Witch Hunt!

[Elenna]

Valmark should be around to hammer soon.

Hopefully gac and Snowblaze weren't the Martyr. (Bunny, you still playing?)
@Martyr in case you somehow missed all the discussion, please save me from a sacrifice, thanks. You can just put "if Elenna is killed I want to save her" as a conditional action anytime, if you might not be on

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Oh I was ninja'd by the hammer vote. Aventine, let me know if you want me to delete that post or something.

[Aventine]

That should be seven...

Day Two Ends
(please wait a minute for things to resolve)

[Aventine]

JonnyPatches is lynched
JeenLeen also dies

Night Two Begins
And will end in roughly 24 hours

[Aventine]

The current plan is for JeenLeen to replace Snow. Like I said in central, I don't really like doing that, but I think at this point it's probably the less bad option.

[rogue_alchemist]

Sounds good to me. I trust JeenLeen to act in the best interest of her new role, especially considering her old role has already lost with no hope of winning.

[Aventine]

JeenLeen replaces Snowblaze

---

Elenna should die, but survives
JeenLeen/Snowblaze dies
Valmark dies

Day Three Begins
(There are 8 living players: the day will end once a majority of 5 votes is reached or after 72 hours)

[Unavenger]

Oh, so that's why you wanted a substitute player so badly, because if you didn't get one, changing the rules mid-game would have been for nothing as you wouldn't have been able to screw us over.

Junior, get in the building if you're not AFK or dead. You have a game to carry.

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(Tonight, that is. Don't get in until we have a chance to sac Elenna for reals)

[AvatarVecna]

Time to start going through the motions then. Unavenger

[Xihirli]

Unavenger, I don't particularly approve of your method of criticism.
Aventine is new to running this sort of game, and balancing a game with this many power roles isn't something that comes easily.
It's just a game, and should never be a reason to put someone down.

[Unavenger]

Unavenger, I don't particularly approve of your method of criticism.
Aventine is new to running this sort of game, and balancing a game with this many power roles isn't something that comes easily.
It's just a game, and should never be a reason to put someone down.

Yeah, but it's a game that's rapidly becoming a chore as I'm having to deal with every single "Um, actually" that seems to be designed specifically to make the game more annoying. Of course I'm going to be critical of it, particularly since I have literally nothing better to do this game day except hope that there aren't 5 active townies.

[Aventine]

Unavenger, chill. If you think the balance was bad, we can discuss that after the game. Frankly, I think it was off myself. But the martyr thing wasn't a change, it was a clarification. I did seriously consider changing from my original thought on how it should work once the question was raised, but decided against it.

You seem to be at the point of claiming I wanted a sub specifically to screw you over. Get over yourself. Once you get to the point of throwing a temper tantrum because I replaced the player who had to leave suddenly for irl reasons, you really need to step back and consider what you're doing.

[CaoimhinTheCape]

Vote: Unavenger

It's a rough situation all around, especially since the game is semi-solved at least for a day or two. I'm still legitimately worried though - even if today is an obvious vote we'll have an uphill battle going forward.


N2: two townies die. Town 5 vs witches 3.
D3: lynch Unavenger. Town 5 vs witches 2.
N3: sacrifice Elenna, NK one townie. Town 3 vs witches 2.
D4: lynch Xihirli (fails). Town 3 vs witches 2.
N4: NK one townie. Town 2 vs witches 2.
D5: tie for the lynch. Town 2 vs witches 2.
N5: NK one townie. Town 1 vs witches 2.
D6: Loss.


Is now the time for the mass claim? Hopefully outing the Junior Witch early?

Or do we stay quiet and hope they kill the Junior Witch or waste time on Traveler/Survivalist?

[Unavenger]

The thing is, very few of the rules you've "Clarified" this game are actually written that way - the martyr specifically is explicit that it works at the end of the phase, which means not between the sacrifice and the assassination. This happening after you already "Clarified" that our unblockable kill isn't even unblockable is pretty frustrating. That on top of not replacing inactives but just deciding to replace one player the one time that it would allow your "Clarification" to screw us over? Yeah I'm slightly upset.

If you even considered ahead of time the possibility that how that worked was even a question, you should have specified that it worked in a way entirely contrary to how the setup is actually written before it was about to become an obvious issue.

[rogue_alchemist]

Well if for nothing else than to end the temper-tantrum, I'll vote Unavenger. I know it is hard when something happens that ruins a good plan, but I believe Snowblaze would have chosen to make that same sacrifice given all that happened during D2. I also don't see a problem with letting someone fill that role just so it can do it's one mechanic.

Martyr

You are a member of the town. You win if the werewolf and all the witches are dead.

You may sacrifice yourself to save another player from dying. At the end of every phase, you will be informed of who is dying and given the opportunity to take their place.

