WW42: Life, the Universe and Everything - EOG

[Tierra de Madre]

Don't Panic.

Well done Applicants. I hope you enjoyed the training program.

This End Of Game thread is your opportunity for discussion, to ask each other any questions, and to talk through the most exciting moments of the game.

My aim in setting up this theme was to devise a game that demanded thinking of a different kind, that used a simple set of roles creatively, and that worked to my amusement in penalising inactive players. (I maintain that that's the game-master's right.) I also wanted to really engage people to participate in the theme by offering Night phase activities too.

I calculated the balance of six Sneaks against two very powerful Soberly Dressed Programmers. For those just reading this summary, and not the entire game thread, the Soberly Dressed Programmers could ask any question as long as it didn't require more than one component in the answer, or the name of another individual. The limiting factor of their power was the fact that the answer they got sent each night was randomly the answer to either their question or the other programmer's. They didn't know which.

I very intentionally made the end of the game hard. Sorry for those who had to suffer through it… but not really.
By other game rules the Sneaks could have been named the winners far earlier. I wanted a game that didn’t default though, where players had to think the whole way through. Although it was quite unlikely, it was possible for the Sneaks to lose even in the last couple of rounds.

Thanks for getting involved with the theme and taking your own initiative to characterise your posts appropriately. I loved reading the responses that came from you all.

Thank you in particular for your patience while I set up the game, and occasionally during some 'lengthened' phases. I was prioritising giving you a good well-thought out game over presenting it exactly on time, and I appreciate that you all seemed to realise that.

Looking forward to being involved with the next game, The GM Sucks, hosted by Elite.

---

Players:

Campinia - Sneak
Sauron - Sneak
Elite - Sneak

Deceased:

Sheynat - Sneak
Bendariaku - Sneak
Aersoldorf - Sneak

Louisistan - Soberly Dressed Programmer
Takaram - Soberly Dressed Programmer

Randomain - Babel Fish

Lower Columbia - Infinite Improbability Drive

Hahiha / USSR - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Ater Nox - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Shy Guy - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
@tredania - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Tanzoria - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Echolilia - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Barry - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Ayunli - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Tim Stark - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
The Candy Lane - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Flemingisa - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant

Actions:

Night 1:
Soberly Dressed Programmer 1 - What is the total number of Sneaks?
Soberly Dressed Programmer 2 - What is Barry's role?
DEEP THOUGHT answer - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Sneaks - attack Randomain
Babel fish - defend Randomain
Infinite Improbability Drive - no action

Night 2:
Soberly Dressed Programmer 1 - What is the total number of Sneaks?
Soberly Dressed Programmer 2 - What is Elite's role?
DEEP THOUGHT answer - 6
Sneaks - attack Ater Nox
Babel fish - defend Barry
Infinite Improbability Drive - no action

Night 3:
Soberly Dressed Programmer 1 - How many sneaks are on this list? Tim-Opolis, Ayunli, Shy Guy, Tanzoria.
Soberly Dressed Programmer 2 - What is Elite's role?
DEEP THOUGHT answer - Zero
Sneaks - attack Lousistan
Babel fish - defend Barry
Infinite Improbability Drive - no action

Night 4:
Soberly Dressed Programmer 2 - What is flemingisa's role?
DEEP THOUGHT answer - Hopeful Journalistic Applicant
Sneaks - attack Randomain
Babel fish - defend Aersoldorf
Infinite Improbability Drive – Activated (use 1 of 2)

Night 5:
Soberly Dressed Programmer 2 - What is Aersoldorf's role?
DEEP THOUGHT answer - Sneak
Sneaks - attack Tanzoria
Infinite Improbability Drive – No action

Night 6:
Soberly Dressed Programmer 2 - Is Echo a Sneak?
DEEP THOUGHT answer - No
Sneaks - attack Takaram
Infinite Improbability Drive – No action

Night 7:
Sneaks - attack Barry
Infinite Improbability Drive – No action

Night 8:
Sneaks - attack Lower Columbia
Infinite Improbability Drive – Activated during the night, five hours before Sneak attack. (use 2 of 2)

---

Crucial moments:
There were a number of moments throughout the game that were particularly crucial, in that they could have changed, (or did change), the course of the game. I thought it would be interesting to summarise some of them below. Feel free to suggest any further ones.

