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Werewolf CXCV: Elves!

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aedan777 said:
Sure anyone outside of it would put a target on themselves, but if they did nothing they were next anyways, assuming the JL was right. And it's always better to bet on one's ability to talk out of a situation than waiting for the JL to turn on them from a limited candidate pool. Unless the JL's barking up the wrong tree, like this time.
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I agree. The three-way-TIE was far too easily won; the wolves can coordinate, after all.

Also, I think it was an error to try to lynch all non-JLs. While perhaps not apparent then, in hindsight the JL should have collected information and observed.

Aedan- Quark outed the sorc independently of the JL, FYI.
 
al-Aziz said:
Aedan- Quark outed the sorc independently of the JL, FYI.
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Yes, but he did so before the other outings. The JL outing me after the others were in the open was the main thing I was critical of. The more baddies that are publically outed, the more days until the village returns to regular lynches.
 
GM AAR Part 1 - Setting up the Game
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With this game there was one thing in particular I wanted to try. We've had the role and traits assigned randomly, we've had the players themselves pick roles and traits but what if I let other players give out role and traits?

Of course there are several problems with this, what if the player with all treats die early? what if he just sits on it and keep all the goodies to himself? what if he only give to his friends? And it's hard to see how this would work for baddies so lets limit it to the goodies. And what goodie gives away presents? Well, Santa of course! So there's the RPing setting.

But given the problems, I didn't want to give everything to a single Santa so I split it in two with one more powerful (seer+GA+misc) and one less powerful (doc+misc). And since the two Santas were easy to accidentally knock out early i gave them each something to avoid lynch (alderman, plotter, cloak). I particularly didn't want Santa #1 to die early so apart from seer I gave him a single priestly scan so he could completely clear one player (and, I hoped, give that player the seer trait). And I decided to have the priest as a guild, that way making him very hard to kill.

But the baddies had to have some way to find a Santa. I could either let the sorcerer do it or I could add another baddie scanner. I thought having two scanners would make the game more robust against early sorcerer death which could make the baddies blind. And that's how Krampus was born (and he was named Krampus and not Grinchen because a friend of mine saw Murdoch Mystery Christmas Special on TV where Krampus featured and was more evil than Grinchen is).

But since the guilds have worked so poorly the last times they were used I decided not to have any baddies in it. But I didn't want the guild to know that so I gave them sorcerous scans instead of priestly scans (they detect pretty much the same thing so for a goodie it's about equivalent). I thought that would make the guild initially a little paranoid but that they would at the latest start scanning when a JL appeared. I also gave the guild two padre uses (so it could act a little like a protector) and two liar uses (so it could cover for a missing scanner or assassinate in case the goodie hunters went trigger happy too early). And to spice it up I gave Krampus and Santa a guild member card each to hand out, partly to to add to the guild paranoia and partly as a way to get in contact/control the guild.

Since Santa handed out traits I had to make the normal goodie roles into traits and since they could then end up with cursed players and even baddies I thought it only right and proper to have the Santa non-cursed and a safe goodie. But it's never good for the game that someone can 100% prove he is a goodie, and Santa could do that by handing out presents. So I also let Krampus be able to hand out traits so he could fake Santa but also just the fact that a Krampus could fake Santa should make recepients of presents wary who they got it from. Two Santas should also make for some interesting JL paranoia, I thought.

Since I didn't have a priest I took away Krampus' detection of apprentices. I thought all the goodies single scans would be enough to balance out the missing priest and if they detected an unclaimed apprentice they would hand him over to the JL for the seer to claim him.

So how did it go?

The Santa part worked above expectation, I think, as they both balanced the use of traits and the handing out of traits very well. I was a bit disappointed there was no paranoia when they met or when someone got a present, even when it was such an obvious baddie trait as distiller.

The little paranoia I intended for the guild turned out to petrify them instead. Ooops.
 
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Oooh, a GM AAR! Shiny!

Yeah, Wagon and I might have gone a bit overboard on saying that the guild was teh evol. But the last time I won as a baddie, it was because I manipulated the guild as one, so I could be excused. :p
 
GM AAR Part 2 - Role assignment
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Two packs are more robust so I went with that and 1/3 rule of thumb rounded upwards gave 12 starting baddies. I made the packs slightly asymmetrical (3+2 vs 4+1) to make analysis harder

Midsummer pack
werewolf + brutal (kaiserohaib)
werewolf + ghost whisperer (Gen. Marshall)
werewolf + spiritually attuned (EUROO7)
cultist + sorcerous powers (k-59)
cultist + infiltrating powers (JCan)

Easter Pack
werewolf + brutal (Yakman)
werewolf + distiller (Health)
werewolf + alderman (aedan777)
werewolf (De Chatillôn)
cultist + sorcerous powers (al-Aziz)

sorcerer + plotter + blessed (Slinky)
Krampus + ghost whisperer + healing powers + guild member card (Comm Cody)

Santa + seer + priestly powers + GA + plotter + brutal + assassin (Audren)
Santa + doctor + one eye open + spiritually attuned + alderman + cloak of invisibility + distiller + guild member card (madchemist)

guild: 6 x sorcerous powers + 2 x pathological liar + 2 x padreous powers

villager + guild member (Cliges)
villager + guild member (Jacksonian Missionary)
villager + guild member + cursed (Ithvan)
villager + guild member + blessed (Wagonlitz)

villager + padre (Rovsea1)
villager + assassin (Ironhead 5)
villager + one eye open (Ironhide G1)
villager + spirtually attuned + cursed (Teep)
villager + priestly powers (Quark8)
villager + infiltrating powers (tamius23)

villager + cursed (Mder1)
villager (Hazbot)
villager (LatinKaiser/Rovsea2)
villager (Arkasas)
villager (deathbywombat)
villager (alxeu)
villager (Hax)

apprentice + ghost whisperer (Gen. Skobelev)
apprentice (Sleepyhead)
apprentice + cursed (Lord_D)
 
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tamius23 said:
I'm still mystified by the guild's refusal to do anything. They can only use one power a night - surely by Day Six or Seven, with eighteen or so players left, they should have realised it wouldn't still be going by Day Fifteen? Even if you're worried that your guild could be infiltrated, I cannot see any sense in just leaving the powers unused.
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Actually they could use more than one trait a day since all it took was two members to vote for a use (I lowered this from a majority to get the guild more active).

