[Game thread] TRIBE VS TRIBE

Just a couple of notes on my motivation behind the game, concepts etc.

The first game I ran on GR was I Love You, But You're Dead. It was pretty well-received as a new concept, and I really enjoyed being responsible for something novel that the community here liked! It gave me the confidence to try and run an (as we almost universally referred to them then) AYA-style game. I thought I'd start off small though, so it was in some ways more akin to a novelty game: Are You A Vigilante? Indeed, the answer was yes: everyone in the game was a Vigilante! But again, it seemed to go down pretty well (and my fond memories of running it led me to re-use the setting for Tribe Vs Tribe).

I then teamed up with the very excellent Karl, and we co-ran Cannibal House. In hindsight I had gotten some of the critical mechanics wrong (one of the votes in particular should have been private not public; it made the game too difficult for the Cannibals) but it was another enjoyable exercise in game-running (though we did get feedback then that the game seemed limited by having a definite set end date; feedback I should have listened to). It was a bold, ambitious, complicated game! It made me want to run a proper AYA - one for the ages.

Real life got in the way somewhat, but when I was able to, I went out all guns blazing, with what I was hoping would be my Magnum Opus: Wolf Mafia.

Safe to say, I cocked it up.

In hindsight it is clear to me: the "half-wolf" mechanic totally imbalanced the game. The realities of the game were unknown to the player base - no amount of clever cryptic hints could bridge that gap. At the game's end, there was a palpable (and justifiable) sense of disappointment among the players: all too kind to truly sting or wound with their feedback, but honest enough to reflect that, actually, this might have been a bit of a waste of time, given that we didn't actually know the rules we were playing to. (And again, I set a specific cut-off date for the end of the game! )

I am in no way ungrateful to have been able to run those previous games (and am actually quite proud to have played a small part in Karl subsequently turning Cannibal House into the first entry of what would become an outstanding trilogy, having added the magnificent Howling at the Moon and When the Larvae Moult to the GR game canon). But ever since the end of Wolf Mafia, a thought has lived in the back of my mind: I owe this community a good game.

This time, I did not want to forget one crucial thing: the players are the stars. No deliberately hidden surprise mechanic can create a "moment" quite as memorable as those organic moments that come up within classic games. Those classic moments happen from creative players taking creative choices within a defined, consistent, known ruleset. You want your mechanics to be thorough, balanced, fair - but you don't want them to be the attraction; that's generated entirely by the players. (To give a footballing metaphor: the best referees are those you don't notice.)

I therefore wanted the ruleset to be watertight (which is why I posted it before the game start) but flexible enough to allow creative play, without the rules themselves being the creative factor. At the same time, I really wanted this to be a proper event - hence my unashamed hype thread - but I wanted it to justify such a status, by being simultaneously familiar enough to play, but new enough to intrigue. I also hoped that a change to the base mechanics might help us steer clear of some of the foibles that our "traditional" structure now brings (the same players being killed in the same order, people being punished for being busy IRL, the "Seer Circle", etc.)

I came up with the "wish list" of what the game would offer (I referred to this in my hype thread) before I came up with the ruleset, and the idea behind the game: what if everyone was involved in a secret team in some way? I had previously considered advertising the game as a "classic" Are You A Werewolf, but in secret everyone would be a Wolf - but there'd be multiple teams of Wolves, each unaware of the existence of the others, each thinking they were the only set. But that would have resulted in a massive number of daily kills. So then I thought, each Wolf faction could be told that they get one Kill, unless none of them post in the game thread (in which case they'd get no kills), but they'd get an extra kill if one of their number was that day's mayor, and an additional kill if they met a certain daily posting quota.

The concept was too convoluted for me to make work (it would have required me to lie and tell each player that, upon death, there was an X% chance of them flipping as a Villager, with the outcome dependent on a RNG; then, all killed Wolves would flip villager automatically, to preserve the secret long enough until one faction became dominant enough to win the game) but you can probably see how the base mechanics fed into the ruleset that became Tribe Versus Tribe.

Then rinks pointed out that the abbreviation was more commonly associated with vaginal tape, and I have regretted the name choice for nearly forty days and forty nights

I doubt very much I'll ever run a game again - IRL factors make it far too difficult (it's been a squeeze to get this one over the line TBH!) - but I'd be absolutely delighted if anyone else wanted to take the reins, or put their own twist on it, or even run something else completely! If nothing else, I hope that this game has shown that it's possible to use the forum format to run different kinds of games, so hopefully we won't stop playing them altogether.

Thank you all for playing!

OrangeRKN wrote:Yeah I wouldn't have joined a whatsapp group either

I think GRcade is actually the best way of contacting me online

It's gotta be true. You list here above twitter and your email in the contact information on your website.

OrangeRKN wrote:Yeah I wouldn't have joined a whatsapp group either

You haven't been contacting me under an alias?

sawyerpip wrote:

site23 wrote:

sawyerpip wrote:we probably should have moved things to Whatsapp or Discord, although I dont think it would have necessarily helped with the problems that we had with inactivity.

