Parzival
Mome Rath
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Post by Parzival on Jun 23, 2007 23:08:44 GMT -5
Blaster Master, until Mad claimed, I actually thought you might be Steele. I was playing a little weird as you noticed, since for a bit I was hoping to keep Pirates alive.
Longer post in a one second.
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Parzival
Mome Rath
Let's all strive to do our best today![on:forgot to log out][of:forgot to log in]
Posts: 201
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Post by Parzival on Jun 23, 2007 23:13:30 GMT -5
Here's how I (as Ben Gunn) played the game. It may be a little long, but I do feel as if I've been holding this stuff in, so skip it if you want to:
The Role Description Before I got the gag order from Malacandra, I realized I would be unlikely to die very quickly. If I ever came close to a lynch, all I had to do was role-claim, and convince the crew to keep me around until they killed Flint. The pirates wouldn't waste two Nights to kill me, so I'd be a sort of useless player - unkillable but likewise untrustworthy, since once enough crew died the Pirates could all come out and win with me. In fact, flat-out role-claiming would keep me in this state the longest. Someone else (MHaye?) figured this out as well, so there was the clarification early on. The other consequences would be that just about anyone else could role-claim and almost break the game (since there'd be no way to distinguish).
One aspect that I almost forgot myself (until reminded in a PM) was that I'd lose any powers I had, including my night-killing ability. I'd be either plain but confirmed crew (obvious Pirate target) or clueless pro-scum (eventual crew target). So coming out, even if I'd been activated, was never a possibility unless Flint was dead (but see below).
Protecting against 'tells' I knew I risked revealing knowing more about my role than was likely for regular crew. I resolved to try and talk about the power roles generally, trying to look like someone new at the game attempting to figure out what could happen. I did risk saying something wrong about myself, but I felt I could cover it a little easier if I was speaking in hypotheticals.
There was also the 'known scum tell' of asking about power roles, so I couldn't overdo it. While I didn't realize it at first, after a bit I also realized this might be a way to telegraph my role to the Pirates, since they'd know I wasn't scum. This apparently didn't work.
I did want to play the role at least a little shy. Even before the role-claim ban, I didn't want to role-claim anyway (unless forced). It would have been best if people didn't think I was in the game. I was kind of hoping someone might suggest that, since I knew I couldn't do it if I was talking up power roles a lot. If Flint had been killed (and we didn't win), I would have kept quiet as well. Partly for those reasons, and partly for the psychological blow to the remaining Pirates : Here you've been paranoid about avoiding Ben Gunn the whole game, and it turns out he never even existed! It wasn't like I could point to anything that really verified the claim anyway, so it wouldn't have helped me much.
My strategy (this developed over the first couple days; it wasn't like I knew what to do from the start).
A winning strategy clearly means trying to avoid being killed. Lynches were to be feared, since I'd probably end up looking like over-defensive scum (but without any support). Becoming activated would most likely lead to death quite shortly thereafter. So probably I would want the Pirates to know who I was, and keep me alive, hoping to last until Flint died and I could win with the crew. If the Pirates started winning, I could pop up and then vote down the crew towards the end.
But what good is a kiling power if you can't use it? I would not have minded at all becoming a killer, even if only for one night, just to have some fun with the role.
So I figured I'd try to get night-killed if at all possible, but also in a way that might let me get one scum with me.
The Pirates were under standing orders to kill anyone who failed to die the first night (since it'd either be me, or the Doc, or in the worst case a Steele block). I feared as much, so I knew that if I were to get hit, it would hope it to be by Dick Deadeye. Since he fails as often as he hits (but look at Night 1!) I could hope he wouldn't go to the effort of attacking me twice when he may have other targets to go after.
The last part of that plan was how to avoid being discovered in my vigilante mode. If Dick hit me, but later became a Pirate, he'd have a short list of folks to go after. I realized my best hope if I got activated would be to go after Flint. Since Flint blocks any kills by me, nothing unusual would have happened the night after Dick's hit on me. The problem with that, of course, was finding Flint.
If I were killing, I couldn't be sure that a blocked target was really Flint, or a Steele block (or a Doctor save, at least until morning). If I was indeed lucky enough to find Flint, I'd have to try and hit him twice, hoping not to get killed. If I survived, I'd not only be harder to figure out as Ben but I could reveal Flint at any moment.
Once Dick was out and if I wasn't killed early, I'd have to stay as low as possible. The other thing I had to do was not finger the people I truly suspected to be Pirates if the Pirates were winning. Though I really had no faith in my abilities, and if I'd been thinking I should have just gone pro-crew the whole way. I think this ambivalence toward the crew maybe led to some of the suspicion of me, which mostly came from Blaster Master.
How the game went
It took me a little while to figure some things out, and I was at first I little more open about what I was doing. I tended to try a couple of things, and keep going if it worked, but I felt a little uneven at times.
Early on, I was suspicious of Gadarene. I made sure to put in my mild suspicions to sabotage him if he was a Pirate. This was what nearly got me killed by them. Somehow he ended up as my prime candidate for Flint (amazingly lucky by me). Of course, if the Pirates had activated me, I'd have died without a peep (since I'd go after Gad, and they'd kill me).
The other odd happening was that Gadarene openly mentioned he thought he knew who Gunn was. Since I'd talked about Gunn that day, I thought he had picked up on me. This was especially so since I thought he might be Flint, so I figured it was just as likely he knew who I was. At that point I backed off on him, and thought I was safe from Pirate night-kills.
