Girl Genius (Game Thread)

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

It may be a farce, but it is an experimental farce! And really, is that not what man has created, time and again, since first he looked up at the skies and dreamed?

*cough*

I'm pointing at SweetLikeLemons. All my acting talents were used up in those first two sentences.

[Free Hand]

((Wow pretty crazy, I was hoping this would be drawn out a little longer but I suppose it wasn't meant to be. *sigh* Well now it's time to bet on how much longer they last! Who knows? maybe they can pull through? Don't know why Freshmeat is pointing at SweetLikeLemons but he seems to know what he's doing.))

[FoE]

((I'm sorry, Iames, it was a poor choice of words. I'm just pissed that we couldn't get more players and that I got stuck as a Hive Engine. How do you RP that?))

[Free Hand]

((You roll around and vomit slaverwasps I suppose, maybe you're the reverent caretaker for the creature and the mob follows you to it.))

[Lord Iames Osari]

((I'm sorry, Iames, it was a poor choice of words. I'm just pissed that we couldn't get more players and that I got stuck as a Hive Engine. How do you RP that?))

((Yeah, I'm gong to rename that role to be "the Hiver Engine's Caretaker". And yes, I know the rules need some tweaking.))

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

(Maybe your a Slaver Warrior Wasp, crudely wearing the rotting flesh of a villager, who happens to speak for yuor Hive Engine and is forced to lead the mob to it?)

[Freshmeat]

((For what it's worth, FoE, Agatha actually killed you.

I don't think anyone would really mind to see a second run of this game with some revised rules. Thanks to this game, I've begun reading Girl Genius and I haven't regretted it for a moment. The theme is certainly interesting.

Something I've been wondering on for some time is: why 'Hiver Engine'? Isn't it called 'Hive Engine' (without the 'R') in the comic?))

[Lord Iames Osari]

((Is it? It's been a while since they've referred to one. I must have misremembered.))

[Lizard Lord]

SweetLikeLemons

[Ganurath]

((I'm sorry, Iames, it was a poor choice of words. I'm just pissed that we couldn't get more players and that I got stuck as a Hive Engine. How do you RP that?))

((You're a sleeper Revenant, like the residents of Sturmhalten (Stormhold in English, hail the Storm King!) who runs a warehouse where food supplies are stored. Every once and a while, there's an error in the supplies, as though something is feeding on the wares, but you don't remember anything... right?))

((I wouldn't mind giving running a game a shot, once I'm done with the other WW game I'm in than this one. Next time, the Empire will be the Wolves, and the Other will be the Cult. The Masons will be House Heterodyne, consisting of Agatha and the Jaegerchorus.))

[FoE]

((I really want to play a Girl Genius game, Iames, I guess this one wasn't meant to be. Maybe we should call this a trial run to get out all the kinks.))

((Yeah, I thought to be a Revenant who's just hiding the Hive Engine, but I thought people might get mad at me.))

[Jontom Xire]

((Some of you may find this move a bit surprising. I prefer to think of it as the most logical and efficient way to find the last Revenants. It also serves as a statement - namely that both masonic factions are actually the real problem here, balance-wise. Due to the Spark, Team Good can also completely outwolf the Revenants at their own game.

For those of you who are wondering:
- I requested the removal of Face of Evil, hap hazard and Jontom Xire, all of whom were Revenants.
- I also requested the removal of Bloodyredcommie. I changed my mind afterwards, but it appears my last-minute change didn't get through in time. So you might just as well say my ficklety got a civilian killed here. My bad.
- As a result of the above, it seems safe to conclude that EK was killed by the Revenants last night.

We've now entered the stage of unknown-killing. Some of the non-masons have already been scried. However, since only my scry offers -absolute- proof of someone's innocence, the process of finding the last two Revenants - Lucrezia and a generic Revenant/Wolf - might take a few days or so.))

