Afterlife 3

[AvatarVecna]

Spoiler: Initial Recruitment Post

Show

For some of you, everything went wrong in an instant. The reactor should've been fine, but you saw some of your coworkers messing around near it right before it blew up. You can't remember who it was, but you know that you didn't die accidentally - this was sabotage. For some of you, everything went wrong gradually. You were sent to sabotage the reactor as insiders, but you're not exactly the most professional saboteurs. Too many mistakes, too many close calls almost getting caught, and it turns out you couldn't even delay the blast enough to all get out.

Now all of you are trapped in the power plant. The place is crawling with investigators and wannabe detectives of all kinds, trying to figure out what went wrong. And because you all felt some dire need to keep your name from being posthumously sullied, you have remained behind as phantoms to haunt the facility until the investigations are completed.

One of the teams investigating things are ghost-hunters, who seem convinced that some malevolent spirit is responsible for what went wrong. Worse, they're not complete loonies - they've got methods of communicating and exorcising ghosts that actually work. Every now and then, the ghostbusters will exorcise another of you, so now it's a race against the clock: can you point these wannabe polter-guys in the right direction to make sure justice is served, or will you fail and be blamed for the sabotage, with your living loved ones to bear the social consequences?

Spoiler: Rules

Show

Basic Mechanics
This is a game of Werewolf/Mafia. It functions somewhat like "Among Us", if you are more familiar with that game.

Prior to the game starting, I will randomly assign roles to players from the lists below. The role you receive will define your win condition and what powers you have (if any). If you are a member of the scum team, you will start the game in secret contact with other members of scum team via a group QT, which you can use to discuss strategy without being discovered.

The game will start on a Day Phase; the first Day Phase will last 72 hours, while subsequent ones will last 48 hours. During any Day Phase, all players can vote for who they wish to "lynch" (remove from the game) that phase. Your vote is not set in stone once cast, and you can recast your vote at any time (or even unvote entirely), provided that the phase has not ended. To cast your vote, please bold and color in red the name of the person you wish to vote. It doesn't have to be their forum name proper, or some official "I vote [name]", as long as it's recognizable who you're voting and the formatting has been done. Examples:







At the end of the day phase, I'll tally votes, and declare how many votes each wagon received. Whichever wagon has the most votes is lynched and can no longer participate in the game publicly or privately (except for Dead Chat, where they can talk with me and anybody else who is already dead). I will then inform the other players of that person's role and alignment. If there was a tie between who had the most votes, the tie will be resolved randomly.

After a Day Phase ends, the game will shift to the Night Phase; all Night Phases will last 24 hours. If you possess a power that lets you target somebody during the Night Phase, this is the time to use it. During this time, the scum team will be able to select a non-scum player to be killed (as well as using whatever other powers they might have as well). After a Night Phase ends, the game will shift to the Day Phase once more.

This cycle will repeat until one of two things happens: either all members of one team or the other is eliminated, or the elimination of all members of one team is inevitable. For example, if you get to a Day Phase with 7 players left (3 town, 4 scum), town has basically already lost, and so a Mercy Rule will be invoked to call the game early instead of making everybody play through the next 120 hours of a game whose conclusion is foregone.

QuickTopic

This community frequently employs the use of QuickTopic threads for games like this (and, ever since QuickTopic shut down, discord servers and/or Xoyondo threads) in order to have private communication between players without the narrator's inbox getting filled up constantly. However, the overuse of QuickTopics by certain individuals (...me, I'm the one who's done this, primarily) has tended to result in them being the center of a great deal of the game's strategy rather than the main game thread, which 1) makes it difficult to gauge the game-state properly if 90% of the game is occurring in chats you're not in, and 2) makes it basically worthless to try and revisit the game later, since frequently only two QTs will get posted in the main thread (the wolf chat and the dead chat, typically).

For the above reasons, as well as QuickTopic shutting down and opinions being split on the preferred alternative medium for private discussions, I am opting to not have private communication in this game. Most people will be members of the town with no powers anyway, so there's no need for them to have a QT in the first place. In a previous iteration of this game, QTs still played an integral role in the mechanics, but you can rest assured that won't be the case this time around.

Narrator Confirmation

Narrator confirmation of things will be limited, but the narrator will not lie to you; if you are told a thing by the narrator (such as a death reveal, or an answer on a power interaction), it will be the truth. With that being said:

1) There will be no powers that screw with vote totals in this game. The process and results of the lynch shall be sacred and public.

