on 23rd Aug
Well I wasn't going to point to anything genuinely disturbing. Anyway, murder victims and medical anomalies are eight a penny on the internet. Strangely, the brief sight that most disturbed me wasn't warm dismembered human flesh, but a woman in high heels doing to a kitten what Flash Gordon did to Klytus. That really is etched on my memory - maybe because it was so calculating...
anonymousbob said @ 1:34am GMT on 23rd Aug
anonymousbob said @ 1:35am GMT on 23rd Aug
fuck it
EPT said @ 11:54pm GMT on 22nd Aug
That first image is... appropriate for the search term.
Jewbacchus said @ 11:01pm GMT on 22nd Aug
penisinface said @ 11:20pm GMT on 22nd Aug
haha I'm the one that killed you! nyaaaah!
shizac said @ 11:02pm GMT on 22nd Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
It looks like even your reveal is going to be all out confusing and complicated as hell
Jewbacchus said @ 11:03pm GMT on 22nd Aug


what can I say, this one is dedicated to Rosary and Tamp.
kichijoii said @ 11:09pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Damn, as an average SC fan, I thought this was really interesting. What did happen? Anyone?
theolypse said @ 11:12pm GMT on 22nd Aug
It's coming. Promise.
kishi said @ 11:21pm GMT on 22nd Aug
As someone who's got (vague) plans for a mafia game of their own, I appreciate the chance to see what went on behind the scenes, and how it went wrong.
cb361 said @ 11:30pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Mafia games don't work if the GM gets killed on Day 1. ;-)
theolypse said @ 11:33pm GMT on 22nd Aug
It was day 2!
cb361 said @ 11:40pm GMT on 22nd Aug
That's a totally different joke, which I didn't think of.
kishi said @ 12:51am GMT on 23rd Aug
Says you. In my game, there are three factions, none with useful night actions, and I just randomly kill off players each day. Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Really, though, I figured I'd go with a Star Trek theme, just so I could use the title "Red Shirt's Revenge."
sythe said @ 11:31pm GMT on 22nd Aug
Not enough information from the start.
cb361 said @ 11:43pm GMT on 22nd Aug
I guess it's a decision choice. theolypse says he likes uncertainty in games, which is fair, although I tend to think that it makes the player's behaviour a bit too random.
theolypse said @ 12:05am GMT on 23rd Aug
You mean a design choice?

It was a design choice, but it was a choice that made teh game much less robust. It -depended- on active, enthusiastic, near-best play, or not enough information would have been generated. Obviously, I didn't get what the design needed, but less secrecy would have powerfully mitigated the damage.
It's not a choice I'd attach to something this complicated again, because the variance inherent in the system appears to be wider than the razor-thin margin of playability I created. And I really should have expected that.
cb361 said @ 12:07am GMT on 23rd Aug
I wrote decision choice? Ha! That was an unnecessary tautology.
herra turpa said @ 12:02am GMT on 23rd Aug
i dont get it?
archangel_2 said @ 12:10am GMT on 23rd Aug
this is a recap of the mafia game "Thoughts in Chaos" that was recently run by Theolypse. They usually have an epilogue, but since this one went so disasterously, he took this approach to doing his.
cb361 said @ 12:54am GMT on 23rd Aug
Don't listen to archangel_2, he's just screwing with you. This post is really a coded map to the location of the Pillars of Enoch. You have twelve minutes to decipher it and set out to recover the Ica stones hidden there before the Illuminati catch you.
archangel_2 said @ 1:06am GMT on 23rd Aug
Hey, when the Illuminati gang rape your near-corpse body for saying too much, my hands will be clean. I'm just sayin'.
theolypse said @ 2:35am GMT on 23rd Aug
Speaking of Illuminati, if SE is still playing Mafia in another year, or however long it takes me to down enough gin and rum to forget what a headache this was, I'll be co-Modding an Illuminatus! game with jarringpeach.
theolypse said @ 2:36am GMT on 23rd Aug
It will be open-rules. Goddamn will it ever.
herra turpa said @ 2:08pm GMT on 23rd Aug
oh but i know where the pilars are already
Jewbacchus said @ 1:14am GMT on 23rd Aug
Is a weekend of TF2 being free postworthy?
-_- said @ 1:49am GMT on 23rd Aug
Ok, BIG REVEAL ... I usually make my games up on the spot.
I just try to have good balanced start conditions and let the players write the story.
I'm putting rather a bit more thought (with me that term means I can detect a consistent interest in the subject in my inner mind) into Sensible Paranoia and intend to launch it after the game after Sensible Good Omens.
It just has massively more complex start conditions is all.
Narration, in my opinion, is there primarily to give the GM something to do and to entertain the players that didn't participate in the narrated actions.

