When the Larvae Moult | The infection spreads | Post-mortem p.74

I used to think they were necessary, but I think I am finally sick of PM chains. If I have anything to say about the next game, everything will be done in-thread, with the exception of sending your actions to the GM. Down with PM chains! The campaign starts here!

Welcome to my world!

Also Karl, can you please explain what the heck the pool did? I can't see it in the post mortem.

Also, you say I came close to figuring out the game, but I can't remember when or how. I think I mentioned that maybe people take over other peoples accounts at one point, but I was so confused that I can't even remember saying it.

Minoru wrote:

OrangeRakoon wrote:Also I wish soneone had noticed the sudden drop in activity for Delta_Orange once I got took over! But I don't blame anyone, I'd hace never realised either :p

I noticed this. I was a couple pages behind reading and at first I thought you'd died. Then I realised you hadn't and it drove me crazy not being able to point it out.

There was a lack of activity a lot of times and I was a bit concerned about the game carrying on. I was tempted to give up and just stop posting on day 5 but thought it would be unfair on Karl, and then I accidentally posted from my real account

Qikz wrote:Also Karl, can you please explain what the heck the pool did? I can't see it in the post mortem.

It's in there, but maybe it needed its own section. It's definitely one of the most mechanically complex parts of an already-tricky game. (There were going to be victory conditions associated with the Pools as well, but I felt like it was too much!)

This is a summary of the relevant rules:

• The Cleansing Pool killed Lv.1 Parasites, and downgraded Lv.2 Parasites. It gave immunity to infection (the Cold-Blooded attribute) to Humans. This could be used every day and was controlled by the Acting Commander.
• The Maelstrom upgraded Lv.1 Parasites, converted Humans, and killed the Cold-Blooded. But the latter two functions could only be accessed by Lv.2 Parasites, so once Mog was downgraded, the Maelstrom couldn't be utilised (unless someone upgraded themselves again).

(Feeding Cold-Blooded to the Maelstrom also represented an upgrade path towards Lv.3 Parasites, but it would have been almost impossible to access this with the way the game turned out, so don't worry about that...!)

OrangeRakoon wrote:Unfortunately we had no inkling that my PMs would become compromised, and that must have played right into the parasite's hands. Our careful web of trust was completely broken.

This is actually the exact reason why I didn't start up a Sigma squad group PM like the Delta squad had, or use PMs at all actually. I took Karl's warning seriously:

don't assume or expect your forum game account is secure

As soon as I found out I was a Spy and knew my abilities, my instant thought was there might be a duplicate role - so I deleted my Role PM

Really enjoyed this from a narrative perspective, I was theorising like crazy on the last couple of days, in hindsight should have shared more of what I was thinking in the thread but thought I was already being very vocal and didn't want to get targeted by the wolves once I'd established contact with two seer circles.
I do think it was fairly unbalanced towards the parasites but ultimately it was fun and different so I don't really mind too much.
One moment that made me face-palm like mad was Iron randomly outing himself as a Biologist in thread to nail Orange - when I had already pretty much secured AC on that platform anyway. Idk if he'd been rumbled by the parasites at that point and wanted to get the AC protection but at the time it made no sense to me.
Also annoyed that I missed my Big Damn Hero moment with Clark - I'd been told by Mini and Dan that he was probably cult, then Iron confirmed it and I sent my sniper shot in, only to be told I should save my bullet because he was already dead I should probably have shot earlier, might have helped us if the parasites had one less recruit.

Edd wrote:Sorry I was so inactive for the whole game, ended up being out every day and working most nights this week. Almost won by doing nothing anyway until I was rudely shot at the last second.

Thanks for running the game Karl. I enjoyed what little I did.

Reading through everything now, the sides did seem imbalanced but I enjoyed it all the same, so thanks.

Oh and Sat. I almost pmed you on your normal account to ask what the strawberry float you were doing and why were you playing so badly.

I came to you on the first night because I knew how well we’d played these games together in the past. I couldnt believe how stupid both you and Hexx were being. Probably should have twigged there.

In short, I didn't grasp any of the major mechanics or the big picture stuff. I was quite annoyed when I was randomly logged out of my Gamma_Drum account and then got the PM to say that someone else had assumed control and that I was permanently out of the game. I was under the impression that someone had a one-time use role which allowed them to take control of my account and was actually fuming because I had put so many hours into this, organising my little group of special roles.

Thankfully, Karl was very obliging with his time and with a single PM had me grinning like a loon. I was playing this game with my AYA...? hat on which was grossly unsuitable (though it seems I was far from the only one!).

Given the amount of ability, mystery and information that the parasites had over the innocents as played I don't think any other result was ever likely but it was a fun experiment while it lasted.

Thanks to all for taking part, extra special thanks to Karl for the style, story and guile for creating such a game.

Very complicated game but I expected that from Karl.

My initial thought was that everyone was infected and that each 'suicide' was being chosen by a single 'Alpha' type role rather than a team.

On the day I got assassinated I'd begun to suspect something more complicated was occurring, especially when Mog turned out to be human despite the PM from Ariel/Karl saying he was infected, when the bullet hole jpeg appeared I just knew it was me who had been shot and I realised people were switching accounts as there was little reason for a vigi to target me unless they had been compromised in some way.

really, everyone should have realised something was up when Karl said that the person who had Ariel's protection killed themself

Zellery wrote:Thanks for running the game Karl. I enjoyed what little I did.