As for today:

Sweetlikelemons

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Ok, so how in hell did you figure out THREE bad guys!?! God, I thought Smash Bros was unfair on the bad guys!

I've been signing up to games without checking the game balance first. Bad me! And paid for it.

[Ganurath]

Ok, so how in hell did you figure out THREE bad guys!?! God, I thought Smash Bros was unfair on the bad guys!

I've been signing up to games without checking the game balance first. Bad me! And paid for it.

Five in each Mason group, three scries a night, and 24 players on Day 1. What gave you away is that you accused me of lying offhand... I guess. Like I said, Freshmeat is keeping me out of the loop. And Zeetha.

[Freshmeat]

Ok, so how in hell did you figure out THREE bad guys!?! God, I thought Smash Bros was unfair on the bad guys!

((Since I routinely keep everyone out of the loop (including fully trusted people), especially about my reasoning, I assume you'll understand that for me to give anything other than just a red name in public is a very rare occurence. I'd be out of business pretty soon if I did.
However, I can say that none of you were scried and that - in Face of Evil's case - I wouldn't have killed him off so soon if the number of masons wasn't this high.
Or I just got lucky as usual. Who knows?

That said, I'd like to state that I have run somewhat dry (when it comes down to leads) in regards to the last two Revenants. By now it doesn't really matter though, so I probably won't give too much thought to the next couple of lynches/kills/scries/cheeseburgers and start focusing on other games. I know who -could- be Lucrezia and who -could- be the last generic Revenant, and that's enough.
Or maybe I'll change my mind and begin looking for more circumstantial evidence. I don't know and, after last night, it's pretty much a moot point anyway.))

[Jontom Xire]

Umm, yeah, actually game over.

Someone can run the figures for me, but with N masons taking N nights to kill, and all knowing who each other are, the number of hiding places is reduced to (number of players) - N. So if N > (number of players) - N, or to put it another way, Number of players > N then the game is won by the good guys. No matter what.

How many masons left alive? I think it's 9 isn't it? Maybe 10. So if there are fewer than 18/20 players left alive then the good guys have won. Well with 24 players alive, and 5 people dead last night, plus previous lynches and kills...

The only way good guys lose is if they occasionally (or in this case quite frequently) get lynched, and since they can all vouch for each other...

Othar Trygvassen might skew the results a bit with night kills, but with 2.5 scries a night plus any additional 50% spark scries every other night he won't last long as won't the revenants anyway.


On a rules change note, the Fool should ALWAYS get an incorrect result, except by random chance. E.g. if he scries a villager and a random result is rolled that is ... villager. 50% is not fair. If he scries the same result two nights in a row he has a 75% chance of being right. If he scries the same target for 3 nights that also gives him a good chance of being right. Ditto with Sparks. If three sparks all scry the same target, they have a good chance of getting a majority correct result.

I think the cool off period for sparks needs to be a bit longer (maybe different depending on the ability used - 2 for a bane, 3 for a scry, 5 for a kill), or have fewer masons being sparks.

[Lord Iames Osari]

((Is everyone in agreement that we should end the game early and convert this thread to a discussion of how to improve the balance of the rules?))

[InaVegt]

((Yeah, I agree, this game has been as good as won, it'll last two, three more days at most.))

[Freshmeat]

I'm in favor of that. As a matter of fact, I'll voice some of my suggestions right away. I believe I adressed some of these a couple of months ago in werewolf central already, but those were probably missed amongst numerous discussions, game feedback, game suggestions and scheduling talk.

First of all, I'd like to mention that this game would be a little different if, rather than 26 players, the game would have started with the full 40 players. Obviously a couple of things still need to be addressed, but please keep the amount of players in mind when reading everything detailed below.

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1. There are too many masons.
The number of masons should always be dictated by the number of people. In this small a game, there's nothing inherently wrong with five masons. There is when there are ten masons, even when one half of them doesn't know the other half.