So, in brief, I'd say you over thought it.
You gave yourself too much responsibility as the GM.
And you gave yourself too many variables to track.
Compartmentalization is key (group leaders coordinate their teams desires before contacting you, etc).

And the biggest piece of advice I have to ANY GM is "don't try to control the story" .. people want to make their own decisions and feel like they are the authors of the story, not players in the GMs story.
Blow your control wad on elaborate narration and maintaining the theme, but don't try to steer the players.

(0.02)
theolypse said @ 1:52am GMT on 23rd Aug
Noted. The steering I was doing, at least in intent, was just to keep abuses of the excessive complexity to a minimum. If you can point to something more intrusive, I'll examine that.
archangel_2 said @ 2:30am GMT on 23rd Aug
So you'll be running your game after mine? ;)

(I REALLY would like to be next...)
Aidentas said @ 12:14pm GMT on 23rd Aug
I REALLY REALLY would like to GM Sensible Caesar before October.
Bodnoirbabe said @ 8:39pm GMT on 23rd Aug
I think we're going to need a sign up for games. There are multiple people who have games ready and they all want to start ASAP.

Would it be wise to have someone keep track of games and who is to go next, etc? I know sythe has a list of games people have claimed, but not what order they're going up.
sythe said @ 8:58pm GMT on 23rd Aug
That's because I used to have a list in order, and people stopped paying attention to it after the first few people on the list were repeatedly not interested. I can keep a smaller "order" list if people want....
foobar said @ 2:39am GMT on 23rd Aug
The Computer is your friend?
-_- said @ 4:14am GMT on 23rd Aug
yes.
archangel_2 said @ 4:39am GMT on 23rd Aug
THECOMPUTERISGREATTHECOMPUTERISMYFRIEND!!!!!!!!
archangel_2 said @ 4:40am GMT on 23rd Aug
I just gotta ask: are we getting clones in Sensible Paranoia?
spite48 said @ 5:55am GMT on 23rd Aug
I was wondering that myself. I'm so all over that game, just don't start the week of October 20th.
-_- said @ 6:38pm GMT on 23rd Aug
kind of ;)
Dioxin said @ 1:54am GMT on 23rd Aug
This has gone way out of hand. The next game should have all vanilla townies and 1 GM kill per night until everyone's dead.
theolypse said @ 1:55am GMT on 23rd Aug
I was seriously considering running that as a joke, at some point.
spite48 said @ 3:51am GMT on 23rd Aug
That's funny, so did I. Although my idea was no GM kills. Just lynchings until there's only one player left. I was going to call it mafia-lite.
shizac said @ 3:55am GMT on 23rd Aug
if I understand these games correctly by now....that might've wound up more confusing by the end than this one was at the beginning.

In other words, it sounds awesome
theolypse said @ 3:59am GMT on 23rd Aug
It would have wound up like Sensible Howling 2.

Which is to say, a mess.
sythe said @ 7:06pm GMT on 23rd Aug
Frankly, that game seems the best fit for the moniker "Sensible Paranoia".
Stratafyre said @ 2:16am GMT on 23rd Aug
Dear lord, this gave me a headache and I ran Sensible Evil.
theolypse said @ 2:17am GMT on 23rd Aug
And I'm only half done with the roles. I don't deny that I bit off more than anyone should ever have to chew.
spite48 said @ 3:53am GMT on 23rd Aug
By the way, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to the XRS for betraying all of your secrets. Particularly ArchAngel_2 who came to my defense after I had been compromised.
-_- said @ 4:16am GMT on 23rd Aug
Pish Posh, you did the right thing as a Zerg recruit :)

I, on the other hand, had the option to turn traitor and start recruiting my own minions(who would have kept their special abilities) but wasn't in a hurry and died because I got sent out on a mission to kill a splodey.
shizac said @ 4:25am GMT on 23rd Aug
welcome to the club.
archangel_2 said @ 4:38am GMT on 23rd Aug
No problem, man. I had to spend a few days apologizing to brat#3 for getting her killed. lol

Oh, and I read the Zerg google group - the reason I went hitched my vote to -_-'s was because he was the MAIN bad guy in the Mountains of Sensibility, so I assumed that odds were he was a good guy this time around, and I wanted to tag onto that. Just seems to prove: I'm BAD at figuring out who the good guys and who the bad guys are in these games. lol

I think I'd LOVE to be an Investigator one of these days, so I can GET that knowledge! ;)
shizac said @ 4:58am GMT on 23rd Aug
you just hafta stop carrying over "information" from game to game. That's all.
kishi said @ 6:32am GMT on 23rd Aug
But then how are we supposed to make our Day One lynch votes?
archangel_2 said @ 1:16pm GMT on 23rd Aug
Well, I'd agree with that, except that I COMPLETELY screwed the pooch on who I thought was the Saboteurs (and who weren't) in my FIRST game, so that wasn't carrying over any information.

