[Post-game] WW78: The GM Sucks! (Blood!)

[Elite]

Werewolf: Valentian Elysium
Traitor: wazew

Seer: Jabberwocky
Shaman: Flying Eagles
Harlot: Eastern New England
Villager (Cursed): Aersoldorf
Villagers (Vanilla): BarryRedux Liberdon Markanite

(Alive) Winners: ENE, FE, Liberdon

Day 1:
Jabber, Mark, Barry, Liberdon and FE vote no lynch

Summary: After a lengthy discussion, the inevitable no lynch bandwagon began. Interestingly, neither of the bad guys decided to sneak onto the bandwagon. What will that imply to the village tomorrow?

Night 1:
ENE visits FE
Jabber scans Aerso: Werewolf
FE silences Liberdon: No effect
Val kills Aerso

Summary: In a stroke of luck, Jabber managed to discover the cursed Villager in his only chance to do so, while FE was able to rule out Liberdon as the Werewolf. Aerso was basically saying goodbye throughout the night phase, knowing that he would be the first to be eaten without a defender in the game.

Day 2:
wazew, Liberdon, FE and Val lynch Barry (Villager)

Summary: Barry had the right clue, but didn't explain why Val's posting was fishy. Val managed to defend himself and got Mark to redirect the bandwagon away. Jabber also went out on a limb and messaged ENE after he claimed Harlot, so there is a small seer's army now.

Night 2:
ENE visits wazew
Jabber scans Val: Werewolf
FE protects FE
Val kills Mark

Summary: The game was on a knife's edge during this phase. The Wolves almost attacked Jabber, and the Jabber had a pretty good chance of scanning villagers, which is a little useless. Unfortunately for the Wolves, both of these chances went against them and it might be the major turning point of this game.

Day 3:
ENE, Jabber, FE, Liberdon and wazew lynch Val (Werewolf)

Summary: ENE accused Val to get some information before giving it up and revealing that he had been in contact with the Seer. Val counter-claimed and said that he was in fact the Seer. This claim drew Jabber out of hiding, who will almost certainly get offed overnight. wazew drew some suspicions, but FE and Liberdon have done the same. Will he be able to slip through the cracks and win it for the Wolves?

Night 3:
ENE visits FE
Jabber scans wazew: Werewolf
FE kills wazew
wazew kills Jabber

Summary: And so ends the game. wazew could've still won this, FE almost killed Liberdon instead and that would've forced us into a classic stand-off on Day 4. Alas, it wasn't to be. Also, what are the odds of FE rolling the kill power on such a pivotal night? Wild.

[Elite]

First off, this was a good game! Remarkably close at points, but the village's good roles managed to scrape through. I'm also shocked by how many good power roles survived for so long, and there was only one villager left at the end. I thought ENE and FE had great games, and I thought Val also did well by not only redirecting a bandwagon away from himself but managing to lure the seer out for wazew. I also think everyone deserves a special thank you, across our 3 day phases we only had 4 instances of players not voting and they were all on the fairly inconsequential first day. It makes me so appreciative that you all engaged with the game I put together.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but I was planning on developing a plot where Vampire Elite was an impostor and the particularly cynical narrator was real Elite, but I didn't plan it in advance and didn't get my ideas together in time. Oh well.

And now, six reflections on the game design and game conception that you can feel free to ignore if you're not interested.

Inactivity as a strategy

If you're considering hosting a game in the future: make sure you incentivise voting. I absolutely hate that inactivity is a viable strategy for Werewolves most of the time, as it just makes the game remarkably less fun if they choose to take that path. Punishing people that don't post at all is okay and all, but it can just lead to Werewolves just posting once and logging off and that's not fun either. Make them vote and get them to hide in plain sight instead of giving the village nothing to work with. Voting for an inactive player because they're inactive is not fun for the Village because they haven't figured anything out, and it's not very rewarding for the Werewolves if they get away with it because they didn't really have to deceive anyone. Now, this incentivisation doesn't have to be an inactivity punishment for not voting - you could reward players who vote with a mechanic - but I'd have to think about what that could be.