2) There is a bastard mechanic, but I won't specify what it is until the game is over.

Roles

Most people will not have powers of any kind. No power roles will be defined here.

Player List:

1. Batcathat
2. bladescape
3. Book Wombat
4. Elenna
5. flat_footed
6. gac3
7. JeenLeen
8. Snowblaze
9. Taffimai
10. Xihirli
11. Xumtiil

Please hold off from posting until I give the all-clear that Day One has begun.

[AvatarVecna]

The first day, you're still in shock from events. You're still processing what's happened, and yet before the bodies have even had a chance to cool, these ghostbusters have shown up with equipment and media outlets, claiming they'll get to the bottom of this, and send the ghosts responsible for the accident into a manmade hell as punishment. As if dying wasn't bad enough...

Day One Ends In ~72 Hours

[Snowblaze]

I was planning to OMGUS someone, but that doesn't really work when I'm the first here.

Elenna for no particular reason. (I remembered to bold my vote!)

[Taffimai]

The old janitor shuffles into the room, looking for something.

"AvatarVecna! AvatarVecna! Where are you honey? Come to daddy, daddy's got gooshy salmon chunks for you!"

He stops as he spots Snowblaze.

"Why hello, sweet lady! By any chance have you spotted my dear cat, AvatarVecna? Poor thing must've gotten an awful fright from that big noise just now. I'm trying to find her... or at least her body, worst case scenario.

You get the distinct impression that the old codger hasn't quite copped on that he's dead, himself.

[Batcathat]

Cool, I thought the game wouldn't start for a few more days.

I'm tempted to vote Snow, just to give her the chance for that OMGUS, but let's start with Book Wombat for gunning me down in cold blood last game. (Right as I was shooting Snow, but still... )

[Book Wombat]

Seems like the dice agree with you, Batcathat...
):

Book Wombat.

[Snowblaze]

The old janitor shuffles into the room, looking for something.

"AvatarVecna! AvatarVecna! Where are you honey? Come to daddy, daddy's got gooshy salmon chunks for you!"

He stops as he spots Snowblaze.

"Why hello, sweet lady! By any chance have you spotted my dear cat, AvatarVecna? Poor thing must've gotten an awful fright from that big noise just now. I'm trying to find her... or at least her body, worst case scenario.

You get the distinct impression that the old codger hasn't quite copped on that he's dead, himself.

Finally thought of a decent concept, so...


Sweet lady.

No-one else ever called her that. There were other names for a not-particularly-attractive female nuclear physicist. She smiled at the janitor. "No, I'm afraid I haven't seen her. I'll definitely let you know if I do, though."

She couldn't quite bring herself to break it to him that he was dead. Wasn't that a strange sentence? She set off to find some more of her fellow ghosts.

It was time to play detective, to find the sabatours and clear her name. She might not have any family to care whether she was responsible for the explosion she'd died in, but a man-made hell didn't sound pleasant. Though then again, neither was haunting the remains of the power plant. What were you supposed to do when you were a ghost?

[Batcathat]

Seems like the dice agree with you, Batcathat...
):

Book Wombat.

You include your own name when you randomize your vote? That is some admirable dedication to randomness.

[flat_footed]

Snowblaze. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and your books are calling you!

I'm going to have limited internet access for the next 2 days, summerizing the family cabin now that we're getting warmer weather. I'll be back by Monday to contribute something more meaningful than simply getting Snowblaze back to her studies.

[Elenna]

Apparently bladescape hasn’t been random wagoned as town yet. I’m down to either fix that or catch a wolf.

[Taffimai]

Janitor Taff watches the nice scientist leave. Such a lovely woman! Always returns his hellos, goodbyes, never too good to walk around when he's mopping the floor... a rare breed!

Then his attention is drawn by the sound of a cat furiously scratching at a large pile of books. Music to his ears! Unfortunately, it is not his, but if one cat survived, perhaps AvatarVecna might still be around too.

"What have you got there, little friend. Mind if I have a look? Don't worry, I won't steal your prize, I just want to make sure what's trapped underneath isn't my Ava... OH."

Startled, he drops the books back onto the rodent of unusual size.

"I'm afraid that's not a mouse, kitty."

[Xumtiil]

As much as I'm going to miss reading all about janitor Taffimai, I'm still (only marginally) salty of what his author did to me last game.