Personal QT: LINK

It says the Martyr will be INFORMED of everyone who dies at the end of the phase and given the opportunity to take their place. It doesn't say it can only block kills at the end of the phase. It is being a bit pedantic on my part to have to point this out, but it clearly reads as they get to decide to stop one kill, and if you choose correctly it might stop more kills, if it was a chain. So they could have stopped the VB from being killed and then whoever the VB chose to die would not be killed as well, even though both would have already died from an end of the phase perspective. The Martyr isn't told what order people die in or what role they had, just that they died. It was the witches bad luck that we found the SPY and they outed who the other witches are and uncovered the werewolf in the process (who was then Narrator confirmed, or we would have had trouble). I agree it was a series of bad luck for the witches, but nothing was mechanically broken or changed in such a way as to be unfair. And throwing a tantrum and pouting never made anyone's position look good either.

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As for mass claiming, we only have the Junior witch to worry about as far as figuring out who they are, but each night the witches get to target who they kill and they will know who are town vs who are witches, so it still seems bad mechanically to mass claim. They will then know who to target to maximize their chances of winning. We need the judge alive and active at the end of D5 so that during the tie they can choose a witch to die. Or we need the witches to choose a traveler or whatever one night before then to keep the numbers in our favor. The only way we have any chance of that is to not let them know who is who.

[Apogee1]

We massclaim today right to edge out the space that the Junior Witch has to fakeclaim tomorrow?

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Or maybe not

I'll think about it

[Unavenger]

It says the Martyr will be INFORMED of everyone who dies at the end of the phase and given the opportunity to take their place. It doesn't say it can only block kills at the end of the phase.

"At the end of every phase, you will be[...] given the opportunity to take their place" means you can take their place at the end of the round. If it doesn't mean that, it should be specified at some point earlier than mere real-life hours before it becomes relevant.

I also don't think much of painting legitimate criticism of the perfect storm of bad setup decisions and obvious, blatant rules changes as a "Temper tantrum" because literally no defence of it comes close to a legitimate argument. It's tone policing because you can't hack what I actually have to say.

[rogue_alchemist]

alright your point about calling it a temper-tantrum is more of a red herring/straw man argument attacking you instead of your points. I did mean it as a criticism of your argument technique, but it by no means negates your arguments. It could have been written more clearly to leave no room for doubt, everything always can be. However the literal word by word interpretation is as follows:

Martyr

You are a member of the town. You win if the werewolf and all the witches are dead.

You may sacrifice yourself to save another player from dying. At the end of every phase, you will be informed of who is dying and given the opportunity to take their place.

Personal QT: LINK

I don't think anybody has a problem with the first bit up through "You may sacrifice yourself to save another player from dying.", so I won't analyze that bit, but from there: :At the end of the phase" this is a prepositional phrase set off by the preposition "at" and ended with the comma. This means it modifies the entire sentence that follows. The core of the sentence states "you will be informed of who is dying and given the opportunity to take their place." so we have a single subject "you" (the martyr) who gets two verbs "will be informed" and "given the opportunity", so this sentence could be split up to read "At the end of the phase, you will be informed of who is dying." and "At the end of the phase, you will be given the opportunity to take their place." Based on this interpretation, Unavenger, you are trying to say that they can't take the place of the dead person until the end of the phase and that is shouldn't negate anything but the death they stop, instead of all actions that chain off of that death. This is a valid interpretation of the syntax of the sentence as written, though I don't quite agree with the last part of your argument about it not negating the actions that chain off of that death.

I feel that it is more common to interpret the description sentence as "At the end of the phase, you will be informed of who is dying and [then] given the opportunity to take their place." The addition of that then in the middle changes the purpose of the conjunction "and" from joining the verbs into both going at the same time to making it sequential. This then changes the interpretation of the sentence so that you are only informed of the deaths at the end of the phase, however you then get to decide to retcon what is happening and stop one of those deaths, which negates any chain of events that happens based off of that death.


As I said last time, this would mean that if the martyr can figure out what roles people have they could potentially sacrifice themselves to stop multiple deaths and not just the one death that they actually sub in for. I would further argue that this makes the most sense, as the actions that follow from the original death (of the VB or the witch sacrifice) HAS TO happen to cause the chain and by the martyr stepping in to stop that death, they MUST negate the chain that follows for there to be a consistent logical timeline that everyone can follow in a game where we are told very little. Further I would argue the only clarification that would be needed is if that WAS NOT the case, because then that would mean that the martyr can only sacrifice themselves to stop 1 and exactly 1 death, and the chain would go off still. That would be logically inconsistent (as I mentioned above) and would need clarification so that we could watch for that to happen so that the town could try to use it to help piece together what is actually happening. However with no logical inconsistency created in the current implementation of the rules, then we don't have to watch out for it and there is no clarification needed. Werewolf is ultimately a game of perfect logistical consistency. Because of this, we only need information that violates our current understanding of the logical flow of the world (such as the fact that werewolves exist and how their powers might behave, or that magic exists and how it might behave), but we all know how time should behave, and so we only need to be told if current time rules are being violated.