This game, I didn't think that one of our group would be turned to a Zerg ON THE FIRST NIGHT, and I did use a bit of the Gambler's Fallacy (as foobar pointed out) in regards to Face.

Ya know, BOTH games mistakes were due in no small part to trusting Face...
sythe said @ 7:07pm GMT on 23rd Aug
I don't really understand why anyone EVER does that.
Bodnoirbabe said @ 5:03am GMT on 23rd Aug
Just an FYI, I would say that the majority of these games use random.org to assign roles.
archangel_2 said @ 1:18pm GMT on 23rd Aug
Yeah, I know - but I was assuming the whole "odds are, given that there are fewer Mafia in a game than townies, and given that Face rolled a natural 20 (to use a gaming term) last time to GET a Mafia role, odds are he won't be one again."

DUMB assumption, but I made it...
foobar said @ 5:50am GMT on 23rd Aug
Gambler's Fallacy
brat#3 said @ 6:13am GMT on 23rd Aug
I really wasn't mad, you did exactly what you were supposed to do, and I kept digging my own grave :)

Can't believe what a fluke it was to kill cb361. (Sorry bout that, by the way...)
cb361 said @ 7:19am GMT on 23rd Aug
Ah, that was you, was it? Ha!

I ought to have known that that we should have killed you first.
dead_bob said @ 6:29am GMT on 23rd Aug
This kicked ass even if it ended too soon.
Good job theolypse !
nibbon said @ 7:17am GMT on 23rd Aug
In Summary - Zerg won! right theo?

Seriously - did it look like we were going to win? ;p
theolypse said @ 9:05pm GMT on 23rd Aug
You probably would have. Your strategic decision on the last day was a sound one. But your success by such a cheesy method would have made me weep.
nibbon said @ 9:02pm GMT on 23rd Aug
I am going to attempt to explain some of my actions since theo is wrong about most of them ;p

night 1: basically luck since its the first night but I wanted to recruit someone I thought would participate but not be a suspect for murder. I choose bob to do the killing because I valued face more than Bob and I figured there would be some kind of way of getting killed on our night actions. The recruit was also bob because I felt like it - and if you remember I asked you to do the recruit first because I thought it was less dangerous (maybe I was wrong?)

night 2: stupid choice of who to kill but I sent face because I decided to rotate between the three of us.

night 3: obviously I was a bit worried about dieing, but I was next in the rotation so I did the kill. At this point I was trying to silence anyone who talks a lot (because of the obvious lack of participation). I wanted a new XRS person as well to replace our lost one (which face caused - which I didn't agree with, but whatever it kinda worked out)

night 4: dead bob's turn - I was still trying to silence talkative people, jarring was the most talkative and opinionated.

When you post the other nights I will explain - including the last nights action which didn't take place.
nibbon said @ 9:07pm GMT on 23rd Aug
night five: you got it exactly right. My turn in the rotation and same reasons as before.

Just a general: After face died i decided killing terran was safer since the templar is a protoss thing and they likely didn't exist within the terran. I felt the same way about recruits but Shiney Things being recruited would have been a pretty close auto win. Also I figured there had to be a few groups and I wanted to try to capture another group other than XRS.

night six: I was going to kill Zelgius for being active ;p
theolypse said @ 9:09pm GMT on 23rd Aug
If you had attacked eskimonoise, a Terran, you would have died and he would have lived. Protoss were probably safer, statistically, by that point.
archangel_2 said @ 6:15pm GMT on 24th Aug
Ya know, I gotta say: Theolypse, you did an INSANE amount of work - both on the game and on the recap. I know it didn't turn out the way you wanted, but thank you for the effort you put in! I will most definitely be looking forward to Sensible Illuminatus next year...especially since it will be more "above board" this time. ;)
RedRiverRat said @ 11:47pm GMT on 24th Aug
Seconded, thanks Theo
theolypse said @ 11:41pm GMT on 15th Aug
I guess I ought to run an AD&D campaign some day.

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