[Xumtiil]

For the record, I'd be game for a Snow wagon D1, the memes can only save her so often.

Vote count so far:
Elenna (Snowblaze)
AvatarVecna (Taffimai)
Book Wombat (Batcathat, Book Wombat)
Snowblaze (flat_footed)
Bladescape (Elenna)
Taffimai (Xumtiil)

Haven't voted yet: gac3, JeenLeen; Xihirli, bladescape

[Snowblaze]

For the record, I'd be game for a Snow wagon D1, the memes can only save her so often.

Why would you say that without actually voting for me? It's not as if we have plenty of other wagons.

Speaking of wagons, bladescape.

[Batcathat]

Well, this very quiet (Have I made a "Quiet. Too quiet" joke recently? I feel like I might've) . I don't really like that our only wagons are one inactive (though I'm sure blade will show up and say something cryptic eventually ) and one that's 50 percent self-voting, but I can't say I have any better ideas.

Just to get people talking, does anyone have any guesses about the advertised bastard mechanic? Personally, I got a little suspicious about us winning when there's "no living threats to town", when we're all supposed to be ghosts. The rational part of my brain tells me that it's just me getting death in a fluff sense and death in a mechanical sense mixed up, but still.

[AvatarVecna]

Well, this very quiet (Have I made a "Quiet. Too quiet" joke recently? I feel like I might've) . I don't really like that our only wagons are one inactive (though I'm sure blade will show up and say something cryptic eventually ) and one that's 50 percent self-voting, but I can't say I have any better ideas.

Just to get people talking, does anyone have any guesses about the advertised bastard mechanic? Personally, I got a little suspicious about us winning when there's "no living threats to town", when we're all supposed to be ghosts. The rational part of my brain tells me that it's just me getting death in a fluff sense and death in a mechanical sense mixed up, but still.

I'll clarify that the win condition is concerned with "living" in the mechanical sense. You've all "died", but nobody has had suffered a mechanical death and subsequent role reveal. This is what the win condition is concerned with - when all people who are a threat to town are fully dead, rather than this weird "dead but also not dead" state. My apologies for the confusion.

[Snowblaze]

AV actually giving helpful answers? Kill them with fire!

...fine, I'll be serious. I'm not exactly much of a fan of our wagons or activity either, bladescape was the least worst option of the people who already had votes.

And no, I don't have a guess for the bastard mechanic. Based on previous Afterlives it'll probably become apparent after a few flips, so I'm not too worried about it rn.

[bladescape]

"Bwuh? Was going on?" The blinking man looked up from the magazines he had in front of him, ones that were recently very well acquainted with his face. He blinked sleepy eyes at the surrounding people before wiping the drool from his lips, obviously still not quite with the current reality. The slow blinking as life came back to his eyes almost looked like it was in slow-mo, if it were not for the other people around still moving at normal speed.

"People already pointin' at me? Come on guys, I ain't the brightest bulb in the shed." The man slurred, hands held up and smile on his face as he looked at the handful of people pointing at him. The smile was almost taunting as he looked around and then spoke again with a wink, "But ya know, I do like playing dangerous games. Tell you all what, there's a trick I have for finding some of them dirty blighters. Tis called voting a good friend of mine."

"So what say you come to the party yourself, Ms 'Numbers be thee mine bane'? See who tangoes fastest when the spirit lines attether."


(Snowblaze)

[Snowblaze]

She hadn't set out to collect such unusual friends, honestly. It had just... happened. Weird people had a tendency to stick together.

"You know I can't dance to save my life... uh, 'Save my undeath' doesn't really have the same ring to it, does it?" She sighed. The amount of time recently she'd spent having surreal thoughts like that was concerning.

"But assuming you're speaking metaphorically... all right. Let's play." What would a proper detective do? Right. "Where were you at the time of the.. incident?" Always a good question to start off with. She doubted anyone would have a good alibi, but the sooner she could rule some of the ghosts out of her enquiries, the better.

(It's not day one without a Snowblaze wagon. Though you do need to bold your vote.)

[bladescape]

"Sleeping, I think." The man chuckles wryly, hand coming up to brush the hair out of his face as he grinned at the bookish scientist. There was a quick appraising glance, then a nod. "What abouts you, doing your science thing?"

"That being said, saving our undeath has a really weird ring to it. But I like it. Here to save undeaths and read magazines."