Nerfing the seer

One thing I'm also generally against - although this is more of a stylistic preference - is games that take place in PMs. I like most of the game to take place in public where activity creates more activity and evidence doesn't hide behind a wall, which is also why I'm a fan of nerfing the seer. Instead of them being someone who sits back and accumulates innocents without being noticed, I wanted to force them to play a more active role where they could attempt to leak information and pass it off as something they noticed without drawing suspicion to themselves. So instead of the seer being the village's ace in the hole, the seer is instead just another villager with a handy power. Of course, I failed to consider one major part working against me in my plan for this. Which leads me to…

The harlot

I wasn't really sure what to make of the role, but I added it anyway. To be clear, I don't like the implications of the name and ability in tandem but decided to keep it just in case someone wanted to look at the balance guide. Of course, when I posted the thread, I forgot about two mechanics which I decided not to retroactively add so as to not confuse things: the Harlot dying by visiting the Werewolf's house; and the Harlot alerting the person who they were visiting as to their identity. That would've added a lot of interesting moments, I think, as visiting someone becomes a significant risk if they visit the Werewolf or the Traitor. Visiting the Traitor would've been the most interesting, I think, as it gives the Traitor a chance to be proactive and message the Harlot. I didn't think about the strategy of claiming Harlot and getting the seer to contact them as a way of building a small army, and I don't think it worked out too badly in the end. However, this role goes against everything I said in the Nerfing the seer section, and in hindsight I might've just gotten rid of it.

No defender

I wanted to add some interesting roles, and when I saw that the balancing guide I was using had a Shaman instead of a Defender, I liked it. The Shaman could do other things as well as occasionally defend someone. This role was a fun addition I think, but the problem lies in our best players - players who have made a name for themselves across XKI's history of WW like Aerso, Palman, Sauron, BT and First (non-exhaustive list btw). The guys you really don't want to be up against. These are the players who get defended, scanned and killed first because Defenders can't risk them dying in case they're good, Seers can't risk going up against them without knowing who they are, and Werewolves can't risk leaving them alive. You can see that this happened in Mark's WW76, Aerso and Palman were both under the eye of the power roles from the beginning. It also happened here, and there was no defender to protect Aerso this time. You know he could see it coming too with the way he was tossing out role guesses during a first night phase, something a player of his level wouldn't dream of doing unless he knew he was probably going to die anyway. So, it's something to think about, and I will be accounting for this in the next game I run. There's two methods I'm considering and I think both are going to be really cool. Look forward to it.

The GM sucks

I regret naming this after my The GM Sucks series because I didn't really have the time or energy to make it a proper entry into the series. I still had the fun little graphics but the snarkiness and humour wasn't there. I wanted to do it but gave up pretty early on when I fell into the same 7-year-old jokes. If I do another entry into the series, I'll have to plan out the story and quirks in advance like I did in the first three, but I might just start doing one-offs for a bit.

Lastly, an error

Lastly, I'll remember in future to tell the dead Villagers not to talk about how innocent they are when they could've been the Traitor and it was still unconfirmed. It would've been very funny had Barry claimed to be innocent in his forum sig when he was actually the Traitor, but Val did raise this point and he was absolutely right to do so. I didn't ask Barry to remove it because that would've basically confirmed he was not the Traitor to anyone who noticed the change. Lesson learnt for me.

I'll be up to host again from June onwards when my other responsibilities slow down a little, and I'm really looking forward to it. I'm also looking forward to shaking off my playing cobwebs with whoever is our next host.

[Valentian Elysium]

gg wp
makes it 0 wins/4 games for me

[Markanite]

Thanks for hosting such a great game!

[Eastern New England]

Thanks for hosting! It was a lot of fun as the Harlot. I agree with many of your speculations, the Harlot did feel a tad too invincible. Being killed upon visiting a Wolf would have balanced it a bit more out.

[Liberdon]

GG! Thanks for hosting Elite! It was a great game with very different mechanics than I’m used to, and I really enjoyed the theme!

[Flying Eagles]

Thanks! Regarding why I killed Wazeww: voting history. Lib and Jabber both threw lynch votes on Val when it wasn’t at all obvious Val would be lynched.

Also if I killed Wazeww and Wazeww killed me in the same night, would we have both died?

[BarryRedux]

Great format, Elite, with very challenging roles for everyone. You and Val are absolutely right in pointing out I changed my sig during the game. I meant it just to be funny, but it could've been seen as an important facet of the Traitor's role. Mea Culpa...again.

[Aersoldorf]

Apr 3, 2024 8:08:50 GMT -5 Liberdon said:

GG! Thanks for hosting Elite! It was a great game with very different mechanics than I’m used to, and I really enjoyed the theme!

I was so very proud of you when you made the night post announcing that you were the final villager. I'd been waiting since Wazew claimed it for someone to notice.


Very fun game and thanks to Elite for hosting. Anyone called 79 yet?

[Jabberwocky]

That was a ton of fun. I enjoyed being something other than a villager. I made some mistakes but didn't mind being sacrificed for the greater good. I'm looking forward to next time.

[Elite]

Apr 3, 2024 8:56:41 GMT -5 Flying Eagles said:

Also if I killed Wazeww and Wazeww killed me in the same night, would we have both died?

I didn't think about it until you rolled that power at the end, but yes. I didn't specify an order of night abilities so it makes sense to just have everything happen at the same time.