Night 1:
Sneaks discovered the possessor of the Babel Fish
I (sneakily) made a rule adjustment clarifying that the Babel Fish could defend the same individual two nights in a row, but couldn't defend any one individual more than a total of two times. This was not to prevent the Sneaks from killing Randomain off (as that was now inevitable), but to make sure they had to do it in a way that still demanded thought.

Day 3:
Barry's choice to randomly break the tie ended up giving the Hopeful Journalistic Applicants their first successful Sneak death. That was important.

Night 3:
On the same night as Louisistan successfully identified four other players as Hopeful Journalistic Applicants, the Sneaks picked out Louisistan as one of the two Soberly Dressed Programmers. Takaram still received the answer of Zero from DEEP THOUGHT, but was never able to establish the question.

Night 5:
Sneaks had decided that one of Tanzoria or Takaram was the remaining Soberly Dressed Programmer. They went for Tanzoria on the night that Takaram asked DEEP THOUGHT for Aersoldorf's role. This gave the group their first intentional kill of a Sneak.

[Louisistan]

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Thank you for hosting it, Tierra de Madre! Then again, I adore chaos.

Congratulations to the sneaks for a very well played game.

[Sauron]

Thank you Tee.

This had to be one of my favourite Werewolf games I can remember. Thoroughly enjoyable game.

A key moment for me at least was when Barry misidentified what exactly the answer to Zero was. I think we were able to use that to good effect and it meant myself and Camp (though particularly myself) who was quite high on the suspect list could make a decent argument to lynch someone else.

It was a good call by Aerso to identify Louisistan as a 'Seer' and then his work as an outed sneak really allowed us to narrow down who and what everyone's role were.

[Barry]

Thank you, Tee, for giving us one of the bestest, and certainly the zaniest, WW games we've ever had. The thought, energy, and intentional confusion you brought to this contest made it a pure delight to both play and watch from the "Dead Thread". I'm not sure that even ol' Doug Adams, himself, could've have presented it in a more chaotic fashion than you!



Well done!!

And congratulations to the Sneaks - well played throughout. Unfortunately, as the once again Genius Evil Lord Sauron pointed out, I think the real tipping point came when the Journalists relied too much toward the end of the game on my initial theory that the answer "0" referred to the number of non-XKI sneaks. I had hoped that Louisistan 2nd question was more general in nature than geared toward specific individuals. Sauron played that up to great benefit at the end, being the evil genius he is.. I know it's easy to say now, but I did warn against relying upon my theory too much. I'm pretty certain that I would've have backed off, especially when both Echolilia and Ayunli were innocently lynched, as the number of remaining sneaks were too great for that to have been the question.

And Aersoldorf played great, per usual. One of his strengths as a wolf is that he is always willing to sacrifice himself for the team (maybe because he's a great player whose always going to be scanned early anyway), especially when he can gain his side valuable information - as in this game that Lower Columbia was the operator of the IID. Plus, he always goes down fighting, making the villagers' job that much more difficult. Nice job, Mr. Delegate/Mayor.

Well, thanks again, Tee, for such a fun game, and to everyone for making it an exciting battle. See y'all in WW43.

 

[Elite]

Great job Tee, it was a really well-run and well-written game.
(I'm getting nervous about needing to follow it up)
I really felt like we should've definitely lost (we were all fairly sloppy at points, especially towards the end), but no-one really picked up on it.
Aerso did brilliantly when he was lynched, and I got really lucky that Deep Thought decided not to reveal my role twice.

Louis' kill was also a bit of a fluke, Aerso identified him as the Programmer but it was because he was an early voter for Ben.

I think I'll start sign-ups for WW43 next weekend. Everyone who expresses interest here and in the game thread will be tagged when I put it up. What to expect early on is a slightly more complicated assassin-type role and themed day phases.

[Flemingisa]

You know in I'm... Time to hone my inner-Kenway.. Ships are my thing... first move- Lynch:Elite

[The Candy Lane]

Well I knew Camp and Sauron fairly early on. It was nice surviving to the almost end of the universe.