2. The masons are too powerful.
Between the ten of them, you've got a day baner, a night baner, a seer, a semi-seer*, a semi-semi seer** and two beast roles. Several sparks as well.

Thematically, the masons make perfect sense, but game-balance wise, there's no reason as to why (for example) a seer should know four good guys (amongst whom two unrecruitables) right off the bat, especially when most of these have special abilities as well.

Removing both seers from each separate mason team would go a long way.
That might be a good enough fix and of itself, actually. Difficult to tell at this point.

* & **: The Ferret Handler and Fool respectively

3. Insta-speed daybaning: more often than not, masons and network members aren't going to get lynched anyway, so this isn't that big of a deal, actually. Depending on your point of view, it's either useless, very good or borderline broken, and some will argue that this is actually completely broken.
What it certainly does is take away the option (for the wolves) to turn a bandwagon around right on a confirmed good guy. This happens quite rarely though, and only if fellow wolves are willing to back the initial lynch target (which we are assuming is a wolf as well) through their votes*, and if the remaining villagers are incredibly gullible. But it still happens every once in a blue moon, and I see no need why the wolves should be denied that opportunity.

*: Which, in the long term, is often a suicidal tactic, but that's besides the point.

Other than that, instant daybaning often tends to annoy people quite a bit, since one person's whim can save someone from death. If someone - such as Demonking in this game - waits way too long with revealing his identity, he can also still be saved, even when he really should have just been lynched.

I think the following question is an inherent part of the day lynch, and shouldn't be tampered with: 'Do I reveal my identity now and save myself from death-by-lynching, or do I wait and (hopefully) people will choose someone else to be lynched instead? If I wait too long, then the day might end before I convince enough people to change their vote...'
An instant-speed daybane pretty much puts a direct stop to that.

The case against this is as follows: a daybaner (let's assume a non-mason, individual daybaner) can't go around protecting everyone. Whether to save someone or not depends entirely on his judgement, which might very well be wrong.
(In mafia V, for example, this was the case, and I didn't consider it a problem there. Of course, the day baner also happened to be the night baner in that game, so the role still ended up being completely broken.)

But to make an already long story short: even then I'm still inclined to go with a standard 'send-your-bane-in-on-the-preceding-night' way of handling daybaning.

All of this as an aside though, since the daybaning issue has already been addressed.

4. The Spark.
As of now, a Spark can do the following, every two days:

• Kill someone
• Scry someone at a 50% accuracy
• Bane someone
• Protect someone from Hive Engine recruitment
• Daybane someone

You can fix this in several ways:
- adjusting or introducing percentages
- merging, separating or removing certain abilities-
- making Sparks recruitable (although this alone won't solve the problem, and might even be a bad idea in the first place)

a. Killing someone is too powerful an ability. I suggest reducing the success rate to 50% or something, or increasing the cooldown after a kill to three days. Keep in mind that a villager kill ability is much less of a factor the more players you have.
b. Scrying at 50% accuracy is pretty worthless. I suggest increasing it to it to 75%, 80% or even 100% and (possibly) adjusting the cooldown (although I don't think that'd be necessary). As it stands, no one will ever use the Spark to scry someone since the best thing they can hope for is to get a fool's scry.
c. Nightbaning and protecting someone from recruitment: both are already highly circumstantial (since they are defensive by nature and rely on the actions of the wolf team). As such, I feel they could use a minor buff. Just merge both abilities into one, so that if the target was either attacked by the Slaver Wasps or the Revenants themselves, he'd be protected.
d. Daybaning someone: I can't see this being particularly useful, but sure, why not.

5. Hiver Engine.
I'm not really a fan of countering 'power' with 'power'. That is to say: being able to recruit someone every two days, with no chance of refusal is pretty damn strong. It's also pretty damn fragile, which is a problem.
If the Revenants still have the Hive Engine, they've got a major ace up their sleeve (arguably one that's too major). The moment they lose the Hive Engine, then they're practically worthless.
Therefore, I prefer that the 'oomph' behind the wolf force is divided more equally, so that success doesn't entirely depend on a single person's survival.

