Howling at the Moon | Post-mortem on page 83! (With a special section by OrangeRakoon!)

Our best bits.
User avatar
Herdanos
Go for it, Danmon!
Joined in 2008
AKA: lol don't ask
Location: Bas-Lag

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Herdanos » Sat Aug 25, 2018 11:44 pm

I know that technically I won but I feel horrible about it

I played an awful game with the lynching of Psyches while still a tech the only redeeming highlight

I really enjoyed it and Karl, you are outstanding. The narrative was impeccable

I feel like the game was very weighted in favour of the hackers and it showed

I hope the fact that Denster and I ended up together on the winning side means that I'm safe to cross the Pennines Again

I'm out tonight and v drunk and basically O love you all. Gg

Generating Real Conversations About Digital Entertainment
User avatar
Lagamorph
Member ♥
Joined in 2010

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Lagamorph » Sat Aug 25, 2018 11:47 pm

Whoops.

Lagamorph's Underwater Photography Thread
Zellery wrote:Good post Lagamorph.
Turboman wrote:Lagomorph..... Is ..... Right
User avatar
Pancake
Member
Joined in 2008

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Pancake » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:27 am

Look forward to reading the write ups properly tomorrow.

Congratulations OR, you played it very well.

Thanks Karl for another really engaging story, very well written, consistently interesting, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

In the spirit of constructive feedback, I maintain the same criticisms I noted at the end of your last infection based game. For it to be remotely fair for the uninformed majority, the rules of the game need to be more explicit. It's hard enough not knowing who the bad guys are without also having to work out whether there is an infection mechanic and how it works. There is a reason both games ended in dominant victories for the bad guys, Drumstick et al. did their best but had no chance.

User avatar
False
COOL DUDE
Joined in 2008

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by False » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:45 am

I was a little sad how I died in the end. I didnt feel I was doing anything suspicious but the post game narrative always twists that a bit.

I had a shielding mod in the end and my plan was to use it at the last second and mess with the vote. If i didnt die it would extend my murder another turn and keep heat off the hacker and if it did kill me I was hoping Karl would story fluff a shield to confuse you all and ruin the next vote. Unfortunately I misunderstood the turn windows (I thought 10 was the start of the turn I could get my move in, not the start of the queued actions) so I ended up just taking it to the grave and dying on a wheeze.

Image
User avatar
Denster
Member
Member
Joined in 2008

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Denster » Sun Aug 26, 2018 6:36 am

Moggy wrote:Oh and the best moment by a long long way, possibly the best in forum game history, was Denster doing that vote rigging. Incredible play and absolutely hilarious. :lol:

:wub:

User avatar
Denster
Member
Member
Joined in 2008

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Denster » Sun Aug 26, 2018 7:50 am

I enjoyed the win. First time I've finished a game alive and first ever win. However I did prefer my time as a tech. I think I was resurrected just to provide a distraction and the techs (whilst commenting on me in thread) wisely ignored me and focused on the hacker - which I obviously wasn't. Any suspicion on me prior to that was entirely groundless but it did lead to me being in the lynch and then OB giving me that perfect opportunity. I found it baffling that after the glow of doing that had gone - I was then under more suspicion :roll: but I suppose that's the game. 10 is staying on my gooseberry fool list for his detective work (that had more holes than Skarjo's smashed!) but otherwise it was great. I always wanted my own positive AYAW moment (as opposed to the strawberry floating vigi deaths) and this game delivered it.

Some great work by a lot of people on this game. Nun and Hypes were great. Drummy and OR were superb. I was sat here watching last night - seeing OR online and thinking "Cmon, cmon switch your vote to pull the lever!" I was so happy when he did. :lol:

Thanks again to KP for running a great game. Superb work mate.

User avatar
Oblomov Boblomov
Member
Joined in 2008
AKA: Mind Crime, SSBM_God

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Oblomov Boblomov » Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:06 am

When were you turned, Moggy?

I was turned literally half an hour before I was killed. I couldn't believe it :lol: although you'll note earlier in the thread I said I'd rather die than be a scummy bot, so Denster did me a favour ;).

I did genuinely have a vigi nanomod, but I was only ever winding Denny up because it's hilarious, as it was obvious he wasn't a bad dude.

I think a couple of you figured out what had happened to me, which I thought was very smart! Unfortunately Drummy was the most influential player in the game and he kept basing most of his theories after my death on the idea that I'd been bad all along.

The recruitment aspect of this game is exciting but ultimately I think it makes it incredibly difficult for the good guys to win. Don't get me wrong, I bloody loved the game, but if we have another one with recruitment there needs to be an additional mechanic for the good guys to try and balance it out. For what it's worth, this felt less imbalanced than the last one (which was also a fantastic game!) so it was an improvement in that regard.