[Jin]

I know i wasnt part of this but i wanted to butt in to let Elite know i was interested in the next round

[Louisistan]

May 17, 2015 9:17:52 GMT -5 Elite said:

Great job Tee, it was a really well-run and well-written game.
(I'm getting nervous about needing to follow it up)
I really felt like we should've definitely lost (we were all fairly sloppy at points, especially towards the end), but no-one really picked up on it.
Aerso did brilliantly when he was lynched, and I got really lucky that Deep Thought decided not to reveal my role twice.

Louis' kill was also a bit of a fluke, Aerso identified him as the Programmer but it was because he was an early voter for Ben.

I think I'll start sign-ups for WW43 next weekend. Everyone who expresses interest here and in the game thread will be tagged when I put it up. What to expect early on is a slightly more complicated assassin-type role and themed day phases.

vote: tag Elite

[The Candy Lane]

Thanks for hosting Tee! It was a fun game

[Ater Nox]

Thanks for running this one Tierra, it was really fun to watch.

I liked the way the Soberly Dressed Programmers worked, even if they didn't last too long.

[Hahiha / USSR]

I feel like this would've been a really awesome game to play had I not been the first lynch.

Vote: Tag Elite

[Tierra de Madre]

May 17, 2015 9:17:52 GMT -5 Elite said:

Louis' kill was also a bit of a fluke, Aerso identified him as the Programmer but it was because he was an early voter for Ben.

Yeah, it was fascinating to see you guys come up with Lousistan as one of the Soberly Dressed Programmers for a reason which actually wasn't one (ie. he voted for Ben, but actually didn't have any knowledge of Ben's role at the time). In actual fact, he had dropped a hint that could have given him away, but I think everyone missed it:

Apr 14, 2015 13:02:06 GMT -5 Louisistan said:

I suspect it's more than three. I'd suspect it to be more in the vicinity of 5 to 6 or so.

[Louisistan]

Yeah, I wanted to get the info out there, but I couldn't stand up and say "Hey, it's six, Deep Thought said so". In fact, when I was killed, I was convinced the sneaks had picked up on this.

[Elite]

Honestly, I thought that was just common sense talking.

[Campinia]

Yeah, it's usually 5 in these games

[Aersoldorf]

Firstly, I apologize for taking so long to make this post. My life has been rather hectic for the past couple of weeks and I've been fighting a medical issue for the past few days.

That being said, all I can say about this game is WOW!! I remember months ago when I saw that Tee was hosting WW42 and I sent her a pm stating that a H2G2 theme might be nice since there were a lot of Adams fans here. Her reply was along the lines of 'great minds think alike' - she had already decided to go in that direction.

And then the wait began. It took a long time for the sign up thread to appear, and then it took a while for the game thread to appear, and even during the game there were phases that went on far longer than normal. Part of me wanted to scream about the waiting at times, but the Adams fan in me reminded me of what it was like, 30-odd years ago, as a young child, discovering the first 2 books of the series in the library at school, reading through them both in one night, and then - the waiting. Oh, the agony of waiting for years for the next installment to come out. But each and every time it turned out that the wait was well worth it. It taught me that creative genius isn't something that can be rushed (my own attempts at writing poetry have further served to hammer that lesson home). Thus, even the drawn out agony of waiting for something was in actuality a tip of the cap to Adams' own style and pace of production.

Tee, I don't have any reservations about saying that this was without a doubt the single greatest job of writing a themed game of WW that I've ever had the pleasure to read. Your ideas for game mechanics were absolutely brilliant. Your story was a carefully crafted masterpiece that I think Doug would have approved of. It had all of the hallmarks of his work: it was funny, it had amazing twists and turns, and it kept the readers guessing and engrossed right to the end. You have my heartfelt thanks for the superb job you did. I thoroughly enjoyed this game.

[Tierra de Madre]

Thank you Aersoldorf.

The only parts of the story I had absolutely finalised in my mind where the fact that we would start with the destruction of the Earth, and finish at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Aside from that, I was literally making it up as we went, depending on how all the players reacted to various events and to each other. The HGTTG books 1-and-a-little-bit-of-2 were the framework that we followed, but I was very much trying to make the details infinitely flexible and infinitely changeable by you guys.

The challenge of this, of course, is that you can't prepare beforehand. You all gave me a lot of patience during the waiting times, often carrying on with your own Adams style discussions, and that was really important in allowing me time to work out where we were going next.

Thanks for the excellent enthusiasm you all greeted this theme with. It was a lot of fun to write.

[Aersoldorf]

Unpinning