Everyone can steal from the Hoard though, and the person with the Ring of Limited Wishes can take an item of choice too.
There are also items - the Ring of Limited Wishes and the Rod of Telekenesis.
The Rod of Divination, if somebody has it, can confirm somewhat what people have, but it can still fail, it seems.
Which adds more evidence that we should not mass drop items.
I got a reply from Pleonast. It’s not as good as I would have hoped, but it is not as bad as it could have been.
If someone nullifies storyteller’s item, only storyteller will be informed that it was nullified. However, if he places the nullified item into the Hoard, we will all see the item, and we will all see that it is nullified.
I’m getting clarification on whether or not the nullifier gets information on success or failure.
So, if storyteller is lying about having the Helm of Empathy, he is taking a risk since he will be expected, at some point, to show that he really does have the Helm of Empathy. And if someone tries to nullify storyteller’s item and ends up nullifying something else, then storyteller would be in a bind. Could it be a scum plot? Maybe. But it’s a high risk, low reward scenario. The scum plan could be storyteller lying about having the Helm when someone else really has it, who can give it (or drop it) when storyteller needs him to. I find this unlikely, but I am worried about investigating someone Evil who has a detrimental item, and the Helm isn’t the only one.
Maybe storyteller should give the Helm to MHaye (Bard) or tdpatriots (Illusionist), since neither of them should be investigated anyway. tdpatriots is ideal since the Helm pretty much reproduces his natural ability anyway. If we hand off the Helm each Turn, then we can keep an eye on it (sort of) that way. And investigators will be able to avoid it. And the Nullifier will know where it is each Turn.
This will require storyteller to use this Turn with a give action, and tdpatriots must use the accept action; bummer but it might be worth it.
Weaknesses?
Well, that “we lose two turns handing an item around every time” thing is a pretty big negative to me, when you consider that the townies doing it could be using important items or investigating or what have you. Just doing it once to a class whose class kind of already does that… I don’t hate it off the bat.
I’m fine handing off the Helm at any time. I am unlikely ever to use my primary power (Stun), and my secondary power (Kill) is only useful if we have identified someone we want dead in a pinch. Once the Helm is out of my possession, I can be a permanent watcher, unless or until there is a need for some other service.
Now, all of this stuff about the items is useful and good, but in about an hour Turn One will start, and at some point we’re going to have to start talking about who to Disintegrate.
I think it’s worthwhile clarifying who and what we’re looking for - and, indeed, who “we” are at all. There’s a fundamental, and difficult, question here: is this, at heart, a two-sided game or a four-sided game? Or something else? It is clear that all the Evil characters can win together, if they choose, by killing a sufficient number of goods and getting magic items into lawful hands. All the Good characters can do the same. But the problem comes in if Chaotic Evil, for instance, decides to pursue a victory independent of Lawful Evil (players have historically sought ought more exclusive victories versus less). Or if the Lawful Goods decide to try to wipe out all the Chaotics and all the Evils. Or… well, you catch my drift.
Thus it is difficult to tell exactly how to proceed collectively, given that there are many players who may be my ally, or may be my enemy, depending on their choices and my own approach to the game. What do we do?
I prefer trying the Nullification plan than passing it around. It has the upside of permanently removing a dangerous item, and giving us some info on storyteller. (Note: I don’t think it would confirm him in any way, but could catch him in a lie). This assumes the Rod of Nullification is in play, of course.
I’ve put in a question to Pleonast as to what will happen during a hand-off AND nullify. i.e., storyteller hands off to tdpatriots and the nullifier (if there is one) targets storyteller.
Just nullifying on its own doesn’t produce verifiable results. we would have to wait until the next turn for storyteller to put the item in the Hoard for us to see the result.
If storyteller passes it to tdpatriots (or someone else), and it gets nullified, I’m hoping that we get the item passed AND nullifed on the same Turn. I think that is better; but I’m not sure how actions resolve.