I was hoping to get hit by Dick Deadeye, for the fun of it. I realized just a few days late that I ought to have pulled the same move Autolycus did, making myself look enough like the real Steele to get targeted at night. I couldn't role claim, though, since I'd end up lynched for a liar when I couldn't produce evidence. You could see me regretting having missed this chance (and making a clumsy effort at it) on the next Day.
Once Dick was killed and I thought the Pirates knew who I was, I intended to try and lay low. Of course the game began to go downhill quickly. I noticed that storyteller/notdeadyet had considered the possiblity that keeping Gunn alive to the end could have been a last chance for them (by getting Steele or the Doctor lynched), but as guessed, I wouldn't have done that. I'd have opted to role-play and kill Flint if I got the chance.
That's my summary. Hope it helps future players. I would like to get in on some more games of this, but I've got a couple big trips and a close friend's wedding coming up, so I know I wouldn't be able to get into it, unfortunately. Maybe sometime in a little while, if people aren't sick of them by then.
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Post by ArizonaTeach on Jun 24, 2007 1:49:03 GMT -5
I was the one who PMed Mal about role-claiming for Ben. I was thinking that I might do it myself and basically become immortal.
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Merestil Haye
FGM
Grudge Keeper
[on:Slumming it in the Middle-Earth][of:In the halls of Manw
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Post by Merestil Haye on Jun 24, 2007 4:22:56 GMT -5
If memory serves, what I said about Ben was that if you got activated early (and became Crew) then the best way to help your new team was to roleclaim and get hung.
At the time we would have had two and a half killers running around, and that made me worry that the crew could bleed to death - losing 2 or 3 players a turn, with no guarantee of hitting any crew at all - especially if the pirates were successful in steering your suspicions in the wrong direction.
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Post by Pleonast on Jun 25, 2007 11:47:29 GMT -5
Another thing I can talk about and point out now that we have complete privacy. I always had a really strong feeling that Pleonast was scum. Very very strong. So were you really telling the truth about him, zuma? I just don't see it. Although it would seem, if it was false, that AZ and FCOD would have said that he's not one of the officials by now. The main thing that tripped my meter about him, something I would have NEVER said in the game or used against him due to my special knowledge, is that in Day one, post #322, he says this in the last half: This was after a lot of discussion over players who had set themselves to invisible. It was also wayyyyy before I posted and said that admins (so me) can see who is invisible and who isn't. So what immediatly made me suspicious about this quote is (revealing it now we're alone): Pleonast is on invisible himself and has been since the very start of the game. So why would he act like he didn't know what invisible users were if he is and was (already at the time he asked that) invisible himself? It's not a default thing. One actually has to check the box that reads "remain invisible to who's online?". So it just strikes me as him playing dumb there, for one...and for two, really, why be on invisible anyway? Kyrie was on invisible too, at first. However after I made that post that I, too, could see who was invisible and who wasn't, I noticed he took it off. Pleonast, however, did not and is still invisible. So yeah. All of that combined. Being invisible in the first place and then acting like you don't know what invisible posters are, that just really hit me strong. From then on, I started reading all of his posts carefully, and again, he just seemed to grow more and more scummy. He voted for all of the crew lynches and even confessed that he voted for Auntbeast when he wasn't listed. I took this as being him being a clever "honest" scum that was trying to throw people off the trail ("Well, hell..if he's admitting that he was the first to vote for her, he couldn't be scum. What pirate would be that stupid?") So when you posted, zuma, that he was an official...that really shocked me. I still don't know if it was true or you were trying to get one last sneak in as sneaky sam. Again, though, if you were, why aren't the other two saying that he's not what they'd know he was or wasn't? *shrugs* Hehe, never assume malice when ignorance is possible. Yeah, I probably set something in my profile that makes me "invisible" (I just checked my profile, and I can see it there), but I still have no idea what that means. No one ever really explained it. All the posts I saw were attributed to someone. Of course, I wouldn't be able to see anything invisible anyway. Honestly, I have no idea what the "invisible" means. I dropped the question because it seemed obvious to everyone and I didn't want to belabor it. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ About my play style: I know it strikes some people as scummy. It happened in the first game as well. Fortunately, having a confirmable role has meant it's not a big problem. I don't think I'll play any differently if I have something else instead. We'll see. I may get lynched early. I've always been surprised at how long I've survived. I don't think I'm an especially good player (probably too transparent, not suspicious enough of others, and really bad at picking up tells). I'll do best a regular Townie who gets lynched early. And, Idle, I was going to start a serious lynching effort against you. Except you turned up dead. I thought zuma targeting you was an elaborate ploy to get himself confirmed. Either you (as a Pirate) would get lynched, confirming zuma, or zuma would die and confirm you. Your defense didn't seem like one a real Crew would take. That horrible math! I think the Pirates killing Idle was their biggest mistake. And huge kudos to ArizonaTeach with his bluff about the Doctor. After that, I was prepared to role claim as the Doctor if the heat on me got to high. Darn that Sneaky Sam!
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Post by Gadarene on Jun 25, 2007 12:04:53 GMT -5
Poo. Great job, Mad the Swine and the rest of the crew. And the Officers! Very nicely played by panamajack as well. I had tons of fun until work overtook everything else and I no longer had time to play. It's a shame, too; I wanted to see how long I could go without even an inkling of concrete suspicion thrown my way. storyteller, I put you in a really tough position. Sorry 'bout that.
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