(Ty)

- - - Updated - - -

(I gave Xum a town point for their start posts, albeit I'm making a guess about their towngame since I've only seen their scum so many grains of salt as they say.)

[Taffimai]

Vote Count:

AvatarVecna (1): Taffimai
Book Wombat (2): Wombat, Batcathat
Snowblaze (2): Flat-footed, Bladescape
Bladescape (2): Elenna, Snowblaze
Taffimai (1): Xumtiil

Not voting: Gac, JeenLeen, Xihirli

[Xihirli]

Hi I’m here! Feel rotten! Very sorry everyone

- - - Updated - - -

So, we must kill the correct ghosts before we are all punished

It falls to me to break the tie between Snowblaze, Bladescape, and Book Wombat, does it.

Let the reaping begin?

[bladescape]

This looks like a job for me so, everybody follow me,
Cause we need a little controversy, and it feels so empty without me.

Trying to Wagon Snow D1 is a deathwish apparently.

Onwards, my beauties, onwards to death or glory.

[Xumtiil]

Hi I’m here! Feel rotten! Very sorry everyone

- - - Updated - - -

So, we must kill the correct ghosts before we are all punished

It falls to me to break the tie between Snowblaze, Bladescape, and Book Wombat, does it.

Let the reaping begin?

Fine, we'll make it official. Bladescape versus Snowblaze?

PS, I think you need to bold your vote.

[Batcathat]

Not sure how much it'll matter at the game's current pace, but I should mention that I'll be busy with traveling and meetings for most of today, so I probably won't be able to be very active, if at all. Should have plenty of time before EoD though.

[Snowblaze]

Yes, trying to wagon me is a death wish. Not that I particularly want to kill you, just the usual lack of better ideas. If anyone does have better ideas it would be great to hear them.

Xumtiil, you didn't address my point about why you didn't vote for me earlier.

Ties will be resolved randomly, apparently.

[Xumtiil]

Yes, trying to wagon me is a death wish. Not that I particularly want to kill you, just the usual lack of better ideas. If anyone does have better ideas it would be great to hear them.

Xumtiil, you didn't address my point about why you didn't vote for me earlier.

Ties will be resolved randomly, apparently.

Rando-voting Taffimai had been in the back of my mind since the end of last game, so that's what I was laser-focused on. Then I realised I'd also be game for an attempted meme-breaker combo, but it was one on you, mine on Taffimai and I was still holding out hope someone would hop on my Taffimai vote.

Later, considering my Taffimai vote wasn't gaining any traction but your vote was, I swapped.

[Snowblaze]

Rando-voting Taffimai had been in the back of my mind since the end of last game, so that's what I was laser-focused on. Then I realised I'd also be game for an attempted meme-breaker combo, but it was one on you, mine on Taffimai and I was still holding out hope someone would hop on my Taffimai vote.

Later, considering my Taffimai vote wasn't gaining any traction but your vote was, I swapped.

Yeah, that makes a certain amount of sense. I guess my issue is more that meme vote and wanting it to gain traction don't really fit together imo. But that's the way I think and applying it to you isn't necessarily valid, so...

[bladescape]

On one hand it's fun to keep Snow alive.

On the other hand I do want to D1 wagon successfully.

Decisions.

Decisions.

[Taffimai]

"Oh, it's Ms Snowblaze you're looking for. Sure, I have an idea of where she went, just follow me."

...but why did you come all the way out to me if she's the one you actually wanted, he added to himself, but he wasn't going to have that conversation. First of all, because he wanted to be polite to the young man (and it was very tragic to get involved in such a bad accident only days after you start a new job), but mostly because the live capture cage trap he was carrying was slightly heavy and very unwieldy, so he was eager to get back to his own business.

They made it back inside and towards the cantine. As he expected, most people had gathered there looking for a hot drink and something to eat to get over the shock. A... painfully polite conversation was taking place about who could be responsible for the accident. He was glad to stay well out of it, though it was funny to see these well-dressed, educated people all dishevelled. Especially Ms Xihirli was looking very pale. He must go and find her a nice warm blanket as soon as he had put up the badger trap near the bookcase.

Perhaps he'd even find AvatarVecna then. She hadn't been in the shed (which was good, because it was an unholy mess in there), but maybe she'd hidden in a storage closet, you never knew.

"Was there anything else you wanted?"