Huge thanks to Karl for running another masterpiece. :wub:

Image
User avatar
Moggy
"Special"
Joined in 2008
AKA: Moggy

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Moggy » Sun Aug 26, 2018 8:16 am

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:When were you turned, Moggy?


The PM was received Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:25 am

So I spent most of the morning as a good guy fighting evil Hexx. Then got turned and spent time fighting my fellow evil doer Hexx. And then I died later that same day. :lol:

User avatar
OrangeRKN
Community Sec.
Joined in 2015
Location: Reading, UK
Contact:

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by OrangeRKN » Sun Aug 26, 2018 11:37 am

So first off, thanks to Karl for running this game. With two turns a day this was already demanding for us players, but with your processing of nanomods and story updates (which were great) this must have eaten up a considerable part of the 5 days it ran across!

From starting as the Hacker and the lone member of the evil team, my game plan was pretty simple.

1) Definitely don't die
2) Recruit the most active players
3) Don't let people work out it's a recruitment game

(1) is pretty self-evident for mafia, but it was doubly important considering that I (to my knowledge) was the only person capable of recruiting more bots, and if I died that would die with me. Hyperion and Ironhide were the only players I didn't myself recruit. Ironhide came too late to really affect the game, and when Hyperion was recruited I was guessing that some one-off role power had been used (like Hyperion being able to switch sides at a point of his choosing or something).

I actually kept an entirely made up list of nanomods I had "used" and updated it every day, to make sure I was consistent in my claims. I think claiming to have scanned 10 was one of my better moves for staying under the radar, and that was just completely made up. One of my great worries was that I would get data dumped and my identity revealed - I knew I was safe from virus scan after the very first turn (thanks Drum), but I still don't know if data dump would have revealed my recruitment nanomod (or either of the two nanomods I won, once I won them). I do think the innocent side missed a trick by not calling for an exact history of everyone's nanomod use at any point to try and catch out anyone lying through an inconsistent claim.

(2) I decided would be the best general gameplan as this was a recruitment game. The actively posting players were the ones most in danger of working things out, so that's who I targeted. I realised it would lead to a few bot deaths - because active players are more likely to get called out on their post history too - but I wasn't overly worried about losing bots early on when. Recruiting every turn meant our numbers were either going up or staying even, and the constant vigi kills were rapidly reducing the innocent side. I'm really interested in knowing who was behind all the vigi kills, I have no idea if it was bots on my team or just innocents making bad calls.

(3) I figured the only way the town really stood a chance was to focus on outing myself as the Hacker, but until people knew we were playing a recruitment game that wouldn't occur to them. To that end I didn't recruit anyone who had been scanned, because that was the only way recruitment was going to become obvious. PsychicSykes was the first previously scanned player I recruited, and I felt we were a little unlucky in him then being immediately outed the turn after. I only switched at that point to recruiting someone who was previously scanned because the number of bots (who all hadn't been scanned yet) was approaching the same number of unscanned innocents, so the odds of the town finding the bots by naively just working through the scan list was going up.


There were two (and at a point three) players on the innocent side I decided I would keep as innocents regardless, where my effort instead was focused on getting them to trust me. The first was Drum, which is why I backed him to be champion from the start and then to keep him as champion. It felt wise to ingratiate myself with the person that quickly turned out to be the most infuential player. Also, once he had acquired Serene Mind but not told us what it did, my guess was that it was a persistent mod that granted him protection from recruitment. Then I was more than happy for him to be champion as it would waste that aspect of the mecha's protection, and I thought it was too risky to try and recruit him from then on anyway.

The second player was Roon, which I decided on after receiving his first cipher text PM very early on. He basically outright said he trusted me, so I thought that if I kept him as an innocent I'd be much more able to persuade him to switch vote if needed, and he was unlikely to target me himself. Finally there was 10, who after going after for a while I then switched to pretending I trusted him. However once he started posting some uncomfortably accurate theories in thread about the nature of the game, I decided to turn him.


On the subject of balance, I think it was skewed in our favour because of the recruitment variation being unknown, but it was much more balanced than WTLM. I was particularly concerned by the number of virus scan and vigi mods. The game would have flipped to the town's advantage had I been killed early on, and there wasn't anything I could do to protect myself other than do my best to appear innocent through my posts.

Once I picked up Mind Backup I was less worried, as on my death that would have transferred my nanomod that allowed for player recruiting to another bot. Luckily it never got used, but I think the existence of that probably sealed the deal for the town. However it's also worth noting that that was very much not guaranteed - first of all we had to win a challenge, then we had to pick that nanomod to take, and finally it was only so useful because I was the one to pick it. If another of the bots had taken the challenge (like I chose Hexx to do on the first night - you said in thread you were available Hexx!) and taken that mod, it would have been pretty useless.