Rules clarification:
Action resolution is simultaneous, as much as possible. In general, that means actions operate on the game state as it existed before any actions have been processed. This resolves most potential order issues. However, if I can’t work out how to resolve two actions simultaneously, I will randomly determine which goes first (even odds).
Yeah, but does somebody really want to “claim Nullifier”? Is that a good idea, if that item is in fact in play and held by a Good player?
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This has been something preying on my mind as well.
Obviously, I’m playing to win. But do I aim for the most restrictive win possible, or do I agree to cooperate with those on the opposite ends of the ethical (Law/Chaos) spectrum, and maximise my chances of winning?
The Moral (Good/Evil) axis of the game is really a basic Mafia game. The quirk is that I could go for eliminating my moral enemies and find I’ve lost because I wasn’t paying attention to the ethical opponents.
It’s a similar situation to the end of Last Bastion, except that my failure there was to misevaluate the likelihood of a PFK.
I’ll think about this over the next Turn or two and see how the game actually develops before I decide.
I’m thinking that the game effect of alignments may essentially be that some Town players are not playing strictly for a Town win - in other words, whereas normally a townie would be willing to die for the cause, to the point where it looks suspicious when a claimed townie is about to be lynched and starts going crazy, we have Chaotic Good people in this one who may be town but still need to live.
I’ve been ignoring the Chaotic/Lawful win conditions as I didn’t think they mattered until mid-game (I still don’t). But I’m pretty sure a subset of the Chaotic players will win. We don’t have any clue as to whether or not the Lawful win condition is in a state of satisfaction. (Well, if all items are in the Hoard, then we do, but fat chance of that happening). Also, the moment the other win condition (Good v Evil) is met, the game is over (barring the highly unlikely scenario where Evil wins, but they are all Lawful and a Chaotic Good exists with an item). Anyway, there is no way for Lawful to gauge progress on the win condition, which sucks.
Not that being Chaotic is all that much better since death = lose. I think a Chaotic player (or two) will win. Most Chaotic players will lose. I think most players in this game will end up losing. It is mostly a matter of which Chaotic player ends up staying alive. Unless the number of Chaotic players (which we don’t know) is small, Lawful will have a tough time of winning.
I’m much less excited about this game than I was 4 hours ago.
We will need to use Paladins and Magic-Users to monitor players to make sure that Chaotic players don’t have any items. What a pain in the neck!
Forget it. I’m just going to play for a Good win, and not worry too much about Chaotic players. I don’t need the distraction or aggravation. I can’t do anything about Chaotic players, so I’ll leave that to players who can.
I’m not worried about CE characters; Good characters have to kill all Evil characters to win, whether they are LE type or CE type. It’s the CG characters that worry me.
Sach, At this stage of the game I think you’re right; the ethical axis is not important. At the moment we’re in data-gathering mode. Bit at some point, I think we’re going to have to get all CG characters to either demonstrate that they’re playing for a group win, or treat them as PFKs and eliminate them.
In fact that may be the best way to look at the setup. The Town is LG characters, the Mafia are LE and CE types, and CG types are third party with a choice of playing as a Survivor or as a win-stealer.
That should make it a manageable proposition. What do you think?
Seems reasonable to me.
So what should we do? Should we use actions working out alignments, or should we focus on the straight old-fashioned Mafia town/scum game?
Play according to your conscience. (Or, if you’re Evil, play according tto your group goals.
For myself, at this stage of the game it’s better to play to defeat the Mafia, and watch for evidence of third party win-stealers. So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next two Turns.
MHaye, it took me until now to figure out why you were posting lyrics. :smack:
Hello Hello Hello
I’d like MHaye’s and tdpatriot’s opinion on accepting storyteller’s item this Turn. I’m kind of shocked that tdpatriots showed up with a one line post and didn’t even acknowledge that we had been talking about it. I don’t expect everyone to post as much as me, but a happy medium would be nice.
Can we zap all the lurkers on Tuesday please?
There is one crucial difference between this and a regular game. In a normal game we can never fully trust the PFKs, because we don’t what their win condition is. In this game we know exactly what they need, and we know their win doesn’t prevent our own. We might be able to work together here.