Now as I said, when you start thinking about how time should work, it is not immediately clear to people, and so there could have been clearer language used in the description to call out that depending on the death the martyr stopped, the events that followed could be stopped too if they were predicated on the death happening, but from a logical standpoint that is an obvious statement that is redundant, and thus not necessary.

[Elenna]

My understanding was that the assassinate happens at the end of the phase because it depends on the results of that phase. Just like all the other things that depend on results, like the judge, the VB, and the martyr itself, which happen in a "twilight" phase between phases. Aventine is mostly ignoring that phase for convenience by the use of conditional actions (and by moving the judge announcement), but it still technically exists.

Based on that, the martyr and the assassination should happen at the same time. Based on game logic, I could go either way on whether the martyr should stop the assassination as well as the sacrifice. But based on fantasy-witch-story logic, which this is clearly based on, it doesn't make sense for you to get power from an unsuccessful sacrifice. Since the game logic is ambiguous I'm not surprised Aventine went with the option that matches fantasy story logic.

Some other points since you accused people of not responding to them:
- It would have been nice to know in advance that the werewolf devour protection trumped the witch unblockable kill - I wouldn't have expected it to work that way either. But that's pretty clearly an ambiguous situation in which Aventine was thinking one thing and some players were thinking another and nobody thought to clarify, not a rules change. Anyways it didn't affect this game.
- The fact that the survivalist only loses one life to the unblockable kill was stated in the recruitment thread.
- There's a pretty big difference between someone who's inactive and someone who straight up dropped out of the game. Legit question: did you object to JeenLeen replacing in before it was revealed that Snowblaze was the martyr? Because you didn't say anything about objecting but admittedly sometimes I think of a comment and then get distracted and never actually post it.

Anyways, actual game-play comments: based on Caoimhin's post I'd say we don't mass-claim now and hope that a) we can figure out who the JW is though good old-fashioned analysis and b) witches either hit the traveller or leave the judge alive by accident. Or hope that gac or Valmark was the JW, I guess. But if anyone has less risky suggestions I'm down for other thoughts.

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Oh look, a rogue ninja alchemist. Nice multi-classing

[rogue_alchemist]

It could be advantageous for the acolyte to reveal their role and tell us whether the priest is still in the game and active. Then we would have a pretty good chance of finding the JW without having to reveal who the priest is until we find them and can definitely kill them. We already know the other witches, so no point in testing them, so only the other 5 (we know elenna too) will have to be tested, and tomorrow it'll be down to 4 that have to be tested, so pretty good chance of finding them. And worse case the witches kill the acolyte tonight so that we don't have that information source anymore, but then we know that the priest is still alive to test again another night or the witches shoot randomly and the acolyte can still confirm for us.

[Unavenger]

I feel that it is more common to interpret the description sentence as "At the end of the phase, you will be informed of who is dying and [then] given the opportunity to take their place." The addition of that then in the middle changes the purpose of the conjunction "and" from joining the verbs into both going at the same time to making it sequential. This then changes the interpretation of the sentence so that you are only informed of the deaths at the end of the phase, however you then get to decide to retcon what is happening and stop one of those deaths, which negates any chain of events that happens based off of that death.

No, that interpretation would imply that the opportunity to take someone's place happens even later than everyone dying, which means that it makes even less sense that someone should be able to queue-jump.

Based on game logic, I could go either way on whether the martyr should stop the assassination as well as the sacrifice.

Then it should have been "clarified" before it was too late to make any meaningful decisions with that information.

But based on fantasy-witch-story logic, which this is clearly based on, it doesn't make sense for you to get power from an unsuccessful sacrifice.

So sacrificing a warlock gives us power, sacrificing an assassin gives us power, sacrificing a spy gives us power, sacrificing a junior witch gives us power, but sacrificing a martyr? Naw, that can't give us power, that wouldn't make sense!

- It would have been nice to know in advance that the werewolf devour protection trumped the witch unblockable kill - I wouldn't have expected it to work that way either. But that's pretty clearly an ambiguous situation in which Aventine was thinking one thing and some players were thinking another and nobody thought to clarify, not a rules change. Anyways it didn't affect this game.

I mean, I expect "Unblockable" to mean "Unblockable" and it to be clearly specified when "Unblockable" doesn't mean "Unblockable."