Each to their own but I definitely wouldn't want people pinging my phone over a forum game. Maybe Discord could have worked, but only if people were going to check it more often than the forum, and I don't know if that's true for everyone.

Yeah, that's fair enough! I've found it useful when a wolf in previous AYAW games, but there ended up being a hell of a lot of messages being sent through the group chats in those games, to the point my wife would be getting annoyed with me constantly checking the chats when out

Having the team group chat, super secret info sharing group chat, Drum, and the two forum specific group chats I’m in pinging constantly was quite hellish at times

Pedz wrote:One thing I really liked is how Aayl1 was picked up on for Tribe Your Eyes Mate when I'm pretty sure is was Tsunade who came up with it.

Nah it really was Aaron who picked Tribe Yer Eyes Mate I suggested a list of random ones and Aaron posted that one right afterwards! Cora was bang on from the get go

Ah, fair enough

Herdanos wrote:Thank you all for playing!

Thanks for running it! It was an interesting game with a lot of fun ideas in the ruleset. I enjoyed playing and following along with it! I think you can be proud of the effort you put into designing and running it.

I'm grateful for the kind words about my old games! FWIW I think you're being a bit harsh on yourself about Wolf Mafia - I thought it was fun!

I always like reading the post-game analysis, especially from the game runner - interesting stuff!

Name change to "TVT Dan" incoming...?

aayl1 wrote:Ooh

(Pages 128 to 130)

You're welcome
Thanks OrangeRKN!

Hypes wrote:

Parksey wrote:Wait, why did we shoot Clarkman and was this common knowledge amongst PV?

So his tribe wouldn't be revealed and it being deduced who was in PV. Way back when that mattered

Red Tribe were seriously considering putting a save on Clarkman to ensure two other players made it to the weekend vote with us, but we talked ourselves out of it at the last moment. Had we, it would have saved us a shot to break our own protection and kept another player Red Tribe player alive after the first weekend.

The fact that nobody guessed the blocked save that weekend was us (having won the event) was quite surprising.

Drumstick wrote:

Parksey wrote:Wait, why did we shoot Clarkman and was this common knowledge amongst PV?

Aaaalllll the way back on Day 5, we thought it would be important to avoid other tribes scoring off us. I believe it was actually Clarkman's idea. Considering we only won by 3pts and the other tribes could have scored 8pts off us, it may not have been the worst idea.

Must have missed all this. I was actually abroad for the first few days on a short notice trip, only realising the game had started when Clarkman sent me a what's app message (having my number from a previous games of AYAW). Was in the middle of a meal with my wife and then had to go make a forum post.

Sprouty wrote:The fact that nobody guessed the blocked save that weekend was us (having won the event) was quite surprising.

What are you talking about? I guessed that immediately to Cora but he talked me out of it!

Drumstick wrote:

Sprouty wrote:The fact that nobody guessed the blocked save that weekend was us (having won the event) was quite surprising.

What are you talking about? I guessed that immediately to Cora but he talked me out of it!

Oh really? In that case, well played Cora!

My only criticism of the game would be that Aaron's posts should have been discounted upon his death. Just for the lols

In hindsight we should have gone with the plan in the PV chay - either I ban Aaron due to spamming like the good old days of Mood and Goat, or one of us post something incredibly un-PC in the thread so I had to lock the thread overnight.

I could ajeb also split the thread at the point Aaron posted, and then emailed a link to it to his wife and made sure he got the help he so obviously needed.

Drumstick wrote:

From my perspective, we were a reasonably well-oiled machine and I salute every member of Pro-Village for their commitment.

I setup the WhatsApp group because it provided several key benefits and is more conducive to faster, easier communication. People always have their phones in their pockets or beside them and having the group allowed us to get someone's immediate attention, which was vital at times. There were a few moments which for us ended up being pivotal:

Day 26: Getting the Vigis to vote with us to put mic up when it was clear it should have been someone from P-V. We worked tirelessly that morning. This was crucial because it meant that nobody from P-V would face the weekend vote, allowing us to take our lead and player advantage into the next week.

Day 30: Somehow securing a 6-6 deadlock between Tsunade and Parksey, knowing we had a bullet to use in the dying moments before the deadline. Sorry Rula! This allowed us to not only score points for the kill, but also from that day's interrogation.

Day 33: Getting the Vigis to vote for Preezy instead of OB, meaning that OB would remain uninterrogated with a SAVE and, also, that we could probably rig the vote to ensure we lost only one player instead of two.

Day 35: Winning the contest - we needed to control how the endgame would play out, specifically to avoid Amnesty which would've seen the SAVES protecting myself, OB and Parksey wiped. It would have been open season on us due to our commanding advantage and all our hard work would've been for nothing.

OrangeRKN wrote:My biggest critique (and as a vigi you know what this is already) was powers being tied to whole team activity. As an individual playing the game it leaves you without much agency and powers were so vital to the game that being without them felt like a huge disadvantage that wasn't our fault and little could be done about.

The WhatsApp was invaluable on this front - any time it got to around 9pm and someone hadn't yet posted, we could harass/remind them immediately to do so. That's how we were able to earn so many KILLs and SAVEs.