My favourite part of the game was definitely the Denster debacle. Denster and ObBob were both innocent, yet both trying to get each other lynched. I recruited ObBob as the vote swung against Denster, and all seemed good. Then that vote rig came out of nowhere and ObBob was dead, and Denster was hailed a hero for doing it - but had I not just recruited ObBob it would have not been the case! I then won Necromancy in the following challenge, but thought I'd save it. Combined with Mind Backup it meant that should I get killed, Necromancy would get transferred to a bot and I thought I'd likely then get revived with it.

Then amazingly Denster got voted out the next day. It didn't feel optimal from a gameplay perspective, but I couldn't resist the urge to revive him immediately. What made it even more hilarious to me was him coming back /quite clearly evil/, and yet still not being killed! I'm very glad you made it to the end of the game Denster :toot:


My final comment is that no PMs was a good rule and it definitely drove thread activity. My only complaint would be that I felt very disconnected from my team, so it often felt like I was playing solo despite having recruited a lot of bots. I felt bad for playing 2 of the 3 challenges myself, but unfortunately I had no way of knowing if any of the bots were available and wanted to play (this is why I let Hexx play the first challenge as he had put himself up for champion in the thread). I know part of what makes being in the mafia so fun is that feeling of knowing what's happening, and I hope that wasn't lost too much for the bots when they instead had to simply watch what I was doing, rather than being able to make suggestions.

tl;dr Great game Karl and I really enjoyed it!

Image
Image
orkn.uk - Top 5 Games of 2023 - SW-6533-2461-3235
User avatar
Nun
Member
Joined in 2015

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Nun » Sun Aug 26, 2018 11:54 am

So did you just get a Virus Spreader every turn then OR? Or was your recruitment separate from that?

After I got a spreader and recruited Hyperion I just assumed that each of the other bots had a chance to pull a spreader mod from the pool so the various recruits were just from different members of our team. That was one of the reasons I ended up drawing a new mod most turns as I assumed we needed as many chances as possible to draw another spreader. Particularly when we had a phase with no recruits.

User avatar
OrangeRKN
Community Sec.
Joined in 2015
Location: Reading, UK
Contact:

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by OrangeRKN » Sun Aug 26, 2018 11:57 am

Nun wrote:So did you just get a Virus Spreader every turn then OR? Or was your recruitment separate from that?


Here is my role PM :)

Karl wrote:You are the avatar of Alpha, the first AI, who was locked away for its lack of morality. Immeasurably intelligent, you've constructed this biological form so you can at last release yourself from your prison within the Foundry. Using the moon as a reflector dish for your transmission, you plan to upload your mind-state into every governing Mind and become the god you deserve to be. But first you must eliminate the humans sent here to stop you.

"Bots" are those humans that you have hacked, changing their allegiance and making them serve you. You begin the game with a special black nanomod of your own construction:

Image

This counts as your nanomod for the whole game. You may not pick up or use any others (except if you were to win one as a minigame bonus).

There are currently 0 Bots. (You should try to create one every turn.)


The phase we had no recruitment was because I used the necromancy nanomod instead to revive Denster

Image
Image
orkn.uk - Top 5 Games of 2023 - SW-6533-2461-3235
User avatar
That
Dr. Nyaaa~!
Dr. Nyaaa~!
Joined in 2008

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by That » Sun Aug 26, 2018 11:59 am

So I fairly strongly indicated to OR at the start of the game, after he asked me a question, that if he died the Bots would lose the ability to recruit. As Nun and 10 know, that wasn't entirely true, but I wanted it to be true from his perspective -- y'know, it was right at the start, no-one should know what the other nanomods are. I believe someone - possibly OR? - went on to correctly speculate that there might be an alternate form of Virus Scan for the Bots, and that was indeed Virus Spread.

I'm writing up a bit of a megapost for this and I will list every nanomod in full so you can see what they all would have done!

Image
User avatar
Denster
Member
Member
Joined in 2008

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Denster » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:02 pm

Cheers OR. Great game mate. Thanks for giving me my first win. It was so funny how excited I got last night waiting for you to switch.
:oops:

User avatar
Nun
Member
Joined in 2015

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Nun » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:04 pm

So datadump was actually a very real threat to OR then. That's kind of cool as I was honestly thinking it was kind of useless when I picked one up as a tech.

Then when I was a bot I was very paranoid about data dumps so I started trying to time my drawing of a new mod to be right at the end of the phase so there would only have been a small window where the spreader might have been my active mod. Just incase anyone felt like targeting me with a datadump.

User avatar
Parksey
Moderator
Joined in 2008

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Parksey » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:06 pm

How did the daily kill work with the bots this time then?

Also I used my Vigi kill to shoot Satriales. I'd had it since Day One and was conscious that a) I was wasting the chance to get new nanomods and b) that I normally don't last until the end so had better use it.

