Post by Pleonast on Jan 24, 2013 16:41:52 GMT -8
Holy Moley! Day One
So, initial thoughts on my role:
First off, oh boy. If ever there was a person to NOT give a role like this to, it's probably me! It has been well established that I suck at roles. That said, character-wise, it's the perfect role. A scientist heretic? That's absolutely me.
Going through it carefully, and knowing what I know so far, here are my initial thoughts.
*
1) I know of at least three "factions" in the game: Christians, Heretics, and Devils. Since neither Christians nor Heretics appear to know each other, that means that we have two factions that are "uninformed majority". It could be that one has numbers, the other has powers. In which case, the heretics would be the most powerful, the Christians the most numerous.
We could be allies or competing powers. It seems most unlikely that a Christian would align with a Heretic, so unless something is really really"off" with the colour, I'm inclined to assume that we're competing for the win. Yet my win condition mentions nothing about beating the Christians, and theirs (as far as I know) mentions nothing about Heretics. All that I know is that the Devils absolutely cannot win for me to do so.
If the Christians and Heretics are competing, the Heretics may have one major advantage right now: the Christians are (mostly) unaware that we exist. If that's not the case, why point out that your win condition includes stopping the Devils, but not mention the Heretics? It may be that a few Christians have the Heretics mentioned in their role PMs.
Could there be other factions? Certainly.
*
2) Let's look at the question of "recruitment". I don't believe that either the Christians or Heretics would have this power, since they might recruit from the informed minority group (the Devils). Assuming, of course, that there IS an informed minority group.
If there is no informed minority and the Devils are as in-the-dark about their friends as I and the Christians claim to be, then it's quite possible for ANYBODY to be a recruiter.
So: if there's an informed minority, the recruiter would come from that group (and the Devils would make most sense). If not, the Devils, Heretics, Christians, or hypothetical fourth group (let's refer to them as Jehovah's Witnesses, until I get a better name) could all contain "recruiters". Colour is no help here. Any of the known factions could be interested in "recruiting".
I don't want to assume anything - not even the existence of a "scum" group, as you see - given your remarks about this being a "one play only" game. That suggests that something is very, very "off" in the state of Denmark. The normal alignments of town, scum and third-party are unlikely to apply here. Which brings me nicely to the question of:
*
3) Sins. Could be a recruitment mechanic or a killing mechanic. Could be that there are sub-factions containing everyone whose cardinal sin is a particular one - so I might be unknowingly aligned with other gluttons. Could be that there's a player or players out there whose sole job is to identify the cardinal sins of others, although if this is the case then their job would be made very difficult indeed by the warning - apparently given to at least three people - to never reveal your sin.
*
4) The dead. Now here's where I think the big twist comes in. When you're dead, you're not out of the game - you can still influence the outcome and help your team to win. The possible ramifications of this are enormous, the mechanics even more so. I don't even know where to start looking at this. For the moment I'm not going to worry about it, and instead worry about what I can influence. Which brings me to:
*
5) My power: to investigate and manipulate others' roles. Let's take this in turn.
The four types of power roles are:
Killer - kills players
Investigator - cops, trackers, watchers, role investigators
Manipulator - protector, roleblocker, role redirector
Mechanic - recruiters, vote count powers, other unmentioned game mechanics?
Now, assuming for the moment a setup where the Devils are an informed minority with possible recruitment powers, the Christians and Heretics are competing uninformed minorities, and there may or may not be additonal alignments in play (the Jehovah's Witnesses) to be potentially revealed later on, let's see how my role might be useful.
KILLER:
a. I discover how many people alive at dusk have a killing role. I can see this becoming potentially useful late-game, but early on? Depends on the night kills.
b. I discover how many people have used a killing power that night. Utterly useless. I can just about see it being handy in confirming a protector or duplicate "kills" on a single player, or maybe a "janitor"-type role; but otherwise, I think the number of dead bodies is likely to be sufficient indication!
c. You block all killing powers. HELL YEAH. A pity I have to do "b" first.
d. I redirect all kills onto the target of my choice. This is a GREAT late-game power.
e. I discover if player "X" is a killer. A straight investigation, in other words.
f. I discover if player "X" is killing anybody that night. Hmmm... like "b", I just don't see a practical use for this.
g. I discover any players who are using killing powers that night. Potentially game-breaking, but I can't use it until night seven at the earliest. If only this one was available on night one...