In any event, I'm in favor of simply bringing back recruitment once every three days, with the Revenants being able to recruit someone again on the following day if their last recruitment so happened to hit an unrecruitable.

6. The wolves don't know eachother.
I don't really see why they shouldn't, actually. But this has little to do with the main issue.

7. Othar Trygvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!)
I don't really see how he's supposed to win. He can't kill a Spark without revealing himself to be a Spark as well. But revealing himself will invariably get him killed.
A clever Othar might decide to manipulate events in such a way that both sides end up killing eachother's Sparks (more on this in § 9.) so that he can appear out of nowhere and kill the last Spark by himself, but that would require him to survive for an obscenely long time, during which he would certainly have to go unscried (since Team Spark would probably kill him on sight).

8. Dr. Sun.
I hate necromancer roles that don't re-randomize the role of a ressurrected player. The moment an unrecruitable role would get killed (whether by a night kill or a day lynching) a single ressurrection is all it'd take to break the game in half. After all, you already know the dead person's role, so you know he can be trusted. From there on out, that person can then simply be contacted by all the other power roles.
Result: Instant network.

9. The Spark (again)
The Spark is quite a potent ability. This begs the question: why are all the Sparks on the villagers' side (with the exception of Lucrezia)?
Keep in mind that Lucrezia would probably be loathe to use her own ability since that'd simply paint a big bullseye on her. Everyone would know on the following day that she'd be a Spark so she'd risk getting killed by Othar and might even end up getting scried (and if not scried, then she'd probably have to do precisely as a trusted public spokesperson says to avoid attracting further suspicion).

Adding one or two Sparks to the Revenant side might fix this. Or one could make Sparks recruitable. The best solution might actually be something in between: make civilian Sparks (but not mason Sparks) recruitable.


More than anything, it's the combination of all the above that led to this game being cut short after a mere two days. It's quite possible that one or two of these issues can be entirely ignored and that the next game will still be fine. This remains to be seen.

[Ganurath]

1. My idea is that House Heterodyne be the Masons, House Wulfenbach be the Wolves, and the Other is the Cult. Problem of too many Masons solved.

2. Solution 1. fixes Problem 2 as well.

3. It may not be a big deal, but it's enough to raise objections. Day Banes shall be submitted during the Night. *slams gavel*

4. Each Spark will have different abilities with different cooldown rates. Some examples:
Agatha, Lucrezia, and Gil will all have Unleash the Minions, a Night Kill that prolongs the wait for the next Spark power by a turn and fails against Sparks.
Agatha and Gil will have Imperial Intelligence, where Krosp and Wooster respectively perform a semi-scry for Civilian or Non-Civilian.
Agatha and Lucrezia will have Voice of the Other, which has the narrator anonymously project the Other's voice for a three point point the following Day Phase.
Gil and Lucrezia have Mark for Death, which secretly doubles all point values against the target the following Day Phase.
Othar, The Circus, and Rebel Noble will all have two unique powers, as well as Ask The Right People, a semi-scry tweaked as appropriate for theme.

5. No Hive Engine then. The Other gets Lucrezia's Spark powers, the High Priestess as Lucrezia's Lars, and a Sleeper Revenant for a Scryer. As for the Empire, they'll have Gil, Sergeant Wise Beard Man (forgot actual name), maybe Captain Vole, and the Black Squad for filler roles.

6. They'll know each other.

7. Simple solution: Since Othar doesn't make any Sparky inventions, his using his powers doesn't reveal him as a Spark.

8. No Dr. Sun then. He isn't stealthy enough to be a wolf.

9. The setting is Mechanicsburg. Agatha has reactivated the castle, Zola and her boys are dead, and the Jaegers are back (Agatha's Masons.) The Baron has been safely extracted, but Gil stayed behind with the Empire's stealthier elements to try to get to Agatha (so their night kill will be nonlethal if they get Agatha, and the Civilian goal will be to rescue her after that point.) Lucrezia has shown up, however, and wants to reclaim her daughter to get back her fleshier half.