It was between him and Hyperion, which is why I said we shouldn't scan him as I knew he was dead soon.

The Satriales/Denster vote seemed quite pivotal, so I wanted to knew Sat's role either way so we could work with the data without a big unknown in there.

I also thought that if there was a recruitment mechanic, what with the OB vote/kill, that someone might be turning people after they survive a close lynch. They someone get scanned in the immediate aftermath, and then they's recruit to the bots team and still appear safe and trustworthy to the techs.

Obviously it didn't work out that way, and I should have just shot Hyperion.

User avatar
Herdanos
Go for it, Danmon!
Joined in 2008
AKA: lol don't ask
Location: Bas-Lag

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Herdanos » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:53 pm

When I started gunning for Drumstick it was because I'd just been hacked, but I did have a sneaking suspicion (incorrectly obviously) that he might be the alpha when I was still a tech.

Denster though I really did think could be the alpha, that was all genuine. Clearly my judgements were quite poor this game but rather than act on hunches without evidence I wanted to always target whomever there was the strongest case against - even if the case wasn't actually that strong (best of a bad bunch).

When Denny came back my first thought was that as he'd clearly been resurrected using a mod the alpha had won, he must now be a bot. But the fear that I might be wrong, and end the game as the player who killed an innocent Denster three turns in a row, was too great at that point and my confidence in my own predictions was shot at that point.

I was clearly quite lucky to pick Psykes to scan as it reads like he had just been turned, so the suspicious behaviour I'd picked up on was in fact not actually suspicious at all as he was just a tech at that point. So again, poor judgement.

OR clearly wins MVP for me as at no point did I suspect him - I'm not even certain I was sure he was playing / still alive at points throughout the game. To fly under the radar that completely while still controlling the game behind the scenes takes some doing and he deserves all the credit. I don't really feel I won this game though I ended on the winning side as really OR could have recruited another tech instead of me and still won - though I did get lucky with my first nano mod as a bot as I was then able to recruit IronHide.

Good game all and cheers for running it Karl - superb work as always.

Generating Real Conversations About Digital Entertainment
User avatar
Jenuall
Member
Joined in 2008
AKA: Jenuall
Location: 40 light-years outside of the Exeter nebula
Contact:

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Jenuall » Sun Aug 26, 2018 1:01 pm

That was a really great game to be a part of, even when I got killed and switched to spectator mode it was still exciting to follow along with the accusations and wild theories being thrown about! :lol:

I picked up a Task Kill vigi mod on day one and was constantly holding back my itchy trigger finger against several targets as I was never quite sure enough in my convictions to gun anyone down. Also I didn't want to be the guy who shot an innocent and it quickly became apparent that as the good guys we were doing a lot of that! By the time I had finally decided that my next action would be to target Moggy I logged in to discover I was already dead :fp: (not sure if you would have still been good or not at this point Moggy, I was going with my gut that you had been getting more and more vocal as the game went on and thought it was suspicious enough to warrant a hit!)

After being on the infecting side in WTLM it was interesting to experience things from the uninformed side I would agree that Karl made some good changes to the format to make the balancing better this time, neither game was in any way a guaranteed win for the bad side and both required good play from them to win, but this time it did feel like the Tech team had a solid chance of winning if we played a good game.

Looking forward to reading any more details that come out (and discovering who killed me!)

Corazon de Leon

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Corazon de Leon » Sun Aug 26, 2018 2:32 pm

Who shot me?

User avatar
DarkRula
Member
Joined in 2018
Contact:

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by DarkRula » Sun Aug 26, 2018 2:38 pm

So looking through the thread again, I can't believe how accurate I was in saying

DarkRula wrote:If you were the hacker and everything had to be played in-thread, would you be hiding or doing everything you could to guide? Just something to think on.


in relation to who actually was the hacker. OR was certainly leading, second only to Drumstick, yet completely flew under the radar. In fact, the only time I had a suspicion was right at the beginning - though admittedly that was just because he was going against everyone else.

DarkRula - Turn 1 wrote:I think it's a little too late to put up a new nomination, but I would be wary of OR. He says he voted for 10 just because he wanted someone instead of a dice roll, but what if it's a cover for something else?


OR got scanned as not a bot, and I forgot about that suspicion. By the time I got my data dump on turn 7, I'd completey forgot that I'd ever suspected OR.

Image
Image
User avatar
Lagamorph
Member ♥
Joined in 2010

PostRe: Howling at the Moon | The End [Day 5 / Turn 10] (Page 79)
by Lagamorph » Sun Aug 26, 2018 2:41 pm

Corazon de Leon wrote:Who shot me?

The forumite in the grassy knoll.

Lagamorph's Underwater Photography Thread
Zellery wrote:Good post Lagamorph.
Turboman wrote:Lagomorph..... Is ..... Right

Return to “Archive”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 124 guests