The obvious thoughts regarding using my role on "killers" is that c, d, e and g can all be extremely useful in the right circumstance. But to get those powers, I have to use b and f. None of which have much obvious use at the time I'd have to use them - early-game for b, late-game for f. The "a" power is a wild card that might be useful for tallying up the players late-game... or could turn out to be completely and utterly useless.
INVESTIGATOR:
a. You discover how many players alive at the start of this Night are an investigator. And this helps me how...? This isn't like a kill, where you can get information from the number of dead bodies each night.
b. You discover how many investigations have been used that night. Again, how does this help me? Anybody could've used them and I can't see the results of the investigations.
c. You block all investigations. I see this one as having an equal chance of hurting or harming my side. I don't want, say, a Christian to discover a Heretic; but what if they'd discover a Devil or Jehovah's Witness? And what if there's another Heretic investigator out there? I don't want to block that person.
d. I redirect an investigator's power onto another person... but again, don't see the result. Very late game, I guess this could be useful for deflecting an investigator. The trouble is, I have to use a, b and c to get to this point.
e. You discover if player X is an investigator. Honestly... if I get this far in the game and don't have a good idea who the remaining investigators are, I'm playing it wrong anyway. Plus, investigators tend to get killed off early anyway in many cases. This just seems like a waste of an investigation to me.
f. You discover if player X is using an investigation that night. See point e. I just do not see myself ever having to use this power by the time I'd be able to.
g. You discover which living players are using investigations. This would be at least night seven by this time. All investigators should be either claimed, obvious, or dead.
You'll gather that I don't think much of the prospect of using my power on investigators, regardless of the setup. The cost-benefit ratio is just ridiculously unbalanced to me. The potential benefits don't even start until I've wasted two nights' worth of powers, and even then they're extremely dependant on specific circumstances. The late-game powers seem to me to be far more potentially useful in the early stages, and what good is that to me? By the time I get to use them, I could potentially be the only investigator left alive.
So I'm inclined to rule out using my powers on investigators completely, so let's turn to group 3: MANIPULATORS. Docs, roleblockers, bus drivers.
a. You discover how many players have protective or role-blocking / redirecting roles. I don't see how this helps me at this point in the game. May have some use later on perhaps.
b. You discover how many people have used protective or role-changing roles. Now this could potentially be very useful indeed, but it would require very specific circumstances. Say, a player claims that they were roleblocked or their role was redirected. I think it's more of a late-game power though.
c. You block all protections, role-blocks, and role-changes. I don't even know how to tally this one up. What if there's a heretic protector, or a devil roleblocker? I think it's at least unlikely that there's another heretic manipulator out there, so I guess that's one person I'm less likely to need to worry about... if it wasn't for the "protector" role I'd say this was an easy net positive. But blocking the doc by accident? I don't want to do that.
d. You redirect all roleblocks, protects and role-redirects onto another player. So let me work this out... let's say that A protects B, C roleblocks D, and E role-redirects F onto G. I redirect all of them onto H. A now protects H, C roleblocks H, and E redirects H's role (possibly now blocked by C) onto G? I could get halfway through the alphabet before I make sense of this... I guess it would be good if H was a powerful ally and got a protect, but at the same time, if H is roleblocked or redirected as well... could be nasty.
e. You discover if X is a protector, role-blocker, or role-redirector. Again... if I don't have some idea of this by night five, I'm probably playing the game wrong.
f. You discover if X is using a protect, roleblock, or role-redirect. This late in the game, this just seems useless to me. Earlier on, to confirm a suspicion, maybe more useful.
g. You discover which living players are using role-blocking / redirecting / protecting powers that night. Meh. See e and f.
My thoughts: these powers are definitely more potentially useful than the investigator ones. My problem is that the early-game powers would be more useful late-game, and vice-versa... I'm not dismissing all of them per se, but with potentially very limited powers to use of my own, I think using them on manipulators may be a waste of my role.