[Shishnarfne]

Regarding ending the game: That'd be something where I'd think the remaining Revenants would have to agree to it (probably via PM and after discussion amongst themselves).

Regarding Masons: There are too many of them, and they are too powerful relatively.
The Empire starts out with the Baner, a Spark, a Seer+Fool (only good for Revenant/non-Revenant, but still), and an insurance policy for the Spark

The Circus starts out with two Sparks, A Seer, and a double insurance policy for one Spark, plus the other Spark is a Day Baner.

As soon as these two groups work together, the Revenants are effectively toast.

I'd say weaken the Masons, have more people, and give the Revenants a bit more staying power.

[Griever]

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7. Othar Trygvassen (Gentleman Adventurer!)
I don't really see how he's supposed to win. He can't kill a Spark without revealing himself to be a Spark as well. But revealing himself will invariably get him killed.
A clever Othar might decide to manipulate events in such a way that both sides end up killing eachother's Sparks (more on this in § 9.) so that he can appear out of nowhere and kill the last Spark by himself, but that would require him to survive for an obscenely long time, during which he would certainly have to go unscried (since Team Spark would probably kill him on sight).

Well, here I was about to go and post something very similar to this in order to share my opinion. *chuckles*

I am Othar Trygvassan, Gentleman Adventurer! When trying to decide how to play this role, running into the brick wall of being slaughtered the moment I was found out hit very hard. I was forced to try and contact the seers, in order to gain their trust so they didn't scry me as soon as I broke through as a spark.

I fully agree that the spark ability to kill is, in many cases way too powerful except in the case of Othar. With so many Sparks, a huge cooldown or mid-% chance on a kill would in many ways make the character unwinnable.

Just my two cents.

P.S.- What if you give Othar a % chance to avoid death? (Just to emulate the comic, he just won't seem to die )

[Lord Iames Osari]

((While I appreciate all the analysis that has been going on, I have received word that at least one of the Revenants wants to continue this to the end. I have not heard from the other, but in the event that they do decide hey want to finish the game, I would like to ask that all of you who have made the lengthy analyses and recommendations spoiler them so as not to be distracting from the game.))

[evnafets]

Oho! Eez not ova before ze fat ladee singz - iz zat vot day say?

Brink on ze danzing gurls! Lez have a partee!

[Frankelbert]

Sweetlikelemons it is then.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

"Actually, my good Jager I have just the sort of thing you're looking for," Fullbladder says with all the inflection of a used car salesman as he leans towards Evnafets. "This miniature figurine, which, as you can see, takes the form of a rather overweight gal, is imbedded with a small clockwork device. It can sing any opera song from before fiftie's. One of a kind. Got it off music-lover down by Vienna.

"But what would you pay for such a thing? Why, for you, today only, it is going at the low, low price of [insert appropriate overpriced amount of appropriate currency here] ! It's a steal!"

[Lizard Lord]

So what is going on here? Iames, did you receive word from the other revant yet?

[evnafets]

Ho Ho Ho! - a Steel! Datz a goot vun! (the Jager slaps Fullbladder on the back in a friendly fashion)

Ken she sing "Flight of the Jager-ries" Datz vun off my Favorites!

[Lord Iames Osari]

((Not yet, alas. I've sent off a PM; hopefully that will get his attention.))

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

Flinching his way through the pain, Fullbladder, in his salesman-y way, activates the little figurine, which sings the first 13 seconds of the requested peice. Slowly he removes his earplugs.

"She can do all that and more, my friend! Can I assume that you are willing to make a purchase?"

[Lord Iames Osari]

((Okay, game is officially over now. The Empire, the Circus, and the Civilians win.))