- There's a pretty big difference between someone who's inactive and someone who straight up dropped out of the game. Legit question: did you object to JeenLeen replacing in before it was revealed that Snowblaze was the martyr? Because you didn't say anything about objecting but admittedly sometimes I think of a comment and then get distracted and never actually post it.

No, I did not say anything in the quarter of a day flat between the announcement ITT that the replacement would be happening and the replacement happening. As it happens, I was only doing other things, rather than actually asleep, but "You were given plenty of time to object" is a pretty lame answer given that I was not, and should not have been expected to be, paying much attention to posts in the Capital thread (because I don't read other people's posts in that thread most of the time even if I'm posting there, don't try to "gotcha" me) and I was given less time than most people spend sleeping to object in thread.

And to be frank, I consider people not actually playing the game to be a sign that they too have de facto dropped out. I'm putting in more effort than some of the living players and I have zero meaningful moves at this point in the game.

[rogue_alchemist]

town was stalemated until JeenLeen forgot I had voted for Xi already and accused us both of being witches, which then lead to Elenna outing herself and town solving a lot of our problems. There is always the chance someone will make a mis-step you can take advantage of and win the game, as Cao pointed out, it is still a close game. With so little information to start with there has never been a "best" moves solution that would guarantee a win, but you have to try things and see what sticks. The witches best hope is town implodes and makes a mistake somewhere. Same as it has been from the start.

[Xihirli]

Right! I am NOT evil.

But I will vote to kill rogue_alchemist for no particular reason.

[Apogee1]

Right! I am NOT evil.

But I will vote to kill rogue_alchemist for no particular reason.

Ya know I hear voting for Unavenger can get you lots of towncred these days

[Xihirli]

I’m not here to defend my rep.

[Unavenger]

I’m not here to defend my rep.

Xihirli never chose the witch life. The witch life chose her.

[Xihirli]

I have no idea what this person who is currently not avenging is taking about.

[CaoimhinTheCape]

It could be advantageous for the acolyte to reveal their role and tell us whether the priest is still in the game and active. Then we would have a pretty good chance of finding the JW without having to reveal who the priest is until we find them and can definitely kill them. We already know the other witches, so no point in testing them, so only the other 5 (we know elenna too) will have to be tested, and tomorrow it'll be down to 4 that have to be tested, so pretty good chance of finding them. And worse case the witches kill the acolyte tonight so that we don't have that information source anymore, but then we know that the priest is still alive to test again another night or the witches shoot randomly and the acolyte can still confirm for us.

That's the question for today. Do we ask the Acolyte now to give everyone (including the junior witch) that information? It's really the only role left that can confirm anyone and clears up two roles. But doing that will tell the Witches exactly who are safe kills.

This can go wrong in a few ways though, including if gac or Valmark was the Acolyte. I suppose no one claiming it would confirm.



@ AV, Apogee, Bunny, Rogue, Elenna What do you guys think? Have Accolyte reveal and give information to everyone and limit what JW can claim? Or stay hidden and make it harder for them to decide who to kill?

Based on other posts: Rogue seems to be for revealing, Elenna seems to be against.

[Elenna]

IMO acolyte shouldn't say anything. We obviously don't want them to say who the priest is, because witches. And I don't see any point in revealing if the priest is alive or not, since it's not like we can do much about it either way. It would be nice to know if that possibility it still open to us, but I don't think it's worth revealing the identity of the acolyte, since that lowers the chances of the witches hitting the JW or survivalist.

Side note, I assume all townies are piling on Unavenger near EOD?
@Bunny of Faith, if you could just post a vote for Unavenger that would be great...

[rogue_alchemist]

I am for the acolyte revealing themselves but NOT who the priest is. that will help limit who the priest has to check and lets us know if we need to be coming up with an alternative strategy to deal with the JW. If the JW doesn't flip tonight, we know they will flip the night after anyways. We need to be honing in, though it is just as likely that gac3 or Valmark could have been the JW as the witches don't know who it is either until they flip. I am not around enough to go through all the possibilities of who holds what role and what that means for our chance of survival. I am all for dragging this day out, because weekends are not when I am on very much and it'll give me more time to do analysis for the next game day when our strategy really starts to matter.

[CaoimhinTheCape]

It would be nice to know if that possibility it still open to us, but I don't think it's worth revealing the identity of the acolyte, since that lowers the chances of the witches hitting the JW or survivalist.

Side note, I assume all townies are piling on Unavenger near EOD?
@Bunny of Faith, if you could just post a vote for Unavenger that would be great...

I mean, that's the awkward point. I'm fine staying quiet for now, but this plan goes out the window as soon as the Junior Witch joins the Witches. If they join now, the witches know exactly who is one their side. If the JW joins now, they know who not to shoot and we don't have the acolyte's info.


Yeah, Unavenger is the lynch for today. I'm comfortable putting votes down now, but we can wait till closer to EOD.