Reading through everything now, the sides did seem imbalanced but I enjoyed it all the same, so thanks.

Oh and Sat. I almost pmed you on your normal account to ask what the strawberry float you were doing and why were you playing so badly.

I came to you on the first night because I knew how well we’d played these games together in the past. I couldnt believe how stupid both you and Hexx were being. Probably should have twigged there.

The last PM I saw from you was where you said how great it is that vote rigger and biologist have teamed up so early. And then I was logged out of my account and couldn't get back in. A PM on my main explained that I was out of the game, and I had to watch as a baddie took over.

Straight away I knew they'd be looking through PMs and see your role, so the situation looked bad. However, the next day you came clean in the thread that Orange or Me were a traitor and at that moment I was really rooting for you to get a kill. The one thing that worked against you was my original role of vote rigger meant you couldn't get elected and then it was an easy kill for the parasites.

How all of that happened and then I was elected AC the next day I wil never understand.

OrangeRakoon wrote: :p

I started out Human and became the spy so I got the human pm at the beginning so on being ask about I knew what to say.

I was paranoid about posting with the wrong account, I actually considering compiling a version of the GR app in black that I could sign in with separately so I didn't strawberry float it up.

Luckily I managed to stop myself every time I nearly balls other but yeah still.

Am tempted to do a forum game version of the app though, update it as a game starts to load the game tread with buttons for the thread and PM's and nothing else. Maybe so e method the game master can make announcements to users or something.

Errkal wrote:I was paranoid about posting with the wrong account, I actually considering compiling a version of the GR app in black that I could sign in with separately so I didn't strawberry float it up.

Luckily I managed to stop myself every time I nearly balls other but yeah still.

Am tempted to do a forum game version of the app though, update it as a game starts to load the game tread with buttons for the thread and PM's and nothing else. Maybe so e method the game master can make announcements to users or something.

That would be pretty cool. I used a different browser for the game when at home so I knew what account I was in, but a different app with game specific features - or at least a sub part of the app that achieves the same - would be great.

I just used a different forum theme for my main account to make it stand out. Prosilver's getting on in years, huh.

FudgeDiver wrote:really, everyone should have realised something was up when Karl said that the person who had Ariel's protection killed themself

Very easy for you to say but you have no idea what it was like for the uninformed. We all knew crazy gooseberry fool was happening but there seemed to be so many possibilities!

That's not a growth wrote:

Errkal wrote:I was paranoid about posting with the wrong account, I actually considering compiling a version of the GR app in black that I could sign in with separately so I didn't strawberry float it up.

Luckily I managed to stop myself every time I nearly balls other but yeah still.

Am tempted to do a forum game version of the app though, update it as a game starts to load the game tread with buttons for the thread and PM's and nothing else. Maybe so e method the game master can make announcements to users or something.

That would be pretty cool. I used a different browser for the game when at home so I knew what account I was in, but a different app with game specific features - or at least a sub part of the app that achieves the same - would be great.

I'd probably go separate purely as anything in the main app wouldnt work for a game using ALTs as another webview would use your main logged in account.

Also it means those not playing don't need to have the extra features and stuff. Keeps it nice an separate.

I just used the app for the game and turned to Chrome for standard posting. It's nice to be solely back onto the app now, although a shame that this has come to an end.

Karl, now that the many cats are out of the bag, would you consider running the same format again or do you think the lack of mystery would ruin the gameplay?

Funny thing is if he ran a game with this exact concept again it'd be skewed balance wise in the other direction.

It was entirely imbalanced towards the parasites, but honestly a lot of that came down to complete RNG which Karl couldn't do anything about. The fact he only made it seem like he could access the accounts in the rules though meant that nobody thought anything of the death posts, we all thought it was Karl. I would say that's the biggest tipper of the balance here. Maybe if Karl hadn't said anything about him accessing the accounts the humans might've twigged something was up.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Karl, now that the many cats are out of the bag, would you consider running the same format again or do you think the lack of mystery would ruin the gameplay?

That's an interesting question! I probably wouldn't run it again in the same way, as a kind of 'horror experience.' I think there would be legs in taking the same ideas and applying them to a more light-hearted game, maybe with a much greater emphasis on pretending to be the person you inhabit. 'Are You An Alt Account?,' maybe! I could see that interacting well with a 'No PMs' rule.

I think what I miss most about, say, 2010-era AYA?s were the big spontaneous in-thread happenings -- Phoenix Wright GIF laden Megatons in particular. I'm really interested in thinking about ways to recapture that for our current userbase. Many of the same players are still around, but can't spend all day watching the thread or all evening putting together theories, so I wonder whether a game could be put together to mechanically encourage that kind of moment. Perhaps the act of accusing someone could have some mechanical importance.

This is maybe straying into Forum Game Test Group territory, but a mechanic I've been sitting on for a long time is the idea that the wolves can only target from the bottom half of that day's posters in terms of post count. Hard to keep track of and enforce, but probably good for in-thread activity and making sure the most involved players make it to the end.