Last one: MECHANICS. With known effects of recruitment and vote-influencing.
a. You discover how many players alive at the start of this Night are mechanics. This might be the most useful of the lot, especially where recruiters are concerned.
b. You discover how many mechanics used their powers... with vote-changing powers probably being fairly obvious, this could be huge for identifying recruiters or recruitment game mechanics.
c. You block all recruiters or vote-changers? Yes please!
d. You redirect all powers of the given role type to another living player. Have all vote-changing and recruitment powers redirected onto a Devil? Well the obvious answer is that this is great, but what if there are helpful vote-influencing mechanics? For example, extra votes for friendly players? And would there still be recruiters around by night four? This one could be a trap.
e. You discover if X is a mechanic. Again, it would be a very unusual game where recruiters could still recruit this far into the game. And vote-influencing players should be sufficiently obvious that I wouldn't need this power by this point.
f. You discover if X used a recruitment or vote-influencing power. Might be good to confirm if somebody is still "recruiting", but again, that seems hugely doubtful to me. Unless evidence crops up that there are late-game recruitments, this seems a waste of a power.
g. You discover which living players are using vote-influencing or recruitment powers. Hugely useful early-game. Seven rounds in, do I really need to have this option open to me, given the huge investment of powers that it requires? It could be massively useful... or totally useless. There are better options to work towards.
Well the huge one there is power "c". And its potential usefulness depends entirely on one thing: is there a Heretic-aligned recruiter? Or are the recruiters all neutral / hostile (so Devils / Jehovah's Witnesses)? Using powers "a" and "b" might be helpful in finding out.
With only the information I've got, my instinct is to go something like this:
Night 1 - mechanic "a".
Night 2 - mechanic "b".
Night 3 - mechanic "c", if I'm confident the"recruiters" are not allies.
Night 4 - killer "a".
Subsequent nights - subsequent killer powers.
I think using my power on anybody but mechanics or killers seems like a waste.
*
6) TO DO LIST:
Things I need to find out.
1) Death mechanics. How do the dead influence the game?
2) Sins. What do they do, what effect do they have?
3) Cardinal Sins. I know the strength of my cardinal sin - gluttony. But what's its weakness? Who can exploit it, and how?
4) Are the devils a traditional informed minority?
5) Which faction or factions is able to recruit?
6) How many Heretics are there? How many Christians? How many Devils?
7) Is there a fourth faction - a "Jehovah's Witness" faction?
8) Who are the Devils?
Boy, that's a long list. And this has been a VERY long message.
Peace!
So, initial thoughts on my role:
First off, oh boy. If ever there was a person to NOT give a role like this to, it's probably me! It has been well established that I suck at roles. That said, character-wise, it's the perfect role. A scientist heretic? That's absolutely me.
Going through it carefully, and knowing what I know so far, here are my initial thoughts.
*
1) I know of at least three "factions" in the game: Christians, Heretics, and Devils. Since neither Christians nor Heretics appear to know each other, that means that we have two factions that are "uninformed majority". It could be that one has numbers, the other has powers. In which case, the heretics would be the most powerful, the Christians the most numerous.
We could be allies or competing powers. It seems most unlikely that a Christian would align with a Heretic, so unless something is really really"off" with the colour, I'm inclined to assume that we're competing for the win. Yet my win condition mentions nothing about beating the Christians, and theirs (as far as I know) mentions nothing about Heretics. All that I know is that the Devils absolutely cannot win for me to do so.
If the Christians and Heretics are competing, the Heretics may have one major advantage right now: the Christians are (mostly) unaware that we exist. If that's not the case, why point out that your win condition includes stopping the Devils, but not mention the Heretics? It may be that a few Christians have the Heretics mentioned in their role PMs.
Could there be other factions? Certainly.
*
2) Let's look at the question of "recruitment". I don't believe that either the Christians or Heretics would have this power, since they might recruit from the informed minority group (the Devils). Assuming, of course, that there IS an informed minority group.
If there is no informed minority and the Devils are as in-the-dark about their friends as I and the Christians claim to be, then it's quite possible for ANYBODY to be a recruiter.
So: if there's an informed minority, the recruiter would come from that group (and the Devils would make most sense). If not, the Devils, Heretics, Christians, or hypothetical fourth group (let's refer to them as Jehovah's Witnesses, until I get a better name) could all contain "recruiters". Colour is no help here. Any of the known factions could be interested in "recruiting".