OrangeRKN wrote:How did everyone work out it was Qikz's list that was correct? Was it quite complex to do that, or did it fall out pretty easily from knowing your own tribe membership so being able to dismiss any lists that had more than two of your own tribe guessed incorrectly? I'm not even sure how Vigis knew it was Qikz's list that was correct as it was when I died.

I can only speak for our tribe, but Cora and I traded notes to figure it out.

Vermilion wrote:There's only one thing i'm curious about now, and that was who shot me.

This is every shot I took:

Day 5: Clarkman (successful)
Day 17: Nun (successful)
Day 20: Vermilion (successful)
Day 23: Roonmastor (successful)
Day 26: Cuttooth (unsuccessful)
Day 30: DarkRula (successful)
Day 35: Pedz (successful)
Day 35: sawyerpip (unsuccessful)
Day 37: rocsteady (unsuccessful)

At least one player from every tribe.

Thanks Dan for a wonderful game.

Did you suspect I was Red Tribe at the time you took the shot at me? As I wondered if I was shot by PV thinking I was Vigilante at the time.

Either way it was the best call for you as it was mostly me arguing with Cora that his alliance with you was going to get him sold out later on so we should shoot you early while we knew Clarkman has taken one power and Parksey was a likely better target for the first save

I will just say whoever made the Red Tribe blue in colour is a monster.

If memory serves, I think we banked three saves at once - myself Drummy and OB

We also only ever missed one or two days of not posting. What's App was invaluable and probably saved us numerous times I don't think anyone didn't post after being promoted there.

It was an absolute nightmare trying to stay focused on work. Fortunately my wife was back in Japan for a large portion of it (which was definitely reflected in my What's App posting at the time).

Times it interfered with my work included:

*Having the chat open whilst talking about killing someone, and my wife saw it
*Recording my rap whilst working from home, at the moment the postman knocked on the door.
*Having to navigate one of the tighter, riskier votes whilst meeting with a MP. The irony is I probably lasted longer in the game than they did in their role.
*And the aforementioned text from Clarkman whilst abroad in a restaurant. A quick toilet break had to be arranged where I sat on the loo not getting down to business but also getting down to business.

Parksey wrote:I could ajeb also split the thread at the point Aaron posted, and then emailed a link to it to his wife and made sure he got the help he so obviously needed.

Herdanos wrote:

aayl1 wrote:Ooh

(Pages 128 to 130)

You're welcome
Thanks OrangeRKN!

Thanks guys. Initially I had no idea what that was about. Lost in the fever dream.

Firstly, thanks so much to Dan for running this. I was grateful for the slower initial two weeks as I was busy (having one of the best holidays of my life), and could keep up with the game and slowly figure out the rules. The fact I wanted to says everything about how intruiging I found the premise.

My spam spree was just one of those perfect moments. I saw the contest, knew I had 6 hours on everyone and a pack of weed gummies. That's what life's about. Making 1512 consecutive manual posts on a dying gaming forum you love just for lols.

I felt it was fairly obvious that Dan would discount posting bots or spamming the submit button to dodecacuple post so opted to just bash out manual posts, hoping to make so many I'd discourage anyone else from starting. The fact the thread was on page 99 meant I really wanted people to see it be on 200 when they woke up, but at 175 I just couldn't go on (it was about 5/6 hours of constant posting by that point). I figured that was enough and it would do what I'd set out to.

The wording of the contest (which I reread several times as I kept being paranoid I had done something wrong and it would be discounted) made it clear to me that my posts would count if I died, and I wanted my Tribe to keep their saves up to endgame. The fact that if Preezy could have won if the order of shots/victim choices had been slightly different made me feel that this was probably the right call (no worries for not pulling it off Preez, we can't all win our last man standing standoffs ).

Thanks so so much again, Dan. You done good.

Edit: also I totally called Clarkman being shot by his own tribe to stop us scoring points.

Damn, what a day to have ended up in meetings almost the entire time!

Congrats to the Pro-V strategists, Drummy and Parksey, who masterminded the bulk of our operation. I spent most of my time running among the shadows, engaging in dodgy dealings, cloak and dagger firmly in hand...

At the time, Mommy's surprisingly accurate list felt like a huge moment. When he chose Sat instead of the other three, we pounced on it and made sure that when the result came out, Mommy would be denounced as a lunatic somehow, it played out perfectly, Mommy fell on his sword and we felt we had dodged a major bullet.

Of course, that all feels like it was forever ago and almost inconsequential but clearly we did end up relying on the way those early points fell.

Huge thanks to Dan for running the game. I am distraught to see him say that he may never run a game again I hope that doesn't turn out to be true.

Cutty's megaton was outstanding. The only explanation is of course that he did have Demon Lord powers and I wonder if we are still actually playing the game, caught in one of his sick, twisted enchantments? Someone must stop him!!

In summary, I love being in a team of buddy bros who aren't Wolf Scum and I love dastardly diplomacy via PM/WhatsApp so I really enjoyed this one.