As long as we’re responding to the spoiled thread here, story pm’d me to ask me if I was faking my flame-out for strategic reasons.
Here’s my response:
That’s slightly complicated.
I was really frustrated. But part of the reason I was really frustrated was that it very much looked like I might have saved myself at the expense of Mahaloth (and oh by the way Guiri has become a very very good player); if I intended to play to win, it would then involve at least two (and probably more) additional weeks of probably feeling like complete crap at least one day a week, and I didn’t want to commit to that. I probably would have sucked it up if I thought we could get a mislynch and go for the win next week.
I had considered making a deliberate slip about Oredigger being the Godfather in my response to Drain (something like “oh when you vote for the Godfather in turn 1 you’re Townie, but when I find some damning evidence by spending a solid hour rereading posts I’m clearly scum”), and in retrospect probably should have.
I wanted to protect story Night One but couldn’t because he was fictional. That was the real reason why I brought up the mass claim idea, by the way. I wanted to know who my power would work on.
MHaye was modkilled for lack of participation. I don’t recall the details but he essentially had 2 posts on one day then 1 post the following day. DEAD.
Zeriel was modkilled for lack of participation. While he had more than 2 posts on the day he died, most were not game-related. Of the mod-kills, Zeriel is the one I was most iffy about, but I felt that if I was taking out MHaye, I needed to take out Zeriel for essentially the same reason.
Red Skeezix could arguably have been modkilled as well.
Different people have different opinions on non-participation. As someone who falls into the over-participation category, I get moody about non-participation. Some moderators put the task of dealing with non-participation on the players, but I’m not sure if that is a good solution. My personal opinion is that if the game is going to be determined by who doesn’t participate then the game suffers. Mod-kill at least determines the game in favor of those that participate and punishes those that do not.
At least that was the theory. In practice, the swing involved in mod-kill gets in the way. If I could do it again, I probably would mod-kill Red Skeezix for his lack of participation.
Shoot. This, I thought, was my most awesome move. My last minute move to kill you was, I thought, what saved us. I had no idea it was a lock to work.
I agree. It could be a scum tactic to lay very low. I was pissed we lost MHaye. I thought we were going to lose for it.
No, it wasn’t. I was totally after Kelly in the last game and when he did get lynched, I was proven right* and I* was town. I was dead already, but it was very similar. I had my vote on him for Days and I would have wanted credit for finding him if I had lived to see him lynched.
Here is what I did as scum, in my opinion. I’d love to know what others think(the other scum, that is). I like being able to review.:
Pushed to Night-kill a lot of the best players early. I figured it was very transparent, but I liked that idea. I was up for killing Ed earlier in the game. We probably should have. He nearly had us.
Also try to Night-kill people after me, which again, would be very transparent, but I liked that.
Voting Tom and using Tom’s own case against him, which you can read(written by him) on the scum board.
Made the move to kill Rysto, assuming he had protected Cookies, our confirmed player. I see now that was no big deal, but there it is. Then again, it did save us, as he did protect Cookies, right?
Most other stuff I did, like when I forgot about Rysto and Cookies being confirmed was all mistakes.
Red, when you said that you would be here today to make a solidarity vote, were you trying to hint to me that you would be available to move votes if necessary at the end of the game? I read it that way, anyway.
This is why I set a hard objective criterion for what constituted “inactivity” in Cecil Pond. I didn’t want to put myself into a position where a judgment call on my part would make a significant difference to the outcome, since I don’t trust my own impartiality.
And while I think that there’s a place for kill-without-reveal (obviously, given that I had such a mechanic in Pond, too), I don’t think a modkill is it. It just punishes the folks who are still playing, but doesn’t really affect someone who’s decided not to bother with the game (since they are, after all, not bothering with the game).
One could argue that the rule should be removed for future games, but it was included in the rules from the very beginning of the game, so the lack of reveal wasn’t something out of nowhere.
In terms of win-condition. The Mod-kill was a huge help to Town. So much so that I was worried that it broke the game. Storyteller pointed out that the set of unknowns was getting smaller, and Zeriel was an UNKNOWN. In other words the pool in which scum had to hide was very small. At the time Guiri had all the scum identified. No one listened to her. Furthermore, no one looked at what she had said after she died.
IMO, the reason why town lost is because Town was talking (scummy!) and Scum was silent (safe), which is irritating but true.
I also fully accept the criticism that Red should have been modkilled.
Yeah, and I was trying to suck up to cookies a bit. I wanted to make sure that if we needed to block lynch that I would be around (Even if I did move to you in the early part of the day)
Red did pop onto my radar after the modkills of MHaye and Zeriel. If you look at the spoiled board I even expressed the feeling that I should modkill him. I didn’t and I regret it.
The rule exists because lurking as a strategy isn’t fair to the other players. People invest time and energy into the game and if someone is going to intentionally not participate as a strategy to win, then the game devolves into something not worth playing.
Like I said, if I’d known that 2 players were about to be beamed out of the game that I would already have to be digging myself out of, I probably wouldn’t have subbed in. Making sure to read the rules isn’t really something I prioritize until after I’ve agreed to be in the game. Looks like that will have to change now.
I’ve done that in the past: “three substantive posts.” But do you know what happened? People just made sure they made 3 pithy but game-related posts. I allowed it to be more subjective this time to remove such gaming.
Oh and a big thanks to ShadowFacts for helping with moderating duties.
And Thanks to storyteller for hosting the spoiler board (after he died). I didn’t want to put the spoiler board on the same site as the scum talk, so we went without for weeks.