I don't want to assume anything - not even the existence of a "scum" group, as you see - given your remarks about this being a "one play only" game. That suggests that something is very, very "off" in the state of Denmark. The normal alignments of town, scum and third-party are unlikely to apply here. Which brings me nicely to the question of:
*
3) Sins. Could be a recruitment mechanic or a killing mechanic. Could be that there are sub-factions containing everyone whose cardinal sin is a particular one - so I might be unknowingly aligned with other gluttons. Could be that there's a player or players out there whose sole job is to identify the cardinal sins of others, although if this is the case then their job would be made very difficult indeed by the warning - apparently given to at least three people - to never reveal your sin.
*
4) The dead. Now here's where I think the big twist comes in. When you're dead, you're not out of the game - you can still influence the outcome and help your team to win. The possible ramifications of this are enormous, the mechanics even more so. I don't even know where to start looking at this. For the moment I'm not going to worry about it, and instead worry about what I can influence. Which brings me to:
*
5) My power: to investigate and manipulate others' roles. Let's take this in turn.
The four types of power roles are:
Killer - kills players
Investigator - cops, trackers, watchers, role investigators
Manipulator - protector, roleblocker, role redirector
Mechanic - recruiters, vote count powers, other unmentioned game mechanics?
Now, assuming for the moment a setup where the Devils are an informed minority with possible recruitment powers, the Christians and Heretics are competing uninformed minorities, and there may or may not be additonal alignments in play (the Jehovah's Witnesses) to be potentially revealed later on, let's see how my role might be useful.
KILLER:
a. I discover how many people alive at dusk have a killing role. I can see this becoming potentially useful late-game, but early on? Depends on the night kills.
b. I discover how many people have used a killing power that night. Utterly useless. I can just about see it being handy in confirming a protector or duplicate "kills" on a single player, or maybe a "janitor"-type role; but otherwise, I think the number of dead bodies is likely to be sufficient indication!
c. You block all killing powers. HELL YEAH. A pity I have to do "b" first.
d. I redirect all kills onto the target of my choice. This is a GREAT late-game power.
e. I discover if player "X" is a killer. A straight investigation, in other words.
f. I discover if player "X" is killing anybody that night. Hmmm... like "b", I just don't see a practical use for this.
g. I discover any players who are using killing powers that night. Potentially game-breaking, but I can't use it until night seven at the earliest. If only this one was available on night one...
The obvious thoughts regarding using my role on "killers" is that c, d, e and g can all be extremely useful in the right circumstance. But to get those powers, I have to use b and f. None of which have much obvious use at the time I'd have to use them - early-game for b, late-game for f. The "a" power is a wild card that might be useful for tallying up the players late-game... or could turn out to be completely and utterly useless.
INVESTIGATOR:
a. You discover how many players alive at the start of this Night are an investigator. And this helps me how...? This isn't like a kill, where you can get information from the number of dead bodies each night.
b. You discover how many investigations have been used that night. Again, how does this help me? Anybody could've used them and I can't see the results of the investigations.
c. You block all investigations. I see this one as having an equal chance of hurting or harming my side. I don't want, say, a Christian to discover a Heretic; but what if they'd discover a Devil or Jehovah's Witness? And what if there's another Heretic investigator out there? I don't want to block that person.
d. I redirect an investigator's power onto another person... but again, don't see the result. Very late game, I guess this could be useful for deflecting an investigator. The trouble is, I have to use a, b and c to get to this point.
e. You discover if player X is an investigator. Honestly... if I get this far in the game and don't have a good idea who the remaining investigators are, I'm playing it wrong anyway. Plus, investigators tend to get killed off early anyway in many cases. This just seems like a waste of an investigation to me.
f. You discover if player X is using an investigation that night. See point e. I just do not see myself ever having to use this power by the time I'd be able to.
g. You discover which living players are using investigations. This would be at least night seven by this time. All investigators should be either claimed, obvious, or dead.
You'll gather that I don't think much of the prospect of using my power on investigators, regardless of the setup. The cost-benefit ratio is just ridiculously unbalanced to me. The potential benefits don't even start until I've wasted two nights' worth of powers, and even then they're extremely dependant on specific circumstances. The late-game powers seem to me to be far more potentially useful in the early stages, and what good is that to me? By the time I get to use them, I could potentially be the only investigator left alive.