In the guild's defense, early sorcerer scans could help the baddies narrow in on the seer/priest so not scanning at first might be a good idea.

Yakman said:
oh and @johho888, awesome art on the updates.

good game. did honor to the x-mas werewolfing tradition.
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Thanks, glad someone noticed it although calling it art seems a bit much. ;)
 
Sleepyhead said:
Slinky was the originial sorcerer
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Right, I always mix you two up and was happy when he claimed you so it wouldn't matter if I talked to the wrong one.
 
Again, my biggest complaint with this game is the concentration of traits. There were 5 starting villagers with no traits, 6 if you include cursed Mder. That's a lot, especially when you have other roles that have a lot more knowledge and traits at their disposal. Look at your wolf packs. You have a lot of traits stacked up there, plus a Krampus and a fairly powerful Sorc. You were relying on the Santas to give the right traits to people whose role they can't automatically verify. Granted, the petrified Guild screwed things up, but you still have a large body of players with little to no information on the village side, and relatively few who can gain a lot of insight. This game could have snowballed ridiculously into the wolves' favor, in my opinion.
 
I disagree, having something like 1/3 plain villagers is good! If anything I tend to use too many traits in my games. Traits are there more to spice up the game for the players, the real power lies with a few roles like wolf, seer, priest and maybe the protectors. Evereyone else is really only cannon fodder but if they get a trait they might not feel that way. And knowledge can be had in other ways than traits.

What I feel was the biggest weakness of the setup was that there were too many unattached (actual and potential) baddies and if one pack was knocked out early that could very easily have tipped the balance out of control. Here I felt I had to have enough cultists for the sorcerer and Krampus to find but that was at the risk of them forming a big pack-neutral block. And neutrality is bad for gameplay, even if it's limited to within the baddie side.
 
Anyone interested in hosting the next big?
 
Excellent. Johho's GMAARs are far and away the best. I was going to ask for one if I didn't see one today. :)

johho888 said:
The Santa part worked above expectation, I think, as they both balanced the use of traits and the handing out of traits very well. I was a bit disappointed there was no paranoia when they met or when someone got a present, even when it was such an obvious baddie trait as distiller.
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I must say, being Santa was a real blast. Every trait I passed out had me scared in the back of my mind that I might be screwing something up for the village (and eventually, I did, though that was with Audren's trait so I'll blame him for that). :D

It's also been a long while since I was that invested in a WW game.

Rovsea said:
Again, my biggest complaint with this game is the concentration of traits. There were 5 starting villagers with no traits, 6 if you include cursed Mder. That's a lot, especially when you have other roles that have a lot more knowledge and traits at their disposal. Look at your wolf packs. You have a lot of traits stacked up there, plus a Krampus and a fairly powerful Sorc. You were relying on the Santas to give the right traits to people whose role they can't automatically verify. Granted, the petrified Guild screwed things up, but you still have a large body of players with little to no information on the village side, and relatively few who can gain a lot of insight. This game could have snowballed ridiculously into the wolves' favor, in my opinion.
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Traitless villager is an underappreciated role. And don't forget, the traitless villagers could be made non-traitless if they got in touch with Santa somehow - hence wombat becoming a doctor, for instance.

johho888 said:
I disagree, having something like 1/3 plain villagers is good! If anything I tend to use too many traits in my games. Traits are there more to spice up the game for the players, the real power lies with a few roles like wolf, seer, priest and maybe the protectors. Evereyone else is really only cannon fodder but if they get a trait they might not feel that way. And knowledge can be had in other ways than traits.

What I feel was the biggest weakness of the setup was that there were too many unattached (actual and potential) baddies and if one pack was knocked out early that could very easily have tipped the balance out of control. Here I felt I had to have enough cultists for the sorcerer and Krampus to find but that was at the risk of them forming a big pack-neutral block. And neutrality is bad for gameplay, even if it's limited to within the baddie side.
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I think the tendency of most GMs is to massively overdo the handing out of traits. Traitless villager should be the most common role in a game, IMO.

Jacksonian Missionary said:
Anyone interested in hosting the next big?
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Not me. At least not until the summer, most likely.
 
madchemist said:
I think the tendency of most GMs is to massively overdo the handing out of traits. Traitless villager should be the most common role in a game, IMO.
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+1
 
I could possibly host the next big since I have a theme, but my paranoia that it would go horribly is preventing me from claiming it.
 
Jacksonian Missionary said:
I could possibly host the next big since I have a theme, but my paranoia that it would go horribly is preventing me from claiming it.
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Do eet. My break is almost over and I'd rather wait until I get settled in the semester before hosting.
 
Cliges said:
Paranoia? Well, you could go on atypical antipsychotic medication, but who wants that from a GM?
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Those traits make for some of the best GM's.
 
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