So I'm inclined to rule out using my powers on investigators completely, so let's turn to group 3: MANIPULATORS. Docs, roleblockers, bus drivers.
a. You discover how many players have protective or role-blocking / redirecting roles. I don't see how this helps me at this point in the game. May have some use later on perhaps.
b. You discover how many people have used protective or role-changing roles. Now this could potentially be very useful indeed, but it would require very specific circumstances. Say, a player claims that they were roleblocked or their role was redirected. I think it's more of a late-game power though.
c. You block all protections, role-blocks, and role-changes. I don't even know how to tally this one up. What if there's a heretic protector, or a devil roleblocker? I think it's at least unlikely that there's another heretic manipulator out there, so I guess that's one person I'm less likely to need to worry about... if it wasn't for the "protector" role I'd say this was an easy net positive. But blocking the doc by accident? I don't want to do that.
d. You redirect all roleblocks, protects and role-redirects onto another player. So let me work this out... let's say that A protects B, C roleblocks D, and E role-redirects F onto G. I redirect all of them onto H. A now protects H, C roleblocks H, and E redirects H's role (possibly now blocked by C) onto G? I could get halfway through the alphabet before I make sense of this... I guess it would be good if H was a powerful ally and got a protect, but at the same time, if H is roleblocked or redirected as well... could be nasty.
e. You discover if X is a protector, role-blocker, or role-redirector. Again... if I don't have some idea of this by night five, I'm probably playing the game wrong.
f. You discover if X is using a protect, roleblock, or role-redirect. This late in the game, this just seems useless to me. Earlier on, to confirm a suspicion, maybe more useful.
g. You discover which living players are using role-blocking / redirecting / protecting powers that night. Meh. See e and f.
My thoughts: these powers are definitely more potentially useful than the investigator ones. My problem is that the early-game powers would be more useful late-game, and vice-versa... I'm not dismissing all of them per se, but with potentially very limited powers to use of my own, I think using them on manipulators may be a waste of my role.
Last one: MECHANICS. With known effects of recruitment and vote-influencing.
a. You discover how many players alive at the start of this Night are mechanics. This might be the most useful of the lot, especially where recruiters are concerned.
b. You discover how many mechanics used their powers... with vote-changing powers probably being fairly obvious, this could be huge for identifying recruiters or recruitment game mechanics.
c. You block all recruiters or vote-changers? Yes please!
d. You redirect all powers of the given role type to another living player. Have all vote-changing and recruitment powers redirected onto a Devil? Well the obvious answer is that this is great, but what if there are helpful vote-influencing mechanics? For example, extra votes for friendly players? And would there still be recruiters around by night four? This one could be a trap.
e. You discover if X is a mechanic. Again, it would be a very unusual game where recruiters could still recruit this far into the game. And vote-influencing players should be sufficiently obvious that I wouldn't need this power by this point.
f. You discover if X used a recruitment or vote-influencing power. Might be good to confirm if somebody is still "recruiting", but again, that seems hugely doubtful to me. Unless evidence crops up that there are late-game recruitments, this seems a waste of a power.
g. You discover which living players are using vote-influencing or recruitment powers. Hugely useful early-game. Seven rounds in, do I really need to have this option open to me, given the huge investment of powers that it requires? It could be massively useful... or totally useless. There are better options to work towards.
Well the huge one there is power "c". And its potential usefulness depends entirely on one thing: is there a Heretic-aligned recruiter? Or are the recruiters all neutral / hostile (so Devils / Jehovah's Witnesses)? Using powers "a" and "b" might be helpful in finding out.
With only the information I've got, my instinct is to go something like this:
Night 1 - mechanic "a".
Night 2 - mechanic "b".
Night 3 - mechanic "c", if I'm confident the"recruiters" are not allies.
Night 4 - killer "a".
Subsequent nights - subsequent killer powers.
I think using my power on anybody but mechanics or killers seems like a waste.
*
6) TO DO LIST:
Things I need to find out.
1) Death mechanics. How do the dead influence the game?
2) Sins. What do they do, what effect do they have?
3) Cardinal Sins. I know the strength of my cardinal sin - gluttony. But what's its weakness? Who can exploit it, and how?
4) Are the devils a traditional informed minority?
5) Which faction or factions is able to recruit?
6) How many Heretics are there? How many Christians? How many Devils?
7) Is there a fourth faction - a "Jehovah's Witness" faction?
8) Who are the Devils?
Boy, that's a long list. And this has been a VERY long message.
Peace!